Zhang Qinglan did not go home.
She walked down to the third floor, passed the New Year goods cardboard boxes piled at the stair landing, stepped out into the snow outside the building, and then stopped.
The first-month wind blew across from the river side, laden with the damp chill of the thawing snow, drilling inward along her collar. The old osmanthus tree in front of the teachers’ residential building had shed all its leaves, its branches weighed down by residual snow from which a clump would occasionally drop with a soft thud.
She stood under that tree, completely motionless.
Her mind was a chaotic mess, yet remarkably clear. What was chaotic were the things Teacher Meng had spoken of, one by one, like the cluttered seats strewn all over the floor after a movie lets out. What was clear were other things, things neatly arranged in time codes:
In 2018, the good-news poster at the county high school gate, 682 points, English 148.
In 2022, the top scorer record chart in the school history museum’s glass case, where she stood on tiptoe and took more than a dozen photos.
In 2023, the 137-point English test paper, graded by the person right in front of her right now, who had said, “Your English is better than hers; you will definitely surpass her.”
In the Dragon Boat Festival of 2026, those few screenfuls of earnest, detailed replies on WeChat, alongside the several messages of admiration and gratitude she had sent consecutively, and then silence. She was sensible, and never disturbed her again from then on.
In 2025, the county runner-up. On the day the scores were released, the physics teacher patted her shoulder and sighed: her emotional fluctuations were too severe; she wasn’t as steady as Yi Junling. She lowered her head and accepted it. Her whole life she had wanted to win against that name, yet her whole life she had been completely clear that from start to finish, what she was chasing was never victory or defeat.
In 2030, undergraduate graduation, direct Ph.D., choosing a direction. Her advisor asked her why she was passing up the smooth path of clinical medicine to switch to AI drug discovery. Seven or eight teachers sat in the interview classroom. She stood up, spoke a well-prepared official speech, and when she finished, blurted out a quiet half-sentence at the end, wanting to get a little closer to the person she liked. Her voice was as soft as talking to herself; she foolishly thought no one heard.
In 2029, “The remaining boundless years, to be spent together.” That night she smoked for the first time, choking so hard tears came out; she drank alcohol for the first time, getting so drunk she lost all consciousness.
In the 2034 Spring Festival, also in this building, also in this room, she casually pretended to ask about it, and Teacher Meng said: Lingling is very happy. She smiled and said: I am very much looking forward to meeting senior sister and her wife.
That sentence, when recalled now, felt like a joke.
What she did not know was:
In that very year she spoke those words, 2034, two flight paths had once brushed past each other high above the Pacific Ocean.
In March, Yi Junling took off from the West Coast, heading east, crossing the Pacific Ocean, concluding her twelve years in Country A. Outside the airplane window was a sea of clouds. She sat by the window with a cardboard box on her knees, containing everything she had brought out from that home: a few books, a few pieces of clothing, an old computer. Fourteen years of emotional attachment, five years of marriage, one mark, ultimately condensed into a twenty-kilogram checked baggage allowance.
In June, Zhang Qinglan took off from Shencheng, heading west, likewise crossing the Pacific Ocean, to register at Lighthouse Institute of Technology. Before taking off, she posted a Moment on WeChat with a boarding pass as the picture, her caption quite restrained: A new journey. Teacher Meng liked it underneath.
Two planes, one heading east, the other west, separated in the middle by three months and an entire Pacific Ocean.
If one were to spread out the world maps of those two years and circle the coordinates of the two people with a red pen, they would discover a nearly cruel truth: they were actually not very far apart. On the same continent, spinning in the same time zone, speaking the same language, looking at the same moon. Between Lighthouse Institute of Technology and that research institute, the plane ride took only five hours.
Five hours. In countless late nights of overtime, Zhang Qinglan later ran simulation calculations over and over again, each round taking five hours. What she did not know was that during those nights, she was away from the person she had kept on her mind for half a life by merely the time of such a calculation cycle.
Yet during those two years, Yi Junling’s world was in turmoil: a fourteen-year relationship collapsed, a piece of paper for an agreement, a cleansing, a retreat spanning across the Pacific Ocean. She deleted that city along with everyone in it, completely and cleanly. And in Zhang Qinglan’s world, there was no her, only increasingly thick literature and increasingly late leaving times.
Two lines walked parallel on the same continent for two years. The closest distance was a five-hour flight, and the furthest distance was that one person had already turned around, while the other was still left completely in the dark.
