The prism was still spinning, and the seven-colored light it refracted cascaded down like a waterfall, hitting the stopped clock.
10:17.
The pointer remained stubbornly stationary.
However, as the light shone on it, something incredible happened. At the 10:18 mark on the clock face, the shadow of the hands—or rather, something beyond shadow—began to slowly lengthen. The shadow detached from the clock face and was projected onto the waiting room floor, continuously extending and distorting.
Ayu and Zhonghua held their breath, staring intently at the shadows on the ground.
It is no longer a simple projection of the hour and minute hands. It has become complex and convoluted, presenting an irregular yet incredibly familiar shape.
That shape...
Ayu recalled that night at Namtso Lake, when the temperature was below zero and the lake was covered with a thick layer of ice. They walked on the ice with flashlights, and occasionally, glancing down, they noticed that the surface of the ice was covered with spiderweb-like cracks. These cracks radiated outwards from the center of the lake, some thick and some thin, shimmering with a silvery light under the moonlight, like the earth's sigh in the cold, or like the reflection of the starry sky on the ice.
The shadows on the ground are exactly the crack patterns on the surface of Namtso Lake when it freezes over!
Exactly the same.
Every branch, every corner, even the tiny fork at the end of the crack, is exactly the same as the ice cracks they remember. It's like a stopped clock, not only recording time, but also preserving the winter memories of a distant lake.
The prism's rotation began to slow, and the iridescent light gradually softened, no longer so dazzling. A strange tranquility permeated the waiting room, with only the faint hum of the rotating prism, like the heartbeat of time itself.
Ayu reached out, wanting to touch the flowing, icy blue core layer. Just as her fingertips were about to make contact, she felt a chill, yet also a hint of warmth, as if she were touching the skin of a memory.
“Tell me,” Zhong Hua’s voice sounded from the side, tinged with a hint of confusion yet also a hint of understanding, “are these… all coincidences?”
Ayu didn't answer. She looked at the prism, at the peeling three-layered walls, at the ice cracks of Namtso Lake on the ground. The red bricks and seashells from 1999, the cement walls and locomotive from 1972, the meltwater trails of the glacial lake in Yubeng Village, the ice cracks of Namtso Lake... These fragments, spanning decades and thousands of miles, were now converging and overlapping in an incredible way in this waiting room that was about to be demolished.
She remembered the dusty old wooden crate from when they moved, the peony-patterned letter paper her mother embroidered, and the radio her father was halfway through repairing. She remembered the yellowed family photo Zhong Hua had traced with his fingertips, the tin box that had rolled out, and the concert tickets from 2008.
Those seemingly scattered old objects, those landscapes from the journey, those unexpected encounters... they were never isolated. They are like hidden threads, quietly woven together by the hand of time.
The prism's rotation slowed more and more until it finally stopped. The multicolored light gradually subsided, merging into the icy blue core layer. The peeling of the walls also ceased, revealing the three layers of time's marks laid bare before them, like the dissected rings of a tree, telling untold stories.
The clock hands were still stopped at 10:17, but the shadows of the ice cracks on Namtso Lake on the ground were still flickering slightly, as if they were alive.
“10:18,” Ayu said softly, “is the time you were born.”
Zhong Hua looked at her abruptly, a flash of shock in his eyes. He had always known he was born in the morning, but he had never bothered to find out the exact time. His mother had said it was around 10:20.
Could it be...?
He stepped forward, squatted down beside the shadow of the ice cracks, and reached out to gently trace the direction of one of the main cracks. The icy touch reminded him of the movement in his grandfather's pocket watch, the sand of the Gobi Desert at night in Dunhuang, the icy water splashing on his face at the sacred waterfall in Yubeng Village, and the frost flowers that had formed in Ayu's hair under the starry sky of Namtso Lake.
“Perhaps,” Zhong Hua stood up, looked at A Yu, his eyes filled with tenderness, “it’s not a coincidence.”
“It’s an echo.” Ayu picked up where he left off, a smile playing on her lips. “It’s the echo of time. It has quietly hidden the roads we’ve traveled, the scenery we’ve seen, and the people we’ve met in these corners. Until one day, when the seven colors of light converge and the prism rotates, everything will reappear, telling us that everything has a trace, that we have long been connected to each other in the long river of time.”
Outside the waiting room, the roar of excavators came again, seemingly even closer than before. The dust swirled even more fiercely.
But as Ayu and Zhonghua stood before the prism, the three-layered walls, and the shadows of Namtso's ice cracks, they felt an unprecedented sense of peace.
They knew that the old waiting room would soon be demolished, and this place, which carried countless echoes of time, would disappear in the city's renewal.
But so what?
The seashells hidden in the cracks of the bricks, the locomotives painted on the walls, the flowing patterns of the glacial lake, and the cracks in the ice of Namtso Lake... they have been etched into their memories and become a part of their lives.
Like the sunset over Qinghai Lake, the flying apsaras of Dunhuang, the icy lake of Yubeng, and the starry sky of Namtso Lake... they are not just scenery along the way, but also codes woven by fate, and love letters written to them by time.
The light from the prism completely disappeared, and the waiting room fell into darkness again. Only the three layers of peeling walls and the faint shadows on the floor proved that what had just happened was not an illusion.
“We should go.” Zhong Hua grasped A Yu’s hand; his palm was warm and firm.
“Hmm.” Ayu nodded, taking one last look at the icy blue core layer, where the aura of Yubeng Ice Lake seemed to linger.
They turned and walked towards the exit of the waiting room. Sunlight streamed in through the doorway, casting a golden glow on their silhouettes.
As she reached the door, Ayu suddenly stopped and looked back at the stopped clock.
10:17.
But she knew that behind that dial, in that instant when the prism rotated, in the depths of time, the shadow of 10:18 had already fallen, the ice cracks of Namtso were spreading eternally, and their story had only just begun.
Like a rotating prism, it gathers all the colors, memories, and echoes of the past, present, and future into a beam of light, illuminating their path forward.
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