A Promise Etched in Shadows

"We promised each other as kids and said we'd be friends for life, and now it looks like their anticipation has laid a steady path forward.”

A girl in a light yellow skirt twirled the end of her fluffy hair with her fingertip. Sunlight filtered through the glass dome of Xintiandi, casting dappled shadows on her eyelashes. Beside her, another girl in a white puffy dress nodded with a smile, the tips of her hair swaying gently with the movement, like a butterfly resting on her shoulder.

They were classmates in middle school, went to different high schools, and are now freshmen at the same university in Shanghai, one studying English and the other studying materials science. They ran into each other at the registration desk when they first enrolled. The girl in the yellow skirt turned around, holding a stack of new books, nearly knocking over the tea in the other's hand. The moment they recognized each other, both burst out laughing. 

"I had no idea what I was going to study back then," the girl in the yellow skirt said as she brushed her bangs aside. 

"When choosing my major, I just wanted to be in the same city. After all, since middle school, we've spent less time apart than together." 

When the girl in the white dress tilted her head and smiled, two dimples appeared. Her fingers tapped rhythmically, as if sending some secret signal only they understood.

Breaking free from the stress of high school, they felt like kites just cut loose from their strings. Last Thursday afternoon, with no classes, they rode shared bikes to the Bund. The girl in the yellow skirt held up her phone to take a photo of the Oriental Pearl Tower across the river, when the girl in the white dress suddenly pointed at a ferry and shouted, "Look! Doesn't that look like the boat we took on our middle school spring trip?" 

In high school, they were stuck to their seats by the class schedule, even timing their bathroom trips to fit the ten-minute breaks. Now, they can stay in the library until closing time or cook hot pot in the dorm late into the night. 

"It's just that the classes are so long," the girl in the yellow skirt suddenly slouched her shoulders. "Last week, there was a calculus class that went from two to five, and my legs were so numb I could barely stand when it ended."

Talking about high school, the girl in the white dress fell silent. At the 100-day countdown rally before the college entrance exam last year, the red countdown on the blackboard was glaring. 

The Besties

"I really felt like I couldn't breathe back then," she stirred the ice in her cup. "I worked on problem sets until midnight every day, and even dreamed about trigonometric functions." The girl in the yellow skirt patted the back of her hand. "But do you remember? I failed the last mock exam in math, so I hid and cried in the stadium stands. You gave me that chocolate you'd been saving for three days." Now they often advise high school students: "Never fall asleep in math class, and cramming at the last minute is totally useless," the girl in the yellow skirt said earnestly. "We don't want others to trip over the same potholes we did."

Their friendship is ivy, quietly spreading through the years. In the first year of middle school, there was an iron cabinet at the back of the classroom where they always hid their comic books at the bottom. Once, a classmate suddenly broke down crying in class. Scared, they stuffed the comics into their school uniform pockets and slipped hand in hand to the teacher's office. 

"Back then, you squeezed my hand and said 'don't be afraid,' but your palm was all sweaty," the girl in the white dress teased with a smile. 

They attended different schools for three years of high school and grew less in touch, both throwing themselves into studying, hoping to get into a good university. Never in their wildest dreams did they expect to run into each other, that most familiar figure, on the first day of their freshman year.

Now that they live close by, they've grown even closer. The three-minute walk from Building three to Building five can take them half an hour—not because they're dawdling, but because they're always stopping for stray cats, new flower shops, or lecture notices on bulletin boards. Last week, the girl in the yellow skirt was called on in English class to read Shakespeare, her voice trembling with nervousness. After class, she received a message from the other girl: "You're much better than when you spoke at the class meeting in junior high. Back then, you were so nervous you said ‘hello every fun’ instead of 'hello everyone.'"

Talking about the future, both perked up. The girl in the yellow skirt pulled up the travel guides saved in her phone album. 

"When we retire, we'll go see the Northern Lights in Iceland, the pyramids in Egypt, and stay a month in an overwater bungalow in the Maldives." 

The girl in the white dress leaned over and pointed at the screen. "Then we need to start saving now, or when we're old, we'll only get to watch the travel channel at home." 

The wind chime in the café suddenly tinkled. The girl in the bright yellow dress raised her hand to smooth the hair tousled by the wind, while the girl in the white dress was gazing intently at another photo in her phone album — it was their junior high school graduation photo. Two girls with ponytails were hooking fingers in front of the teaching building, their shadows stretched long by the sun.

"Look," the girl in the white dress held out her phone. "We promised back then that we would walk a long way together."