Stargazing

I went on one of those trips where you simply decide to go and go. Throughout the retreat, I kept saying I ought to write something, but I was genuinely too busy. Every day was exceptionally full, spent enjoying conversations with brothers and sisters and the messages being shared. At last, back aboard the familiar Silver Line, I began another round of typing. Let me think… I should probably begin with UTD’s battle royale of a hundred clubs. As mentioned in Diary 134, the fair itself was nowhere on my schedule. I merely walked outside, stumbled into a massive gathering, and found that no amount of desperate effort could get me out. Hailan Church’s booth happened to sit along a side branch beyond the circular route. Even if a question mark had appeared there on the map, a speedrunner like me would probably have skipped it. Yet by sheer coincidence I stopped, happened to glimpse familiar Chinese characters, then looked more closely—and suddenly, upon turning my head, there they were where the lantern light was dim. ...

Zhuge Tianyao skipped one update and never rose again. The End. Alright, I was simply lazy. Now I am living alone, feeling bored, and want something to write—so the updates return. … A planetarium must contain a sufficient quantity of astronomy! (Applause.) As the name implies, it must be hardcore enough that every child thinks the displays were written in an alien language (?) before it earns my approval. Ahem. Perhaps that goes too far. But the dome theater at the planetarium truly was orders of magnitude better than the one at the science museum. I even heard parents consoling children who had fallen asleep by telling them the show was “too technical.” ...

On the night before my exam, I saw stars in the Malaysian sky for the first time. With an apparent magnitude of around −4, it shone brilliantly among the scattered pinpricks around it. I checked my star chart and recognized Venus, the symbol of love and beauty. Funny: three years ago, when a crowd of us huddled on the balcony of Room 2901 in the middle of the night, this very same morning star was what we found through the telescope. In my memory, it glittered just as brightly then. ...