Siheyuan (traditional courtyard house): Starting with the Korean War, returning home to take charge

The engine of the Il-14 is very noisy, so noisy that it's impossible to think.

He Yuzhu leaned against the porthole, watching the clouds drift past beneath the wing. Sunlight streamed in from the opposite direction, illuminating the man's profile with a golden edge. His short hair was shorter than before, revealing half of his earlobe.

He turned his head to the side.

She was looking out the window and didn't see him. Three years had passed; he'd lost weight, his chin more pointed than before. She'd never seen those thin-rimmed metal glasses before; they were probably new. He was still wearing the blue Lenin suit he'd been issued before leaving the country, the cuffs rolled up twice, revealing a slender, white wrist.

She turned her head.

The instant their eyes met, He Yuzhu saw something flash in her eyes, then disappear. He wanted to say something, his Adam's apple bobbed, but no sound came out.

She looked away and continued looking out the window.

He Yuzhu also turned back to look at Yun. The seats across the aisle were separated by two seats, more than a meter apart. No one had spoken the entire way.

It's not that I don't want to talk about it.

I don't know what to say as my first words.

The engine sound suddenly changed, and the plane began to descend. The clouds outside the window thickened, the fuselage swayed slightly, and then stabilized. She looked down and flipped through the Russian technical dictionary, turning the pages slowly, as if searching for something, or perhaps just not wanting to look up.

He Yuzhu remembered the letter in his left breast pocket. He'd carried it since 1953, three years now, without opening it. The edges of the letter were worn, and it was still warm against his heart.

The plane lurched as it landed, and the tires made a loud screech on the runway. She stood up to get her luggage; the suitcase was on the overhead bins. She tried to reach it by standing on tiptoe, but couldn't.

He Yuzhu stood up, reached out and took the box down, handing it to her.

"Thanks."

"Um."

She took the suitcase and walked towards the hatch. After a few steps, she paused, didn't turn back, and continued walking forward.

He Yuzhu followed behind, about five or six people behind, watching her cross the covered bridge and enter the arrival gate. Someone was there to meet her—a man in his forties wearing a gray Zhongshan suit. He took her suitcase, bowed his head, and said something. She nodded and followed him out.

He Yuzhu stood inside the arrival gate, watching the black sedan drive away. Its taillights flashed beneath the rear window, merging into the evening traffic.

Chen Dashan patted him on the shoulder from behind.

"Chief, the car is outside."

He Yuzhu nodded and followed him outside. It was getting dark outside, and the streetlights had just come on, making the road look dusty.

His dormitory was on the third floor of a tenement building in the General Staff compound, and he lived in the innermost room on the second floor.

I pushed open the door, didn't turn on the light, and sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. The light from the streetlamp outside shone in, making the things in the room blurry—the table, the chair, the bookshelf, and the map of Jincheng on the wall.

He stood up, walked to his desk, and opened a drawer.

At the very bottom was a stack of letters, contained in a brown paper bag. He untied the cotton thread, pulled them out, and counted them.

Thirteen letters.

Each letter is dated from July 1953 to September 1954. None of them are finished. The longest is three pages long, the shortest is only one line: "Rain, I'm busy with work, I'll come back to see you in a while."

He flipped to the bottom letter, written the day before yesterday in Geneva, which contained only one line:

"Huairu, I saw you today."

He stared at that line of text for a long time. He recalled the night he wrote the letter; there was a streetlamp outside his hotel window in Geneva, the light was dim, and he sat by the window until late at night after he finished writing.

What was she doing that night? Was she also looking at the streetlights outside the window?

He laid out the thirteen letters on the table and flipped through them one by one. He came to the one from November 1953—written that night in Korea, in a field hospital tent, his fever had just subsided, by the light of a candle. That day she was being transferred to the division headquarters; before leaving, she came to change his dressing. Her fingers were icy cold as she pressed them against his forehead, lingering for a couple of seconds.

He brought the letter to his nose.

It's lost its smell. Three years of dust have long since covered everything up.

