Matchstick Star Chart
At 6:17 PM, the construction team's electric pick broke through the floor tiles of the old waiting room's smoking area. Chen Mo, a cigarette dangling from his lips, squatted beside the pile of rubble, watching as the seventh bluestone slab was pried up, revealing a rusty iron box rolling out of the crack. The brass lock on the lid had crumbled to dust; he gently tapped it with a crowbar, and the lid fell onto the dusty floor tiles like a withered leaf.
"Brother Zhong, come and see this." Chen Mo's voice echoed in the empty waiting room.
Zhong Hua was checking the locations of the load-bearing columns against the blueprints when he heard this and walked over, kicking a piece of peeling plaster from the wall. The matchsticks stacked in the tin box gleamed a dark yellow in the twilight, like a row of ears of rice dried by time. Ayu followed behind him, and as she squatted down, her knee pressed against a glazed tile. The glaze reminded her of the coral fragments she had picked up on Weizhou Island last year—both were that kind of blue that had been soaked in seawater for thousands of years.
"1989." Zhong Hua picked up the top matchbox. The four characters "Shanghai Matches" on the box had faded to a light brown, like the damp pages in his grandfather's old photo album. He remembered his grandfather always saying that the phosphorus coating that year was particularly durable, "able to scratch the moon's shadow."
Ayu's fingertips glided across the matchsticks in the box, suddenly stopping at the fifth match in the third row. The phosphorus on the match head was worn down remarkably, the edges jagged irregularly, as if someone had repeatedly rubbed it and blown it out. She remembered that night at Namtso Lake, when Zhong Hua, holding a star atlas, traced his fingertip across Orion and said, "Betelgeuse is actually a red supergiant, about 640 light-years from Earth."
"Let's arrange them and see." Chen Mo placed his helmet face down on the ground to use as a table, and the three of them squatted in a semicircle. Zhong Hua arranged the matches from left to right according to the wear of the match heads, when Ayu suddenly grabbed his wrist: "Wait—the position of Betelgeuse!"
The phosphorus surface of the middle match head was only one-third of its original size, which corresponded exactly to the coordinates of "Zhong Family Old House" marked on the mobile phone map. The third match on the right, which was almost intact, had a phosphorus surface that reflected light so strongly that it reminded Zhong Hua of the magnitude 1.6 of Betelgeuse marked on the star atlas that night. In the clear air of Namtso Lake, it did indeed shine like a polished silver ingot.
"Orion's Belt." Ayu's voice trembled slightly. She recalled the time they were camping in the Dunhuang desert, when the red willow wood in the campfire crackled and popped, and Zhong Hua had drawn this constellation on the sand with a twig. At that moment, the construction team's temporary light fixture cast a shadow in the distance, and the rust on the edge of the iron box looked just like the hazy effect of the Milky Way in a star atlas under the light.
Chen Mo took out a lighter to light his cigarette, but Zhong Hua suddenly grabbed his hand: "Use a match."
Ayu picked out the most worn match. The moment the phosphorescent surface brushed against the box, the waiting room suddenly darkened for half a second. The flame that shot up was a strange bluish-green, and the frequency of its flickering reminded Zhong Hua of the warm air currents from a desert campfire on a desert night—also rising and falling slightly every three seconds, like someone holding their breath.
"Listen." Ayu held the burning match to her ear. The crackling sound of the flame seemed to be mixed with a very faint bell ringing, exactly the same rhythm of the camel bells they heard when riding camels in Dunhuang. Zhong Hua counted the flickering flames: 1, 2, 3... On the seventh flicker, a spark suddenly burst out and landed on the ash inside the helmet.
As the matchstick burned down to her fingertips, Ayu released her hand, and the ashes fell softly into her helmet. The three of them leaned closer, and the grayish-black fragments miraculously coalesced into a spiral shape—opening to the right, the whorls gradually tightening—a cross-section of the Queen Conch they had found on the shell beach of Weizhou Island. Chen Mo instinctively tried to move it with his fingers, but the ashes seemed fixed in place, even the fine lines on the whorls were clearly visible.
"1989..." Zhong Hua suddenly remembered his grandfather's nautical logbook. He had seen the route map from 1989 on the title page. Next to the Qingdao to Shanghai route, there was a matchbox drawn, with the words written in pen: "For Xiaomei's constellation matches. She said Orion looks like the eaves of her old home." Xiaomei was his grandmother's nickname, and her old home was located where the Zhong family's old house is now.
Ayu picked up the match that represented Betelgeuse; its phosphorescent surface reflected tiny specks of light under the lamp. She remembered that night at Namtso Lake, when Zhong Hua pointed a laser pointer at the starry sky: "Look, Betelgeuse is right at the hunter's toes; its blue-white light will take 860 years to reach Earth." At that moment, the red light from the laser pointer seemed to still flicker before her eyes, overlapping with the phosphorescence of the match head to create a wondrous color.
The sound of the construction team's chainsaws suddenly stopped, and the entire waiting room fell into a brief silence. Ayu arranged all the matches in the star map inside her hard hat, with Betelgeuse positioned directly opposite the window—a crescent moon peeking out from among the newly built high-rises in the distance, just like the faded moon pattern on the matchbox cover.
"Your grandfather..." Ayu's fingertip hovered above the Betelgeuse match, "Did he also set up this star chart that night when he was stargazing at Namtso Lake?"
Zhong Hua didn't speak, but simply took out his grandfather's old pocket watch from his pocket. When the watch cover was opened, the inside was not engraved with patterns, but with a star map of Orion. There was also a small dent in the position of Betelgeuse, exactly the same shape as the worn match head. The hands of the pocket watch were stopped at 10:17, the exact moment he was born.
Suddenly, the ash spiral inside the helmet began to glow. It wasn't firelight, but the eerie blue fluorescence of the seawater flowing over the coral of Weizhou Island. Tiny lines emerged from the center of the spiral, and Ayu leaned closer to examine it. She discovered that it was two characters carved with a matchstick: "Waiting for you." The handwriting was familiar to Zhong Hua, his grandfather's handwriting, exactly like the penmanship used to record tide tables in the nautical log.
Chen Mo instinctively reached out to touch it, but his fingers recoiled as if burned the fluorescent light the moment they touched it. The light wasn't hot, but rather a damp coolness, like the morning air of Namtso Lake. Zhong Hua suddenly remembered his grandfather's last words before he passed away: "When the light from Orion reaches Earth, remember to visit the eaves of the old house."
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