This story sounds like something out of a TV drama, but it actually happened to me.
I’m someone who’s very sentimental.
Due to family reasons, I left that place at an early age. The concept of “growing up together (childhood friends)” has always been vague to me—and because of this, I’ve always envied those who could grow up side by side with deep affection.
After growing up, I always felt like I was constantly drifting. Habitually leaving early, abandoning my friends behind.
But precisely for that one sentence from back then—
“I’ll come back.”
I never expected that this wait would last twenty years.
I also know that no one was really waiting there for me to fulfill this promise.
Even so, this matter became a persistent obsession in my heart.
I thought that returning here would instantly bring my thoughts back to the past.
But when I truly stood there, all that remained in my mind were fragmented memories—
perhaps forgotten, or perhaps everything had changed beyond recognition.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would return here twenty years later.
Twenty years ago, I certainly couldn’t have foreseen that my future self would come back to this place.
At that moment, there was a strange sensation of time travel, which felt utterly unbelievable.
I even found myself wondering—
maybe, viewed from another dimension, the me from twenty years ago and the current me overlapped at the same point in time.
This trip back home was, in a sense, a solo journey.
The photos were all taken casually with my phone—shaky shots as I walked and snapped.
To avoid appearing too lonely, I even photoshopped someone into the pictures.
That playground, which seemed incredibly vast to me as a child,
would be filled every evening by a large crowd dancing square dance.
The most familiar tunes were “Moon Above” and “Most Awesome Ethnic Tune,” and it used to be so lively.
Let me show you what a city looks like after more than ten years without humans.
I remember clearly putting on my red scarf here,
with help from older students in fifth and sixth grade—the moment I became a Young Pioneer.
That cinema, which I never once entered.
Now, its roof has completely collapsed.
Actually, before coming here, I’d already seen from satellite maps that—
the school had long since changed.
The playground had been leveled, and even the main gate was nowhere to be found.
It was completely unrecognizable from my memory; almost all the seats had been removed.
There were many classrooms I didn’t even know existed—
herbarium, library, equipment room… After all, our textbooks at the time bore the note: “This textbook is provided free of charge by the state.”
I also spotted familiar names on an old duty roster—how strange, why would these names still appear after so long?
This is the classroom where we watched movies at school when I was little.
Back then, it seemed enormous, and we boys often hid in the back row, in the dark.
This tree too.
When I was young, it wasn’t even as thick as my thigh and barely taller than me.
Now, it has grown into a towering giant.
Hello, old friend.
I’m back again.
Let me show you some old relics from the past—how many can you recognize?
The streets are empty, overgrown with weeds, and the roads are cracked and broken.
As children, we’d even climb onto train carriages and ride slowly forward with the train.
I returned to my former home, my old school, and near the homes of my former classmates.
I had half-expected some “unexpected discoveries,”
like reconnecting with old classmates.
But reality proved far more sobering than imagination—
there were no phones, no computers back then, and we didn’t even keep each other’s contact information.
After much effort, I finally tracked down an old mobile number and added them on WeChat.
Result: added on day one, deleted on day two.
Called them—first time, no answer.
Second time, I already knew the outcome—
~Sure enough, blocked. ~
Back then, this was where boys and girls played hopscotch barefoot.
Now, many areas have been walled off and sealed.
Originally, I wanted to take a photo of that very staircase where I said, “I’ll come back”—
But too many paths have disappeared.
I can’t even find the original route,
so I can no longer retrace my steps according to my memories.
This trip brought neither reunions nor surprises.
Yet, it allowed me to sincerely complete a statement that had been delayed for twenty years.
“I’m back.”
