Our Thirteenth Encounter

On the first day of school, Mu Qiyan read her name as “Cool White Water.”

The whole class laughed. Her eyes curved into a smile. “Then I have a pen name now,” she said.

That was the first time they met. There was a second time, then a third. The old seat by the library window, the stars above the stadium stands, the New Year’s Eve fireworks, the little program he stayed up all night writing for her twentieth birthday. Through all those years, neither of them ever said they liked the other. He didn’t dare. She was afraid.

On the night before graduation, they crossed the line.

The next morning, she left him six words: “I’m leaving. Don’t wait for me.” Then she flew overseas.

He didn’t know that when she left, another life had already begun inside her. She gave birth to their daughter alone in a foreign country. The father’s name was left blank on the birth certificate. The child was called Mu Nian, with “Nian” meaning longing.

Three years ago, she came back to China with Niannian and arranged to meet him. He replied, “Okay,” then left on a business trip. She waited seven days. After seven days, she left with the child, replying with just five words: “There’s no need anymore.”

Years later, in September, at the start of the school year, he returned to his alma mater with a little girl. In front of the sign-in desk, he told the story of a girl whose name had been misread there many years ago. He called out, “Cool White Water.”

In the crowd, a woman turned around.

It took him eight years and twelve missed chances to reach the thirteenth, when at last they did not pass each other by.

“This time, you got it right,” she said.