Jin Feixun did not turn around.
The voice outside the door was too soft.
So soft, it didn't sound like anyone was standing there.
It was more like it had traveled from somewhere far away, down a long corridor, before finally falling into her ear.
“Feixun.”
Another call.
This time, she heard it more clearly.
It was Yan Chuxian.
She couldn't have mistaken it.
Three months ago, at South Bank Cinema.
That was the first time she'd heard that voice.
Afterward, she'd heard it many more times.
Yan Chuxian always spoke softly.
She never put too much weight on any one word.
Especially when she called Feixun's name.
She would pause ever so slightly at the end.
As if confirming—
whether Feixun was still there.
At last, Jin Feixun stood up.
The chair scraped across the floor with a harsh screech.
She walked toward the door.
One step.
Two.
Three.
Her hand closed around the doorknob.
She didn't open it right away.
She glanced through the peephole.
There was no one in the hallway.
The dim motion-sensor light was on.
The walls were still.
Only a few drops of water, not yet dry, marked the floor.
As if someone had just come in from the rain.
Jin Feixun slowly opened the door.
The hallway was empty.
She stood in the doorway.
She didn't run after whoever had been there.
Because she knew.
If Yan Chuxian had really been standing there, she would never have let Feixun see her.
Her phone suddenly buzzed.
A message.
From Zhou Yu.
[That name you asked about—I looked into it.]
Jin Feixun looked down.
[There is no Yan Chuxian.]
Another message.
[I checked the company system, the project materials, and the old employee files.]
[There is no such person.]
She stared at the screen.
Her finger hovered in midair.
For a long time.
Only then did she reply:
[What about South Bank Cinema?]
The reply came quickly.
[What?]
[She worked on the South Bank Old District Project.]
This time, the other person didn't answer right away.
More than ten seconds passed.
A new message appeared.
[Feixun, have you been working too hard lately?]
Jin Feixun didn't reply again.
She shut off her phone.
Back in her room, she found the recorder still running.
Its red indicator light blinked on and off.
Like a tiny heart.
She sat down.
She reopened all the materials she'd shot three months earlier.
One by one.
One by one.
She began to check them.
The old streets.
The cinema.
The seaside.
The café.
The subway station.
The overpass in the early hours of the morning.
Every place she and Yan Chuxian had walked through together.
Yan Chuxian appeared in none of the photographs.
But Jin Feixun knew.
She had been there.
Because the timestamp on every photograph matched.
5:41 p.m.
The cinema.
6:23 p.m.
The café on the old street.
8:07 p.m.
The seaside.
10:36 p.m.
The subway ride back.
She wasn't in the photographs.
But Jin Feixun remembered.
They had talked there.
They had eaten together.
They had walked through the streets after the rain.
They had even sat on that seaside bench for two hours.
She remembered Yan Chuxian saying:
“Waves are a lot like memory.”
“Why?”
“After they come, they leave behind a trace.”
“And then?”
“Then they carry the trace away.”
Jin Feixun had laughed at her then.
“Then why do you record anything?”
Yan Chuxian looked out at the sea.
“Because I don't want it to disappear so quickly.”
Only now did Jin Feixun understand.
She hadn't been talking only about the sea.
Jin Feixun picked up her phone.
She dialed another number.
This time, it was the person in charge of the South Bank Old District Project.
The phone rang for a long time.
At last, someone answered.
“Hey?”
“Mr. Chen.”
“Ms. Jin?”
“I want to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Was there a sound recordist at South Bank Cinema three months ago?”
There was a brief silence on the other end.
“A sound recordist?”
“Yes.”
“What was her name?”
Jin Feixun closed her eyes.
“Yan Chuxian.”
Silence.
Then came a laugh.
“Ms. Jin, are you sure you didn't get it wrong?”
That again.
She was beginning to hate those words.
“What do you mean?”
“You were the only person who went inside that cinema.”
Jin Feixun said nothing.
“I still remember the security footage.”
“The cinema had already been sealed off, so no one usually went in.”
“You were the only person who went inside to take photographs that day.”
Jin Feixun's fingers slowly tightened.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
“Was there a woman in white in the footage?”
“No.”
“Anyone carrying recording equipment?”
“No.”
“Do you know Yan Chuxian?”
There was another two-second silence.
Then he answered:
“I don't.”
The call ended.
Jin Feixun sat at the desk.
The room held nothing but the sound of rain.
Then she suddenly remembered something.
She got up.
She opened the closet.
From the very bottom, she pulled out an old cardboard box.
Inside were all the film negatives she'd never gotten around to organizing over the years.
She searched through them one by one.
At last.
She found a photograph.
It had already yellowed with age.
Date taken:
November 3, 2017.
That was the day her mother vanished.
It was also the first time Jin Feixun had picked up a camera.
The photograph showed an ordinary street.
Seventeen-year-old Jin Feixun stood by the roadside.
And behind her.
A woman stood there.
A white shirt.
Long black hair.
Sunlight obscured the side of her face.
It was impossible to make out her features.
Jin Feixun stopped breathing.
She held the photograph beneath the light.
The woman's figure was faint.
Almost swallowed by the old photograph.
But Jin Feixun still recognized her.
Yan Chuxian.
How was that possible?
At seventeen.
She hadn't known Yan Chuxian at all.
She hadn't even known the name.
Jin Feixun immediately opened her computer.
She scanned the photograph.
Enlarged it.
Brightened it.
Processed it again.
The woman's face gradually came into focus.
Finally.
Jin Feixun saw her eyes.
