Six in the morning on a Thursday, and a thin mist still hung low over the lawn on the side of the train park that bordered the pond. The same runners came past in waves, at intervals Phum had long since memorized — the older man in the yellow tank top always first, then the husband and wife who walked so fast it was nearly a jog, then the woman with the fat beagle who never seemed to want to be walked.

Phum and Baitoey kept to the left lane the way they did every morning. Neither of them had said anything for the last two hundred meters.

He'd known since he saw her at the entrance that this morning wasn't like the others. She'd arrived ten minutes ahead of him, which was ordinary, but she hadn't been stretching against the metal railing the way she always did. She'd just been standing there, looking down at the path, still wet with dew.

"I gave them my answer," Baitoey said as they reached the first bend. "Last night, around ten."

Phum didn't stop walking. His feet kept moving at the same pace, because to stop here would make it a larger scene than she'd meant it to be.

"And what did you say?"

"I accepted."

The mist over the pond was thinning under the sun coming up over the buildings to the east. Sparrows racketed in the shrubs along the path. For the first time in weeks, the sound of their sneakers on the asphalt fell out of step, and Phum heard that broken rhythm more clearly than he should have.

"When?" he asked, his voice coming out flatter than he'd expected.

"The twenty-ninth. I have to report on the first."

The twenty-ninth. Twelve days. He converted it into mornings without meaning to — eleven mornings, twelve if you counted the day she flew — and then caught himself doing the thing he'd learned to do with the numbers in the habit app, counting them so they'd feel like something he could hold.

"Eleven more mornings, then," he said.

Baitoey glanced over at him. "You're quick with that."

"Occupational hazard."

She laughed, more breath than sound, and then went quiet again. They passed the wooden pavilion where a group of older people were moving through tai chi in slow arcs, Chinese music drifting out of a Bluetooth speaker set on the bench.

"I thought I'd cry when I hit send," Baitoey said. "But it was so quiet. Like emailing in a sick day."

"How does it feel?"

She thought about it long enough for them to walk past the big rain tree at the top of the curve.

"Frightening," she said. "But a different kind of frightening than I've had my whole life. This one still wants to keep walking."

Phum nodded. He wanted to say something smarter than that. He wanted to say good. He wanted to say he was proud of her. He wanted to say his chest had been too tight to breathe properly since the word accepted. But every one of those sentences would have made her stop and comfort him instead.

"Finish the loop first?" he asked. "Another eight hundred meters."

"Yes," Baitoey said. "Let's finish it."

They walked the full loop the way they did every morning, and split up at the entrance the way they did every morning. Before she got on the back of a motorbike taxi she turned and said, "Six tomorrow, same as always," and Phum said of course, the way he'd said it every day.

---

Baitoey's last day at Briskly fell on the last Friday of the month. It didn't rain. The heat was the kind the office air conditioning couldn't quite hold back by afternoon.

At three o'clock there was a cake on the low table in the sofa area — chocolate, from a shop in Thonglor, ordered by Sam, with GOOD LUCK BAITOEY piped across the top in white cream, the Y crowded so far to the edge it nearly fell off.

Sam spoke for less than two minutes. He said Baitoey had been with the company a little over a year and had changed the entire face of the product. He said if she ever wanted to come back, the desk would still be here. Then he laughed loudly to cover the shake that had gotten into his voice at the end of the sentence.

Pae cut the cake. He cut the first slice too large and it collapsed onto the paper plate, and he said quickly that he'd meant to do that. Neung came over and shook her hand and told her, "Go do it properly. And don't work as hard as I do," then went back to his desk faster than usual.

Phum stayed at the edge of it the whole time, eating the small piece Pae had pushed into his hand, so sweet it caught in his throat. He didn't say anything for that entire half hour — not because he had nothing to say, but because everyone in the room was already saying it for him.

---

By six, almost everyone had gone. Only the new project team was still at their screens. Baitoey packed her desk into a single cardboard box. There wasn't much — a second monitor, a mousepad, her washed coffee cup, the small plant in the terracotta pot she'd set out on her first day, three or four books that had been stacked in a drawer.

"Want me to carry it?" Phum asked.

"I've got it," Baitoey said, and lifted the box. "...No. It's heavy."

He took it from her without a word and followed her to the elevator, where they waited in silence under a fluorescent tube that had been flickering for months without anyone reporting it. A taxi was already waiting out front.

