The pendulum's hum had stopped sometime ago. Only the sound of flowing liquid glass remained in the waiting room, like the glacial meltwater they had heard in Yubeng Village. Ayu looked down at the mirror; her reflection in her windbreaker was separating from the girl with pigtails, yet a golden line remained at the hem of her jacket. The steel structure of the new subway station and the texture of the old mailbox gradually faded, leaving only the spots of light at the intersections of the grid still shining, like road signs scattered in time.
“Let’s go back.” Zhong Hua bent down to pick up the travel journal from the ground. A new crease had appeared on the worn cover, its shape exactly the same as the ring in the sky.
As Ayu followed him toward the exit, she caught a glimpse of the ring of light slowly contracting, eventually condensing into a single spot of light that fell upon the spot where they had stood when they first arrived. She suddenly remembered the faded photograph she had found in her mother's wooden box while tidying up old things the night before: a girl in a school uniform holding a kite standing under a sycamore tree, her father repairing a radio behind her, and a little boy sitting on the stone steps in the corner of the photo, munching on an ice pop, wearing an old watch on his wrist that was exactly the same as the one Zhong Hua was wearing now.
As they stepped out of the waiting room, the morning light streamed through the glass dome of the subway station, casting grid-like patches of light on the floor. Ayu counted the patches, then suddenly laughed—exactly the number of cities they had visited together. Zhong Hua took her hand; the warmth of his palm reminded her of the first rays of sunlight falling on the back of her hand at sunrise over Qinghai Lake.
"Where to next?" he asked.
Ayu looked up at the sky, where clouds drifted by at a familiar pace. She remembered the words they had written in pencil on the last page of their travel journal: "The best scenery is every step we took together."
"Whatever." She squeezed Zhong Hua's hand, her fingertips tracing the lines on his palm. "Anyway, our journey has no end."
In the distance came the sound of construction workers hammering steel bars, the rhythm perfectly synchronized with the hum of a pendulum. Ayu glanced back towards the waiting room, where the last glimmer of light from the loop line shone through the glass curtain wall, transforming into a rainbow in the morning light. Within the arc of the rainbow, she seemed to see the sunrise over Qinghai Lake, the camel bells of Dunhuang, and the starry sky over Namtso Lake twinkling simultaneously, like countless treasured moments, forever bright in time.
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