In the late winter, fine snow was falling in the small town. Lin Dongxue huddled at the writing window of the post office, using her frost-red fingertips to write a letter for the sunny boy Chen Yan to his seriously ill mother. He always gave scarves to classmates who were afraid of the cold, but on Christmas Eve he was injured by a gangster while protecting her. The silver watch on his right wrist always stopped at 18:00 - that was the time he agreed to watch the sunset with her.
She secretly changed "Mom, I'm fine" in his letter to "I miss you so much". He saved up money to buy a red scarf, but after being discharged from the hospital, he said with a cold face, "Don't follow me." Until the day she transferred to another school, she stuffed the scarf and the unopened letter into his desk. The letter contained an unspoken message: "The heat from your breath is warmer than the scarf."
Ten years later, among the yellowed letters in the old post office, she found a letter dated Christmas Eve, 2012, with water stains on the edges of the postmark. "I've repaired the watch crown. Can you accompany me to see the snow on the Songhua River?" The handwriting could be read through the back of the paper, but the recipient could never wait. The old man at the counter said that the postman who always sang "About Winter" never crossed the postal road covered with fresh snow.
The red scarf was still showing its old color in the corner of the closet, and the lesson he taught her to "love as straightforwardly as snow" was finally frozen in that late winter when she didn't say goodbye. Some words have not yet been opened, and some people are trapped in eternal Christmas Eve.
Purpose: cherish the present moment
