Jiang Yi was a little nervous today — and beneath the nervousness, she couldn’t quite hide a thread of excitement.

She had gotten up at six in the morning, all for the sake of today’s interview. She arrived early at Li Siqi’s villa and waited for the appointed hour.

Opportunities to interview Li Siqi in person were rare — especially after he had retired from the screen at fifty, when he and his wife had begun traveling the world, appearing infrequently in the public eye.

Yet the public’s interest in him had not diminished in the slightest. People were intensely curious about his life.

That curiosity had begun when he was still an unruly little boy.

The sun was well up before the old man finally stirred from his sleep. His wife, Han Sui, reminded him that the time agreed upon with the reporter was nearly here. Li Siqi yawned and shuffled into his study in his pajamas.

When Jiang Yi entered, she saw a clear-featured elderly man sitting in the chair by the window, drinking coffee. Li Siqi had an unhurried temperament; his hair was salt and pepper — black and white intertwined — which only gave him a kind of unrestrained ease. He heard her come in and looked up, and Jiang Yi felt heat rise to her face. No wonder, she thought, he came from such a remarkable family — there was a quality about him that was simply beyond compare, something none of the younger actors could match.

Jiang Yi greeted him with a bow. “Hello, Mr. Li. I’m Jiang Yi, a reporter from Film Weekly.”

Li Siqi smiled at her, which made Jiang Yi’s head spin even more.

Li Siqi set down his coffee cup and said quietly: “I’m still a bit foggy just having woken up — I speak slowly. Just go ahead and ask what you want to ask.”

Jiang Yi sat down quickly and took out her notebook.

As Li Siqi had warned, his reactions were slow from just having woken up, and after many of Jiang Yi’s questions, he would pause a long time before answering.

At the start, Jiang Yi had worried he might respond to the interview with guarded, official-sounding answers. But within a few minutes, Li Siqi had already put her mind at rest.

Jiang Yi asked: “You retired at fifty, and many directors have tried to persuade you to return — yet you remain unmoved. Was the plan to devote your energy to family at that point?”

Li Siqi said: “No.”

Jiang Yi: “Then why?”

Li Siqi: “Laziness.”

Jiang Yi: “……”

Li Siqi yawned and said: “At first it was laziness. But then more people started asking — big-name directors — and that made it even harder to go back. Think about it: if all these important people have gone to such great lengths to invite someone, expectations run high. What if I turn in a poor performance? How embarrassing.”

Jiang Yi was at a loss for words.

The assortment of unexpected answers lightened the atmosphere considerably. Sensing conditions were favorable, Jiang Yi ventured: “Could I ask a few more personal questions?”

Li Siqi: “Go ahead.”

Jiang Yi asked carefully: “Today is the third anniversary of your mother’s passing. Did you choose today for this interview as a kind of remembrance?”

At the mention of his mother, Zhu Yun, Li Siqi’s gaze grew distant and still. He said quietly: “I do miss her very much.”

Jiang Yi added: “And today also happens to be your parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary.”

Li Siqi laughed. “You all keep much better track of these things than I do.”

Jiang Yi: “They were devoted to each other for so many years — always held up as an example in the field.”

That phrase amused Li Siqi.

“Example in the field.” He looked out the window, his thoughts drifting far. “Any relationship, taken to its end, becomes habit. Maintaining the feeling of being in love all the way through is genuinely very hard — especially when both people are as stubborn as they were. It takes a great deal of effort.” He let out a breath. “Honestly, my father’s coldness in his later years was mostly my mother’s doing. He was spoiled beyond measure at home and had already received more than enough — so whether anyone else liked him or not was simply of no concern to him.”

Jiang Yi had long felt that Li Siqi was something of an anomaly. Most public figures held fast to the principle of careful, measured speech — only Li Siqi had, from childhood to old age, always said precisely what came to mind, never changing. He had caused considerable trouble because of it; his mother, Zhu Yun, had apologized to the media on his behalf many times. But Li Siqi remained entirely his own person.

Jiang Yi had always assumed he would be reprimanded by his family for his ways — but as it turned out, whether it was his brother Li Yuchen, who had gone into government, or his sister Li Yueling, who had taken over the family business, both had independently confirmed that Li Siqi was the most spoiled child in the family.

Li Yueling had once given the reason — “Because he looks the most like Father.”

Jiang Yi repeated this to Li Siqi. Li Siqi burst out laughing: “My dad has a bad temper, but you really shouldn’t scold him quite like that.”

Jiang Yi: “Do you think your father had a very bad temper?”

