They made their quick goodbyes. He followed the snow-packed road down the mountain. She stood at Mount Siyun’s peak for a long while watching him leave. They both prepared for a seventeen-year wait.

THIRD TIME

After the third time he returned from Mount Siyun, he was suddenly aware of the end of his life. Neither of them had more than seventeen years left. The vast and desolate universe made light as slow as a snail. Life was as worth mentioning as dirt.

They kept in touch for the first five of the seventeen years. They exchanged emails, occasionally called each other, but they never met. She lived in another city, far away. Later, they each walked toward the summit of their own lives. He became a celebrated brain-medicine expert and the head of a major hospital. She became a member of an international academy of science. They had more and more to worry about. At the same time, he understood that, with the most prominent astronomer in academic circles, it was inappropriate to discuss too much this myth-like thing that linked them together. So, they gradually grew further and further apart. Halfway through their seventeen years, they stopped contacting each other entirely.

However, he wasn’t worried. He knew that, between them, they had an unbreakable bond, the light from Altair rushing through vast and desolate space to Earth. They both waited silently for it to arrive.

ALTAIR

They met at the peak of Mount Siyun in the dark of night. Both of them wanted to show up early to avoid making the other wait. So around three in the morning, they both clambered up the mountain. Their flying cars could have easily reached the peak, but they both parked at the foot of the mountain and then walked up, as if they wanted to re-create the past.

Mount Siyun was designated as a nature preserve ten years ago, and it had become one of the few wild places left on Earth. The observatory and vacation villas of old became vine-covered ruins. It was among these ruins that they met under the starlight. He’d recently seen her on TV, so he knew the marks that time had left on her. Even though there was no moon tonight, no matter what he imagined, he felt that the woman before him was still the one who stood under the moonlight thirty-four years ago. Her eyes reflected starlight, making his heart melt in his feelings of the past.

She said, “Let’s not start by talking about Altair, okay? These past few years, I’ve been in charge of a research project, precisely to measure the transmission of type A twinkling between stars.”

“Oh, wow. I hadn’t let myself hope that anything might actually come from all this.”