Gears and puzzles
A thin layer of dust covered the studio's glass windows, warmed by the afternoon sun. Ah Yu squatted on the floor, tidying his camera bag. As his fingertips brushed against the leather strap, they touched a corner of cardboard. He paused, then reached in and pulled out a folded notepad. Unfolding it, three small circles joined together jumped into his eyes—it was Lin Wanqing's handwriting, with delicate wavy lines drawn around the edges, like ripples stirred by the wind.
“This girl,” Ah Yu chuckled, her fingertips brushing against the paper. The ink was still slightly damp; it must have been slipped in this morning. Lin Wanqing always liked to do these little tricks. Last year on his birthday, she had hidden a note in the lens cap that read, “Open the aperture wider to capture more starlight.”
He stood up, holding the note, walked across the long table piled with photography equipment, and went to the balcony. Zhong Hua was squatting there, holding a ceramic pot, carefully moving the pothos plant that Lin Wanqing was growing to the window. The sunlight slanted down on his shoulders, turning the ends of his hair a light gold, and softening the lines of his profile, making him look less tense than when he was looking at reports.
"Wanqing left this." Ah Yu handed over the note.
Zhong Hua reached out and took it, his other hand still holding the edge of the flowerpot, a little soil clinging to his fingers. He glanced at the drawing on the note, and the corner of his mouth curved almost imperceptibly: "She said the three of us form a closed loop."
Ah Yu leaned against the balcony railing, the wind rustling the sycamore leaves below. He suddenly remembered that evening by Qinghai Lake, the setting sun painting the lake surface with molten gold. The three of them sat on the hood of the rented SUV, Lin Wanqing drawing circles in the sand with a twig, saying that the three of them were like three rings, and it wouldn't be complete without any one of them. At that time, Zhong Hua was looking down to change the camera battery, and Ah Yu even grabbed the twig, adding an arrow next to it, saying it should be a gear, that it needs to be interlocked to turn.
“It’s a gear,” Ah Yu said softly, gazing at the distant horizon. “If one is missing, it won’t turn.”
Zhong Hua folded the note, stuffed it into his shirt pocket, and then continued tending to the potted green ivy. He arranged the three flowerpots in a row: Lin Wanqing's green ivy, Ah Yu's succulent that had died and been revived three times, and his own pot of sunflowers that were blooming vigorously, just filling the width of the windowsill. Sunlight spilled over the edges of the flowerpots, casting three overlapping shadows on the tiles, like a half-finished jigsaw puzzle, warm and cozy.
"Before she left, she kept saying that pothos shouldn't be exposed to the midday sun," Zhong Hua straightened up and patted the soil off his hands. "You have to turn the flowerpot halfway around every afternoon."
"I know, Butler Zhong," Ah Yu said with a smile. Zhong Hua was always like that, remembering everything clearly. Last time they went to Qinghai, Ah Yu casually mentioned that she liked a kind of blue-purple flower by the lake. When she came back, she found a dried specimen in the side pocket of her camera bag. Zhong Hua had secretly picked it while Ah Yu and Lin Wanqing were arguing.
Zhong Hua didn't reply, but just glanced at him with a helpless smile in his eyes. He turned and walked into the house, the hem of his clothes brushing against the clothesline on the balcony, where Lin Wanqing's silk scarf, washed yesterday, was still hanging, its delicate floral pattern swaying gently in the wind.
The studio suddenly felt much emptier. Lin Wanqing's easel was still standing in the corner, with an unfinished sketch pasted on it—a poster she designed for her next photography exhibition; her usual red marker was slanted in the pen holder, the cap not closed tightly, the ink nib leaving a small red dot on the table; even the chrysanthemum tea she had brewed yesterday was still in the cup on the windowsill, two petals floating on the surface.
"Is there anything else to pack?" Ah Yu asked. Lin Wanqing's train was at seven o'clock this morning. They went to see her off at the station, and when they returned, the sun had just climbed over the rooftops across the street. Before she entered the station, she was still shouting out the train window, saying that when she came back, she would take them to eat the osmanthus cake at the training location, a place where the line was said to be two hours long.
“Her books,” Zhong Hua pointed to the third shelf of the bookshelf, “she said yesterday that she was afraid they would get dusty, so she asked us to move them to the cabinet.”
Ah Yu walked over and pulled out several thick books on curatorial theory. Sticky notes written by Lin Wanqing were pasted on the spines, densely covered with notes: "The lighting design for this exhibition is too rigid," "The circulation should be smoother," the handwriting was bold and lively, just like the circles she drew, full of vitality. He hugged the books to his chest, and as he turned, his gaze fell on a metal box at the very bottom of the bookshelf.
That was their "time capsule." When they graduated from university, Lin Wanqing suggested that each of them put something in it, saying they would open it ten years later. Ah Yu put in a group photo of the three of them taken on the roof of their dormitory building. In the photo, Lin Wanqing was grabbing Ah Yu's camera, and Zhong Hua was standing next to her, holding a melting ice cream. Zhong Hua put in his math notebook, with a piece of petal that Ah Yu had accidentally knocked off when taking a picture of lotus flowers tucked into the last page. Lin Wanqing put in a hand-drawn sketch of their studio. At the time, they joked that this sketch probably wouldn't be realized for ten years.
Unexpectedly, just five years later, the sketch has actually become the studio before our eyes. When we moved last year, Zhong Hua specially brought this metal box with him and placed it in the most conspicuous position on the bookshelf.
"What are you thinking about?" Zhong Hua walked over, holding a clean cloth in his hand, and was wiping Lin Wanqing's easel.
“It’s nothing,” Ah Yu put the book back in the cabinet, “I just feel that time really flies.”
Zhong Hua hummed in agreement, wiping the rag in circles on the wood grain of the easel. "Before she left, she said the training location wasn't far from Qinghai Lake," he suddenly said, "and that the migratory birds there are starting to fly north this season."
Ah Yu paused for a moment, then smiled. He recalled the photo of the three people's shadows overlapping at Qinghai Lake. Lin Wanqing had insisted on standing in the middle, saying that this way the shadow would look like a complete sun. The wind was strong that day, making it hard to open one's eyes, but Zhong Hua stubbornly insisted on waiting for the sunset to turn the lake golden before leaving. As a result, all three of them ended up shivering from the cold and caught colds afterward. Lin Wanqing even joked that this was a "medal given by the plateau."
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