It's quite something to be along Bukit Timah Road around evening time. The students never grow old. They look quite the same as we once did. And they remind us perfectly of who we used to know. Their distinctive after-school-smell... The way they chatter with their friends... Or the way they look into space so seriously.
I no longer remember what fills the mind of a student on his/her solitary way home. Something they said in class? An argument waiting at home? That special "meimei" or boy?
I can really only imagine like an outsider. Scary. It's like I haven't been there before!
Still, I wish to tell them that it's probably not important at all. That they should forget about everything completely, and enjoy the unspoken, yet unanimously acknowledged, rights to be irresponsible that belong to teenagers.
I wish somebody had told me...though I probably wouldn't have believed.
Oh well...
Oh well, I want to go into the schools though. I want to see to remember how it was like, before I become too far away, too old, and forgotten by myself. I want to sit where I used to sit, and remember who I used to laugh with, and what I used to eat every Friday, and how I psyched myself up to fake a fever.
I want to hide where I used to hide, and listen to the echoes of the whispers I used to whisper, to remember who I used to whisper to.
I want to watch where I used to watch, and imagine that that ageless faceless student over there is you, or anybody, and wonder how everything could have been different.
I want to go where you used to go and imagine how you used to go there and what you used to do and wonder how everything could have been different and how you felt and what was on your mind.
I want to eat what you used to eat I want to laugh at what you used to laugh at and imagine how it might have been if we might have been able to laugh at it together.
Not because I love you, but because I might have.
Not because I love you, but because of the past we have lived, and might have shared.
(For Junyao, though not about Junyao, to convince him of something secretive.)
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