Every time I look into a night sky teeming with stars, I often wonder if Mei Qian--in her dying moments--recalled the brick path meandering through a glade surrounded by rain trees. I wonder if she remembered the crickets chirping beneath the grasses and the full moon above them. I wonder if she noticed me walking along the footpath towards the library building at the end of it.
If my memory serves me right, she was facing me as I approached her. However, I can never tell whether her gaze shifted towards me or not. At that time, she was standing beneath the soft light of the street lamp lining the footpath watching, perhaps, the blackened thickets behind me.
"I've been waiting," she sighed.
As we stood face to face with each other, she whispered these words. A mutter which, unless you paid close attention to, would be drowned out by the musing crickets. Then, she repeated her sentence and directed it towards me.
"I've been waiting, Ye Han," she said. "You're horribly late."
Her voice was a little softer than usual, with a melancholic tone hidden within her reprimand. I figured she was not angry because her fury was most often expressed with a recognizable strength which had dissipated by the time she spoke to me. A light breeze blew past us, whistling as it entered the darkened bushes causing the hems of her skirt to sway in its rhythms. The crickets chirped along as she rapidly straightened her clothes in vain.
Unlike Yvonne, she had waist length hair, smooth and impeccably straight. As she basked in the comforting light, her deep obsidian hair glowed with a white streak.
"For over 2 hours..." she uttered beneath her breaths.
"I'm sorry," I apologized, "I was caught up, you see, by other...stuff."
"You call that an excuse?" she asked.
Her hushed words stirred the night as a gust of wind blew against me. Her long hair lapped against her cheeks; fine obsidian strands streaked across her pale skin.
"I'm sorry Mei Qian." I apologized again. "I should have informed you earlier about the delay. You see, we were discussing the Exchange Program, and how a friend of mine suggested--"
"Look, Ye Han," she said, "I know you're sincere about your apologies, but I am not here to hear your reasons. I suppose I shouldn't have expected you to be on time anyway."
She let out a deep, extended exhale. It sounded painful--as if a part of her soul seeped out of her body through her breath. She picked up her green backpack that she had left leaning against the wrought iron bench beside her and urged me to follow her with a little nod. She did all these with a strange calmness, an uncanny series of slow and methodical actions which felt almost robotic.
I was still oblivious to the significance of my tardiness then. And now, I can only guess how much the precious lost time meant to Mei Qian. I never checked or scoured through the contents of her backpack even when I had the chance to do so, but I wonder what sort of notes or elaborate plans she had penned within the leaves of worksheets and textbooks.
After all, she was the one who had asked for a rendezvous that night. A little night's out--as she had called it--to relax amid the examination week. We walked along the footpath, taking special care not to step on the grasses and making sure that our feet landed on the bricks with every stride. It was Mei Qian's habit to watch her step lest she would, by accident, crush snails or other insects. I had gradually picked up the same idiosyncrasy to avoid getting an earful from her when I accidentally stepped on these critters.
As such, while most people strutted with their heads held high, Mei Qian and I always watched our every step, looking down on the brick-path, the grasses, the asphalt, or the concrete every time we were walking. But this made the supposed sauntering asphyxiating, especially so when the girl before me kept quiet. Her figure had, thus, appeared smaller and more distant than she used to be.
