1:17 AM, 周以寧 bought a bottle of milk at the convenience store.

She doesn’t actually drink milk.

Her stomach has been weak these past few years; dairy makes her bloated. The doctor has told her several times, and she remembers. But that day, standing in front of the fridge and seeing the row of white bottles, she suddenly thought of how 陳述 used to drink a glass every night before bed.

Memory has no manners.

It never knocks.

Especially the people and things you thought were already dead.

以寧 stood in the convenience store with the air conditioning blasting too hard, holding that bottle of milk, and suddenly remembered a winter twelve years ago.

陳述 sat on the floor of her rented place, back against the bed, and asked her:

“If there’s a parallel world, what do you think another you is doing right now?”

She was twenty-six then.

At twenty-six, she thought life had infinite possibilities, so her answer was cocky.

“Probably in Paris.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe being a photographer. Maybe dating a French guy.”

陳述 let out a laugh.

“What about me?”

She pretended to think for a moment.

“You probably don’t exist.”

He threw a pillow at her.

She laughed loudly.

Back then she didn’t know that one day the person who no longer existed would be him.

---

陳述 died at twenty-nine.

In a car accident with no drama at all.

No last words, no rainy night, no final handshake in an ambulance, no love that made it out in time like in novels.

He had only messaged her the afternoon before:

“What’s for dinner?”

She was in a meeting and didn’t reply.

Two hours later, he was gone.

For a long time afterward, those four words became what 以寧 hated most.

What’s for dinner.

A person’s entire life can end on such an ordinary sentence.

The world didn’t even change a little bit because of it.

The next morning the subway was still crowded, the breakfast shop’s griddle still sizzled, the neighbor next door still hung clothes on the balcony, the finance department still emailed her to sign a missing form.

Only then did she understand: the cruelest thing about death isn’t that someone stops breathing.

It’s that while someone else’s world has already collapsed, the world itself has no idea.

---

Twelve years later, 以寧 is thirty-eight.

She never went to Paris. She never became a photographer.

She works as a planner at a publishing house and occasionally takes photos for magazines.

She’s had a few men.

More precisely, a few relationships that could barely be called relationships.

The first one dated her for six months and asked:

“Do you even need me at all?”

She said, “Of course not.”

But her tone was too calm.

Calm like customer service.

The second one was more patient.

He watched movies with her, traveled with her, left medicine at her door when she had a cold.

A year later he asked:

“以寧, have you ever loved me at all?”

She was silent for a long time.

Finally she said:

“I guess so.”

That “guess” killed everything.

The man lowered his head and smiled.

Not angry.

It was the tired smile of someone who had finally confirmed a suspicion he’d carried all along.

“You’re not incapable of feeling.”

He said.

“You just don’t dare put anyone in a place where you could lose them.”

以寧 didn’t argue that day.

Because he was right.

She isn’t incapable of loving.

She just locked it away.

Like a house that once caught fire.

The fire is out, the walls repainted, the furniture replaced, but the person who lived there knows—

That place once burned.

So from then on, even the faintest smell of smoke makes her afraid.

---

She met 沈默 at a photography exhibition.

The first time she heard the name, she laughed.

“Did your parents know early on that you don’t talk much?”

沈默 looked at her.

“You’re the two-thousand-and-seventeenth person to say that today.”

“You counted?”

“No.”

She laughed again.

Later she learned he wasn’t actually silent.

He just spoke slowly.

As if every sentence had to live in his heart for a night first.

The first time they ate together, he asked why she always photographed places without people.

Empty train stations.

Alleys at dawn.

Beaches after the tide goes out.

Cafés after closing, with only chairs left.

She said, “People ruin the composition.”

沈默 looked at the photos for a long time.

“Or do you think people always leave the frame?”

以寧 looked up.

In that moment she disliked him very much.

Because some people’s perceptiveness feels like an intrusion.

---

They started seeing each other.

No one made an official confession.

After thirty, many adult relationships begin this way.

A few meals together, sharing a few songs, saying “Where are you” after work, until one day you realize you already know the other person doesn’t eat cilantro, grinds their teeth in their sleep, and disappears when they’re in a bad mood.

沈默 knows she’s afraid of hospitals.

