Later she told me that when she was unconscious, she heard me reading the manuscript, and it was like hearing an echo coming from thousands of miles away. "When you read 'the person who always protects me in the dark,' I suddenly wanted to wake up," she nestled in my arms, her fingers tracing the scar on my chest, "to see if you really were standing in the light waiting for me, just like in my dream."
The second side should be drawn towards Lin Wanqing. I paused, then switched to a finer pen. Her presence was like moonlight, cool yet gentle, rarely speaking, but always illuminating our path at the most crucial moments.
At last year's charity gala, she stood on the stage in a white suit, her hair short, revealing her smooth forehead. The Humanitarian Award medal hung around her neck like a heavy badge of honor. Her gaze swept across the audience, pausing for half a second between me and Zhong Hua, then she nodded slightly, as if to say, "It's all in the past." Later, she texted me: "A triangle is the most stable; it can't function without any one of its members." At that moment, Zhong Hua was leaning on my shoulder peeling an orange, the sweet scent of the orange segments mingling with her breath, filling the entire winter night. I suddenly understood that true fulfillment isn't about one person replacing another, but about everyone shining brightly in their own place.
Remembering Gu Yanting's suicide note, the lawyer, when delivering it, said, "Miss Lin specifically instructed that it must be given to you only after the Gu family case is closed." The arson scene video hidden in the envelope was shaky, but the snake-shaped ring worn by the real culprit was clearly visible—it belonged to Gu Yanting's henchman. Lin Wanqing had known the truth all along, but chose to endure it in prison until the time was right before handing over the evidence. She said, "Some fires must be completely burned out before the truth in the ashes can be seen."
When the third side was connected, it was almost dawn. The triangle on the paper was crooked, but its three vertices were drawn with circles—inside which were written "Snow Mountain," "Paris," and "Africa," respectively.
The snow-capped mountains are a form of salvation. When Zhong Hua tied a red string to the prayer wheel, she said she would make three wishes: that the truth would come to light, that good people would be safe, and that lovers would stay together until the end. I secretly tied the same red string next to her and made one more wish: that Lin Wanqing could find her own place in the world. Later, in a small tavern in the Tibetan area, she drank some barley wine, her cheeks flushed, and said that when she saw me tying the string, she suddenly felt that "waiting can also be warm."
Paris was a reunion. After the rain stopped in Montmartre, Zhonghua had a special photo in her camera: the foreground was a sky dyed red by the sunset, and in the background, my shadow was running towards her, as if about to plunge into that gentle orange glow. She said she wanted to name the photo "The Belated Answer" because from the day we first met at the party, she wanted to ask me, "Are you, like me, waiting for a moment when you can tell the truth?"
Africa is a distant place. In the video, Lin Wanqing said that the starry sky on the grassland was so low that she could reach out and touch it. When she distributed supplies to refugees, the children would surround her and sing French songs. Those songs were like feathers, gently brushing against her once wounded heart. The postcards she sent had a drawing of three little people raising their glasses under the starry sky, with the words: "Distance will not dilute our concern, just as the moon will always shine on us at the same time."
My phone vibrated on the bedside table; it was a photo from Lin Wanqing. The starry sky over the African savanna seemed to hang low, and she stood by the campfire, a half-moon reflected in the rim of her glass. The firelight danced on her face, and the scar at the corner of her eye had faded considerably—a mark from when she was slashed in prison years ago. "I checked the Milky Way for you," the message followed. "Zhong Hua's new book's prologue is truly beautiful; it says love is about allowing everyone to be free."
I turned to look at Zhong Hua. She was fast asleep, a smile playing on her lips. She must have been dreaming of something happy; her brow was relaxed, like a child who had received candy. On the bedside table lay her new book, *Red Beauty*, its cover a field of purple lavender, bathed in the golden-red light of the setting sun. The sentence on the title page, "Some people teach you to love, some people teach you to be brave," was highlighted with a highlighter, the ink slightly smudged—she had accidentally spilled coffee while reading.
Tucked inside the book was a piece of dried lavender, sent by Lin Wanqing on the day of the proposal. It had faded to a pale purple, but still retained the scent of sunshine. The silver ring I bought in Tibet that day was in the gift box; when I opened it, I found three words engraved on the bottom: "Be happy." It was Lin Wanqing's handwriting, delicate yet strong, like her—gentle yet resilient.
On the last blank page of my diary, I slowly wrote: "The three angles of an equilateral triangle are equidistant, and so are the longings." The snow outside the window had stopped sometime earlier, and the first ray of morning light climbed onto the windowsill, shining on Zhong Hua's ancestral jade pendant—sent by her mother. The cloud patterns on the jade surface had been polished smooth by the years, like all the roads we have walked, seemingly winding, but ultimately leading to gentleness.
In her letter, Zhong Hua's mother wrote, "This jade pendant should have been passed down to Gu's daughter-in-law, but I know that true destiny lies not in titles, but in the heart." She also sent an old photograph of Zhong Hua as a child, chasing butterflies in the yard, her hair in two pigtails, smiling and revealing two little tiger teeth. At that time, she had no idea that she would experience so many storms in the future, and the light in her eyes shone like stars.
Zhong Hua rolled over and reached out to hug my waist. Her hands were warm, smelling of lavender hand cream, and she gently pressed them against the scars on my back. "What are you writing?" she asked groggily, her nose brushing against the back of my neck, her breath as light as a feather. "Are you writing down some embarrassing things about me again? Like when you burned the oven while baking cookies last time?"
I tucked the diary under the pillow and turned to hug her. The lavender scent from her hair wafted over, mingling with the lingering smell of embers in the fireplace, creating the most comforting aroma in the world. "I was thinking," I kissed her forehead, where there was a faint scar from when she was shoved by reporters at the truth-revealing press conference, "that when the snow melts, let's go to Africa to see the stars."
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