Work Text:
Of the 24 solar terms in 2202, The 7th of December was the start of winter.
“Cheng Xiaoshi, do you know what this means?” Qiao Ling asked without looking up from her phone.
“Eat dumplings, mutton and rice cakes?”
“Not bad, I thought you wouldn’t know.”
“Hey!”
Lu Guang watched and listened from the sofa. He had his eyes half-closed, like a smiling, loafing cat.
“Mutton would be nice,” Cheng Xiaoshi mumbled. “Lu Guang! You look so languid these days, you should eat some mutton.”
“I’ll eat it if you cook it.”
Mutton required slow cooking. It would be patience training for Cheng Xiaoshi.
“There’s also the traditional winter baths,” added Qiao Ling. “But these days it’s hard to find a good, authentic herbal bath. It’s either floral or the Japanese style Yuzu bath, or vegetable bath.”
“Lu Guang, say something. Do you want a bath?”
“What’s the occasion?”
“It’s the Start of Winter,” Cheng Xiaoshi answered, unhelpful.
Qiao Ling was more helpful: “The winter holidays will bring many customers to the studio and you won't want to close. This is why, if you two want to close the studio and enjoy the winter, this is the time.”
Lu Guang opened one of his eyes fully while closing the other, the gaze shifted between them like water in bowls. “Sounds good.”
Hey, cxs, Qiao Ling messaged him on the phone. Do you think that Guang Guang might have a, what is it called, winter depression?
Maybe? Cheng Xiaoshi answered. He never thought about it. To him, Lu Guang was always indolent unless he was asked to move around.
The oldest form of recording was not by human hand.
Like photo films, the fossils captured the memory of a moment in a snapshot, while the object of the capture itself faded with the flow of time. The captured image, frozen in time, could then be presented to an observer of a different time.
Lu Guang stood before the framed photo of an ammonite fossil.
The snapshot of a snapshot, the ghost of a ghost, the simulacrum of a simulacrum.
A frozen time preserved in a frozen time.
Lu Guang blinked.
The photo was of himself. The frame was the same: black, of unknown matte material, perhaps wood or plastic. The wall was white. The room was dark. A single floodlight illuminated the photograph.
Lu Guang blinked.
This wasn’t a photograph. This was a mirror.
“Lu Guang!”
The first snow had arrived. The powdery white was round and hard, more hail than flakes. It dusted the windowsills and trees like sugar, though it melted on the dark asphalt of the roads.
Cheng Xiaoshi tried to scoop up some of this hail-snow to make a snowball. It was too hard to form.
“...Idiot,” Lu Guang muttered.
“Snow here is like this.” Qiao Ling mumbled from the counter. “The city is too hot. It should be more abundant in the rural areas… Xiaoshi?”
“Huh?”
“Do you remember whether there was snow in winter in Sichuan?”
“I…”
There was a suspicious silence before Cheng Xiaoshi told the stories of his youth with his parents. They sounded like lies.
Neither Lu Guang nor Qiao Ling pointed this out.
A leaf, frozen in ice. It would be protected from rot until spring.
A man, captured on cellphone, preserved in digital storage that shall become obsolete within the decade, if the jpg rot doesn’t compress it into a single-pixel tall line first.
A boy, captured on film, rolled up and kept in a plastic capsule. An old and hardened elastic band had stuck to it, along with the paper note it was meant to keep on the capsule.
Whose childhood was this? Lu Guang thought, his small hand unfolding the note. He wasn’t old enough to read, though he recognized the words “small” and “hour.”
Lu Guang blinked. His hands, larger, were unrolling the roll of film.
On the films were two boys. They were alike, yet didn’t look alike. It wouldn’t be until they met in person that they would feel complete.
Lu Guang stared. An iciness crawled up his irises, his pupils.
The two boys in the photos were not in the same time and space. No, rather, it was the same space in the studio, but the photos were taken days apart. The first boy was made to stand on one side, then the film was rewinded and reused, the other boy made to stand adjacent in the same space on a separate day, carefully positioned so that no more than the outlines of their fingers overlapped.
“Lu Guang!” The first boy shouted to the camera. “When we meet in person, let’s live together!”
The second boy made no indication that he ever heard that. He only stood where he was despite the questioning and protests of his parents.
Later, said parents screamed ghost.
“Guang Guang, do you have photos of when you were small?”
“I wanna dive into them!” Cheng Xiaoshi jumped. “Small and soft Lu Guang… must be adorable!”
The grin was endearing, but Lu Guang knew it wasn’t time. The boy Cheng Xiaoshi from the photos had a mind older than the Cheng Xiaoshi before him in the present time.
“I don’t have any photo from back then,” he lied.
