In the autumn of 2016, Xia Li came down with a bad cold.

She ran a fever for an entire night, and in her fitful dreams she revisited scattered fragments from her high school years.

After the fever broke, she felt inexplicably at peace — as though all worldly burdens had dissolved.

When Xu Ning came to take her temperature, Xia Li said: “Ningning, that public account of yours — can I submit a piece?”

After graduating from Nancheng University, Xia Li had been hired through campus recruitment by a tech company in Beicheng, where she worked in international product brand operations.

Xu Ning had done her undergraduate studies in Beicheng and, after graduating, had naturally stayed on. Through someone’s introduction, she had entered the screenwriting profession.

As a newcomer to the industry, Xu Ning only took on small projects — the outlines were set by others, and she simply filled in the content according to those outlines, with payment calculated by episode.

This kind of piecework made it easy to go from feast to famine.

Fortunately, starting in 2013, Xu Ning had begun running a WeChat public account called “Pluto Post Office,” which focused on emotional stories.

In the beginning, the account barely limped along, sustained purely by Xu Ning’s own passion.

Then, in the second half of 2015, the public account landscape suddenly entered a golden period of explosive growth.

One of “Pluto Post Office’s” featured articles had been written by a senior schoolmate of Xu Ning’s — a true story about an eight-year romance that collapsed when the woman discovered her fiancé was cheating just as they were preparing for their wedding.

The piece was emotionally genuine and written in an accessible style. Because the people involved were rumored to have once been a celebrated couple at a certain university, it satisfied readers’ appetite for gossip and quickly spread through several university circles in Beicheng.

The readership for that post shot up like a rocket.

Xu Ning seized the momentum and subsequently released several more modestly viral pieces — claimed to be true stories but actually written entirely by her. Having worked as a screenwriter, she found this kind of writing second nature.

Riding that wave, “Pluto Post Office” captured a surge of new followers, and the income from advertising was finally enough to keep Xu Ning from going hungry.

The account Xia Li wanted to contribute to was this very one.

She used up her sick leave and then took two more days of annual leave, holing up in her rental apartment to write what she called her “memoir.”

Two days later, the draft was still unfinished, and the sheer willpower that had been holding her up abruptly gave out.

She sent the half-written document to Xu Ning and asked her to take a look first — if it seemed worthwhile, she’d find the time to finish it.

Much of the content had been drawn from her own NetEase blog, then reorganized and polished.

She vaguely remembered having once come across a short piece called Through the Ninth Year of Dreams somewhere, and felt the title suited her story well enough to borrow for now. As for her pen name, she dashed down the name she’d given her blog on a whim: “Sherry Lab.”

It wasn’t that the writing style or the story itself was anything extraordinary. It was that the male lead — “Boy Y” — was someone she actually knew.

Xu Ning’s verdict on Xia Li: “You had a secret crush going on right under mine and Xiaoxiao’s noses for two whole years. Xia, you really are someone who keeps your cards close to your chest.”

Afterward, a major promotional campaign kicked off, and then the new year was upon them. Xia Li was swamped, and the draft was completely pushed to the back of her mind.

Xu Ning’s account wasn’t short on submissions anyway — the publication queue stretched three months out.

It was already past eight o’clock, yet the entire office building remained lit up.

Inside the office, the unoccupied areas had gone dark, leaving behind a few isolated islands of white light — those were the fellow souls who, like her, were still working overtime.

Outside, a bitter wind howled. The floor-to-ceiling glass kept it at bay. Within the quiet space, the only sound was the occasional click of fingers on a keyboard.

A message arrived suddenly from Xu Ning: Xiaxia, that half-finished draft you showed me a while back — are you still planning to continue it?

Xia Li replied: No time lately [sobbing emoji]

Xu Ning: There can’t be that much left to write. Just sit down and knock it out for me~ I’ve been running low on quality submissions recently.

Xia Li: I’ll see if I have time this weekend.

Xu Ning: Working late again tonight?

Xia Li: Waiting for our colleagues in New York to start their day. If it gets too late, just go to sleep — don’t wait up for me.

Xu Ning: I’m pulling an all-nighter on a script anyway.

After chatting with Xu Ning, Xia Li got up to refill her glass of water.

Back at her desk, she pulled up the document she’d sent Xu Ning the previous autumn — Through the Ninth Year of Dreams — from her cloud drive and opened it.

She sipped her water and scrolled through it quickly with the mouse.

The last lines she had written, just before she’d set the unfinished memoir aside, read:

From Chucheng to Nancheng, from Nancheng to Beicheng, from Beicheng to Los Angeles.

To be near you, I crossed three thousand days and nights, ten thousand kilometers.

But you needn’t know any of this — because I am just about to forget you.

Xia Li thought back to the state of mind she’d been in when she wrote those words — that almost feverish fixation — and smiled to herself.

She had a feeling that, with the way she saw things now — as though time had moved on and left the past behind — she probably couldn’t continue this story even if she tried.

She closed the document and threw herself back into work.

Around ten o’clock that night, the messaging app notified her that Jerry — the colleague from the New York operations team she’d been coordinating with — had come online.

The two of them went back and forth several times over the scheduling for next month’s promotional campaign, making painfully slow progress, and eventually switched to a voice call.

They argued for over half an hour before reaching a grudging consensus.

Xia Li decided she’d come in early the next morning to write up a summary of everything they’d discussed.

She packed up her things and prepared to leave.

