Xia Li took all of her remaining annual leave at once and settled in contentedly at Chucheng for the time being.

Over the next few days, she and Yan Sishi spent every afternoon together at his place — sneaking around, only parting in the evenings when she had to go home.

Honestly, there was an advantage to not coming fully clean with Jiang Hong: it gave everything the secretive thrill of a high school romance carried on in hiding.

They stayed until February 27th — the twelfth day of the first lunar month. Early that morning, Xia Li accompanied Yan Sishi to visit Huo Qingyi’s grave. Naturally, Huo Jizhong and Dai Shufang came along as well.

When they met, Xia Li noticed that the bouquet Yan Sishi held was white tuberose.

She thought of his birthday, and the pale pink tuberose that had been arranged in a vase on the dining table at the Huo family home.

She understood now: those must have been Huo Qingyi’s favorite flowers in life.

The bouquet stood in wordless witness to everything.

That day the sky was overcast, the light muted and gray — but not bleak. There was only a kind of still, quiet calm.

Huo Qingyi was buried at the Dongshan Public Cemetery in the northeastern outskirts of Chucheng. It was neither the start of the new year nor the Qingming Festival, so there weren’t many people visiting that day.

Once they entered the grounds, no one spoke. Xia Li walked alongside Yan Sishi, holding a bunch of white chrysanthemums.

She could guess that his feelings in that moment must be complicated. If he hadn’t returned to Chucheng for all those years, then this was the first time he had visited the grave since Huo Qingyi’s passing.

But what exactly he was feeling — how could any outsider presume to claim they truly understood.

The only death Xia Li had personally lived through was her maternal grandfather’s, who had passed away two years ago.

But he had gone peacefully, without illness or suffering — everyone said it was a natural, well-lived death. The family had set out tables along the street, and a band had played through the night. Perhaps because she hadn’t been particularly close to her grandfather growing up and hadn’t been home often after primary school, the atmosphere hadn’t felt overwhelmingly sorrowful — only a diffuse, gentle sense of loss, at least for her.

They made their way through the grass and among the rows of grave markers. Dai Shufang, who had been walking at the front, came to a stop first.

Xia Li followed her gaze. A marble headstone, engraved with a name and dates of birth and death.

In the small black-and-white photograph — no larger than a palm — one could still see that she had been a woman of extraordinary beauty.

Yan Sishi walked up to the grave and laid down the tuberose. Xia Li followed and placed her white chrysanthemums beside them.

Dai Shufang drew the offerings from the bag Huo Jizhong was carrying. Nothing elaborate — simply things that Huo Qingyi had loved in life: a bunch of grapes, a few snow pears, a few pieces of osmanthus cake.

She arranged the three dishes in a neat row, then began tidying the fruit and pastries, placing each piece with care so that everything was arranged neatly and looked its best.

Yan Sishi watched Dai Shufang’s slightly bent back, then leaned down and took the things from her hands, saying softly: “Let me.”

The grave had been tended regularly and was clean and neat, but a few stray leaves had drifted over to one side.

Huo Jizhong noticed them and crouched down to pick them up one by one.

This whole family was restrained in the way they showed their love. Not a word was spoken throughout, yet the subdued, quietly welling grief in the air was unmistakable.

They stood in silence for a long while. Then Dai Shufang spoke — she patted Yan Sishi on the arm. “Xiao Yan, let’s go.”

Yan Sishi said softly: “Could you and Grandfather wait for me at the car park? I’d like a moment alone.”

He took out his car keys and handed them to her.

The grass was damp with dew and a little slippery underfoot. Xia Li took Dai Shufang’s arm and walked with her toward the cemetery entrance.

Dai Shufang walked slowly. “Xiao Xia, has Xiao Yan ever told you about his mother — about what her life was like?”

“He has, Teacher Dai… I know that his mother suffered from a mental illness.”

Dai Shufang let out a quiet sigh. “Did he tell you how she died?”

“Yan Sishi hasn’t told me that part yet.”

“She took her own life.” Dai Shufang said it plainly and directly.

Xia Li had turned this over in her mind before, had even dimly suspected it — but hearing it spoken aloud by Dai Shufang still sent a jolt through her chest.

Dai Shufang said: “She had been going through a difficult spell, doing better and then worse in turns. It wasn’t the first time she had tried… We’d strengthened our precautions after that, but even the most careful plan can have gaps…”

Xia Li’s mind went at once to the day of the school anniversary celebration, when Dai Shufang had answered a call and gone pale with fright, and Huo Jizhong had left before the donation ceremony had even concluded — the two of them had rushed off in a state of visible panic, with Yan Sishi in tow.

That was probably it. Huo Qingyi had nearly come to harm that day.

Dai Shufang said: eight years ago, on the 27th of February, Huo Qingyi had ordered a car in advance and slipped out of the house in the three minutes the housekeeper had stepped out to take out the rubbish. No one knew how, but she had made her way to a construction site that had sat idle for several months.

She had climbed to the roof. Perhaps she had come to her senses up there, or perhaps she lost her nerve at the last moment — but then she called Yan Sishi. She said it was very high up there, she didn’t know how to get down, and she was frightened.

Xia Li thought of that afternoon of the pledge ceremony in their final year of school, when Yan Sishi had received a phone call and walked straight out of the building.

“Xiao Yan took a cab by himself and went over. He also called us. We were on our way when we decided to call the police as well. The construction site wasn’t far — Xiao Yan was the first to arrive…”

The building had fifteen floors. A half-finished shell of a structure. The only way up was the staircase.

By the time Yan Sishi reached the roof, he was a moment too late.

Just one single moment.

