That summer had gradually faded into the distance, and I had found a temporary place to settle for now.
I had forgotten how to miss you, forgotten how to reminisce, because the passage of time had blurred the images in my memory.
Just like now, as day after day passed, year after year went by, we had each set out on our own path in life.
And so, all these tangled complexities between us were things I had never imagined two years earlier.
Every day, we each worked hard to get on with our lives,
And when you sat down in the quiet, did you ever think of those stubborn kids who had rebelled for freedom that summer?
Time no longer lingered, just as the kapok flowers that symbolized us would still bloom and wither in a cycle with the turning seasons.
We had all grown up. We were no longer children who charged straight ahead without a care,
So we began living with responsibilities, began learning to think about the concerns and burdens we had to make sense of.
I did not know whether this was a good thing or a bad one,
I only understood that we no longer imagined everything would be beautiful with such innocent simplicity, and our youthful days were no longer so green.
And I still had that little regret, the regret of falling a year behind you. But I did not regret my choice, because truly, I, Little Ai, had learned so much: that optimism, those lessons in treating people and handling things, that innocence... Watching them every day that year, I saw how different their innocence was from our wildness. Perhaps, as time wore things away, my thoughts would lose their simplicity and become muddled and complicated. But I would still be