The following morning, the three of them left the fishing island in high spirits.

Wen Shubai, without a shred of apology, informed Yan Sishi that he was absolutely required to buy business-class tickets — or there would be no next time.

On the plane, Xia Li had picked up an in-flight magazine and spread it open on her tray table.

She noticed that Yan Sishi, seated in the adjacent seat, kept glancing at her. She turned to him. “What’s wrong?”

Flipping idly through the magazine, she asked in passing, “Will you be going to Lin Qingxiao and Nie Chuhang’s wedding?”

“Nie Chuhang invited me, but I…”

Xia Li noticed his tone carried some hesitation. She turned to look at him. His gaze was slightly lowered, as though he were weighing how to explain.

“If you have other plans, it’s really fine not to go.”

Yan Sishi shook his head. His tone was very quiet. “I haven’t been back to Chucheng in many years. There are some… not-so-pleasant memories there.”

Xia Li felt a jolt inside and hesitated before asking, “…Because of your mother?”

A long pause. Yan Sishi let out a soft “mm.”

Xia Li didn’t ask further. She could see the restrained pain in his eyes.

They were already off to such a good start. There was no need to rush.

She said, “It’s fine if you don’t go. It’s one of those big banquet-style weddings — in a small town, it probably won’t be anything very special.”

Yan Sishi nodded and said nothing more.

Xia Li had been flipping through the magazine without much attention, then stole a glance at Yan Sishi and suddenly said, “There’s something I’ve made up my mind about.”

Yan Sishi looked at her. “Oh?”

She blinked, smiling. “Today at noon — you can take me to lunch.”

Yan Sishi gave a quiet laugh. “Alright. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.”

Lin Qingxiao and Nie Chuhang’s wedding was set for October 4th.

On the afternoon of the 2nd, Xia Li accompanied Jiang Hong for a stroll and a hair appointment on Tiānxīng Street. During a quiet moment she pulled out her phone to take a look, and found that the wedding guest group chat Lin Qingxiao and Nie Chuhang had temporarily created had suddenly come to life with a sign-up thread.

Scrolling back, she found that someone had proposed a pre-wedding get-together, so everyone could have a proper catch-up — the wedding day itself was sure to be rushed, and after it was over, people would all have their own plans and gradually start leaving Chucheng.

Those signing up were indicating they’d attend.

Xia Li added her name to the list.

By the time she checked the chat again a little while later, the venue and responsibilities had already been sorted out. Some people were handling drinks and cigarettes; others were taking care of snacks and fruit — someone had even put together a simple spreadsheet to keep track of it all, with clear assignments for everyone.

Someone in the chat asked: Is Class 7 joining with Class 18?

Someone from Class 18 replied: What’s the matter — does Class 7 not want to hang out with us?

Someone chimed in to stir things up: Isn’t that great though? Class 7 has more girls, Class 18 has more guys. Tonight we can all have another look at each other — who knows, after all these years, maybe someone will suddenly see someone in a new light.

Jiang Hong’s hair appointment took some time. Once she was done, Xia Li followed the address shared in the chat and headed over.

It was a villa — she wasn’t sure which classmate had provided the venue.

Inside, it was quieter than she’d expected. The speakers were playing the songs that had been popular when they were in school — Jay Chou, JJ Lin, Sun Yanzi, Mayday, and others.

The table was piled high with neatly cut fruit, and snacks of every variety covered the surface. Drinks and alcohol were freely available for the taking.

Xia Li first found Lin Qingxiao and Nie Chuhang and said hello to them both.

Lin Qingxiao had just dyed her hair a few days ago — a beautiful, glossy chestnut-brown. Her nails were freshly done too: a soft pink cat-eye effect.

She had already been complimented countless times that evening, with someone even announcing that if anyone wanted to make off with the bride, this was the last chance — step up now.

Nie Chuhang told them to knock it off. Getting this far had cost him everything — if someone swooped in and snatched her at the last moment, he truly had nothing left to live for.

Xia Li then went to look for Xu Ning, who was deep in conversation with a classmate from Class 18 who worked in the aerospace industry. She was saying she’d just accepted a script with an aerospace theme and was getting a head start on research.

Not wanting to interrupt, Xia Li went to the refreshments table to get a drink.

