I Will Never Forget the Sunlight Filtering Through the Trees That Morning

Even now, I remember that light-footed sense of exhilaration, as if my heart were beating to a new rhythm every time I slipped my arms into the sleeves of my brand-new uniform.
It was spring, just after I had entered high school.
Everything I saw was fresh, and I felt as if I were standing on my tiptoes, having joined the ranks of adults.
Swaying on a crowded train, smelling the ink of new textbooks, and stealing glances at the faces of classmates whose names I hadn't even learned yet.
Every day felt like the entrance to an unknown adventure, and my heart was simply racing.

The road to school was a gentle slope lined with cherry trees.
The path that had welcomed us with full blooms at the time of the entrance ceremony had turned into cherry leaves with the changing of the seasons, and now it formed a tunnel of green that sparkled in the morning light.
The sunlight filtering through the trees onto the ground changed shape every moment, like a kaleidoscope, dancing at my feet.

That day, too, I was walking along, stepping on those grains of light just as I always did.
An ordinary, unremarkable morning. Yet, that day is still deeply etched in my memory as a special morning I can never forget.
Suddenly, a male student appeared before me. I knew his face. A quiet boy in the same class, though I didn't even know his name.
The moment he stepped into my daily life, the equation of my world, which should have been stable until then, began to change its shape slowly but surely.

✅ If you make 'ordinary' a high school girl, it becomes me

If I were to describe myself at the time in one word, the word 'ordinary' would suit me best.
If there were a sculpture called 'the average high school girl,' it would surely look just like me.
I kept a portable CD player filled with popular J-Pop in my bag, and during breaks, I would chat with friends about our thoughts on yesterday's TV dramas or share trivial gossip.
Before tests, I would hold my head in my hands while cramming all night, and I would be happy or sad about the scores on the returned answer sheets.
I was just an ordinary high school student, the kind you could find anywhere.

I also had a tendency to view romance as something that had nothing to do with me.
Although my heart would race at the dramatic developments in shojo manga, I never for a moment thought that such things would happen to me.
Romance was an event that belonged in stories.
As a spectator, I was satisfied just watching it from a safe place.

Therefore, his existence was also nothing more than a part of the scenery I called daily life.
A boy who was always quietly reading a book in a seat in the corner of the classroom.
He didn't stand out, he wasn't athletic, and he didn't excite the class by saying funny things.
I might not have even heard his voice.
He was like a small fish drifting aimlessly in the aquarium called the classroom, never mingling with the other fish.
Through my filter, he was a faint presence with blurry colors and shapes.
That was the extent of my perception of him until that day.

✅ Romance equation = I who am changing

That day, after passing through the tunnel of cherry leaves, he was walking just ahead of me.
He should have been just a part of the scenery, as always.
However, he suddenly dropped something. A paperback book wrapped in a brown leather cover.
Almost unconsciously, I picked it up and called out, 'Um...'
That was the first word we exchanged.

'Thank you.'

His voice as he turned around was a little lower than I had imagined, and surprisingly gentle.
That was the first time I felt I had really looked at his face.
It wasn't about whether he was handsome or anything like that.
I just noticed that his eyes were very quiet and a deep color.
He was reading a somewhat obscure novel by an author I also liked.
When I asked, 'Do you like this book?', he opened his eyes wide as if a little surprised, and then smiled shyly.
'Yeah, I really do,' he said.

At that moment, something clicked inside me.
A new variable called 'common ground' was suddenly added to the equation where 'he = scenery' had been until then.
From that day on, my daily life began to change its hue little by little.
I found myself looking for him in the classroom.
I became curious about the spine of the book he was reading and would steal a glance during breaks.
If our eyes met, my heart would beat a little faster.

My equation, having gained the variable of him, could no longer be the simple one it was before.
If he smiled, my world brightened, and if he looked clouded, a haze would settle over my heart.
The sunlight filtering through the trees on my way to school, which had looked monochrome until now, began to shine with vivid colors just by being conscious of his existence.
His words, his gestures—each one became a new variable, and my equation changed into an increasingly complex form.
It was a source of confusion, but at the same time, it was an exciting adventure of discovering a new self I hadn't known before.
Even while feeling a little scared, I was certainly enjoying the changing me.

✅ The feelings I want to send to that time from the me of today

More than a decade has passed since then.
A simple ring shines on the ring finger of my left hand, now that I am thirty.
The same one is on the finger of my husband sleeping next to me.
Yes, the person who picked up the paperback book under the cherry trees that morning is now breathing peacefully beside me.
The morning sun streaming through the window is very similar to the sunlight filtering through the trees back then, and sometimes I fall under the illusion that I've been pulled back to my high school days.
In the crib next to us, our three-year-old son is sleeping soundly.
When I gaze at this small sleeping face, something warm wells up from deep within my chest.

If I could send something to the me of that time.
To that defenseless, slightly ignorant me who wasn't thinking about the future at all and was just absorbed in the events right in front of her.
There is only one thing I want to tell her.

'That change in the equation that day definitely brought you happiness,' I would say.

That tiny, trivial coincidence that morning.
If I hadn't called out, if he hadn't turned around, our story might never have begun.
Among countless choices, we chose each other, held hands, and walked this far.
When I think that all of these calm and precious days were at the end of that change in the equation, it even feels like a miracle.

But is that really so?
Sometimes, I wonder.
If I had chosen a different path, where would I be now, with whom, and what kind of scenery would I be looking at?
How can I say for sure that the choice I made that day was the only correct answer?
Life might be like an unsolvable equation that has countless branching points and continues to change each time.

There is only one thing I know for sure.
I truly cherish this solution called 'now'.
This moment, wrapped in the loved ones sleeping beside me and the gentle light streaming through the window.
Perhaps happiness is not about seeking a perfect solution, but the movement of the heart itself that finds the imperfect solutions of a constantly changing equation, at any given time, to be irresistibly precious.
Like the sunlight filtering through the trees that morning, a light that wavers and shifts, yet is certainly there.
I believe now that that is what our lives truly are.

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