“ ? ”
Chapter 22
“What’s wrong?”
Cao Yu looked at Chen Huai, who was clutching the photograph without moving, and asked.
After Qin Yao came out of the photograph, she found a chair to lean against, her head hanging very low. Chen Huai could still hear her crying.
He glanced at Cao Yu and exhaled, as though he had no strength left either. His eyes could barely stay open. He returned the photograph, swallowing for no apparent reason in an attempt to keep his voice from sounding so terribly dry.
“You and the friend in this photograph…”
Cao Yu slipped the photograph back in place, lowered his head, and lifted his lips slightly. “She died a few years ago.”
Qin Yao’s emotions had yet to settle. Chen Huai felt as though both his head and his heart were in pain, his nerves seemingly suspended over a fire and scorched. Vast expanses of blankness spread through his mind, leaving him unable even to find a point from which to begin making sense of his confusion.
Was Sun Hongping really his mother?
Was he really Xiao Yao?
Chen Huai felt that something had gone wrong with his memories. It was not merely amnesia. He was so utterly lost that he could not even think clearly about who he was.
“You said the son of an old friend asked you to treat Qin Yao…” Chen Huai spoke hoarsely.
Cao Yu nodded. “Yes.”
“Was her child a boy or a girl?”
“A boy… Why are you asking?”
“What was his name?”
Cao Yu answered mechanically. “Chen Huai.”
“Sun Hongping’s son is named Chen Huai.”
Chen Huai pressed hard against his temples. When his gaze passed over the world outside the window, he suddenly felt that vast expanses of blankness had appeared outside. He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again, and the clustered buildings gradually gathered, hazy through the white mist, like mountains thrust upward by the shifting of the earth.
“What nonsense are you talking about?” Qin Yao grabbed his wrist. Her eyes were still so swollen that she could barely open them. She wiped them twice with her hand. “Give me a tissue first. My eyes hurt so much.”
Chen Huai’s hand was trembling slightly, but he still took a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her first. After Qin Yao wiped away her tears, she sat on the chair, her shoulders still hitching with little sobs.
He remained silent for a long time. Then he asked Cao Yu whether there was any ice in the hospital.
“You can just buy that downstairs at the convenience store,” Cao Yu said.
Chen Huai also felt that he was talking nonsense, as though even common sense about daily life had been lost. “Okay. Thank you.”
The convenience store had the heating on, and warm mist covered the floor-to-ceiling windows. Chen Huai noticed that the same milk advertisement still stood by the entrance as before. It had not shifted even by an inch.
Most of the time since he had encountered Qin Yao in the rental apartment had been spent inside the photograph, so in the reality outside the photograph, only a few days really had passed. It was normal that they were still in winter.
But it had snowed day after day, night after night. Why was the snow piled on the ground still just as thick, thick enough to be exactly right, coincidentally covering the soles of a person’s shoes?
Chen Huai bought another bag of bread and sat in a chair by the window to eat. Qin Yao tilted her head back and pressed an ice pack against her eyes.
He tore open the plastic bag of bread with slightly more force than necessary. The little packet of preservative inside fell out, and Chen Huai tossed it into the trash.
Qin Yao held out her hand in front of him, sniffled, and quietly said that she wanted some too. Chen Huai broke off half and gave it to her. Qin Yao scolded him again for being stingy, saying he was not even willing to buy her a new one.
“You can go take one from the shelf.” He suddenly became generous.
She shifted the ice pack away slightly and secretly watched him. “Then I don’t have to take the same kind as yours, right?”
“Whatever.” Chen Huai stuffed the bread into his mouth.
“You’re suddenly so generous… Did crying make you rich?” Qin Yao straightened her back. Chen Huai still did not look at her. He kept his gaze lowered, tearing the bread into little pieces and stuffing them into his mouth, making his voice indistinct.
“Because the money won’t decrease,” he said. “It’s always that same thousand-something yuan. No matter how you spend it, it’s still that much money.”
