Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Xinhua Bookstore in the city opens at 8:30, but they arrived at 7:40. The librarian was mopping the floor when she saw the two of them standing at the door. She waved them in and said, "Come in, the floor was just mopped, don't get it dirty."
On the far end of the second-floor literature section, there was an empty space where the sun couldn't reach, covered with a cheap carpet. Xu Li sat down cross-legged and took out "Snow Country" from his backpack.
Tan Yuze turned to the title page, where it was written in black pen:
To Xu Li:
If there really is a tunnel in the snow country, I hope the exit is you.
"Ze Wuguiqi (retired)" Xu Li chuckled, then quickly covered her mouth, afraid of alerting the administrator.
"Retirement???"
"Yeah, I uninstalled it last night," Tan Yuze said seriously.
"So, how are you going to spend your day?"
"Let's finish reading the first chapter together first, and then..." He looked around, his gaze landing on the supplementary learning materials section across the street, "...shall we go buy a set of math practice papers?"
"No." Xu Li rested her chin on the spine of the book. "No practice problems today. We agreed on that." The sunlight gradually rose, slanting in from the stairwell and falling at their feet.
Xu Li read attentively, occasionally drawing little stars next to paragraphs with her fingernail; Tan Yuze stared at her profile, her eyelashes casting dappled shadows in the sunlight.
When Xu Li read the line "The twilight scenery flowed on the glass, its outlines blurred," she suddenly asked, "What if we didn't get into the same city after the college entrance exam?"
Tan Yuze was stunned. This question was like a piece of ice falling into warm, cozy air.
“Then…” He scratched his head, “Harbin is the provincial capital, there must be colleges there, right? I’ll go to college with you.” Xu Li patted his shoulder with a book: “Can’t you be a little more ambitious?”
“Success is relative.” He said seriously, “For example, if you go to Peking University and I go to Tsinghua University next door, we are still considered to be in the same city.”
"Tsinghua University isn't..."
"Don't expose me."
At noon, the fast food restaurant downstairs from the bookstore was packed. Tan Yuze queued for twenty minutes and bought two teriyaki chicken rice bowls. When he returned to the second floor, Xu Li was using sticky notes to cover the book "Snow Country," sticking them on crookedly.
"Guess what I heard while I was queuing?" Tan Yuze put down his food. "The two girls at the next table were discussing 'Ze Wuguiqi' quitting the game, saying, 'That Luna pro player has stopped playing, he must be in a relationship.'"
Xu Li cut the chicken cutlet into small pieces without looking up: "Did they guess right?"
"Half and half." Tan Yuze took the biggest piece of chicken from her bowl. "The relationship didn't work out, but I already have a target."
Xu Li paused, her chopsticks moving slightly, her ears turning red. After the meal, the sun shone brightly. They decided to go to the abandoned warehouse in the north of the city—their secret base for skipping classes in junior high, which they heard was going to demolish.
The warehouse's exterior walls were painted with the word "Demolish," the red paint peeling off. The iron gate was half-closed, revealing piles of rusty machine tools and broken glass inside. In a corner, there were even a few cardboard boxes containing unburnt sparklers and firecrackers.
Xu Li picked up a sparkler and lit it with Tan Yuze's lighter. The sparks burst open with a "sizzle," like a miniature Milky Way.
Do you remember when we played with sparklers together before?
“I remember you even splashed a spark onto my down jacket and burned a hole in it.”
Didn't your auntie beat you up?
“I hit her, but she said ‘boys are tough.’” The sparkler burned out, the last spark falling into the snow with a very soft hiss. Xu Li suddenly said, “Tan Yuze, if the warehouse is really demolished, what will this place become?”
"It could be a shopping mall, or it could be a school district property." He kicked at the broken bricks on the ground.
The wind on the rooftop carried the dampness of early spring, causing the pages of the "Harbin Travel Guide" to rustle and stop at "Opening time of Ice and Snow World: December 20th - end of February of the following year".
Xu Li folded a small corner of that page, as if marking the future. At 20:31, the first shooting star streaked across the sky, so bright it almost cut through the night, its trail resembling Luna's silver sword aura.
