Chapter 7: The First Story

When I can no longer comfort you, or you can no longer care for me, please remember that within our meager, fleeting years, twelve white egrets once flew across an autumn lake.

—Jian Zhen, Splitting Silk in April

The corner of the velvet skirt showing beneath her wool coat was lifted by the wind.

That wind swept through her hair, spun in a circle, and then passed almost imperiously between his fingers.

Chen Zhiyu laughed. Against the sound of the wind, something indescribable colored his voice. “Thank you. It’s been several years since anyone said that to me in person.”

He raised his eyes and met her puzzled gaze, then lowered his head and took a drag from his cigarette. Half seriously and half in jest, he explained, “When I was young, my parents would seize me whenever my birthday came around. There would be dozens of people in the house, and I had to toast every one of them and offer auspicious greetings like an obedient little grandson. After that, whenever my birthday came around, I hid if I could.”

Seeing what appeared to be a smile at the corners of her mouth and the brightness in her eyes, he added, “Yes, your Professor Chen has endured humiliating moments too.”

“That’s one of the advantages of growing up.” He raised an eyebrow slightly. “No one forces you to do things you dislike. No one says you’re a picky eater, and no one controls when you sleep or wake.”

“What about yourself?”

He watched Su Nan take a step upward, drawing closer to him. Her features, blurred by the darkness, seemed to grow somewhat clearer.

She did not appear to be arguing with him. She probably did not have the courage.

“A person can avoid being forced by others, but can they avoid being forced by themselves?”

He inhaled the smoke and slowly released it. After a moment of silence, he smiled. “Are you trying to discuss philosophy with me?”

“No. I wouldn’t win an argument with you.”

“Then let me tell you a story.”

“Here, in the full force of the wind?”

It truly was cold. He did not know whether the wool coat she wore offered enough protection.

“Shall we go to the café in the rest area?”

“Then... perhaps we should stay here.”

“What? Weren’t you complaining about the cold?” Chen Zhiyu glanced at her.

“Stories heard in comfortable surroundings usually aren’t remembered.”

What a sharp tongue. She seemed to be deliberately opposing him. He wondered how long it had taken her to accumulate this small amount of courage. Or perhaps, because it was his birthday, she was deliberately teasing him within careful limits to make him happy.

The girl was not actually as foolish as he had imagined.

The story concerned a pair of lovers who committed suicide together. They had vowed to share both life and death, then drank a bowl of deadly poison and departed the world together. At Naihe Bridge, they drank from the same bowl of Meng Po’s soup and waited for fate to reunite them in their next lives.

Nothing went wrong except that, in their second lives, they were both reborn as men.

They each struggled through thirty years in the mortal world before meeting by chance. By the time they vaguely recognized the face of their lover from their previous lives, there was nothing but endless awkwardness between them. One had already established a family and career; the other had both sons and daughters.

“What happened afterward?”

The cigarette in his hand was nearly finished. Chen Zhiyu pressed it out against the stone step, rose, and shook the cold dew from his coat.

“Afterward, they became strangers, pretending that the meeting had never occurred.”

Su Nan listened in bewilderment. “That is the most inconclusive story I’ve ever heard.”

A faint trace of amusement entered Chen Zhiyu’s eyes. “Because most stories in this world have neither a proper beginning nor an ending. Now that you’ve heard it, give me your reading comprehension. What does this story teach us?”

Su Nan considered it seriously for a moment. “Concern yourself only with this life and ask nothing about those who come after?”

“Wrong.”

Chen Zhiyu stepped down. The scent of tobacco on him, tinged with the cold wind, immediately entered her nose.

“It teaches us not to make promises lightly.”

He continued past her. “Come on. You look nearly frozen senseless. We’ll get something to drink, and then I’ll drive you down the mountain.”

“I’m really not cold.”

Somehow, she felt that here, in this desolate wilderness, Chen Zhiyu was his truest self.

“If you aren’t cold, why are you trembling like a sieve? You’ve shaken out enough flour to make dumplings for three years.”

He raised a hand, removed the scarf casually looped around his neck, and tossed it into Su Nan’s arms.

Su Nan caught it blankly.

