Over the next two days, Lin Yuanxi barely had a moment to herself.
The Floating City's daily rhythm was completely different from the world she had once known. It was always nighttime. Day after day, the moon grew rounder, hanging in the sky as though someone with a paintbrush added a little more light to it every day. No one told her what time she was supposed to wake up, but whenever she opened her eyes in the communal bunkhouse with its thin straw mats, she found that the other girls had already begun their assigned work. Some were tidying the stone steps beside Lotus Pond, some were dusting bamboo leaves in Bamboo Shadow Pond, and others were crouched beside Water Lantern Pond, carefully setting each newly formed water lantern upright.
Gradually, she figured out a few patterns.
The Floating City was divided into several districts, each corresponding to a different pond, and every pond required its own kind of care. The moment insect damage appeared on a lotus leaf in Lotus Pond, the leaf had to be removed, or all the lotuses in the pond would wither ahead of schedule. Water Lily Pond had one strict rule: no loud noises. The water spirits were timid, and the slightest fright would send them hiding at the bottom of the pond for days, taking the water lilies with them as they wilted. Bamboo Shadow Pond, meanwhile, required everyone to “walk in the direction of the bamboo leaves.” It sounded mystical, but after Lin Yuanxi tried it several times with girls familiar with the place, she discovered that if she stepped toward the pond against the direction in which the bamboo leaves had fallen, a strange resistance really did rise through the soles of her feet, as though she were stepping on the skin of a living thing.
On the first day, she was assigned to Stone Bridge Pond. Her task was to scrape away some of the moss that had spread too far across the bridge, leaving behind just enough to keep the surface from becoming too slippery. The girl in charge of showing her around was named A-Zhu. She was quick with both hands and feet and spoke just as quickly, giving Lin Yuanxi a running lesson in the Floating City's various oddities while scraping moss beside her.
“Did you know every bridge in the Floating City is different?” A-Zhu said. “The bridge in Stone Bridge Pond is the steadiest because the water spirit underneath has the best temper. It almost never gets angry. If you ever cross the suspension bridge over by Bamboo Shadow Pond and it starts swaying like crazy, that’s not the wind. It’s the water spirit underneath throwing a fit.”
“What do you mean, throwing a fit?” Lin Yuanxi asked as she scraped along with her.
“It means it’s upset.” A-Zhu shrugged. “When it comes down to it, the water spirits in the Floating City have emotions too. Treat them well, and they’ll let you cross safely. Treat them badly, and they’ll teach you a lesson. Most of the time, though, they’re fine. The real trouble comes from those…”
She suddenly stopped, as if realizing she had said too much.
“Those what?” Lin Yuanxi pressed.
“Never mind.” A-Zhu smiled and changed the subject. “You’re scraping too hard. Leave some moss, or the bridge will crack.”
Lin Yuanxi didn’t get an answer, but she silently memorized the phrase “the real trouble.” She gradually realized that nearly everyone in the Floating City had this habit when they spoke—stopping abruptly halfway through, as if there were an unspoken understanding about things that couldn’t be said aloud. Everyone seemed to know exactly what the others meant. Only she, the newcomer, was always a beat behind, forever failing to understand what lay beneath their words.
On the second day, she was transferred to Wax Apple Pond to help out. A plant she had never seen before grew there, with long, slender leaves and pale pinkish-purple blossoms. It smelled faintly sweet, somewhat like wax apples, but mixed into the scent was another almost imperceptible note, something like earth after rain. As she crouched at the water's edge pruning overgrown branches, that earthy smell suddenly reached her. Her chest tightened for no apparent reason, as if something had been lightly touched.
She frowned and stopped moving her hands, struggling to remember where that familiar feeling came from.
But she couldn’t remember anything.
Only a blurry, grayish scene flashed through the depths of her mind—maybe a torrential rainstorm, maybe something from when she was very young, maybe she had once crouched somewhere with something cupped in her hands. But the image came and went too quickly. Before she could grasp it, it had completely dissolved, leaving behind only a hollow sense of loss, as if she had misplaced something important without even being able to remember its shape.
She asked several times what all of this was for.
The answers were always vague.
“Because the full moon is coming.”
“Because it’s time for Fish Selection. You still don’t get it?”
“Ask Sister Zhiqing. She knows more than any of us.”
But Liu Zhiqing had been especially busy these past two days, rushing between the various ponds and whispering with women Lin Yuanxi had never seen before, women who looked older than the rest. She was so busy that she barely had a spare moment to stop and answer Lin Yuanxi’s questions. Lin Yuanxi could only swallow them one by one and follow the crowd, continuing to do work she didn’t understand but somehow felt she had to do well.
