Back Then, I Adored You

But she had remained in contact with this person through letters.

They had kept in touch for seven years.

To be honest, although she had communicated with him for seven years, she knew nearly nothing about him, not even basic information, like his name or age. She only knew that he was a male in the army.

She hadn’t even known that until the person had mentioned it unintentionally in a letter three years before.

From the very start, it was them who had first sent a letter to her. At that time, she had been living in a dormitory. The address on the envelope had been her bed number, and the return address had been left blank.

It had been the second semester of the second year of high school for her. Over ten months had passed since she had been stood up by Gu Yusheng, but she still hadn’t recovered from the pain. Therefore, when she had received the letter, she had thought of it as a normal love letter, like the ones she had received before. She hadn’t cared much for it and put it in the pages of a random book.

Every month after that, she had received a letter in the same envelope. Month by month, she had become curious about the letter. When she had gotten bored during a self-study session at night, she had taken out all of the letters and unsealed them. She had found out that they hadn’t been love letters, but more like letters from a pen-pal.

Since then, Qin Zhi’ai had finally figured out why there was no name on the envelope, only the bed number—the bed number had been written randomly by someone to find a pen-pal.

At that time, making having a friend to write to had been quite popular. Xu Wennuan couldn’t help but follow the trends even after she had started dating Wu Hao. She had deliberately found an elegant sounding pen name from a best-selling youth magazine, then had written a letter carefully and sent it out. After receiving a letter in reply, she had shown it off with complacency to the classmates who had also sent out letters and earned their admiration.

Qin Zhi’ai had never expected to follow the fashion at that time, but Xu Wennuan had thought of it as romantic destiny, so she had persuaded her to write back by all means. Since she hadn’t been a person who stood firm, she had written a letter and sent it back to the address given by that person at Xu Wennuan’s urging.

That was probably how she had started contacting him through letters.

Then, when she had reached her junior year, she had changed rooms, so she had directly instructed him to send the letters to the Gate Guarding Office. Since they had just been pen-pals, he had never told her his real name, and neither had she. Qin Zhi’ai had just let him call her A.

Later, when she had been preparing for the National College Entrance Examination, she had stopped writing back to him because of the great pressure on her to study. After she had graduated from high school, she had gone directly to college. The next time she had gone back to her high school was the Spring Festival after the first semester of her freshman year in college.

Actually, she hadn’t gone there deliberately. She had just happened to pass by there on her bike. Because she had gone to the Gate Guarding Office for letters somewhat frequently when she had been in high school, the administrator had already known her and that the letters to A belonged to her. Thus, the administrator had stopped her and given her a large pile of letters that had been sent from that person.

The courses in college had been easy, and Xu Wennuan hadn’t come back to Beijing, so Qin Zhi’ai had felt extremely bored at home. One night, as she had been watching a TV series, she had remembered the pile of letters and read through them one by one. Her college had been in Beijing, so she had gone back to her high school once a month regularly since then, and every time, she had received a letter from him.

Since they were just strangers and had never expected to become actual friends, they vented to each other. In the letters were each other’s negative emotions. He eased her bad feelings, and she comforted him with warm words.