Late at Night, She Couldn't Help Herself

I searched desperately for her, worrying that something terrible had happened, but everyone who knew her, mostly our colleagues, clammed up whenever I asked about her. At first, I thought the mission was too classified for anyone to discuss. But later I realized that wasn't the whole story. It seemed that some unknown force was gradually erasing every trace of her from the world. Just a few hours later, people who clearly knew her couldn't remember her anymore. They weren't pretending. And little by little, my own mind began to blur. By the next day, I sometimes even wondered whether I had ever known someone named Lin Lin, or whether I had imagined her. Her face grew indistinct in my memory. The photos on my phone were mysteriously corrupted and wouldn't open. The details of our time together faded like a dream. So I had to keep revisiting the places where we had made our deepest memories: a certain archive room where we once lived, a barbecue stall we often visited, the residential complex where we first met, and the bridge pier where we caught a violent criminal. I had to do this, or she would never live on in my heart.