The tent was quiet, save for the sound of the wind and Song Tao’s light snoring.
I leaned against Xiao Yan, my eyelids feeling heavier by the minute.
Xiao Yan’s shoulder shifted closer, gently propping up my head just as it began to slide down.
“Sleep for a while,” she whispered.
“Mmhmm.”
As I drifted into a daze, Bai Lu moved.
She put her phone away and looked down at Lin Ming, who was resting against her shoulder.
Lin Ming’s breathing was steady.
Bai Lu reached out to brush the stray hairs from her forehead.
Her movements were slow, her fingertips sliding from the hairline to behind the ear, as if she were touching something fragile.
Lin Ming stirred, nuzzling deeper into the crook of Bai Lu’s neck.
She mumbled something incomprehensible.
Bai Lu smiled and leaned down to kiss the top of her head, her lips lingering on the strands of hair for a second.
“I’m going to check the Equatorial Mount,” she said softly, gently resting Lin Ming’s head on a cushion.
“It seemed a bit off earlier.”
Lin Ming opened her eyes groarily, her brow furrowing as she reached out to grab Bai Lu’s sleeve.
“I’ll go. You sleep.”
Bai Lu caught her hand and tucked it back under the blanket, her thumb grazing the back of Lin Ming’s hand.
“…Okay.”
Lin Ming closed her eyes again, but her fingers didn’t let go of Bai Lu’s.
Bai Lu waited for two seconds before gently extracting her fingers.
Lin Ming’s brow furrowed again, only relaxing after Bai Lu leaned down to press a finger to the space between her eyebrows.
“I’ll be right back,” Bai Lu said.
She lifted the tent flap, and a gust of cold wind rushed in, making me shiver.
The flap fell shut, and the sound of her footsteps faded into the distance.
I sat there for a moment.
‘Senior Bai Lu is out there alone. Won’t she be cold?’
The wind was quite strong where the Equatorial Mount was positioned.
After a moment of hesitation, I stood up.
“President?”
Xiao Yan opened her eyes and looked up at me.
Behind her white glasses, her eyes weren’t fully awake yet, looking slightly misty.
“I’m going to help Senior Bai Lu.”
She watched me for two seconds before slowly sitting up.
She ignored the blanket as it slid off her shoulders and reached out to unwrap the scarf from her neck.
Wait, that scarf was hers to begin with.
She had wrapped it around my neck earlier, and I hadn’t even noticed when it had ended up back on her.
“It’s cold outside.”
She stood up and wound the scarf around my neck.
Once, then twice.
She wrapped it slowly, smoothing it out with every loop as if she were performing a vital task.
Finally, she tied a knot at my chest, her fingers adjusting the tension at both ends.
“There.”
She patted the scarf, her fingers lingering for a moment just above my collarbone.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m wearing plenty of layers.”
She gave a small smile, her fingers grazing the edge of the scarf as she withdrew them.
“Make it quick, President.”
“Okay.”
I pushed through the flap and stepped outside.
The cold air hit me instantly, and every breath I exhaled turned into a white mist.
Bai Lu was crouching by the Equatorial Mount, a flashlight clenched between her teeth as she tightened a screw.
The hem of her white cashmere coat dragged on the ground, picking up a bit of mud, but she didn’t seem to care.
Her thick black tights disappeared into her leather shoes at her ankles, the small bit of exposed skin looking pale enough to glow under the moonlight.
Hearing my footsteps, she took the flashlight out of her mouth and looked up.
“Why did you come out? It’s cold.”
“To help.”
She glanced at the scarf around my neck and smiled, her eyes crinkling.
“Is that Xiao Yan’s?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s really good to you.”
She handed me a wrench and pointed to a screw on the base of the Equatorial Mount.
“Help me loosen that one. You don’t have to take it all the way off; just a bit.”
I crouched down and gave the screw two turns.
Bai Lu adjusted the angle from the side, tilting her head to check the spirit level, her lips slightly pursed.
“Do you fix this often, Senior?”
“I did back in high school.”
She didn’t look up, her fingers turning the fine-adjustment knob millimeter by millimeter.
“Lin Ming was always too heavy-handed when she calibrated things. She’d overshoot the mark constantly.”
“Senior Lin Ming?”
“Mmhmm.”
Bai Lu chuckled, shifting the flashlight’s angle.
“She looks quite steady, doesn’t she? But she’s actually incredibly strong—she just refuses to admit it. Once, she snapped the knob right off the Equatorial Mount. She just stood there staring at it for a long time before telling me, ‘It broke by itself.'”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“And then?”
“And then I said, ‘Right, it broke by itself.’ I bought a new one and replaced it the next day.”
Bai Lu’s tone was casual, but the corners of her mouth remained lifted.
“She still doesn’t know that I know.”
I let out a genuine laugh.
Bai Lu smiled too, tightened the screw, and stood up to brush off her hands.
“All done.”
She didn’t head back to the tent immediately.
Instead, she stood there, gazing up at the sky.
“Han Han, look. Orion.”
I followed her gaze.
The three stars of the belt were lined up in a straight row, bright and clear, making them incredibly easy to identify in the night sky.
Betelgeuse glowed red at the left shoulder, while Rigel shone blue-white at the right foot.
