Sometimes I ask myself: What exactly did I come back to Hangzhou for?

The past few days have been busy. I used up all 50 yuan on my citizen card riding the subway and buses (realized this halfway through writing and quickly switched to another subway card, phew, almost went into debt). It feels like every day I manage to hit my exercise goals, either by meeting classmates or being a teaching assistant, haha.

Today I went to find Zhaobai (it still sounds so chuunibyou to use online nicknames) and enjoyed a hotpot buffet, and also played the escape room I always wanted to try! Attached are two elevator repairmen (who missed the escape room at Hangzhou Paradise during the last middle school field trip because there were too many people in line? Oh, that was me!) It just goes to show that sometimes choices made in a moment of thought can lead to completely different paths.

Years from now, I will probably still remember the joy of rushing into Sisyphe (a bookstore) tonight, frantically trying to browse for a few seconds before it closed (quite fitting for the Sisyphean myth, I suppose).

Honestly, these past few days, time has still not been enough—all the classmates I met were either those who proactively contacted me or those my dear mother helped me contact (it seems I have an ‘i’ attribute on the internet). Often, when we met, we just chatted idly without a clear topic, even though I had prepared to share my learning experiences and changes over the past three years… Well, writing it down seems like a solution too.

So, back to the initial question: what did I come back to Hangzhou for? To commemorate that “happy time with a little regret”? The past is gone forever, and before us lies an unknown road. But what I know is that I made the right choice.