Chapter Three: It Turns Out Not Everyone Is Moving Forward
At 7:36 on Monday morning, Lin Mo sat in the last row of the classroom and, for the first time, didn't open his graduate school handouts.
He set his phone on the desk.
The screen was still on the page for the photography class he'd signed up for last night.
The course title was ordinary enough.
“Introduction to Urban Photography—Recording Life with a Camera.”
Seven p.m. every Wednesday.
Eight classes in total.
The fee wasn't cheap.
More precisely, it was a little expensive for him right now.
Lin Mo stared at the price for a long time.
He suddenly regretted it a little.
For those few minutes at the intersection last night, he'd felt like he'd done something incredibly brave.
But by this morning, that bravery had started turning into something else.
Something called wasting money.
He opened his banking app.
Checked his balance.
Then quietly closed it again.
“What were you doing last night?” Chen Yu suddenly asked beside him.
Lin Mo jumped.
“What?”
“I didn't see you when I got back to the dorm last night.”
“I went out for a bit.”
“With who?”
“A friend.”
Chen Yu raised an eyebrow.
“Which friend?”
“Someone I haven't seen in a long time.”
“A girl?”
Lin Mo didn't answer.
Chen Yu looked at him.
“Oh.”
He drew the word out.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you smiling?”
“I am not.”
“You definitely are.”
“I just think you've been kind of weird lately.”
Lin Mo put his phone away.
“What way?”
“You used to do nothing but study every day. Now you're suddenly disappearing.”
“I went out before.”
“No, you didn't.”
Chen Yu answered immediately.
“You used to want to eat every meal in the campus library.”
“That's an exaggeration.”
“It isn't.”
Chen Yu leaned back in his chair.
“Last time, you even told me that if you could, you'd have the school move your bed into the campus library.”
Lin Mo smiled.
“I was joking.”
“I know.”
Chen Yu glanced at him.
“But you really used to be afraid of wasting time.”
Lin Mo paused.
He didn't argue.
Because he knew Chen Yu was right.
He had always been afraid of wasting time.
Afraid of falling behind.
Afraid other people would move faster than he did.
Afraid his classmates would have finished a chapter while he was only halfway through it.
Afraid other people would already have their acceptance letters while he was still preparing.
Afraid other people would start working while he was still a student.
So he kept running forward.
Until, in the end, he'd even forgotten where he was trying to go.
After the first class ended, the professor left them an assignment.
“Turn it in next week.”
The classroom erupted in groans.
Lin Mo packed up.
Chen Yu asked, “What should we eat for lunch?”
“I don't know.”
“You've been saying ‘I don't know’ a lot lately.”
“Is not knowing a bad thing?”
“You used to look up the calories before deciding what to eat.”
Lin Mo laughed.
“Sometimes it's okay to eat something random.”
They walked out of the classroom.
The sunlight on campus was bright.
The autumn wind was a little cool.
Lin Mo suddenly realized he hadn't really looked at the school in a long time.
Not passed through it.
Not walked from the dorm to the classroom.
Not walked from the classroom to the campus library.
Actually looked.
He saw a little yellow along the edges of the leaves.
He saw people running on the track.
He saw two freshmen sitting on the grass eating breakfast.
He saw a guy holding a camera and taking pictures of an old academic building.
Lin Mo paused.
“What are you doing?” Chen Yu looked back.
“Nothing.”
He kept walking.
But the person with the camera reminded him of the class he'd signed up for yesterday.
He didn't know why he'd suddenly wanted to learn photography.
It wasn't as if he'd ever been particularly interested in it.
He barely even organized the photos on his phone.
Most of them were screenshots.
Class schedules.
Questions.
Handouts his professors had sent.
Shopping records.
Only occasionally were there a few pictures of friends.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
If someone hadn't left much of their own life behind, would they still remember, years later, how they'd lived?
Maybe not.
Because people remembered less than they imagined.
So he wanted to try leaving something behind.
Even if it was only ordinary things.
At 12:30 p.m., Lin Mo and Chen Yu ate at the student cafeteria.
His phone suddenly buzzed.
Su Yan.
“Did you go to the campus library today?”
Lin Mo replied, “No.”
“Why not?”
“Class.”
“What about this afternoon?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Why are you suddenly keeping such close tabs on me?”
A few seconds passed.
“Because I'm afraid you'll lock yourself away again.”
Lin Mo stared at the message.
His finger hovered for a long time.
He didn't reply.
Because he knew what she meant.
The thing he'd done most often in the past was lock himself away.
Put his phone on silent.
Delete his social media apps.
Turn down gatherings.
Turn down invitations.
Tell people he was busy.
Then sit alone in the campus library.
