Star map on the platform floor tiles

The rumble of the last subway train, like a lurking steel python, sent shivers down the tunnel, shaking the entire platform. Ayu was squatting on the ground, wiping the third bluestone slab with a cloth soaked in detergent—a fragment of an old platform deliberately preserved during the construction of the new subway station, supposedly unearthed from an abandoned station area twenty years ago. As the cloth slid across the brick surface, her fingertips suddenly touched several irregular cracks; under the harsh white light, the cracks seemed vaguely familiar.

She put down the rag and moved closer. The surface of the bluestone slab was uneven, with years of dirt filling the cracks like patterns outlined in ink. At the very top were two short, slanted seams, followed by three slightly longer straight lines, ending with a thin, upturned line—Ayu's heart skipped a beat. The shape was so similar, like that photo she had saved countless times in her phone's album: last year at Namtso, at three in the morning, the Big Dipper hung above the sacred lake, its handle pointing directly at the snow-capped peak of Nyainqêntanglha Mountain.

"Zhong Hua, come quick!" She looked up and called out to the man tidying up his toolbox not far away.

Zhong Hua walked over at the sound, his work pants still stained with cement dust at the knees. He squatted down in the direction A Yu was pointing, his fingertips gently tracing the edge of the crack: "The Big Dipper?" His voice held a hint of surprise. "This brick... looks quite old." His fingertip stopped at the point where the cracks met, where several tiny mica flakes were embedded, shimmering with a fine, silvery-white luster under the light, like grains of salt sprinkled on a dark blue velvet cloth. "Look at this reflection," Zhong Hua's fingers picked up a mica flake that was almost falling off, "isn't it very similar to the halo around Namtso Lake that night? It's that... fuzzy feeling of stars through a thin layer of clouds."

Ayu nodded, her memory suddenly becoming clear. That night, they were wrapped in down jackets and squatted by the lake. The lake was covered with a thin layer of ice, and stars were scattered in the cracks of the ice, their mica-like reflections shimmering gently with the ripples. Now, the mica in the cracks of the bricks, under the lamplight, was flashing at a frequency that synchronized with the flickering of the starlight on the lake in her memory, as if guided by some unseen rhythm.

Zhong Hua didn't speak again. He stretched out his index finger and slowly measured along the direction of the brick seam. From the "head" to the "handle," the main north-south crack meandered and twisted. His fingertip moved up and down on the brick surface, suddenly stopping at an unusually concave spot. The concave spot was an irregular oval, its edges worn smooth by the soles of shoes, like a natural crater formed by countless footsteps.

“The Yunnan-Tibet Highway.” Zhong Hua suddenly spoke, his voice a little strained. “Do you remember the elevation map we drew?” His fingertip moved along the crack. “From Lijiang to Lhasa, this is the steep slope of Tiger Leaping Gorge, this is the pass of Dongda Mountain…” His finger stopped at the depression. “And here, the most worn part, at an elevation of about 3,800 meters, doesn’t it look a lot like that rock under the Yubeng Waterfall? We sat there for an entire afternoon, and you even buried your water bottle in the moss.”

Ayu leaned closer to look, and the indentation on the brick surface did indeed resemble the shape of the rock beneath the waterfall, eroded by the water for many years. She suddenly remembered that day: the melting ice of the waterfall crashing overhead, sunlight filtering through the mist to create rainbows, them sitting on the slippery rocks, Zhong Hua using his phone's GPS to record the coordinates: 28°23′N, 98°48′E. Looking at the indentation on the brick now, she could almost feel the coolness of the rock back then.

The subway tracks vibrated again, the sound of the last train arriving at the station. White lights swept across the platform, illuminating the cracks and mica flakes in the bluestone slabs. As the train roared past, the powerful jolt caused a few drops of water to seep from the cracks in the brickwork, probably moisture from the underground pipes being shaken out. The water droplets landed in the depressions, forming small puddles.

"Look!" Ayu exclaimed.

The puddles reflected the ceiling lights, and the light spots flickered on the ground. As the train moved away, the vibrations subsided, the water droplets slowly came to rest, and the shape of the light spots also became fixed—it was an irregular circle with several raised edges, like a bitten mooncake, and a tiny crack radiating outwards from the center.

“Weizhou Island volcano crater,” Zhong Hua said almost simultaneously. He pulled out his phone and quickly pulled up a screenshot of a satellite map from his album—last year on Weizhou Island, they had specifically bought an aerial photograph of the volcano national geological park, and the crater on the map had this shape: a circular volcanic lake with several ridges formed by lava flows around the edge, and the crack in the middle being the main channel of the volcanic eruption. The light spots in the puddles, even the direction of that crack, were exactly the same as on the map.

The water droplets slowly evaporated, and the light spots faded. Ayu reached out to touch them, but as soon as her fingertips touched the brick surface, she discovered something deep within the crack. She took out her key and carefully scraped it against the mica sheet, revealing a dark red spot in the loosened dirt.

“This is…” She pried the object out; it was a small shard of pottery, about the size of a fingernail, with rough rope-like patterns on its surface.

Zhong Hua took the pottery shard and examined it under the light: "It looks a bit like Neolithic sand-tempered red pottery. Aren't there similar pottery shards embedded in the volcanic rocks of Weizhou Island? We found something similar at Dripstone Danping." He paused, then suddenly remembered something, "And at Namtso Lake, sometimes you can find stone tool fragments left by our ancestors in the mani stones by the lake, with shapes and the curvature of this crack..."

The platform lights flickered suddenly, as if the voltage was unstable. Ayu looked up and saw that the digital clock on the wall showed 23:59. The last subway train had already left, and the entire platform was empty, with only a low hum coming from the ventilation vents.

“You know,” Ayu asked softly, “do these brick seams, mica, pottery shards…have they long ago remembered the places we’ve been?” She remembered the old wooden crate they found when they moved, the peony-embroidered letter paper her mother had embroidered, the family photo Zhonghua had touched, and the radio antenna her father was halfway repairing, which was pointing right in the direction of Qinghai Lake. And that time in Dunhuang, the arc of the ribbons of the flying apsaras in the murals was exactly the same as the scarf Ayu’s was wearing when the wind blew up.

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