“That’s too bad, Guang Guang must be like a lamb back then,” Qiao Ling said as she unpacked the mutton in the kitchen.
Cheng Xiaoshi peeled and chopped the green onions. The ginger water was boiling on the stove. The noodle soup base from Yu Xia and Lin Zhen rested in the refrigerator.
All was good in the kitchen.
The photo was sliced up with a kitchen knife.
Lu Guang didn’t know what happened. He looked at his own hands, at his right hand holding the kitchen knife.
Whose face is this? He stared at the photo, unblinking.
The mutton was stewing in one pot while its bones were simmering in another. The aroma of meat, bone, marrow, herbs and spices had filled the studio all the way to the roof.
Lu Guang, from the top of the bunk bed, was tempted enough to descend to the kitchen. He held his unfinished book in one hand, rubbing his eyes and yawning. His pyjama shirt was wrinkled and his hair was a mess.
“See? The sleeping beauty can be awakened without a kiss.”
“Cheng Xiaoshi, the proper reference here is the buddha jumping over the wall.”
Lu Guang did not speak. He looked into the simmering pot and saw that the marrow had already seeped into the soup, making it milky white.
“We’re going to eat mutton soup noodles,” Cheng Xiaoshi explained as he was peeling soft-boiled quail eggs. “It would be nice if we have stone bowls, but we’ll have to do with regular bowls.”
“Is there anything that I can do to help?”
“You can help us eat.” Qiao Ling said while pouring the soup inside bowls of noodles.
Lu Guang put his book away. He was still sleepy and the sequence was as if a dream. The soup was spiced with ginger and many other things that he couldn’t name (there were the red of wolfberries and the green of scallions, then the pale yellow of Solomon's seal, Chinese yam, winged cardamom and dragon’s eyes). He took a sip and his body was warmed all over.
The mutton itself was tender, the noodles were chewy. From the heat in his face he could tell that he must be blushing. Xiaoshi handed him a glass of chilled buckwheat tea and he drank with gratitude.
As his body temperature was becoming even, he thought about how he wanted to keep this moment frozen in time.
He blinked and it was.
Cheng Xiaoshi, who hadn’t taken off his apron, was slurping his noodles without grace. Lu Guang would be happy to see him this way for a moment longer.
Qiao Ling, her hair kept in place with an old hairband, was drinking from the bowl. She was a wonderful friend to him and a sister-like figure to Cheng Xiaoshi, and Lu Guang was grateful for both.
He wanted to touch them, to hug them and to tell them: “Thank you, I’m so happy with you.”
But his mind was not inside a body. The Lu Guang eating with them was not the Lu Guang watching them. The Lu Guang watching them was holding a picture taken by Qiao Ling before the Lu Guang eating with them descended from the stairs.
It was a good picture: Cheng Xiaoshi, smiling, breaking the shell of a quail egg on the edge of a bowl while the mutton cooked on the stove behind him. He had the same kind of naivety as the puppy face on his light yellow-brown apron, though the steam from the simmering pots blurred his figure, making the scene appear ethereal and dreamlike.
It was almost too good to be true.
Here, in this darkness, while his body was bleeding to death, Lu Guang wondered if he was paying the price of his happiness.
A fall of pictures covered him in a hail-like powder-snow.
“I knew you had a picture like this.”
Cheng Xiaoshi was smiling.
Cheng Xiaoshi was not crying.
Yet the sound of someone crying was hanging in Lu Guang’s mind.
Who was crying?
Why are they crying?
“Lu Guang.”
Cheng Xiaoshi was smiling. His voice was of the purest innocence. It was happiness, to have one’s name called by this voice.
“We dive constantly into the past of others, but neither of us has a past, do we?”
Lu Guang nodded in answer. It was true. Do not ask about the past.
“And our future… Ah, Lu Guang…”
Lu Guang accepted Cheng Xiaoshi into his arms, letting the young man’s head rest on his shoulder. Do not ask about the future.
This Cheng Xiaoshi, too, was crying. It started muted, muffled, before it grew louder, a thunderstorm approaching.
Past or future, let them be.
The thunder of a pained howl echoed in Lu Guang’s ear.
“I do not want a future without you, Lu Guang!”
The young man’s fingers scratched Lu Guang’s back.
“I named the studio after you, too, you’re part of it. You must stay!”
The tears had long wetted Lu Guang’s shoulder. It burnt.
“I can’t repay the debt to Qiao Ling without you, Lu Guang.”
Their heartbeats were deafening. Cheng Xiaoshi was heavy. Lu Guang couldn’t breathe in this winter rain of emotions.
“Just this once, Lu Guang, let me ask you about the future. Let me demand that you stay in my future, please. I cannot let this future be.”