He went to the kitchen, got an enamel basin, put the letters in one by one, and struck a match.

The flames first licked the edges of the letter, slowly burning in and swallowing the words one by one. Ashes rose, landing on the rim of the basin, on the table, and on the back of his hand. He turned his hand over, looked at the ash, and gently blew on it.

The ashes have scattered.

When Chen Dashan pushed the door open, the last letter had just been burned. He stood at the door, paused for a moment, then stepped back out and closed the door behind him.

The door closed very quietly.

He Yuzhu sat there, watching the ashes in the basin slowly cool. The fire had long since gone out, but the residual heat was still burning his palms.

He put the basin back in the kitchen, washed his hands, came out, and sat on the edge of the bed.

The interface flashed into his mind. He instinctively scrolled down, past the categories of supplies, technology, and knowledge, until he reached the bottom, the section he never looked at—

"Humanities and Emotions".

Clicking through, there's only one page. A single, isolated option sits on the page:

【Memory Retrospection: A Space for Empathy】

He stared at the words for a long time. Could it tell him what she was thinking—what was she thinking when she received that letter? What was she thinking after waiting a year, two years, three years? What was she thinking when she saw him in Geneva?

he does not know.

He can spend 200,000 points to find out.

But he didn't click on it. If you can only find out about certain things by using points, then knowing or not knowing makes little difference.

He closed the interface, lay down on the bed, and looked at the ceiling. There was a crack in the ceiling, running from the light fixture all the way to the corner of the wall. He stared at that crack for a long time.

three days later.

There was a knock on the office door, and the communications officer came in, carrying a brown paper package.

"Director He, your package has no signature."

He Yucheng took it, weighed it in his hand, and found it wasn't heavy. He peeled back the outer layer of kraft paper, revealing a book inside.

The cover of the 1951 edition of "Selected Battlefield Communications" was a bit worn, with frayed edges. He opened the title page, where a line of neat, legible handwriting appeared:

"This is the first book I've edited. It contains the story you mentioned."

No signature.

But he recognized the handwriting. His finger traced the line of text, stopping at the end—below which there seemed to be raised marks, as if something had been written and then forcefully erased. He looked at it in the light and could vaguely make out the remaining strokes of a single character.

"what".

It was wiped off, but not completely clean.

He flipped to the table of contents and found the report signed "Qin Huairu." The title was "Snowstorm at Changjin Lake," page thirty-seven.

As I followed the page numbers, my fingertip brushed against the edge of the paper as I turned the page; it felt a little rough.

Page 37.

He had read that report. It was about a mess hall during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, describing how they delivered food to the front lines in sub-zero temperatures, how they encountered the enemy on their way, and how they fought the American soldiers with bayonets using a carrying pole and a spatula. He hadn't thought much of it when he first read it, assuming it was material from interviews with veterans.

Now he looks at it again.

When he saw the third paragraph, his mind went blank.

The text describes a detail: the new recruit in the cookhouse was so scared when he went to the battlefield for the first time that his legs went weak and he didn't know where he was hitting after firing a whole magazine of bullets.

That is himself.

At Chosin Reservoir, after the first shot killed the American soldier, he lay there shivering for a long time. It wasn't from the cold. He only mentioned this to one person.

At the field hospital, she changed his dressing that night. He was delirious with fever and didn't know what he said. When he woke up, she was sitting beside him. Seeing that he was awake, she handed him a glass of water without asking anything.

He Yuzhu closed the book and placed it on the table.

The sunlight streaming in through the window shone on the book cover, making the words shine.

He sat there for a long time.

Then he took out some stationery from the drawer, unscrewed the pen, and began to write.

This time, I only wrote one sentence:

"I received the book. Are you free Saturday afternoon?"

After finishing writing, he folded the letter and put it in an envelope. The address on the envelope was: People's Daily, Qin Huairu.

He held the letter in his hand for a long time.

Then he stood up, went outside, and put the letter into the mailbox at the gate of the compound.