Hello! Me from a year ago.

Even though you never thought to sum up 2020, you're looking forward to the new year.

You're still clueless about the future, so let me tell you what 2021 has in store for you!

You count down 3, 2, 1 with everyone, watching the clock flip to 2021 at 00:00, excited and cheering, but you don't notice time quietly slipping through your fingers.

Soon after, you meet someone who sweeps you off your feet. His name is Zhang Zitao, and everyone calls him Sprite. He'll hold your hand during a movie together—don't be surprised; in that time, he'll love you with all his heart.

Later, you write a summary of your 2020, saying you have dreams, a faraway place, and a lover. You call "dream" the most important word of 2020, but I want to tell you: "chasing dreams" will be the most important phrase of 2021. And your lover will keep surprising you this year, but also let you down.

After winter break, you step back through the gates of Shiyan, where you'll spend your last three months with everyone.

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Later, Uncle Da passes away, and you write a piece mourning him, also calling out those low-quality celebrities and their fans.

You travel to many places, your parents shower you with care, and under your lover's guidance, you fall in love with photography, snapping countless photos. A life full of art makes your heart more open and passionate.

Grandpa Yuan also passes away, and everyone starts cherishing food. You write:

The youth of the new era should heed the teachings of the older generation, clearly understand the hardships before and just after the founding of New China, draw strength from that old era, and combine it with the changes of the new era to build a brand-new spiritual force, contributing their own strength to national prosperity, national rejuvenation, and social harmony!

You pour everything in your heart onto paper, and the words are turned into 1s and 0s, becoming data, because those profound words express all the hopes for young people.

You work on two projects, which become the best way for you to grow technically, but your lover also leaves you.

You'll turn your memories of Shiyan into pictures, and everyone will scatter to the ends of the earth. Before that, you never knew those all-night heart-to-hearts, those wandering detours, and those serendipitous twists would become memories you can't forget, haunting you in your new environment.

You'll keep moving forward, meeting beauty along the way. You'll meet a group of people who love beauty just like you and talk with them. In the prime of your youth, like the summer when you meet, they radiate the heat of life. You'll also find a new love, who will soothe your pain, listen to your past, and share your future. He'll quietly stay by your side, becoming the lover who always understands, appreciates, and protects you. After experiencing loneliness, you'll transform from a naive boy into a young man passionately chasing dreams. You'll enjoy more and more wandering alone on campus, watching the distant sky slowly turn to night. And then, you'll become the me of now, standing at the crossroads of life, looking back and realizing you've already dreamed so many dreams and gained so much beauty. You'll start to sigh, "Oh~ I really want to love the world." You'll leave your old friends behind and finally make up your mind to learn Python. People come and go around you, but they're still by your side. The partings you thought you'd never get through will eventually be eroded by time. You learn to stop mentioning your loneliness to others, to go through those partings without showing a thing. But you still can't learn to pretend you can hate, forget, or escape time. You finally understand: after the brilliance of fireworks, you have to endure the silence of emptiness. But don't ever forget—walking this whole path, even as you keep losing, even as you chase distant dreams, you already have so much. Xiao Kai.