【be】Proof of Existence

Lin Shen drew a sun on the north-facing wall the day after he found the hook mark.

Pencil. 2B. The one he used for sketches. The tip made four strokes on the wall — first an irregular circle, then nine radiating lines outside the circumference, uneven in length, a few crooked because his hand was shaking as he drew. Not from nerves. Not from excitement. It was from staring at a hook mark for an entire night — his eyes and his hands were no longer in the same time zone.

He stepped back to look. The sun was a size larger than the ones Su Wan used to draw, positioned about a centimeter to the left. Her suns were always small enough to be covered by a fridge magnet, tucked away in the corner of the refrigerator door, like a secret code that only she knew the password to. His sun wasn't small enough, wasn't off-center enough, the lines too rigid — an architect's fingers always produced right angles no matter what they drew.

But he didn't erase it.

He put down the pencil, went to the kitchen to brew himself a cup of coffee, carried the cup back to the living room, and sat down in that wooden chair. The hook mark on the wall was directly in front of him; the sun was to its left. Two symbols next to each other — one was a trace of her presence that couldn't be erased, the other was his response to her trace.

Then he started talking.

This was the content of the first day. He talked about the chicken breast at the supermarket yesterday, talked about the functional layout of the new project at the firm, talked about how the老板娘 at the fruit shop downstairs had gotten a new cart. The tone was exactly the same as when he used to come home from work and report his day to her — steady, unhurried, with occasional pauses. The pauses were the gaps where she would have laughed or asked "and then?" — now filled by the sound of rain.

After he finished, he stood up, reached out, and touched that sun. Graphite dust clung to his fingertips, grayish-black, like the mark left by some ritual. He wiped his fingers on his pants, then went to work.

That day was March eleventh.

He would later circle this date on the calendar. Not for commemoration — architects don't have the habit of commemorating things. He circled it because it was the first day of a new calendar.

---

Year one.

Lin Shen's life switched between two spaces. During the day, he drew blueprints at the firm, attended meetings, argued with clients about budgets. Gu Yang said he was quieter than before the incident — he used to say at least a few words during meetings, but now he said as little as possible, leaving all his words for the drawings. But his drawings were better than before.

His designs suddenly had something he couldn't articulate. It wasn't technical improvement — he'd been drawing for ten years, his skills had long hit the ceiling. It was the relationship between space and people that had changed. Before, when he designed a space, he thought about function, circulation, lighting, fire codes. Now, when he drew the first line in CAD, he would pause for three seconds at some empty spot, as if waiting for someone to tell him what should go there.

For that cultural center project he designed, one of the judges said that Lin Shen's proposal had a wall — a pure white wall with nothing hanging on it, but it sat at the very center of the entire space. All circulation paths went around it. Every line of sight ended on that wall. Like the heart of a room.

The judge asked him what the function of that wall was.

He said, waiting.

The judge didn't understand, but the proposal was approved.

After work, he returned to the north-facing apartment, changed his shoes, washed his hands, and sat down in that chair. Then started talking.

The first day he talked about work. The second day he talked about the new milk tea shop downstairs. The third day a storm hit — he sat in the chair and listened to the rain for ten minutes, then said, today's rain is lighter than that day's. He didn't say what "that day" was, but he knew Su Wan knew.

The time he spent talking wasn't fixed. Sometimes ten minutes, sometimes half an hour. Sometimes he would say only two sentences and then stop, sitting there with his eyes closed until the streetlights outside came on. He never fell asleep in that chair — it was for talking, not for resting. Sleeping was for the bed.

Gu Yang came to his new place once. He glanced at the chair facing the wall, then at the little sun on the wall.

"You drew that?"

"Yeah."

"Pretty cute."

Lin Shen didn't reply. Gu Yang didn't ask further. He stood in the living room for a moment, then noticed a set of two bowls and chopsticks on the kitchen counter — the other bowl was turned upside down on a plate, clearly unused for a long time, but washed very clean.

As Gu Yang was leaving, he turned at the door and said, "Brother, if you ever want to drink, I'm always around."

Lin Shen said okay.

Then he closed the door and went back to that chair.

That day he talked for a long time. He said Gu Yang was still wearing plaid shirts. He said Xiao Qi's boiled fish in chili sauce was really good — Gu Yang had brought a lunchbox to the office last time, and he'd tried a piece. He said the firm was moving to a new office building next year, and he was in charge of the interior design. He said Su Wan had sent an email from Line A, saying everything was fine there, asking if he wanted to come visit.

He hadn't replied to that email.

