Xia Li did not sleep very long — perhaps only about half an hour before she woke.

The firelight, the down coat draped over her, and the snowflakes still drifting beyond the glass wall outside all gave her a brief, disoriented moment — and then gradually the events leading up to this all came back to her.

Xia Li nodded slightly, lifting her head away from Yan Sishi’s shoulder.

“Would you like to stay here a while longer, or shall we head back?”

Xia Li picked up her phone and checked the time. “Let’s go back.”

They gathered their things. Yan Sishi said a brief farewell to the staff on-site, then they both returned to the car.

It was close to three in the morning. The drive back would take nearly three hours.

Yan Sishi said: “You don’t need to. Sleep in the car for a while. I can take the day off.”

“If you feel sleepy at any point, just call me and I’ll take over.”

Before they set off, Xia Li took one last look back at the brightly lit building. “It’s an indoor ski resort, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t ask exactly where.

A place you didn’t know the name of — that was a real secret.

On the way back, the faint, muffled sound of the wind outside the windows seemed to echo through her mind the whole way.

Half-asleep and half-awake, it reminded her of riding overnight buses from Jushuzhen back to the city during high school.

Like traveling through an absurd dream.

By the time they reached the entrance of her complex in Beicheng, the sky had already begun to lighten.

A phrase she had often used in high school essays — the sky had turned the color of fish-belly white.

On the distant horizon, a faint thread of amber light.

Xia Li let out a long, deep yawn. “Thank you… You should head home and get some rest.”

And she, once upstairs, might still be able to squeeze in an hour of sleep before work.

Xia Li reached for the door handle, wondering whether “good morning” or “good night” was the more appropriate farewell.

“Wait a moment.”

But she heard Yan Sishi’s voice.

He reached over and pressed a button on his side of the door, locking it.

He looked at her, and then said: “I only need two minutes. There are two things I want to say.”

Xia Li paused.

After the long night’s drive, Yan Sishi’s face showed distinct signs of tiredness — but the way he was looking at her was very clear, with a faint, unmistakable quality of resolve, as though nothing could disturb him now.

Xia Li’s breathing tightened, almost without thinking.

Yan Sishi was silent for less than half a second before speaking: “I should have said these things that night…”

“Wait.” Xia Li interrupted him.

The sound of her own voice felt as though it came from somewhere a little far away, like it was passing through a layer of water.

Yan Sishi looked at her.

Xia Li tightened her fingers, as though that twilight bell were striking once more against her chest — the reverberations carried a faint, aching weight. “…I think I can guess what you want to say. But…”

Her breathing deepened slightly. The seconds of pause that followed felt, inside her, as long as an entire century.

She continued: “…I think it might be better to leave it unsaid.”

She had turned the thought over many times. Saying it now didn’t feel as difficult as she had imagined.

Yan Sishi’s gaze was perfectly still — so still it was difficult to guess what he was thinking in that moment.

And his voice, too, was remarkably composed: “You know I’m clear-headed right now.”

“I know.”

“Then why…”

Xia Li didn’t know how to answer. “…It’s probably not a good fit.”

“The two of us?”

Under the sharp clarity of his gaze, it was very hard for her to nod.

“If you truly see me as an old classmate, you wouldn’t brush me off with a line like that.”

Xia Li was quiet for a moment.

The hazard lights blinked steadily, like a tiny clock marking time against her chest.

Finally, very calmly, she said: “Everyone understands closeness differently, and everyone’s hopes are different.”

Yan Sishi’s every response came back direct: “Meaning — I haven’t met your hopes.”

Xia Li wanted to say: that’s not it.

It’s not that — maybe it’s that I haven’t met yours, which is why you haven’t ever opened even a crack of that door for me.

Earlier on the drive back, she had been fully awake for the second half of the journey, turning everything over and over in her mind. Like a piece of dyed cloth wrung and beaten again and again in water, until not another drop of color could be extracted — until her thinking was perfectly, absolutely clear.

She could pretend not to notice. But she was not capable of ignoring it.

The candy she couldn’t have as a child — once she grew up, she could buy as much as she wanted.

But Yan Sishi was not candy. He was not a compensation for some unfulfilled longing from her girlhood.

She could not deceive herself by only tasting the sweetness that was most easily within reach.

Forgive her for being presumptuous.

She wanted to be the person who could truly walk into his heart.

And if she was not that person — then she would sooner give up even this sweetness, this sweetness with its unknown expiration date.

While she still could let go.

While she had not yet fallen so completely that it would truly hurt.

He was a snowfall that had wandered into the summer solstice.

A presence that, by all accounts, should never have existed in her world.

Man-made snow was not real winter, after all.

Yan Sishi did not press her with any further questions.

Her two seconds of silence, in his understanding, had already answered him.

The hand resting on the steering wheel dropped away now, in a way that was unmistakably deflated.

He had ordered the flowers yesterday.

The florist’s website had said the meaning of white roses was: I am worthy of you.

He was still too far short.

It wasn’t time yet to say those words.

A moment later, Yan Sishi cleared his throat, and only then could he speak again: “Was the birthday good, at least?”

“Of course… I don’t think I’ll ever have a birthday this good again.”

Yan Sishi watched her nod, deeply and sincerely.

But he could no longer tell whether she meant it, or whether she was trying to comfort him.

If she had truly been happy, she would not have pronounced his sentence at this particular moment.

Perhaps it was his silence that had made her feel she still needed to say something more. She looked at him and said: “…I’m sorry. I hope you don’t think I’m some unreasonable, awful, melodramatic person.”

“I have never thought that.”

Those days in high school had been, for him, complete chaos — and had ended all the more abruptly and without warning. And she was one of the very few bright points he could summon when looking back on that time.

Yan Sishi reached out and pointed toward the glove compartment on her side. “Your birthday gift is in there. I still hope you’ll accept it.”

Xia Li pressed the button and opened it. Inside sat a beautifully wrapped gift box — deep navy blue fabric-textured paper, substantial and refined in the hand.

“…Thank you.”

Yan Sishi did not accept her thanks.

There was nothing more he could do for her. It didn’t feel like a “thank you” he deserved.

Outside the car, daylight was already bright.

Yan Sishi pressed the button to unlock the door.

Xia Li pulled it open, then turned to him and said “good morning.”

He appeared to make a sound — some murmur of acknowledgment — but she couldn’t be certain it had actually left his throat. Everything in front of him had taken on a slightly blurred, unfocused quality.

The car door closed.

A moment later, it opened again.

He immediately looked up.

Xia Li was standing just outside the door, the morning light all around her, her outfit one impossible-to-hold shade of moonlit white.

She said: “The third wish I made on my birthday was for you to be happy — I meant that sincerely… I hope there will be someone like that, who stays with you to make it come true.”

He said nothing, only looked at her. His mind seemed to have gone still, unable to follow what she was saying.

Who else could that be, besides her?

Xia Li paused for a moment — as though waiting for him to say “thank you.”

He knew it was rude. He simply could not.

She said “goodbye” once more, and the car door closed again.

Yan Sishi watched through the window as that silhouette walked into the complex, until she could no longer be seen.

He lowered his head and rested it against the steering wheel.

His heart felt as though someone had injected a rapidly-freezing solution directly into it, and his blood began to slow to a halt.

Dark water rose over him.

That sensation of something closing around the throat — unable to cry out, unable to breathe — was sickeningly familiar.