At that moment, a new message came in from Xu Ning on WeChat: Xiaxia, on your way back, could you swing by the convenience store and grab a bento for me?

Followed by a pitiful little emoji.

Xia Li: What do you want?

Xu Ning: Whatever they have — you pick, Xia! I’ll treat you to barbecue this weekend.

Xia Li grabbed her bag, clocked out, and left the office.

She’d been living in Beicheng for nearly three years now, and she still hadn’t quite adjusted to the climate here.

There were only a few genuinely comfortable months in the whole year. The rest of the time it was either scorching hot or bitterly cold — especially in autumn and winter, when the cold set in from November and dragged on until March, endlessly, without any sense of reprieve.

The air was dry and frigid, and the intermittent static electricity drove her absolutely mad.

It was now past the middle of February, and the weather remained harsh.

The freezing night wind filled Xia Li’s lungs as she walked. When she pulled open the door of the convenience store, her fingers got a shock from the static — a sharp, stinging jolt.

She picked up a chicken bento and, after paying, slid it into the microwave to heat, then stood there waiting for the timer to go off.

On her phone, her New York colleague Jerry had sent a string of messages.

She glanced over them — he was now questioning one of the items they had already confirmed during the phone call.

She didn’t have the patience to type a reply. She just called him directly.

Without giving Jerry a chance to speak, Xia Li got in first: “We already reached an agreement during our call earlier. If you’re now trying to unilaterally reverse that, you’re just driving up the cost of communication for everyone involved. I’m not in a position to entertain further objections on this. I think we both need to focus our energy on the execution phase going forward — if you have an issue with my approach, you’re welcome to escalate directly to my supervisor.”

Jerry’s tone softened.

The microwave let out a cheerful ding.

Xia Li opened it and took out the bento.

It was still quite hot, so she left it on the counter for a moment.

Continuing to respond to Jerry, she picked up the plastic bag she’d brought with her other items, straightened out the drink bottles that had toppled over, and made room for the bento.

When she turned back to grab it, her gaze swept idly across the space ahead of her.

At the far end of the aisle between two rows of shelves, in front of the refrigerated beverage cabinet, someone appeared to be looking at her.

She looked up sharply — and froze where she stood.

In the late-night convenience store, there was no one else but her, the store clerk, and the person across from her.

The space was hushed. The cold white light fell over him like a dusting of fine frost.

Something surfaced from deep within her memory — a slow, blanketing fog.

The years had eroded her ability to judge exact details, but she thought he seemed perhaps two centimeters taller than she remembered. Still the same tall, lean frame. He wore a black lightweight sweater and trousers in a similar shade.

The dark clothing made his complexion look cool and pale. His features had shed the soft freshness of youth, and what remained was a face of sharper, more sculpted definition — the kind that could now be described with more pointed words like “refined and austere.”

What struck her as unfamiliar was his bearing.

He was no longer the first snowfall of winter. He had become the deep snow of a winter that never thaws.

A single glance seemed enough to perceive how years of frost and ice had gradually carved their marks upon him.

He was like an uninhabited territory at the edge of the world.

Coldly, impossibly remote.

In truth, it was less that she didn’t dare to recognize him, and more that she was afraid of being wrong.

Ever since she’d first set foot in Beicheng, she had imagined it more than once — whether, during the long summer and winter breaks, they might happen to run into each other.

At a crowded plaza. At a jostling subway entrance. Or in the hushed silence of a library, or perhaps near his old high school campus…

It had never happened. Not once.

And now, as he appeared as suddenly as if he had materialized out of thin air, her only thought was: Is that him — or is it just some stranger in this world who happens to look the same?

While Xia Li stood there in stunned silence, the person across from her quietly pushed the refrigerator door shut and walked directly toward her.

At the other end of the line, Jerry noticed she’d gone silent and asked a puzzled question.

Xia Li murmured an apology and said she’d call back in a moment.

She hung up and stood there, phone clutched in her hand.

That cool, calm presence had already drawn close. Standing in the shadow cast by his figure, Xia Li held her breath for a moment — and before she could say a word, he spoke first:

“Long time no see.”

The memory of his voice proved more reliable than sight alone.

That cool, quiet timbre confirmed it: he was Yan Sishi.

At the time, Xu Ning had read through Xia Li’s unfinished memoir, and the two of them had discussed a question together.

Xia Li had asked Xu Ning: can a person truly disappear completely from another person’s life?

Xu Ning had said: look — it’s been six years since we graduated. How many of your high school classmates are you still in touch with? Sure, you’re in the group chats. But do you ever reach out to them on your own?

Xia Li had gone quiet.

Xu Ning had said: for a lot of people, the last time we ever see them is actually the last time we ever see them. That’s the reality of most of our lives, most of the time.

Xia Li had said: I know. The reason it still bothers me is that there was no goodbye.

It was like a poem that only had its first half.

That sense of incompleteness had trapped her in suspended time, kept her wandering in circles, searching for the story’s second half.

Even if it didn’t match. Even if it was superfluous. Even if it was a pale shadow of the original.

It had been like a long, long question without an answer — and now, at last, something had replied. Standing here looking at the face before her, so familiar yet so changed, Xia Li felt, unexpectedly, a profound and complete sense of release.

As though the apocalyptic ash that had been settling over her for years scattered all at once.

Her clock was set right.

It was February 2017. The Lantern Festival had just passed. The wind still carried its sharp edge.

Beicheng’s spring was still some time away.

Xia Li smiled — composed and natural. “Yan Sishi? Long time no see.”