The Boeing 757, scheduled to take off at exactly 10:50, returns to a familiar city.
The company’s car comes to pick her up. The air conditioning hisses, blowing cool air with a faint scent of fruit—an air freshener’s fragrance. Sunlight filters through the tinted windows, casting light brown spots on her pale arm. Outside the car, the scorching sun blazes, tormenting the masses with a record-high temperature of 40°C.
Xiao Yang, who’s driving, chatters on with great enthusiasm about the recent media reports of historic highs—the temperature on the bridges, daily sales of air conditioners, and the rate of taxi breakdowns...
The entire city is in dire straits.
Finally, he asks, "So, how was Beijing?"
Beijing was also searing under July’s heat, with people sweating profusely. But it was nothing more than a routine of hotel, conference room, restaurant—an unchanging triangle. There were cars waiting at the door, and wherever she went, the central air conditioning made it feel like eternal spring, almost like the immortal’s caves of legend, as if a thousand years passed in the blink of an eye. If she could, she truly wouldn’t want to return to this city, infamously known as a furnace—a place rooted in the mundane world, with its bustling red dust, lovelorn men and women, all manipulated by the invisible hand behind the scenes.
Her phone rings, a so-called 16-tone melody, still a delicate sound. The familiar tune—it's the boss calling. He urges her to return to the office without delay, giving her no time to breathe. After she hangs up, Xiao Yang says, "The ringtone sounded so familiar just now, what song is that?"
She lazily replies, "It’s 'The Devils Enter the Village.'"
Xiao Yang bursts into laughter, saying, "You’re the only one quirky enough to think of something that mischievous."
The words feel faintly familiar; that person had said something similar once. He’d affectionately tousled her short hair and sighed, "You really are such a quirky child."
No! No!
That was Yang Guo’s tone toward Guo Xiang—it wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted were just three simple words [implied: "I love you"], but he was too stingy to give them. She stubbornly moved to this city, thousands of miles away from home, just for him—just to be a little closer to him, and even closer still.
The university city she had studied in was located upstream of the Yangtze River. She would write him letters on traditional hibiscus-scented stationery, with tiny ink-blue characters, each word carefully chosen: "I live at the head of the Yangtze, and you live at its tail."
The next line of that ancient poem reads: "Day after day I think of you, yet cannot see you, though we both drink from the same river."
Even now, she and he are still separated by the Yangtze. She stands on one shore, he on the other. Bridges have been built—first one, then two, then three—and now the fourth and fifth are soon to open. Yet still, they remain as distant as heaven and earth, separated by an impassable chasm.
Before her business trip, she had called him. She told him she was leaving. He had advised her to take care of her luggage and valuables, to mind her diet in the heat—rambling on, in a parental sort of way. She had said, "I’ll make time to visit the company we talked about last time. They seem to be really interested. If possible, I might not come back."
He laughed heartily, "If your boss hears that, he’ll really think you’re planning to jump ship and will be scared out of his wits."
In that instant, her smile was tinged with despair. To the company, she wasn’t that important. And to him—she mattered even less. If she truly left, if she traveled thousands or tens of thousands of miles away, he wouldn’t care at all.
She was truly useless. Despite having everything arranged, despite thinking it over time and time again, she still came back—back to this furnace, willingly letting her heart be consumed by its flames.
She remembered, once, over a small matter, she had lost her temper, blurting out without thinking: "What right do you have to tell me what to do?" He hadn’t gotten angry, but had calmly replied, "Your parents entrusted me to take care of you."
And so, she became like Ah Zi—the troubled, lonely child. If not for the dying plea of the kind-hearted Ah Zhu, why would Qiao Feng have even cared about her?
Qiao Feng would never know that, after his death, Ah Zi held his body and leapt into the endless abyss. He was dead, and she refused to live. She loved him—loved him no less than Ah Zhu did.
Sometimes, love is nothing but an empty word.
[The End]
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