Hydrogen burns quietly in □□, producing a pale flame.
Back when Lin Fen was still in school, she came across that sentence. For some reason, it always stuck with her.
There must be some unknowable reason behind the things that leave a deep impression. Just as back then, amid a dazzling jumble of brown, yellow, red, and brown smoke, white smoke, and fierce flames, she spotted that sentence at a glance and remembered it without difficulty, never forgetting it to this day. Just as back then, the fresh-faced girl bent over a heap of chemistry notes looked up and met a pair of bright, clear eyes. Those eyes would remain with her for the rest of her life, spanning an unforeseeable twelve whole years.
Twelve years.
That meant rewinding the tape, a cycle of rebirth, a journey through time with no way back. From one person's eyes to another's, from one presence to growing familiar with another, a slow, steady progression from brief to lasting: an irreversible, irretrievable process that would consume the best years of one's life.
Burning quietly, blazing with light and heat.
Can you see it?
Will you know?
