I will always remember the hug she gave me before she left.

The sun was shining brightly that day, casting its light through the balcony glass onto her and turning her hair golden.

Her hair brushed against my neck, carrying a faint scent of soapberry—the smell of the shampoo I bought for her. She said the scent reminded her of home, making her feel at ease.

She hugged me very tightly, as if she wanted to meld me into her bones, but I still felt that the smell of gunpowder on her was too strong, so I pushed her away and said, "Go take a shower, you smell all sweaty."

It turns out that some farewells are hidden in the ordinary details, hidden in the phrase "wait for me to come back".

Hidden in an embrace tinged with the smell of gunpowder, hidden in my pushing her away because I disliked her strong sweat smell.

Back then, we all thought there was plenty of time, plenty of time to fulfill our promises, plenty of time to say "I love you".

But we forget that life is unpredictable, and some goodbyes mean never seeing each other again.

By now, the snow on Changbai Mountain should be falling.

The TV said that this year's snowfall was particularly heavy, and the mountains and fields were covered in white.

No one will ever hold my hand again, leave a trail of footprints in the snow, and laugh as they say, "Ah Yun, look, don't our footprints look like two little bears?"

No one will ever again be rubbing their hands in the snow, snatch my scarf and wrap it around their own neck, saying, "Your scarf smells like me; I'm going to take it on a mission."

No one will ever again lean against me after watching the snow and say, "A-Yun, with you here, anywhere is home."

I put the couple's bracelet on my wrist. The cool metal against my skin felt like she was still beside me, warming my hand with her body heat and saying, "Don't be afraid, I'm here."

The lights in the autopsy room were still on, and the smell of formaldehyde was still pungent.

But now, every time I pick up a scalpel, I think of the light in her eyes—a light like a lamp, guiding me as I walk through the cold truth.

I also urge you to live well in the days without her, carrying on her legacy and continuing to protect the world she loved.

Because I know she never left; her warmth remains.

But I don't know when it started, Qianluo's image began to blur in my mind, like an old photograph soaked in rain, the colors gradually fading and the outline slowly dissolving.

It started with the curve of her eyes when she smiled.

I used to say that when she smiled, she looked like a cat that had stolen a sip of honey, with two faint smile lines appearing at the corners of her eyes.

Like ripples on a lake that has just thawed in early spring, even her eyebrows lifted, revealing two sharp little tiger teeth.

On the tip of her left tooth, there's a small chip from a fall when she was little, which you can't even notice if you don't look closely.

I always liked to pinch her chin, stare at that tooth, and laugh at her, saying she looked like a little tiger that hadn't grown all its teeth.

She would pounce on me and tickle me, saying, "Forensic Doctor Mo, has your magnifying glass come to life?"

But now, I'm trying desperately to visualize the shape of that smile line in my mind, but I can only remember that it was once very gentle. I can't quite recall the exact angle at which it curved.

Later, it was the lines between her eyebrows when she frowned and analyzed the case.

When she's thinking, she always likes to gently massage the space between her eyebrows with her fingertips, and the shallow frown lines deepen as she gets into thought.

Like drawing three lines lightly on paper with a pencil, the lines will gradually fade away, leaving only a faint mark, until the case becomes clear and she relaxes her brow.

Once, she stayed up all night reviewing case files, and the next morning I noticed that the frown lines between her eyebrows were so deep they looked like they were carved in.

I found a massage cream and gently massaged it in circles between her eyebrows. She closed her eyes and leaned against me, saying in a muffled voice, "Ah Yun, your hands are so soft, they're better than the massage machine in the team."

But now, I can't even remember the way she used her fingers when massaging my brow, whether she used her index finger alone or pressed with the pads of her fingers together.

Later, even the tone of her voice when she called me "A-Yun" became erratic.

Sometimes I suddenly remember her voice calling me, but I can't tell if it's her hoarse voice with the smell of gunpowder when she returns from a mission, or her sticky, soft voice when she just woke up in the morning.

Was it the drawn-out tone she deliberately uttered when she was arguing with me, or the crisp, joyful sound she made when she received her certificate of merit?

Those sounds that were once etched into my ears are now like those covered by a glass dome, separated by a thick fog, and I can't hear them clearly no matter how hard I try.

I could only catch a vague glimpse of it before it vanished from my memory in an instant.

This discovery sent chills down my spine, and my fingertips felt as cold as if they had just been taken out of an icebox from the dissection table.

How could I forget her? The one I loved to the core, the one I could only fall asleep with my head on her arm on countless nights.

Her arms were always warmer than mine, and I always loved to put my feet on her legs and rub them against her body heat.

The person I personally prepared for her funeral, even using a cotton swab to carefully remove the tiny grains of sand clinging to her eyelashes.

I counted her eyelashes: 23 in her left eye and 22 in her right eye. I laughed and thought, "No wonder you always say your left eye is more prone to tearing up than your right eye."

How did the person I once swore to protect for a lifetime slowly fade from my memory?

What makes me despise myself even more is that the sharp pain in my heart seems to be slowly dulling.

No longer is it the suffocating feeling of not being able to breathe when I think of her, no longer is it the trembling feeling of clenching my fists and my knuckles turning white when I see her old things.

Sometimes, while tidying up her wardrobe, her fingertips would touch the black tactical gloves folded in the corner—the first pair of gloves she bought when she graduated from police academy, with light brown marks worn on the palms.

These are marks left from years of gripping handcuffs. There's also a stitch on her index finger joint, which I sewed up with dark blue thread after it got caught on barbed wire during the last mission.

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