“He was a draft blowing through an open corridor. Blowing without rest, from south to north, year upon year.”

— Sherry Lab, The Ninth Year Past the Dream

Xia Li pushed open the private room door and walked down a corridor blazing with light.

As the warm air from inside rushed out, so did a row of eyes, turning toward them all at once.

Ouyang Jing, who had been seated on the sofa, shot to her feet. She seemed momentarily at a loss, clutching Lin Qingxiao’s arm. The delight was written plainly across her face.

Nie Chuhang came over. “How did you two end up coming in together?”

“I was going to step out for some air,” Xia Li said, “and I ran into him right at the front door.”

She did not mention that Yan Sishi hadn’t known the room number and had been on the verge of going home.

Among the friends Nie Chuhang had invited, two had also attended the intensive physics competition training and knew Yan Sishi from that. They greeted him and asked if he wanted to join their card game.

Yan Sishi told them to go ahead without him — he had just arrived and would sit for a while first.

He scanned the room briefly, then settled at the far end of the long sofa.

Xia Li watched as Ouyang Jing glanced repeatedly toward where Yan Sishi was sitting, hesitating — but ultimately, it seemed, unable to summon the courage to move closer. She sat down beside Lin Qingxiao with three or four empty seats between them.

She heard Lin Qingxiao say teasingly to Ouyang Jing: “You’ve been waiting so long for him to show up, and now you’re not going to say a single word?”

That seemed to do it — Ouyang Jing couldn’t just sit there after that.

She straightened her hair and her skirt, then turned to Lin Qingxiao: “Do I look all right?”

She reached across the coffee table for a can of cola, took a slow, steadying breath — and then stood up and walked toward Yan Sishi.

It wasn’t even her situation to be in, and yet Xia Li’s chest tightened with unexpected anxiety. She bit her lower lip and watched, unable to look away.

Ouyang Jing held out the can of cola with a smile. “Would you like something to drink?”

Yan Sishi only raised his eyes slightly — barely glancing at the can of cola — and did not reach out to take it.

The pause stretched on a beat too long. The smile on Ouyang Jing’s face stiffened, degree by degree.

“Thank you.” The voice was like cool spring water, like a summer breeze — not cold, exactly, but completely without warmth.

And having said it, he took the can from her — only to set it directly back down on the coffee table.

The implication was clear: he was never going to open it.

Her expression crumpled at the edges, as though she might cry.

But Ouyang Jing tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, kept smiling, and tried again: “Would you like to request a song?”

“Not right now. Thank you.” The same tone as before.

As an observer, Xia Li felt a distant, low ache — a kind of secondhand sorrow.

She thought: probably no one could bear a rejection from Yan Sishi without feeling it keenly, not even someone as accomplished and self-assured as Ouyang Jing.

And had there not been that small favor of lending him her MP3 — a tiny thread of connection between them — she suspected her own fate would have been no different.

Ouyang Jing said nothing more. She turned around and went back to sit beside Lin Qingxiao.

She buried her face in Lin Qingxiao’s shoulder and stayed like that for a long time without lifting it again.

Was she crying?

Xia Li didn’t know.

Yan Sishi never joined in with the lively atmosphere.

He remained as he always was — somewhere at the edges of the noise.

In the private room, some people were singing, some were playing cards, someone had produced a dice cup for rounds of low-stakes betting, just for the small, pleasant thrill of it.

And Yan Sishi sat in the far corner of the long sofa and didn’t move.

He reached into the pocket of his down jacket, pulled out his iPod, and plugged in his earphones. He bowed his head, pressed a few buttons, then slipped out of his down jacket and laid it beside him, tucking the iPod into his hoodie pocket.

He had constructed an invisible boundary around himself. No one was going to breach it.

Ouyang Jing, wounded, stayed where she was. Lin Qingxiao urged her to come sing, and she had no heart for it.

