“What a coincidence,” Yu Cisheng said.
“Not really a coincidence,” Huo Ranyin replied. “You reminded me this morning that it was the Spring Equinox, which is why I thought to come here to pay my respects.”
“I am reminded every day by someone, too,” Yu Cisheng said.
Huo Ranyin glanced at the coffin Yu was lying in and the traditional, embroidered burial shroud he was wearing. “Reminded to perform this kind of ritual?”
“Yes, this ritual.” Yu Cisheng raised his arms, his fingers smoothing out the wrinkles in the shroud. “I had a weak constitution when I was little. When I was four or five, I nearly didn’t pull through. The hospital couldn’t save me, so my father—I don’t know where he heard this superstitious idea—had a coffin built for me. He made me put on the shroud and lie inside to ‘play dead,’ saying it was a way to ‘deceive the Impermanence (Death).’ Perhaps it wasn’t my time to die; after doing this, I really did deceive Death and recovered. Since then, my father has believed in it implicitly and insists on doing it every year.”
He spoke of his own affairs, yet there was little expression on his face.
Ji Xun noticed that inside this massive coffin, there was a book lying face down. As the funeral procession carried him up the mountain, was he actually lying in the coffin reading?
“It was fine in previous years; just wearing the shroud and lying in the coffin for a while for the ceremony was enough. But turning thirty this year, my father felt uneasy and insisted on making a huge spectacle of it.”
He spoke briefly, looked at the entire funeral procession around him, then squinted and looked up at the sky. The sky was, of course, invisible—only the rolling expanse of black fabric draped between him and the sunlight.
Yu Cisheng’s face and skin were white—a snow-like color that, even under the sunlight dimmed by the black umbrellas, shimmered with a fine, clear radiance. He looked like an elf from the snow, placed under the sun.
Beautiful, indeed, but one couldn’t help but worry he might dissolve into the light. It was no wonder Yu Cisheng’s family was so worried.
An elf from the snow?
Ji Xun’s heart skipped a beat. He captured a vague impression and immediately began searching his memory palace. He felt this wasn’t his first time meeting this person.
“Let me make introductions,” Huo Ranyin said. “Yu Cisheng, my neighbor and friend from when I was a child. Ji Xun, my boyfriend.”
Ji Xun glanced at Huo Ranyin. Given Huo’s character, the fact that he was so direct about their relationship suggested that Yu Cisheng held an extraordinary significance to him, likely exceeding the boundaries of “neighbor” and “friend.”
“Hello,” Yu Cisheng extended his hand toward Ji Xun.
“Hello.” Ji Xun stepped forward and shook hands with him.
He had walked past those people in black, holding black umbrellas; they waited patiently, showing no reaction to Yu Cisheng stopping halfway to chat with Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin. The service was certainly thorough.
As their hands met, Yu Cisheng’s hand wasn’t particularly cold—in fact, it was less cold than Huo Ranyin’s. If anything, it felt like jade: warm and smooth, neither cold nor hot, and lacking much of a human “vibe.”
They shook hands briefly and quickly parted. Yu Cisheng didn’t rush to talk to Ji Xun, turning instead to Huo Ranyin. “Since we’ve met, come up with me and light a stick of incense for me.”
Huo Ranyin raised an eyebrow.
“After I’m done here, I’ll go with you to pay respects to your family,” Yu Cisheng added. “Since we’ve run into each other at such a moment, it’s only right to pay respects.”
That was true. Since they had bumped into each other here and were old neighbors, paying respects to each other’s families was fitting—even if Yu Cisheng’s incense ritual was a bit strange.
Huo Ranyin lowered his eyebrow, took Ji Xun along, and followed Yu Cisheng’s funeral procession forward.
With a shout, the procession moved on. This time, they, too, were members under the rolling sea of black umbrellas.
The Yu family had risen in status during the generation of Yu Cisheng’s father, who had started by reselling home appliances and later opened a company. Riding the wave of national development and possessing a knack for business, he had made a fortune. However, land is limited, and mountains are finite.