Xu Li closed her eyes, clasped her hands together, and her eyelashes trembled in the starlight. Tan Yuze didn't make a wish. He turned his head to look at her: her scarf was blown open by the wind, revealing the last button on the collar of her school uniform—it was the spare button they had fastened to each other during last year's sports meet, its white color showing signs of wear.
After the third meteor disappeared, the wind suddenly stopped, and the city seemed to be muted. Xu Li opened her eyes and saw Tan Yuze putting his Swiss Army knife back into his keychain; the back of the blade reflected the distant neon lights like a small moon.
"What did you promise?" she asked. "I can't say," Tan Yuze mimicked her tone, "it won't come true if I say it."
Xu Li nudged him lightly with her elbow: "You childish brat." After a few seconds of silence, he spoke again, his voice so low it was almost swallowed by the wind: "Actually, it just comes down to one sentence—no matter how long the tunnel is, as long as you're at the exit, that's all that matters."
Xu Li didn't reply, but simply placed the highlighter in her hand into his palm. The pen cap still retained a little warmth, as if she had handed over her answer along with it.
The meteor shower ended at 9:00 PM, leaving only a few stubborn stars in the sky. The sound of security guards patrolling downstairs drifted in, their flashlight beams sweeping across the building entrance. Xu Li, clutching her travel guide to her chest, stood up and dusted off the back of her school uniform.
"I'm off, I still have to do the second mock exam tomorrow."
“Okay,” Tan Yuze pinned the highlighter to her bib, “D-97 tomorrow.” The two went down the rooftop one after the other. The motion-sensor lights in the stairwell turned on and off floor by floor.
When they reached the corner on the third floor, Xu Li suddenly stopped, turned around, and held out her little finger to him: "Pinky promise, see you in Harbin." Tan Yuze paused for half a second, then smiled and hooked her finger with his: "Pinky promise, the Huangpu River is our witness."
At 6:05 a.m. the next morning, Tan Yuze woke up before the alarm clock went off.
He stuffed the "Harbin Travel Guide" into the outermost compartment of his backpack—where he used to put a power bank and data cable, but now it was empty, as if making room for the future.
Hearing him come downstairs, Lu Yi chased after him to the door and called out, "Isn't it the weekend? Where are you going?"
"The library," he said without turning his head, "and Xu Li."
Lu Yi stood there stunned: Tan Yuze actually took the initiative to study? He didn't think much of it, as Tan Yuze was a good student.
At the same time, Xu Li stood at the entrance of the residential area, holding two cups of soy milk in her hands. The cups no longer emitted white steam—today she wore gloves but forgot to use a thermos.
Tan Yuze took one of the cups, their fingertips touching; the temperature was just right. "Let's go," he said, "we're not going for a run today, we're going to do something big."
They boarded the early morning subway line 2, the city outside the window still shrouded in morning mist. Destination: "Railway Ticketing Experience Day" at the North Square of Shanghai Railway Station.
This was a temporary activity launched during the Spring Festival travel rush, where high school students could practice "mock ticket purchases" in advance, similar to filling out college applications, using their student IDs. The ticket hall was bustling with activity.
The two found the self-service machine. Tan Yuze opened the "student ticket" interface and hovered his finger over the screen:
Departure: Shanghai Hongqiao
Arrival: Harbin West
Date: June 9 (the day after the National College Entrance Examination)
Train number: G1204/5 High-speed sleeper train
Note: Two second-class seats. "Confirm?" Xu Li asked softly. "Confirm," Tan Yuze clicked "Submit."
The machine dispensed a long, thin receipt—not a real ticket, but a "trip intention form" printed with a QR code and a line of text:
"Please purchase your ticket through official channels with your valid ID. Have a pleasant journey!" He folded the ticket in half, then in half again, and put it in the chest pocket of his school uniform, close to his heart.
Xu Li also had one, but instead of folding it, she tucked it into page 137 of "Snow Country"—the chapter where Shimamura leaves Snow Country for the second time. D-86 The days are like a stretched rubber band, snapping faster and faster as time goes on.
