Sean Sherman once joked about herself, saying that every year of her life was no different from the last. Studying, exams, sleeping. Day after day, year after year. It seemed like there was nothing worth remembering, so she didn’t even know what she had forgotten.

Yet in that moment, scattered memories rushed over her, like a leaf covering her entire field of vision.

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Sean Sherman Extra: Beyond the Mountains, Beyond the People

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Sean Sherman Extra: Sean Sherman sat in the passenger seat, tilting her head. The circle of chattering boys and girls outside the car window were clearly a bit tipsy. The former vice class monitor was futilely calling everyone to get in the car, but no one listened to him.

“Hey, you.” The boy in the driver’s seat spoke in a low voice, the car filled with a faint smell of alcohol. Sean Sherman suddenly remembered a word she never understood back then—“tipsy.”

“What?” She didn’t look at him, her gaze fixed straight ahead through the windshield, just like she used to stare at the blackboard.

“I’m asking you…” He suddenly put his hand on her shoulder, then turned her chin toward him, his warm breath washing over her face.

Sean Sherman opened her eyes wide in surprise. In her twenty-some years of life, no one had ever treated her like this.

“I’m asking you, do you have any regrets now? Even just a little?”

They all asked her that. Everyone.

“Sean Sherman, have you ever regretted it, have you?”

“Sean Sherman, you’re the hardest working of all of us.”

“Sean Sherman, do you never go out to have fun?”

“Sean Sherman, do you even dream about studying?”

“Sean Sherman…”

Sean Sherman knew what they wanted to say. “Sean Sherman, genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Tell me, you’ve done all this, so why did fate still make you end up so ordinary by some twist of fate?”

“Sean Sherman, you didn’t do well on the high school entrance exam, went to a regular high school out of spite, worked yourself to the bone for three years, and in the end still went to a local university.

Sean Sherman, don’t you resent it? If you’d known, wouldn’t it have been better to just enjoy your youth and have fun while you could? Sean Sherman, do you regret it?”

Sean Sherman, do you regret it?

“I’ve never regretted it.” She said softly, with no hint of defiance, calm and composed.

The boy in front of her was no longer the mischievous, sloppy kid from middle school, but was now well-dressed, driving his own BMW X5 to the class reunion. In everyone else, Sean Sherman could see the magic of time, but she herself seemed frozen in the years.

She was preparing for graduate school exams, and had been studying at the provincial library before coming, so she was the only girl with a backpack, still bare-faced, with the same low ponytail she’d worn for over a decade; blue ski jacket, rimless glasses, white knit hat, thin, expressionless.

In the largest private room at the restaurant, forty middle school classmates gathered, from all walks of life, scattered across society, drinking and laughing for three hours. She sat in the corner, hidden in the shadows.

Even she didn’t know why she came to the reunion. Since graduation, she had never shown up.

Maybe it was because of her sharp-tongued aunt’s words: “If you keep studying, you’ll turn stupid. It’s not like you’ll ever make a name for yourself. Make more useful friends—connections are what matter most in the future. Do you want to stay in school your whole life until you’re old?”—she had no Sean Sherman Extra strength to argue back. She was already as ordinary as could be, with no confidence or capital to resist.

Even though she had never truly admitted defeat in her heart.

Yet she knew, as harsh as those words were, there was some truth in them. She really should see more of the outside world. Her parents were getting old, and the path that once promised to change her fate was narrowing until she couldn’t see tomorrow. Maybe, she really should stop and look at others.

“Do you still remember who I am?”

After getting Sean Sherman’s understated “no regrets,” the boy slammed his hand on the steering wheel, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, thought for a moment, then stuffed it back in his pocket.

“Do you even know what I’m asking about, and you dare say you don’t regret it?”

Of the people who came to the reunion this time, four had driven their own cars, so after dinner everyone agreed: the girls would ride in the cars, the boys would take taxis, and they’d all head to the biggest KTV to sing. Sean Sherman was the first to leave the restaurant, standing at the door in the cold wind. Behind her, a boisterous crowd of boys and girls, all red-faced from drinking, only she stood alone by the revolving door.

