Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My mom’s name is Zhou Lan.

Fifty years old, a retired elementary school Chinese teacher. She likes wearing pale wool sweaters, speaks in a gentle, soft voice, and even when she loses her temper, all she ever says is, “How can you be so stubborn, child?”

My dad died ten years ago, and she never looked for anyone else.

I tried to talk her into it once. She set down her spatula and said, “I’m busy raising you. I don’t have time.”

Then, when I was twenty-nine, she suddenly started going on blind dates.

Not the kind relatives force you into.

She was proactive. Proactive to the point of seeming a little strange.

First she bought new dresses, then dyed her hair. She even dragged me from downstairs at my office to the mall and asked me which lipstick made her look healthier.

I said, “Mom, did you get scammed by some senior dating group?”

She smacked me lightly. “Watch your mouth. He’s only forty-six.”

“Forty-six still won’t do.”

“Why not?”

I looked at her and held it in for a long time before saying, “Just a few days ago, you said I was still young at twenty-nine.”

She smiled faintly. “Whether you’re young is my business. Whether I’m old or not is my business too.”

That shut me up.

My mom rarely spoke like that.

Before, she always put her own matters last.

When she bought clothes, she first asked whether I had a jacket for the changing season. When we ate shrimp, she peeled them for me first. She hid her medical checkup reports and said everything was fine.

Now that she had suddenly said “my business,” my heart ached, and I didn’t dare stop her too forcefully.

But on the day of the blind date, I still secretly followed her.

The place was an old book café in the south of the city.

My mom sat by the window, her back very straight, like it was her first time teaching an open class.

I sat diagonally behind her, wearing a hat, holding the menu so high it was almost pressed to my face.

The server asked what I wanted to drink.

I said, “Whatever.”

She glanced at me. “We don’t serve whatever.”

Just as I was feeling awkward, the wind chime at the door rang.

A man walked in.

He wore a black coat and was very tall, with a little rain on his shoulders.

It was May, and it clearly wasn’t raining outside.

My fingers trembled, and coffee spilled onto the edge of the table.

Three years ago, on that stormy night, I had seen him under a bridge in the old district.

Back then, I had just finished revising drawings for a client and couldn’t get a cab, so I could only jog all the way to the subway station.

The water under the bridge was deep, and a man lay collapsed in it.

He looked no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven. His white shirt was soaked through with blood, and in his hand he clutched a bus ticket ruined by the water.

I called the police, but he seized my sleeve.

“Don’t call the police.”

“Don’t let me go back.”

I thought he had run into debt collectors, and my voice changed with fear. “Then I’ll call an ambulance.”

He stared at me.

Rainwater dripped from his eyelashes, and he suddenly asked, “What’s the date today?”

I said, “June twelfth.”

He closed his eyes, as if he had finally come back to life.

“Xu Zhixia.”

My whole body stiffened.

“You know me?”

He didn’t answer. He only stuffed that bus ticket into my palm.

“If one day your mom wants to go on a blind date, don’t stop her.”

After saying that, he passed out.

I called an ambulance.

But before the ambulance arrived, he disappeared.

Only a bus ticket remained in the water.

There was no bus number on that bus ticket, only a line of tiny words.

Jiugang North Station, Twenty Years Later.

After that, I treated it as a hallucination brought on by staying up too late.

Until today.

That twenty-six-year-old man sat down across from my mom.

He had aged.

Not the normal aging of three years.

There were fine lines at the corners of his eyes, a patch of white at his temples, and faint old scars on the backs of his hands.

But I recognized his eyes.

He recognized me too.

He called me “Senior.”

My mom turned back and saw me without showing the slightest surprise.

She even beckoned. “Zhixia, come here.”

When I stood up, my legs were a little numb.

The man stood up as well.

I heard myself ask, “Who exactly are you?”

He looked at me, his voice very low.

“Liang Yan.”

“You saved me three years ago.”

My mom pushed the glass of water toward me.

“Sit down and talk.”

I looked at her. “You knew I would come?”

My mom nodded.

“I also knew you would sit at the third table diagonally behind me.”

A chill crept down my back, bit by bit.

“Who told you?”

Liang Yan looked out the window.

His pale face was reflected in the glass.

“You did.”