Scale Star Chart

Ayu squatted on the tiled floor of the waiting room restroom, the steel wool in her hand scraping against the corner of the wall with a screeching sound. The afternoon sun slanted in through the skylight, illuminating the suspended dust and the thickly grime-covered tiled wall in front of her. This was the last waiting room in the old town slated for demolition; the construction team had already cleared away most of the cubicles, leaving only this forgotten corner in the northwest corner, where limescale and rust had spread across the tiles, creating a dark yellow map.

"Zhong Hua, hand me a rag." She called out without looking up, her fingertips digging into the stubborn limescale in the brickwork, cold dampness seeping into her fingernails.

The footsteps stopped behind her, but no rag was handed to her. When Ayu turned her head, she saw Zhong Hua squatting by the drain in the southeast corner, his finger tracing circles along the rust on the edge of the drain. His T-shirt cuffs were stained with white dust from when he was removing the ceiling that morning, and his profile was clearly defined in the backlight, like a piece of jade warmed by the sun.

“Look at this.” His voice trembled slightly, his fingertips lingering on the rust around the drain. “This ring of rust, doesn’t it look like the constellation Ursa Minor?”

Ayu crawled over, her knees aching from pressing against the floor tiles. The drain was an old-fashioned cast iron mesh, the rust along the edges creating irregular curves. Seven slightly darker rust spots formed the shape of a spoon, the smallest spot at the end of the handle resembling the North Star at the tip of the Ursa Minor constellation. She suddenly remembered last year at Namtso Lake, the night sky at three in the morning so low it seemed she could reach out and touch it, Ursa Minor hanging on the ridgeline of the Nyainqêntanglha Mountains, its star trails casting shimmering silver light across the lake's surface.

"What about that corner over there?" Zhong Hua had already stood up and was walking towards the northwest corner.

Ayu followed him over, and the sunlight just happened to fall on the limescale crystals, making the white, hard lumps protruding from the tile surface shimmer with tiny sparkles. She looked closer and saw that the limescale deposits over the years had naturally formed a dipper-shaped arrangement, with the seven largest crystals forming the outline of the constellation Ursa Major. The crystal at the rim of the dipper was particularly large, resembling the brightest star in the Big Dipper, Dubhe.

“Between the poles…” Zhong Hua’s finger traced from Ursa Major to Ursa Minor, revealing a winding pattern of limescale on the tile. The pattern wasn’t wide, but it resembled a silver river polished by time, stretching from northwest to southeast, precisely connecting the two constellations. Ayu’s heart skipped a beat—the direction, the arc, were exactly the same as the Milky Way that stretched across the sky under Namtso Lake, even down to the indentations of several dark nebulae at the edge of the Milky Way.

They once pitched a tent by Namtso Lake, wrapped in down jackets, and lay on sleeping mats to watch the stars. At dawn, the lake was covered with a thin layer of ice, and the Milky Way, like a river of spilled milk, flowed down from the snow-capped peaks of the Nyainqêntanglha Mountains, the starlight reflected in the ice crevices trembling slightly with the ripples. Ayu pointed to the Milky Way and said to Zhong Hua, "Look, it looks just like a road; you can walk all the way to the stars."

“It’s not just a star map.” Zhong Hua’s voice pulled her back to reality. His fingers were still on the tile, gently tracing the thickness of the limescale lines. “Feel it, the thickness of the limescale here…”

Ayu reached out, her fingertips touching the cool ceramic tile. The thickness of the limescale crystals was uneven, especially thick in the center of the Big Dipper, where it was almost impossible to scrape off fragments. It thinned towards the edge of the Milky Way, becoming only a shallow layer near the Little Dipper. Following Zhong Hua's guidance, she started touching the thickest part and suddenly froze—the thickness, the feel, were exactly like the glacier tongues she had touched in Yubeng Village, hard, rough, with the density of millennia-old snow compressed together.

“Kawagebo Peak,” Zhong Hua said softly, his eyes shining brightly. “The thickness of the limescale here is roughly proportional to the height of the snow line on Kawagebo Peak.”

Last year, while trekking through Yubeng and gazing up at Kawagebo Peak from beside the glacial lake, their guide remarked that the 6,740-meter-high mountain's summit was perpetually covered in snow, and the glacial textures below the snow line resembled the veins on an old man's hand. Ayu recalled picking up a piece of ice shard washed out by glacial meltwater, and the sheer thickness of that ice was now vividly recreated on the tiles of this waiting room.

She followed the Milky Way's pattern southeastward, the limescale thinning until it was almost a transparent film near the constellation Ursa Minor. When her fingertips touched the rust beside the drain, the thin, brittle texture reminded her of the volcanic ash she had rubbed against the volcanic rocks on Weizhou Island—where the volcanic rocks were only 79 meters above sea level, covered with loose volcanic debris that would crumble into powder with a gentle scrape.

“Weizhou Island…” Ayu’s voice trembled slightly, “The thinnest part is exactly the height of the volcanic rock on Weizhou Island.”

The bathroom suddenly fell silent, with only the faint sound of construction workers hammering on the walls outside. Sunlight moved across the tiles, making the star-like pattern formed by limescale and rust flicker. Zhong Hua squatted down and used his phone flashlight to illuminate the pattern. The light danced on the uneven surface of the limescale, casting star-like spots of light on the wall.

“Look here.” He pointed to a tile in the very center of the Milky Way, where there was a small dent, like a flaw left during construction. “If this is the center of the Namtso starry sky…”

Before he could finish speaking, a drop of water suddenly dripped from the faucet above his head. The construction work had probably loosened the water pipe; the droplet hovered in mid-air for a few seconds before landing precisely in the center of the dent.

"Clatter".

The moment the water droplets splashed, Ayu and Zhonghua held their breath simultaneously. Ripples spread outward from the depression, forming circles of transparent waves on the surface of the tile. The ripples spread incredibly slowly, yet with a certain precise rhythm—Ayu suddenly recalled the scene beneath the sacred waterfall in Yubeng Village: melting snow water cascading from a thousand-meter-high cliff, crashing into the pool below, the ripples spreading at that same pace, unhurried yet possessing a power that transcends time and space.

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