Chapter 37: “Snowy Day Felt Hat” Part 1

The winter nights in the Northern Border brought a cold that solidified in one’s bones and blood, seeping even into the crevices between the bones.

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Before she had ever been to the Northern Border, Fu Tingli had always heard Qiao Lipan say as much.

Once Fu Tingli had grown sensible enough to wonder about it, she asked Qiao Lipan why she still thought so fondly of such a frigid place after leaving the Northern Border so many years before.

Qiao Lipan had been drinking at the time. She was draped in a warm, crimson blanket embroidered with ethnic patterns. She ruffled Fu Tingli’s hair a couple of times, then tossed the blanket straight over her head, covering her completely. Somewhat wistfully, she told her:

“You’ll know once you’ve been there.”

Back then, with that blanket—reeking faintly of alcohol—plopped over her head, Fu Tingli hadn’t understood. The words had seemed too abstract, the kind of empty adult wisdom grown-ups spouted to fob off kids.

Later, amid the ebb and flow of memories—anywhere north of forty-three degrees ninety minutes latitude counted as the Northern Border—she recalled setting foot there three times in total.

Once, she had gotten lost in the Northern Border’s snow. Once, she had ridden a little brown horse through the Northern Border’s snow. And once, she had been trapped in a small village amid the Northern Border’s snow alongside a certain woman.

They were all winter nights in the Northern Border, all with that bone-piercing chill invading every fiber of her being.

Yet the third time had left the deepest impression. She could never forget that blanket draped over her body.

Nor could she forget the scent that clung to it: the local warmth blended with the faint osmanthus from her bath gel, and the clean, lingering aroma of Walch Original Laundry Detergent from her old clothes. She had tried time and again to recreate that smell later on, but it never quite matched that Northern Border night.

Thanks once more to the Proust effect, what she found herself recalling over and over was no longer that soul-chilling cold that filled her with dread at the mere thought.

“Still cold?”

A hyper-realistic yet grotesque movie scene flickered with faint light in the dim, drab old room, illuminating two young, pallid faces—like the final throes of a desperate standoff.

“Not cold.”

Fu Tingli spoke the truth; she didn’t feel cold at all. Her attention was utterly absorbed by the movie’s plot.

The conflicts in Winter Storm layered one atop another, emotions laid bare in raw intensity, all captured in a strikingly distinctive visual style that commanded the eye.

“Really?”

The woman’s voice was soft and languid, drifting from Fu Tingli’s left shoulder to her ear. Her breath came like scattered clouds dissolving into fine mist, slipping into the hollow of Fu Tingli’s collarbone.

“Of course it’s real. Why would I lie to you for no reason?”

The body seemed to hold onto memories more enduringly than the mind. Kong Liyuan had been leaning on her shoulder for ages now, but Fu Tingli felt no discomfort whatsoever.

Admittedly, that initial request—”Let me lean on you for a bit”—had caught her off guard.

But the surprise lasted only a second. The very next moment, she remembered the messages in the WeChat group—and how Kong Liyuan hadn’t gotten any rest since waking up fever-free at the relief station that day.

Was she coming down with another fever?

“You haven’t started burning up again, have you? Did you take the fever meds?” The thought made Fu Tingli’s heart lurch, and she reached out on instinct to feel the woman’s forehead.

Kong Liyuan neither pulled away nor objected. She merely smiled lazily.

Fu Tingli’s hand came to rest on Kong Liyuan’s forehead, their similar warmths mingling.

For once, Fu Tingli’s hands—which never seemed to warm up in winter—felt toasty.

Fortunately, though, Kong Liyuan showed no sign of fever. The woman’s constitution was truly remarkable; her tolerance for both pain and illness far exceeded the ordinary.

Fu Tingli let out a breath of relief. She tucked her hand back under the blanket and returned her gaze from Kong Liyuan’s head on her shoulder to the phone screen.

In the murky light, something glinted in her peripheral vision. She paused, her eyes settling on a slender silver necklace.

It lay against the woman’s pale neck right now, peeking out from the loose collar of her sweater and half-hidden beneath a tangle of dark hair.

It was the one with the “Ava” pendant—the twin to the identical necklace still tucked away in Fu Tingli’s suitcase. Kong Liyuan had handed it over back in California, telling her to redeem the original once they reached Los Angeles.

Later, after mingling their blood into it, the necklace had stayed in Fu Tingli’s possession.

Would now be a good time to give it back to Kong Liyuan?

Fu Tingli mulled it over quietly, then shifted her gaze away as if nothing were amiss.

The movie was nearing its end. The bloodied Li Yi had found a phone booth and slotted in her coins with a blank expression, dialing a number that would never connect.

Fu Tingli was still debating whether to return the necklace—and how to bring it up—when Kong Liyuan spoke first.

“Fu Tingli.”

“Huh?” Fu Tingli blinked, pulling herself out of her reverie.

“Why have you never asked me anything?” Kong Liyuan’s breath came slow and measured.

“Asked you what?” Fu Tingli blinked in genuine surprise.

The film had reached its long final shot, myriad emotions warring across Li Yi’s face. Kong Liyuan paused before continuing.

“You saw the necklace, didn’t you?”

“Oh, that.” So they’d both had it on their minds. Fu Tingli considered her words for a moment. “Actually, there’s not much to ask.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“A little.” Fu Tingli shrugged it off airily. “But I get it. I can tell those two necklaces mean a lot to you.”

Kong Liyuan smiled at that. “They do. You could call them keepsakes.”

She didn’t say whose keepsakes, and there was no trace of sorrow or melancholy in her tone.

Fu Tingli toyed with the edge of the blanket regardless, that familiar pang of sun-bleached bitterness returning.