She had dressed so carefully and come with such high hopes — and she had a voice good enough for the school’s annual Top Ten Singers competition. But tonight, none of it had been of any use.

Ouyang Jing’s family had a strict curfew; she couldn’t stay past nine, and she had to leave.

“Aren’t you going to stay a little longer?” Lin Qingxiao stood up to see her out.

Ouyang Jing shook her head, and stole one last look in Yan Sishi’s direction — half reluctant, half resigned. “…My dad’s car is almost at the entrance.”

“Then let me walk you down.”

When Lin Qingxiao came back from seeing Ouyang Jing off, she sat down beside Xia Li and rummaged through a bag for a packet of snacks to open.

With a small sigh, she said: “I’m glad the person I like isn’t some big, sought-after figure. Otherwise I’d be crushed too.”

Xia Li didn’t know what to say.

Liking someone who many others also liked — the moment you felt even a flicker of grievance, wasn’t that already losing?

She didn’t think she had ever really felt wronged. Because from the very beginning, she had never held any expectation that he would respond in kind.

“Honestly…” Lin Qingxiao turned to glance toward where Yan Sishi sat — they were quite far from him, but she still lowered her voice slightly. “He’s from Beicheng. A city like that. He must have seen so many remarkable girls. Would he really give any of us from Mingzhang a second glance?”

“…I don’t think he’s that kind of arrogant person,” Xia Li said, with some care. “I don’t think he measures people by whether they’re ‘good enough’ or not. I think he’s simply not interested. That’s all.”

Lin Qingxiao looked at her, amused. “You say that like you know him really well.”

“I’m just a bystander with a clear view,” Xia Li said, perfectly unabashed.

Tonight’s birthday boy was, of course, Nie Chuhang.

One person’s quiet departure hadn’t disrupted the general mood.

And being the guest of honor, it was inevitable that Nie Chuhang would be teased — Lin Qingxiao right along with him.

Someone queued up “Only Have Feelings for You,” and the moment the opening notes played, the room collectively shoved a microphone into each of their hands with gleeful efficiency.

Lin Qingxiao protested — no one listened, they only cheered louder — and both of them were pushed, helpless, to the center of the room.

Nie Chuhang made a last stand: “My singing is really terrible…”

“Just sing! Stop stalling!”

The top student was not being modest. When that first note came out, not a single one landed on pitch.

The room erupted in laughter.

Lin Qingxiao actually sang well, but she couldn’t pull the performance back on her own. During the duet sections, she came dangerously close to getting dragged off-key herself.

While the noise swelled around them, Xia Li quietly watched Yan Sishi.

His head was bowed, face lost in shadow. He hadn’t moved. He seemed to have fallen asleep.

It genuinely puzzled her. If he didn’t want to socialize, why had he agreed to come at all — only to sleep alone in a corner?

When Lin Qingxiao and Nie Chuhang put down their microphones and came back to sit down, Xia Li seized the moment. As they settled in, she stood and shifted two seats in Yan Sishi’s direction.

It looked perfectly natural, as if she were just making room. No one noticed.

Of course, those two were still caught up in the private little warmth of having been teased together — they had no attention to spare for anyone else.

Among the group, there was another pair tangled in something unspoken.

After a while, Lin Qingxiao and Nie Chuhang decided to give the teasers a taste of their own medicine.

Another round of noise erupted, the room growing louder and more feverish.

And Xia Li, as if drawn along by the energy of the room, grew a little bolder too.

Yan Sishi still hadn’t stirred. She was certain now that he was asleep.

And so, in a moment when no one was watching, she edged another two seats closer.

Now there was barely one person’s width of space between them.

Her heartbeat pounded like a drum. She was terrified he’d wake up suddenly.

Fortunately, he didn’t.

It felt like being back in the car on the night they first met — as close to him as this, separated by so little.

Xia Li didn’t want to use the word “handsome.” It seemed to belong to someone a little older, someone whose edges had been carved sharper, whose character had had more time to accumulate weight and edge. Perhaps in ten years, she thought, that word would finally be right for Yan Sishi.

