She suddenly understood why she couldn't hold onto these old things. When she reached out to touch the unmailed airmail letter again, the moment her fingertips brushed through the paper, the stamp on the letter suddenly came to life—the stamp with the lighthouse on it slowly unfolded, transforming into a real lighthouse standing in mid-air. Wherever the beam of light swept, all the suspended old things began to show traces of connection: the yeast powder in the bakery and the flying apsaras' robes in the Dunhuang murals both shone with pearly white; the hot milk in the emergency room and the moonlight of Namtso Lake both had silver edges; and on the red umbrella ribs shared on the rainy night, the veins of the ginkgo leaf perfectly matched the snowflake shape in the old camera film.

“They are fragments of memory,” Ayu said softly. Zhong Hua was looking at his grandfather’s grandfather clock. At this moment, the pendulum was swinging more and more widely. Each time it reached its lowest point, a 1983 ship ticket would fall out of the gears. The route map on the ticket gradually overlapped with the cracks in the waiting room floor tiles. When the hundredth ticket landed, those cracks suddenly began to seep out a fluorescent blue liquid, much like the color of the frozen lake in Yubeng Village. The liquid washed over their ankles, but they didn’t feel cold. Instead, it carried the warmth of the hot springs of Qinghai Lake.

Suddenly, the suspended old objects began to arrange themselves chronologically. At the front was a roll of film from a photo studio in 1972, followed by a nautical map from 1983, then a canvas bag from 1992, concert tickets from 1998… all the way to the icicles they collected in Yubeng Village in 2023. These objects formed a ribbon of light, at the end of which stood the girl with pigtails, a postcard in her hand facing them, the postmark date—June 17, 1999—the very day Zhong Hua was born.

The girl seemed to sense their gaze and slowly turned around. Ayu then noticed that the red ribbon tied to her pigtails was the same red thread her mother used to embroider peonies. As the girl held up the postcard, the street scene on the back suddenly began to change, slowly transforming from barren foundations in 1999 into the current residential complex, finally settling on their building—on the balcony, where pothos vines were climbing up the security bars, and dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves formed the shape of the Big Dipper on the wall.

"Time isn't a line, it's a loop." The boatman's voice rang out again, this time sounding as if it came from Zhong Hua's mouth. Ayu looked down and saw two overlapping shadows reflected in the fluorescent blue liquid at her feet: one was herself now, wearing a windbreaker, and the other was the girl with pigtails in 1999. Between them, the shadows of all the old things formed a loop, and at the center of the loop, the resonant curve was emitting an increasingly bright light, absorbing the orange-red of Qinghai Lake, the indigo of Yubeng Ice Lake, and the silvery-white of the Namtso starry sky, condensing them into a rotating sphere of light.

The moment the ball of light exploded, Ayu heard countless familiar sounds ring out at the same time: the chiming of her grandfather's clock, the ticking of the monitor in the emergency room, the pattering of umbrellas in the rainy night, the hum of the oven in the bakery... These sounds merged into a clear sentence in the air, as if Zhong Hua was speaking in her ear, or as if it were the voice in her own heart: "We have always been here."

She turned to look at Zhong Hua and saw that he was holding something in his hand. It was the 1998 coin she had found in the phone booth. Now it was no longer a mirage; the cool metallic feel was clearly tangible. The serrations on the coin's edge were slowly rotating, transforming into a miniature map of the Yunnan-Tibet Highway, and nestled among the ears of wheat bearing the national emblem on the coin was a tiny ginkgo leaf—exactly the same one she had picked up in Dali last year.

The old objects around her were still spinning, but suddenly Ayu no longer felt they were illusions. When the airmail letter floated past her again, she didn't reach out to grab it. Instead, she watched the lighthouse beam on the stamp sweep across Zhong Hua's profile, casting dappled shadows on his eyelashes, much like the coral shadows they had seen while diving on Weizhou Island. She knew these fragments wouldn't disappear, just like the roads they had traveled and the people they had loved—never truly past, but living in another form within the folds of time, waiting for a moment of resonance to resurface.

As the light from the exploding sphere faded, the distortion in the waiting room ceased. The floor tiles were no longer flowing liquid; the suspended old objects slowly fell back to the ground without a sound, silently seeping into the cracks like water droplets merging into the ocean. Only the resonant curve remained clear, now becoming a faint engraving on the third bluestone slab—the very one where Ayu had previously discovered the cracks forming the Big Dipper.

Zhong Hua placed the coin in her palm, and the moment their fingers intertwined, the bluestone slab suddenly trembled slightly. They looked down and saw the silvery-gray liquid seeping from the engravings slowly solidifying into a translucent crystal, sealing within it miniature images of all the old objects: faded letters, rusty tickets, spinning glass marbles… In the center of the crystal, the peony embroidered by their mother was slowly blooming, and entwined between the threads were their overlapping shadows, much like the flying apsaras in the Dunhuang murals, forever frozen in the moment of resonance.

“Let’s go.” Zhong Hua pulled her toward the exit. As they passed the ticket gates in the old waiting room, Ayu heard a familiar clicking sound—the sound of the gates opening, perfectly in sync with the frequency of the clock gears and camel bells. She glanced back and saw the girl with pigtails from 1999 still standing there, waving at them. The wave patterns on the postcard shimmered in the sunlight, much like the sunlight streaming through the glass curtain wall, casting shards of gold on the ground.

As they stepped out of the subway station, the rains of the plum rain season had just stopped. The air was filled with the damp smell of earth, mixed with the aroma of wheat wafting from a distant bakery—a smell that Ayu knew all too well, the smell of yeast powder foaming under the warm light. Zhong Hua suddenly stopped and pointed to the horizon: "Look."

A rainbow arched over the demolition site, its seven colors clearly visible. Looking at the rainbow, Ayu suddenly recalled the iridescent light of suspended water droplets, the orange-red of Qinghai Lake, the indigo of Yubeng, and the silvery-white of Namtso Lake. She looked down at the coin in her palm, then at Zhong Hua's hand holding hers, the coolness of the crystal still lingering on his fingertips.

“Let’s go home,” she said. “It’s time to water the pothos.”

They walked side by side across the puddle, their reflections shimmering gently in the puddles with each step. Ayu kicked a small pebble, and as it hit the water, she saw the reflections in the puddle suddenly overlap—the girl with pigtails from 1999, herself now, and even a figure from the future, all slowly merging into one in the ripples. And at the end of the rainbow in the distance, directly opposite their building, the green ivy vines on the balcony had already climbed to the top of the security bars.

She knew those old things hadn't disappeared. They had simply returned to the loop of time, waiting for the next resonance, the next reappearance. Like the wind blowing past her ears now, carrying grains of sand from Qinghai Lake, dust from Dunhuang, and snowflakes from Yubeng, gently knocking on the door of memory in some unexpected moment. And behind that door, there would always be someone holding a red umbrella, offering her warm milk, or helping her complete a long jigsaw puzzle, brewing every moment into an echo that would never fade in the folds of time.