Notes of Youth

The door creaked shut behind Lin Keqing as she stepped into the dimly lit library. Dust motes floated in the amber light spilling from a single desk lamp. The air smelled of old paper and lavender-scented tea—an oddly comforting mix.

The librarian, Madam Qiao, gestured toward the chairs across from her desk. "Sit."

Keqing sat down cautiously, fingers still curled around the silver pin in her pocket.

"You mentioned Lin Wanzou," Madam Qiao said without preamble. "What do you know about her?"

Keqing hesitated. "Not much. Only fragments. A name in a book. A poem hidden in a drawer. An old essay... And then today, I found this." She held out the pin.

The librarian took it with a soft exhale. "She used to wear this every day. Said it reminded her of her grandfather."

Keqing leaned forward. "Who was she?"

Madam Qiao studied the pin for a long moment before answering. "Lin Wanzou was a student here three years ago. Quiet. Sharp. A girl who always borrowed more books than she could carry. Literature, philosophy, even old astronomy charts. She came every afternoon like clockwork. Until one day... she didn't."

"What happened?"

Madam Qiao folded her hands. "No one knows for sure. Some said she transferred schools. Others whispered she had problems at home. But the truth is, she simply vanished. No record, no farewell. Her library card was returned in an envelope. Unmarked."

Keqing's mind raced. "Did she write? Leave anything?"

The librarian got up, walked to a locked drawer, and pulled out a small stack of notebooks. "These were left in the lost and found. I kept them. Didn't know what else to do."

Keqing took them reverently. The top one had W.Z. scrawled on the cover. Inside were short stories, sketches, and halfway-finished poems. Some pages were dog-eared. Others had tiny annotations: dates, weather notes, philosophical questions like "If silence is memory's echo, what does forgetting sound like?"

She turned to a page near the middle and paused. A drawing—a girl sitting alone on a bridge, sketching trees whose roots turned into words. Underneath: "Sometimes you don't disappear. You just become part of the margins."

"Did she have friends?" Keqing asked.

"One," the librarian said. "A boy. Name: Bai Andui. Brilliant. Reserved. They would argue about poetry while sorting returned books. But after Wanzou vanished, he changed. Shut down completely."

Keqing blinked. That name—Bai Andui—was the very same boy who had recently started showing up at her school as a transfer student. The one always tied in academic rankings with Gu Yuyan.

"He's at our school now," Keqing murmured.

The librarian raised an eyebrow. "Then perhaps fate isn't done with either of you."

That night, back in her room, Keqing laid the notebooks gently on her desk. Her camera memory card was still in her coat pocket, filled with frost-touched images from the winter PE class. But her mind was miles away.

A girl who vanished. A pin that resurfaced. And a boy who might hold the rest of the truth.

She reached for her pen and began to write. Not an essay. Not a poem. Just a letter:

*"Dear Wanzou, I don't know where you are. But your story isn't over. Not yet."

Across the city, Bai Andui sat alone in the chemistry lab after hours, staring at an old library card tucked into the pages of his textbook. It was faded, the name barely visible.

Wanzou.

His fingers closed around it.

Someone was stirring the past.

And he wasn't sure he was ready.

The next day, Keqing noticed Bai Andui lingering outside the literature classroom during break. He seemed lost in thought, notebook in hand, his usual sharp focus replaced by a hesitancy that didn't suit him.

She approached. "You knew her, didn't you? Lin Wanzou."

He looked at her with surprise, then nodded slowly. "Everyone knew her. But few remembered her."

"You remember."

He paused, then opened his notebook. Between notes for a class reading lay a folded paper—a letter. "She wrote this before she left. I never showed it to anyone."

Keqing glanced at it. The handwriting was fragile, but clear.

"Tell the right person. When they come. Someone will look. Not because I asked them to. But because they see the same shadows I once saw."

"She meant you," Bai Andui said. "I didn't understand it then. But now..."

After school, Gu Yuyan found Keqing sitting by the library steps, the Wanzou notebooks by her side. "You're chasing ghosts," he said, gently.

"Or they're chasing me."

He sat beside her in silence. Then: "I remember her too. Just a little. She once asked me why I never looked up. I said I was focused. She said I was afraid of falling."

Keqing laughed, a quiet, bitter sound. "She had that effect on people, didn't she?"

Gu nodded. "Maybe you're the one who'll finish her story."

That evening, just before dinner, Keqing received another anonymous message. This time, it included a photo—blurry and taken from an angle above a desk. It showed a torn page from what looked like a diary.

"If they find the red book, they'll know what I couldn't say. But it's buried in fiction. Look for it where stories pretend to be truth."

The message was unsigned.

Keqing's heart raced. She knew exactly where that hint was pointing: the fiction section of the old library archives, where rare novels and out-of-print works were stored. She had only been there once, escorted by Madam Qiao.

She grabbed a coat and dashed back out into the evening chill.

At the school library, the lights were off, but the side entrance was ajar. Inside, a faint glow came from the archive hall.

She stepped inside, searching the shelves. Historical fiction, classic literature, magical realism...

Her eyes landed on a faded red spine, nearly hidden behind thicker tomes. She pulled it free. The title: The Door Between the Lines.

Inside the book's cover, taped carefully, was a folded piece of paper.

She opened it slowly.

"If you've found this, you've already seen more than most dared to. This isn't a confession. It's a question. Why does a voice disappear only when someone stops listening?"

Keqing stood there in the silence, holding the note like a fragile truth.

Suddenly, she heard a creak from behind one of the shelves. Turning swiftly, she caught sight of a shadow slipping through the far exit—someone had been there, watching.

She rushed after them, heart pounding, but by the time she reached the door, the hallway was empty. Only the lingering scent of lavender remained.

Back in the archive room, the old red book lay open where she had dropped it. But now, another slip of paper had fallen onto the floor. It wasn't there before.

It read: "Page 27. The clock stops where truth begins."

She turned the page and gasped.

A photo.

Wanzou and Bai Andui, sitting at the back of the old library, smiles faint but real. Someone had taken it from the shadows.

Below it, written in Wanzou's handwriting:

"If you find this, you're already part of the story."

Keqing's fingers trembled. She wasn't chasing ghosts anymore.

She was being invited in.