“At first glance, I knew the young man did not belong here — like a lark that had flown down from the north, he did not belong to summer.”

— Sherry’s Lab, The Ninth Year Through the Dream

It was Xia Li’s birthday.

Her parents had promised to come home Friday evening and spend Saturday with her celebrating. But that night a torrential rainstorm hit, and the gypsum factory needed all hands for flood-prevention work. Neither of them could get away for the entire night.

On the morning of her birthday, her mother Jiang Hong called and asked whether Xia Li could bring them a fresh set of bed sheets and pillowcases.

Xia Li had already arranged to go out singing with friends that afternoon, so if she was going to deliver anything, it had to be in the morning.

She opened the wardrobe. The smell of mothballs mixed with a musty dampness rushed straight into her head.

She sorted out a set of bed sheets and pillowcases and put them in a plastic bag.

The black garbage bag wasn’t sturdy enough — it tore open at once.

She flung everything onto the bed in one sharp motion, took a long, deep breath, steadied herself, found a paper bag, and started packing all over again.

She felt at least a little wronged.

The gypsum factory was in Jushuzhen Township. Taking the bus from the Chucheng development zone took a bumpy hour and a half. There was no stop near the factory, so she had to watch carefully and call out to the driver when the time came.

Today happened to be the day of Chucheng’s middle school entrance exams, and the city had imposed traffic restrictions. Several routes were blocked, and the buses had to detour. It ended up taking two full hours to reach Jushuzhen.

Beside the gypsum factory, land that had once been held in reserve was now under construction for a second-phase expansion. Blue sheet-metal fencing enclosed the site, and enormous gantry cranes rose above it. Heavy trucks going in and out scattered mud and grit in their wake, and their tyres had churned the ground into a pitted, muddy mess.

Her father, Xia Jianyang, worked in the factory’s security division; her mother, Jiang Hong, worked in logistics as the kitchen cook. The factory had a dormitory, and the two of them had applied for a room there — on most days when nothing special was going on, they simply lived at the factory.

Xia Li didn’t step inside the dormitory. She handed everything to Jiang Hong at the door and stood on the front step scraping the mud off her shoe soles while Jiang Hong spoke to her from inside the room.

Mother and daughter had little that was truly intimate to say to each other. The conversation circled back, as it always did, to Jiang Hong reminding her to stay safe at home alone, not to read too late, and to make sure the water and electricity were turned off.

Xia Li gave a sound of assent. Then something occurred to her. “I think the gas canister might be empty.”

“Call the gas delivery man.”

Jiang Hong flipped through her phone’s contact list, tore off a corner of a cigarette-box flap, copied down a number, and held it out to Xia Li. “I need to go make lunch. Come find me in the canteen later and eat before you head back.”

“I won’t eat, actually — I’m going singing with Xu Ning and the others this afternoon.”

Jiang Hong just said, “Then don’t play too late.”

“Okay.”

Her parents rarely managed her closely, because she had always been well-behaved and sensible — the kind of child who never caused worry. Even if she stayed overnight at a friend’s place, she would tell the adults, and she would never be out all night without a reason.

Jiang Hong walked to the doorway, paused mid-step, then turned back. She opened the wardrobe, took fifty yuan from her handbag, thought for a moment, and exchanged it for a hundred-yuan note instead, handing it to Xia Li. “Then go treat yourself to something nice. And buy yourself a birthday present with this.”

“You don’t have to — I have money.”

“What you’ve saved up yourself is yours to keep. Take this.”

Xia Li said nothing more. She accepted the bill and tucked it into the inner pocket of her school bag.

As she was leaving through the main gate, a black Mercedes sedan pulled in.

She stepped aside — only for the car to stop right in front of her.

The window rolled down. Xia Li recognised the person inside and quickly greeted him: “Hello, Uncle Luo.”

Luo Weiguo smiled and said, “I was going to have lunch with your father today, but something came up at the last minute. I’ll treat all of you to dinner another time.”

Xia Li smiled in her well-mannered, obliging way. “Uncle Luo, you take care of your own business first — there’s no rush.”

Luo Weiguo nodded. “Alright then, I’ll head in.”

The window rolled back up and the car swept past. As it did, Xia Li noticed there seemed to be another person sitting in the back seat.