Once, she saw Liu Zhiqing from a distance, standing beside a pond she had never visited. A waist-high ring of stone railings surrounded it, something Lin Yuanxi hadn’t noticed before. The water was darker than that of the other ponds, almost ink green, and unnaturally still—not even a ripple disturbed its surface. Liu Zhiqing stood beside the railing with her head lowered, staring at the water with an almost solemn concentration. Her lips moved faintly, as if she were saying something to the water, but not a sound could be heard.
Lin Yuanxi was about to go over and ask her when A-Zhu, passing nearby, grabbed her by the arm.
“Don’t go over there.” A-Zhu lowered her voice. “That’s Orchid Pool. Ordinary people aren’t allowed near it, especially not these days.”
“Why not?”
“Because Orchid Pool is home to…” A-Zhu hesitated. “Forget it. You’ll find out when the time comes.”
Lin Yuanxi sighed and stopped asking. She was gradually getting used to the Floating City's version of “You’ll find out when the time comes,” like an invisible wall that always left her one layer away from the real answer.
By the evening of the third day—if the word “evening” could still be used in the Floating City, it meant the time when the sky grew one shade darker than usual and the moon one degree rounder—all the girls were summoned to the largest courtyard in the center of the Floating City.
A huge pond occupied the center of the courtyard. Its surface was so still that not a ripple could be seen. Lotus flowers and water lilies of every color grew thickly around it, their pink, white, and pale purple petals overlapping across half the water. Several intricately carved stone pillars stood along the bank, with bronze lanterns hanging from their tops. Their light was brighter and purer than anywhere else, as if someone had deliberately turned up the brightness.
Lin Yuanxi stood at the edge of the crowd, watching more and more girls arrive. She counted roughly fifty or sixty at least, ranging from girls who looked sixteen or seventeen to young women in their early twenties. Every face carried a mixture of excitement and nervousness, and whispers rose and fell all around her.
“Tomorrow’s the full moon.”
“I wonder what kind of fish there will be this year.”
“I heard Orchid Pool has been especially quiet these past two days. Maybe it’s hiding something powerful.”
“I don’t care whether it’s powerful or not. I just want to choose a gentle one.”
The more Lin Yuanxi listened, the more questions she had. They talked about Fish Selection as if it were some kind of casting event, but also as if it were a marriage that would determine the rest of their lives. In fact, if she understood correctly, those two things seemed to be one and the same.
She didn’t know when Liu Zhiqing had appeared beside her. In her hands was a small tray bearing several cups of water so clear they were almost transparent.
“Have some.” She handed one to Lin Yuanxi. “It’s Moon Pool water. Drinking it the day before the full moon will calm your heart.”
Lin Yuanxi accepted the cup but didn’t drink right away.
“Sister Zhiqing,” she finally said, unable to hold back any longer, “I want to ask you something. Can you give me a straight answer?”
Liu Zhiqing looked at her, a flicker of understanding passing through her eyes, as if she had expected this question all along.
“Go ahead.”
“What are we really choosing in Fish Selection?” Lin Yuanxi asked, each word deliberate. “They aren’t ordinary fish, are they? That thing I saw in Willowbank Pond that night—is that one of the fish we’re supposed to choose?”
The noise around them seemed to recede. Liu Zhiqing was silent for a long time—so long that Lin Yuanxi thought she would brush her off again with something like “You’ll know soon enough.”
But this time, Liu Zhiqing didn’t avoid the question.
“Every pond in the Floating City is home to things beneath its surface that… can’t be considered ordinary creatures.” She spoke slowly, as if weighing whether each word should be said aloud. “They were originally just fish, but for certain reasons, they gained things that don’t belong to fish—a very, very long lifespan, a small measure of something resembling human consciousness, and…” She paused. “An obsession.”
“An obsession?”
“Every fish that gets chosen,” Liu Zhiqing said in an even softer voice, “once shared a bond with someone—a connection even the fish themselves couldn’t fully explain. Maybe that person once saved it. Maybe that person treated it gently just once. Maybe all they did was look at it and remember what it looked like.”
Lin Yuanxi’s heart skipped a beat.
“That bond was so light and thin that the person might never even think of it again.” Liu Zhiqing gazed at the distant surface where lotus flowers and water lilies grew together, a difficult-to-describe sorrow in her eyes. “But to the fish, it was something they would spend the rest of their lives remembering. They would wait, year after year, for that person to one day appear in the Floating City—for that person to choose them again.”
“So…” Lin Yuanxi’s voice trembled. “Fish Selection isn’t about randomly choosing a fish. The fish has already chosen the person it wants to wait for?”
Liu Zhiqing turned to look at her. Her gaze settled on Lin Yuanxi’s face and lingered for a very long time, so long that Lin Yuanxi felt as if those eyes were seeing through something inside her.
