1. March

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Winter’s Scent
By Chen Qingyue
Originally published on Jinjiang Literature City, September 1, 2024

Love is a superstition born of the right time and place.

—

The March wind was sharp with the chill of early spring. A refreshing coldness brushed across Wen Dong’s face as the mountain trail twisted around the peaks. The gust spun once through the crags, shaking the pine branches on the cliff and scattering a few droplets of water onto her face.

Supporting herself with both hands on her knees, Wen Dong lifted her head and drew several heavy breaths. She casually wiped her face, only to spread the dampness across half of it. The wind then blew the cold straight onto the sweat-soaked nape of her neck.

She stepped onto the final stone stair and lowered her head, leaning against the wooden sign beside her that read: “Warning: Mountain Climbing Is Dangerous.”

This was inhuman!

What company organized a mountain-climbing trip for its female employees on Women’s Day?

And if they insisted on climbing, why forbid everyone from taking the cable car? It was pure madness.

The summit of Mount Yuze stood 3,300 meters above sea level. It was a famous five-A scenic area, with a winding mountain road. During the off-season, only two buses ran each day, one in the morning and one in the evening.

Their group had not gathered at the foot of the mountain until ten. The bus had already left. To get up the mountain, they could either buy a cable-car ticket costing 120 yuan or climb step by step like her.

These days, apart from a few hiking enthusiasts, no one took this rugged, precipitous mountain path. Weeds grew thickly along the trail, some taller than she was.

She had actually thought her boss had finally grown a conscience and decided to do something kind. Without giving it another thought, she had put on a little skirt and left the house. Now, the compact camera she had brought was useless, and the bag over her shoulder was pitifully small—it could not even hold a bottle of mineral water.

Wen Dong tipped back the remaining half bottle of water and drained it in one go. The plastic bottle crackled as she crushed it in her hand.

She flattened it, tightened the cap, glanced around, and tossed it toward a trash bin nearby.

Clang—

It missed.

…

Wen Dong let out a long breath. After pausing for two seconds, she resigned herself to walking over, picking it up, and throwing it into the bin. When she lowered her head, she noticed a fallen sign lying beside it. It indicated that the visitor center halfway up the mountain was another five hundred meters ahead.

Unable to resist, Wen Dong flipped the sign over, laid it on the ground, and dropped onto it. She was completely incapable of taking another step.

Her phone vibrated inside her bag. She glanced at it. The messages were all from the company’s hiking team group chat.

Some people had already reached the summit and were asking what everyone wanted for lunch.

Most of the group was resting halfway up the mountain. Only Wen Dong had fallen behind, becoming the tail end of the procession.

Someone asked where she was. Wen Dong replied with a crying emoji and sent her location.

A senior colleague from her team tagged her: “Hurry to the halfway station. We’re taking the cable car up.”

Wen Dong replied that she understood. She turned and used a wet tissue to wipe the sweat from her face and palms. Just as she was about to set off, her foot suddenly caught on something—

In the instant before she fell, she saw Zhang Xingxu.

Wen Dong gripped the railing with all her strength, her fingertips turning white. Her heart pounded wildly as she raised her head again in disbelief and looked toward the observation platform.

The cold mountain wind howled, whipping the man’s hair into disarray.

He wore a black outdoor jacket and was leaning half his body over the railing, swaying perilously.

Wen Dong’s face went numb.

Gooseflesh spread from her forearms upward. “Wait!”

Her voice echoed through the mountains.

The man’s figure froze. After half a second of stunned stillness, he turned around.

His curly hair partly obscured his eyes, but the wind quickly swept it aside, revealing brows drawn slightly together.

When he saw who had called out to him, the furrow between his brows deepened.

She was hurrying up the path, wearing a sweater over a floral skirt. Her two braids had come loose, and she was even wearing a pair of dark swimming goggles on her head. A Donald Duck plush bag hung crosswise at her side, its two webbed feet swinging with every movement. Below that were a pair of brown combat boots, with white cotton socks extending slightly above them.

…

What kind of bizarre combination was that?

Zhang Xingxu’s fingers moved slightly as he adjusted the focus of his camera and stepped down from the railing.

Wen Dong staggered toward him in a panic, exhausted and gasping for breath, her hair plastered across her face.

