The Empty City Holds the Moon

Zhou Shen would charge 100 yuan in phone bills to a downtime number on the first of every month. On the day when the eighty-fifth month was over, he saw Su Nian again - his fiancée who disappeared at the airport seven years ago - on the playground of a school for the deaf. She is now a sign language teacher, wears the cheapest hearing aid in her left ear, and has an old scar on her wrist from an indwelling needle. He didn't know where she had been during those seven years. He only knew that she couldn't hear the sound of rain now, and he only knew that she had written "Remember the Favor from Generation to Generation" under his name for seven years. He didn't know that she left because the doctor said her disease had a 70% chance of being hereditary. She calculated all night, calculating the complete home he wanted and the things she might not be able to afford. She vacated that spot for him. Then he demolished the 428-meter-high tower where he had lived for seven years, began using controlled noise to damage the hearing in his left ear, and put on her old hearing aid that had been used for seven years. He wanted to hear about the part of the world that she couldn't hear - whether there was wind, whether there was rain, whether there was a moon. Later he discovered that the position that had been vacant for seven years was not meant to be filled. The empty space can hold the moon.