Occasionally recall

Reflecting on the swift passage of time, a card that caught my eye unexpectedly reminded me of twenty years ago. I was so young then, youth was truly wonderful…
That winter, the snow was particularly heavy and frequent, and winter vacation started early. As a student, I found a part-time job at a supermarket.
Several people from out of town came to the store almost every day. We gradually became familiar with each other and sometimes chatted. I learned they came from a well-known hometown of overseas Chinese in eastern South China. They were going from here to Russia (then the Soviet Union), and then to Europe, eventually settling in one of those countries. They had been here since summer, waiting, and they themselves weren't sure how long they would have to wait before leaving.
The youngest guy was named Bin, about my age at the time, so we chatted the most. He wasn't used to the cold of the Northeast winter; every time I saw him, he would come into the shop with his red, frostbitten hands covering his ears and his neck hunched. With him was a slightly older young man named Hua, with a pair of large, slightly melancholic eyes on a angular face. He was Bin's cousin. Hua was quiet; whenever Bin and I chatted, he would listen quietly, rarely interjecting.
One evening, near closing time, Hua came in alone. I asked him what he wanted to buy. "I wanted to wait for you to get off work, okay?" he said, looking at me.
"We have to do inventory after work, it'll be very late," I said. I felt a little embarrassed; it was the first time I'd encountered this situation, and I was a bit nervous, unsure what to say.
"It's okay, I'll wait outside after we close," Hua said.
When the inventory was finished, it was almost midnight. When I came out with the others from the shop, I saw Hua standing on the street corner.
He stood under the streetlamp, wearing a black leather jacket. The yellow light illuminated the snowflakes dancing silently in the air, highlighting his slightly lonely figure...
"Are you hungry? I'll treat you to a late-night snack," Hua said as he saw me.
"No, thank you. My parents are waiting for me to come home soon; they'll worry if I get back too late."
"Then let's walk together, towards your house, okay?"
And so, for the first time, I strolled with a boy in the snowy night, our feet sinking into the thick snow. He told me so much—how he gave up his government job to go abroad, how he broke up with his girlfriend of many years; how he felt helpless about the unpredictable future. He would laugh out loud at happy parts, but his overall tone was melancholic and sad. At the time, I couldn't fully understand; I just listened quietly…
Before I knew it, we reached the street corner near my home. I remember him telling me at the end that he would be leaving soon, and that he would remember me…
Soon, I returned to school before him and never saw him again. A year later, in winter again, I unexpectedly received an envelope from a foreign country. Inside was a postcard with a handwritten note in a skilled and distinctive handwriting:
"...The snow outside the window keeps falling, stirring up so many memories!
Do my footprints still remain in the snow that night...?"
The envelope was only signed "Moscow, USSR"...
The story is over. My child found this envelope while cleaning the room the other day and brought it to me. So I told him it was a beautiful memory from my youth.
Then, on this chilly afternoon in the northwest, I photographed it and saved it digitally.

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Occasionally recall

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