Thus, even though the Yu family’s current wealth far surpassed the Huo family’s, “late is late.” The Yu family cemetery was still located below the Huo family cemetery.
Yu Cisheng, however, did not seem to care.
They entered the Yu cemetery. After the singing and playing of instruments and Huo Ranyin lighting a stick of incense, before Huo could even fully place the incense into the burner, Yu Cisheng had already stepped out of the coffin.
He took off the burial shroud, put his own clothes back on, and commented with a bland expression:
“The placebo effect of superstition.”
Since the superstitious activities were over, it was time to head to Huo Ranyin’s cemetery. He didn’t want anyone to follow, so he held his own black umbrella and walked beside Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin.
The distance wasn’t far; after walking a bit further up, they arrived at the spot.
As they chatted casually along the way, Ji Xun looked at Yu Cisheng twice and suddenly said, “Mr. Yu, I feel like you look familiar.”
“Is that so? You look very familiar to me, too, Mr. Ji.” A faint smile appeared on Yu Cisheng’s face—thin as the frost on a leaf vein in winter; there one moment, gone the next.
No.
This was certainly not just a polite compliment to get close.
Ji Xun had already completed his memory search. He had accurately pinpointed the time and place of his first meeting with Yu Cisheng:
Six years ago, in the mountains of Nepal.
He had already started working by then and was doing well, having saved up his annual leave to travel abroad. Unexpectedly, he encountered an avalanche. He had managed to find a cave in time and worked with the tour guide to organize the others to hide inside while sending messages to the rescue team below.
That avalanche had been a narrow escape.
Soon, the rescue team found the cave where they were hiding. By then, they had already started a fire; the roaring flames dispelled the chill of the icy world. They shared the food and water brought up by the rescue team along with their own, and sitting around the fire in that cave… they had told stories.
He couldn’t remember who had suggested it.
In short, they had imitated the “if the story isn’t told well, you get eaten” trope. Whoever told a bad story had to perform a talent. Compared to storytelling, it seemed more people were better at performing talents.
Ji Xun remembered listening to a few songs and watching some lively magic tricks. As for what stories were told, he had forgotten—he could recall them if he really tried, but there was no need.
Later, it was his turn. He told a story… a crime story from the perspective of the perpetrator.
Among the listeners, everyone on the bus knew he was a police officer, as he had revealed his identity to maintain order during the avalanche. They had been surprised, perhaps expecting a story about police catching criminals. But in reality, the cases he had handled during his internship were mostly straightforward—what twists and turns were there to tell? Abstract, wild reasoning fiction was much more interesting.
That was likely his first time spinning a story, improvised on the spot, but the suspense kept his audience captivated. The final twist had everyone cheering.
Then, someone in the crowd spoke up, guessing the second layer of the twist he had hidden in the story. They offered high praise that resonated deeply with him and subtly suggested that the first-person psychological monologue could have been described more delicately.
They had talked happily. It felt as if he had spoken more to this person, but unfortunately, those casual remarks were like all the other little stories he couldn’t remember, left behind on that snowy mountain.
But he still remembered the eyelashes and eyes of the person he had seen during the conversation.
Snow-white eyelashes, pale eyes.
In speech and action, an elf of the snow; in stillness, a statue of a mountain god.
Yu Cisheng.
He remembered their first meeting, but Yu Cisheng did not seem to.
…Did he really not remember?
Ji Xun thought of the rows of signed books he had seen in the study he once visited.
He had always had extraordinary confidence in his intuition. Bringing up the memory of the snow mountain during their chat wasn’t in bad taste—after all, not everyone had a memory as sharp as his—but this, he could talk about.
“Ranyin took me to Mr. Yu’s home. I saw the books I wrote in your home. Plus, you told me that Mr. Yu likes to do charity work, and among the support organizations for my books, there just happens to be a ‘Xing Yi Shan Charity Foundation’… May I boldly guess that this foundation was founded through your investment, Mr. Yu?”
Yu Cisheng listened quietly until the end. “Does Mr. Ji enjoy guessing riddles?”
Ji Xun: “As much as Mr. Yu enjoys doing charity, I think.”