On the soil of Country A, they had zero intersection. Zhang Qinglan spent two winters in the laboratory at Lighthouse Institute of Technology, doing her molecular docking and kinetic simulations. She did not know that in some apartment three thousand kilometers away, there had once been someone she had missed for sixteen years, and when that person left, she did not even leave behind the corner of a garment.
Fate placed them on the same continent for two years, and then arranged a perfect missed connection for them.
All of this was impossible for Zhang Qinglan to know. She only stood in the snow downstairs at Teacher Meng’s house, recalculating the eighteen-year ledger in her heart one stroke at a time.
Another clump of snow fell from the osmanthus tree, striking her shoulder, cold.
She suddenly remembered the rule she set for herself after the Dragon Boat Festival of 2026: do not disturb. She remembered the verdict she passed on herself after that drunken night in 2029: give up completely. She remembered the smilingly spoken words from 2034, “I am very much looking forward to meeting senior sister and her wife.” She remembered the unopened bottle of suppressants in the laboratory cabinet, she remembered every single rejected suitor over all these years, and she remembered the sentence she blurted out when a classmate caught her staring blankly at her phone, the school motto:
As it turned out, none of those were giving up.
It was hibernation.
The wind swept past again, stirring up fine snow particles on the ground. She glanced at her phone. Half an hour had passed, and her fingertips were frozen stiff.
The third-floor window of Teacher Meng’s house glowed with warm yellow light. The curtains were not fully drawn, revealing the familiar floor lamp in the living room, and beneath the light was the single armchair she habitually sat in.
Senior sister is divorced.
Senior sister is back.
Senior sister is at Jiangwan University, in Shencheng, in the same city as her.
Senior sister cannot bear children. The people in the family who pressured her have scattered. Senior sister washed away the mark, leaving a scar on her gland. Senior sister changed her number, deleted the past, and started anew.
The spark beneath the ashes had finally been uncovered by her own hands.
Zhang Qinglan stood straight in the snow, tucked her frozen hands back into her coat pockets, turned around, and walked back into the stairwell.
When the door opened, Teacher Meng was not surprised at all.
She did not even ask why she was back. Instead, she stepped aside, looked at the young person covered in biting cold with snow particles still clinging to her eyelashes, and said, “You ran down without even changing your shoes, you must be frozen through. Come in.”
Zhang Qinglan did not go in.
She stood at the doorway, standing as straight as she had every time over the years when walking into an exam room, a thesis defense room, or an interview room, and took a deep breath.
“Teacher Meng,” she said. “Could you help me talk to senior sister?”
Teacher Meng looked at her.
“I want to…” She paused, rolling those two words around on the tip of her tongue before they finally settled firmly into place, “…go on a blind date with her.”
The voice-activated light in the stairwell went out. In the darkness, no one moved. After two seconds, Teacher Meng raised her hand and patted the wall, and the light came back on, illuminating a face with a complex expression.
She looked at Zhang Qinglan for a very, very long time.
Starting from that 137-point English test paper in 2023, she had known this child for thirteen years. She watched her grow from a silently precocious high school freshman into the county’s runner-up, a top medical school student, a postdoc returning from Country A, and a quasi-scientist about to join Luosheng. She also watched her appear promptly at her doorstep every Spring Festival, carrying inexpensive yet always perfectly thoughtful gifts, chatting with her, and then beating around the bush until winding back to the very same person to ask how senior sister had been lately, listening to the answer, thanking her, and leaving.
Year after year. She saw it all.
“Qinglan,” Teacher Meng finally spoke, her voice very soft, “how long have you been waiting?”
The voice-activated light went out again.
In the darkness, Zhang Qinglan did not answer.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t answer. It was that she couldn’t. Once this question was opened, what followed was eighteen years, 682 points, the glass case in the school history museum, the unanswered Dragon Boat Festival of 2026, the wretched heavy drunkenness of 2029. It wasn’t time for her to tell yet. Some numbers, when spoken aloud, become a burden. She came today to ask for a match, not to beg for sympathy.
She merely straightened herself a bit in the darkness and said softly, “Teacher Meng, I cannot tell you this answer right now. The day I can tell, you will be the first person I inform.”
The stairwell fell quiet for two seconds.
Teacher Meng stood in the darkness for a moment, and suddenly understood.
She did not pursue the matter further either.
“Come in.” She turned the light back on, her tone returning to normal. “It is cold outside.”