When he got to this part, he paused. Then he said, sorry, too much rambling today.

He looked at the sun on the wall. The pencil-drawn sun had been dampened by the humidity several times during the rainy season of the first year, and the edges were already starting to blur. Every few months, he would trace over it with the same pencil, pressing the scattered graphite particles back into the wall.

The third time he traced it, he noticed the sun was a little bigger than before.

He didn't make it smaller. He let it slowly grow on the wall.

---

Year three.

Lin Shen was promoted to Design Director. His office was moved to the one by the window, where he could see the plane trees downstairs. He told Su Wan about it — facing the wall — said the new office window faced south, just like the room where she used to live.

A few strands of white began to appear in his hair. Not the dramatic kind that suddenly spreads — it started at his temples, one by one, like frost on a winter morning, spreading silently. He found his first white hair while showering, catching a glint of light at his right temple in the bathroom mirror. He leaned in and looked for a minute, then continued washing his hair.

The next day, facing the wall, he said, I have white hair now.

The tone was like reporting the weather.

That year, he also did one more thing — he bought a pot of Gardenia and placed it on the windowsill. Su Wan's hand cream used to smell like Gardenia, and her diary carried the same scent. He didn't know if the Gardenia in this world was the same variety as the one in Mirror A, but every time he passed a flower shop and caught that smell, he would stop. Once, he walked three blocks and then turned back just to confirm whether the plant at the entrance of that flower shop was Gardenia.

It was. He bought the smallest pot and placed it on the north-facing windowsill.

The north-facing windowsill didn't get much light. The Gardenia didn't grow well. The leaves turned yellow, the blooming period was short — it only bloomed twice a year, and only one flower each time. But when that flower bloomed, the entire room was filled with her scent.

He sat in the chair, eyes closed, breathing that scent deep into his lungs. He remembered the first time he smelled it — it was the day Su Wan moved into his apartment. She was applying hand cream in the bathroom, and he was drawing in the living room. The scent of Gardenia drifted through the half-closed bathroom door, floating onto his drawings, into his nose. His pencil paused for a second, then continued. That night when he went to sleep, he smelled that scent lingering on his pillow. He lay there in the dark for a long time, feeling for the first time that this apartment was no longer empty.

When he lay down now, there was no scent on his pillow.

But the Gardenia had bloomed.

---

Year five.

Gu Yang got divorced.

It wasn't the kind of divorce with screaming and fighting — Xiao Qi had been transferred to work in another city, and the two had been long-distance for two years. At first they video-called every day, then every other day, then only on weekends. In the end, he realized he no longer knew what she ate every day, and she didn't know if his new shirt was gray or blue. Neither of them was at fault. Time had just worn things away, like a river wears down stones — in the end, it wasn't smoothness, but the complete erasure of the original shape.

Gu Yang came to Lin Shen to drink. On the third bottle, he buried his face in his arms and said, "My mom told me that marriage is about finding someone to argue with. But now we can't even find a reason to argue."

Lin Shen didn't say any words of comfort. He took a sip of his drink, then started talking about Su Wan. About how she left sticky notes in the refrigerator, about the starry sky she painted — the stars were faint scratch marks made with her fingernails — about how her last words were "I'll tell you tomorrow."

Gu Yang looked up at him, eyes red.

"You've never forgotten her."

"Yeah."

"Five years."

"Yeah."

"Do you think she'll come back?"

Lin Shen put down his glass and looked at the wall. The sun had been traced over so many times that its outline was no longer the irregular little circle it had been at the start — now it was a full, nearly perfect circle. The radiating lines had gone from nine to thirteen. The longest one extended from the edge of the circle all the way to right below the hook mark.

Like a real sun, shining on something that no longer existed.

"I don't know," he said. "But I'll wait."

Gu Yang didn't ask any more. He poured himself a fourth glass, drank it, then leaned back on the sofa and fell asleep. Lin Shen moved him onto the sofa, covered him with a blanket, and sat in that chair all night.

When Gu Yang woke up the next morning, Lin Shen was already dressed in his suit. On the table were a still-hot Americano and a sandwich.

"Time for work," Lin Shen said.

At that moment, Gu Yang wondered — over these five years, had he needed their friends more, or had their friends needed him more? The answer might be the latter. Because at least in Lin Shen's world, things were stable. He had a habit that would never change, and a person he would never forget. In an age where everyone was afraid of change, this constancy had instead become something reassuring.

---

Year ten.

Lin Shen was forty-five.

The architecture firm moved to a new office. He designed it himself. In his own office, he left one wall blank — facing north, with nothing hanging on it. His colleagues thought it was some kind of minimalist design philosophy. No one knew what that wall was really for.

