Prism Echoes
Concrete fragments groaned and crumbled under the excavator's iron claws, the rising dust like sighs undigested by time, permeating the old waiting room soon to be demolished. Ayu crouched down, her fingertips brushing against a sharply angled bluestone slab on the ground. A piece of mica embedded in the crack shimmered faintly in the dim light—that glimmer inexplicably reminded her of the starry night sky over Namtso Lake, cold yet carrying a certain ancient gentleness.
"Ayu, look at this."
Zhong Hua's voice came from behind, trembling slightly. A Yu turned around and saw him standing in front of the clock that had stopped for who knows how many years, carefully holding something in his hands. Sunlight streamed through the broken glass skylight, cutting obliquely into the dusty air, illuminating the thin, yellowed letter in Zhong Hua's palm.
“It fell out from behind the pendulum,” Zhong Hua said. “It’s a 1999 postmark.”
The handwriting on the letter was already somewhat blurred, as if stained by countless tears. Ayu leaned closer and could barely make out a few lines: "...No. 7 Moon Street, waiting for someone who will never come... The kite string broke, just like the radio under the sycamore tree that year, it can never be repaired..."
“No. 7 Moon Street,” Ayu’s heart clenched. “That’s where I lived when I was a child.” She looked up at Zhong Hua, only to find his gaze fixed on the clock face—the hour and minute hands stubbornly stopped at 10:17, a moment forgotten by time.
Just then, the entire waiting room suddenly shook violently. It wasn't the roar of an excavator, but a deeper, more intrinsic tremor, as if it came from the heart of the earth. Ayu and Zhonghua instinctively hugged each other, only to see the beam of sunlight shining in obliquely suddenly undergo a strange change—it was no longer simple white light, but split into seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet, as if someone had twisted them into a dazzling rope of light by an invisible hand.
The optical cables spiraled and converged in the air, accelerating until they formed a prism suspended in the center of the waiting room. Though small, it emitted a dazzling light, and with each rotation, it produced a soft, tinkling sound, like crystals colliding.
“Prism…” Zhong Hua murmured to himself, his eyes filled with disbelief and astonishment.
An even more amazing thing happened. With each rotation of the prism, the mottled walls of the waiting room began to peel off like old tree bark.
The first layer to peel away was the outermost, dusty layer of cement. After the dust settled, dark red bricks were revealed underneath. Those bricks looked as if they had been carefully polished by time, exuding a serene luster. Ayu's gaze was immediately drawn to the cracks between the bricks—in one of the cracks, a small, spiral-shaped seashell was half-embedded, with faint purple patterns still remaining on its surface.
“This seashell…” Ayu exclaimed, “It’s exactly the same as the one I found in the old wooden box when we moved!” She clearly remembered that her mother had picked up the seashell when she was young and kept it in the dressing table drawer until they accidentally discovered it when they moved.
Zhong Hua stepped forward and gently touched the seashell with his fingertips. The cool touch reminded him of the wind on the shore of Qinghai Lake. "1999," he said softly, "wasn't that when you had just started elementary school?"
Ayu nodded, a flood of memories rushing back: That autumn, she was flying a kite under the sycamore trees on Moon Street when the string suddenly snapped, and the kite, like a wounded bird, drifted away into the unknown distance. At that time, her father was at home repairing that old, worn-out radio, the screwdriver clicking and clanging among the parts.
The prism continued to rotate, emitting a second buzzing sound. The red brick layer began to peel off.
This time, a cement wall from 1972 is revealed. The wall surface is not smooth, with the rough texture unique to that era. In the center of the wall, a chalk drawing stands out—a simple yet whimsical locomotive, with three crooked smoke rings drawn in the chimney and two not-quite-round wheels.
Zhong Hua's breathing suddenly quickened. "This locomotive..." He abruptly pulled a small brass pocket watch from his pocket, the same pattern engraved on the cover—a running locomotive. "This was left to me by my grandfather; he was a train driver when he was young."
Ayu leaned closer to examine it closely, and the chalk strokes seemed to still carry the warmth of that child from back then. She imagined a boy in blue overalls, perhaps Zhong Hua's grandfather, or perhaps a friend of his grandfather, squatting on this wall on a certain afternoon in 1972, sketching his longing for the distant horizon with chalk. And the locomotive's chimney, those three smoke rings, bore a striking resemblance to the trajectory of the hot air balloons they later saw taking off in Dunhuang.
The prism spun faster and faster, emitting a third, and clearest, buzzing sound. The cement layer peeled away, revealing the core layer.
It was not any building material they knew. It was a transparent, ice-blue color, like a frozen sky, or like millennia-old ice collected from an extremely cold place. And on this ice-blue "wall," there were not static patterns, but flowing lines—lines that meandered and intertwined like water, sometimes turbulent, sometimes gentle, carrying a rhythm of life.
“Yubeng Village…Ice Lake!” Ayu and Zhonghua blurted out at the same time.
Indeed, those flowing patterns were the meltwater trails they had seen in the glacial lake beneath the sacred waterfall during their trek to Yubeng. Those icy blue streams, seeping from the glacier's fissures, carried an ancient chill, drawing ever-changing patterns on the lake's surface like the fingerprints of the earth. And now, they flowed eternally in this strange way within the core of the waiting room.
My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