It was plaid, a classic design. She recognized the brand and knew it was expensive. The fabric was extraordinarily soft, and when her fingers touched it, it still retained the warmth of Chen Zhiyu’s body.

Why had he given it to her? It was not as though she could wear it.

Such an expensive scarf did not match her clothes at all.

His tall, slender figure descended the steps and was nearly swallowed by the darkness.

Su Nan tightened her grip on the scarf and hurried after him.

The café was filled with a sweet fragrance. Heat and lamplight transformed the small shop into something resembling a shelter at the edge of civilization amid an arctic wasteland. After all, who but desperate fugitives would climb a mountain at this hour?

Some came for art, and others for love.

“What would you like?”

“Anything.” Her gaze lowered but fixed upon the sole surviving slice of tiramisu in the display case.

“You people who say ‘anything’ hand the decision to someone else, then find fault with whatever they choose.” His tone was teasing. He seemed to have returned to the distracted, dissolute man he had been at the bar.

Su Nan pressed her lips together and immediately answered with precision. “A vanilla latte.”

Not long after they sat beside the window, their two cups of coffee arrived.

Su Nan took a small sip. As expected of a café with a captive market at the edge of civilization, it appeared to be charging extortionate prices. The flavor was so weak that it tasted as though they had been unwilling to use an entire sachet of instant mix.

After sitting for a while, she remained unable to let something go.

“Professor Chen, I’m going to the restroom.”

“Straight ahead, then turn right.”

He was even more familiar with the place than she was after living in Dancheng for nearly two years.

The screen of the phone on the table lit up and dimmed, then lit up and dimmed again. He had silenced it, so it made no sound. Text messages, calls, WeChat notifications, and everything else were bombarding him with birthday wishes.

When he was young, he had enjoyed extravagant celebrations. Using his birthday as an excuse, he could make merry through the entire night and still feel unsatisfied, as though his birth truly deserved so many people’s attention and celebration.

Yet after a lifetime, a person became nothing more than a line in a footnote added by some student writing a paper, living on in neat absurdity among the references.

At some point, he had stopped celebrating his birthday. In the morning, he would answer two or three calls from close relatives at the appointed hour. For the rest of the day, he pretended to be too busy even to glance at his phone. In truth, he was as idle as a lonely wandering ghost that had drifted beside the Three Lives Stone for a thousand years.

When he returned to his senses and looked up, the foolish student he had picked up along the way was approaching with a plate in her hands. On it sat some unidentifiable thing with a single candle stuck into it. She carried it with great care.

Chen Zhiyu stared for a moment. Only when Su Nan stopped opposite him and somewhat stiffly said, “Happy birthday,” did he react.

“Su Nan.”

Su Nan slowly raised her eyes to him, nervous and unsure of herself.

He remained silent for several seconds. In the end, he restrained himself from saying, I don’t have a habit of climbing mountains in the middle of the night to eat cake. As though completing an assigned task, he took the plate from in front of her.

“Wait! Make a wish.”

The candle flame flickered, reflected in her clear eyes.

“I don’t have any wishes.”

Involuntarily, he remembered Cheng Wan speaking that night in her neither-light-nor-heavy tone, stating it like a simple fact:

This is all my life will ever be.

His foolish student continued urging him. “Just make one up. Good health, a promotion, a raise...”

“What do you wish for?” Chen Zhiyu interrupted. He watched her face grow increasingly awkward. “Tell me. I’ll give you mine.”

“But it’s your birthday.”

“Fine. My birthday wish is to grant one of yours.”

Su Nan froze, her mind suddenly blank. “Can I... save it for later?”

“Anything except not enrolling in my class next semester.”

With mischievous satisfaction, he blew out the candle. He picked up the fork and condescended to take a bite of the tiramisu, which had been sitting there for an unknown length of time and was of questionable freshness.

It was cloying, and the sweetness of cheap artificial flavoring rushed directly into his throat.

He forced himself to swallow, then immediately pushed the plate away. “Thank you.”

Su Nan smiled, looking as happy as if it were her own birthday.

Very well. Perhaps the inferior cake was not entirely without merit.

Chen Zhiyu watched her and inexplicably felt the urge to smoke. After thinking about it, he realized he had already smoked rather heavily that evening, and they were indoors. He suppressed the impulse and looked through the dim yellow light at the foolish student opposite him.

