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Nianqing fell silent on the other end of the line for several seconds. When she spoke again, she hesitated, leaving the sentence unfinished: “Why didn’t you go with—”

Zhang Momo knew whose name she had meant to say, and unease stirred in her. Fortunately, Nianqing stopped there. What followed was a thick, heartfelt apology: “Shall I come back when you two get married?”

Clearly, she meant that the journey was too far to attend her younger sister’s engagement banquet. Yet for some reason, Zhang Momo still heard something else hidden beneath that apology. She was terrified that the next words she would hear might be something about Xiang Zuo, and her hand around the phone had grown damp with sweat. Instead, Nianqing said, “Momo, why are you so foolish?”

Zhang Momo froze. It was not until Nianqing slowly went on to explain that she understood. “When he proposed to you back then, you could have admitted that you were not really Nianqing.”

The reproach in her tone—whether accusation or pity, it was hard to tell—suddenly drove out the tears Zhang Momo had thought she would never shed again. Such words were far more unbearable than if Nianqing had said, “I’m sorry, because of me, you and Xiang Zuo can’t be together.”

“Xiang Zuo is that kind of man. It would not have been hard to win him over. Can you really say that when you agreed to marry him, there was nothing in your heart besides Dongyin and me? Momo, you can deceive other people, but you can’t deceive yourself. How could you be so foolish? If you had confessed from the beginning that you were not Nianqing, and married him openly as Zhang Momo, how could any of this have happened afterward? Even if I woke up, I might resent you, hate you, feel unwilling to have my happiness taken by you—but it would all pass. I couldn’t possibly hate you forever! Most importantly, you would have had that man! Now look at how things have ended up… why did you ever have to make it so difficult for yourself?”

Back then, whether she had ever truly wanted to marry Xiang Zuo in the light of day or not, the question was now meaningless. Only one person in the world knew the answer, and that person could never speak it aloud. Standing before her parents’ joint grave, Zhang Momo had come to wrap up and forget everything that had come before; today, she would bury the old version of herself beside them.

On the white marble base stood a stele of black stone. Beneath the green, layered hills, only the two still photographs looked down at her in silence from the cold gravestone. Zhang Momo knelt before the grave railing, where the sunlight had coaxed out a faint warmth, and carefully set the bouquet upon the tomb slab.

It was not the season for grave-sweeping, and her parents’ headstone stood in a section near the deepest part of the cemetery. This corner of the world was eerily quiet. Yet that stillness seemed like a stretch of freedom heaven had left solely for her. Before Zhang Momo’s hand even touched the edge of the stone, tears began to fall without restraint.

“Dad, Mom, I’ve come to see you. I’ve taken so long to come—am I very unfilial?”

She spoke softly, touched the stone softly; her hands were cold, yet somehow carried warmth. In the photograph, the two elders wore gentle smiles. They smiled, while she wept.

“Yes, I’m unfilial, because I was afraid. I never knew how to face you, never knew how to face that car accident. I didn’t mean it… I truly didn’t mean it. The day I got off the plane, I saw Dad looking so worn out, so terribly unwell. Mom and Sister couldn’t drive, and all I wanted was to tell Dad to rest for a while, but I didn’t know…”

Zhang Momo wiped away her tears, then, not even bothering to find tissues from her bag, she used her sleeve to rub her face in a messy, childlike way. As she rearranged the flowers one by one, the tears still kept dripping down.

“Actually… you still blame me a little, don’t you? I know I shouldn’t say such things in front of you, but how I wish it had been me who died! Or even if I had been the one who fell into a coma, that would have been fine too! When I saw Nianqing lying there, unable to wake up, how I wished the one lying down was me, and the one standing was her! I wanted to treat myself as if I were Nianqing and live out the rest of her life for her… Dad, Mom, but I couldn’t even say these things to anyone. I could only tell myself… that Nianqing is still not living happily. It’s all my fault. She can’t let go, and even if Brother Tang Hao loves her, there’s still a shadow in his heart…”

“I’m afraid to call Nianqing, because every time I do, she tells me all alone that Brother Tang Hao isn’t at home…”

Under the clear sky of late spring turning toward summer, a few unknown little birds chirped noisily as they flew past, finally interrupting Zhang Momo’s rambling. At last she pulled tissues from her bag, solemnly wiped her face, and watched the birds disappear into the distance before letting out a long breath and drawing her gaze back.

“Actually, I came to tell you that tomorrow I’m getting engaged. There’s a young man who is very good to me, and his family is good to me too, and besides…” Here, Zhang Momo awkwardly scrunched up her nose and smiled shyly. “He’s also handsome…”

Still smiling as she wiped away her tears, something suddenly flashed through the corner of her eye: a figure from behind. The cemetery had been so quiet that Zhang Momo almost turned her head without thinking. At a considerable distance, that figure turned into the gate of another section. He was not walking slowly, and only remained in her sight for the briefest two seconds, yet Zhang Momo sprang to her feet at once.