He doesn’t know why.

She never told him.

One day after watching a movie, they passed the emergency room.

Ambulance lights flashing in the night.

Red.

Blue.

Red.

Blue.

以寧 suddenly stopped.

Her hands were cold.

沈默 didn’t ask.

He simply stepped between her and the ambulance.

The gesture was small.

Small enough that almost no one would notice.

Yet she wanted to cry in that moment.

Not because she was thinking of 陳述.

Quite the opposite.

It was because she suddenly realized the person standing in front of her this time wasn’t 陳述.

And she wasn’t disappointed.

That was more terrifying than missing him.

---

Loving a dead person is safe.

這是以寧 only understood later.

The dead don’t change their minds.

They don’t get tired.

They don’t suddenly decide ten years later that you’re not right for each other.

He’s forever frozen in the year he loved you most.

So the living can never compete with him.

Because the living grow old, get irritable, say the wrong thing, forget anniversaries.

The dead, however, are trimmed perfectly by memory.

Like a flower that never wilts.

She guarded 陳述 for twelve years.

Sometimes she couldn’t even tell whether she couldn’t let him go, or couldn’t let go of the version of herself who once dared to love someone without holding anything back.

---

沈默 told her he liked her in the eighth month after they met.

There were no candles.

They sat by the river embankment.

In the distance someone rode a bicycle; the wind flattened the grass in one direction.

沈默 said:

“I like you.”

以寧 didn’t speak for a long time.

“You know my situation.”

“I know some of it.”

“I might not be able to love like a normal person.”

“What’s normal?”

She frowned.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

沈默 turned to look at her.

“You laugh, you get angry, you get jealous, you deliberately reply half an hour late when I don’t reply for three hours. Isn’t that normal?”

She couldn’t help laughing.

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

After laughing, they both fell quiet.

以寧 lowered her head.

“沈默.”

“Mm.”

“I’m afraid you’ll die.”

The words finally came out.

Twelve years.

The first time she truly said it.

Not “I’m afraid of losing you.”

Not “I have no sense of security.”

But the rawest, ugliest sentence.

I’m afraid you’ll die.

沈默 didn’t answer right away.

The wind blew between them.

After a while he said:

“I will.”

She looked up sharply.

“What?”

“I’ll die one day.”

Her face went white.

沈默 didn’t take it back.

“You will too.”

“So?”

Her voice started to shake.

“So I can’t promise you I won’t leave.”

以寧 stood up.

“Then why did you even—”

“But 以寧.”

He caught her wrist.

Not hard.

“You can’t refuse to turn the first page just because every story has a last one.”

She stopped.

---

That night when she got home, she didn’t sleep.

At three in the morning she opened a hard drive she hadn’t touched in over ten years.

It was full of 陳述.

陳述 at twenty-five.

Twenty-six.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-eight.

Ending at twenty-nine.

In the photos he’s forever young.

She’s already thirty-eight.

She looked through them one by one.

Until she found a very short video.

From New Year’s Eve twelve years ago.

The footage was shaky.

She asked off-camera:

“If you could trade lives, whose life would you want to live?”

陳述 was drunk, slumped over the table.

He thought for a long time.

Then smiled and said:

“Mine, I guess.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in it.”

The video ended there.

以寧 sat in the dark.

She didn’t cry.

Only much, much later did she suddenly say:

“Idiot.”

The screen went dark.

For the first time she understood something.

If another universe really exists.

Maybe in that one 陳述 didn’t die.

Maybe they got married, had children, argued over utility bills.

Maybe by forty they no longer loved each other.

Maybe another version of her is envying this world’s version of herself.

Envying that she once had a love that never decayed.

But so what?

That’s exactly where parallel worlds are both cruelest and gentlest.

You can never prove they exist.

So the only life you can truly live is this one.

No trading.

No do-overs.

No other self to be brave for you.

---

At 6:12 AM, the sky began to lighten.

以寧 deleted some of the photos.

Not all of them.

She couldn’t bear to.

She didn’t want to bear to.

Forgetting has never been a condition for healing.

A person can keep living with the dead inside them.

Like carrying a scar.

You don’t need to cut the skin off to prove the wound has healed.

She closed the hard drive.