A third of his hair had turned white. It spread from his temples to the top of his head, mixed in with the dark brown, like some kind of slow fading. His eyes were still dark brown, but his eyelids had two extra creases than before. When looking at blueprints, he had to take off his glasses and lean in close. He didn't like reading glasses — wearing them felt like admitting he was old.

His body was much worse than ten years ago. His knees ached on rainy days — an old injury from kneeling on cement floors at the hydroelectric station. But he still woke up at seven every morning. He still habitually squeezed out toothpaste in two bean-sized amounts — even though the other toothbrush was no longer in the cup.

The sun on the wall had been traced over so many times that the graphite had seeped into the wall, merging with the concrete. Even without tracing, it wouldn't disappear anymore. It had become part of the wall, just as Lin Shen's memories had become part of him. Impossible to take away.

The Gardenia had been replaced three times. Each time, after the flowering season ended, it would wither, and he would buy a new pot. The flower shop owner had come to recognize him. Every April or May, she would set aside the best pot for him in advance. Once, when he was paying, the owner said, your wife must really like Gardenia, right? He took the pot, said thank you, and didn't explain.

That spring, Gu Yang remarried.

The wedding invitation was delivered to the firm. Lin Shen glanced at the date — March eighteenth. He flipped back to check the calendar. March eleventh. Seven years ago on that day, he had drawn that sun.

At the wedding, Gu Yang raised his glass and said, in front of all the guests, that he wanted to thank someone.

"My best brother. He's an architect. He's been waiting for someone to come back. I'm not sure if that person will come back. But I am sure — "

He paused. It was so quiet you could hear birds chirping outside the hall.

"I am sure — that a person being able to remember another for this long — that in itself is something very rare."

Lin Shen sat below on the dais, the glass in his hand trembling slightly. He didn't stand up. He just nodded at Gu Yang. The nod was so small that only Gu Yang saw it.

---

Year twenty.

Lin Shen was fifty-five. He resigned from his position as Design Director, transitioning to a consulting role, going to the office only two days a week. The rest of the time, he spent in that chair.His hair was completely white. Not the fashionable silver-gray kind of white—it was the white of old paper, dry and textured. The wrinkles on his face had grown another layer beneath his nasolabial folds, and his jawline was no longer distinct, buried under sagging skin. But his eyes hadn't changed—still that deep brown, habitually narrowed gaze, squinting when looking at blueprints, squinting also when looking at that wall.

His body was getting worse. The old injury to his knee had developed into arthritis, and he needed to hold the railing when going up and down stairs. His right hand sometimes trembled—the doctor said it was an early sign of Parkinson's. Every morning when he took his medication, he would count out the pills, two white ones and one blue one, and place them in a small dish. That small dish was one Su Wan used to use for mixing pigments—a palette, round, with ten depressions. He put the pills in each depression, as if mixing some special color.

He still talked to that wall every day.

Over twenty years, the things he had said could fill an entire hard drive. The firm had gone through several rounds of new people, the city below had been demolished and rebuilt, and the streetscape of the old town had completely changed. He talked about how he felt riding the high-speed rail for the first time, about how phones upgraded too fast for him to keep up, about how someone had invented something called AI that could draw a hundred times faster than him.

But he never said he missed her.

He didn't need to. The fact that he sat in this chair every day was a longing more complete than any words.

The sun on the wall had become a picture. Not just a simple circle with a few lines—over twenty years of tracing, he had unconsciously added things. The sun's face was no longer blank; it had a pair of curved eyes. Not drawn intentionally—each time he traced it, the pencil naturally made an arc in the middle of the circle, and after twenty years of repetition, it became two arcs. Below the arcs was a small, asymmetrical curved line.

Like a dimple.

One day Gu Yang brought his grandson to visit. The little boy pointed at the sun on the wall and said, "Grandpa, grandpa, that sun is smiling." Lin Shen crouched down, slowly because his knees hurt. He looked at the little boy and said, "Do you know why it's smiling?" The little boy shook his head. Lin Shen said, "Because it's waiting for someone to come back." The little boy said, "Did they come back?" Lin Shen smiled, his nasolabial folds moving, and said, "Still waiting."

---

Year thirty-five.

Lin Shen was seventy years old. He no longer went to the firm. In the second year after his retirement, he donated all his blueprints to the architecture school, keeping only one—that note he had found in the crevice of the control room at the hydroelectric station. "Goodbye, my love. Thank you for coming for me." The handwriting had faded almost beyond recognition. Pencil marks couldn't last that long on paper, so he had sealed the note with tape, layer after layer.

