Chapter 32

Five years.

The sycamore trees on campus turned yellow and green again, green and yellow again, completing five cycles. Former freshmen became graduates, familiar faces gradually replaced by unfamiliar vitality. Only Lü Xiaoyan, like a fossil forgotten on the riverbed of time, stubbornly remained at a certain point in the past.

He graduated and naturally became a professional photographer. His work matured, and he began to win awards internationally. Critics interpreted his work with various obscure terms—"absence of existence," "archaeology of memory," "silent epic." They saw the technique, the composition, the emotion, but they couldn't see the huge, silent gap hidden behind every perfect frame.

For the past five years, he has been doing something that seems almost obsessive, even bizarre, to outsiders.

He is still "collecting" photos of Qiu Yayu.

However, these "photographs" are no longer records of new moments—there are no longer any "new moments" worth recording for her in his world. His collection has become an inward excavation and fixation of memory itself.

In his first year, he practically scoured all his hard drives, backups, and old computers, searching every nook and cranny where she might exist. Those photos he'd previously considered blurry, poorly composed, or even just accidental shots of her back were all carefully retrieved, re-developed, enlarged, and solemnly treasured. Each one was like a precious, rare grain of gold salvaged from an hourglass of time.

The following year, he began cautiously asking Qiu Yayu's parents, her former roommates, colleagues at the radio station, and even some classmates who might have taken group photos with her, for any photos that might contain her image. This process was fraught with difficulty and heartache. Each time he asked, it was an disturbance to their grief and a tearing at his own wounds. He received many photos—her smiling face in the corner of the class graduation photo, her profile holding a script during a radio station event, a candid shot of her making a funny face during a late-night chat in the dormitory… These moments of her, seen from the perspective of others and unfamiliar to him, filled some gaps, but also brought new pain—that she had once existed so vividly in places he couldn't see.

By the third year, he had almost run out of "new" photographs to find. His obsession shifted to another form. He began repeatedly developing and enlarging the existing photos, experimenting with different photographic papers, different developing techniques, and different sizes. It was as if through this extreme pursuit of technical perfection, he could make her in the image more "real," more "close." The darkroom was piled high with countless different versions of her—black and white, yellowed, high-contrast, soft and hazy… The same smile, the same gaze, copied a thousand times, yet ultimately just a phantom.

The fourth year was an even more silent one. He no longer sought anything externally, nor did he repeat the process of re-processing. He began to organize all the images of her he had collected over the past five years, meticulously categorizing, numbering, and archiving them according to chronological order, location, and even the color of her clothes and the type of her expression. He created thick catalogs and indexes, like a meticulous archivist managing a life that had ended. The process was calm and mechanical, yet permeated with a suffocating sadness. He seemed to be using this order to combat the eternal chaos within his heart caused by her departure.

The fifth year, which is now.

He stood in the darkroom of his studio—more professional and spacious than the one at school, but the smell of chemicals in the air and the lamp emitting a lonely red glow remained unchanged.

On the workbench lay an enormous photo album, almost impossible to close. It was filled with the "harvest" of the past five years, recording every visible trace of a girl from her first day on campus to the final moments of her life. The last page of the album was blank.

To the side, five identical cardboard boxes were neatly stacked. Each box had a label on it.

"200X-200X: On Campus"

"200X-200X: Darkroom and Everyday Life"

"200X-200X: Off-Campus Activities and Travel"

"200X-200X: Others' Perspectives"

"200X-200X: Repetition and Experimentation"

This is the result of his five years of obsession, an exquisite tomb built with images.

He picked up a blank sheet of photographic paper and placed it in the developing tray. This was his annual ritual, and also the ultimate metaphor for all his "collecting" activities over the past five years—after confirming all the images that could be collected, what he ultimately faced was still that unfillable, enormous blank space.

Under the red light, the photographic paper remained pure white, completely blank.

He stared at that blank space for a very long time.

Five years of collecting, five years of searching, five years of perseverance.

He collected all the images of her he could find, but realized more clearly than ever before that what he had truly lost was the warmth that images could not record, the laughter that lenses could not capture, and the unique soul named "Qiu Yayu" that photographic paper could not bear.

Collecting photos is nothing more than futilely striking match after match in the endless darkness.

The brilliance is fleeting, and what it reflects is always one's own eternal loneliness.

He turned off the red light and turned on the white light. The blinding light instantly filled the darkroom.

Those five heavy cardboard boxes, and the glaring blank space at the end of the photo album, lay there quietly, silently proclaiming a fact:

Five years have passed.

He collected every photo he could find.

But his autumn never came.

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