Harbin called it spring—but did so with irony.
Even after the calendar turned, the city still carried winter on its shoulders: the wind came dry and cold, the nights hovered stubbornly near 0°C, and the days—though brighter—offered only a brief warmth, a warmth that seemed to happen just to prove it existed. In April, the air already opened itself to the sun, yet it still bit at your skin in the early hours and again at dusk, as if to say: don't get distracted.
That morning, the light was pale, almost blue. Old snow still hid in the shadows of buildings and along the edges of sidewalks—not white, not beautiful—just stained remnants, melting slowly into thin streams that ran toward the drains. The sky had the calm of something that promises nothing: light clouds, a slow drift, and a silence that only exists before the city begins to speak.
At 5:23, the alarm rang once.
Gu Yanshen (顾言深) opened his eyes without hurry, as if he had been awake inside for a long time already. He reached for the clock on the bedside table—not to check whether he was late, but to confirm what his body already knew. 05:23.
He stared at the numbers for two seconds.
And thought, with a cold, almost scientific clarity:
Today finally came.
It wasn't anxiety. It was decision.
Yanshen sat up. His feet touched the floor carefully, as if even in the dark his movements had to be exact. The apartment was warm, but the air near the window still held the memory of cold. Outside, Harbin seemed suspended—few lights on, few cars; the city breathing softly.
In the bathroom, the shower water fell hot and steady, and steam fogged the mirror at once. For a few minutes, the world narrowed to sound and temperature. He closed his eyes, let the water run over his shoulders, and thought of what waited ahead, arranging each step in his mind like an experiment: beginning, middle, outcome—and no room for error.
When he shut off the water, he dried his hair with quick movements. The white bathroom light was merciless. He leaned toward the mirror and wiped a clear strip through the fog with the palm of his hand.
The reflection returned the same man as always: tall, sharp lines to his face, eyes tired from thinking too much; his thin-framed glasses resting on the sink for a moment. Without them, the world looked harsher, closer. He put them back on, as if dressing himself in a layer of control.
He took a deep breath.
Not to calm down.
To remember to stay.
In the bedroom, he chose his clothes with the precision of someone who didn't negotiate with chance: a light shirt, a dark blazer, a heavier coat for the street—Harbin still demanded that in spring. Inside, everything was clean and quiet; outside, the city was wet and cold.
At 6:34, he shut the door.
The click of the lock sounded final.
In the parking lot, the car waited with a thin film of moisture on the glass. Yanshen got in, turned on the heat, and paused for an instant before pulling out—his hands on the wheel as if he were holding something that wasn't only direction. The dashboard lit up. His breath fogged the windshield for a second; then the warm air won.
Harbin began to move.
The streets of Nangang District were still half-empty, but life was already showing itself: a vendor lifting a metal shutter, someone walking fast with hands buried in pockets, bicycles passing carefully so they wouldn't slip on the damp stretches. Spring there was like that—it didn't arrive with flowers at once; it arrived with meltwater and hurried footsteps.
He followed broad avenues, the kind that give Harbin the look of a city drawn with a ruler—and at certain intersections, the urban lines reminded him that space there had always been planned as an axis: Dazhi Street and the old Hongjun Street (now Zhongshan Street) cutting through the grid like main strokes.
Through the windshield, buildings slid by in silence. The dark asphalt reflected the pale light, and small puddles trembled when the tires touched them. In some places, low piles of old snow still clung to the curb, as if unwilling to admit defeat.
Yanshen drove without rush, but without hesitation. Each traffic light seemed synchronized with him—green, yellow, green—and when traffic thickened, it was only enough to remind him the world had its own rhythm too.
As he neared the campus area, the façades began to speak a different language: more students, more backpacks, more coffee cups, more construction signs—the kind of life that renews itself every semester. He crossed a stretch where the city seemed to make room for academia to breathe, and then he turned onto the route he knew as if it were part of his own body:
No. 92, West Dazhi Street.
Harbin Institute of Technology wasn't just a place to him. It was an extension of what he had built to survive: discipline, reputation, output, silence. Everything there had purpose. Everything there had a cost.
He parked with his usual care. Turned off the engine. For a moment, he watched his faint reflection in the glass—the line of his glasses, the cut of his blazer, his contained expression.
Today finally came, he repeated to himself.