At the end of March, the results of the second mock exam were released:
Tan Yuze ranked 9th in the grade, and entered the top 20 in mathematics for the first time.
Xu Li ranked first in her grade, rising 0 places from the first mock exam.
The homeroom teacher called the two of them to the office and handed them a form:
"These are the admission guidelines for Peking University and Harbin Institute of Technology. Take a look and see if you're interested." On the way back to the classroom, sunlight streamed through the corridor glass, casting their shadows on the ground, one long and one short, yet always parallel.
Xu Li suddenly stopped: "Tan Yuze, if... we pass the independent enrollment, we can get the admission notice in June, so are we still going to Harbin?"
“Go.” He answered decisively, “The notice is an admission notice, and Harbin is the agreement.” D-61 During the Qingming Festival holiday, the school only gave students one day off.
Tan Yuze took Xu Li to the Bund, not for sightseeing, but for "surveying".
They found a bronze survey marker below the square – the “Wusong Zero Point” benchmark.
“We start calculating the tide level of the Huangpu River from here,” Tan Yuze said. “Let’s also designate this as ‘zero point’—the distance to Shanghai Station is 0 kilometers, and the distance to Harbin West Station is 1353 kilometers.”
Xu Li took out her phone and created a new coordinate entry in the notes app:
[0 km→1353 km]
Note: 61 days to go. The countdown clock on the third floor of D-30 has finally gone from three digits to two digits.
The May heatwave arrived early, and the classroom fans hummed loudly. During lunch break, Tan Yuze pasted an A3 sheet of white paper next to the blackboard bulletin board, with the title handwritten:
Research Report on Climate and Tourism Suitability of the Songhua River Basin
—Authors: Tan Yuze, Xu Li
The main text consists of only three lines:
1. In June, Harbin's average daily temperature is 15-25℃, which is cool.
2. The Ice and Snow World is closed, but Madier Ice Cream on Central Street is still open.
3. The high-speed rail second-class seat takes 11 hours and 47 minutes; you can get there by taking a nap. The whole class burst into laughter, but the homeroom teacher didn't tear it up. He just said, "Next Wednesday is the mock exam. If you two are consistently in the top 10 or top 3, this piece of paper will be kept until after the college entrance exam."
In classroom D-7, the countdown on the upper right corner of the blackboard has reached "07".
Xu Li found a brand new passport in her drawer—her mother had secretly obtained it, fearing she would need to go to Beijing for an interview after passing the independent enrollment process.
During the last evening self-study session, Tan Yuze stuffed a piece of stiff cardstock, about the size of a train ticket, into her pencil case:
The front of the train displays the train number G1204/5, while the back features a hand-drawn illustration of the Hagia Sophia.
"Fake?" Xu Li asked.
“Really.” Tan Yuze laughed. “The official app has locked the seats. It departs at 08:43 on June 9th. Second-class seats 12A and 12B. The payment password is my birthday plus your birthday. Do you dare to click 'Submit Order'?”
Xu Li didn't speak, but simply held the cardboard in her palm as if she were holding a real train ticket. D-1 June 6th, checking the exam venue.
In the evening, the school's loudspeaker played "The Battlefield of Youth" on a loop.
Tan Yuze and Xu Li are on the rooftop—the same rooftop where they made a pinky promise three months ago.
The wind carries the scent of gardenias.
Xu Li took out the "letter of intent" from her pocket; it was already folded and frayed at the edges.
What if I still get the derivative wrong tomorrow?
“Then turn the draft paper over,” Tan Yuze replied, “and write a line in the blank space: ‘Wait for me at the Songhua River.’”
They smiled at each other, and the final broadcast came from afar:
"...All the ideals and aspirations heading towards the future, all the passion and madness breaking free from constraints..." On the morning of June 7th, D-Day, the red archway outside the school gate was dyed golden by the rising sun.
Xu Li stuffed her admission ticket into a transparent document bag, which also contained the hard-copy train ticket.
