Although they hadn’t deliberately kept in touch, both were still studying at Berkeley, so they couldn’t possibly avoid seeing each other forever.
When they met again some time later, it was at the university’s clock tower.
The university’s clock tower was extremely famous. It was called Sather Tower, stood nearly a hundred meters tall, and was said to be the third-tallest clock tower in the world, surpassed only by structures such as St. Mark’s in Venice. Mr. Sather had once served on Berkeley’s board of trustees, back when it was still known as the College of California. After his death some fifty years earlier, his wife, Jane Sather, had donated part of his estate to build a campus gate and a clock tower: Sather Gate and Sather Tower.
There were clocks on all four sides, and a complete set of twelve chime bells inside. Music students played them at a fixed time each day. The performances were often improvised, with a few extra or fewer strikes, so the timing was frequently inaccurate.
Elio’s Notes: Berkeley confirms that Sather Tower originally had twelve bells, but this was technically a chime, not a full concert carillon. The tower’s instrument was expanded into a carillon decades later. The novel’s period description is preserved. Sources: UC Berkeley Visitor Services and Berkeley Department of Music.
Standing atop the tower, a person could see the entire campus and even beautiful San Francisco Bay in the distance.
Since those days at Yosemite, Qin Siyu had often come up to the clock tower.
It took quite a while to climb up, but he liked it.
One evening, when he went up again, he unexpectedly spotted Aston’s back beside the railing on one side.
The wind lifted Aston’s golden hair, making it flutter, and occasionally his tie as well. His sleeves were half rolled up, revealing part of his forearms. He leaned forward slightly, both arms resting on the railing. The curve of his lower back was drawn out, and his legs seemed impossibly long.
Qin Siyu went over. “Hi~”
Aston smiled. “Hi.”
Qin Siyu asked, puzzled, “Was your class canceled today?”
Aston didn’t understand. “Hmm?”
“At this time every week…” Qin Siyu paused slightly, then finally continued, “Shouldn’t you be taking a class in South Hall?”
Aston turned his eyes and stared at him.
After a long time, he asked Qin Siyu, “You know that?”
“More or less,” Qin Siyu said.
“Finals are coming up. They’ve left this week for revision,” Aston explained.
“Oh,” Qin Siyu said.
Aston remained leaning over the metal rail, gazing toward the sea. His question sounded utterly casual. “What else do you know? Only that I’m usually in South Hall at this hour, or do you know where I am at other times, too? How many?”
Qin Siyu took his hands out of his pockets and rested them on the railing, bending forward to gaze into the distance. Side by side, the two men stood in almost exactly the same posture, as if creating a space that belonged only to them. Qin Siyu’s answer was equally difficult to interpret, a long stretch of words carried away by the wind up high. “I also know that your second class on Monday morning is in Wheeler Hall. It’s a big lecture, isn’t it? Lots of students. Your second class Tuesday afternoon should also be in South Hall, and your first two classes Thursday afternoon are both in Wheeler Hall… You usually spend Friday afternoons at Doe Memorial Library, looking up sources, writing papers? Saturdays you’re at the fraternity house. I’m not so sure about the other times.”
He had said half of what he knew and hidden the other half. But even this was a great deal.
During this time, whenever he had no classes of his own, Qin Siyu would come to the top of the tower around the time Aston’s classes ended, look down over the campus, and search for the tall figure emerging from a building. He would wonder what Aston had just been doing, which class he’d attended.
He wanted to keep his distance. He knew he absolutely shouldn’t trouble the other man or cause him difficulties. But he desperately wanted to see him, too. So he often climbed the tower, from which the whole campus could be seen.
The distance was great and there were so many students that Aston wasn’t easy to find. Qin Siyu didn’t always manage to spot him.
But the economics department used only a few buildings. If he came often enough, sooner or later he would see Aston.
Besides, Aston was unusual. He stood out in any crowd.
He was tall, with a commanding presence, elegant clothes, and graceful bearing. His golden hair was unmistakable, and even when his features were too blurred to distinguish, he looked extraordinarily handsome. Wherever he appeared, people around him always turned to look. Aston himself seemed unaffected. After a while Qin Siyu had learned a trick: wherever a cluster of people were turning their heads, Aston was there.
Hearing that answer, Aston drew his gaze back. They looked at each other for a while, neither knowing what the other was thinking.
What are you doing? Qin Siyu asked himself. You’re supposed to stay away from him, so what are you doing now? Why can’t you stop yourself from wanting him to know you’ve been secretly watching him, that you’ve been quietly caring about him, that you’re not nearly as indifferent to his affairs as you pretend? What are you hoping for? What could you possibly ask for? Why are you feeling so aggrieved?
At that moment, the bells began to ring.
