The Door Opened

March 11, ten years later

Lin Shen stood downstairs for a while. Not waiting for anyone—there was no one left for him to wait for now. It was just that the March wind had suddenly turned warm, and the damp air carried the scent of gardenia buds, drifting all the way from the flower shop at the end of the alley. He stood there, letting the wind fill his nose with that smell. The flowers hadn't bloomed yet, but the buds had already cracked open a thin slit. In two more days, the whole city would be filled with the fragrance of gardenias.

Half of his hair had turned white. Spreading from his temples to the crown, white and dark brown each claiming half, like winter and autumn fighting for territory on his head. He wore an old dark gray trench coat, the stitching at the cuffs slightly frayed—he had worn this coat for seven years, just like all his other habits: once he started something, he never changed.

In his hand, he carried a plastic bag from the supermarket, containing a carton of eggs, a bunch of scallions, a pack of chicken breast, and a bag of frozen dumplings. The menu would be decided when he went upstairs—open the refrigerator, see what was left, then decide whether to make egg-fried rice or dumplings for dinner. Cooking for one didn't require much thought.

He switched the bag to his other hand at the building entrance. His knees felt a bit sore—old injuries plus ten years of wear. The doctor said he needed joint replacement, but he kept putting it off. It wasn't that he wasn't afraid of pain; it was that putting an artificial joint inside his body would make something feel wrong.

The elevator stopped on the seventh floor. The motion-sensor light in the hallway flickered once before turning on. He carried the bag to door 703 and pulled the key from his pocket. The copper key stopped before the keyhole—not because the lock was stuck, but because he was. He paused for a second or two in front of the door every day. Ten years, and this habit had never been broken. Because two seconds later, he would push open the door and see the empty living room, and the sun on the wall.

The door opened from the inside.

Lin Shen's hand was still in the air, the key still three centimeters from the keyhole. But the door had opened. Not because of the wind—someone had turned the knob from inside.

Warm yellow light spilled through the crack in the door. Not the light he had forgotten to turn off when he left this morning—he was sure he'd turned it off; in ten years, he had never once forgotten to turn off the light. Then came the smell—not dust, not gardenias. It was chicken soup. Simmered for a long time over low heat, with red dates and goji berries, bubbling softly.

Then he saw the person.

A girl stood at the door. She came up to his chin. Wearing an oversized light gray hoodie, the sleeves longer than her hands, only a few fingers peeking out. Long, straight black hair hung over her shoulders—undyed, unpermed—a few strands scattered by her cheeks. She had just washed her hair; the tips were still a little damp, leaving two small wet patches on her shoulders.

There was a very small tear mole at the corner of her left eye. Like a drop of ink that could never be wiped away.

In her hands, she held a clay pot, steam rising from its rim. When she smiled, a shallow dimple sank into her right cheek.

"I'm back," she said.

Her tone was soft. Her voice had a gentle lilt, the kind that let the last syllable trail off slowly.

Then she stepped aside to make way for him to enter, set the clay pot on the coffee table in the living room, and casually pulled a tissue to place under the pot. The movements were natural, as if she did this every day.

"Dinner's ready. Go wash your hands."

Lin Shen stood at the door.

The plastic bag hung from his right hand. The key was still clutched in his left palm, the serrated edges of the copper key biting into his skin—it hurt.

But the pain was real. It meant he wasn't dreaming.

He felt his heart skip a wrong beat in his chest. Not a missed beat—an extra one. Like an old clock that had been stopped for a long time, suddenly having its gears turned by someone, grinding through rusty joints with effort, then starting to stumble forward again.

"You—"

He only got out one word before stopping. It wasn't that he didn't want to speak. His lips were trembling.

Su Wan turned to look at him. Across the three meters from the entryway to the living room, across the clay pot on the dining table and the tissue on the coffee table, across an entire decade of emptiness.

She still held that smile. But her eyes were red. Transparent liquid slid down from beside the tear mole, tracing a thin line across her cheekbone. She didn't wipe it away.

"Your hair turned white," she said. Her voice still had that soft tone, but the last word cracked, like an eggshell gently crushed.

Lin Shen slowly walked through the door.