Yu Cisheng suddenly smiled.
This time, his smile became genuine, as if the snow had gained temperature, instantly becoming amiable and lovely.
He nodded at Ji Xun:
“You are very good at riddles, and you write very well. The mantra of ‘Xing Yi Shan’ is ‘do one good deed a day.’ It’s good, I like it very much. The world is vast; many things depend on fate. I had the good fortune to see a story I liked so much that I wanted to do something I liked for the story I liked.”
“Hmm,” Ji Xun said.
Surprised? A little. Not surprised? Also true.
“Wait.” Huo Ranyin, hearing this, frowned and asked Yu Cisheng, “You not only like his books, you even founded a foundation for him?”
“That’s right,” Yu Cisheng said.
“That sounds a bit strange,” Huo Ranyin commented.
“My behavior isn’t strange; your heart is just a bit small,” Yu Cisheng replied. “Or perhaps next time the foundation organizes author signings in other cities, I’ll have them remember to book double-travel tickets?”
“And was the Qin University Affiliated High School also a place you specifically singled out?” Huo Ranyin asked.
“It happened to be on the selection list, and remembering it was once your school, I chose it,” Yu Cisheng said.
The conversation between the three did not last long.
Soon, the Huo family cemetery arrived.
This was Huo Ranyin’s first time here. The iron-colored gate was foreign, the high courtyard walls were foreign, and even the pines and cypresses behind the walls, standing like lines of soldiers, were foreign.
After knocking on the closed iron gate and explaining their identity to the surprised staff, Huo Ranyin was finally able to enter with Ji Xun and Yu Cisheng.
Once inside, they followed the stone path to where the gravestones stood.
When they reached the final stretch, Ji Xun and Yu Cisheng slowed their pace simultaneously, letting Huo Ranyin go forward alone.
Humans are social animals, but they also need independent space. Huo Ranyin, who had never come to see his family’s gravestones before, likely needed these few minutes of solitude.
Living while facing life, walking toward death when old—the path in between is winding and difficult to climb, and in the end, it all becomes a few bright red characters on a grey gravestone.
Huo Ranyin’s hand gripped the identification report he had received that morning.
When people die, they turn to ash; no soul, no consciousness remains. What happens in the world has nothing to do with those who have passed.
But sometimes, even those with the firmest will cannot help but superstitiously wonder: If the dead are still lying beneath the ground, eyes wide open, watching the world of the living, what should be done?
When the truth is ugly, and the happiness is real—should one use the ugly truth to shatter a real happiness?
Ahead, Huo Ranyin stood in silence before the gravestone. Behind him, away from him, Yu Cisheng and Ji Xun stood together.
Yu Cisheng suddenly spoke: “Watching Huo Ranyin today, he hasn’t been moving very easily. Is he injured?”
“Back injury,” Ji Xun replied.
“The back, again.”
That word “again” made Ji Xun look at Yu Cisheng more closely.
As if chatting casually, Yu Cisheng said to Ji Xun: “If you are together, you must have seen the burn scars on his back. Those are marks from when he was scalded by boiling water as a child.”
“How was he scalded?” Ji Xun asked.
“His mother was bathing him and didn’t mix the water properly. The water, which had just boiled not long before, was poured straight onto his back, causing the burns. Because Huo Ranyin didn’t scream or cry when he was scalded, it took a long time for his mother to notice and send him to the hospital. He told me about this incident later.”
Yu Cisheng, who had been looking straight ahead, tilted his head slightly. His translucent pupils fixed on Ji Xun. Because there was no focal point, it held a kind of hazy, aesthetic beauty. This was a common visual impairment in albinos, a defect that could not be corrected by surgery.
As those pupils, which felt like transparent glass slides, landed on him, Ji Xun felt a subtle shiver, as if fearing the ominous content he sensed was coming next.
“We were both very small then, having just met not long before. I told him that if he couldn’t cry at home, he could come to my house; no one would bully him there. But in the end, he didn’t cry,” Yu Cisheng finished. “He was very happy. He didn’t think the scalding was a big deal at all. He said that that time, his mother had held him.”
