Wang Ge:
May this letter find you well.
By the time you read this letter, I should have settled down in an unfamiliar city.
Perhaps you have already realized that I did not take the gaokao.
There is no need to worry about me, and don't come looking for me either. I'm fine—I've never been better.
You should have finished your math exam too. This should be the time when we meet in the library every evening.
Although I think there is a very good chance I will come back to find you, no one can say for certain what the future holds.
Since that's the case, consider this letter our final meeting.
A long time ago, I told you that I rejected your confession because I had something more important to pursue.
You should have guessed by now that this more important thing was freedom.
This wasn't a choice I made on impulse. It was something I had planned long ago.
For a very long time, I had been working toward this goal. Freedom had practically become an obsession of mine.
I have to leave.
You're so smart. You must have realized long ago that a day like this would come, right?
Well, I had only written a few words, yet all those memories of you and me had already begun surfacing in my mind, colliding again and again, impossible to dispel.
I'm already beginning to feel reluctant to leave.
After carefully thinking it over, I realized that most of the time we spent together consisted of you talking and me listening.
I really liked listening to you talk, listening as you shared all sorts of trivial things with me. It was warm and interesting.
I never had any friends growing up, and no one at home would listen