He set the plastic bag on the shoe cabinet. One egg tipped over, rolling to the corner of the bag. He didn't bother with it. He just walked forward. One step, two steps, three steps.

When he reached her, he caught the scent of her. Not gardenias—it was chicken soup, it was shampoo, it was her. It was the existence that had once filled his nostrils every morning after he squeezed out her toothpaste, later became the smell of gardenia potted plants, and later still became the entire content of his life on a blank wall.

He raised his right hand.

His fingertips touched her left cheekbone. The tear mole was less than half a centimeter above his fingertip. Her skin was warm—not just warm, but a perfect thirty-seven degrees, as precise as the habit of squeezing toothpaste every morning.

She was trembling. Not from cold. It was from standing here, being touched on the face by him.

"Real," Lin Shen said.

It wasn't a question.

Su Wan wiped her eyes with her sleeve. The hoodie's fabric was quite absorbent, leaving a damp trail on her cheek. She lowered her head, swallowed her tears, then lifted it again and pulled out another smile.

"Did you buy chicken breast?"

"How did you know?"

"Because there's already chicken breast in the fridge." She turned and walked to the kitchen, pulling open the refrigerator door. It was stuffed full—spinach, green peppers, two tomatoes, a carton of eggs, a pack of chicken breast, a tray of yogurt. Completely different from the empty fridge he had left this morning.

"Also," she took a yogurt cup from the fridge and handed it to him, "I bought you yogurt. You said you wanted yogurt when your stomach felt uncomfortable. Did you have another meeting at work today?"

"How did you know—"

"Because you don't eat lunch when you have meetings." She closed the fridge, turned to look at him, and her expression suddenly became very serious. "Lin Shen, how many times have I told you? You need to eat even during meetings."

This was something he had said for ten years and never been heard.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

Su Wan watched him stand there silently, stepped half a step closer, rose on her tiptoes, and reached out to smooth the wrinkles on the collar of his trench coat. The movement was exactly the same as ten years ago—first the left collar, then the right, finally brushing across the entire shoulder with her fingers. Like she was tidying up something very precious.

"I'll cook the dumplings. You wash your hands. The soup is ready," she said, then turned to the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and started washing vegetables. The water rushed noisily, mixing with the tune she was humming—an old song she had hummed ten years ago.

Lin Shen stood at the kitchen doorway.

He raised his right hand in front of his eyes and spread his palm. On his palm was still the warmth of her cheek—that warmth was slowly fading, but he kept clenching and unclenching his fingers, as if confirming that they could still feel it had been there.

Something was falling from the corner of his eye. Very hot, but by the time it reached the corner of his mouth, it had turned cold.

He lowered his hand, walked to the sink, and turned on the faucet. He placed both hands under the running water and washed them for a long time. Not because his hands were dirty—he needed the sound of the water to cover up some other sound. After washing, he didn't dry his hands, just wiped them wet on his pants a couple of times. Then he noticed two toothbrushes by the sink—a new blue toothbrush placed next to his old yellow one, toothpaste squeezed from the middle, different from how he used to squeeze it for her every morning. Next to them was a small dish—the palette he had recently bought to hold his medication, its ten little wells once filled with colorful pills now replaced by three pieces of mint candy.

He stared at the palette for three seconds.

Mint candy. Not medicine.

He squeezed a strip of Su Wan's toothpaste from the middle and placed it next to hers.

---

Su Wan was cooking dumplings in the kitchen.

The water boiled, and she poured the frozen dumplings into the pot, stirring with chopsticks to prevent them from sticking to the bottom. Her movements weren't practiced—the same as ten years ago, she still wasn't much of a cook. Lin Shen's cooking was better; her main job was eating and praising.

She hadn't dared to look at his face just now. Afraid that if she did, she'd lose it.

She had been taken out of the crevice three months ago. A-Line Su Wan had spent seven years perfecting the two-way passage with A-Line Lin Shen, and Jiang Fei had joined them in the third year—she said she had nothing better to do anyway. A-Line Su Wan had done the final energy test and said the success rate was eighty-seven percent. She asked A-Line Su Wan if it could fail. A-Line Su Wan said yes. But we've already waited seven years. If we wait any longer, we'll all be old. So she walked into the passage. When she came back, she found herself standing in the control room of that hydropower station from ten years ago. Outside was clear skies, no rain. A-Line Su Wan stood at the door, smiled at her, and said welcome back. She didn't tell her anything about him—just said, go see him. He's been waiting for you. Ten years.