The sound of the chime was clear and enormous, bright without being shrill, a lovely metallic sound with a deep, heavy resonance lingering after every note.
The bells pealed. The beautiful music the students were playing filled the tower and soared into the sky, as though the whole heavens were echoing. It flowed down from the tower’s peak, swept across layer upon layer of roofs and treetops, and the wind carried the dying notes farther and farther, leaving them hanging in the air.
With the bells ringing, the two men stopped speaking and simply continued gazing into the distance.
San Francisco was shrouded in fog throughout its summers.
Summer moisture blew in, covering the sea with a milky haze. There was even a phrase for it, “fog locking the Golden Gate.” Now the Golden Gate Bridge, still under construction, showed traces of orange through the mist, a bright splash of color.
Along the shore, the fog had already retreated. A flock of white gulls beat their wings and skimmed past.
The bell music reached the viewing level. The entire tower seemed to resonate faintly with it, vibrating with a deep, far-reaching sound.
Qin Siyu felt the rail beneath his hands and the floor beneath his feet vibrate in sympathy, leaving them faintly tingling.
A few minutes later, just as the music was ending, a couple climbed up.
The girl was carefully holding a birthday cake. She had taken such care that it wasn’t damaged in the slightest.
But by the time they reached the top, the music was already playing its final phrase. Disappointment filled her face. “We should’ve come up earlier! I didn’t know it would take so long! I wanted to light your candles when the bells started playing today so you could make a proper wish!”
The boy was very handsome. He asked curiously, “Why did we have to come here, anyway?”
“Because this is the highest place around, of course!” she said. “Wishes made somewhere way up high are more likely to be heard. The gods live in the sky, after all.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the boy reassured her. “The gods can hear us if we make a wish now. Who cares if the bells have stopped?”
“But the bells were supposed to be playing around us! It’s your eighteenth birthday. You only turn eighteen once.”
Aston turned to look at them. Qin Siyu, however, stopped the elevator operator, who had been waiting and was now about to close the doors when it seemed no one wanted to go down.
“Sorry to bother you,” Qin Siyu said with a warm smile, “but could you tell the people on the performance floor what’s happened to these two? Is there any chance they could play a little more?”
The daily performance was supposed to last ten minutes, but pieces varied in length. Sometimes it ran longer, sometimes shorter. Sometimes they played two more pieces, sometimes two fewer. They often improvised.
The twelve chime bells hung on the uppermost level. The playing room was below them, where performers pressed “keys,” really huge wooden levers that pulled the corresponding clappers in the bells above. The viewing platform was another level farther down.
The operator looked at the couple, smiled, nodded, and went upstairs. Meanwhile the young lovers struck a match and lit the candles.
Suddenly music filled the tower again.
It was “Happy Birthday to You.”
The tune had been written by the Hill sisters, elementary-school teachers. Originally it was called “Good Morning to You,” but over time it had become “Happy Birthday to You.” With its simple, cheerful rhythm, it had been growing popular across the United States in recent years.
The girl cried out excitedly and urged her boyfriend to hurry and make his wish for his eighteenth birthday.
The boy closed his eyes and muttered for a while before blowing out the candles. The girl called out loudly, “Thank you!” both to Qin Siyu and to the people playing above. Carrying their cake, the couple happily went back down.
Qin Siyu smiled. He and Aston exchanged a quiet look for a few seconds, then leaned against the railing again and turned back toward the sea.
“You know,” Qin Siyu said, “when I was little I always ate ‘longevity noodles’ for my birthday~ My mother would make a pot of chicken broth and pull out one whole noodle. One unbroken noodle, you know. You mustn’t break it. She’d lower it into the soup, crack an egg into it, add some char siu and greens, and pour in the seasonings. Then it was ready. It smelled wonderful~ I didn’t know until I started middle school that people outside Chinatown ate cake and made wishes.”
His eyes curved with amusement. “Our wishes were all the same, and we didn’t get to choose. Just ‘long life.’ Chinese culture holds that everyone’s greatest wish must be to live a long life! It couldn’t possibly be anything else!”
Aston’s lips curved, too.
“What about you?” Qin Siyu asked. “You grew up having cakes, right?”
“Mm.” Aston’s voice was gentle in the high wind. “I’ve had cakes since I was a child. Very elaborate, very pretty, with lots of tiers.”
Qin Siyu: “…Oh.” He had never seen one. He’d eaten cake before, but never a cake with “lots of tiers.”
“But I’ve never made a wish,” Aston said quietly. “My father always believed that ‘making wishes’ was a sign of weakness. It meant putting your hopes in something imaginary.”
Qin Siyu: “…Huh.”