He'd always thought that was discipline.
Looking back now, sometimes it was really just avoidance.
As long as he kept himself busy, he didn't have to think about whether he was actually happy.
“I signed up for a class yesterday,” he suddenly texted.
“What kind of class?”
“Photography.”
The other person didn't reply for a long time.
“Don't you dislike taking pictures?”
“I don't know.”
“Another ‘I don't know’?”
“I just want to try it.”
This time, she replied quickly.
“Good.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Don't you think it's a waste of time?”
“If you enjoy it, it isn't a waste.”
Lin Mo stared at the message.
He suddenly felt that, somewhere in this world, there really was someone who could say so naturally the things it had taken him years to begin understanding.
At three that afternoon, Lin Mo still went to the campus library.
Only this time, he didn't sit in his usual spot.
He chose a place near the window.
He took out his handouts.
Read for twenty minutes.
Then stopped.
Not because he couldn't understand them.
But because, for the first time, he realized he actually wanted to go outside and walk around.
He looked out the window.
The sunlight slowly moved from the desktop to the floor.
A girl sat across from him, taking notes.
She wrote quickly.
Page after page.
Lin Mo suddenly grew anxious.
That familiar feeling had returned.
“Has she already read so much?”
“Am I falling behind again?”
“Am I not working hard enough today?”
He picked up his pen.
Forced himself to continue.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen minutes.
Finally, he put the pen down.
He suddenly remembered what Su Yan had said yesterday.
“You're not unaware of what you want to do.”
“You're just afraid of choosing wrong.”
Lin Mo leaned back in his chair.
Closed his eyes.
Maybe what he'd really always been afraid of wasn't failure.
It was other people seeing him fail.
If he couldn't get into graduate school, what would people think of him?
If he was terrible in photography class, what would people think of him?
If he ultimately couldn't find a job that looked good on paper, what would people think of him?
He'd been living for an audience that didn't exist.
And that audience had never even truly appeared.
Lin Mo opened his eyes.
Put away his handouts.
He'd studied for less than two hours that day.
The old him would have felt guilty about it.
Now, he simply walked out of the campus library.
At 6:45 p.m., the photography classroom was on the fifth floor of an old building downtown.
Lin Mo stood at the foot of the stairs.
He looked at the sign on the door.
“Introduction to Urban Photography.”
He suddenly wanted to leave.
There were already more than a dozen people in the classroom.
Most of them looked older than he was.
Some held DSLR cameras.
Some carried professional camera bags.
Some had even brought tripods.
Lin Mo glanced down at his phone.
He only had a phone he'd been using for two years.
No camera.
No lens.
No photography experience whatsoever.
He started to feel ridiculous.
“First time here?” a voice asked from beside him.
Lin Mo turned.
It was a girl wearing glasses.
She had a camera in her hands.
“Yeah.”
“First time learning, too?”
“Yep.”
“Good.”
Lin Mo froze for a moment.
“What?”
“I thought I was the only one who didn't know anything.”
She smiled.
“I'm Zhou Qing.”
“Lin Mo.”
“Do you have a camera?”
Lin Mo shook his head.
“No.”
“A phone works, too.”
“The teacher said that's okay?”
“The first class is meant to be done with phones.”
Lin Mo let out a breath.
So he wasn't the only one who had nothing.
He found a seat.
At seven sharp, the teacher walked in.
He was a man in his forties.
Nothing about him was especially formal.
He wore an ordinary black T-shirt.
He turned on the projector.
The first photo appeared on the wall.
An old man sitting on a park bench.
There was nothing particularly special about the image.
It was even a little blurry.
The teacher asked, “Do you think this is a good-looking photo?”
No one answered.
The teacher smiled.
“I don't know either.”
Everyone laughed.
“Because photography isn't an exam.”
“There are no standard answers.”
He switched to the next photo.
A little girl running in the rain.
Then the next.
A convenience store in the early hours of the morning.
Then the next.
A man sitting alone in an empty station.
Lin Mo looked at that photo.
He suddenly felt something strange.
The person in the photo wasn't doing anything.
He was just sitting there.
And yet Lin Mo felt that the man was terribly lonely.
The teacher said, “A lot of people learn photography because they want to take pictures of beautiful things.”
“But I think what's really interesting is when you start noticing the things you wouldn't have noticed before.”
“For example, the expression on someone's face while they're waiting.”
“Or a light glowing behind a window.”
“Or the shadow left on the ground after someone walks by.”
Lin Mo lowered his eyes to his phone.
He suddenly understood why he'd come.
He didn't want to become a photographer.
At least not yet.
He just wanted to learn how to look again.
To look at the things he'd always ignored before.