After stuffing the last of the bread into his mouth, he casually crumpled the bag into a ball and threw it into the trash, then lifted his chin toward the snowy ground outside the floor-to-ceiling window, gesturing for Qin Yao to look.
“Just like this snow. No matter how much falls, it never gets any more. No matter how much melts, it never gets any less.”
Qin Yao’s body went still. She suddenly fell silent, unable to make a sound.
“Qin Yao.” Chen Huai said her name. “Where exactly are we?”
“Who are you?” He turned slightly and looked seriously into her eyes. “And who am I?”
Qin Yao’s hand curled into a tight fist. Her eyelashes were still wet, and everything from the corners of her eyes to the skin beneath them was flushed red. Quietly and for a long time, she gazed into his eyes.
“I am a melancholy blue corpse.”
“I know.”
Chen Huai frowned slightly. Qin Yao stared at him and shook her head very gently. “No. You don’t know at all.”
She pushed Chen Huai’s shoulder away. The convenience store’s air conditioner blew warm air toward the two of them, and the ice pack in her hand was almost completely melted. Qin Yao put it back over her eyes.
“Go to Mati Street.” She closed her eyes as she spoke. “There’s one last photograph we haven’t seen.”
Chen Huai opened his mouth as if he still wanted to say something, but Qin Yao anticipated his question.
“Once we go, you’ll know everything.”
She said, “This is the process.”
And so Chen Huai had nothing more to say.
Mati Street still looked exactly as it always had. At the intersection stood a blue sign, one side pointing toward Zhongxin Road, the other toward Tianguan Prefecture.
The two of them walked one in front of the other through the snow. Halfway there, Qin Yao pointed toward the stairs. “There seems to be a little shop up there, and there are quite a lot of people. Let’s go join in the fun.”
She had barely finished speaking before she started up the stairs. Although she had asked politely, she clearly had no intention of actually asking for Chen Huai’s opinion, hopping up the steps one by one.
Chen Huai let out a breath, glanced at her back, and followed.
As he walked, he drawled, “Weren’t we going to look for No. 136 Mati Street?”
Compared with his impatient attitude, Qin Yao seemed completely at ease. “You’re the one who said there was no No. 136 here.”
“Then where is the photograph we’re looking for?”
Qin Yao stepped onto the stairs and turned around, looking down at him from above. She sighed. “Can’t we look around first? Can’t you let me catch my breath?”
She muttered under her breath, “Do you think going into those photographs doesn’t take any effort?”
Chen Huai hesitated for a moment, then held out his hand toward her.
“What are you doing?” Qin Yao asked suspiciously.
He climbed several steps, grabbed her hand, and pressed her palm firmly against his.
“What else could I be doing? Letting a female ghost suck up my yang energy.”
Qin Yao froze for a moment, then smiled. Her voice was like a murmur to herself. “I was just talking nonsense. And you actually believed me.”
At the top was a little photography shop called “Find a Friend.” The glass at the entrance was plastered with all kinds of Polaroid photos, most of them of couples who had come here traveling. There were also plenty of people who had come to visit relatives over the New Year. After lunch, everyone would come downstairs to wander around, and if they thought something was interesting, they would stop by to check in and leave themselves a keepsake.
The shop was not very big, yet quite a few people were crowded inside.
Qin Yao seemed extremely excited, touching this and looking at that. Fortunately, no one could see her, otherwise they might have thought she was about to steal someone’s photographs.
As if she had suddenly remembered something, Qin Yao ran over and asked him very seriously, “How much money did you bring?”
Chen Huai saw how happy she was, her eyes shining brightly in the light. And so, for some inexplicable reason, even someone who had been unwilling to spend money on firecrackers let himself be persuaded.
“You want to take photos here?”
Qin Yao nodded happily.
But she clearly had no way of being captured in the photograph. Wouldn’t there only be his face in the picture when the time came?