Walked out the door.

---

沈默 was asleep.

His phone rang three times before he answered.

“Hello…”

“沈默.”

“Mm?”

“How old are you right now?”

Silence on the other end for two seconds.

“Thirty-nine. You calling at dawn to do a census?”

She smiled a little.

“Then you might still have forty years left.”

“If I’m lucky.”

“Or maybe four.”

“Mm.”

“Or four months.”

“Also possible.”

Her eyes slowly reddened.

“Tomorrow?”

沈默 woke up a little more.

“No one can guarantee it.”

以寧 was quiet for a long time.

Car sounds began to appear on the streets.

The breakfast shop rolled up its metal gate.

Someone walked past carrying trash.

The city was waking up.

Twelve years ago, on the day she lost someone, the world had woken up just like this.

Back then she hated it.

Now she suddenly understood.

The world isn’t heartless.

The world just has to keep going.

“沈默.”

“Mm.”

“Let’s date.”

Complete silence on the other end.

以寧 sniffled.

“If you don’t say anything I’m hanging up.”

“Wait.”

There was a smile in his voice.

“I’m just making sure I’m not still dreaming.”

“Never mind then.”

“周以寧.”

“What?”

“Say it again.”

She looked at the gradually whitening sky.

“No.”

“One more time.”

“No.”

“Please.”

She was silent for a long time.

Finally she said very softly:

“I want to try loving you.”

Not “I love you.”

She still couldn’t say that.

But it didn’t matter anymore.

True courage has never been the absence of fear.

It’s knowing you might still lose in the end, yet still being willing to reach out your hand.

---

A year later, 以寧 went to Paris.

沈默 went with her.

By the Seine, he carried her camera bag the whole way, complaining it was too heavy.

She turned around to photograph him.

Just before she pressed the shutter, he suddenly asked:

“Didn’t you used to only photograph places without people?”

She paused.

“Yeah.”

“What about now?”

Wind blew across the river.

Someone played music in the distance.

She looked at him through the viewfinder.

A forty-year-old man.

A few fine lines at the corners of his eyes.

Hair messy from the wind.

Imperfect.

Will grow old.

Will change.

One day will also disappear.

She suddenly thought this was good.

So she pressed the shutter.

Click.

“Now I photograph people sometimes.”

She said.

“Why?”

以寧 lowered the camera.

Thought for a moment.

“Because even if someone leaves the frame, it doesn’t mean the photo isn’t worth taking.”

沈默 didn’t speak.

He simply held out his hand to her.

This time, 以寧 didn’t hesitate.

She took it.

---

She still dreams of 陳述 sometimes.

In the dreams he’s still twenty-nine.

While she’s already forty, fifty, sixty.

He always stands far away, watching her.

One time in a dream she asked:

“If you really could trade the rest of your life, would you trade with me?”

陳述 smiled.

The same smile from when he was young.

Then shook his head.

When she woke up, it was raining outside.

沈默 was sleeping beside her, one hand ungracefully clutching her blanket.

以寧 looked at him for a long time.

Reached out and touched his eyebrows.

He frowned slightly, turned over, and kept sleeping.

She suddenly smiled.

No trading the rest of their lives.

No other world.

The dead stay in yesterday.

The living sleep beside her.

And she finally admitted—

Love has never been promising each other you’ll never leave.

That’s just humanity’s impossible demand on time.

Real love might simply be:

I know one day we’ll be separated.

It might be death.

It might be fate.

It might even be that we stop loving each other.

But until that day comes,

I won’t lose you ahead of time.

Because it took her twelve years to understand,

Some people turn the rest of their life into waiting.

Some turn it into running away.

And the courage to love someone again

Isn’t finally believing the ending will be good.

It’s finally accepting—

Even if the ending isn’t kind,

The meeting was still worth it.

That morning, 以寧 went back to sleep.

In the dream there was no 陳述.

No 沈默 either.

Only a very long road.

She walked forward alone.

At the end of the road, no one was waiting for her.

Strangely, she wasn’t afraid at all.

Because she finally knew,

The one thing in life that truly cannot be exchanged

Has never been the rest of your life.

It’s this moment.

#OneSongOneStory#Love#ShortStory

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