The rising sun pierced through the clouds, scattering golden dust across the attic.
Lin Yi opened his eyes, his gaze instinctively falling on the inconspicuous weed on the windowsill.
Overnight, the mysterious silver veins that once covered the leaf veins have disappeared without a trace. In their place is a very faint iridescent layer on the surface of the leaf, which changes angle in the morning light, like a thin oil film floating on the water, shimmering with color.
An idea struck him, and he got out of bed, walked barefoot to the window, and squatted down.
Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the color was not the leaf itself, but rather a layer of barely perceptible, shimmering dewdrops condensed on the surface of each blade of grass.
He held his breath and focused his gaze on the largest drop.
The water droplets were clear and transparent, but they did not reflect his face at this moment. Instead, they reflected his blurry silhouette as he lay on the table in a deep sleep last night.
This is not a simple projection, nor is it a refraction of light.
The silhouette seemed to grow from within the water droplet, a materialization of memory, a natural condensation of past time by this wild grass and this drop of dew.
Lin Yi slowly straightened up, his mind clear.
He understood that those memories, deeply imprinted in his mind and requiring great effort to awaken, had now found a new vessel.
They no longer require him to actively search; they have learned to silently reflect back everything from the past.
He washed up, changed his clothes, and went downstairs to buy groceries as usual.
The pebble path outside the attic gleamed with a damp light in the morning mist.
As I passed the breakfast stall on the street corner, the familiar warmth wafted towards me.
When the proprietress saw him, she remained as taciturn as ever, silently taking two vegetarian buns from the steamer, filling a bowl with soy milk, and bringing it to his usual seat by the window.
Throughout the entire process, she didn't utter a single word, not even a single confirming glance.
Lin Yi thanked him and sat down.
The moment he picked up his chopsticks, a barely perceptible warmth came from the soles of his feet.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several strands of light, thinner than a hair, quietly peeking out from the gaps in the metal grille of the drainage ditch, like living vines, gently wrapping around the soles of his shoes.
They carried no ill intent; they simply circled around cautiously three times before suddenly retreating, the whole process taking less than a second, as if an old acquaintance were subtly nodding in greeting at a street corner.
His expression remained unchanged, as if nothing had happened. After picking up a steamed bun, he casually moved the small dish of pickled cucumbers on the table half an inch to his right.
The next morning, when he sat in the same spot again, the dish of pickled cucumbers was already placed there, perfectly positioned half an inch to his right, with even the angle of the pattern on the edge of the dish exactly the same as when he had casually placed it there the day before.
Lin Yi picked up the soy milk, the warm liquid sliding down his throat. He looked out the window at the bustling street and sighed softly to himself, "You all remember me better than I do now."
Back in the attic, Lin Yi pulled out the rusty tin box his mother had left behind from under the bed.
He opened the box and carefully took out the last old photo inside.
The photo has yellowed and the edges are slightly curled. It was taken when he was five years old, with his mother holding his hand in an alley after a heavy rain.
In the photo, he is stepping through puddles, laughing carefree, while his mother looks at him tenderly, her smile brighter than the rainbow in the sky.
He intended to put the photos into an album, but his fingertips suddenly felt a strange dampness.
He looked down in astonishment and saw several slender white mycelia extending from the soil at the base of the potted weed on the windowsill, crossing the floor, silently climbing onto the tabletop, and gently covering the photograph.
Like the most skilled restorers, they weave and fill every tiny crack on the photographic paper at a speed invisible to the naked eye.
Lin Yi didn't move, he just watched quietly.
Three minutes later, the mycelium receded quietly like a tide and returned to the flowerpot.
He picked up the photo, and the originally yellowed and curled photographic paper became smooth and warm, as if it had just been developed.
What struck him even more was that in the photo, at the spot where he had left his footprints in the mud, a faint ray of light, almost imperceptible, slowly rose and then sank deep into the fibers of the photographic paper, making that small patch of mud exceptionally clear.
He gently stroked his mother's young face in the photo with his fingertips, feeling the warmth that transcends time, and whispered in a voice only he could hear: "The path you walk, someone is watching over you."
Meanwhile, across the street, Granny Chen, who lives with a cane, was patrolling the pebbled path under her courtyard wall.
Her most treasured possessions were those few peculiar plants in the corner of the wall, which she called "Wall Whispering Flowers".
This morning, as usual, she came to water the flowers, only to find that on the inside of the translucent petals of one of the most beautiful blooms, there were some dynamic light spots.
It wasn't text, nor was it any human face; it was a flowing miniature map.
The route on the map was incredibly familiar; it was the exact route Lin Yi took every day from the attic to the breakfast stall, and then around to the vegetable market.
The point of light representing Lin Yi is slowly moving forward along this miniature route as time goes by.
Granny Chen stood there for a long time, a look of understanding flashing in her cloudy eyes.
She reached out her wrinkled hand and gently touched the petal, whispering, "You are not looking for him; you are walking the path he walked."
As soon as she finished speaking, the point of light that was moving along the path suddenly turned in her direction without warning, paused for a full second, as if in response or greeting, before continuing along the predetermined path.
In the stillness of the night, Lin Yi was tidying up the old bookshelves in the pavilion.
When he picked up the old book that had once held a blade of wild grass, the pages turned on their own again without any wind, flipping to the page where the words had appeared before.
On the blank page, a line of new characters woven from fine mycelium is emitting a soft glow.
"You sit here not because you are important, but because you have always been here."
Between the strokes of the writing, there was also half a dried petal from the wall.
Lin Yi stared at the words in silence for a long time. He closed the book, but instead of putting it back on the shelf, he turned around and placed it flat in the center of the wooden chair he usually sat on.
On the chair, a halo of light, visible only to him, quietly enveloped the book.
That very night, an unbelievable scene unfolded.
A faint glow emanated from the cracks in the floorboards of the entire attic.
These rays of light, like spider webs or the veins of the human body, extended from all directions of the attic, eventually converging under the seemingly ordinary weeds on the windowsill.
At that moment, it was as if the entire room was silently declaring: We remember the place where you sat.
The next morning, Lin Yi did not go out to buy groceries as usual.
In the attic, he used the last of his ingredients to cook himself a bowl of clear soup noodles.
When he sat down on the wooden chair with the bowl in his hand, the halo around the chair appeared as usual, warm and gentle.
He had just taken a bite of noodles and was about to get up to get the vinegar when he caught a glimpse of something unusual outside the window.
The winding pebble path below the attic lit up spontaneously, even though no one was around.
A clear stream of light flowed slowly along the path, starting from the street corner and gradually converging at the window of his attic.
There, the light stream formed a brief but bright vortex of light, which swirled for a few seconds before reluctantly dispersing and re-entering the cracks in the ground.
Meanwhile, at the monitoring center on the other side of the city, a duty officer was suddenly jolted awake from his slumber.
On the screen, the seven main silver veins representing the city's underground energy network showed a 0.7-second pause on the data graph.
The pause was perfectly synchronized, without any warning, like a massive, precisely functioning machine taking a brief but profound collective breath.
Lin Yi looked down at the empty bottom of his bowl, as if he could see through the porcelain to the vast, silent network deep underground.
An unprecedented idea, like a seed, quietly sprouted in his heart.
If he is the memory anchor of this world, then when the anchor chooses to remain still, how will the whole world... respond?
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