Cleaning out old things
Autumn arrives early in Princeton, and Chen Wang's apartment is filled with boxes destined for shipment back home. Outside, maple leaves bloom crimson. He kneels on the carpet in his study, sorting the last few boxes of materials he's brought back from the lab. The marker markings on the boxes, "Old High School Stuff," have faded, and the tape has yellowed and become brittle with age.
As he opened the cardboard box emblazoned with his alma mater's logo, dust rose in tiny swirls in the sunlight. Competition certificates, old textbooks, basketball medals...each item carried the warmth of time. At the bottom of the box sat a brown paper package. There was no sender's address, only the three words "Chen Wangshou" scrawled in what looked like Zhou Xu's handwriting.
He unwrapped the package, and a dark green diary slipped out. The brass lock was already rusted, and the gilded hibiscus pattern on the cover reminded him of the pattern on Lin Weixi's pencil case from high school. He subconsciously opened the cover, and the familiar handwriting on the title page made his breath catch: "To my sixteen-year-old self - Lin Weixi 2009.9"
His fingers unconsciously rubbed the footer, where there was a faded star sticker, exactly the same as the ones girls loved to buy back then. He remembered one afternoon in his senior year of high school, when he saw Lin Weixi lowering her head to stick the same sticker on her notebook, the sunlight dyeing the hair around her ears a light golden color.
The diary suddenly fell apart from his hands, its pages spread out like dead leaves on a carpet. He squatted down to sort it out, but his eyes were fixed on the diary entries:
October 12, 2009, sunny
Today he helped me pick up scattered homework books, and his fingers touched my fingertips. It turned out that he had a mole on the palm of his hand, like a small dark star in a constellation.
March 5, 2010, Rain
He put the anonymously folded paper crane in his pencil case. Chen Siyu said it was ugly, but his sister said it was the most thoughtful gift they had ever received.
November 30, 2011, cloudy
When the list of recommended students was posted, I ran ten laps around the playground. The gap between us was 238 points, like stars at opposite ends of the Milky Way.
The latest page stays in college:
September 15, 2013, sunny
I met him in the library, holding a guide to astrophotography. It turned out that he remembered the major I applied for, just as I remembered all his hobbies.
A Polaroid photo slipped between the pages: In a corner of a graduation party, he bent his head, tuning his guitar strings, while she hid behind a curtain, taking a sneak shot. Her tearful smile was reflected in the camera's reflection. On the back of the photo was written: "Goodbye, my boy."
Dusk deepened outside the window, the shadows of maple leaves stretched across the carpet. He remained kneeling, his diary spread open across his lap. It turned out that what he thought were coincidences were her carefully calculated heartbeats; the tenderness he received was her secret code for navigating the sea of people.
Suddenly, the phone rang. Zhou Xu sent a message: "Siyu sent it by mistake when she was sorting out old things... I wanted to tell you, but I think Weixi should tell you herself."
After hanging up, he clicked on Lin Weixi's Moments. The latest update was a picture of the aurora forecast for Statland, Norway, with the caption: "Waiting for the expected light." The posting time was ten minutes after he received the invitation to observe.
Moonlight streamed through the blinds, casting bright spots like piano keys on the open diary. He gently closed the book, and the brass lock clicked crisply. Those dusty memories of the past awoke in the silence, like the first rays of the aurora in the eternal night of the Arctic Circle, finally illuminating all the silent traces.
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