It's like looking at an old book laid out in the sunlight, where you can clearly see the wrinkles left by time and the traces of tears between the lines.

“I am who I am, Xin Zimo.” She tapped her fingertips lightly on the edge of the mahogany table, her nails tinged with a faint pink, making a soft “tap-tap” sound.

It miraculously overlapped with the lingering resonance of the celadon cup's bottom touching the table earlier.

It's like tapping out a discordant rhythm for this bizarre conversation, or like helping me count those fragments related to Qianluo that have been blurred by time.

"As for why I know these things... I'm sorry, I can't say."

She looked up at me, her gaze as calm as a deep pool of water frozen solid in the depths of winter, without even a ripple.

Yet it clearly revealed the panic and evasion in my eyes—an evasion that concealed a yearning for the truth, yet was also shrouded in the fear of having my "loss" officially declared.

"I'm telling you this because I don't want the world to lose a forensic doctor who can uncover the truth."

You keep getting caught up in those thoughts, daytime you're distracted by the dissection table, and you almost accidentally picked up the wrong piece of myocardial tissue with the tweezers.

I heard that last week you were so distracted that you wrote '2024' on the pathology report as October 17, 2023, the date of Qianluo's accident.

That was the last time she sent you the message, "Ah Yun, remember to eat something hot after get off work."

When the director came to you with the report, you stared at the string of numbers for half a minute, your eyes red as if you had just been crying, but you stubbornly insisted, "It's just printer ink smudged."

"You couldn't sleep at night, clutching her off-white scarf. The scarf's collar still had oil stains from the last hot pot meal she had, the color of your favorite tomato broth."

You can't bear to wash it, always saying it's 'living evidence' she left behind. Before going to bed, you bury your face in it and smell it for a long time, as if to confirm whether she really came.

Your eyes were so red that it looked like you had been up for several nights in a row. Even Aunt Zhang from the breakfast shop downstairs grabbed your hand and asked, "Ah Yun, are you having some trouble?"

You used to always buy two meat buns and a tea egg, but lately you've only been eating a steamed bun.

She wouldn't even add sweetener to her soy milk; her face had become so thin it was unrecognizable, and her cheekbones were protruding.

She paused, her tone softening almost imperceptibly, as if afraid of reopening old wounds.

"If Qianluo knew that you were dragging yourself down like this, she would probably blame me instead, blaming me for not speaking up sooner and letting you keep going in circles."

Even your most cherished job as a forensic pathologist, which you risk your life for, has been affected—she used to always say that A-Yun wanted to be the best forensic pathologist.

She said she would expose every hidden truth to the light of day, and that she would be A-Yun's "backbone" from now on, so that when A-Yun worked late, there would always be a hot meal waiting for her when she got home.

As soon as she finished speaking, she suddenly added a sentence, her tone as light as a breeze across a lake, even the last syllable of her voice carrying a soft, ethereal quality.

But every word was like a needle tempered with heat, precisely piercing my deepest thoughts: "Besides, you already believe it in your heart, don't you?"

From the moment I told you that Qianluo was a female soldier in the Republic of China era in her previous life, your grip on the hem of your clothes loosened slightly, and the whiteness in your knuckles faded a bit, as if a heavy burden that had been pressing down on you for a long time had been lifted.

When you mentioned "you give her a cotton-padded coat, and she gives you warmth in return," your eyes were red like soaked cotton wool, and tears were welling up inside.

But instead of slamming his fist on the table and demanding, "Is it fake?" as before, he simply pursed his lips and stared at the cracks in the ice on the glass.

It's like counting whether those cracks are as many as the wounds in your heart.

Even when I mentioned 'destiny,' your lips moved as if you wanted to refute something but then swallowed it back—you just didn't dare to admit it.

I'm afraid that if I admit it, I'll forget those times when I squeezed into a small noodle shop at the alley entrance with Qianluo to eat hot soup noodles, and she would put a fried egg on my plate and say, 'Ayun, you need to eat more, solving cases takes a lot of brainpower.'

Those promises made while watching the stars on the balcony, where she would point to the brightest one and say, "This is me. After I'm gone, it will keep you company in my place. Look at it when you miss me."

Those moments when you share an umbrella in the rain, she tilts most of it towards you, and even though half of her shoulder is soaked, she still smiles and says, "I'm not afraid of the cold."

It truly became a pipe dream of 'repaying a debt of gratitude,' and even a simple 'I genuinely like you' became a self-indulgent joke.

In an instant, it felt as if all the blood in my body had frozen.

How could she observe so closely? She pointed out the wavering I was trying to avoid and not fully acknowledge.

Like peeling an onion, peel away the hard shell I built with "disbelief" and "doubt" to reveal the softest and most unbearable part underneath.