Someone tapped her gently on the shoulder.

She turned around. It was Ouyang Jing.

“Didn’t you say you were only coming back tomorrow?” Xia Li smiled.

“I thought about it and decided to come back a day early. I was worried about being tired from the journey and showing up to the wedding looking puffy. Makeup never sits right on a puffy face.”

Ouyang Jing was one of Lin Qingxiao’s four bridesmaids.

“Your boyfriend didn’t come with you?”

Ouyang Jing shook her head. “We’re not at the meet-the-parents stage yet.”

Ouyang Jing looked at her and smiled. “What about a certain someone? He’s not here?”

“Nie Chuhang invited him, but he said he wasn’t coming.”

“What’s the situation between you two these days? After the whole Class 7 search party incident — was there ever a follow-up?” Ouyang Jing asked with a grin.

“That’s a story for when we can grab dinner just the two of us. You’re so hard to pin down, Teacher Ouyang.”

“Can’t help it — we have so many rehearsals, and it’s not easy to get time off.”

As they were talking, more people came over.

It was Xiao Yulong, and he had someone in tow — a young woman.

Xia Li greeted them. “Your girlfriend?”

“My fiancée.” Xiao Yulong’s smile was so wide it nearly reached his ears.

“Wow, congratulations!”

The young woman smiled warmly. “Thank you.”

Xiao Yulong hadn’t pursued graduate school after his undergraduate degree — instead he’d sat the civil service exam and returned to Chucheng, where he now worked in the municipal government’s publicity department. His fiancée was from the same office.

Compared to when Xia Li had last seen him at the class reunion four years ago, he seemed to have filled out a little — what one might call “happiness weight.”

His fiancée smiled at him. “See, everyone agrees you’ve put on weight.”

Xiao Yulong immediately swapped his can of beer for a bottle of plain water. “The diet starts today!”

Xia Li spent a while after that chatting with the Class 7 class monitor, Zhu Xuan.

Near the sofas, a group had gradually gathered, deep in some very animated conversation. Xia Li picked up a can of 7UP and drifted over. All the sofa seats were taken, so Ouyang Jing nudged the guy next to her to squeeze in and made a little room for Xia Li.

“Is that enough space?” Ouyang Jing asked.

Xia Li squeezed in next to her. “Plenty.”

Ouyang Jing put an arm around her shoulder. “You’re so slim — you barely take up any room.”

“You study dance and you’re saying that to me? Is your waist eighteen inches?”

Ouyang Jing laughed.

Listening in for a bit, Xia Li gathered that the topic was secret crushes from high school — who had liked whom.

One guy confessed that he’d had a crush on a girl in the art stream who painted, and had kept slipping tubes of titanium white paint into her desk drawer, because he’d heard she went through them quickly.

Those who painted and those who didn’t both agreed: that’s romantic. Practical and romantic at the same time.

From there the conversation branched out, and people began sharing small, romantic things they’d done back then that no one had ever known about.

Bringing milk and fruit, writing love letters — those were just the basics.

Someone said they’d lied about living in the same neighborhood as their crush just to have a reason to walk home with him after evening self-study. They’d ride to his stop, then secretly double back and transfer to another bus — and kept this up for a year and a half.

Someone else said that during a class play, the girl he liked was desperate for the female lead — so he treated a bunch of people to meals and convinced them to withdraw from competing with her.

Someone said their crush had gotten into a fight with her parents on her birthday and was in a bad mood, so he’d spotted an opportunity and dropped fifty yuan on the corridor floor in advance, hoping she’d find the money and feel a little better — but the girl was too honest and handed it straight to the lost-and-found.

At this point, Xiao Yulong smiled and said, “I’ll share one too.”

Everyone looked at him.

He said, “So I could keep doing cleaning duty with her, I became best friends with the labour commissioner. Every semester when the duty schedule was drawn up, I’d bribe him with a good meal.”

Xia Li froze.

She looked at Xiao Yulong.

She remembered — at that KTV gathering during the final year of high school, Xiao Yulong had seemed to sing a song called Enough, that barely veiled deep feeling and the things left unsaid.

Someone teased, “Does your future wife know about this?”

Xiao Yulong put his arm around his fiancée’s shoulder. “She knows everything. And I know all her stories too.”