Tan Yuze sharpened a 2B pencil into a triangular prism, and stuck a sticker the size of a fingernail on the cap:
"1353 km = 0 km" Before entering the examination room, the two high-fived each other across the crowd.
There were no shouts, no cheers, only one sentence that only they could hear—
"The Songhua River bears witness." Ten minutes later, the bell rang.
At the same moment, the electronic screen in the waiting hall of Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station showed a green light for the G1204/5 ticket gate:
"Train is currently checking tickets. Shanghai Hongqiao → Harbin West, departing at 08:43."
The real train tickets lay quietly in the hearts of the two boys, like a river already navigable, waiting for them to pick up their pens, hand in their papers, and drift downstream.
June 9th.
The alarm rang for the third time before Tan Yuze finally pulled his phone out from under his pillow. On the screen was an unread message from 11:48 PM last night: Xu Li: [I can't sleep.] Tan Yuze: [Me too.]
They said goodnight to each other, but neither of them slept soundly. In the kitchen, the father was frying the leftover dumplings from last night until they were golden brown, the oil sizzling and popping like firecrackers.
While pouring plum juice into his thermos, his mother repeatedly checked whether the copies of his ID card, exam admission ticket, and train ticket were all in the zippered pocket on the outside of his backpack.
"You'll be free after the exams," the father said, putting the fried dumplings into a disposable lunchbox. "But don't let your brain be freed too." "I know."
Xu Li stuffed the lunchbox into the other side of her backpack—where the book "Snow Country" still lay, its title page now containing all the notes, train ticket drafts, and a new sticky note written last night from the past 137 days:
"0 km to Shanghai Station, 1353 km to Harbin West, 1353 km to the entrance of St. Sophia Cathedral + 4 stops on bus route 12."
The first train of Metro Line 2. The carriage was empty. Tan Yuze sat in the first car, his messy bangs and dark circles under his eyes reflected in the opposite window.
Next stop, People's Square, where a familiar figure boarded—Xu Li. She wore a dark blue fisherman's hat, pulled low over her shoulders, and carried a small carry-on suitcase.
"Didn't your mom see you off?" Tan Yuze asked.
"I'll go back after dropping it off at the security checkpoint." Xu Li placed the suitcase next to his seat. "The suitcase belongs to my grandma. She used it to go to Harbin. It's made of cowhide and is super sturdy." Tan Yuze flicked the corner of the suitcase with his finger.
The two stood at the back of the line, surrounded by students who had just finished their exams: some wearing school uniform jackets, some tucking their exam admission tickets into their passports like bookmarks, and one girl who had cut her red wristband with the words "Victory in the College Entrance Examination" in half, tying one half to the handle of her suitcase. The ticket gate beeped, and the ticket QR code passed through.
Tan Yuze suddenly grabbed Xu Li's wrist, his palms sweaty: "One last time—ID card, cell phone, train ticket, hard-card ticket?" Xu Li lifted the brim of her fisherman's hat, revealing her crescent-shaped eyes: "And you."
Tan Yuze flipped down the small table behind the seat and laid out his father's fried dumplings, his mother's plum juice, and the rice ball that Xu Li's mother had made early in the morning—seaweed wrapped around salted egg yolk and pork floss, like a small energy pack. The moment the train started moving, the platform outside the window began to rush past.
The plane crossed the Suzhou Creek and then the Yangtze River. The paddy fields, high-voltage power towers, and rapeseed fields outside the window changed like a slideshow.
Xu Li opened her grandmother's old trunk, inside which were neatly stacked items.
A 1979 edition of the "Atlas of China," with the page on Heilongjiang folded at the corner; a black-and-white photograph: a young grandmother standing on the steps of the Hagia Sophia, also carrying the same suitcase; a kraft paper envelope, sealed with the words "To my future Xiao Li."
Inside the envelope were 200 yuan of old-version RMB and a fragment of a train ticket: [1979.12.31 Shanghai → Harbin, hard seat, 31.5 yuan]. Xu Li placed the fragment and the hard seat ticket from the previous night side by side on the small table. The two pieces of paper, old and new, spanned 45 years, like two parallel lines converging at this moment.
