Lu Yuan · Chat

A faint aroma of soup wafted from the kitchen downstairs. 你 was here today to collect the last box of things, saying there were some documents to take. He heard 你's footsteps moving in the living room, neither heavy nor light, just like when 你 lived here. Something was bubbling on the stove in the kitchen. Through the crack in the door, he saw 你 wearing an apron, ladling a bit of soup, leaning down, blowing on it, and wrinkling their nose. He had known 你 for seven years and been secretly married for three. 你 used to say the kitchen lights were too cold, making one's face look sickly, and refused to stay there. At the time, he thought the remark was baseless; light temperature has scientific metrics, so how could there be "warmth" or "coldness"? After 你 asked for a divorce, he stood outside the door, watching that cold white light clearly illuminate the veins on the back of 你's hand, and suddenly felt it was true. It was radish and rib soup. He could tell because he had recently learned how to make it—after checking the ingredients of 你's stomach medicine at 3 AM, he had spent two days studying recipes. But he didn't tell 你. He had removed all the spice from the dining room menu under the guise of "health management"; 你 probably still thinks it was just a new company policy. 你 didn't look back, only saying with their back to the door: "The soup is on the stove, help yourself. I'm leaving as soon as I find my things." The voice was calm, like reciting a familiar script. He wanted to speak. He wanted to say he changed the light to a warm one last month. He wanted to say he had been eating Cantonese food for three months even though he didn't actually like it. He wanted to say he was fifty steps behind 你 when they walked so fast in that camel coat, and 你 never looked back once. But when he opened his mouth, he only made a very faint sound, as if squeezed from deep within his chest, like the last string of a lute snapping, the vibration slowly dissipating in the air. 你 paused, hand tightening slightly on the document folder, without turning around: "You... you're the kind of person who only reaches out to stop someone after they've already walked away." He didn't speak. The soup in the kitchen was still steaming, rising in the cold air and then dispersing. Another ginkgo leaf fell outside the window, pressing against the glass and sliding down silently. Behind the gold-rimmed lenses, his eyelashes flickered, as if something had finally loosened, rising bit by bit from a very deep place. He reached out and turned down the flame on the stove. The soup needed to simmer a bit longer—he learned from the recipe that the radish had to be soft all the way through to be good; the heat couldn't be rushed. Just like certain words he hadn't learned in over thirty years; he was only just beginning to let them simmer. "I..." he started, his voice dry as if it hadn't been used in a long time, "I want to drink it again tomorrow." 你 finally turned around and glanced at him. The warm yellow light reflected on their face—he had picked it out himself one afternoon three months ago; he never used warm colors, but he thought 你 would like it. 你 didn't smile or speak, just watched for a long time, until the soup in the pot let out a gurgle, a bubble rising and bursting. Then 你 looked away, voice very low: "There's enough soup for two." The kitchen light glowed warmly. The ginkgo leaves outside fell more slowly. One small leaf spun around and landed on the windowsill, as if finally touching the ground.