And this time there was something new inside the sentence: it wasn't only about work.
It was about what he still didn't have the courage to name.
He opened the door.
The morning cold came in like a truth.
At the entrance of the main building of the research center, a middle-aged man waited as if he already knew the exact moment Yanshen would step there.
It was Han Mingyuan (韩明远)—head of the Department of Sciences. He had the kind of posture that didn't need to impose authority: steady shoulders, an attentive gaze, and a smile that carried the calm of someone who had watched many generations of students come and go through that building. His coat was buttoned neatly, and his nose held a faint flush, the mark of someone who had spent too long in the morning cold.
When he saw Yanshen, he stepped forward.
— Good morning.
Yanshen dipped his head, brief and respectful.
— Good morning, Professor Han.
The man's smile widened, gentle, almost paternal.
— Welcome home, Yanshen.
The simple words crossed Gu Yanshen's routine like a hand placed on his shoulder without warning. He didn't show it; he only blinked once, as if adjusting the world's focus.
— Thank you.
Han Mingyuan watched him for a second, as if measuring not only appearance but the invisible fatigue of a long return.
— How was the trip back from Germany? — he asked. — And… have you found a place to live?
The word "live" sounded ordinary, yet here it carried weight. It wasn't only an address. It was belonging.
Yanshen answered with his usual calm, unhurried.
— It was good. No delays. — A brief pause. — And yes, I already have an apartment.
— Great. — Han nodded, satisfied, as if checking off an important item. — Harbin can be… hard when you arrive. Especially after living abroad. But you'll adapt. You always do.
Yanshen didn't argue. He only tightened his grip on the strap of his bag, as if the sentence had touched a place he preferred to keep quiet.
Han gestured toward the building.
— Come. I'll show you around and take you to your office.
They went in. The corridor was too clean, too silent, as if it were still preparing itself for the voices that would fill it later. Cold lights reflected on the polished floor. Somewhere in the distance, a door closed. The sound echoed.
Han walked at an easy pace and spoke without pressure—a rare skill in a department head.
— The building went through some updates last semester. They replaced part of the network, upgraded classroom projectors, and renovated the offices for new faculty. — He glanced sideways. — Yours is one of them.
Yanshen let out a low hum, almost inaudible. Renovations meant change. Change meant variables. Variables meant a loss of control. He didn't like that.
They climbed a flight of stairs and crossed a narrower hall whose windows faced the inner courtyard. Outside, campus was waking: students hurrying by, breath visible in the air; a bicycle squeaking; a leafless tree like charcoal against the clear sky.
Han stopped at a door with a freshly mounted plaque. The name was printed in clean, official letters:
Gu Yanshen — Professor / Researcher
For a moment, Yanshen looked at it as if it were proof of something that still hadn't fully settled inside him: he had returned. He was here. Not as a visitor. Not as a student. As a professor.
Han opened the door.
— Here.
The office was empty.
Truly empty.
A desk, a chair, a tall cabinet, two bare shelves, a clean whiteboard, and a large window letting in pale light. The brightness lay across the floor like a silent rectangle. The air smelled of new wood and fresh paint—the kind of smell that isn't exactly pleasant, but suggests beginnings.
Yanshen stepped in and stopped in the center, not moving for a few seconds.
In his mind, the room was no longer empty.
He could already see books lined up by subject, folders labeled by year, pens placed exactly where they belonged, an article stand, a minimalist calendar. He even saw where the coffee cup would go—not from need, but from the habit of building small certainties.
Organizing was a way of breathing.
Han watched his expression—not the coldness, but the speed with which his eyes calculated everything—and smiled slightly, as if it didn't surprise him.
— I asked them to leave it as neutral as possible, — he said. — So you can set it up however you want.
Yanshen nodded.
— Thank you.
— Your first class is at ten. — Han checked his watch. — You have time.
He stepped back, giving space, as if he understood that this kind of man needed room in order to exist.
— You can organize your office… — Han's voice stayed light, almost an invitation. — Or you can walk the campus, Professor Gu. A few things have changed since your undergraduate days.
Hearing the title out loud—Professor Gu—shifted something inside Yanshen, like a piece sliding into place, but too tight.
He took off his glasses for a second and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It wasn't physical fatigue. It was the weight of starting.
When he put the glasses back on, his gaze hardened again.