The assignment for the first class was simple.
The teacher asked everyone to take five photos.
The theme:
“Your day.”
They couldn't use anything from the internet.
They couldn't use old photos.
They could only start taking them that day.
By the time Lin Mo left the classroom, it was after nine p.m.
Zhou Qing followed beside him.
“Where do you live?”
“Near the school.”
“Want to walk together?”
“Sure.”
They walked along the street toward the subway station.
The city was livelier at night than during the day.
Restaurants glowed along the roadside.
Motor scooters passed one after another.
Someone stood outside a convenience store smoking.
Someone else sat under an arcade eating dinner.
Zhou Qing suddenly stopped.
“Aren't you going to take a picture?”
Lin Mo blinked.
“Now?”
“When else?”
“But didn't the teacher say to take pictures of your day?”
“This is your day.”
Lin Mo took out his phone.
He pointed it at the corner and took a picture.
In the frame was a guy in a school uniform.
He stood at a traffic light, looking down at his phone.
Zhou Qing glanced at it.
“Not bad.”
“Really?”
“At least you're looking.”
“What kind of review is that?”
“A very good one.”
They kept walking.
When they passed a laundromat, the glass reflected their shadows.
Lin Mo stopped.
He took a picture.
Zhou Qing stood beside him.
“This one's better than the last.”
“Why?”
“Because you're starting to know what you want to photograph.”
Lin Mo looked at the screen.
Both people in the photo were shown only from behind.
Their faces couldn't be seen.
Yet, for some reason, the image made him feel a little at ease.
At 10:30 p.m., Lin Mo returned to the dorm.
There were four new photos on his phone.
The first was a tree on campus.
The second was a window in the campus library.
The third was the entrance to a convenience store.
The fourth was the reflection in the laundromat window.
He still hadn't taken the fifth.
He stood by the dorm window.
Looked down.
A guy was walking alone down the street.
Lin Mo suddenly had a thought.
What if he took a picture of this?
He picked up his phone.
Pointed it out the window.
But his finger didn't press the button.
Because he suddenly realized that the person looked a lot like him.
Lonely.
Exhausted.
But still walking.
Lin Mo didn't take the picture.
He lowered his phone.
Walked back to his desk.
His graduate school handouts were still there.
He opened them.
Read two pages.
Then suddenly closed them.
He wasn't giving up.
He just didn't want to force himself anymore that day.
He took out a sheet of paper.
Wrote:
“What do I actually want?”
He left the space below blank.
There was no answer.
Then he wrote:
“What am I afraid of?”
After thinking for a while, he wrote:
“Choosing wrong.”
Below that:
“What if I choose wrong?”
This time, he didn't write an answer right away.
A long time passed before he slowly wrote:
“Then I'll choose again.”
When he finished, he stared at those words.
It suddenly seemed a little ridiculous.
Such a simple truth.
And it had taken him twenty-two years to understand it.
At 11:48 p.m., Su Yan texted him.
“How was today?”
Lin Mo replied, “I went to photography class.”
“Did you take any pictures?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me see.”
Lin Mo sent her the five photos.
She looked at them one by one.
After a while, she wrote, “What about the last one?”
“Didn't take it.”
“Why not?”
“I don't know.”
“You really like saying ‘I don't know’ today.”
Lin Mo smiled.
“Because the last one looked too much like me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
Su Yan didn't press him.
She only replied, “Then tell me when you feel like talking about it someday.”
Lin Mo stared at the message.
He suddenly felt something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Someone was willing to wait.
Not rush him.
Not demand that he make a decision immediately.
Just tell him:
Whenever you're ready to talk, I'll still be here.
He lay down on the bed.
His phone rested beside his pillow.
The room was very quiet.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
What would he be like now if Su Yan had never appeared?
Probably still sitting in the campus library.
Studying every day.
Anxious every day.
Telling himself every day:
“Just hang on a little longer.”
He didn't know whether she had changed his life.
Maybe she hadn't.
What had truly changed him was that he had finally been willing to stop.
But Su Yan was like a mirror.
She let him see himself as he really was for the first time.
The next morning, Lin Mo woke at 6:45.
He didn't reach for his phone right away.
He didn't get up either.
He simply lay in bed, watching the light slowly spread across the sky outside the window.
He suddenly thought:
He didn't actually have to decide at twenty-two how he was going to live the next forty years.
Maybe his old self had taken “life planning” too seriously.
As if, once he chose a path, he could never turn back.
If he chose graduate school, he had to keep studying all the way through.
If he chose a job, he couldn't change it.
If he liked someone, he had to keep liking them forever.
If he left a city, he could never come back.
But life wasn't a multiple-choice question.
