The moment the resonance curve solidified in the center of the waiting room, Ayu heard a soft cracking sound of glass shattering above her. It wasn't the tempered glass of the newly built subway station, but the cracked window of the old waiting room—the one that had been frozen into ice flowers by the 1999 cold wave, its shape strikingly similar to the cracks on the surface of Namtso Lake. Looking up, she saw those ice flowers flowing along the curve's trajectory, weaving a translucent net in the air, with countless tiny specks of light floating between the meshes, each speck containing a familiar image: seagulls from Qinghai Lake skimming over the fir trees of Yubeng Village, flying apsaras from the Dunhuang murals holding a conch shell from Weizhou Island, and Zhong Hua's grandfather's nautical logbook being turned page by page, the blue ink seeping between the pages spreading in mid-air, perfectly connecting to form the route map they had drawn on the Yunnan-Tibet Highway.
"Careful." Zhong Hua suddenly grabbed her wrist. Ayu looked down and found that the tips of her shoes were hanging half an inch off the ground. The paving stones beneath her feet had turned into flowing silver-gray liquid, much like the last moments before Namtso Lake froze. Old objects that had appeared in different times and spaces were floating up from the liquid: the edges of faded letter paper still had grains of sand from Qinghai Lake, the 1983 boat ticket was stained with seawater from Weizhou Island, twelve glass marbles spun in mid-air, and the refracted light spots pieced together the outline of the "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" puzzle on the wall—the one her father had finished assembling in the emergency room. At this moment, the sails on the Bian River were slowly unfurling, and on the sails were even printed the photos of prayer wheels they had taken in Lhasa.
As Zhong Hua's fingertips brushed through a ginkgo leaf, A Yu heard a familiar rustling sound. It was the same leaf they had found in Dali Old Town last autumn; Zhong Hua had said then that its veins resembled the course of the streams in Yubeng Village. Now, it was spinning on the loop, its tip brushing against a 1998 concert ticket, instantly spreading the pinkish-purple of the glow sticks and condensing in mid-air into the shape of the sunset over Qinghai Lake. She suddenly remembered the peony her mother had embroidered on the letter, and sure enough, the next second, that faded peony emerged from the letter, its threads intertwined with the gears of Zhong Hua's grandfather's clock, the clicking sound perfectly matching the frequency of the camel bells they had heard in Dunhuang.
“Look at that,” Zhong Hua pointed to the floating iron box. It was the nautical box they had found in the demolition debris. The copper lock was now turning on its own, and the logbook in the hidden compartment flipped to a page with a rustling sound. The wavy lines drawn in blue ink suddenly came to life, turning into real seawater that overflowed from between the pages. Strangely, the seawater didn't fall to the ground; instead, it gathered in mid-air into a small vortex. Floating in the center of the vortex was a pocket watch with an anchor—the hands were still stopped at four in the morning, exactly at the moment Namtso Lake froze over. Wrapped in the watch's metal chain was half a movie ticket stub, the one that had fallen out of the candy packet in the coffee shop. The words “Waiting for someone who will never come” on the back were slowly fading, and the ink dripped down the chain, forming a miniature Milk Sea of Daocheng Yading on the ground.
Ayu bent down to touch the sea, but her fingertips slipped through the water. Chlorophyll from trimming the pothos a few days earlier still clung to her nails; now, that green hue suddenly climbed up her fingertips, weaving vines onto her arm—exactly like the pothos on the balcony security bars. The pencil-like map on the back of the leaves glowed faintly, the wavy lines of Qinghai Lake overlapping with the Milky Way outline of Namtso Lake, forming a constantly rotating ring. A leaf suddenly fell, drifting towards the suspended copy of *One Hundred Years of Solitude*. The pages immediately flipped automatically to the one with the ginkgo bookmark. The silver threads between the veins began to shimmer, connecting with the embroidered "2010.11.5" on the bookmark, resembling the icicles they had seen on the frozen lake in Yubeng Village.
Zhong Hua suddenly grabbed her hand and pulled her back. Ayu turned around and saw half of the "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" jigsaw puzzle facing her upside down. The Bian River's waters had already overflowed the edges of the puzzle, and the boatman in the picture had stepped out of the painting—wearing the same coarse cloth shirt as the illustrations in Zhong Hua's grandfather's logbook, and holding an oar with the words "Weizhou Island" engraved on it. Even more astonishingly, the boatman's face kept changing in the flowing light, sometimes resembling Ayu's father in his youth, and sometimes overlapping with the outline of Zhong Hua's grandfather. When he spoke, his voice sounded like countless people whispering at the same time: "Time is not a line, but a circle."
This sentence suddenly reminded Ayu of the moonlight in the emergency room late at night. The nurse had said the moon looked like a bitten mooncake, and now, that moon truly emerged from the waiting room's overhead light, its surface oozing a silvery-gray liquid that fell to the ground, becoming the final piece of a puzzle—precisely the sails of boats on the Bian River. As the last piece was fitted, the entire "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" scroll suddenly began to rotate. The sounds of the marketplace, the hawkers' cries, and the oars from the painting surged forth, mingling with the surrounding camel bells, gears, and waves, condensing into visible sound waves in the air. When the sound waves hit the suspended old objects, they revealed more details: the scorch marks on the bread kiln pottery bowls contained snowflakes from Yubeng Village; the words "Magnolia" on the peach wood sign of the traditional Chinese medicine cabinet were covered with sand from Qinghai Lake; and the film in the old camera was developing frame by frame. Next to the children who were building snowmen in 1998, two blurry figures slowly appeared—myself and Zhong Hua, wearing windbreakers, holding snowflakes just like those from Changbai Mountain.
“These aren’t illusions.” Zhong Hua’s voice trembled with disbelief. He was staring at the floating cassette tape, the tape of “Scenes in the Rain” spinning on its own. The children’s voices mixed with the static suddenly became clear, singing “Rock-a-bye Baby” that Ayu’s grandmother had taught her. As the song played, it started to rain in the surrounding air, but it was dry rain—each raindrop was a transparent glass marble that wouldn’t shatter when it hit the ground. Instead, it bounced up and transformed into something else: some became the waves on a 1999 postcard, some became seashell buttons from a tailor shop, and one landed in Ayu’s hand and transformed into the little sun she had drawn in her elementary school textbook. Its warm temperature seeped through her skin, just like the sunshine she had basked in in Lhasa.
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