“You learn quickly.” Liu Zhiqing’s voice was soft, carrying an almost pitying tenderness. “But not everyone gets to meet the fish that’s waiting for them. Some people search all night and can only choose an ordinary fish, one with no prior connection to them. That kind of bond has to be cultivated from the beginning. And some people…”
She left the sentence unfinished.
“What about some people?” Lin Yuanxi pressed.
Instead of answering, Liu Zhiqing asked her a question.
“When you were little, did you ever do something you have absolutely no memory of?”
Lin Yuanxi froze.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Liu Zhiqing considered her words. “Something that seemed insignificant to you, something you did and forgot, but that was important enough to another person to change their entire life.”
Lin Yuanxi opened her mouth to say no, but the answer stopped on her lips. She remembered the inexplicable flutter in her chest when she smelled that earthy scent beside Wax Apple Pond. She remembered the gray, blurry fragment of memory she couldn’t seem to hold on to.
“I…I don’t know.” She answered honestly. “These past two days, I’ve kept feeling like there’s something there, but I can’t remember what it is.”
Liu Zhiqing’s expression shifted slightly. She didn’t seem surprised. She only sighed softly.
“You’ll know tomorrow.” After saying that, she distributed the remaining cups of water from the tray to the girls around them, then turned and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Lin Yuanxi alone where she stood with the untouched cup of Moon Pool water in her hand, every word she had just heard churning through her mind.
Obsession. Connection. Waiting.
She lowered her head and looked at the mirror-still surface in the cup. Her reflection was quietly gazing back at her.
For some reason, she suddenly remembered a small thing from her childhood—a memory she had forgotten for a very, very long time, so blurred that she could barely grasp its outline. All that remained was the damp scent of rain mixed with earth, and the tiny, feeble tremor that had once passed through her palm.
She frowned and tried desperately to catch hold of the memory, but it was like the surface of the water in her cup. The harder she reached for it, the farther the ripples spread, until there was nothing left to grasp.
“What’s wrong?” A girl beside her noticed her daze and asked with concern.
Lin Yuanxi came back to herself and shook her head.
“Nothing.” She tipped back the cup and drank all the Moon Pool water. It was cool on her tongue, with the faintest hint of sweetness. As it slid down her throat, it really did quiet her turbulent thoughts a little.
The night deepened. The moon was almost full, with only the tiniest sliver missing, like an eye about to close. The lantern light around the courtyard softened along with the moonlight, casting a faint glow over the lotus flowers and water lilies filling the pond. They were beautiful enough to seem unreal.
The girls gradually dispersed, each returning to her own quarters to rest and save her strength for tomorrow. Lin Yuanxi remained where she was for a long while, gazing at the quiet water as the inexplicable premonition in her heart grew stronger and stronger.
She remembered the golden eyes at the bottom of Willowbank Pond.
She remembered the almost reverent longing hidden in the gaze fixed on her.
She remembered Liu Zhiqing’s meaningful words—“And some people…”
The unfinished part of that sentence was like a thin splinter lodged in the softest place in her heart. It ached faintly, yet carried a trembling sense of anticipation she couldn’t understand herself.
On the slow walk back to the bunkhouse, she passed a pond she hadn’t visited yet. It was deserted and utterly quiet. On a whim, she stopped, went to the water's edge, and looked down in the moonlight.
The full moon was reflected on the surface, clear as a mirror. She stared at the moon in the water for a long time, then suddenly felt that its shape was strange. It wasn’t an ordinary circle. It was as if someone had gently blurred a very faint ring of golden light outward from its center, beautiful in a way no natural formation could be.
She reached out to touch the water. The instant her fingertips neared the surface, that familiar black shadow rose again from the depths. Its golden eyes shone startlingly bright beneath the moonlight as it gazed at her without moving, as though it had been waiting there for a very, very long time.
Lin Yuanxi’s breath caught. Her hand stopped in midair and remained there, never descending.
Something seemed to be hidden in those eyes—an emotion she could never decipher, yet somehow found deeply familiar.
“Have you been… waiting for me?” she asked softly, her voice so quiet that she could barely hear it herself.
The black shadow below gave no reply. The golden eyes merely blinked once, like a sigh, or perhaps a silent affirmation.
A night wind passed over the water. Ripples spread across the surface, and the figure instantly sank into the depths and vanished.
Lin Yuanxi stood there for a long time before finally turning toward the covered walkway. As she crossed it, she instinctively glanced down at the bridge beneath her feet. That nearly imperceptible, rhythmic tremor was still going, as if the entire Floating City were holding its breath along with the approaching full moon.
Tomorrow was the day of Fish Selection.
She clenched her palm. That lingering warmth seemed to surface again, refusing to fade, as though something had finally, after twelve years, gently touched her once more.