Li Siqi: “He reeked of arrogance from head to toe.”

Jiang Yi: “……”

Just as Li Siqi’s uninhibited manner of speaking had become something of a trademark, Li Xun’s temper had been a sensation in its day — the stories were too numerous to count.

“You’ve never been on the receiving end of a scolding from him — if you had, the shadow would last a lifetime,” Li Siqi said with a laugh. “How to put it… my father had somewhat low emotional intelligence. Or maybe it wasn’t low — he just couldn’t be bothered to deal with all the social niceties. He saved his patience for his work and for a handful of people.”

Jiang Yi: “It seems like he never had many friends, even until the end.”

Li Siqi: “That’s right. Very, very few.”

Jiang Yi: “In your own life, which parent influenced you more?”

Li Siqi answered without a moment’s hesitation: “My mother.”

Jiang Yi: “Why?”

Li Siqi drew a long breath and said: “Truthfully, when I was little, my relationship with my father wasn’t great. I was disobedient — extremely rebellious — and I was always finding ways to bother him and disrupt his work. And my grades were terrible, which he found deeply unsatisfying.”

Jiang Yi: “Were you afraid of your father when you were small?”

“Terrified!” Li Siqi’s eyes went wide. “Absolutely terrified — especially when he was holding my report card and just looking at me without saying anything. I genuinely wanted to offer up my life in apology.”

Jiang Yi burst out laughing.

“And your mother — what was her attitude in those moments?”

Li Siqi spread his hands: “She watched. My father ran the household — as long as he didn’t physically hit me, my mother wouldn’t get involved. Though actually, my mother was more invested in my grades than my father was. She had more traditional ideas about these things; my father mostly just viewed my playing around with contempt.”

Jiang Yi asked a few more questions, and then the conversation drifted, almost without noticing, to the film that could be said to have shaped Li Siqi’s entire acting career.

Jiang Yi: “The film ‘The Eternal Flame’ was something of a turning point in your career. The film is in many ways a biographical portrait of your father, Li Xun. What led you to take the role in the first place?”

Li Siqi thought for a moment, then said: “My mother asked me to.”

Jiang Yi: “It was entirely your mother’s idea?”

Li Siqi looked back through time and said: “That period of my life wasn’t a good one — the media knew the reasons.”

Li Siqi was thirty-six when Li Xun passed away. He had not yet reached old age — not quite a long life. But he went quietly and without great suffering. Those who knew him understood: he had exhausted himself. Thirty years of unrelenting dedication to his work — and only in those final few years, when his body could no longer carry the load, had he stepped back from the front lines and gone abroad with his wife to live a period of ease and peace.

Before he died, Li Xun saw only one person alone — Li Siqi. That scene is depicted in the film.

Jiang Yi asked: “Was the film’s depiction identical to what really happened?”

Li Siqi smiled. “How could it be identical? The film is something I performed. In reality, I truly lost my father. I couldn’t replace him. No one in this world could ever replace him.”

The tenderness in his expression as he said this brought a sting to Jiang Yi’s eyes.

She asked softly: “Were his final words the same as in the film?”

Li Siqi gave a small smile.

Li Xun’s passing had not been marked by great anguish; he remained sharp and defined right to the last. He left few words for Li Siqi, but every one of them was clear and unhesitating — without a trace of doubt, as he had always lived.

He said to Li Siqi: “Most of my money goes to you — do whatever you want with it. Eat what you like, play as you like. Life is short; don’t waste it on people who don’t matter. But a man still has to carry himself like a man — remember to look after your brother and sister. As for your mother…” Only when he came to Zhu Yun did he pause for two seconds. Then he continued: “When I was here, she had to listen to me. When I’m gone, she’s right about everything. Remember that.”

Li Siqi said tearfully that he would remember.

Li Xun continued: “When I’m gone, she will be the one hit hardest. Tell her to live until she’s eighty before she comes to find me.”

Li Siqi was even more distressed. He choked out: “Should I call Mom to come?”

Li Xun: “No. She’s timid. She couldn’t bear it.”

Li Siqi: “You don’t want to see her?”

By then Li Xun’s voice had grown very quiet. He murmured: “It doesn’t matter — I’ll see her soon enough.”

Jiang Yi didn’t know how that real scene had actually unfolded — but she remembered every shaft of light and every mote of dust in that film. She had first seen it when she was in her teens, and from that moment she had become an ardent admirer of this whole family. Li Siqi had performed it so perfectly — and precisely because it was perfect, it had never left her.

