Chapter Two: In This Room, the Dead Are Still Alive

Years in hospitality had taught him that what a guest truly needed was rarely a standard answer. He fished the red ball from the water and pushed it into Chen's arms. “Then stay.” Chen stared at him. “Stay, and she remains seven forever, trapped in the twenty-eight minutes before the flood. She never goes to school, never falls in love, never becomes the adult you never met. You're not keeping her company. You're imprisoning her with your guilt.” Every Xiaoman fell silent. Zhou pointed to a woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight on the highest landing. She resembled Chen's wife in the old personnel photograph and held a lunar geology textbook.