“Actually,” Aston said, looking at him, “before secondary school, until I was about eleven, I thought up a birthday wish for myself every year. I always felt I might get a chance to use one, so I’d prepare what I wanted to wish for. But I never did. Starting with my twelfth birthday, I simply stopped bothering, and I haven’t thought of wishes since.”
His voice was calm.
The cakes had been elaborate and pretty, with many tiers, but they had never felt as though they were meant for him.
Aston still remembered being six. He knew the cooks and other staff were getting ready for his birthday and had told his mother he wanted a cake shaped like a star.
But Victoria hadn’t given him a star cake. Instead, his parents had once again invited a crowd of people, all sorts of “friends.” The cake was still elaborate and beautiful, piled with layer upon layer of flowers. There wasn’t a single star.
Hearing this, Qin Siyu turned back to him. “When is your birthday?”
Aston smiled. “It’s already passed.”
“What a pity,” Qin Siyu said thoughtfully. Then he suddenly turned back. “So, would you like to do something bad tonight? Or something good?”
“Hmm?” Aston didn’t understand.
Qin Siyu didn’t explain further. “Anyway, after dinner, come to the main entrance of the Life Science Building at nine tonight, all right?”
Aston nodded, and Qin Siyu went down the tower first.
Aston watched from behind as he disappeared into the elevator.
What were they going to do tonight?
That evening, they met at the main entrance of the Life Science Building.
When Aston arrived, Qin Siyu was staring at someone.
“What are you looking at?” Aston asked.
“That fellow,” Qin Siyu said, raising his chin. “I think he’s called Oppenheimer. Only in his twenties, and apparently a physics genius.”
“So that’s Oppenheimer,” Aston said, clearly having heard of him too.
“Mm. Let’s go.”
The building was new and beautiful, used mainly by the biology department.
There were plenty of display cases for the life sciences, containing dinosaur teeth and other fossils, and a dinosaur skeleton stood nearby.
Remembering the photographs he had recently bought, Qin Siyu pointed at the tyrannosaurus skeleton and teased Aston. “Kingsley, aren’t you a boxing champion? Think you could beat that?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Aston said.
Qin Siyu: “…………”
A few seconds later Qin Siyu said, “Kingsley, you really have no sense of humor.”
“And you do,” Aston replied.
They walked all the way to Professor Watson’s laboratory. Qin Siyu took out a key, opened the door, and slipped inside.
Aston: “?”
The laboratory was large, with benches and high stools. Microscopes, Petri dishes, alcohol burners, and other equipment stood on the workbenches, and a faint, peculiar smell lingered in the air.
Professor Watson studied insects. The cabinets against one wall contained rows of scientific instruments: insect pins, little tweezers, test tubes, beakers, glass rods… Against the opposite wall were many insect enclosures.
Qin Siyu went to inspect them and carried out a small cage.
Aston again: “?”
Qin Siyu turned off the lights. “There. Let’s go.”
Aston hesitated. “Is that—”
He remembered that he had first learned Qin Siyu’s name in Professor Brown’s office. Back then, Qin Siyu had been carrying a similar cage, and it had turned out to contain cockroaches.
Qin Siyu was startled for a second, then laughed. “Fireflies.”
“Fireflies?”
“Mm,” Qin Siyu said. “He wanted to study how they produce light. He thought maybe the ability could be useful for biological experiments someday, so he asked me to catch a few. But he didn’t really have a plan, just a hunch. I went to all that trouble catching them, and then he had no next step… He switched over to studying the European corn borer. I think it’s an agricultural project with the government.”
Aston asked, “There are fireflies on the West Coast?”
Qin Siyu replied, “There are a few by the streams in the redwood forest. Only a few. Nothing spectacular, but they’re there.”
Aston looked at the cage again. “So we’re going to…?”
“Set them free.” Qin Siyu smiled again. “You know, since ancient times people have liked making wishes on things that glow, especially things whose light is fleeting. Shooting stars, auroras, and fireflies. Birthday candles are really the same idea. Since you’ve never had a chance to make a wish, you can make them all at once tonight. And I’ll get to release the fireflies.”
Aston shook his head helplessly and looked up at him in the dark.
“Come on.” Qin Siyu gave him a tug. “Let’s go to Strawberry Creek.”
Qin Siyu had turned off the lights. The hand carrying the cage was illuminated in the darkness. Two long, slender fingers hooked through its handle, their backs shimmering.
Aston could only follow him.
Many oak trees grew along Strawberry Creek. One was especially enormous. At graduation season, students would come there to make a solemn wish: that they might one day return to the university.
It was late now, and there were few people by Strawberry Creek.
Qin Siyu lifted the cloth covering the cage.
It was a fine-mesh enclosure containing damp soil, with moss, fallen leaves, and rotting chips of wood to imitate the insects’ habitat. Qin Siyu had also put in wet cotton and a dish of water to maintain the humidity. He had even prepared a little feeding dish with honey.