Jiang Yi asked: “When your father said ‘I’ll see her soon enough,’ did he mean the reunion that comes after death?”

Li Siqi said: “I’m not really sure.”

Jiang Yi: “Because it’s the film’s very last line, everyone has held onto it. By that point, Li Xun’s strength was already fading — could it have been something said half-consciously, without much meaning behind it?”

Li Siqi: “Perhaps.”

Jiang Yi was quiet for a moment, then asked: “Although only a glimpse of your parents’ love story was shown in the film, it captured many hearts. Li Xun’s last wish — for your mother to live to eighty before coming to meet him — was that a form of tender farewell?”

Li Siqi gave a soft laugh. “Not quite.”

Jiang Yi: “Why not?”

Li Siqi thought about it, then said: “My father and my mother shared a very deep bond. He understood her better than anyone. He knew that his own tenderness was a double-edged sword for her. If in those final moments he had shown how desperately he didn’t want to let go — she would never have been able to find her way back out of that grief. When it came to him, she was always in danger of losing herself completely.” Li Siqi’s smile slowly faded; his voice dropped low. “He knew her too well…”

Jiang Yi found herself quietly fighting back tears. She steadied herself and said to Li Siqi: “But at that point, the film hadn’t yet been planned.”

Li Siqi: “Right — all of that came later. My mother organized it.”

In the time after Li Xun’s death, Li Siqi drifted for a long while in a fog. He was the last in the family to find his footing again. Many times he could barely believe that the father who had loomed like a god over his whole childhood had truly, permanently, left him. For a long time after, Li Siqi couldn’t find his direction. By then he had been in the industry for more than a decade, coasting on his looks in one idol drama after another — his popularity was unquestionable, but now, having heard his father’s final words, he felt somehow that there were things he had not yet done.

His way of working through the disorientation was to throw himself into reckless play. Eventually things went wrong — he was caught for drunk driving, and was pushed to the center of public criticism all over again. He was completely lost.

“I genuinely thought I was useless,” Li Siqi said calmly. “I didn’t understand why my father had chosen to see me last. I suspected he’d called the wrong person. Anyone else in our family would have been a better choice. I had squandered that precious opportunity.”

Jiang Yi: “Was it around that time that your mother began developing ‘The Eternal Flame’?”

Li Siqi: “Yes. I never amounted to much. My mother never had high expectations of me in this life — the one exception was this film. For this, she told me I had to do as she said.”

Jiang Yi: “She personally supervised the production, and most of the story’s details came from her. Was she hoping this film could convey something to you — to you, who were lost at that time?”

Li Siqi gave a gentle sound of agreement.

His mother’s words from those days still rang in his ears.

“You are my child. I could draw strength from your father — and you can too.”

Zhu Yun had poured her whole heart and soul into planning this film for Li Siqi.

She told him: “I have never lectured you with grand principles, because I know it would be useless. Our family is stubborn — we only believe in things we’ve lived through ourselves; everything else is empty words. I’m asking you to make this film for one reason: I want you to understand what kind of person your father was. So that in the future, when you face all the things still to come, you won’t give up so easily.”

And the film truly did change Li Siqi.

Li Siqi won countless awards for it. In the films that followed, he consistently chose high-quality work. Though he still appeared as easygoing and carefree on the surface as ever, something inside him had transformed entirely — as if he had become a different person.

Jiang Yi: “But every advantage has its costs. This film, because so many of its details were so truthful — even touching on your father’s more controversial moments, such as his ruthless treatment of enemies or the methods he employed to expand the company — inevitably affected his reputation. How did your mother weigh and balance all of that?”

Li Siqi smiled. “Reputation — what is that? My father didn’t know. My mother made this film for me. As for what anyone else thought — she didn’t know either.” He leaned forward slightly, looking at Jiang Yi. Though he was in his fifties, Li Siqi’s eyes were clearer and more beautiful than those of someone much younger, and Jiang Yi found herself utterly drawn in.

Li Siqi said with warmth: “Young lady — this world has so many people in it. But only a few of them truly matter. Many things can only be done for them. Many words can only be said to them.”

The interview went smoothly. Time had slipped by unnoticed, and the housekeeper knocked on the door to let them know. Jiang Yi hastily began packing her things.

“Thank you so much for today,” Jiang Yi said, bowing.

Li Siqi: “Not at all. I need to head out — let me walk you part of the way.”

Jiang Yi: “Please don’t trouble yourself — I can manage.”