— I'm going to… — he began, and almost said "work." Almost said "organize." Almost said "stay alone."
But Han's words at the entrance came back with the same dangerous calm: welcome home.
Home wasn't just an office you arranged. Home was learning to walk hallways without feeling like you were only passing through.
Yanshen breathed in, discreet.
— I'm going to walk the campus first.
Han looked pleased, as if the choice were small, but important.
— Good decision. — He stepped aside in the corridor. — I'll walk you to the exit and show you the way to the lecture building. After that, it's your time.
Yanshen picked up his bag again and, before leaving, cast one last look at the empty office.
It wasn't just a new place.
It was a silent promise that, from that day on, he would no longer have excuses to keep postponing certain things.
And although he still couldn't name exactly what, he felt the strange certainty that this morning—cold, clear, almost blue—wasn't only the start of a semester.
It was the start of himself.
Yanshen left the building and let the door close behind him with a low, dry sound—as if the place exhaled and returned to silence.
The campus, in that early Harbin spring, looked like a photograph in transition: winter hadn't fully left, yet there was already an intention of beginning again in everything.
The wide paths were damp, small puddles scattered where melted ice had decided to rest. Along the edges of sidewalks, old snowbanks—gray now, stripped of any glory—held on like memories no one had had time to clear away. The wind was cold but not aggressive; it passed over the face and reminded you the day was still starting.
Most trees were still bare, but there were subtle signs—almost shy—of life: pale buds at the tips of branches, a very young green appearing like a promise, not a certainty. And in a few places, the sun slipped through the clouds and poured a washed-out light over the buildings, casting long shadows that looked drawn with a ruler.
Yanshen walked without hurry.
He wasn't looking for anything specific. He was simply letting his body memorize the return, as if the city needed to be recognized by his feet before it could be accepted by his mind. He passed groups of students with heavy backpacks and earbuds in, some speaking too loudly, others still carrying sleep on their faces. He heard brief laughter, the squeak of a bicycle, the slow scrape of a cleaning cart pushed by an employee in uniform.
Everything was ordinary.
And yet he felt as though he were crossing a border.
Because he was no longer the student who arrived early to secure a seat in the front row. No longer the young man chasing deadlines and approval. He was the man who had returned with a surname on a door and a lecture at ten.
At one point, he stopped beside a campus map. Not because he was lost, but out of habit. He read the arrows the way he would read a scientific paper: structure, orientation, route. It calmed him. Knowing where he was. Knowing where to go.
And then, as if his body had remembered something basic, a simple realization arrived—almost irritating:
He hadn't had coffee.
The thought didn't come with drama, only logic. Coffee was part of his routine. Routine was stability. Stability was… emotional survival, even if he never called it that.
He walked a few more minutes to a small café, the kind tucked between buildings and fed by hurried footsteps. A simple sign, a warm interior, and a mixed scent of bread, hot pastry, and something sweet like milk.
As soon as he stepped in, the shift in temperature fogged his glasses for a second. He took them off, wiped them with the edge of his coat, and put them back on with an automatic motion—as if, without them, he didn't know exactly where to place his gaze.
The place was half full: students at small tables, some with laptops, some with open notebooks, others simply holding their hands around hot cups. A low radio played music no one truly listened to. The coffee machine hissed steam, and there was a short line at the counter.
Yanshen waited his turn.
When he reached the front, the barista—a young woman with tied-back hair and honest under-eye shadows, the kind you get from waking too early—looked at him with the instant recognition people have when they see someone who doesn't quite belong to the usual noise.
He was too formal for a campus café. Too tall. Too quiet. And he had that kind of face that always looked occupied by thought.
— What can I get you? — she asked.
— Coffee. Black. No sugar.
She blinked, as if expecting something more elaborate, and yet the answer fit him perfectly.
— Okay.
While she prepared it, Yanshen watched the room with his usual restraint. He didn't look at anyone for too long. Not out of shyness—out of respect. And because of an old fear he never named: the fear of being seen too clearly.
He took the cup.
Heat traveled into his palm like a presence.
He chose a table by the window. Sat down. Set his bag beside the chair. Aligned the cup carefully on the tabletop, as if even coffee needed an exact place to exist.
Outside, the campus kept moving—footsteps, wind, light, the distant sound of a class arriving early. Inside, the glass created a smaller world, protected. His breathing slowed without him noticing.
