Almond rings in a tin can
The roar of the bulldozers was like a dull, heavy heartbeat, pounding on the city's disappearing old fabric. As Zhong Hua kicked aside a half-cast slab at his feet, his toe touched something hard, buried in broken bricks and tangled steel mesh, only a rusty edge of sheet metal showing. "What's this?" He bent down to rummage through it, his fingernails scraping the surface of the metal, flakes of rust falling onto his work boots, revealing a dark, metallic sheen underneath—a square tin candy jar, its corners chipped and deformed, as if trampled by countless feet and forgotten by time in some damp corner.
Ayu was squatting not far away, picking out a copy of "Stray Birds" from a pile of moldy old books, with dried clover tucked between the pages. Hearing the sound, she looked up, a speck of dust on her forehead, like a tiny star in the setting sun. "What did you find?" she asked as she walked over, her heel crushing a piece of peeling plaster, revealing the rough texture of the red brick underneath.
Zhong Hua pulled the jar out; it was heavier than he had expected. The brass lock on the jar's opening was rusted into knots. He pried at it for a while with his Swiss Army knife, and with a "click," the lock broke off, sending rust powder flying into the air, mingling with the dusty smell unique to demolition sites. The moment the lid was lifted, an extremely faint yet exceptionally clear aroma wafted out—almonds, slightly roasted almonds, with a hint of aged sugar sweetness, like a olfactory specimen sealed in amber of time.
"Almond candy?" Ayu leaned closer, her nose twitching slightly. "This smell... it's like the kind my grandma used to hide in her cookie box." Her voice held a hint of surprise. The aroma was so vivid, so specific, that it made you imagine an old woman in a blue cotton shirt carefully opening a tin box in a dimly lit kitchen.
Zhong Hua turned the jar upside down. There was no candy inside, only a few neatly folded candy wrappers and a piece of yellowed cardboard at the bottom of the jar. He shook out the candy wrappers. The top one had an old-fashioned train design. The locomotive had a rounded, streamlined shape and was painted bright red. The spokes on the wheels were clearly visible, and the smoke rings coming out of the chimney were spiraling, rising in circles towards the blue sky and white clouds above the drawing.
“This train…” Zhong Hua’s finger traced the smoke rings on the candy wrapper, “doesn’t it look like that hot air balloon we photographed in Dunhuang?”
Ayu immediately came over to look. Last autumn, at the Singing Sand Dunes in Dunhuang, they watched an orange-red hot air balloon rise into the twilight. As the flames shot out, the spiraling plumes of exhaust drew almost identical arcs against the azure sky. She remembered holding her camera, Zhong Hua standing behind her, gently supporting her arm. The wind tousled their hair, and the occasional sound of camel bells in the distance mingled with the "poof" of the hot air balloon's flames. The photo was later developed and placed on their living room bookshelf. The smoke rings from the hot air balloon and the train smoke rings on the candy wrapper now overlapped in her memory, like some kind of coincidence spanning twenty years.
“It really looks like it.” Ayu’s fingertips also landed on the smoke pattern. The candy wrapper had become brittle and thin due to its age, but the pattern was still clear. “It’s just that the color is more vibrant, like it’s fresh out of the oven.”
She flipped the candy wrapper over and saw five words scrawled on it in crayon: "Waiting for the train to arrive." The handwriting was childish, with the edges of the strokes having the rough texture characteristic of crayon, and the color was a soft orange-pink, like melted strawberry ice cream.
“These crayon colors…” Ayu suddenly stopped, looked up at Zhong Hua, and a look of disbelief flashed in her eyes. “Do you remember the rainbow scarf my mom knitted?”
Zhong Hua remembered, of course. It was the last scarf Ayu's mother knitted before she passed away, using seven colors of yarn, from the deepest navy blue to the lightest pale yellow, wrapped around her neck in circles, like a rainbow. One section was a transitional color, a soft orange-pink, a warm orange tinge, like the color of the setting sun just beginning to paint the sky red. He had once asked Ayu why the color was so special, and Ayu, touching the jade bracelet her mother had left her on her wrist, said, "My mother said it was the color of an old crayon she had seen in Shanghai when she was young, called 'Sunset Gold'."
Now, the crayon writing on the candy wrapper, the layering and blending of colors, is almost identical to the orange-pink stripes on that scarf. It's as if the child who wrote those five words held the same crayon that Ayu's mother used when she was young, and that color, transcending time and space, gazes at an unfinished scarf from afar in this rusty tin can.
“Waiting for the train to arrive…” Zhong Hua murmured these five words, a corner of his heart feeling as if something had gently bumped into it. Who wrote this? Which train are they waiting for? And who are they waiting for after the train arrives? The edges of the candy wrapper were worn, as if it had been unfolded and folded countless times. Within the strokes of those five words, there seemed to be a child’s persistent waiting and some unspoken promise.
Dusk had fallen sometime earlier, and the lights at the demolition site came on one by one, casting a pale, stark light on the ruins, but unable to dispel the shadows in the corners. Zhong Hua held up the candy wrapper, pointing it at a dim, yellow streetlamp in the distance. The wrapper was thin, and the light shone through, illuminating the train pattern and lettering on it.
Just then, Ayu let out a soft "ah".
She pointed to the reflective area on the candy wrapper. The streetlights cast shadows of clouds across the smooth surface of the wrapper. The clouds weren't thick at the moment, and they were being slowly moved by the evening breeze. But strangely, the cloud shadows reflected in the candy wrapper seemed to move at a different speed than the clouds in reality.
“Look…” Ayu’s voice trembled slightly, “the speed at which they are moving…”
Zhong Hua stared intently. The cloud shadows reflected in the candy wrapper were moving at an extremely slow, almost stagnant speed, a speed that instantly reminded him of the sacred waterfall he had seen in Yubeng Village last year.
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