“What are you doing?” she asked, hooking her hair aside as she approached. Supporting her lower back, she rasped, “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“?”

This time, Zhang Xingxu was genuinely puzzled. He turned to look at her.

“Could you wait another two months before jumping? The apartment I’m looking at is going on sale soon. I’ve taken a fancy to the twelfth floor. If you jump from there, the price might drop a little more.”

The words tumbled out at high speed. By the time she finished, she was already standing in front of him.

What kind of nonsense was this?

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Zhang Xingxu looked at her.

Her cheeks were flushed, and several wisps of damp hair clung to her temples. Her large, round eyes resembled a startled deer’s, carrying a trace of confusion as she met his gaze, as though she were still waiting for him to answer her question.

“No,” he said, looking away first and stepping half a pace to the side.

Wen Dong’s eyes widened. “You really were thinking of jumping from here?”

As she spoke, she had already unzipped her Donald Duck bag and taken out her phone to dial. “Wait, I’ll call the visitor center.”

Then she asked, “Did you come alone?”

Zhang Xingxu lowered his eyes, watching her search for the number on her phone. He gave a quiet hum.

Her jet-black hair had been parted unevenly into two sections. It was not long enough for her braids to hold more than the ends, but the colorful hair ties, together with all sorts of strange hair clips, somehow did not look out of place.

It was just…

Far too vivid.

Against the gray, cold silence of the deep mountains, she seemed utterly out of place.

Wen Dong found the number and was about to dial when she looked up at him. “What’s your name?”

The motion nearly wrenched her neck.

She had not noticed from a distance, but now she realized that this man was truly very tall.

Wen Dong unconsciously took two steps back and waited for the discomfort in her neck to ease.

“You don’t need to call,” Zhang Xingxu said. “I’m not jumping.”

“Then what were you doing just now?”

“Taking pictures.” Zhang Xingxu glanced at her again.

His amber eyes were unusually pale. When their gazes met, it was as though a veil of mist lay between them, making him impossible to see through completely.

Then his eyelashes lowered, concealing them entirely.

Wen Dong blinked and finally understood. “Even so, you can’t stand on the railing to take pictures! We’re more than a thousand meters above sea level. That’s dangerous!”

“Thank you,” Zhang Xingxu said.

Wen Dong: ?

“Thank you for the warning.”

This man was ill.

Absolutely ill!

If he had not looked so serious, she would have assumed he was being sarcastic.

Wen Dong forced a smile and was just about to say something when her phone vibrated. A colleague was calling.

“Dongbao, where are you? The next cable car leaves in fifteen minutes. Can you make it?”

“Yes, yes, Sister Tang. I’m down by the observation platform, about five hundred meters away.”

Another gust swept past. The yellow rock jasmine in the camera’s frame swayed from side to side, and the focus that had just been set became blurred at once.

Zhang Xingxu lowered the camera and deleted the photos he had just taken.

The fingers holding the camera were long and slender. His skin was as pale as jade porcelain, faint bluish veins showing beneath it. An inch higher, a mechanical digital watch encircled his wrist; several strands of prayer beads were wrapped around his other hand.

Wen Dong ended the call. “Um…”

She called out to him.

Zhang Xingxu glanced sideways at her.

“Be careful. If anything happens, call the visitor center. The number is on the homepage of the ticketing app. Just tap into it and you’ll see it.”

Her pale floral skirt snapped in the wind, clinging tightly to her legs.

She pointed at her phone. “I have something to do, so I’m leaving.”

Zhang Xingxu’s expression was distant, even faintly cold. He gave a quiet “Mm.”

He then withdrew his gaze, picked up the hiking stick lying nearby, and walked to the other side of the observation platform.

Wen Dong scratched her neck. Although she found him strange, she did not linger. She began huffing and puffing up the mountain again, cursing her thoughtless boss as she went.

Zhang Xingxu lowered his eyes and glanced at the fog pooled in the valley. Then he turned back. Wen Dong had already gone far ahead, her figure obscured by the dense shadows of the trees, visible only in fragments.

His peripheral vision caught a flash of white.

It was where he had been standing moments ago.

When he approached, he found an identification card.

He crouched down, meeting the photograph on the card eye to eye.