An announcement came over the loudspeaker: "The next stop for the train is Nanjing South Station."
A commotion broke out in the carriage as students who had just finished their exams started taking photos and posting them on social media.
The first picture is of the subway platform before departure; the second picture is of Grandma's old train ticket; the third picture is of Xu Li's silhouette reflected in the train window, with the sunlight gilding her eyelashes.
Lunchtime.
A flight attendant pushing a cart passed by: "Boxed lunches, rice bowls, roasted chicken legs—"
Tan Yuze bought two boxed meals: one braised lion's head meatball and the other Kung Pao chicken.
Xu Li handed over her grandmother's old 200 yuan note: "Can I use this?"
The flight attendant smiled and shook her head: "Keep it, little sister."
The old banknotes were tucked back into the atlas, like a talisman that would never be spent.
As the train entered Shandong province, the snow line outside the window became more visible.
Xu Li put on her headphones and listened to "Looking Back", the ending theme song of the TV series "The Long Season".
Tan Yuze wasn't wearing headphones; he pressed his forehead against the car window, looking at the remaining snow on the rooftops of the distant village.
In the earphones, the lyrics went, "Looking back, the figure has already gone far away." Xu Li suddenly reached out, took off the earphone in his left ear, and put it in his own right ear.
The two shared a pair of headphones, like sharing a secret river.
The announcement came over the loudspeaker again: "The next stop for the train is Tianjin West."
"Four hours left." He stretched, and his joints cracked.
Xu Li took out two A4 sheets of paper from her backpack. They were the "Harbin 48-Hour Itinerary" printed last night: 14:30 Arrival → 16:00 Check into the guesthouse on Central Street 18:00 Madier Ice Cream + Huamei Western Restaurant 19:30 Watch the sunset at the Songhua River Railway Bridge 21:00 Listen to "Moscow Nights" at the Old Auditorium Concert Hall.
Tan Yuze drew a small checkmark next to the "Check-in" section: "I booked the homestay, and the owner said I could check in at 4 pm."
Xu Li drew a question mark in the "Watching the Sunset" section: "Is it possible to catch the sunset in Harbin in June?"
“We’ll make it in time,” Tan Yuze said. “If we can’t catch the sunset, we’ll catch the sunrise.”
As the train crossed the last bridge spanning the river, the snow on the Jiangbei Plain suddenly became thicker, as if someone had torn the clouds apart and scattered them on the ground.
Xu Li opened the window crack, and a cold wind blew in, carrying the smell of pine wood and coal smoke.
"It tastes like Northeast China," she murmured. The announcement gently announced the final stop: "Next stop – Harbin."
He turned to look at Xu Li and noticed that her eyes had already reddened at some point.
The door opened, and a crowd poured out.
On the platform, a red welcome message scrolled across the electronic screen:
Welcome to Harbin West Railway Station! Outdoor temperature: 19℃, light breeze.
Tan Yuze carried his grandmother's old suitcase in his hands, the wheels of the suitcase making a "clattering" sound, like an echo of 1979.
Xu Li took off her fisherman's hat, letting the northern wind ruffle her bangs for the first time.
At the station exit, a taxi driver held up a sign: "St. Sophia Cathedral, 50 yuan, flat rate!" The two men exchanged a glance and shook their heads simultaneously. They walked to the bus stop, and bus number 12 was just pulling in. The coin box clattered open, and two coins fell in, like a welcoming gift to the city.
Bus No. 12 crossed the Jihong Bridge, beneath which flowed the gently flowing Songhua River. The setting sun gilded the river surface with an orange-red hue, and broken ice gently collided with the current, making a crisp sound. Xu Li pushed the bus window open completely, letting the cold wind rush into the carriage, and she shouted loudly:
"Tan Yuze, listen—the Songhua River is speaking!" Tan Yuze didn't hear clearly, but he saw the entire river shimmering in her eyes. The bus stopped at the "Zhaolin Street" stop.
As the two got out of the car, they looked up and saw the onion dome of the Hagia Sophia. The setting sun was shining on the top of the cross, as if it were being gilded.
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