That night, the teacher and student sat in the living room past ten o’clock.
Teacher Meng put the harsh words upfront first.
“First, Lingling cannot bear children. This is a confirmed diagnosis, the kind that cannot be cured. If your family counts on you to carry on the family line…”
“Teacher Meng,” Zhang Qinglan interrupted her, her voice calm, “I am turning twenty-nine, not nineteen. All these years, being out on my own, whatever decisions I make, whatever life I live, I can take responsibility for myself. If I minded, I would have given up long ago.”
“Second, she is a divorcee.”
“I know.”
“Third,” Teacher Meng stared at her, “you are a Class-A alpha, 29 years old, with a bright future ahead of you. Although I do not understand the terms Luosheng offered you, I know they cannot be bad. What kind of omega could you not get? Lingling is seven years older than you, divorced, unable to have children, and still has a scar on her gland. Think this through clearly; this is not doing charity, this is for a lifetime.”
Zhang Qinglan listened quietly until she finished.
“Teacher Meng,” she said, “everything you mentioned, I know. I will answer you one by one.”
She stretched out one hand, counting on her fingers like stating an experimental design during a thesis defense.
“First, children. I don’t mind not having children. If senior sister truly likes kids…” She paused, raising her head, “…I can also have them. I am an alpha; alphas can give birth. I have checked into it, looked into everything clearly. My family will not object; as for my parents’ side, I will go talk to them myself.”
Teacher Meng was stunned.
“Second, being divorced. In my eyes, senior sister’s past is not a minus point. That she was divorced only proves that someone in her previous marriage did not cherish her. That was someone else’s fault, not hers.”
“Third, age, rank, future.” Zhang Qinglan put her hand down, smiling faintly. “Teacher Meng, you taught me. You said back then that test scores can only measure a test paper, not a person. I have kept that in mind all these years. I want to marry the person Yi Junling, not a medical examination report.”
The living room was very quiet. The old wall clock ticked away second by second.
“What about your parents’ side?” Teacher Meng asked. “You are an only daughter.”
“I will tell them as soon as I go back,” Zhang Qinglan said. “They never read many books in their lives, working odd jobs outside to support my education, and they never taught me any grand principles. They only taught me one thing: life is lived by oneself, whether it is sweet or bitter, one tastes it themselves. The person I have chosen, they will accept.”
“What if they cannot wrap their heads around it for a while?”
“Then I will slowly make them understand.” Her tone was very flat, like stating an experimental procedure. “Before they understand, no banquet, no fanfare, not letting senior sister suffer even the slightest grievance. Teacher Meng, I do not have any great skills; I just have patience.”
Patience. Teacher Meng chewed on those three words in her heart, ever since seeing the good-news poster at the school gate in the fifth grade of elementary school all the way to today, wasn’t that precisely patience?
Teacher Meng looked at her, and suddenly recalled another scene from many years ago, the young high school freshman standing beside the podium holding a 137-point test paper, when no one else in the entire grade could outscore her, yet she kept her lips pursed, her gaze drifting out the window, wondering what she was thinking about. Back then, she only assumed this child had high aspirations.
Now she knew: back then, there was already a person living in this child’s heart.
And once moved in, they stayed all the way until today.
Teacher Meng herself was also divorced. When her first marriage fell apart, she was thirty-eight, and the gossip in the small town could drown a person. She too had thought her life would just be like this. Later she met Lao Zhou, a math teacher who was a bit of a taciturn blockhead, but who would silently place a cup of hot milk on the corner of the table when she was grading papers late into the night. Now twelve years had passed, in perfect harmony, living days even sweeter than those in a first marriage.
So, what if it is a second marriage? People in a second marriage know all the better how to cherish someone.
“Alright,” Teacher Meng let out a long breath, as if unloading something heavy, “I will help you pass along these words.”
Zhang Qinglan suddenly raised her head.
“But there is one condition,” Teacher Meng raised a finger, “I am only responsible for passing along the message. Whether she agrees or not, whether she meets you or not, Lingling must nod herself. If she says no, this matter ends right here, and you are not allowed to pester her.”
“Okay,” Zhang Qinglan answered without a moment of hesitation, “if she does not nod, I will keep waiting.”
Those words were spoken so naturally, so naturally that it caused a sudden skip in Teacher Meng’s heart keep waiting. Spoken as if waiting was something she had already mastered down to an art.