The first time Su Nian met Gu Yan was at the flower and bird market. She held up her camera to secretly take a picture of a man's profile, and ran away as soon as the shutter clicked. Two weeks later, she opened the door of a traditional Chinese medicine clinic and saw the same person sitting behind the consultation table - a smoky gray shirt, the cuffs rolled up to her forearms, and a string of agarwood beads on her wrists. He raised his chin and said, "Sit."
He took his pulse and said, "You stayed up until 4:30 the night before yesterday."
She clutched the registration slip and said, "How do you know?"
"You have bags under your eyes, your lips are dark, and your heartbeat is very fast." He retracted his finger, "From today on, write down three things before going to bed every day - what you ate, what time you went to bed, and whether you had any happy things. Bring it to me next Thursday."
Su Nian thought he was curing insomnia. Later she discovered that he was treating her whole being—eating, sleeping, breathing, resting. She sends him a photo of the sky every day, and he replies every day. She copied the terms fifty times, and he brought a cup of ginger tea. He was always the first phone call she made during a panic attack, and he answered every time and came every time.
He taught her Baduanjin, taught her Guqin, and taught her to "be kind to yourself" - using a cowhide book, a photo of the sky, a cup of ginger tea, and the sentence "You don't need to carry it alone."
The day she recovered, he folded the contract and put it in a drawer: "It's autumn, you can walk in the city by yourself." She left for three years. Good going. Three years later, she returned to that yard, opened the door, stood in front of him and said, "I have finished my journey."
