Paths. Chapter Three

They stepped out of the entrance into the gray, indifferent light of day, and the silence of the teacher’s apartment was replaced by the muffled hum of the city.

The cardboard box, which Desheng now carried, seemed inappropriately light and at the same time impossibly heavy. They walked without speaking a word until Wenbo’s phone began to buzz persistently. He pulled it out, looked at the screen, and with a sigh, rejected the call.

“It’s Fang,” he said, addressing everyone and no one. “She’s calling for the fifth time already. Tomorrow I’ll be busy. We have to go to her parents’. She says I spend more time with you than with her.”

He fell awkwardly silent. There was no apology in his words, only a statement of fact — of another, parallel world demanding his presence.

“It’s okay,” Xiangliu said, and her voice was steady and understanding. “I’m helping my parents at the restaurant tomorrow too. On my feet all day.”

“Then I’ll take this to my place,” Desheng said, and no one objected.

“Just don’t lose it,” Xiangliu said, and her voice was soft, almost caring.

“I won’t,” he promised.

They parted at the intersection. Wenbo quickly turned toward the subway, Xiangliu headed towards her home, and Desheng remained alone for a moment, clutching the box like a fragile vessel filled with someone else’s life. He watched them go until their silhouettes dissolved in the evening light, and only then turned toward his own place.

He spent the evening in his room, where order and emptiness were the exact opposite of the teacher’s dwelling. There were no mountains of books here, only textbooks neatly stacked on the table, and a computer whose dark screen reflected his own face. He set the box on the floor, sank down beside it, and began sifting through the papers.

It was not a diary. These were fragments, sketches of thoughts, drafts of feelings scrawled on pages torn from school notebooks. There were no dates, no sequence — merely islands of text in an ocean of empty time. And on several of these islands, like a master’s seal on an ancient scroll, the same name was repeated.

Mei Lin.

Desheng picked up one of these sheets. The entries on it were short, separated from each other by empty space. Each one — like a separate poem.

Her voice opened a window onto a city that smelled of snow. She is like a twig of flowering plum. My pencil tried to catch her shadow but drew only a reflection in a puddle. Poems about war fell into silence — like raindrops on parched earth. There was pain in them, not victory. I wanted to ask about her sadness, but I stayed silent. As always. But sometimes silence is the only scream.

Desheng turned the sheet over. On the reverse side were just a few lines, written even more sparingly, as if words cost too much.

Water drips from the roof — in every drop her voice: quiet, stubborn, relentless. Mama used to say: “The house is crying.” If the house is crying, it is alive — it hurts too.

He picked up another scrap of paper. The entries here were even more fragmentary, like notes in the margins of someone else’s life.

Waited for her at the gates. She left for the factory. I remained on the threshold. Mama waits for Father, who won’t return. And I wait for her, not knowing if she will return. In the library, I searched for her in books. Found only myself — someone else, a stranger. Her road left behind only ripples on the water. Iron and noise. There are no poems there. Here — only emptiness. Every book is a drop into the abyss. I am drowning in this abyss. I am not me. I am a reflection.

Desheng put the sheets aside. He sat in the silence of his room but heard the hum of another time. These notes were like ancient guohua painting — a few precise strokes of ink, and the imagination fills in the rest. There was mention of a school. And a factory. But who she was, this woman with a voice like snow, remained a mystery.

The night passed unnoticed. When the first gray light touched the window, Desheng picked up his phone. He opened their group chat with Xiangliu and Wenbo — the very one where they used to arrange meetings, laugh at photos, and share trifles. His fingers typed the message on their own: “I read something. About her. About Mei Lin. He writes about the school. Our school. Maybe we try to find out something there?”

The reply from Xiangliu came almost immediately. One word: “Okay.” A message from Wenbo appeared a few minutes later. Just as short: “On Monday.”

The path was set.

Chapter Four →
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