Mud beads

When Xu Wenwen uttered the name "Liang Dong," Yu Zhu felt a moment of unfamiliarity.

She came here in the spring, watching the snow on the mountain melt, the wild grass sprout from the cracks in the rocks, and then wither again in the winter. She gradually forgot about Liang Dong while learning to read, do arithmetic, and those homework assignments that were repeatedly corrected but still made mistakes. Then, just as her memory was fading, she heard his name again from a woman she had only met once.

He seemed to no longer exist only in her increasingly blurred memories.

She vaguely felt the traces of his existence once again.

Yu Zhu's tears fell onto the rim of the bowl, slowly sliding down the white porcelain. She belatedly raised her hand to wipe them away, feeling apologetic for her sudden outburst.

Xu Wenwen was startled by her, and her chopsticks hung in mid-air, forgetting to put them down.

"Oh dear, what happened?"

Yu Zhu waved her hand, all the words she wanted to say stuck in her throat. In the end, all her words turned into a smile tinged with tears.

"I know him."

Xu Wenwen stared at her blankly.

She didn't ask any more questions and slowly put down her chopsticks. After a moment of silence, her eyes reddened.

Moth

In the bedroom, Yu Zhu sat on the edge of the bed, watching Xu Wenwen squat in front of the wardrobe and pull out the drawers under the wardrobe one by one.

The bedroom was a bit colder than the living room. A wedding photo of the couple sat on the bedside table, and the man's jacket and the woman's long down coat hung on the clothes rack on the balcony. Xu Wenwen knelt in front of the cabinet, first pulling out two old, flattened quilts, and then moving several plastic bags containing seasonal clothes aside.

"I remember leaving it here."

She muttered to herself as she reached her entire arm deep into the cabinet, groping around. After a while, she heard a soft sound of sheet metal scraping against a wooden board.

Xu Wenwen finally pulled out a metal box.

The box wasn't big, and it was a little dented from being weighed down by the heavy object. The surface had a blurry picture of cookies printed on it. She wiped it casually with her sleeve, sat down next to Yu Zhu, and placed the tin box in her lap.

"Take this back with you."

Yu Zhu looked down at the iron box in her arms, then looked at the woman beside her in confusion.

"What is this?"

Xu Wenwen tucked her loose hair behind her ear, a hint of embarrassment beyond her years appearing on her face.

"The letters I wrote to him before..."

Yu Zhu blinked, somewhat surprised.

"At that time, something happened in my family, and they wouldn't let me go to school anymore. I was in a bad mood, so Liang Dong would write me something every now and then." Xu Wenwen looked at the tin box, a faint smile gradually appearing on her face. "I was young then, and I was just writing for fun, nothing serious..."

She paused, then looked up again: "But I think you might want to take a look?"

Yu Zhu looked down at the tin box and slowly nodded: "What kind of person was he when he was a child?"

"Liang Dong..."

Xu Wenwen crossed her arms and thought back carefully for a while.

"Good grades, quick-witted, and cheerful—"

She seemed to have thought of something and suddenly laughed.

"And he's really mischievous."

"His dad was an engineer, and he loved taking things apart when he was a kid. Radios and flashlights that were scrapped at the factory would all be taken to shreds by him. Once, he somehow found a musical doll, repaired it, and secretly hid it under the teacher's podium in the classroom. While the teacher was lecturing, the doll under the podium suddenly started spinning around and singing Aaron Kwok's 'Sakura,' which startled the whole class."

As Yu Zhu listened, the scene seemed to appear before her eyes, and the corners of her mouth unconsciously turned up.

Xu Wenwen said she and Liang Dong had a secret hideout. Near the playground on the back wall of the school, a brick was loose; it could be easily removed from the outside. She would fold up her letters, stuff them into the hole in the brick, and then push the brick back into place. After school, Liang Dong would go around to the outside of the wall to retrieve it, read it, and then put a reply back in a few days later.

"Sometimes when I'm busy with chores at home, I forget to pick them up, and when I go to check again, there are two or three envelopes," Xu Wenwen said. "Actually, sometimes I deliberately save them up to read."

The smile on her face slowly faded.

"His father was an engineer at the factory. He was a kind and honest man who was always willing to help anyone in need. His mother was also a factory worker and had a very gentle personality. Later, when the equipment in the mine malfunctioned, his father went down to inspect it. He encountered a landslide and never came out."

Xu Wenwen lowered her eyes and unconsciously rubbed the corner of her eye with her fingertip.

"The factory was undergoing reforms at that time and didn't have the money, so the compensation for the deceased's family was never paid out. After his father passed away, his mother's mental state deteriorated, and she couldn't continue working at the factory. Not long after, she took early retirement due to illness. That's when we stopped communicating..."

Yu Zhu probably knows what happened next.