For now, what he had was a different kind of striking — something still adolescent, still luminous with youth.

If she were to describe him with snow, she thought he would be the very first snowfall of early winter.

Lost in these idle thoughts, Yan Sishi shifted.

Her heart leaped so violently she thought it might fly out of her throat.

But he hadn’t woken. His body merely tilted slightly to one side.

The iPod in his hoodie pocket slid out with the movement and landed on the sofa cushion.

The jolt of it kept her frozen for a long moment.

When she finally came back to herself — the restless curiosity reasserted itself.

She had wondered about this for so long. The opportunity was right in front of her.

After a long internal debate, she leaned forward just a little and looked at the iPod screen.

An English song was playing.

She took out her phone, opened the text message drafts, and quietly typed in the name of the song and the artist.

Then the next one.

The private room felt as if it had split into two worlds: noise and revelry on one side, and on the other, just this quiet corner — her and Yan Sishi.

She stared at that little screen, recording each one with more focused attention than she ever gave to an English listening exam.

One song, then another.

She lost track of how much time passed. When Lin Qingxiao walked over, Xia Li quickly dimmed her phone screen and hid her secret.

“Why are you sitting over here all by yourself?” Lin Qingxiao sat down, opened a water bottle, and drank a long swallow.

“…Oh, I was just chatting with Xu Ning on QQ.”

Her pulse still hadn’t quite settled — as if she had just survived some great ordeal.

The room had been booked until ten, and the time was almost up.

Lin Qingxiao still had one more song in the queue. Unable to wait, she got up and went over to the song console to push it to the top.

Xia Li glanced at the person still sleeping beside her and hesitated a moment before gently touching his arm.

The boy opened his eyes slowly and took out one earphone.

“It looks like they’re about to wrap up,” Xia Li said softly.

Yan Sishi nodded, and put the iPod away.

Before the song system shut down, someone pushed “The King of Love Songs” to the top of the queue. Twelve minutes long — everyone passed the microphone around, verse by verse, intent on making the venue regret every promotional cent.

A few of the boys, uninterested, slipped out early.

But they were back in no time, bursting back into the room. “It’s snowing outside!”

No one sang after that. Everyone grabbed coats and started gathering their things, leaving a room in cheerful disarray, and filed out one by one.

Outside, a thin white layer had settled over the road and the trimmed shrubs in the flower beds. It must have been falling for a while already.

Under the streetlights, the fine snow fell in silence.

Yan Sishi stood just ahead and to one side, both hands in the pockets of his black down jacket, his head tilted slightly upward. Small clouds of breath drifted from him into the cold air.

“Does it snow often in Beicheng in winter?” Xia Li murmured, watching his silhouette.

She didn’t even know why she’d said it — the question had simply come out on its own.

The north. Such a remote concept to her. Growing up, she had never once left the province — her family circumstances hadn’t allowed for it — and she had no real sense of what the world beyond looked like.

Yan Sishi turned his head and looked at her, as if confirming she was actually speaking to him.

He nodded. “Do you like snow?”

“…Mm.”

“You should go to Beicheng sometime. Have a look.”

Perhaps it was just something Yan Sishi said in passing, following the thread of conversation. But after that night, it became a wish she quietly carried for a long time.

Go to Beicheng. Have a look.

Years later, in 2016, a wildly popular song came out — “My Friend the Taoist Nun.” Someone wrote in the comments section:

“You are a draft passing through an open corridor, inadvertently drawing down a mountain flood.”

Snow was settling into Yan Sishi’s dark hair, slow to melt.

Even the snow seemed to favor him.

Xia Li felt a small, indescribable ache move through her chest.

A single point of red in all the dust of the world. Ten thousand lanterns lit across the turning age.

2008 was down to its last sliver.

That day, she had stood beside the boy she liked and watched a snowfall together.