Then Xiao Yulong glanced sideways at Xia Li, eyes smiling.

That look seemed to say: The past is the past. Who doesn’t have a story buried somewhere in their youth?

The confessions continued around the circle, and eventually it was Xia Li’s turn.

She held her can of 7UP, took a sip, thought for a moment, and said, “I was head of the school broadcast team, right? On his birthday, I used my position for personal reasons and played his favourite music on the broadcast for the whole afternoon — every song was by singers he liked.”

Someone let out a quiet exclamation. They said, imagining themselves in the shoes of that person — hearing every single song on the broadcast being something you love — how must that have felt? Like someone was completely in sync with you.

Several of the Class 7 classmates sitting on the floor turned around and grinned. “Can’t tell with you at all — back then you always seemed so quiet and reserved. So who was it? Who were you doing this for?”

Xia Li smiled and shook her head, refusing to say.

A few of them started guessing wildly, asking if it was the most handsome guy in the class back then — the one who played Zhang Xueliang in the drama production.

Xia Li kept denying it, feeling more and more cornered. She put down her can and stood with a smile. “I’m just going to pop to the bathroom.”

The villa’s layout was neat and regular; the bathroom was at the end of the corridor.

She’d just turned into the corridor when the door on her left suddenly opened and someone stepped out.

Xia Li looked up and blinked — then her surprise gave way to delight.

A vintage pendant light with six glass panels hung from the ceiling of the corridor. Its warm glow was slightly richer than moonlight, casting the person standing beneath it in a wash of amber.

“Yan Sishi? How did you — didn’t you say you weren’t…”

But Yan Sishi was already looking at her. There was something in his expression — a deep, still opacity, like the bottom of a dark pool. “So it was you.”

Xia Li startled.

Yan Sishi suddenly reached out and caught her wrist.

He was rarely this forceful. The urgency in the movement left no room for argument.

The door clicked shut behind them without a sound.

It was a bedroom; the walls were papered in pale beige vertical stripes.

Her back was against the wall now, and Yan Sishi stood before her, still holding her wrist, his voice low and pressing as he asked again: “It was you, wasn’t it?”

The room’s soundproofing was somewhat ordinary. Through the wall, Xia Li could make out the voices from the living room — not crystal clear, but enough to follow without difficulty. Especially in that kind of atmosphere, where people’s spirits were high and voices carried louder than usual.

“…You heard.”

“Yes.”

She was standing in the shadow cast by Yan Sishi’s frame blocking the bedroom light overhead. His grip on her wrist hadn’t loosened at all. He didn’t step back — just stood there, head lowered, looking at her.

She would be lying if she said she wasn’t at all flustered. This time it truly felt like being caught with a cheat sheet; even the tips of her ears were burning. She glanced up briefly, not quite daring to meet Yan Sishi’s eyes, and said softly, “…Can we go outside to talk?”

The two of them slipped out through the back door, entirely unnoticed.

A wind had picked up outside, carrying the cool dampness of early autumn.

Xia Li smoothed a hand over her hair and looked at Yan Sishi walking beside her. “…You said you weren’t coming.”

Yan Sishi said, “I changed my mind at the last moment.”

“When did you get here?”

“This afternoon.”

“I didn’t see you when I arrived.”

“I was in the bedroom sleeping.”

A thought occurred to Xia Li. “…Do you live here?”

Yan Sishi made a sound of confirmation.

He was clearly somewhat distracted, his mind on something more pressing he needed to confirm.

They stepped out of the residential complex. Just ahead was a river.

Yan Sishi stopped on the bridge, and Xia Li halted beside him.

He propped one arm against the stone railing of the bridge, turned slightly, and looked at her.

He didn’t speak — as if he was placing the entire initiative of the conversation in her hands. To say or not to say was entirely her choice.

Xia Li leaned against the railing, gazing at the dark water flowing beneath her feet. The lights along both banks were reflected in it — points of shimmer rising and sinking, floating and drifting — much like her mood at that moment.

“…Where do I even begin.” Xia Li glanced at Yan Sishi, met his deep, ocean-dark gaze, and quickly looked away again.

She felt as though a sixteen-year-old soul still lived inside her, making her contradictory and conflicted. Her heart felt like a crumpled piece of letter paper, covered in thoughts that no one had ever read.

