Ah Yu took out her phone and scrolled to the photo album to find the interview video with Zhong Hua. She was standing downstairs at the Gu Group building, her hand holding the recorder trembling, but her words were clear: "The truth will not be buried in the ashes forever." In the last thirty seconds of the video, the camera shook and captured Ah Yu outside the crowd, clutching an unopened bottle of mineral water, the cap deformed from being squeezed.
"So you're here." Lin Wanqing walked over, holding two cans of hot coffee. "Jean just came to apologize and said he'd help us move some quilts from the warehouse this afternoon."
When Ah Yu took the coffee, his fingertips brushed against hers, like touching a piece of cool jade. He remembered seeing an old medicine box in her suitcase at the guesthouse last night, containing half a strip of scar removal cream, with a production date of five years ago.
“Wanqing,” his Adam’s apple bobbed, “Zhonghua’s flight…”
"Next Wednesday." Lin Wanqing tilted her head back and took a sip of coffee, the steam blurring her vision. "I've booked a restaurant in Montmartre with a sunset view, and then..."
Her words were interrupted by a sudden burst of cheers. The children in the shelter were clapping around an old television, which was showing a documentary about the African savanna, with wildebeest herds resembling a brown river flowing through the rushing water. Lin Wanqing's phone suddenly rang. She glanced at the screen, a gentle smile curving her lips: "It's a call from the medical team. They said the rainy season in Africa is almost over."
Ah Yu watched her retreating figure as she walked into the sunlight; the scar behind her ear was almost invisible in the light. He lowered his head and took a sip of coffee, the warmth flowing from his throat to his stomach, like the cup of hot cocoa Lin Wanqing had given him outside the ICU that year—she had said then, "When Zhong Hua wakes up, you should go and see Tibet; the stars there can light up every path."
The distant church struck thirteen times, and pigeons fluttered past the glass roof of the arcade. Ah Yu took out the candy, warmed by his body heat, peeled off the transparent wrapper, and the sweet aroma of caramel wafted out, like rain five years late finally falling into the soil of Montmartre. He thought, some scars will fade slowly, but those moments that stood in his way will be like a red thread, forever tied to the prayer wheel of fate.
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