It didn't have four options.
And it didn't have one uniquely correct answer.
It was more like a road that kept changing.
If you took a wrong turn, you could turn back.
If you got tired, you could rest.
If you didn't like where you were going, you could turn.
The truly frightening thing wasn't taking a wrong turn.
It was never moving at all.
Lin Mo sat up.
Picked up his phone.
He opened the photography class group chat.
The teacher had sent a message the day before:
“Please bring five photos next week. We'll discuss them together.”
Lin Mo stared at the message.
He suddenly looked forward to next week.
The feeling was unfamiliar.
For the past few months, the only thing he'd looked forward to was the exam ending.
Now, for the first time, he was beginning to look forward to something with no direct connection to the future.
He got dressed.
Walked out of the dorm.
He didn't go to the campus library that day.
He went to the track.
Ran three laps.
Then sat in the stands.
Sunlight warmed his face.
A freshman ran past him.
He was running very slowly.
Halfway through, he stopped to catch his breath.
Then he continued.
Lin Mo watched him.
He suddenly smiled.
Maybe he was that person, too.
Not running fast.
Not knowing where the finish line was.
Stopping sometimes.
But at least for now—
he was still running.
That afternoon, he returned to the campus library.
This time, he didn't sit in the last row.
He sat by the window instead.
Took out his handouts.
Started reading.
He didn't force himself to finish a certain number of pages that day.
He didn't set a ten-hour goal.
He didn't check the time every twenty minutes.
He just read.
When he didn't understand something, he stopped.
When he understood, he continued.
When he got tired, he rested.
Two hours later, he was surprised to find that he'd finished more material than he used to.
He suddenly understood.
Maybe what had really made him inefficient wasn't laziness.
It was fear.
Fear that he wasn't doing well enough.
So he used every minute to measure himself.
In the end, even actual learning became painful.
At seven that evening, he packed up.
His phone suddenly buzzed.
It wasn't Su Yan.
It was a new email.
The sender was a professor from his department.
The subject line contained only one sentence:
“Research Project Recruitment—Interested Students, Please Reply.”
Lin Mo stared at it for a long time.
In the past, when he saw an opportunity like this, his first thought had been:
“Can I do it?”
This time, he asked a different question.
“Do I want to try?”
He looked at the email.
Then pressed Reply.
“Hello, Professor. I'm interested in participating. Is there still an opportunity for me to join?”
He sent it.
Less than three minutes later, the professor replied:
“Yes. Come by my office tomorrow afternoon, and we can talk.”
Lin Mo stared at the screen.
His heart suddenly began beating faster.
Not because he was sure this was the path he wanted to take.
But because, for the first time, he hadn't waited for a definite answer before acting.
He began to understand something.
Some choices aren't made because you know the answer. Sometimes, the answer only slowly appears after you make the choice.
At ten that night, he walked out of the school gate.
The sky was dark.
A few streetlights glowed in the distance.
Lin Mo took out his phone.
Opened the camera.
This time, he didn't think for long.
He aimed it ahead.
Pressed the shutter.
In the photo was an ordinary street.
It wasn't especially beautiful.
It had no special meaning.
It was simply the city at ten p.m.
But as he looked at the photo, he suddenly felt that it was good.
Because this was today.
Not an exam.
Not the future.
Not success as seen through someone else's eyes.
Just his own life.
His phone buzzed.
Su Yan:
“Do you have a better idea where you're headed today?”
Lin Mo thought about it.
Then replied:
“Still don't know.”
“But?”
He looked at the lights along the street.
Slowly, he typed:
“But I don't think I'm as scared anymore.”
She didn't answer right away.
A few minutes later, she sent:
“Then that's good.”
Lin Mo put his phone back in his pocket.
Walked forward.
After a few steps, he suddenly stopped.
He turned and looked at the school gate behind him.
That was where he'd spent four years.
He used to think graduating meant leaving.
Only now did he realize that truly leaving wasn't walking out of the school gate.
It was the day you suddenly no longer needed to use “student” as proof that you deserved to live a good life.
He took a deep breath.
Then continued forward.
What he didn't know was that, just as he crossed the next intersection, a new message arrived on his phone.
It was from Su Yan.
Only one sentence:
“Lin Mo, there's something I've never told you.”
He stopped.
The cursor on the screen blinked.
The next second, another message appeared.
“Three years ago, I didn't leave because I wanted to leave you.”
Lin Mo stood motionless.
Traffic flowed past him.
The noise suddenly seemed very far away.
He stared at those two messages.
For the first time, he felt—
Maybe the relationship that had ended three years ago had never ended for the reason he'd thought.
And the life he thought was already over—
maybe it had only just begun.