There was a wetness in Lu Guang’s belly. It was red as the wolfberries of the mutton soup, spilling out from him.
Yet the pain that came was from the heart, not the belly. Lu Guang understood from experience that it was an acute cardiac failure.
Qiao Ling went home after supper.
The mutton was not cool enough for the refrigerator yet. Lu Guang fetched his book, Cheng Xiaoshi turned on his phone.
“Xiaoshi. You can go to sleep, I’ll wait.”
“I wanna wait with you. You know that I shouldn’t sleep right after eating.”
The studio was silent except for the sounds of pages turning and the occasional mumbling of a young man. Because of this silence, they could hear the wind against their windows.
A thick, proper, down-like snow fell outside.
Past or future, let them be. The two men had no idea of each other’s past and did not think of their future. They sat in the same room on the same couch and yet each immersed themselves in a different world, thinking of different thoughts that would not cross paths.
This state did not stay. Like how the sky and earth would not stay separate, emotions fell and drifted between them like wind-carried snow.
“Lu Guang.”
The Cheng Xiaoshi speaking was not the Cheng Xiaoshi from that time.
“I wish this kind of moment can last forever.”
Lu Guang’s time was out of order. Thus, there was never any difference between past and future. Every moment was forever to him.
Every moment was predestination.
“Whatever happens in my future, you should accept it.”
“I’m fighting in there,” said Cheng Xiaoshi. “I’m going to avenge you. I’m going to make sure that you won’t die.”
“We all die.”
“You know what I mean, Lu Guang. I’m not letting you die before me.”
The white haired man did not answer with words. He rose and walked to the kitchen, where he touched the pot of mutton with his bare fingers and fetched a bowl.
“Xiaoshi, it’s still warm.”
He poured a bowl of mutton soup for him. Cheng Xiaoshi often yelled about food and wanted to eat food from photos. This one would be nostalgic for him.
Though the body already ate, Cheng Xiaoshi’s mind was still hungry. He ate with eagerness. In the middle of the night the body would complain to Lu Guang about feeling too full.
“Let’s eat mutton soup again,” he said. “When you wake up.”
Lu Guang kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t agree. He couldn’t refuse. He had no idea what happened in the future. He could know, but he did not wish to find out.
“Let’s eat mutton every winter.”
This, Lu Guang could accept, as long as their wallets permitted it. It might be a placebo, but it helped with his winter depression.
“As long as you’re the one cooking it.”
The Cheng Xiaoshi finishing the bowl of mutton soup did not act much older than the Cheng Xiaoshi of Lu Guang’s present time. Then again, this was Cheng Xiaoshi, who could act immature even well into his old age.
“I found the photo, by the way.”
Lu Guang was about to ask which photo when a new memory surfaced.
“I knew you had a picture like this.”
Cheng Xiaoshi was smiling.
But the adult Cheng Xiaoshi wasn’t in front of him. He was inside Lu Guang, his words coming from inside Lu Guang’s body.
This body, still a child, was standing in front of a mirror, taking his first selfie.
“How did you find it?” both Lu Guang asked, to the eyes in the mirror and the Cheng Xiaoshi with an empty bowl of mutton soup.
In the child’s memory, Cheng Xiaoshi, using the child’s own arms, gave the child Lu Guang a hug.
It was the warmest hug Lu Guang had ever felt.
“You missed a shard when you tossed them out,” said the Cheng Xiaoshi before the empty bowl.
The memory of the kitchen knife was wrong: it was half of a pair of scissors, the blades separated from misuse. Lu Guang had cut up all of his old photos because he did not wish to bring them with him.
One shard fell away and into an open luggage. The framed photo of an ammonite fossil hung on the wall above the luggage and it stayed there as Lu Guang left and never returned.
Cheng Xiaoshi moved away from the empty bowl and the table. He walked to the second floor and Lu Guang followed.
“This is where you tell me about it, Lu Guang.”
In the closet, Lu Guang remembered. He pulled out the dusty luggage and zipped it open.
It was difficult to find and harder to recognise. When he moved in he thought it was some kind of paper filling and left it there, but in the light of knowledge he realised that it was a slice from a photograph.
A mirror and a bit of his hair.
Cheng Xiaoshi took it and carefully preserved it in a plastified envelope, then underneath the mattress of his own bunker bed.
Lu Guang wanted to ask what happened in the future, but he wasn’t going to break his own rule.
“I’ll see you in the future,” Cheng Xiaoshi said.
Outside the window, heavy snow covered the city like a blanket.
From beneath a snow-white blanket, Lu Guang woke up. The dreams, mixed with real memories, faded as if spring thaw.
Though it was not winter, he wanted to eat mutton.