The library was quieter than usual that afternoon.
Sunlight spilled in through the tall windows, painting golden rectangles on the old wooden floor. The smell of books, ink, and a faint trace of jasmine filled the air—someone must have passed by with perfume lingering behind. Lin Keqing sat near the window, flipping through a thick literature anthology. But her eyes weren't really on the words.
They kept drifting sideways, to the seat across from her.
Gu Yuyan was writing in a black notebook, pen gliding silently over the paper. His posture was perfect, as always—back straight, eyes focused, left hand holding the edge of the page down with quiet precision. He hadn't said a single word since they sat down.
And yet, Keqing didn't feel awkward. The silence between them no longer felt heavy. It was a shared kind of stillness—like two people listening to the same unspoken song.
She smiled a little to herself and picked up a pencil. Then, on the corner of a scrap paper, she wrote:
"Do you ever feel like silence says more than noise?"
She slid the note across the table.
Yuyan didn't look up right away. He finished his sentence first, closed the notebook slowly, and then picked up her message. His lips barely moved, but Keqing thought she saw a flicker of a smile.
He wrote back:
"Silence is just another language. Most people forget to learn it."
She read it twice, then three times. Her fingers tapped lightly on the edge of the desk. This boy was impossible—not just to understand, but to ignore.
They were working on the class project for "The Sound of Silence." The teacher had given them creative freedom—to write, draw, film, or compose something that represented what silence meant to them.
Keqing and Yuyan had chosen to create a collage: half written poetry, half sketches and imagery. At first, it was her idea. Now, she wasn't sure where the boundary was anymore. Every piece felt like a secret exchange between their inner worlds.
That day, Keqing brought colored ink and stencils. She pulled them from her tote bag and placed them gently on the table between them. "I thought we could add some texture," she said, quietly.
Yuyan nodded, still not speaking.
She drew a tree—bare branches stretched toward the corners of the paper. He added a bird, perched near the center, not flying but waiting. Then she added lines of text, short phrases that weren't really sentences, more like fragments of thought:
"When words run dry,I'll read the spaces in your pauses."
He glanced at her then, just briefly.
Something soft passed between them.
Later that afternoon, a light drizzle began tapping against the window panes.
Keqing's mind wandered again, this time to her conversation with her grandmother the night before. Her grandmother had smiled after seeing her look distracted during dinner.
"Thinking about someone?" she had asked gently, stirring soup.
Keqing had laughed it off, but now, sitting in this near-silent space, the memory echoed clearer.
She turned the page of the sketchbook and wrote:
"Have you ever wanted to say something but decided silence was better?"
She slid the paper to Yuyan.
He hesitated longer this time. Then finally scribbled a reply:
"Yes. More times than I can count. Silence doesn't hurt people the way words sometimes do."
Keqing stared at his handwriting. It was beautiful, sharp and deliberate, like every word had to pass a test before it was allowed to be written.
"Do I make you nervous?" she wrote.
He didn't answer immediately.
Then:
"Not nervous. Just… not used to someone who hears even the quiet things."
When the library bell rang, signaling the end of study hours, students began to shuffle out. Keqing and Yuyan packed up slowly. Rain was still falling outside.
As they stepped into the hallway, the hum of conversations returned—laughing students, clattering shoes, umbrella clicks.
They paused at the stairwell.
"I didn't bring an umbrella," Keqing said, looking at the rain.
Yuyan didn't respond. He just opened his bag and pulled one out—a pale gray umbrella with a broken corner. He opened it, tilted it slightly toward her.
"You'll get wet," she said, hesitating.
"I don't mind."
They shared the umbrella in silence.
Her shoulder pressed lightly against his, and for the first time, she didn't pull away.
That evening, back at home, Keqing opened her notebook and found a folded piece of paper tucked between the pages. She hadn't put it there.
She unfolded it.
"You said silence doesn't scare you.I hope that's still true.Because I don't know how to say most thingswithout breaking them."
Her heart paused. Then, slowly, she picked up her pen and wrote in reply—not to give him the note back, but to keep it, in her own way.
"I'll be careful with the things you can't say.I promise."
Elsewhere, across town, Gu Yuyan sat by his window, sketching in the quiet.
For the first time in a long time, he wasn't drawing buildings or scenery. He was drawing a girl holding a pencil, with a slight smile and eyes that didn't flinch from silence.