At last, she spoke. Her voice carried a faint undercurrent of emotion. “…In the winter of 2015, a classmate came to Beicheng on a work trip — he was the one who transferred from our Class 7 to your international cohort. I took him to dinner, and quietly asked if he knew anything about where you were. He told me he’d heard you were studying at Caltech. In March of 2016, I took a work trip as an excuse to go to Los Angeles. The schedule was very tight; I could only carve out a single day. That whole day, from morning until night, I stayed on the street with the most foot traffic I could find. Every time a young man appeared in the distance, I thought — could that be you…”

Yan Sishi went still.

He finally understood why, on the day they met again, when he mentioned he’d been at MIT, she’d let out that quiet, wistful sigh.

“Of course, you can imagine the outcome. You were at MIT, not Caltech. Los Angeles and Boston — one on the west coast, one on the east, separated by the entire breadth of the American continent.”

She still remembered how she’d felt on the return flight, earphones in, listening to Covert Love Flight — you haven’t descended to earth; I have no wings.

No matter how many miles you accumulated, they were never enough to redeem a single chance encounter.

“Do you remember — in the second semester of our second year of high school, on my birthday, you gave me a postcard?”

Yan Sishi felt a dull, icy ache open in his chest. He nodded.

“The Singapore Underwater World closed in June 2016. I never made it there in person…”

She seemed to have conceived the idea of letting go precisely when she learned it had closed.

No matter how hard you chased, you couldn’t keep pace with the vast and moving world, with the tide of human lives. The people you lost were lost forever; all flourishing things came, in the end, to an end.

Xia Li turned her head and looked at him through a film of gathering mist in her eyes. “Yes, Yan Sishi — I liked you for many years. From the very first time we met. Every chance encounter you might remember — nearly all of them were the result of my careful arranging, including the day of your birthday. I quietly noted down your birthday the day we went to the library, and later I sneaked a look at your music playlist… Planning the broadcast for you that day took me a long time. And I had a hunch you might be in the clock tower classroom…”

So she had memorized his birthday. She knew he couldn’t eat spicy food. She read the books he recommended to others.

That magazine — he was certain now. That had to have been from her too.

Everything could be connected now.

He had always known he wasn’t oblivious — he had simply been unconsciously avoiding the idea, refusing to let those scattered clues lead him in that direction. He had been gone so long, without a word.

If she had liked him, then he was the most heartless, the most contemptible person in the world.

A scalding ache rose in his chest — not only because of her eyes, which were now misted with tears, but because he understood: the world was unpredictable, and it had kept him trapped within it.

He had missed her for too long. Far, far too long.

He looked back and retraced those moments: those eyes, whenever they looked at him, always carrying something quietly tender; the gym clothes returned freshly washed; the secret place they had shared; the lunch she had insisted on treating him to…

All the winds that had blown between them. All those silences, quiet as the wind…

So all of it had held within it her hidden, precious feelings.

This time he did not ask “may I.” Even if the answer were no.

He reached out, seized the arm she had resting on the railing, and pulled her into his arms in one motion, holding on tightly.

When her forehead lightly struck his chest, that ache did not diminish in the slightest — it surged, doubled, because of the reality of her breath against him and the warmth of her tears.

“…I’m sorry. I was too slow to understand.” He felt as though even breathing was tearing at something inside him.

She shook her head gently in his arms.

The patch of his shirt over his heart grew warm and damp — like a brand searing into his skin.

He heard her voice, a quiet, tear-softened murmur: “…The reason I chose to tell you all of this is because these feelings have long since passed their expiry date and have no practical meaning anymore. What matters is now. And what comes after…”

“…Is there a place for me — in your now and your after?”

“I…”

Yan Sishi pressed his hand firmly against her back. Afraid of what she might say, he immediately added: “I know. I know you need time to think. Take as long as you need — as long as it takes…”

Xia Li’s heart was utterly, completely soaked through — like a green fruit left out in the plum rains season, forgotten and unmindful, waterlogged until it turned soft and tart.

Everything in the world blurred in the sound of the wind. The only thing left in her ears was his low, steady voice —

“This time, I’ll be the one waiting for you.”