She walked out through the main gate and sent her father Xia Jianyang a text message to say she had come and gone.

Xia Jianyang called her back, asked whether she was short of money, and she said no, her mother had given her some, so he told her to go buy herself something nice.

The buses back to the development zone ran on no fixed schedule — sometimes ten minutes apart, sometimes nothing for forty minutes or more.

Xia Li’s luck wasn’t good today. She waited nearly half an hour without a single bus in sight.

Getting a little anxious, she sent a text to her close friend to warn her she might arrive a bit late.

Standing in the shade of a tree was tiring, so she switched to crouching. At least it had rained the night before, and the weather was relatively cool.

She had earphones in, listening to music on her MP3 player.

In those days, no-name MP3 players were cheap, but the quality was decent enough.

Still, she could only dream of owning an OPPO MP4 — blue body, brushed-finish back, touchscreen menu with no extra buttons, a beautiful purple display interface, and lyrics rendered in a slender, elegant font.

Her best friend Xu Ning had one. Xia Li would borrow it sometimes to listen to music and always found it hard to put down. She thought its industrial design was absolutely perfect.

Then she heard a car horn.

Xia Li looked up. It was Luo Weiguo’s car pulling back out through the main gate.

Luo Weiguo rolled his window down with a grin. “Waiting for the bus?”

Xia Li pulled her earphones out at once and nodded.

She saw Luo Weiguo turn to say something to whoever was in the back seat, then look back at her. “Get in — we’ll take you.”

“Thank you, Uncle Luo, but the bus should be here soon…”

“Come on, get in.”

Xia Li didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Luo Weiguo had always been especially warm and attentive to her entire family.

The Xia family and the Luo family were from the same hometown, and Luo Weiguo’s wife also bore the surname Xia — going back a few generations, the two families even shared a common ancestry. When Xia Jianyang brought his family to Chucheng to make a living, it was entirely thanks to Luo Weiguo’s arrangements that he managed to secure a position at the gypsum factory. When Xia Li transferred her household registration here for middle school back then, Luo Weiguo had been the one to call in a favour and make it happen.

Xia Li walked over and pulled open the rear car door.

She glanced inside — and only then realised there was already someone in the left seat.

A young man she had never seen before. Even seated, you could tell he was very tall.

He wore a white top and black trousers. His frame was slender and light, and his bearing was at once cold and otherworldly — as though he simply did not belong to this world.

She found herself staring involuntarily, and a line of Su Shi’s poetry rose in her mind unbidden:

At first sight by the riverside — the air of an immortal exiled from heaven — without a word, the heart gave its consent.

She felt suddenly self-conscious, uncertain whether to get in. She glanced at the front passenger seat, which was already occupied by a leather briefcase.

A car behind them sounded its horn impatiently. She had no time to think, so she bent down and got in.

She sat down and hugged her school bag in her lap. She stole a glance at the young man’s face from the corner of her eye.

She supposed she ought to say hello, but had no idea how to address him.

Luo Weiguo helpfully chimed in: “This is Director Huo’s grandson.”

But the introduction still left Xia Li with nothing to call him. She thought for a moment, then finally settled on: “…Hello.”

The young man looked her way. His eyes were somewhat cool. His voice was like wind passing through snow-laden treetops. “Hello.”

The car had barely pulled away when Luo Weiguo glanced back at the young man sitting beside Xia Li, his face wreathed in smiles. “If you’re tired, please rest a while. The restaurant is all booked — we can sit down and eat as soon as we arrive.”

The young man replied in an even tone, “Alright. Thank you, Deputy Director Luo.”

“Deputy Director, right, Deputy Director.” Luo Weiguo laughed and corrected himself.

Luo Weiguo’s attitude toward the young man was almost servile, which made Xia Li feel a little awkward — as though she had inadvertently glimpsed a side of a person that was usually hidden. In ordinary circumstances, it was her father Xia Jianyang who tiptoeed around Luo Weiguo, careful and eager to please.

Less than half a minute of silence passed before Luo Weiguo asked the young man again with a grin, “Are you warm enough? Should I turn the air conditioning down a little?”

The young man’s expression remained undisturbed. “No need.”