Qin Siyu opened the lid, reached inside, and carefully, gently caught a firefly. He lifted it out. A faint light flickered in his hand. Bringing it close before Aston’s eyes, he said, “Go on~ Think of the wish you had when you turned three. Mm, let’s start when you were three. At two, you probably didn’t understand yet.”
Aston gazed at his palm. “Childish.”
“You’re only nineteen yourself,” Qin Siyu retorted. “Hurry. It’ll suffocate. If we stand here any longer, instead of releasing it I’ll end up killing it. Think of your third-birthday wish.”
Aston lowered his eyes. A few seconds later he said, with great dignity, “Done.”
“Mm.” Qin Siyu opened his fingers. The firefly flew from his palm and circled in front of them, stopping first before Aston, then before Qin Siyu.
“Go on,” Qin Siyu said with a smile. His cheeks were softly illuminated, looking even smoother and gentler, and tiny stars glimmered in his black eyes. “What are you doing over here? Go to him. It’s his wish.”
The firefly really did turn back toward Aston. After two or three seconds, it drifted lazily toward the oak tree, a tiny, flickering point of light.
“All right.” Qin Siyu caught another. “Now the wish from when you were four.”
Aston fell quiet for a few seconds again. “All done.” He didn’t try to refuse anymore.
The second firefly was released. It fluttered up and down, unsteadily, then followed the first.
They stood quietly for a long time without feeling bored, taking the insects out of their mesh cage one at a time. They repeated the process until they reached eleven.
Oddly, although it was only the same action repeated, both of them took it with utmost seriousness. As they drew closer to eleven, they even began to feel reluctant for the ritual to end.
After releasing the firefly for Aston’s fifth birthday, Aston thought: Only six left.
After the sixth birthday, he thought again: Only five left—
After the eleventh, the air fell quiet for a few seconds. Both paused. Aston said, “We can stop here. After that, I never prepared another birthday wish.”
“Is that so?” Qin Siyu caught another firefly. “Then this one can make up for your twelfth birthday. May you be happy all your life.”
Qin Siyu kept releasing them. “Thirteen.” “Fourteen.” “Fifteen. May you be happy all your life, for every one of them.”
There were more and more fireflies, until they really did form a tiny cloud of light.
After he’d named the eighteenth birthday, Qin Siyu tipped the cage so that all the remaining fireflies could fly out together. He laughed. “As for the rest of you—”
He paused for a few seconds before adding, “You don’t have to carry anyone’s wishes or expectations. Just fly around happily and freely.”
The fireflies flew toward the oak tree, little scattered stars. They were nothing like the spectacle of starlight fallen to earth that Qin Siyu had read about in books. There were only a few points here and there, yet all of them seemed to be flying toward absolute freedom.
Their eyes met again.
Qin Siyu asked, “Does it feel as if all those wishes you made as a child have finally found somewhere to go?”
Aston stood still for a long time, testing and savoring the feeling. At last he nodded gently. Just once, almost imperceptibly.
A tingling sensation passed through Qin Siyu.
I’m finished, he thought.
In the darkness Aston’s face was indistinct. Qin Siyu thought again of the childhood photograph he had found in the old newspapers.
Every time he stared at the picture of Aston as a child, the same feeling of recognition struck him and gripped his heart.
The San Francisco library wouldn’t allow newspapers to be checked out, and a copy would lose something in reproduction, so Qin Siyu frequently went to the library just to look at the photograph.
He compared it with a memory again and again, considering it from every angle. Sometimes he thought it really was the same person, and at other times he doubted it.
He spent three whole days thinking it over. In the end he gradually came to believe: It really must have been him. There couldn’t be another person like that in the world.
After that, sleep became harder than ever, and he loved visiting the clock tower even more.
The fireflies flew across the creek and clustered on the tree, like lights on a Christmas tree.
Qin Siyu asked, “From three to eleven… Your wishes couldn’t have been something like ‘I want ice cream,’ right? That would be too easy. A wish that easy would be wasted.”
“No,” Aston said. “My wishes were very difficult to fulfill.”
“Very difficult?” Qin Siyu looked regretful. “Then we should have used two fireflies for each wish, to give them a margin for error. Too many wouldn’t be good either. If three fireflies were assigned the same job, they’d slack off. As it is… I hope at least half your wishes come true.” After all, when three monks shared the work, nobody fetched the water.
Aston said nothing.
In fact, the result could only be zero percent or a hundred percent.
Qin Siyu had no idea what Aston had wished for when he was young. He’d released so many fireflies for him.
Yet from the age of three or four until he was eleven, Aston had made the same wish every year, until he finally gave it up.
There was no need for so many fireflies.
He had wished that one day, someone would come to love him.