The entire constellation of Orion hung diagonally in the eastern sky, looking like a giant in mid-stride.
“Did you know,” Bai Lu’s voice was soft, like she was sharing a secret, “that the Rigel we’re seeing now is actually how it looked 600 years ago?”
“Because the light takes that long to travel.”
“Exactly. So, when we look at the stars, we’re actually looking at the past.”
She paused, pulling her hands into her coat sleeves and hugging her arms.
As the wind blew, her hair fluttered around her face.
“Sometimes I think the people in the Astronomy Club just like looking at things from the past.”
“Why?”
She thought about it, tilting her head toward the sky.
“Maybe because the past is safer. Things that have already happened won’t change.”
I was stunned for a moment.
Bai Lu turned to look at me and smiled.
It was different from her usual smile; there was something… unidentifiable in it.
“But Lin Ming says that people who watch the stars actually care the most about the present.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you never know if a meteor will appear in the next second. So you have to keep watching; you can’t afford to miss it.”
After saying that, she went back to watching the sky, a faint smile on her lips.
The wind blew a stray hair across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear with a slow, deliberate motion.
“Senior,” I started.
“How did you join the Astronomy Club in the first place?”
Bai Lu’s smile grew a bit softer.
“Because of Lin Ming.”
“Eh?”
“During my freshman year of high school, I got lost in the hallway.”
She leaned against a rock and put her hands in her pockets, her voice turning nostalgic.
“I was a new student, so I couldn’t tell which building was which. I kept wandering until I ended up at the entrance of the Observatory.”
She paused there, tilting her head to look at me.
“The door was open, and Lin Ming was in there alone, adjusting the telescope. Without even turning around, she said one thing.”
Bai Lu imitated Lin Ming’s mannerisms, tilting her chin up slightly and lowering her voice into a cool, detached tone.
“‘If you’re coming in, come in. Don’t stand in the doorway blocking the light.'”
“That’s so mean,” I said.
“I thought so too at the time.”
Bai Lu laughed, her eyes crinkling into crescents.
“But for some reason, I just walked in.”
“And then?”
“And then I went to the Observatory every single day. She never kicked me out, but she didn’t really pay attention to me either.”
Bai Lu’s voice was wistful as she looked toward the distant silhouettes of the mountains.
“She’d adjust the telescope, and I’d just sit beside her. She’d write observation records, and I’d watch the stars. Sometimes we wouldn’t say a single word for an entire afternoon.”
She paused, her voice getting even quieter.
“Then one day, she suddenly asked me, ‘Do you like astronomy?’ I said ‘Yes.’ She just said ‘Oh,’ and went back to being quiet.”
“That was it?”
“That was it.”
Bai Lu looked down at her toes, her lips curved.
“But the next day, she started teaching me how to identify the stars.”
I watched her.
Under the moonlight, her eyes sparkled behind her round gold-rimmed glasses, as if she were looking at something very far away.
“She’s a very harsh teacher,” Bai Lu said.
“If I got one wrong, she’d ask, ‘Is there something wrong with your eyes?'”
“That definitely sounds like Senior Lin Ming’s style.”
“But I realized later that she was only harsh with me. With anyone else, she couldn’t even be bothered to speak.”
Bai Lu’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if she were afraid of being overheard.
“Once, a junior came to ask her a question. She only said three words: ‘Ask Bai Lu.’ Then she just walked away.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Bai Lu laughed too, her gaze drifting back toward the tent.
It was silent over there, save for the faint sound of the tent fabric flapping in the wind.
“What happened after that?” I asked.
“After that, I just stayed by her side,” Bai Lu said, her tone as casual as if she were commenting on the weather.
“She became President, so I became Vice President. She went to Jingshi University, so I went to Jingshi University. She’s in the Department of Astronomy, and I study Meteorology and Climatology.”
“Why did you choose Climatology?”
Bai Lu thought about it, tilting her head toward me.
“Because wind and clouds turn into rain and snow; they change into all sorts of things. But stars don’t change.”
She paused.
“She likes things that don’t change, and I like things that do.”
“Doesn’t that make you very different?”
“Being different is good,” Bai Lu smiled, brushing away a stray hair.
“Being different means you can see the things the other person can’t.”
As she said this, her gaze moved back to the tent.
This time, she looked for a bit longer than before.
“Han Han,” she said suddenly, her tone becoming more casual.
“What do you think of Xiao Yan?”
“She’s great,” I replied after a moment of thought.
“She’s hardworking, cares about the club, and she’s very kind…”
“I’m not asking about that.”
“Then what are you asking?”
Bai Lu looked at me, tilting her head with a meaningful smile.
“Haven’t you noticed? She treats you very differently.”
“She treats everyone well, right?”
“It’s not the same.”
Bai Lu’s voice was serious.
She reached out a finger and tapped the scarf around my neck.
“The way she looks at you, the tone she uses when she speaks to you… and how she gives you her things without even blinking.”
“That’s just because she’s a good person…”
Bai Lu looked at me and sighed.
It wasn’t a sigh of frustration, but more like she had seen something amusing and was trying not to laugh.
“Do you really not get it?”
I looked at her blankly.
“Get what?”
She laughed and shook her head.
“Never mind. You’ll find out eventually.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Let’s just look at the stars.”
She looked back up at the sky, the smile still playing on her lips.