She wanted to know what had happened in those ten years. But when she saw his half-white hair and bruised eye sockets, she suddenly didn't want to ask anymore. All the answers were written on him—every white hair, every wrinkle at the corner of his eyes, was an answer.

The dumplings floated up in the pot. She turned off the heat, poured the dumplings and soup into a bowl, and sprinkled some chopped scallions on top.

"Dinner's ready—" She turned around carrying the bowl.

Lin Shen stood at the kitchen doorway.

She hadn't heard him come over. He stood there, holding a tube of toothpaste, with a very serious look of confusion on his face.

"You squeezed the toothpaste wrong."

"Huh?"

"You're supposed to squeeze from the bottom up. So you don't waste any."

She froze for a moment, then laughed.

Laughed out loud. The same sound as ten years ago, every time he seriously said something completely inappropriate for the moment, and she couldn't help but burst out laughing. The dimple deepened on her right cheek, and tears flowed again, mixed in with the laughter.

She put down the bowl of dumplings, walked up to him, took the toothpaste from his hand, and set it on the counter. Then she rose on her tiptoes and wrapped both arms around his waist.

He rested his chin on top of her head. Her hair smelled of shampoo—the same scent he had caught just now.

He closed his eyes.

His breathing was very light. Something in his chest was changing. Those things he had been holding up for ten years were slowly letting go, piece by piece, like ice melting slowly in spring. Not collapsing, not breaking down—just allowing himself not to have to hold on anymore.

"Lin Shen."

"Yeah."

"I'm back."

"I know."

He tightened his arms.

---

"The dumplings are cold." Su Wan poked her head out from his embrace and glanced at the clay pot on the coffee table. "And the soup."

"Heat it up again."

"You heat it up." She shoved the chopsticks into his hand. "Your cooking tastes better."

Lin Shen took the chopsticks, walked to the kitchen, poured the dumplings and soup back into the pot, and turned on the heat. He added a little more salt to the clay pot—Su Wan liked salty food; if he didn't add it, she would do it herself anyway, so he might as well add it in advance.

Su Wan took the opportunity to look around the living room. She saw that wall—the north-facing wall. On it was a sun drawn in pencil, very large, with traces of being traced over again and again at the edges. The sun had curved eyes and an asymmetrical little arc—like a dimple. Below the sun was a note taped on with two layers of tape, the handwriting already so faded it was almost invisible, but she didn't need to see it to know what it said.

She stood in front of the wall, reached out her finger, and slowly traced a circle along the outline of the sun. The pencil texture was rough against her skin; her finger made a faint rustling sound as it passed.

At the lower right corner of the drawing, she found a tiny line of writing. His handwriting, in pencil—the same as the annotations on his CAD drawings: a fine engineering script, every character resting on an invisible grid line.

"March 11. Day one."

Next to it was a second line.

"March 11. Tenth year—"

He hadn't finished writing it. The sentence broke off on the paper, the pencil stopping mid-stroke on a vertical hook.

Ten years.

She looked down at the hoodie she was wearing—still the one from ten years ago. On the first night she left, she had been standing in the crevice wearing this hoodie. There was no time in the passage crevice, but the clothes remembered time and its marks. The fraying at the cuffs was heavier than ten years ago, the collar was a little loose, the print on the chest had cracked into a fine web of fissures. But it was still here.

He had kept things for this long. He had kept her for this long.

Su Wan withdrew her finger from the wall. A thin layer of pencil lead dust clung to her fingertip. She looked at it for two seconds, then carefully wiped the dust off onto the hem of her hoodie.

The soup began to bubble. Lin Shen turned down the heat in the kitchen.

"Almost ready. Want a spoon?""Yes!" she called back toward the kitchen. "The big spoon!"

"Got it."

Su Wan walked to the dining table. Two sets of bowls and chopsticks were already laid out—she had set them earlier. The bowls were celadon, the chopsticks bamboo. She remembered he didn't like metal chopsticks. Then she noticed something sitting at the corner of the table. A small round box, white cardboard, tied with a pale pink ribbon. It wasn't new—the ribbon was a bit worn, the edges of the box rubbed white.

