Epilogue
Last night it snowed all night.
The whole world turned clean and white.
I didn't get out of the car. I only lifted my head and looked through the windshield toward the parking lot exit.
There, an electronic display was playing a personal interview.
Below the screen ran a line of striking white artistic text:
"Isolated Island"—Solo Exhibition by Emerging Artist and Charity Educator Gu Yan
The screen was huge. I could even make out her slightly lowered lashes and the calm, distant curve at the corner of her mouth.
She stood there quietly, as if she were a world of her own.
A complete, abundant "Isolated Island" that needed no outsider to set foot on it.
"...I used to always think that loving someone meant lowering myself into the dust, then blooming into a flower."
"Now I finally understand—you can't bloom in the mud. You only turn into mud yourself."
"So for me, Isolated Island is not a sad concept. It is a world I can fully control."
"There, you can decide the weather, decide the seasons, decide when night falls and when day breaks."
"You don't have to depend on anyone, and you don't have to be defined by anyone."
"Alone, but not lonely."
"Very happy."
It turned out that when a person truly decided to leave, there was no sound at all.
I breathed a cloud of white fog onto the glass.
With my finger, stroke by stroke, I wrote that name on the fog.
Two characters.
Gu Yan.
And outside the window, the sunlight grew even brighter.