Her mind flashed first to Kong Liyuan’s mother—the woman whose postpartum depression had been dragged into the spotlight by the media over a decade after her death, her old footage dredged up for dissection and judgment.

Fu Tingli didn’t press the issue. She simply nodded and murmured softly:

“Then it’s good that neither one got lost.”

Kong Liyuan hummed in acknowledgment. The breath against Fu Tingli’s collar grew even sleepier.

“You’re not going to ask anything else?”

“Let me think.” Fu Tingli had no desire to pull Kong Liyuan into a melancholic mood. “There is one thing I’ve been dying to know.”

“What is it?” Kong Liyuan sounded surprised—probably because Fu Tingli so rarely put it that way. “Why not ask sooner?”

“Well…” Fu Tingli stifled a yawn, her voice turning lazy.

“Are you Zoe or Ava?”

Rather than probe the vast secrets those names might conceal, she picked the most straightforward question of all.

“Just the one question?” The surprise in Kong Liyuan’s voice thickened.

“Yeah.” Fu Tingli smiled. Sleep was tugging at her now; her head lolled sideways, nearly resting against the woman’s.

“I really do want to know.”

“Zoe,” Kong Liyuan said. Then she fell silent, waiting.

She figured Fu Tingli would follow up—at the very least, ask who the other name belonged to or what their connection might be.

That was the obvious line of inquiry, wasn’t it?

But Fu Tingli always defied expectations. She merely yawned once more, flashed a smile at the beleaguered Li Yi onscreen—or perhaps at Kong Liyuan herself—and said with calm gentleness:

“Then it matches what I guessed. I’ve always thought Zoe sounded nicer.”

“What if I said I was Ava?” Kong Liyuan teased with a smile.

“Ava’s nice too.” Fu Tingli began agreeably, then continued with quiet conviction:

“But I think you’re Zoe.”

“Why’s that?”

“Just a hunch.”

Because the Zoe you showed me is the one who stayed with me, she added only in her mind, the words never quite making it out.

The movie wrapped up with its final shot: Li Yi in the phone booth, ending on her smile. The credits began to roll then—white text scrolling upward against a pitch-black backdrop.

Kong Liyuan let the moment lapse without reply. Fu Tingli yawned again.

“Sleepy?” Kong Liyuan asked.

“Yeah, and we just finished.” Fu Tingli reached for the phone.

“Let’s see the credits through.” Kong Liyuan stopped her.

Fu Tingli lifted her heavy eyelids in a daze. Kong Liyuan’s eyes remained fixed on the tiny screen.

“Oh. You want to watch every name go by?”

“It’s a habit. Feels wrong to stop early. You can sleep if you want.”

Kong Liyuan lifted her head from Fu Tingli’s shoulder and settled lazily against the wall instead.

Shadows ebbed and flowed in the gloom.

Fu Tingli’s shoulder suddenly felt light after sharing its warmth for so long. She wasn’t quite used to the absence.

“Then I’ll stick it out with you. Not much left anyway,” she mumbled, her voice thick with drowsiness.

“If you can still hold on, it’s not impossible,” Kong Liyuan said with a smile. “The end credits are probably about seven or eight minutes long.”

“That’s so long?” Fu Tingli smacked her lips and tried to straighten her back. “Then I have to see it through to the end.”

“You’re not sleepy anymore?” Kong Liyuan glanced at her.

“Even if I’m sleepy, I’ll watch it all first.” Fu Tingli yawned again.

“Last time, Teacher Wen told me that once Daytime Blizzard is released, my name will be in the end credits too. Thinking about it, I’ve never paid attention to those lists before—I always left as soon as the lights went out.”

“So starting with this movie, I’ve decided to watch every single credits roll to the end.”

She pointed at the name of the catering crew that happened to scroll by on the screen and said in some surprise, “No wonder your movie’s credits are so long. They cover every little detail.”

“There are even longer ones. The Winter Storm crew wasn’t very big to begin with—most people wore multiple hats.

“If you look closely, you’ll see that the person you just saw was both the lighting technician and the painter, and this one here was both the cleaner and the assistant director…”

All of this was uncharted territory for Fu Tingli, something she’d never delved into before.

Even as sleepiness washed over her, she was captivated by the expression on Kong Liyuan’s face as she talked about it.

In that instant, the faint glow from the small screen seemed to swell into something wondrous and dreamlike.

Flickering, it played across the woman’s face.

Fu Tingli had always thought this woman didn’t care about anything—that her smiles weren’t genuine, her calm wasn’t true calm.

As if she had no desires or passions of her own, like a vague outsider, or a wisp of gray smoke that could drift away on the wind at any moment.

But now, she realized her perception had been way off. This woman had always been so vivid and intense.

In the woman’s lazy yet clear voice, Fu Tingli slowly sank into the winter night of the Northern Border.

In her drowsiness, as she watched the subtitles crawl upward, a question suddenly bubbled up.

So she asked,

“Kong Liyuan, you’ve played so many roles—which one is your favorite?”

After asking, what floated into Fu Tingli’s mind was the smile Li Yi gave in the phone booth at the end of Winter Storm.

She thought if it were up to her, she’d pick Li Yi. But she didn’t hear Kong Liyuan’s answer. The sleepiness was too overwhelming, and in the drifting dim light,

her head lolled to the side, and she fell completely asleep.

The end credits rolled to a finish, and the young woman’s head nodded drowsily before thudding unceremoniously onto Kong Liyuan’s chest.

It hurt a little, but Kong Liyuan smiled.

Outside the window, the heavy snow kept falling. She sat there in the dim room, not falling asleep right away.