He made the call. On the fifth ring, Ms. Zhang picked up. Her tone was still so calm it was detached, and in this indifference, Cheng Shuo surprisingly felt his heart settle, subtly.

"If you want an interview, find that girl. She knows more than I do. Cen Zeng's own last words were also very clear."

"Hello, Auntie. I'm a friend of Senior Sister and Cen Zeng. Cen Zeng has been living with me off-campus this whole time. I'd like to talk to you about something, if that's okay?"

"I have nothing to say." She was very cold.

"But I have a lot to say," Cheng Shuo replied. "Just let me see you once. I won't bother you again."

She gave him an address and said, "Come over."

They met at the now-familiar doorway. It was three in the afternoon, and the daylight was so bright it made him squint.

The sunlight nearly dispelled all the shadows. Even Ms. Zhang seemed to soften slightly under such clear skies.

"Auntie..." He skipped all the pleasantries he didn't want to utter. "I know you don't want to hold a funeral. But if I hold one, would you be willing to come?"

She was silent, like a statue.

"I will hold one..." he said, speaking the truth. "I hope you'll come. I'll come pick you up when the time comes."

"Will there be many people?" Perhaps because he was finally asking for nothing, no longer trying to give anything, nor asking any more foolish questions, she had the spare mind to discuss these details with him.

"A memorial hall will be set up. After all, there are many people looking for information and offering sympathy right now. As for the funeral, Cen Zeng didn't like crowds, so I'll probably only invite a few friends, and you."

She nodded, not refusing.

He had intended to leave then, but he added one more thing: "Can I scatter his ashes at the North Pole? Near Mohe. He didn't like spring."

The hand she held her cigarette with trembled slightly.

"You decide."

Her words seemed unfinished. She lit a new cigarette.

"You and Cen Zeng, what was your relationship?"

She asked the question, and he answered again: "I'm his roommate. His off-campus roommate."

"Were you close to him?"

Why would she ask that?

"I..." Cheng Shuo looked into her eyes and asked abruptly, "Auntie, can I have a cigarette?"

He used to smoke in his freshman year. The earliest story that spread about him was from a photo of him lighting a cigarette at the North Campus gate while breaking up with a sophomore senior. The senior was a strapping guy of 1.89 meters, crying his eyes out in front of him.

He had sighed calmly, putting on a show of deep affection, saying he was sorry but he actually had a White Moonlight in his heart and didn't want to hold the other person back.

Meddlers posted it on the forums. While Cheng Shuo got flamed, the photo of him smoking went viral for a month.

He quit later. In truth, he didn't really have that much to be sad about, plus his mom had dragged the three of them to get genetic testing, which said he and his dad had a higher probability of getting lung cancer.

Anything was fine, even being gay, but he had to be a healthy gay. This was one of the few demands his mom had for him.

Zhang Ruoxue took out her own cigarette case and handed one to him. "It's a bit strong."

It was indeed strong. He hadn't smoked in so long that he'd long forgotten the cool trick of blowing smoke rings. He took one drag and choked, coughing.

"I was very close to him," Cheng Shuo said. "I'm probably the person who knew him best, besides you."

He admitted it willingly, completely ignoring how the words sounded almost like a curse.

She nodded and didn't refute it.

Cheng Shuo looked at her eyes, which held no trace of judgment, but he suddenly felt that something had finally been settled.

"Would you like to talk about him?"

"There's nothing to say."

"Did you also know he hated spring?"

Zhang Ruoxue replied, "Spring is the peak season for psychiatric patients to commit suicide. When he was a teenager, he was probably very afraid I would kill myself."

Cheng Shuo raised his eyes, looking at the blindingly bright light on the horizon, not thinking at all about whether he was being offensive. "After he grew up, was he also very afraid... that he would kill himself in the spring?"

"We never talked about that," Zhang Ruoxue answered. "Perhaps."

"How is your mental state?" She wasn't an emotional mother, so detached that he was, conversely, able to ask such a question.

"Spring," Zhang Ruoxue said. "Ordinarily terrible. He used to be afraid I wouldn't make it through. Now it's my turn to see him off."

She looked at the vibrant young man before her, dressed head to toe in designer brands, smoking cheap tobacco, and lowered her head slightly. "You take care of yourself."

How ridiculous. Why was she the one saying that?

For a moment, he could barely breathe. The calming effect of the nicotine was so limited it made him want to vomit, and also to sob.

"Do I look that bad, Auntie?"

"You're very sad." It was a statement of fact.

"I don't know what to do." He took a deep breath. "Auntie, I really don't know what to do. How could I have made things better for Cen Zeng? Do you know?"

The two of them fell into a quiet silence. Zhang Ruoxue simply shielded the wind and lit a new cigarette for him.

After he finished smoking and stamped it out with his heel, she looked at the sky, where the grass was growing and the orioles were flying, and spoke again. "Do you want to see Cen Zeng's old things?"

He couldn't refuse. He walked through the door. The crack on the marble coffee table, just as he remembered it, stared back at him.

Zhang Ruoxue pointed to a few boxes in the living room. "I brought these over when I moved. Test papers, scratch paper, composition sheets. He photocopied and sold his third-year high school notes."

He flipped through them blankly.

Cen Zeng had always been a good student, his science scores so good they were astonishing. On the margins of one terrifyingly high-scoring test paper after another, there were occasional traces of his handwriting: "don't die," "go north," "L'Hôpital," "don't cry," "so what about gravity."

His compositions were all argumentative essays, standard eight-legged essays; he must have memorized many good words and phrases. The prompt for one was "To See." Cen Zeng had filled the page with mathematical formulas and written an outline on the side: "To see hope." He'd crossed it out, adding a note to himself next to it: too scattered, won't score well.

Was hope too scattered? Cheng Shuo meaninglessly picked up a ballpoint pen and wrote "no need to calculate the score" next to it.

The scratchpads were filled with various chemistry and biology terms. Occasionally, there would be a line like, "The cafeteria's pineapple and apple stir-fry is really creative." Cheng Shuo drew three question marks in the margin.

Below that was a line, "Why is the only truly serious philosophical question that of suicide?" Cheng Shuo looked it up, then wrote, "Who cares about Camus? What's more important is not eating pineapple and apple stir-fry."

He calmly continued writing, continued reading, silently drawing emoticons, question marks, and exclamation points on the already chaotic scratchpads.

At the very end, he found he had inexplicably written a sentence: Don't die, okay?

There was no reply. The Cen Zeng from years ago couldn't see it, the Cen Zeng who had attempted suicide three times couldn't hear it. He suddenly realized that this sentence was perhaps written for himself, and for Zhang Ruoxue.

He put down the pen, stood up to say goodbye, and said the same thing to Ms. Zhang: "You take care of yourself, too."

She nodded, her gaze sweeping over his eyes and his ink-stained palm, and said in a low voice, "If you want to come, you can come again."