At this moment, outside the glass curtain wall of the old waiting room, the city's neon lights are lighting up one after another. Ayu gently places the match representing Betelgeuse in the center of the spiral. The phosphorescent surface after the flame goes out suddenly reflects a shadow—not her face, but a young woman with braided pigtails, standing under the eaves of the old house, holding the same matchbox in her hand, smiling in the direction of Orion.
"That is..." Ayu's voice trembled. Zhong Hua looked at the woman's features in the reflection, which perfectly matched those in his grandmother's photo when she was young. And the outline of the eaves behind her was the shape of a spiral opening formed by match ash.
A yellowed note suddenly slid out from the bottom of the tin box, on which was written in pencil: "November 17, 1989, the brightest night in Orion, leaving the star map to future generations." Below the date was a drawing of a matchbox, the moon pattern on the lid of which was exactly the same as the one in front of her. Ayu remembered the seashell she had picked up on Weizhou Island, which also had similar natural patterns on the inside, like a code carved by someone with moonlight.
The construction team leader called out from afar to call it a day, and Chen Mo carefully put the matches and ashes from his hard hat back into the tin box. As Zhong Hua closed the lid, he heard a soft "click," like the meshing of gears in a pocket watch. Ayu looked up at the window; Orion was rising just above the gap between the buildings, and Betelgeuse was directly facing the direction of the Zhong family's old house. Starlight pierced through 640 years of time and space, landing precisely on the rust on the tin box.
As they walked out of the waiting room, Chen Mo suddenly stopped: "Listen, can you hear a bell?"
The night wind swept through the unfinished platform, carrying a faint tinkling sound that blended with the camel bells of the Dunhuang desert, the echoes of burning matches, and the tides recorded in her grandfather's logbook—all creating a rhythm in the evening breeze. Ayu gripped Zhonghua's hand, feeling the warmth of his palm, strikingly similar to the lingering warmth of the burnt matchstick.
The metal box swayed gently in Zhong Hua's backpack, like a container holding fragments of stars. In the distance, amidst the city lights, Orion was slowly rising, and the red light of Betelgeuse shone through the backpack fabric, casting tiny spots of light on the ground—the shape of those spots resembled the spiral patterns of the conch shells they had found on Weizhou Island, illuminated by moonlight at low tide.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