He only had time to see the edge of the rooftop, and a fleeting shadow passing through the air.

Then, from below, came a dull thud.

Xia Li drew a sharp breath.

It felt as though a thousand needles had driven themselves, dense and relentless, through her heart.

She could not breathe.

“By the time the police arrived, Xiao Yan had already completely broken down…”

He had been kneeling on the concrete at the edge of the rooftop, unresponsive to everything around him.

What was described above came only later, painfully extracted piece by piece during repeated police questioning.

But after that, he never repeated a single word about what he had witnessed.

He shut himself away entirely.

At that time, Dai Shufang herself had nearly come apart. Losing a child — the words “white-haired parents burying their child” carry a weight no light expression of regret can begin to touch.

It was Huo Jizhong who forced down his own grief and held everything together — supporting his wife on one side, looking after his grandson on the other.

He specifically brought in the finest psychological counselor from Jiangcheng. The doctor assessed the situation and recommended, above all, that Yan Sishi be taken away from Chucheng — removed from the source of the trauma.

So Huo Jizhong moved quickly, and together with Dai Shufang, brought Yan Sishi back to Beicheng.

Yan Sishi had no wish to return to the Yan family home, and the place in Taoyue Lane was uninhabitable at the time. Alternative accommodation was arranged.

That period was one Dai Shufang could not bear to revisit — even now, thinking back on it, the memory felt hopeless.

But with psychological intervention, by the time summer came, Yan Sishi’s condition had stabilized considerably.

School in the United States was about to begin. Dai Shufang was reluctant to let him go alone, but he insisted he was fine.

Still worried, she went with him.

A woman approaching seventy years old — she stayed with Yan Sishi and lived with him in a foreign country for nearly a year.

In those early months in Boston, Yan Sishi kept a very regimented routine. But outside of studying, he had no contact with anyone beyond what was strictly necessary.

Dai Shufang found it almost impossible to tell whether his condition had genuinely improved.

One evening, Yan Sishi drove alone to Revere Beach and didn’t return until the early hours.

She was frightened out of her wits. She pleaded with Yan Sishi to see a therapist.

She had acquaintances in the medical field and asked them to reach out to contacts in Boston, eventually tracking down the finest therapist available there.

At first, Yan Sishi refused to go. He kept insisting that he was capable of living normally.

One day, under the accumulated weight of it all, she finally broke down and wept, telling Yan Sishi: I have already lost my only child. You cannot let me lose my child’s child as well.

It may have been something like emotional coercion — but for a person like Yan Sishi, who was always so prone to self-reflection and self-blame, the sight of a woman nearly in her seventies breaking down in tears was, without question, not without effect.

In the end, with the help of his therapist Myra, Yan Sishi’s condition gradually stabilized and began to improve. Only then did Dai Shufang consider returning to China.

She made a pact with Yan Sishi — three conditions: see his therapist every week; call home every day; and keep regular mealtimes, take his medication as prescribed, and rest properly.

From reducing his medication to stopping it entirely — by the time he was doing his graduate studies, his life had finally, largely, returned to a normal footing.

The process felt like repairing a watch that had been shattered into pieces, reassembling the movement, the escapement, the mainspring…

And yet the intricacy of a person’s inner and emotional world far surpasses any mechanical creation.

Only when the second hand began to tick again did his life start flowing once more.

As though he had endured a long and lightless winter, and survived it.

Xia Li could hardly imagine what kind of psychological abyss Yan Sishi had been living in during those years.

He was the kind of person who blamed himself when his parents argued. How was he supposed to forgive himself for those few seconds of being too late.

It must be a nightmare that never fully leaves. A shackle that can never be fully broken free of.

Having heard everything Dai Shufang told her, she turned her head away. The cold wind cut sharp against her eyes.

While Dai Shufang wasn’t looking, she quickly pressed the corner of her eye to clear the mist that had gathered there.

By now they had reached the car park and were standing beneath an evergreen cypress.

Dai Shufang took hold of Xia Li’s hand and patted it gently. “Xiao Xia — your grandfather and I are old. From here on, we are simply living out our years, one at a time. The only one I can’t stop worrying about is Xiao Yan. I’ve heard that with some psychological conditions, there’s no such thing as a complete cure — they can recur. I can see that, aside from us, you are the only person he truly trusts and relies on. May I ask you to look after him? Even if, one day, you are no longer together as a couple — as his classmate, his friend — if he ever needs someone, please be there for him…”

Something seemed to catch in Xia Li’s throat. Without any hesitation, she said: “Whatever his condition is, good or bad, I will stay by his side. I promise.”

She rarely made promises with such solemnity — she knew too well how unpredictable life could be, how easily people’s hearts could change.

But this, she was certain she could do.

Yan Sishi was not just the fantasy of her youth, the fixation of her adolescence.

He was the person she would always be willing to give everything to, without reserve — her greatest love.

The wind stirred Dai Shufang’s silvery hair. Her hands trembled the faintest degree. Tears welled in her eyes. “Thank you, Xiao Xia. Now I can rest easy.”

They waited for some time. Then Yan Sishi came walking over from the direction of the cemetery.

Xia Li saw that the hem of his trousers had been dampened by the dewy grass. His expression still held the echo of a quiet, withdrawn stillness.

What he had said, what he had thought, standing alone at the grave — she didn’t want to know, and she had no intention of prying.

That was a corner he was allowed to keep for himself. His own shoreline, his alone.

Xia Li reached out and took his hand.

His fingers were a little cold.

Yan Sishi immediately looked down at her, and his hand closed around hers. “What is it?”

Xia Li smiled, and shook her head.