Chapter Three: A Love Already Written

You said that if people could choose what to remember, you'd keep only the northern lights and forget our argument.” He spoke calmly, making no demand that she believe him. Yet at the word argument, Lin Wan heard an ocean wind. A man both strange and familiar stood with his back to her on a black beach, saying: You cannot write love into evidence. “Why is Xubai in the photographs?” “Because later, you wrote him into them.” Lin Wan pressed the book flat. “When did I first use it?” “The night Zhou Xubai had his accident.” The café seemed to lose all sound. Seven years earlier, part of a theater under construction had collapsed. Zhou Xubai, there for an acoustic test, had been trapped. Doctors said that even if he lived, he might never wake.