That night.
Song Xiaotian and I went to Seventh Master's house and summoned the deceased Ji Ziyang.
He could go on to reincarnate now.
But before he left, we wanted to grant him a wish, though for him, that wish might bring more pain than happiness.
"Do you still want to see Xu Hui?" I asked him.
He froze for a long while, his face full of longing he could not hide, but in the end, he shook his head. "No."
We asked him why not.
He said he was already dead, but Xu Hui was still alive, and she had a new life ahead of her. He feared that if he saw her again, he would not be able to stop himself from saying goodbye, from saying all the things he had never told her in person.
He said that, in his short life, he already found it incredible that he had been able to meet Xu Hui.
He said that liking someone meant giving yourself free rein, while loving someone meant restraint.
Perhaps these were things he had learned online while he was alive.
Perhaps he did not have much education, but at his young, innocent age, he had truly managed something even adults struggled to do.
Perhaps what he meant was that if someday they stood together in the falling snow, they could still count it as having grown white-haired together in this life.
Yet snow could never stand in for growing old, and simply having met was already the greatest blessing.
Their ending could only be that of a mountain bird and a fish, bound for different paths, never to meet again across mountains and waters.
But I told him that Xu Hui wanted to see him.
Ji Ziyang was instantly startled, his voice carrying quite