Ah Yu picked up the plane ticket, his fingertips touching the writing on the back. He suddenly remembered the note Lin Wanqing had slipped into the lining of the international ticket she sent him: "Go after the person who fills up your phone's photo album." His photo album was indeed full of Zhong Hua's pictures—her holding up evidence at a press conference, her eyes closed in the ICU, her smiling in front of a prayer wheel in Tibet, and even her with a ginkgo leaf specimen tucked in her hair during a mudslide.
"And what about you?" he suddenly asked, his voice so low it was almost a whisper, "Whose photos are stored in your album?"
Lin Wanqing opened her phone; the screen saver was still a photo of the three of them from behind at a cocktail party. She scrolled to the latest photo, a starry sky taken on the African savanna, the stars so dense they looked like a handful of scattered diamonds.
"It's full of freedom." She put her phone back in her pocket, "and it's also full of the future you might have."
The pine wood in the fireplace crackled, sending a spark flying onto Ah Yu's jeans. He didn't pat it, but just stared at the missed call on his phone screen, suddenly remembering what Zhong Hua had said: her mother told her that missed calls could be called back, but missed contacts might be stuck on busy signals for a lifetime.
“Switzerland is very cold,” Lin Wanqing handed him a windbreaker, the one he lost in Tibet last year. She had patched up the holes in the cuffs sometime during the year. “She’s still suffering from the aftereffects of the interview. Her hands shake when she sees news about the ‘President’s Wife.’ Remember to cover her eyes.”
Ah Yu took the jacket, his fingertips touching the tag inside, on which a small "Zhong" was written in marker. He suddenly remembered that last year on Kangfu Road in the snow mountain, Zhong Hua said she had lost her jacket, and he said, "Buy another one," but her eyes reddened: "That one has your scent on it."
The phone finally went silent. Ah Yu stuffed it into her backpack, zipped it up halfway, then stopped, took out the ginkgo leaf specimen from the inner pocket, and gently placed it on Lin Wanqing's desk. A small piece of Tibetan red rope was still stuck in the crack of the specimen's glass, worn away last year when it was tied to a prayer wheel.
"This is for you," he said.
Lin Wanqing picked up the specimen, looked at it against the light, and suddenly laughed: "Back in prison, when I handed you the map of Paris, the moment your fingertips and mine met on the glass, you should have known that some people can't be kept."
Ah Yu didn't say anything, turned around and picked up his suitcase. When he reached the door, he glanced back and saw Lin Wanqing putting the specimen into a photo frame. Next to it was a photo of Zhong Hua holding a recording pen at the press conference. In the background, he was holding the one she had left behind, as if he were holding the light of the whole world.
“Oh, right,” Lin Wanqing suddenly called out to him, “Zhong Hua’s new book is called ‘Red Beauty’, and on the title page it says, ‘Some people teach you to love, some people teach you to be brave.’ What she didn’t say is that there are also some people who teach you to let go.”
Ah Yu paused. A breeze blew in from the stairwell, carrying the chill of late autumn in Paris, and the lavender scent from his scarf wafted through the air. He remembered that snowy night in Tibet, when Zhong Hua, feverish, murmured to himself, "Wanqing said that if you tie a red string to a prayer wheel, you can send your thoughts a thousand miles away."
He didn't dare tell her at the time that the red string he tied had the initials of three people's names engraved on it.
Pushing open the attic door, the sunset had faded to a pale purple. Ah Yu took out her phone, scrolled to the missed call, and hovered her finger over the redial button. Suddenly, she remembered what Zhong Hua had written in the interview: "The wonder of fate lies in the fact that it always quietly leaves a red thread when you think you've missed it."
The phone was burning hot in my palm, like a prayer wheel in Tibet, turning and turning, guiding the scattered people to where they were meant to go.
He pressed the call-back button. The moment the call connected, the Eiffel Tower in the distance lit up, golden light flowing over the Seine like an endless red rope, one end tied to the Parisian sunset, the other to the Zurich sunrise—there, someone waiting for him to return the recording pen stood at the foot of a snow-capped mountain, clutching half a ginkgo leaf specimen in his hand.
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