He lifted the cup to his lips.
The first sip was always the same: bitter, hot, direct. No detours.
And it was in that instant—precisely when the taste filled his mouth and the warmth filled his chest—that something in him gave way.
Not a thought.
A memory.
It didn't come with warning—it came the way buried things always do: through smell, through temperature, through the bitter taste rising and taking up space in the chest.
For a moment, the café's glass stopped being glass. The pale light of campus became another light—harsher, poorer. And Harbin's cold—this early-spring cold—turned into the cold of a childhood that had no pretty name. Only absence.
He was small. Thin. Too quiet for his age.
After his parents died, no one truly wanted Gu Yanshen. The world simply decided where to place that orphaned body, the way you solve an administrative problem.
They took him to a foster home.
They called it a home, but it was a place that didn't know how to pronounce affection.
The room was small, a narrow bed pushed against the wall and a thin blanket that couldn't defeat winter. Wind slipped through the window cracks like something alive. At night, he lay there listening to his own stomach—not a dramatic sound, just a persistent one. Food was rationed. So was tenderness. Words, then, were almost nonexistent.
No one knocked to ask if he was okay.
No one came in to say good night.
Silence was what he received for free.
That was where he learned his first rule: don't ask.
At school, Yanshen stood out as if it were the only way to exist without being a burden. He was quick with numbers, with logic, with simple experiments that turned into small victories at science fairs. Teachers noticed him. Some even praised him.
But beyond that, no one cared.
His classmates looked at him as if he were too strange to befriend and too good to ignore completely—so he lived in that cruel middle: seen from afar, alone up close.
By twelve, he was already collecting awards without anyone noticing what they meant. Awards didn't fill an empty plate. They didn't warm a cold room. They didn't hold you.
Then came the competition.
A large gymnasium, bright lights, the smell of paper and hot glue. Rows of tables, posters, judges. Children accompanied by parents holding thermoses and shouting their names with pride.
Yanshen was alone.
He held his own display board with cold hands, his fingers stained with ink. He waited for his turn the way he waited for everything in life: without complaint, without looking around, as if waiting were his oldest talent.
That was when a man approached.
He didn't have the rush of other adults. He didn't arrive asking, Where are your parents? He didn't arrive with pity. He arrived with real curiosity.
It was Professor Song Jiancheng (宋建成), one of the invited evaluators—a science professor with attentive eyes and a dark coat, collar raised against the gym's cold.
He stopped in front of Yanshen's project and read every line as if it mattered.
Then he looked at the boy.
— Did you do this?
Yanshen nodded, shy, his chin nearly tucked into his chest.
— Yes.
The professor smiled—small, as if he'd found something rare.
— Have you eaten?
The question caught Yanshen off guard. It wasn't about science. It was about life. And he didn't know how to answer life.
— Not yet… — it came out low, almost ashamed.
— Come with me. — The professor said it simply, as if it were natural. — I haven't eaten either.
Yanshen hesitated for one second. Accepting felt dangerous. Accepting meant depending. But the smell of food drifting from a corridor and the professor's quiet steadiness… pulled him like a tide.
They went to a nearby snack shop—small, plastic tables, a simple counter. The warmth made Yanshen's face sting, and he lowered his eyes, not knowing where to put his hands.
The professor ordered without asking too much:
— A slice of cake. And juice.
When the food arrived, Yanshen froze for a moment, staring at it as if it were a test. As if, at any second, someone might say: This isn't for you.
— Eat. — the professor said gently.
He did.
The cake was too sweet. The juice was cold. And still, it was the first kind of kindness his body understood: warmth and food without a price.
The professor watched calmly, without making him feel small.
Then he began to talk—and it wasn't an adult speaking to a child the way you speak to a pleasant object. It was real conversation.
— So… you like science?
Yanshen lifted his gaze. It was the only thing he knew how to be.
— Yes.
— What interests you most? Physics? Chemistry? Biology?
And Yanshen answered.
He answered everything. He explained in his own way—direct, clean, without ornament. He spoke of experiments, of phenomena, of why. Each response seemed to light something in the professor, who grew brighter and brighter, as if someone had opened a window inside him.
— You think fast, — the professor said. — And you think well.
Yanshen didn't know what to do with praise. He swallowed and went quiet.
