Missed calls from the snow mountain

The fireplace in the Montmartre loft was burning brighter than ever before. As Lin Wanqing stuffed the last piece of pine into the firebox, Ayu was squatting in front of her suitcase, rummaging through her passport. Her fingertips brushed against the faded canvas bag at the bottom of the suitcase—it was a bag she had brought back from Tibet last year, with unwashed yak butter stains still clinging to its edges.

Something rolled out of the side pocket of the canvas bag, making a crisp sound as it hit the floor. Ah Yu bent down to pick it up, her fingertips first touching a thin layer of frost—a cracked ginkgo leaf specimen, the edges of the glass frame still stained with mud from the landslide.

This specimen was brought out from a mountain gully last autumn. When Zhong Hua was trapped in the collapsed rubble, this specimen was tucked into his hair. As he dug through the rocks with his bare hands, shards of glass embedded themselves in his palm, and drops of blood dripped onto the golden leaves, like clumsy red lines added to the specimen.

"What are you looking for?" Lin Wanqing walked over carrying two cups of hot cocoa, her wool socks rustling on the wooden floor. Today she was wearing a camel-colored turtleneck sweater, the neckline covering the scar on her left neck—last year in the Paris refugee area, she was slashed with a broken bottle by rioters while protecting him; blood had flowed down the sweater collar, staining half of his sleeve red.

Ah Yu stuffed the specimen into the inside pocket of her coat, when her fingertips suddenly touched something hard. It was an old cell phone, its screen riddled with spiderwebs from the debris of the mudslide, but it was now slightly warm in her palm, as if something was trying to crawl out of the cracks.

This was Zhong Hua's backup phone. She was unconscious in the ICU for those few days, and he kept it for her, later sneaking his own luggage in the chaos. Suddenly, the screen lit up—not an incoming call notification, but a belated missed call alert, the timestamp painfully bright—it was 3:17 PM on the day of the mudslide, just moments before he carried Zhong Hua out of the ravine.

The phone was still stubbornly lit up, and there was only this one missed call in the call log, from "Ah Yu".

Ah Yu's knuckles suddenly began to tremble. He remembered that afternoon when Zhong Hua was organizing interview transcripts at a guesthouse at the foot of the mountain, while he went to the summit to take panoramic photos of the snow-capped peaks. When the mudslide struck, the sky darkened, and he saw her down jacket amidst the falling rocks, like a leaf torn by the wind. She was clutching a voice recorder in her hand; he later learned that it contained evidence that Gu Yanting had entrusted to his lawyer before his death—evidence concerning the true culprit in the arson case.

“When we were in Tibet,” Lin Wanqing handed him a hot cocoa, the heat of the cup snapping him back to reality, “you were always staring blankly at the red string on the prayer wheel.”

Ah Yu looked down at the steam rising from the cup, condensing into tiny mists in the cold air. Winters in Tibet are much colder than in Paris. When Zhong Hua tied a red string to the prayer wheel, his breath frosted over his eyelashes. He had secretly tied the same string next to him, thinking he'd gotten away with it, but Lin Wanqing caught him red-handed on a video call as he descended the mountain.

“She’s tied a safety rope,” Lin Wanqing said in the video, sitting on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral, handing out bread to refugees. “You’re tied a marriage rope. Ah Yu, one cannot cross two rivers at the same time.”

At that moment, the screen of the old phone went dark and then suddenly lit up again. This time it was a text message preview from an unknown number, but the content was like a dull knife: "When Reporter Zhong was sorting out the arson case materials, he discovered that there was a fourth person at the scene of the fire that year - Gu Yanting's secretary, who is now in Switzerland."

The letter was sent the day after Zhong Hua was admitted to the ICU. Ah Yu suddenly remembered that when the lawyer handed over Gu Yanting's will that day, besides the video, there was also a note with a Swiss address in the interlayer. The handwriting was messy, as if it was hastily written before death.

“This phone,” Lin Wanqing’s gaze fell on his trembling wrist, “should be returned to its owner.”

Ah Yu suddenly looked up, meeting her calm eyes. The firelight from the fireplace was reflected in Lin Wanqing's pupils, just like the light in her eyes two years ago at the party when she shielded him from the red wine Gu Yanting splashed on him—calm, yet hiding a tenderness that could shake the heavens and earth.

"You knew she would come looking for you?" His voice sounded like it had been sanded.

“I know her recording pen is with you,” Lin Wanqing smiled, her fingertips tracing her earlobe where there was a small piercing. “Just like I know you always hide things she leaves behind. Last year in the ICU, when you were reading her interview transcript, when you got to ‘the person she most wanted to thank,’ her eyelashes fluttered three times. You counted, didn’t you?”

Ah Yu's Adam's apple bobbed. He had indeed counted. Amidst the beeping of the monitor, he counted the number of times her eyelashes fluttered, and suddenly remembered what Zhong Hua had said: when she first interviewed him, he said to the camera, "I don't believe in fate," and she secretly recorded it from backstage, saying it was "the toughest thing I've ever heard."

My phone vibrated again, this time with a news notification. The headline was so jarring it was hard to look away: "Reporter Zhong Hua Attends Press Conference Despite Injury, Exposes Evidence of Gu's Group's Embezzlement of Charity Funds Ten Years Ago." The accompanying photo showed her in a black suit, her left arm in a cast, clutching a voice recorder—not the one he had kept for her, but a new one.

“She always said that the truth is the best painkiller.” Lin Wanqing took off her scarf and wrapped it around Ah Yu’s neck. “But some pain is meant to remind you that you are still alive.”

The scarf smelled of lavender, a specialty of Provence. Last year, Zhong Hua suffered from altitude sickness in Tibet and coughed constantly at night. He went to a local pharmacy to buy cough medicine, and the shopkeeper gave him a small packet of dried lavender flowers, saying, "Put it under your pillow, and you'll dream of the person you want to see." Later, he tucked that packet of dried flowers into Zhong Hua's interview notebook; I wonder if she ever found it.

“I’m going to Switzerland.” Ah Yu suddenly stood up, her knee hitting her suitcase with a dull thud.

Lin Wanqing didn't stop him, but took out a plane ticket from the drawer and placed it next to the hot cocoa. The ticket was for a flight to Zurich tomorrow, and there was a line of small print on the back of the boarding pass: "Gu Yanting's secretary has a daughter who is studying at the Paris Academy of Fine Arts. Last year, she exhibited a painting called 'Three Figures' at an art exhibition."

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