A young boy from the 1970s, separated from his family, fled famine and led his younger brother into

The study light stayed on until late into the night.

Su Nianci sat at the table with the letter laid out in front of her. The glass bead rested in the upper right corner of the letter. The light shone through the glass, casting a small patch of colorful light on the table.

Blue, purple, and white, mixed together, landed on the wood grain of the tabletop, a clump the size of a coin.

She stared at the patch of light for a long time, then pulled a piece of paper from the drawer and picked up a pen.

The pen tip hovered above the paper for more than ten seconds before falling.

She didn't start her message with "Dear" or "Hello".

She wrote a name.

"Lin Xi".

The strokes were slower than usual, and each stroke was pressed harder than when writing a prescription.

"I don't know how to begin this, because I've never written a letter to myself before."

She paused for a moment, leaving a small dot on the paper with the tip of her pen.

"But there are some things I need to say today, and if I don't write them down now, probably no one will remember them in the future."

"Thank you for living those thirty years."

Her hand paused for two seconds, then continued writing.

"From age three to thirty-three, you climbed out of the iron bunk bed in the orphanage and walked all the way to the operating room under the shadowless lamp."

"How many sleepless nights, how many unheated lunches, how many times could you only smile and not answer when people asked you where your family was?"

"I remember all of that."

She put down her pen, picked up the glass bead, twirled it in her palm, and then placed it back next to the letter.

"I remember every person you saved on the operating table."

"Your hands were shaking during your first appendectomy, and you tied an extra knot while suturing. The head doctor was watching you, but he didn't say anything."

"You'll stop shaking in the second year."

"By the third year, you'll be able to administer injections with your eyes closed."

"I remember every child in the orphanages you taught."

"On those weekend afternoons when you went back to tutor them, you would draw the skeletal diagrams from the medical textbook on the blackboard, and the kids would laugh so hard they'd be doubled over, saying that the human body looks like tree branches inside."

Su Nianci paused for a moment, looking down at the words she had written on the paper, her lips moving slightly.

"I've said what you didn't have time to say on the day you left."

"Granny Guiying's bowl of noodles, her crooked scarf, and the glass bead she bought with her half-year's worth of pocket money."

"She kept them all; she didn't lose a single one."

"She recognizes you."

She said that no matter who you become, she will recognize you.

The pen tip trembled on the paper, leaving a crooked ink line. She crossed out the line and started writing again next to it.

"I've lived the life you didn't have time to live."

"I have a husband."

She paused here, smiled slightly, and continued writing.

"He's incredibly clumsy; he can blow up the kitchen while cooking and he can put a sweater on the child inside out."

"But he would wait for me for two and a half hours at the alley entrance with a bowl of pork rib soup."

"I have children, a girl and a boy. The girl has such a sweet tongue that she can melt your bones, and the boy doesn't talk much, but he writes everything down in his notebook."

"I have a yard, where I plant cosmos flowers and grow a jujube tree."

"When the jujubes turned red in autumn, the two children took bamboo poles to knock them down, and even after getting bumps all over their heads, they still wouldn't stop."

"When it snows in winter, snowflakes fall on the bare branches of the Gesang flowers, on the stone table, and on the collar of the military overcoat he draped over my shoulders."

Su Nianci stopped writing here, placed her hands folded beside the letter, and stared at the words she had written for a long time.

Then she picked up her pen and wrote the last line.

"Lin Xi, you don't need to come looking for me in the next life. This life has been good enough."

She put down her pen. The letter was only one page long, with few words, but each word was written fully, with little space between the strokes.

She folded the letter, then folded it twice to create four neat creases, before taking out the tiger-head shoes from her pocket.

The crooked-mouthed tiger's slit eyes shone brightly and dimly under the light, and the shoe uppers were coated with starch and felt slippery to the touch.

She used her thumb to pry open the shoe opening, stuffed the folded letter inside, squeezing it together with the old cotton inside, then picked up the glass bead, squeezed it in her palm, and stuffed it in as well.