In the picture, her hair was tied in a bun. Her forehead was full and rounded, and her eyes shone brightly as she smiled.

Wen Dong.

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Han Chinese.

A native of Lianshan City.

She must have dropped it when she took out her phone.

Zhang Xingxu picked it up, took out his phone, and called the visitor center.

—

“I’m telling you, the person I ran into today was definitely not right in the head,” Wen Dong said, holding down the voice-message button. “A few years ago, wasn’t there news about someone falling from Mount Yuze? Apparently, a group climbed the mountain and camped in the middle of the night, but when they woke up, half the people were gone.”

She dragged the message to the right, waiting for the recording to be converted word by word into text before sending it.

“After that, the campground at the summit was closed, and they reinforced the observation platform. The last time you came, you even complained to me about how ugly the two green glass panels at the peak were.”

The other person sent back a voice message: “Get to the point.”

“The point is, safety measures can only stop normal people.”

Li Manyue accurately grasped the second meaning hidden among her ramblings. “So you mean the person you met was about to jump off the cliff?”

Wen Dong was astonished. “Yes! How did you know?”

Li Manyue was speechless. “Did he jump?”

“No. I saved him.”

Li Manyue: “…”

“All right. When are you coming back?”

Her colleague, Sister Tang, suddenly stopped and grabbed Wen Dong.

The finger holding down the voice-message button lost contact, and Wen Dong sent an empty recording.

“What is it, Sister Tang?”

“I think I heard your name.” Sister Tang turned around and followed the sound to the loudspeaker mounted outside the visitor center.

“Listen carefully. Were they asking you to go to the lost-and-found counter?”

Wen Dong casually patted herself down, not taking it seriously. “I haven’t lost anything. It must be someone with the same name, right?”

Sister Tang asked, “You’re sure you didn’t lose anything?”

“Absolutely!” Wen Dong said firmly. “Look, I have my camera, and my lipstick is in my bag.”

As she spoke, she even opened the Donald Duck bag to show her.

Sister Tang nodded. “Then that’s fine.”

They successfully reunited with the main group at the summit.

After lunch, someone suggested taking a walk to the Temple of Stargazing. With luck, they might catch sight of a sea of clouds.

Wen Dong interrupted with a grin. “A sea of clouds at one in the afternoon, Brother Zeng? Mu Rong Yunhai?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

Brother Zeng was the leader of their project team and the person primarily responsible for planning the company’s Women’s Day outing. The foolish idea of climbing the mountain had been his suggestion in the group chat, and Wen Dong had been resentful about it ever since.

He did not mind her jab. He merely planted his hands on his hips and waved one hand. “Even if we can’t see a sea of clouds, it’s still good to go up and pray to the bodhisattva. I hear the Temple of Stargazing is incredibly effective for love and marriage. Come on, Wen Dong, find yourself a handsome man over six feet tall and give everyone something nice to look at.”

The moment the subject turned to romance, Wen Dong fell silent. She muttered, “I think I’ll pass.”

Yet for some inexplicable reason, her mind returned to the man she had encountered at the observation platform that day.

Dressed all in black with a hiking pack on his back, he had looked back at her with a cool detachment that kept people a thousand miles away—colder than the wind itself.

Was she… not even as tall as his shoulders?

Six feet?

He had to be taller than that.

In the end, Wen Dong followed everyone to the Temple of Stargazing.

While the others burned incense and prayed, she browsed the prayer plaques in the blessing area. Nearby, the price was clearly displayed: “15 yuan per plaque.” A group of people stood around writing on them.

People prayed for everything—health, studies, careers—but most were asking for love and marriage. Every plaque bore a name and a date underneath. Red silk tassels hung from the ends, covering the entire wall in a breathtaking display.

Wen Dong took out her compact camera and had barely taken two pictures when Li Manyue’s call cut in.

“You were right, Wen Dong. Zhiyi cheated on me.”

Li Manyue’s calm tone made Wen Dong draw in her neck. She turned the corner by the wall, covered the back of her neck, and asked, “Are you… all right?”

“Of course. I’m perfectly fine.” Li Manyue laughed, then ordered through clenched teeth, “Hurry back and come catch him in the act with me!”

Wen Dong’s legs went weak. She hurried toward the temple. “Coming, Your Highness!”