She lifted the lid.

Inside was a cake. A very simple cream cake, no extra decorations, with six words written on top in chocolate sauce.

"Happy Twelfth Anniversary."

The date was wrong. They had only been together for two years. But the cake said twelve. The extra ten years—those were the ten anniversaries he had spent alone, buying a cake every March 11th and eating it by himself. This year was the twelfth.

This year she came back.

Su Wan stood in front of the table, her hands pressed against its edge. Her shoulders were trembling faintly.

Lin Shen walked out carrying the reheated soup and dumplings, set the bowls down on the table, and paused when he saw her looking at the cake.

"I buy one every year," he said, his tone like he was reporting some trivial piece of work data. "But this year—"

"You're not eating it alone." She turned around.

Her face was soaked. Tears mixed with the steam from the chicken soup, making her entire face glisten. But she was smiling. The tear mole was wet, that tiny black dot turning into a perfect circle in the light.

She walked up to him, took his right hand, pried open his five fingers one by one, and placed her cheek into his palm.

The warmth was exactly the same as ten years ago.

"Before we eat the cake, we have to make a wish," she said.

"What for."

"I'm not telling you. It won't come true if you say it out loud."

Lin Shen looked down at her in his palm. His hair was half gray, there were heavy dark circles under his eyes, the knuckles of his fingers were thicker than before. But in his eyes—in those deep brown pupils—there was something coming back to life. Not youth, not health, not what time had taken from him. It was "finally waited for." It was the feeling of having waited over three thousand six hundred days, and then suddenly, one day, there was no need to wait any longer.

"I've made my wish."

Su Wan opened one eye to look at him. "That fast?"

"Yeah."

"What did you wish for?"

"Not telling you. It won't come true if you say it out loud."

She froze for a moment, then slapped his shoulder.

He laughed.

His nasolabial folds were deeply etched. He rarely smiled, and when he did, the muscles in his face looked unpracticed, a little stiff. But Su Wan remembered this expression. The first time she bumped into him, blueprints scattering everywhere, he crouched down to help her pick them up, and their fingers touched. Then she looked up, and he looked down. At that moment he was smiling—the same expression, the nasolabial folds deepening, his eyes narrowing into two lines, as if all reason and restraint had momentarily short-circuited.

Exactly the same as now.

---

That night they sat at the dining table, ate the dumplings that had gone cold and been reheated, drank the chicken soup that had been re-salted, and cut the cake into two very thick slices. When Su Wan took her first bite, she said the cream was too sweet. Lin Shen said, "Isn't that how you like it?" She said, "You remember." He said, "Yeah."

After the meal, Su Wan soaked the dishes in the sink and said she'd wash them tomorrow. She went back to the living room, picked up the blanket on the sofa, sniffed it, and asked, "Do you never wash this blanket?" He said he washed it every two weeks. She said it was still dirty and needed sun tomorrow. He said it would rain tomorrow. She said the day after, then.

He sat in that chair. The wooden chair facing the wall. Su Wan walked over to him, looked down at the body-shaped dent worn into the seat.

"This chair."

"What about it."

"You sit here every day."

"Yeah."

"Talk to me."

"Yeah."

She pulled a dining chair over next to the wooden one and sat down. Two chairs side by side, facing the north wall. On the wall were the sun, the note, ten years of waiting.

"I'm back," she said once more.

"I know," he answered once more.

Her right hand reached out and took his left. Palm against palm, fingers slotting between fingers. Her thumb rubbed against his tiger's mouth, where a thin callus had formed—worn down from years of drawing. It was still there. Because he drew every day, the callus never disappeared. Just as he sat in this chair every day, the memories never disappeared.

Outside the window, the sky was completely dark. Lights in the old district came on one by one—the light from the fruit shop downstairs, the living room light in the building across the street, the streetlights in the distance. On the evening of March 11th, the air smelled of gardenia buds. The flowers hadn't bloomed yet, but the buds had already split open. In two more days, the whole city would be covered in new blossoms.

Lin Shen held Su Wan's hand and looked at the sun on the wall.

The sun was still smiling.

So was he.

—End of Bonus Chapter—