The letter and glass beads were packed tightly inside the tiger-head shoe, clinging closely to the wad of old cotton that had been stuffed in there for decades.

We won't bury it.

Carry it with you.

Su Nianci held the tiger-head shoes in her hand for two seconds, then stuffed them back into her pocket, capped the pen, put it back in the pen holder, and braced herself against the edge of the table, preparing to stand up.

The study door opened.

It was pushed very slowly, and the soft sound of the hinge turning was drowned out by the wind blowing in through the crack in the door.

Lu Xingzhou stood at the door, his hair disheveled, his collar askew, and he was wearing cotton slippers with his left heel crushed from stepping on them.

Su Nianci looked at him, her voice a little hoarse: "Why aren't you asleep?"

Lu Xingzhou didn't answer, but walked over and took three steps to stand behind her.

"The light was on all night." His voice was muffled, hoarse from just waking up. "I turned over twice, but there was still no movement from your side."

Su Nianci glanced down at the blank sheet of paper on the table: "I just wrote something."

"Write what?"

"Written for myself."

Lu Xingzhou didn't ask any more questions.

Two arms came around from behind, one on her shoulder and the other around her waist. His chin rested on the top of her head. It was heavy; his weight pressed down on her hair through his chin, making her head lower slightly.

Su Nianci did not move.

"When did you wake up?" she asked.

"I woke up when you got up."

"Then why aren't you coming over?"

"You didn't call me." His voice was muffled by her hair. "I was waiting outside when you didn't call me."

Su Nianci's nose tingled: "How long have you been waiting?"

"I don't know."

"That's a lie."

"You really don't know what's going on." He tightened his grip on her arm. "Anyway, it's not the first time. The time I waited two and a half hours for the pork rib soup, this time it was much shorter."

Su Nianci chuckled softly, but the sound broke halfway through, turning into a very soft inhale.

Lu Xingzhou nuzzled her head with his chin: "Did you cry?"

"no."

"His nose is all red."

"You can't see my nose anyway."

"No need to look," he said. "I can tell the moment you breathe."

Su Nianci remained silent.

After a while, she spoke softly, "Lu Xingzhou."

"Um."

Do you know who I used to be?

"Know."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid your wife is actually someone else."

Lu Xingzhou tightened his grip on her arm again: "No matter who you were before, you're mine now."

Su Nianci's eyelashes trembled.

"I wrote about how you fried the kitchen while cooking in the letter," she said.

"What?"

"And the time I put Miaomiao's sweater inside out."

"Why did you write those things?"

"Keep this as a souvenir."

"Did you include the good points as well?"

"What's good?"

"The pork rib soup," he said, sounding a little aggrieved. "The one I waited two and a half hours for."

Su Nianci laughed again, but this time the laughter faded. She closed her eyes, and her entire weight, from her shoulders to her back to her waist, gradually leaned back into his arms.

All my strength has been released.

"I wrote it," she said.

"That's alright."

"Lu Xingzhou".

"Um."

"Thank you for waiting for me."

"It's only right that I wait for you."

"I wasn't talking about pork rib soup."

Lu Xingzhou didn't say anything, but rubbed his chin against her head again and hugged her even tighter.

After a long while, he finally said sullenly, "I know."

The wind howled through the cracks in the window, causing the corner of the blank letter on the table to curl up and then fall back down.

Su Nianci leaned against him, the tiger-head shoes in his pocket digging into her hip bone. Inside were a letter and a glass bead, squeezed together with decades-old cotton.

"It's snowing," Lu Xingzhou said.

"Um."

"The cosmos flowers in the yard will need to be buried again tomorrow morning."

"Remember to sweep the snow off the stone table so the children don't slip."

"understood."

The snow started falling again outside the window, flake by flake, landing on the withered cosmos branches, on the thin layer of old snow on the stone table, and on the two rows of footprints in the alley that had not yet been covered.

The larger footprints were right next to the smaller ones.

The snow slowly covered the area, layer upon layer, until finally the two rows of footprints became a white path, leading from the courtyard gate all the way to the end of the alley.