My fingers trailed along weathered brick walls as I visited each significant spot: the classroom where we'd first locked eyes, the tree-lined path where we'd walked hand in hand, the track field where I'd cheered for him during every meet.
Eventually, I made my way to the bamboo grove beside the artificial lake—to that hidden corner where our younger selves had buried a time capsule the night before our graduation exams.
I knelt in the soft earth, digging until my fingers touched metal. As I pulled the small box from its grave, memories flooded back: Xavier pulling me out of study hall, the darkness around us broken only by our phone flashlights, writing our dreams and promises on paper balanced awkwardly on our knees.
"We'll dig this up together in twenty years," he'd said, his eyes ca
