Time developer in the darkroom
On the seventh day of the rainy season, as Zhong Hua used a utility knife to cut open the seal on the old photo studio's memorabilia box, the sound of the tape tearing echoed long and thin in the humid air. Ayu handed him a cotton cloth, which had just been used to wipe the lid, and immediately, the water stains and growth rings of 1983 surfaced on the wood—those dark brown rings were strikingly similar to the growth lines of the coral fossils they had found last year at the Weizhou Island volcano.
"The thirty-sixth box." Ayu wrote the number on the side of the cardboard box with a marker. The blue hue of the marker ink seeping into the fibers reminded Zhong Hua of the color of the stop solution in the darkroom. The "Time Photo Studio" they were tidying up was where Ayu's grandmother had been an apprentice when she was young. Half a century of dust had formed an amber-colored net between the film canisters and the developing basin. When the seventh wooden box tilted, the film canister wrapped in black tape rolled out from the shock-absorbing cotton. The bite marks on the corner of the canister made Ayu suddenly stop breathing—the row of fine teeth marks was exactly the same as those on the camphor wood chest that her grandmother had given as part of her dowry.
The Secret of Flowers Under the Sycamore Tree
As the red glow of the developing film diffused in the darkroom, Zhong Hua adjusted the developer temperature to 20°C. Ayu, her fingers gloved in cotton, hovered above the developing tray, suddenly feeling a burning sensation on her fingertips—a sensation reminiscent of the timeless heat she felt three years ago when she touched the murals in Cave 323 at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang. As the first negative rose from the chemicals, the silhouette of a woman in overalls appeared in the red glow, standing under a leaning sycamore tree, the silver bracelet on her left wrist gleaming coldly in the gray haze of the film.
"Look at her cup." Zhong Hua used tweezers to pick up the negative and brought it close to the safe light. Ayu's breath caught in her throat. The floral pattern on the enamel cup in the woman's hand gradually became clear in the developing solution: three swirling roses surrounded a pale blue wavy line. She had seen this pattern countless times on the bottom of her grandmother's dowry bowl—when that bowl broke when she was twelve, the curve of the chipped rim perfectly matched the shape of the woman's frayed cuff in the photograph. Even more astonishing was the wood grain revealed by a piece of peeled bark on the trunk of the sycamore tree behind the woman, extending along the curve of the shoreline of Namtso Lake.
Ayu's fingertips unconsciously rubbed against the pocket of her apron, where her grandmother had given her a silver bracelet before she passed away. When the silver bracelet on the negative was developed to the third ridge, she suddenly heard the pendulum of an old-fashioned grandfather clock outside the darkroom—it was a German grandfather clock, its hands stopped at 3:15, now swinging in the rain, the arc of the pendulum exactly matching the angle at which the woman in the photograph was holding a cup.
The Snowman's Carrot Longitude
When the second negative entered the fixer, Zhong Hua noticed tiny gold flakes floating on the surface. A Yu gently stirred it with a glass rod, and the gold flakes suddenly coalesced into the shape of the Big Dipper. The direction the handle of the spoon pointed was exactly the coordinates of the snowman they built on Changbai Mountain last year. As the first snowflake appeared on the negative, A Yu suddenly felt her phone vibrating in her apron pocket—the weather forecast app showed that Changbai Mountain was experiencing its first snowfall of the year, and the snowman's carrot nose in the photo was angled at 118.75 degrees above the snowdrift, an angle exactly the same as what they had measured with their trekking poles.
"Look at the snowman's buttons." Zhong Hua's tweezers pointed to the lower left corner of the film. The arrangement of the three coal-shaped buttons made A Yu take a step back. Those were the coal pieces she and Zhong Hua had searched for half an hour in the snow to collect. The largest one had spiderweb-like cracks, and the patterns that appeared on the film now matched the crack patterns on her grandmother's dowry bowl. Even more strangely, hidden in the shadow of the pine tree behind the snowman was half a road sign covered in snow. The worn strokes of the characters "Changbai" on the road sign revealed a background color that was the same as the oxidation layer of the volcanic rock on Weizhou Island.
The rain outside the darkroom suddenly intensified, and the sound of raindrops hitting the glass reminded Ayu of the sound of snow falling in the pine forests of Changbai Mountain. As she turned to close the window, she saw watermarks on the glass forming the outline of a snowman—the carrot nose was facing the same 118.75° angle as in the photograph, and the speed at which the watermarks dripped matched the frequency at which snowflakes fell from the pine branches.
Watermarks and growth rings from ocean waves
When the last negative was placed into the developing solution, Zhong Hua noticed a dried sycamore leaf floating in the solution. A Yu picked up the leaf with tweezers, and the veins, developed under red light, revealed contour lines of the Weizhou Island volcano. As the water stains at the edge of the photographic paper began to bleed, the two simultaneously heard the sound of the tide—the audio of the waves they had photographed on Weizhou Island, now seeping from the developing solution. The frequency of the waves crashing against the rocks was perfectly synchronized with the speed at which the water stains spread on the photographic paper.
"The shape of the water stain..." Ayu's voice trembled. The water stain spreading on the photographic paper was forming a complete circle, and the density change at the center showed a clear annual ring structure. Zhong Hua suddenly remembered the Tang Dynasty bronze mirror he had seen in the Dunhuang Museum. The wave pattern on the back of the mirror was exactly the same as the spreading pattern of this water stain, and the position of the mirror knob corresponded exactly to the center point of the expanding water stain at the edge of the photographic paper. Even more astonishingly, when the water stain spread to the edge of the photographic paper, tiny bubbles suddenly appeared at the edge—the arrangement of those bubbles was exactly the same as the coral cavities they had photographed while diving in Weizhou Island.
Suddenly, the red light in the darkroom began to flicker, and the light from the safe lamp cast the shadows of Zhong Hua and A Yu on the photographic paper. As their shadows overlapped, A Yu saw water dripping from the ends of her hair, the trajectory of the falling water droplets coinciding with the spread of water stains on the photographic paper. Meanwhile, Zhong Hua's fingertip was pressing on the 52nd ring of the water stain—the age at which his grandmother passed away, and also the number of years between 1972 and 2024.
Time crystallization in developer
As the last photograph rose from the fixer, Zhong Hua noticed tiny characters etched on the back of the photographic paper: "September 17, 1972, 3:45 PM." Ayu checked the lunar calendar on her phone and discovered that it was her grandmother's twentieth birthday. The angle of the shadow at 3:45 PM perfectly matched the tilt of the sycamore tree trunk in the photograph. Even more miraculously, the water stains on the photographic paper suddenly began to crystallize. The crystals grew at the same rate as the calcification of the coral on Weizhou Island. When the crystals covered the entire photographic paper, they saw three images emerge within the crystals:
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