They were exactly the same as they had been three months ago.
Unchanged.
Untouched by age.
As if time had never passed over her.
A chill spread across Jin Feixun's back.
She kept looking.
At the far right of the photograph.
There was part of a billboard, cut off by the frame.
Beneath it.
Someone stood there.
Dressed in black.
The face was hidden.
A silver watch circled the wrist.
It was exactly the same as the one worn by the person in the photograph from the cinema three months ago—
Exactly the same.
Jin Feixun sat there.
Then she suddenly realized something.
She hadn't first met Yan Chuxian three months ago.
At least.
It hadn't been the first time.
Before the first time they met.
Yan Chuxian had already existed in her life.
She had simply forgotten.
Or—
Someone had made her forget.
The next morning.
The rain stopped.
The city returned to normal.
Breakfast shops opened for business.
The subway station filled with commuters.
Everyone acted as if nothing had happened.
Jin Feixun went to the old café.
This was where she and Yan Chuxian had eaten together for the first time.
She pushed open the door.
The owner behind the counter looked up.
“Just one?”
Jin Feixun looked toward the window seat.
“Someone used to sit here.”
“Who?”
“Yan Chuxian.”
The owner froze.
“Never heard of her.”
Jin Feixun didn't give up.
“White shirt, long hair, usually wearing headphones.”
The owner thought for a moment.
“Doesn't ring a bell.”
She turned to leave.
Then a voice suddenly came from behind her.
“Wait.”
Jin Feixun stopped.
The owner looked at her.
“Did you say she used to sit there a lot?”
Jin Feixun whipped around.
“Yes.”
The owner frowned.
“That's strange.”
“What is?”
“I feel like…”
He pointed toward the window seat.
“I really do remember someone sitting there all the time.”
Jin Feixun walked over.
There was nothing on the tabletop.
Only a very faint scratch.
She reached out and touched it.
The owner suddenly said:
“But I can't remember what she looked like.”
Jin Feixun's heart sank.
She said nothing.
The owner kept trying to remember.
“I only remember that she was always alone.”
“Sometimes she'd bring a recorder.”
“Sometimes…”
He abruptly stopped.
“She'd be with a black-haired woman.”
Jin Feixun looked up.
“Who?”
The owner looked at her.
“You.”
The air suddenly went still.
Jin Feixun stared at him.
“You know me?”
“Of course.”
“Then do you remember her?”
The owner fell silent.
“No.”
“But you remember me being with her?”
Confusion spread across the owner's face.
As if a memory were slowly splitting open inside his mind.
A few seconds later.
He suddenly clutched his head.
“I don't know.”
“I really don't know.”
Jin Feixun watched him.
The coffee on the table was still steaming.
And suddenly, she understood.
Yan Chuxian hadn't vanished all at once.
She was being erased from everyone's memory, little by little.
And the people connected to her.
They would slowly lose their memories of her too.
Including Jin Feixun herself.
Jin Feixun turned and left the café.
The moment she stepped outside.
Her phone rang.
An unfamiliar number.
She answered.
No one spoke.
There was only the sound of waves.
One surge.
Then another.
Then.
A woman's voice spoke softly:
“Don't keep digging.”
Jin Feixun stopped.
“Yan Chuxian?”
Silence on the other end.
“Who are you?”
Still no answer.
Jin Feixun stood at the side of the street.
Sunlight poured down.
But for the first time, she felt that this city was cold.
“You knew my mother, didn't you?”
On the other end.
At last, there came a very soft breath.
Jin Feixun's heart sank.
She had guessed right.
“Seventeen years ago…”
Her voice tightened.
“Where were you?”
The person didn't answer.
She only said one thing:
“Your mother didn't vanish.”
“She was just…”
The voice suddenly seemed very far away.
As if it were coming through a layer of water.
“Forgetting her was something everyone did.”
The call ended.
Jin Feixun stood where she was.
The sounds of the city filled her ears.
Cars.
Crowds.
Wind.
A distant broadcast.
Every sound blending together.
Only one sentence kept echoing in her mind.
—Everyone had forgotten her.
She looked down at her phone.
The unfamiliar number had already vanished from the call history.
As if it had never called at all.
Just then.
The advertising screen across the street suddenly lit up.
It had been playing a city promotional video.
The image switched.
An old photograph flashed past.
Jin Feixun jerked her head up.
In the photograph.
Seventeen-year-old her stood on the old street.
Behind her.
Yan Chuxian stood there.
And in the lower-right corner of the photograph.
There was another date she'd never seen before.
November 3, 2026.
Jin Feixun froze.
Today was—
August 15, 2026.
Less than three months away.
That photograph.
It had been taken in the future.
She stared at the screen.
The next second.
The advertisement returned to normal.
No photograph.
No Yan Chuxian.
Nothing.
As if everything that had just happened were only a hallucination.
But she knew.
It wasn't.
Because the phone in her hand.
Had suddenly received a new audio file.
The filename contained only four characters:
“Last Photograph.”
Jin Feixun tapped it open.
At first.
There was only wind.
Then Yan Chuxian's voice rose.
Very close.
Very soft.
As if she were standing right behind Jin Feixun.
“Feixun.”
“If you've heard this far…”
A pause.
“That means you've finally remembered.”
Jin Feixun slowly turned around.
People streamed past behind her.
There was no Yan Chuxian.
Only at the end of the street.
A person in black.
Standing where the sunlight couldn't reach.
The person raised a hand.
Revealing the silver watch around the wrist.
Then—
smiled at her.