“It’s at least half an hour’s walk down from here. Let me take you a bit of the way. Wait a moment.” Li Siqi rose and went back to his room to change. He returned shortly in a well-tailored casual suit. Li Siqi was tall, his figure still trim; though he was older now, he was still remarkably handsome.

Jiang Yi rode in Li Siqi’s car, cheeks red the entire way.

At the junction below the hillside villa, Jiang Yi got out and thanked him again.

Li Siqi smiled and drove away.

Jiang Yi stood where she was, in a momentary daze.

There was something about Li Siqi’s final smile that felt achingly familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. A cool breeze passed through, and she suddenly recalled a video clip she had once found online. Years ago, Li Xun and Zhu Yun had married abroad. They had been too busy with work, and only when their youngest daughter turned five had they finally held a proper wedding ceremony. In the brief clip — flowers everywhere, children gathered around them — Li Xun and Zhu Yun were laughing throughout.

Li Xun rarely appeared in public, and when he did he was always composed and glacially professional. That clip was one of the few times Jiang Yi had ever seen him in genuine joy.

Li Siqi really did resemble his father — especially after making that film. It was as if he had grown into another side of Li Xun: the free, unconstrained side.

Li Siqi’s wife, Han Sui, was the actress who had played “Zhu Yun” in “The Eternal Flame.” They had found each other through making that film — as if Li Xun and Zhu Yun had fallen in love once more. Jiang Yi found herself wondering: was it possible that Li Siqi, in retiring at the height of his fame to travel the world with his wife, had been trying to inhabit his parents’ roles — to live, on their behalf, another kind of life that the two of them, who had given everything to their work, had never had the chance to live?

She was still thinking when she noticed that her face felt cool. She raised a hand and wiped away the tears on her cheeks, then bowed her head and walked on.

Li Siqi drove to the cemetery to visit his mother’s grave and told her about the interview that day.

“I kept reminiscing the whole drive here,” he confided to Zhu Yun with feeling. “Mom, I really was terrible when I was little. I made so many mistakes.”

But then he looked at the grave beside hers, where his father lay, and immediately broke into a grin. “Though I’m sure not nearly as many as my dad.”

He crouched down slowly and looked at his mother’s photograph. It had been taken when Zhu Yun was thirty — young and beautiful. Li Siqi’s gaze softened by degrees.

“Mom, I’m almost sixty myself now. I didn’t turn out as accomplished as my brother and sister — but I’ve made something of myself, and I haven’t embarrassed you or Dad too badly.”

The sun sank red in the west. Li Siqi’s voice was filled with boundless love and longing, and he smiled as he said: “Mom, Dad — let me tell you: every sweet and bitter thing that was mine to bear, I bore it — none of it slipped past me. And right now, I’m still happy. That’s what you’d most want to see, isn’t it?” A thin, bright sheen of tears gathered in his eyes, but the smile at the corners of his lips remained undiminished.

“I believe in the end, you were both the same.”

Beneath the tender red clouds of evening, his parents looked out at him from the photograph — one proudly handsome, one radiantly beautiful.

That night Li Siqi had a dream. In it were scenes from the film, and moments his mother had described to him countless times.

A summer afternoon on a school campus. The heat was stifling.

Li Siqi walked along the sun-baked asphalt road toward the gymnasium entrance. The line of students waiting to receive their military training uniforms stretched on and on.

Li Siqi’s gaze landed on the girl in the queue who was holding an umbrella over her roommate.

He waited a long time. The line grew restless. Then, finally, someone came rushing out from inside the gymnasium — a flustered coordinator, drenched in sweat, calling out names.

“Computer Science Department first! Applied Technology, Class One! Number one — Li Xun!”

No one answered.

The coordinator’s voice grew desperate: “Li Xun! Li Xun, are you here?! Is there anyone named Li Xun?! Li——”

“Here.”

And then, from nowhere in particular, came a voice. Clear and resonant at its core, though loosened and softened by too long in the sun.

The girl startled slightly.

Li Siqi saw this and felt an urgent thrill. He stepped quickly to her side and bent down to urge her: “Quick — turn around, turn around now!”

Perhaps it was the force of his eagerness — the next second, the girl truly turned around. And what she saw made her draw in a sharp breath.

A head of blazing, sunlit gold.

Li Siqi got exactly what he’d been hoping for — that absurd, priceless expression — and laughed with his whole heart, his head thrown back.

In those days the air was still clean, the sky overhead a boundless, unbroken blue. The new students, sweaty and sunburned, gathered together in a bright, chattering crowd — white clouds overhead, brimming with youth and vitality, like jade, like song.

—The End—