Qin Yao had merely taken on human form. In other people’s eyes, she was still a ghost who could neither be seen nor touched.
She herself did not have so many concerns. She even pretended to get in line, with Chen Huai standing behind her.
Of course, in everyone else’s eyes, there was simply an empty space in front of him.
The shop assistant asked him, “Hello, just one person?”
Qin Yao stood to the side choosing doll props. Chen Huai glanced at her, deliberated repeatedly, and still said, “Two people.”
The shop assistant looked surprised and glanced behind him. Chen Huai pointed at himself. “…And there’s a toy. Just take a picture of me.”
As he spoke, he crooked a finger toward her. Qin Yao’s hand passed straight through the dolls and could not pick any of them up. After sighing and lamenting, she ran back over and stood in front of the camera.
Chen Huai had no way of making any large movements, like putting an arm around her shoulder, so the two of them could only be like they had been inside the photographs.
They could only hook their fingers together. That was the most subtle gesture of intimacy.
The shop assistant held up the camera. When they pressed the shutter, their gaze wavered for a moment, and they froze, as though they had truly seen two people through the lens.
When the flash went off, Qin Yao suddenly clasped his finger tightly and spoke.
“Chen Huai, I really, really want to have a photo of the two of us together.”
The light was painfully bright, and Chen Huai could not open his eyes. The sensation was incredibly familiar, like the prelude to entering a photograph every time.
He suddenly realized something and gripped Qin Yao’s hand tightly, only to feel the sensation of her palm gradually disappearing.
They had not obtained any photograph at all. Where was he supposed to enter?
At the same time as the white light swallowed everything before his eyes, Qin Yao’s voice grew fainter and more distant, and the strength with which she had been clutching his finger also disappeared.
She sighed. “But somehow, every time, it seems like we just can’t do it.”
The Polaroid developed. There was only one face on it, occupying half the sheet of photographic paper, eyelashes slightly lowered, glancing sideways at the person beside him, the corners of his lips faintly curved upward.
This was the last photograph.
Qin Yao disappeared completely.
The ventilator in the hospital suddenly began making a sound, and Cao Yu hurried to the bedside.
“There’s activity in the cerebral nerves. Just like before.”
The snow in this world suddenly stopped falling.
The New Year passed.
“…”
“Ding-dong, ding-dong. Ding-ding-ding-dong.”
The Westminster chimes.
Chen Huai suddenly jolted awake from his desk. He did not know why, but his heart was pounding terribly. His throat had grown increasingly dry, and it felt as though a layer of cold sweat had risen over his skin. Bracing one hand against the edge of the desk, he gulped down water again and again to moisten his throat, then wiped the corners of his lips several times with the back of his hand.
Before him were white walls and a green chalkboard. He sat in the far-right corner of the classroom. The students on either side of the aisle were passing the exam papers from one to another, the sound of paper rubbing against paper rising and falling like waves, filling every corner of the classroom.
The exam subject and time had been written on the blackboard in chalk. This exam was mathematics. The papers were being passed from the front to the back. When it was almost Chen Huai’s turn, the person in front deliberately let go, and the paper floated lightly to the floor.
Chen Huai was not surprised at all. He bent down to pick it up, only for the person in front of him to step on one corner.
He clenched his back teeth and pulled with a little force. The corner of the paper tore right off, and Chen Huai simply took the now-mutilated exam paper and continued writing.
It was noon. Outside, the cicadas called louder and louder. The leaves of the banyan trees were layered one over another, and deciduous trees covered the entirety of Lincheng. He turned his head and looked back at the whole school campus, feeling that this summer was strangely familiar.
Knowing that he was not good at studying, Chen Huai only picked out the questions he was certain he could score points on. He left the slightly more difficult problems blank, finding those questions oddly familiar.
Perhaps before Yuan Sheng died, he had seen similar ones in his older brother’s study guides.
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