“When is your birthday?”

“February.” She added, “The sixteenth.”

“After the Beginning of Spring.”

“It’s still cold. Some years, it even snows. I don’t particularly like winter. My older sister was born in April, when the grass grows and the orioles fly.”

Everything seemed to hold more promise then.

“You have an older sister?”

“Mm. She’s six years older than me.” Su Nan lowered her gaze, as though her spirits had fallen.

Chen Zhiyu vaguely remembered Lin Han mentioning a few things. He knew Su Nan’s family was not well-off. Since beginning graduate school, she had not asked her family for money and sometimes even sent home what she earned from work-study jobs. It was not a subject one could openly examine in detail, so he did not know anything more specific.

Nor was he in the habit of rashly offering help. He considered himself contrary by nature, but he still carefully observed certain social taboos.

After leaving the café, Chen Zhiyu drove Su Nan to the Yangtze River Bridge.

The bridge had a long history. It had two levels and carried both railway and road traffic. He parked at the end of the bridge and walked with her for approximately five hundred meters along one of the pedestrian paths. When he looked back, she was clutching his scarf, her cheeks reddened by the wind.

“Why aren’t you wearing it?”

Su Nan stopped.

A moment later, his tall figure moved closer. He took the scarf from her hands, wound it twice around her neck, and tucked it in with his fingers as though acting from habit.

A vast wind swept across the river and engulfed her face.

It took her a moment to breathe again. Her heart suddenly seemed suspended in empty air, swaying unsteadily and unable to settle.

“Professor Ch—”

An electric scooter sounded its horn behind them. He placed a light hand against her arm and guided her aside. The scooter roared past behind him.

Her mind went blank. She blinked mechanically. A moment later, she realized that her entire body had gone rigid, though she did not know whether it was from the cold.

In an instant, Chen Zhiyu returned to his previous position. He slipped a hand into his coat pocket as though reaching for his cigarettes, then stopped.

“Come on. Let’s return to the car. I’ll drive you back to the university.”

“This is my first time here.”

“Do you want to walk a little longer?” A less-than-serious smile entered Chen Zhiyu’s eyes. He appeared far too composed. “This bridge is five kilometers long. Walking across it would take at least an hour.”

“Professor Chen.” Su Nan paused. “Let me tell you a story too.”

Chen Zhiyu looked at her.

There were two people who had known each other since childhood and schemed against one another for half their lives. Later, one of them fell into hardship, and the other offered assistance. Half from self-interest and half from genuine feeling, they overcame the crisis together.

For a time, the two were extremely close, almost as though they were on a honeymoon. They discussed how to clear their old debts and how to rebuild their household. Yet the person who had offered assistance eventually returned to the old path of interference, control, and conflict. When they could not obtain what they wanted, they simply withdrew.

“What happened afterward?”

“Afterward...” Su Nan’s eyelashes trembled. “Afterward, that person died. The other one missed them but understood that sometimes, it was better to let many things remain in the past.”

They still remembered, but revisited it only in dreams.

Chen Zhiyu contemplated the story.

“Have you heard ‘Katyusha’?”

“So the story wasn’t about people?”

Su Nan turned her gaze toward the vast, dark river. Only a few small fishing boats floated upon it, each bearing a single point of light.

“I once walked across the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge. It’s more than sixteen hundred meters long and was built with assistance from the former Soviet Union. Sunflower patterns are carved into the railings. It isn’t far. Before long, you’ve finished crossing it, as though you’ve just toured the ruins of a bygone past.”

She paused, wanting to articulate every word clearly.

“The feeling is as though you’re trapped forever in the past, unable to reach the future.”

A moment later, she gave a quick smile and raised her head to look at Chen Zhiyu.

“That wasn’t a good story. It wasn’t as profound as yours, and there’s no reading-comprehension question to answer. Let’s go. It really is cold here!”

Her description of “touring the ruins” struck so mercilessly close to the heart that Chen Zhiyu’s heart involuntarily jolted.

He lowered his head to look at her.

She herself had probably not noticed that her eyes were veiled with a watery mist, poised to fall but not yet fallen.