Ah Yu's Diary Reflections: Drawing a triangle in a diary, love is a profound interpretation of equilateral triangles.
As the snow of the Tibetan New Year fell into the gaps of the prayer wheels, I was squatting in front of the fireplace in the guesthouse, flipping through last year's diary. Zhong Hua was arranging the dried lavender flowers she had just collected in the attic. The crisp sound of glass jars clinking together mingled with her humming French tunes as they drifted down, like honey melted in the sun, so thick it could hold back time.
Winter in Provence always carries a quiet gentleness. Snowflakes fall on the withered stems of lavender fields, and in the rustling sound, you can hear the earth breathing beneath the ice. Dried wheat ears from last year hang from the wooden beams of the guesthouse. Zhong Hua said they were going to use them as decorations. Now they sway gently in the breeze, casting shadows on the floor, like someone quietly writing poetry.
The last diary lay tucked under the brass wine rack, its cover stained with a bit of red wine—from when Zhong Hua handed it mulled wine on the day of the first snow last year. She always said I kept things like I was collecting junk—ticket stubs, dried flower petals, even ICU bills were tucked between the pages. But when those marked objects were laid out, the days took shape, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, piecing together the path we'd walked.
As I pulled out my diary, a photograph slipped out from the inner pocket. It was taken in Tibet; Zhong Hua stood before a prayer wheel, the wind whipping her scarf, sunlight filtering through the prayer flags and falling on her hair, making it look like it was gilded. On the back of the photograph were her small pencil writings: "The wind here will remember the red ropes we tied."
The first page was a plane ticket stub, from Paris to Provence. The edges were worn smooth from my fingers, and the ink smudged, revealing how I had repeatedly stroked the words "Montmartre." That day, the rain was pouring down. I stood in Place de la Montmartre, clutching the ticket Lin Wanqing had sent me, and saw Zhong Hua holding a camera, photographing the sunset. She was wearing a khaki trench coat, her back to me like a stubborn reed in the twilight, until she turned around, and the camera caught my eye first. In the viewfinder, raindrops still clung to her eyelashes, like butterfly wings studded with diamonds. At that moment, I suddenly understood that some encounters are preordained in the script of fate.
"What are you looking at?" Zhong Hua came down carrying a glass jar, a purple petal stuck to the end of her hair. As she leaned closer, I quickly closed my diary—the triangle on the last page wasn't finished. A corner of a ginkgo leaf specimen peeked out from between the pages; it was the one she had brought from the mudslide site, its edges already curled, but the clear veins were still visible.
“It’s nothing,” I said, stuffing the diary into the inside pocket of my sweater. My fingertips touched the raised marks on the pages, where I had pressed too hard when drawing the outline of the snow-capped mountains last month, and the pen tip had pierced through the paper. “The fireplace seems to be clogged. I’ll have to call someone to fix it tomorrow.”
She suddenly laughed, bending down to pick up a ginkgo leaf specimen from the fireplace ashes. The veins had faded to a pale gold over the years, but the edges still retained their perfect curve. "Do you remember this?" She ran her fingertips along the leaf, her nails neatly trimmed, her fingertips carrying the scent of lavender. "On the day of the mudslide, I had this stuck in my hair. You said it looked like the gilded placemat on the table at the cocktail party when we first met."
Of course I remember. It was the anniversary celebration of the Gu Group that day. The crystal chandeliers illuminated the entire banquet hall as if it were submerged in water. Zhong Hua, wearing an apricot-colored long dress, stood beside Gu Yanting like a magnolia forced into transplantation, its petals tinged with a timid white. Until Lin Wanqing walked over with a glass of champagne, the shadows of the three people overlapped on the floor, forming a strange shape—later I learned that it was the triangle drawn by fate, with the three vertices representing struggle, redemption, and waiting, respectively.
Lin Wanqing was wearing a burgundy velvet cheongsam with a pearl brooch at the collar, a coming-of-age gift from Gu Yanting. She smiled and said to Zhong Hua, "Mrs. Gu, your interview article is very sharp, like a knife hidden in silk." Zhong Hua's fingers suddenly clenched her handbag. I stood in the corner watching them and suddenly remembered the day before in the coffee shop, when she was writing in her notebook, the pen tip hovering over the line "Gu Group suspected of illegal transactions," hesitating to put it down.
“That day you were hiding on the balcony smoking,” Zhong Hua’s voice pulled me back to reality. She tucked a ginkgo leaf into my diary. “I saw you staring blankly at the moon and thought you were Gu Yanting’s bodyguard.”
I was indeed a bodyguard, but Lin Wanqing hired me. She already knew Gu Yanting was involved in illegal business, but she didn't have the courage to expose him—just like knowing the lighter used in the arson wasn't Gu Yanting's, yet choosing to take the blame for him. It wasn't until our meeting through the prison window, when she handed me a map of Paris through the glass, and our fingertips met on the glass, that I understood that some silences aren't cowardice, but rather ways of protecting someone.
Late at night, after Zhong Hua had fallen asleep, I took out my diary again. The warm yellow light of the desk lamp spilled across the pages, and the handwriting I had written in Tibet last year was stained with water. We had just come down from the snow-capped mountains then. She was tying a red string to a prayer wheel, and I secretly tied the same one, thinking I was being discreet. But on the way back, I found a photo of my back with the string on her phone. In the photo, my shoulder was still wrapped in bandages, from being hit by rocks during the mudslide. Below the photo, she wrote: "So someone will quietly tie your pain to the wind."
The pen tip hovered over the paper for a long time before finally falling. The first line, from "Ah Yu" to "Zhong Hua," was repeatedly traced, becoming thick and heavy. Like the roads we've traveled, there's always an unwavering persistence hidden within the twists and turns.
I remember that night in the ICU, the smell of disinfectant was so strong it was almost choking. As Zhong Hua's pulse oximeter readings plummeted and the doctor said her condition wasn't optimistic, I leaned over her bedside and read aloud her unpublished interview transcript. It was taken from her backpack; the pages were wrinkled from being soaked in rain, but the handwriting was still strong. When I read the part about "the person I most want to thank," the monitor's ripples suddenly jerked, like a stone thrown into a still lake. I looked up and saw her eyelashes tremble, tears sliding down her cheeks and into her temples. In that moment, I suddenly understood that some feelings don't need to be spoken; your heartbeat will answer for you.
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