Luo Weiguo smiled on. “I handle things for your grandfather often, so I know Chucheng well. If you need anything at all, just say the word — I’ll do my very best. I’ll make sure you’re comfortable during your time here…”

Xia Li, sitting there as an outsider, already felt her cheeks ache from secondhand embarrassment at all this excessive warmth. Yet the young man merely knitted his brows the faintest fraction and continued to respond with perfectly cultivated courtesy: “Thank you.”

Luo Weiguo’s phone rang.

He picked up at once and said with a smile to the other end, “We’re already on our way… Yes, yes… Director Huo, don’t worry, everything is completely safe… Last night’s flood-prevention work went without a hitch, operations are normal today… You shouldn’t worry about your health, you should leave these small matters to us…”

“Are you listening to music?”

Xia Li suddenly heard the young man beside her ask, quietly.

She turned her head. His gaze was angled slightly downward, resting on her hands — on the MP3 player tangled up in its earphone cord.

She instinctively tightened her grip, not wanting him to see the knock-off brand name.

“Could I borrow it for a listen? Mine’s out of battery.”

The young man’s skin had the pallor of frost under thin ice; his lashes were long and fine. When he looked down, a pale grey shadow fell softly across his features. For some reason, she found herself thinking of the plumage of a winter finch perched in bare treetops.

Mingzhang Middle School certainly had no shortage of good-looking boys. But Xia Li had always felt their good looks were the kind you could imagine clearly and specifically — look too long and the appeal faded.

He was different.

There was a cleanliness to him so pure it felt unreal, as though he truly ought to exist only in the realm of abstraction.

The young man added, “Just one earphone is fine.”

Xia Li’s breathing went quiet. She took both earphones off and held them out to him.

His gaze dropped to her hands. He paused.

She explained, “You take them. I was about to nap anyway.”

He took them. “Thank you.”

She ought to have passed the MP3 player itself over as well, but she was afraid of exposing it, so she kept it in her own hands and asked, “Is there anything in particular you’d like to hear?”

“Whatever is fine.”

“…I’ll set it to shuffle then.”

He nodded.

Xia Li looked down and navigated the menu, selecting a song she listened to often but that hadn’t become overplayed.

The MP3’s screen had a faint trace of moisture on it — from her fingertips.

The young man tucked both earphones into his ears, leaned back in his seat, and turned to look out the window.

Luo Weiguo finished his call and prepared to continue fussing over the young man, but when he turned to look, he finally fell quiet.

Xia Li realised that the young man wasn’t really there to listen to music.

He simply didn’t want to keep dealing with Luo Weiguo.

Xia Li didn’t fall asleep after all. The young man, on the other hand, had folded his arms, tilted his head to the left, and drifted off with his eyes shut before long.

Every so often Xia Li would check the battery indicator in the top corner of the MP3 screen, worrying a little that it might die and shut off.

But one had to admit that knockoff products had their advantages — this one had a battery that outlasted every name-brand device she knew.

The feeling she had was strange, something she had never experienced before.

Sunlight poured in, and the skin on her sun-facing side slowly grew warm. Something like a warm tide seemed to seep into her chest. She let her gaze drift quietly toward the young man beside her — the mottled, shifting patches of light and shadow fell across him, just like her own mood.

It was like someone had lit a small candle inside her at some point, and the tiny flame was bowing in the wind, flickering between bright and dark.

The return journey felt so short. It couldn’t only be because they were travelling by car.

By the time Xia Li came back to herself, the car had already entered the area near the development zone. Luo Weiguo turned to ask her whether she was going home.

“I need to get to Tianxing Street — Uncle Luo, you can drop me off up ahead; I’ll take the bus from there.”

“We’re heading into the city centre as well — it’s right on the way.”

Twenty minutes later, the car pulled up to the corner of Tianxing Street and eased to a stop by the kerb.

Xia Li turned to look at the young man. Before she could say a word, he had already opened his eyes, removed both earphones, and in that same cool, clean voice said to her: “Thank you.”

Xia Li pressed the pause button and wound the earphone cord around the MP3 player.

She pulled open the car door, thanked Luo Weiguo, and took one last look at the young man before getting out. After a moment’s hesitation, she decided not to ask his name after all.

She wouldn’t let herself keep chasing an impossible dream.

They probably wouldn’t have a chance to meet again.