Liang Xia went to work in the south, while Liang Dong and his mother moved to the city. He studied while learning to do laundry and cook, and at the same time dealt with his mother's "minor mischief".

Speaking of Liang Xia, Xu Wenwen perked up again: "His sister wasn't very good at studying, but she was a very straightforward person. After the man in their family died, some people thought they were easy to bully, borrowing things and not returning them, and saying nasty things to them. Once, I don't know who bullied their family, but his sister stood downstairs in the family compound and started cursing, her voice so loud that half the factory area could hear it."

"Yes. She can swear now too." Yu Zhu smiled. "Liang Xia is living a very fulfilling life now."

"They say good deeds are rewarded," Xu Wenwen sighed. "Her family has had such a hard life."

Yu Zhu looked down at the iron box on her lap, her fingers pressing on the mottled lid, remaining motionless for a long time.

When she first met Liang Dong, he was no longer the "particularly mischievous" boy Xu Wenwen had described.

He was reserved, shy, and gentle but not good at expressing himself. Now, through Xu Wenwen's words, Yu Zhu seemed to have found his original bright and sharp sides, slowly piecing together a nearly complete picture of Liang Dong.

Moth

Before leaving, Yu Zhu thanked Xu Wenwen sincerely.

On the way back to school, she held the tin box in her arms the whole time. The snow outside had stopped, and there were more vehicles in the county town, all migrant workers returning home for the Spring Festival.

That night, Teacher Zhang went to bed early.

The iron stove had been repaired by someone, and the coal inside was burning brightly. Yu Zhu sat up against the headboard, wrapped the blanket around her waist, and waited until the breathing on the other bed became steady before taking out her phone from under her pillow and turning on the flashlight.

The cold white light fell on the metal box.

Yu Zhu carefully took the contents out of the container.

There were more letters than she had expected, piled thickly together and bound with a rubber band that had lost its elasticity. The papers varied in size and color: there were square sheets torn from exercise books, rough-edged scraps of paper, and several old calendars with dates printed on them. The paper was already yellowing, and the creases were so brittle that they looked like they might crack at any moment. Some letters had faint gray stains on them, probably from rubbing against the bricks of the school's back wall.

Yu Zhu arranged them by date and started reading from the bottom one.

Liang Dong's handwriting in his youth was different from the strong and vigorous handwriting she remembered; instead, it was crooked and sloppy, with some strokes almost illegible. The contents of the letter, as Xu Wenwen had said, didn't contain much serious information.

He complained that the Chinese teacher often kept the class running overtime, causing him to miss the chance to play ball during breaks. He said his deskmate had an upset stomach and kept farting, making the whole class smell bad in the afternoon. Most of the time, he talked about math problem solutions; Xu Wenwen seemed to frequently ask him questions in her letters.

Liang Dong talks a lot and can be sarcastic. His likes and dislikes as a teenager are all written on paper, vivid, lighthearted, and even a bit noisy.

Yu Zhu read through the letters one by one.

One letter seemed to have been read many times; the pages were folded multiple times, leaving a deep crease in the middle. The letter didn't mention the school or classmates, only the apricot tree outside the playground.

"The apricot blossoms are in bloom."

Last year you said you'd let me know when it opened. Now that I'm telling you, will you come back to see it?

It's okay if you didn't see it; it will open again next year.

The letter ends here.

Yu Zhu's finger stopped at the last period, where the ink was heavy, and a faint blackness peeked through the back of the paper.

She recalled that morning in the apartment the day before the trial, when she nestled in Liang Dong's arms, tears streaming down her face. Speaking of Xu Wenwen, he pinched her nose and said that Xu Wenwen was smart, had good grades, just like her.

Looking at their letters, Yu Zhu didn't feel bittersweet, just a little regretful. They met too late, missing out on their bright, clumsy, and open-hearted youth.

The longer the intervals between letters, the more time passed.

Liang Dong wrote that his mother was going to a larger hospital for treatment, Liang Xia was preparing to go south, and he himself was going to leave the factory area as well. He didn't complain, but occasionally a hint of confusion would slip through his messy handwriting. The last letter was written on the back of an old calendar, with a faded "Suitable for travel" printed in the upper right corner.

He wrote at the end of the letter:

Those who go can not be remonstrated, and those who come can still be chased.

My Chinese teacher recently quoted a sentence, I don't know who said it, but I really like it—

"I will always be confused, and I will always search. Confusion is my honesty, and searching is my courage."

This is written for you, so that we can encourage each other.

Moth

Yu Zhu raised her head when she saw the last four words.

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she slowly forced them back.

A few fleeting, bright sparks flew from the coal in the furnace, and the light from the phone lingered on the yellowed papers scattered across the bed. Those voices, long past, now spoke to her again, separated by the vast expanse of time.