Chapter 30
When the first sycamore leaf begins to turn yellow, and when the sticky, refreshing coolness of summer replaces it in the air, Lü Xiaoyan knows that the day is approaching again.
August 31st.
The threshold between summer and autumn. For her, it was the abrupt end of her life; for him, it was the beginning of a long, year-after-year prison sentence. This wasn't the date next to her name on the calendar, but it was the deepest mark etched into his soul—the eve of her departure to return to school, heading towards death.
On this day of the first year, he huddled in the darkroom, the red safety light like a lump of congealed blood. He stared at the photo album filled with her pictures, his fingertips tracing each of her autumn smiles—a glance back in the ginkgo rain, a silhouette under the sunset by the lake, a moment catching fallen leaves in the botanical garden. The last cicadas chirped hoarsely in the outside world, while he was trapped in amber called "Yesterday."
The following year, he fled to the small town where they had promised to stargaze. The Milky Way was still as dazzling as condensed milk, but he couldn't bring himself to set up his camera. The starry sky without her beside him was cruelly magnificent. He drank until his vision blurred on the same terrace, as if only then could he see the phantom of her pointing at Sirius and saying, "Senior, take a picture quickly!"
In his third year, he tormented himself with wilderness photography. In the desolate northwest desert, the poplar forest was bursting with a resolute golden hue, a color he had missed with his life. On August 31st, he pressed the shutter on a thousand-year-old dead tree; the photo contained only the trails of wind and sand, like proof of the relentless passage of time.
The fourth year, the fifth year...
He became a well-known name in the photography world, his works always carrying an inescapable autumnal atmosphere and tranquility. Critics say his images are "full of a philosophy of loss," but they don't know that the essence of that philosophy is a name that is forever frozen at eighteen.
He moved away from his old city, trying to escape his memories in unfamiliar streets. The gentle women his mother introduced him to always quietly retreated when they saw the snow in his eyes. His heart was an autumn cemetery, covered with layers of fallen sycamore leaves, no longer allowing spring to take root.
The ceremony takes place every year on August 31st without fail.
He wouldn't go to the cemetery—the cold, hard stone of the tombstones would shatter his illusion that she was still just a belated fantasy.
Do not contact her parents—the white frost at the temples of the two elderly people is a knife sharper than the autumn wind.
He carried the rare camera into the darkroom. The camera was brand new, like the heartbeat she never had a chance to send. The chemicals sloshed in the developing tray; he placed in blank photographic paper and watched the image gradually emerge in the red light—
It was always just a void.
He was processing images that didn't exist.
He was waiting for a knock that would never come.
He buried countless autumns in autumn.
The early fragrance of osmanthus blossoms is already wafting through the air outside the window this year. Lü Xiaoyan stands by the window, her palm holding a cool camera. Tomorrow is August 31st again, and the air is already filled with the aroma of her favorite roasted chestnuts.
He suddenly remembered the blood-stained letter the police officer had handed him on the day he identified the body. The last line of delicate handwriting burned in his memory:
"Always be that young man who loves light and shadow."
But all his light sank into that eternal night at the end of summer with her.
Just as the wine glass was emptied, a sycamore leaf drifted in through the window and landed on the windowsill, its veins like the lines of fate.
He knew that tomorrow he would still enter the darkroom, repeating this hopeless ritual in the crimson light. Letting the blank photographic paper soak up the potion, as if letting his soul soak up his longing. Then, carrying this meaningless proof, he would continue in the seasons where she was no longer there.
Live as a gentle ghost.
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