Notes of Youth

It started with a blank space on the schedule.

The second-period teacher didn't show up, and after ten minutes of waiting, the class of 11A1 erupted into soft chatter. A few students checked the hallway; others flipped through their textbooks with no real purpose. Eventually, someone declared it was an official "free period," and that was that.

Le Yahan, ever the source of spontaneous energy, clapped her hands. "Let's not waste this. Group one, get the chalk. Group two, we're playing 'Guess That Doodle!'"

Laughter stirred in corners of the room as some grabbed markers and filled the board with quick, messy drawings: a cat with sunglasses, a carrot dancing, what looked like a house but might have been a potato. Even Chen Yuke cracked a rare smile when Yahan made him guess his own awful sketch of a goldfish.

Across the classroom, Gu Yuyan and Lin Keqing sat at their desks, not far apart but not directly together. Gu was reading something, or pretending to. Keqing was doodling circles in her notebook, her head leaning slightly on her arm. She wasn't thinking about anything in particular. And yet somehow, she was thinking of everything.

A few desks away, Tran Vuka had started folding pieces of paper into tiny boats. One of them was labeled "Somewhere to go, someday." When Yahan saw it, she made a show of placing it on the windowsill like a treasured artifact. "Now we're a fleet," she said, laughing.

Then someone brought out snacks. A small packet of dried fruit was passed around. Someone else shared hard candies from a coat pocket. The classroom became a picnic without a blanket.

About halfway through the period, the door opened. Mr.Ha entered with his usual calm step, holding a stack of papers. The noise quieted. He looked up, paused, then said with a faint smile, "Relax. I'm not here to check on your chaos."

He set the papers down and leaned slightly against the teacher's desk. "Your teacher for this period called in sick. I figured I'd come say hello... and maybe tell you a story."

Students perked up.

"It's not from a book," he added. "It's from when I was your age."

Silence fell, the good kind—the kind that stretches out space to listen.

"There was a girl in my class," he began. "She always sat near the window. Wrote in the margins of her textbooks. Quiet, but... not shy. Just thoughtful. One day, she left a note inside a library book. I don't think it was meant for anyone in particular. But I found it."

He looked at the ceiling for a moment, remembering.

"It said: 'Maybe one day, someone will read this and understand the silence I was trying to keep.'"

The classroom stilled.

"I never told her I found it. I don't know why. Maybe I was afraid I'd ruin the silence she wrote into. Maybe I thought understanding didn't need to be named."

He looked at them with a soft, tired smile. "Sometimes, we remember the people we didn't speak to louder than those we did."

And with that, he picked up his papers again and walked out.

No one moved right away. The story hung there, a quiet curtain between the ordinary and the honest.

After the story, the room stayed quiet for a moment before Yahan broke the silence. "Well. That was poetic. Now I need juice."

As students moved about again, Chen Yuke opened an old desk drawer looking for a marker and pulled out something unexpected—a folded piece of paper.

"What's that?" Keqing asked.

Yuke unfolded it. "A letter. No name."

Yahan immediately jumped over. "Read it!"

He cleared his throat dramatically and read:

"You don't know it yet, but the way you talk about the rain makes people fall in love with the world again."

"Definitely a love letter," Yahan concluded. "And definitely someone in this room."

"I don't think so," Yuke muttered, folding it more carefully this time. "It's something else."

He placed the note gently in the front pocket of his notebook and glanced at Keqing, who wasn't looking at him but had a faint crease between her brows—as if something had stirred just beneath her thoughts.

As the bell for the next period drew near, Yahan clapped her hands once more. "Okay, one last thing before we return to boring academic life. We're playing: If It Were Me."

Groans followed, but she continued undeterred. "I ask a scenario. You say what you'd do. No overthinking."

She pointed to Vuka. "If you found a note like the one Yuke did—would you keep it or return it?"

"Keep," he said easily.

"Keqing. If someone left you something but never signed it, would you want to know who it was?"

She paused. "Only if they wanted me to know."

Finally, Yahan turned to Gu Yuyan.

"If a friend stopped talking, completely, but they were still around... would you wait for them?"

The room held its breath.

Gu looked at her, then glanced sideways at Keqing before answering simply:

"Yes. I would. As long as they're still there."

Keqing didn't look at him. But her pencil stopped moving, and she smiled without realizing it.

During lunch break, Keqing wandered outside to the garden path that circled the back of the school. The trees there had started to shed their leaves a little early. She crouched to pick up a leaf shaped like a heart. She didn't know why she kept it, only that she did.

Nearby, someone began playing soft notes on the piano in the music room with the windows open. The melody wasn't complex—just simple chords, drifting gently into the quiet space like a voice trying not to interrupt. She knew without looking that it was Tran Vuka.

She sat on a nearby bench and listened until the piece ended. Then she stood and walked away, leaf still in hand.

Back in the hallway, Le Yahan was helping a junior student tape up a lost-and-found poster. "It's a pencil case with stickers of ducks," the younger girl explained.

"You'll find it," Yahan said with a grin. "I believe in duck power."

Chen Yuke, passing by, added, "That's oddly specific motivation."

"Sometimes the specific things are the most memorable," she said.

That evening, Keqing wrote in her journal:

"Maybe we remember certain days not because of what happened, but because of how they made us pause. Some silences don't need to be filled. They just need to be held."

She closed the journal slowly, placed the heart-shaped leaf between its pages, and turned off the light.

Sleep didn't come immediately—but she didn't mind. Some days, it was enough just to feel quietly alive.