Walk your own path, but don’t try to guide others—how can you be sure they want to go to Rome, just like you?

They stand on stage, never looking at the audience below. The ethereal lines, dazzling lights, even the enthusiastic applause, none of it matters. What matters is that they are standing on stage, ignoring everything.

The quiet corridor was like a long tunnel through time, with only a window at the end, letting in a faint, grayish light. A young man stood against the light, and no one could see his expression.

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Beauty Six: Time flows like water, winding a hundred times over

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1. Endless Summer

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No matter what, summer vacation had begun.

Every morning, she got up early to study New Concept English—actually, this motivation came entirely from a brand new notebook and a brand new BBK repeat player. During the day, she studied, watched movies, watched all sorts of meaningful or meaningless things, and practiced piano in the afternoon—

She hadn’t managed to chop it into firewood with a kitchen knife back then, but after not practicing for a long time, she truly fell in love with playing the piano. This made Zoe Young deeply understand one of Newton’s three laws: “At the beginning, human nature is base.” Before dinner, she ran laps in the sunset, a side effect of the 0-meter race at the sports meet—she found that after passing a certain threshold, the not-at-all-tired feeling became addictive, and sweating made her less irritable. After dinner, she’d run to the rental place to exchange for new comics, then hide in her room reading until ten o’clock, shower, and sleep.

Every three days, she visited her grandmother. On weekend evenings, she went shopping and for walks with her mom.

Zoe Young felt her summer vacation life was so healthy it could make the heavens angry and people resentful.

“Alan Carter, do you think, when those heroes fall off a cliff and miraculously survive, then find a secret manual and train alone, is it this peaceful and beautiful?

“Would they, in the end, forget to climb back up the cliff and return to the martial world because it’s too peaceful?

“Actually, I’m like that now. I suddenly realized I’m no longer holding my breath, nor do I often think of those teachers and classmates. I even... even stopped thinking about being successful, making Mom proud, and showing off in front of Dad and his wife—I suddenly feel that’s so pointless.

“Sometimes Mom will go downstairs with me to exchange comics, or go out running together, but her health isn’t as good as before. She slows down after a few steps and walks on the side, watching me run.

“The evening breeze is cool. Even though it’s summer, it’s not hot. The sunset is especially beautiful, and so is Mom.

“I think this is already very good. Let’s just keep it like this, let time stop here, okay?”

Okay?

Zoe Young no longer sent letters to Alan Carter, but she bought a diary, with a simple light gray checkered cover, and a few simple words on it: “The spes in between (the distance between the two)”.

She called the diary Alan Carter.

The housekeeper at Grandma’s, Aunt Lucy, was very efficient, but she really liked to sneak food. The fruit at home was never finished, and everyone always invited Aunt Lucy to eat with them, but she always refused, not taking a single bite.

Yet she would sneak fruit from the bag behind their backs.

Most of the time, only Zoe Young was home during the day, and sometimes she’d see Tina Young. Aunt Lucy wasn’t very restrained in front of them, so they’d seen it many times. The peaches Mom bought and the ones Third Uncle bought—one bag had eight, the other seven—were mixed together by Aunt Lucy in the same plastic bag, so no one would notice the peaches disappearing one by one.

“Why is that? Why insist on claiming you don’t do something that’s not even illegal, and then sneak around behind everyone’s back?”

There’s a kind of incomprehensible creature in this world, called adults.

While organizing last semester’s class workbooks, she found a class contact sheet with everyone’s home phone numbers.

Zoe Young suddenly realized she didn’t have Benny’s number.

The sun was blazing outside, and the grass was full of noisy crickets. Zoe Young suddenly felt a bit irritable. She closed the weekly journal on her desk—one vacation, eight weekly entries, and she was already two behind.