He practically lived in that chair now.

Every morning at seven, he crawled out of bed, took his medication first—the pills had gone from two white and one blue to a handful of every color, poured into Su Wan's palette like a painting nearing completion. Then he slowly walked over and sat down in that wooden chair. The chair made a faint creaking sound beneath him—over thirty-five years, the wood had been worn into a body-shaped indentation, perfectly fitting his slightly hunched spine.

He talked to the wall.

His voice had aged a great deal. Its volume had dropped by half, and its pitch had lowered by a key. But the tone was still the same—steady, unhurried. He said the morning congee was too watery today, said the Gardenias downstairs were blooming again, said his knee hurt a little more than yesterday—but Xiao Liu at the pharmacy said it was normal for the season change.

Then he would close his eyes in the chair.

Not sleeping—waiting.

His posture while waiting was exactly the same as thirty years ago—body straight, hands on his knees, face toward that wall. On the wall was a pencil sun, a hook mark, and a note sealed with tape for over thirty years, pasted beneath that mark.

The rain was heavy that day. Raindrops pelted the north-facing window in a dense, crackling rhythm. It was a Saturday afternoon in the old town, as quiet as thirty-five years ago. No one was playing music in the distance anymore—the people of that era were gone, and the new era had its own music. The fruit shop was still there, but the老板娘 had changed twice.

Lin Shen opened his eyes in the sound of the rain.

He looked at the sun on the wall. The pencil lines of the sun were very deep now, so deep they were almost embedded in the wall. That small curved line like a dimple—he had traced it countless times over thirty-five years, and now it looked like it was truly smiling.

Then he remembered something.

He reached into the inside pocket of his shirt and pulled out his wallet. In the inner layer of the wallet were two pieces of paper—one was half a torn scrap, with a barely discernible character "Wan" on it; the other was Su Wan's final note, "Goodbye, my love. Thank you for coming for me." He took out both pieces, held them between his fingers, and raised them to his eyes.

The handwriting on the scrap had completely disappeared. Not erasure—time. Thirty-five years, the carbon molecules of the pencil slowly oxidizing and volatilizing with every breath of air. That character "Wan"—he remembered it clearly. He didn't need to see it.

On the note, only the last line was still discernible. The first line, "Goodbye," had already faded into a smear of gray, leaving only the word "Thank" still visible—because Su Wan had pressed hardest when writing those two characters, the pencil going through the paper, leaving an indelible indentation in the fibers.

He looked at them for a while, then carefully placed the two pieces back into the inner layer of his wallet.

A raindrop, carried by the wind through a crack in the window, landed on the back of his hand. He looked down.

The skin on the back of his hand was very thin, blue veins protruding like rivers crisscrossing a map. His fingers curled slightly, joints making faint cracking sounds.

Thirty-five years ago, this hand had held hers. Her hand was ice-cold, her knuckles distinct, slowly turning from translucent back to opaque. He touched her bones, her shape, her existence. In that moment, mass was conserved. He thought he could bring her back.

He hadn't brought her back.

But he had never let go.

Lin Shen placed his hands back on his knees. He looked at that wall—the sun's expression, the position of the hook mark, the faint "Thank you" on the note. Outside, the sound of the rain gradually faded, like a song reaching its final passage, turning the volume down to its lowest.

"Su Wan."

His voice was very soft. A seventy-year-old voice saying those two words sounded different from a twenty-eight-year-old voice saying them—he had lost a tooth, the resonance chamber of his mouth had changed. But the syllables were the same.

Shu—Wan.

Every time he said those two words, the air vibrated once. Every time it vibrated, she existed once. In physics, nothing truly disappears—energy doesn't, matter doesn't, light doesn't. Neither does love.

The proof that she had existed was never the fading words on paper, never the sun embedding itself into the wall, never the Gardenias, never the outline that Xiao You vaguely remembered. It was him.

As long as he lived, she existed.

When he died, she existed in the years he had lived.

Lin Shen looked at the sun on the wall.

The sun was smiling. He was smiling too.

He slowly closed his eyes. His breathing steadily, quietly, calmly slowed down, like a boat sailing into a gentle river channel, the trees on both banks growing denser, the light growing dimmer. The water grew deeper, the boat grew slower. But he wasn't afraid—he had never been afraid of the dark.

The fragrance of Gardenias filled the entire room.

The curve of his smile still lingered at the corners of his mouth.

Outside the window, the rain had finally stopped.

---

The End