The conversation continued like that for a while. Questions, answers. The professor smiling. Yanshen loosening, millimeter by millimeter—not because he trusted easily, but because when someone asks you with respect, you end up existing.
Then the professor tilted his head slightly, as if changing subjects without making noise.
— Tell me something, Yanshen.
Yanshen straightened, ready for another science topic.
But the question didn't come from a book.
— What do you think is the purpose of our life?
The fork stopped midair.
The cake was forgotten.
For the first time, Yanshen fell silent not out of defense—but out of having no answer at all.
He looked at the professor as if he'd been set in front of an impossible problem. There was no equation. No rule. No award.
The professor didn't hurry him. Didn't demand. He only waited, with a calm that seemed to say: You can breathe here.
Yanshen pressed his fingers together under the table.
— I… don't know.
The words came small. Completely honest.
Professor Song smiled—without pity, with certainty.
— That's okay, — he said softly. — You'll discover that answer one day.
At the end, before they parted, the professor took a piece of paper and wrote a number in steady handwriting. He slid it across to Yanshen.
— If you ever need anything, call me. — he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. — Even if it's only to talk.
Yanshen stared at the paper as if it were both dangerous and precious.
The memory drifted like a cloud.
The gym dissolved.
The cold room returned for a second—and then vanished.
And then came another scene, years later.
The first day of university.
Yanshen—taller now—standing at the entrance with a small suitcase. He was free of the foster home—free of the cramped room, the rationed meals, the wordless air. And the strangest part: he wasn't happy because of the future degree.
He was relieved for a hard, simple, almost shameful reason:
no one would say anymore that he was eating for free.
At the gate, he stopped, not knowing what to do with freedom. Freedom was a large kind of emptiness too.
That was when he saw someone among the crowd.
Older now, hair threaded with white, the same dark coat—and the same smile.
Professor Song.
As if he had crossed time just to be there.
— You've grown, — the professor said, and his voice held real pride. — I knew you would make it here.
And as if repeating a quiet ritual, he took Yanshen first to a snack shop.
— Coffee? — he asked.
— No sugar. — Yanshen answered, almost automatic.
The professor laughed softly.
— Still no sugar.
And in that coffee, in that beginning, Yanshen learned another rule: some people enter your life to prove that not everything is a transaction.
The cloud of memory thinned.
The sound of the café returned in pieces: low voices, steam, footsteps. The campus outside. The warm cup between adult fingers.
Gu Yanshen blinked slowly.
And there he was now, many years later, sitting at the same kind of table—only this time, he was the professor.
The world changed, but certain details insisted on remaining.
He took a quiet breath.
That was when it happened.
No sound. No warning.
He saw her.
Near the window—at the table where the light fell softest—a woman sat with two people. Her posture was calm, but there was a firmness in the way she occupied space, like someone who didn't ask permission to exist and yet never invaded anyone.
Lin Yuan (林予安).
Her hair—black and long, a strand pinned back with a pale clip—fell lightly over her shoulder. She wore a light blouse under a beige cardigan and a simple skirt, elegant without trying. On the table lay a notebook and a pen; beside her chair, a rolled tube of blueprints leaned as if it belonged to her the way breathing did.
The two people with her looked like colleagues: a woman with short hair and bright expression, talking with her hands; and a young man in a dark jacket, listening attentively, as if it were an informal meeting.
Lin Yuan didn't smile much. But when she did, it wasn't social—it was real.
Yanshen didn't know why he noticed that.
He only knew he did.
And then, in the simplest, most ridiculous way, his heart began to beat differently.
Not faster like fear. Not heavy like anxiety.
Different.
As if something inside him—something always regulated by routine and control—had lost count for a single second.
Instinct told him to look away—like he always did when he felt too much.
But it was too late.
Lin Yuan lifted her head at that exact moment.
And her eyes met his.
It was a brief crossing of gazes—too normal to matter.
And yet Yanshen felt as though something had happened that his body understood before his mind did.
The cup grew too hot in his hand.
The air thinned in his chest.
And for an instant, everything around him seemed to turn the volume down.
What was that?
He didn't have an answer.
Only the strange—almost absurd—feeling that, in that moment, life had changed direction without asking permission.
Up to then, his life tasted like coffee without sugar: bearable, precise, alone. And in that look, something sweet—and dangerous—began to exist.