There was still a huge pile of calligraphy homework, one page of grid paper a day. Zoe Young wrote over thirty pages in one go, starting out writing neatly line by line, then switching to column by column, then a line and a column, and finally just jumping around the grid, breaking up “Princess Pearl,” “Stefanie Sun,” “Huang Rong,” and all sorts of lyrics and comic lines, turning the whole grid notebook into a crossword puzzle.

Kind of boring.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Michelle Cindy’s home number.

Actually, when the phone was ringing—“doo—doo—” with a long tone—Zoe Young was a bit nervous. The woman who answered had a loud voice, spoke fast, and sounded harsh. It was obvious she was Michelle Cindy’s mom.

“Hello, who’s this?”

“Ah, hello Auntie, may I speak to Michelle Cindy?”

“Who are you?” Michelle Cindy’s mom’s tone didn’t improve at all, but there was a bit of surprise, as if no one had ever called Michelle Cindy before.

Zoe Young swallowed: “I’m her classma—” She paused, then corrected herself, “I’m her class monitor.

There’s something about the class, I want to talk to her.”

“What is it?”

“The subject teacher asked me to tell everyone to gather at school, seems like there’s an activity.”

There was actually no need to lie, but Zoe Young had a gut feeling that it wasn’t easy for Michelle Cindy to go out.

“Hold on.” The other side put down the receiver, and Zoe Young vaguely heard, “Answer the phone, come here!”

She let out a long breath.

“Hello?” Michelle Cindy’s timid, hesitant voice came through the receiver.

“Are you okay? Want to come out and hang out?”

They didn’t go to the movies or the amusement park. After meeting at the school gate, Michelle Cindy awkwardly turned down all of Zoe Young’s suggestions. After much questioning, Zoe Young finally discovered the truth, a bit embarrassed.

Michelle Cindy only had three yuan in her pocket.

“So what should we do…” Zoe Young’s unconscious sigh made Michelle Cindy lower her head deeply. She quickly waved her hand and said with a grin, “Let’s just find a shady spot and chat. It’s so hot today, the amusement park is crowded, we’d get heatstroke for sure, we shouldn’t go anyway.”

Michelle Cindy barely audibly replied, “Mm.”

So they just sat under the old elm tree on the school’s back playground, cross-legged in the shade, silently squinting at the blinding white sunlight on the field.

Zoe Young felt a little embarrassed. She’d called her out, risked being caught in a lie, just to sit under a tree and meditate? If Buddha could reach enlightenment, did he need a companion?

“Do you like singing?” she asked out of nowhere.

After asking, she felt it was a pretty boring question. Michelle Cindy obviously didn’t even like talking, let alone singing.

She felt sweat trickling down from her hair, like a little bug, starting at her temple and spiraling down to her chin, tickling all the way.

“I do.”

“Actually, I don’t really like it that much…” Zoe Young replied lazily, then suddenly realized the other’s answer was affirmative.

“You, you do… you, who do you like to sing?”

Michelle Cindy looked up and thought for a moment. “No one in particular. If it sounds good, I like it.”

Zoe Young especially cherished this opportunity, and carefully asked, “For example?”

The crickets in the grass made the hot afternoon playground feel very quiet.

Michelle Cindy didn’t speak for a long time, as if struggling with her thoughts. Zoe Young deeply understood what “a calm heart is naturally cool” meant—with Michelle Cindy, she felt she herself became much more silent and deep.

Just as Zoe Young was staring blankly at the playground, she suddenly heard, amid the noisy crickets, a slightly hoarse and shy singing voice.

“The love between you and me is like crystal. No burdens, no secrets, clean and transparent.”

Richie Jen and Yuki Hsu’s “Crystal” was all the rage when Zoe Young was in elementary school.

She remembered that Little Swallow Fiona James once said, full of longing, that everyone has someone in their heart they want to sing this song with.

Zoe Young didn’t like Richie Jen. She thought he always sounded like he was straining, as if constipated—of course, this opinion had once been attacked by all the boys and girls who liked Richie Jen.