Wen Han travelled with this group of people, trekking along for a dozen or more hours until, after being on the move for another night, they at last drew near to Kathmandu. Prior to entering the city, everyone gradually dispersed, and their group became less than twenty people, then just a handful of people. Finally, only she and Cheng Muyun remained.
The two had changed into clean clothing. In this sort of gloomy weather, the garments' dark colours allowed them to easily blend in and hide within a crowd.
"Where are we going?" After Zhou Ke and that bespectacled man also left, she softly asked this question.
"I will take you to the embassy." He instructed, "When you are there, you need to ask for help. If someone questions you, simply say that that night, after you were rescued, you became separated from everyone else and you walked back here."
The meaning of his words was plain.
Do not say that she knew him. What happened on the night those bandits were exterminated should be kept in her heart.
Her eyes flickered a little.<>Please support the original translation at hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com
Brushing a thoughtful glance over her, Cheng Muyun draped his arm casually over her shoulder, and like he and she were the most ordinary of couples and foreign tourists, he spoke quietly. "You need to retrieve your luggage and passport."
"And then?" The words blurted from her mouth. "Where are you going?"
From last night to now, he had not spoken about what he would do next or where he would go. Everything had ended two nights ago, hadn't it? That person who had been with him, Meng Liangchuan, had already explained that that had been a very difficult-to-locate trafficking operation. Although only a few words had been said, she conjectured that he perhaps was an informant for the police.
He smiled, not providing an answer.<>Please read this at hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com
"My visa will be expiring soon. I must go back... Will you go to Moscow to find me?" Remembering he had once said that in this lifetime, he would never return to Moscow, she followed up with another quiet question. "Are you able to enter Russian borders?"
Still he did not answer.<>Please support the original translation at hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com
She did not know how she could continue this conversation.<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the translation has been taken without consent of the translator.
The two stood on the shore of the Bagmati River, the Pashupatinath Temple beside them.
This was Nepal's largest open-air cremation site.
Whether the corpses were of the poor or came from nobility, they would all be cremated on the platforms on both sides of the river. The damp air teemed with the putrid stench of burning dead bodies. However, those people who stood by the fiery pyres were all very devout and sincere. Wen Han had witnessed cremations on the banks of India's Ganges River, but she had watched from across the waters.
Now, though, she was standing in the midst of them.
Less than twenty paces away were cremation platform after platform and corpse after corpse that was ablaze.
Pashupatinath Temple (image credit: pashupatinathtemple.org)
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Life: A Black and White Film (一生一世，黑白影画)
General FictionWen Han has arrived in Nepal on vacation and, as a Buddhist believer, also a pilgrimage. But very shortly after entering the borders, she runs in again into someone she had had one encounter with six months ago, hundreds of miles away on the far-off...