Like a handful of snow in this northern town that just couldn’t be warmed.

“Sean Sherman!” She looked up. One of the car owners was already calling her with the door open. She hesitated, feeling a bit embarrassed, but still walked over.

She meant to sit in the back, but he insisted on putting her in the front passenger seat. He got in too, closed the door, shutting out all the laughter and noise under the neon lights.

The heater was on high, and she gratefully said, “Thank you.”

The boy looked unfamiliar, but she felt like she had some impression of him. In her memory, he seemed like one of those boys who loved to fight—anyway, the group of boys who sat in the last row all looked alike, their behavior and personalities mass-produced.

Then, out of nowhere, he asked her, “Sean Sherman, do you regret it?”

Sean Sherman could only give an awkward smile. “I remember you.”

In the past, faced with such a brash question, she might have just ignored him with a cold face.

She really had changed a little.

“Really?” The boy’s tone was a bit roguish. “Then tell me, who am I?”

Sean Sherman was at a loss for words.

As if he’d expected this, the boy burst out laughing, slapping the steering wheel hard as he laughed, then pointed at his own nose and said loudly, “Let me tell you again. Frank Yeats. ‘叶’ as in ‘a leaf that blocks your eyes,’ ‘从’ as in ‘there’s always someone better than you.’”

Two odd idioms came out of the mouth of a boy who clearly wasn’t very cultured—it was a bit much.

Sean Sherman felt like laughing. But no matter how mismatched, it still couldn’t compare to back then.

Back then, when he introduced himself to her, he couldn’t even say the phrase “a leaf that blocks your eyes” correctly.

Back then. Do you still remember back then?

Sean Sherman once joked about herself, saying that every year of her life was no different from the last. Studying, exams, sleeping. Day after day, year after year.

It seemed like there was nothing worth remembering, so she didn’t even know what she had forgotten.

Yet in that moment, scattered memories rushed over her, like a leaf covering her entire field of vision.

If you asked Sean Sherman what “childhood” meant to her, it would probably be a scene in the middle of nowhere.

She sat on the back of her father’s bicycle, the sky overcast and stuffy.

Her father rode fast, swallows flying low before the rain, but they hadn’t brought an umbrella. Sean Sherman was a little sleepy, her whole body leaning against her father’s back, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier.

“屾屾? Don’t fall asleep.”

She answered softly, and a few seconds later, her eyelids drooped again.

“屾屾? Don’t fall asleep.”

Her father repeated it every half minute, and her responses grew weaker and weaker. She knew her father was afraid she’d fall asleep and, like last time, stick her foot into the back wheel and get it all cut up.

Sean Sherman Extra “屾屾, don’t sleep. Look, where are we? Beijiang Park. Next Children’s Day, Mom and Dad will take you to Beijiang Park to play, okay?”

She tried hard to open her eyes. On the left side of the road, the gate they were passing really was Beijiang Park. A sky-blue ornate archway, with a person-tall inflatable cartoon dog on each side, sticking out their tongues and smiling at her.

“Okay!” She smiled, suddenly not sleepy anymore.

Later, her parents never really found the time to take her to Beijiang Park. The first time she actually entered the park was on a third-grade school field trip. As a child, she’d imagined taking a photo with her parents and the inflatable dogs at the gate, but when she finally stood there, she found they’d long since been replaced by rows of butterfly orchids.

Sean Sherman stood with her classmates at the entrance to Beijiang Park, looking at the long-lost gate, suddenly feeling a bit aggrieved, remembering that unfulfilled promise. For once, a little stubborn, unwilling expression appeared on her face—she finally looked like a ten-year-old child.

But she was sensible, and never made a fuss about it in front of her parents.

Growing up, learning to look back and feel sorry for herself, Sean Sherman couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been too sensible, too early.

But the process from innocence to complexity is irreversible. She had no choice.

Sean Sherman remembered that the summer before the high school entrance exam, she ran into Zoe Young at the city’s biggest bookstore. At the time, they were both looking for the same obscure collection of past exam papers.