Phum set the box on the back seat and stood the plant upright so the soil wouldn't spill, then shut the door.

"We're still walking on Monday," Baitoey said. "I'm not going anywhere until the twenty-ninth."

"I know."

"I'm just afraid you'll start saying goodbye today," she said, trying to make it sound like a joke and not quite managing it.

Phum stood still for a moment beside the car with its engine running.

"I'm not very good at goodbyes," he said. "But I'm good at waking up early. See you Monday."

Baitoey smiled and got in. The taxi turned out of the soi and disappeared into the Friday evening traffic, and Phum stood there a while longer before going back up for the backpack he'd left on his desk.

---

The eleven mornings went faster than they had any right to.

On the seventh, it rained hard from five o'clock, and the two of them stood under the wooden pavilion for forty minutes without walking a single step, talking about Singaporean food and Baitoey's worry that it wouldn't be spicy enough.

On the ninth, Baitoey brought him a small notebook bound in grey cloth. No wrapping, no card. "Your old one's nearly full, isn't it?" she asked. Phum took it and opened the cover. The first page was blank except for her handwriting in pencil in the upper corner: Volume Two.

On the eleventh — the last morning before her flight — they walked two loops instead of one. Neither of them suggested it. They simply went past the place where they always stopped.

"Do you know how many mornings we've walked together?" Baitoey asked near the end of the second loop.

Phum didn't have to check his phone. "Sixty-four," he said. "Not counting the three days I was in Ayutthaya."

She looked at him so long that he thought he'd gotten it wrong.

"How do you even remember that?"

"I write it down every day," he said. "Since the first one."

She didn't answer, but she walked a little closer after that, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched for the last hundred meters.

---

On the twenty-ninth, the flight left at 10:40.

Phum got to Suvarnabhumi at twenty past seven, forty minutes earlier than they'd agreed, because he'd woken at half past five and hadn't been able to get back to sleep. He sat on a bench near the row-K counters and watched people drag their luggage past beneath the high steel ceiling, morning light coming down through it in a grid.

Baitoey arrived with her mother.

He hadn't prepared himself for that, but the moment he saw them he understood why she hadn't warned him. Baitoey's mother was half a head shorter than her daughter, with short permed hair and a large leather handbag that looked heavier than it should have been. She'd taken the overnight coach from Khon Kaen and reached Mo Chit at five in the morning.

"So this is Phum?" she asked, in an Isan accent that hadn't faded at all, looking him over from head to foot without the slightest indirection. "Baitoey talks about you."

"What does she say?" Phum asked, the curiosity out of his mouth before he could stop it.

"That there's a fellow at work who gets up even earlier than she does," her mother said, and laughed. Baitoey put a hand over her face for a moment.

At the counter, Baitoey's big suitcase was two kilos over. The three of them ended up sitting on the floor beside a pillar, the case open in the middle of the airport, moving out a pair of shoes, two books, and a plastic bag holding three jars of pla ra chili paste her mother had brought down with her.

"You can't take this, Mae," Baitoey said. "It's not allowed."

"Who says?" her mother asked. "The lids are on tight."

"It really isn't allowed."

Two of the jars ended up in Phum's hands, along with an instruction from Baitoey's mother to take them home and finish them, not to let them spoil. The plastic bag grew warmer in his grip over the next half hour.

He'd never imagined that the scene he'd been dreading for twelve days would have pla ra in it.

---

At nine twenty they were standing at the entrance to the east immigration hall, the queue spilling out past the second rope.

Baitoey's mother hugged her first — a short hug, the hug of someone not much practiced at hugging — patted her back three times, and said something quietly in Isan that Phum couldn't follow, catching only eat properly and call me. Baitoey nodded, her eyes red, not crying yet.

Then her mother stepped back three paces and turned to study the departures board with more attention than it deserved.

Baitoey turned to Phum.

He saw her in clothes he'd never seen her in — a plain white T-shirt and grey sweatpants, hair pulled up, no earrings, no makeup. A version of her that hadn't been arranged for anyone to look at.

"I rehearsed what I was going to say," she told him. "I've forgotten all of it."

"You don't have to say anything."

"I do," she said, biting her lip. "If I don't say it today I'll regret it for ten years."

Phum waited without hurrying her, letting a boarding announcement for some other flight run to its end.

"That day at the coffee shop," Baitoey began, "when I asked whether you wanted me to stay — I was so angry with you for not answering. I went home and cursed you in my head for two days."

"I assumed as much."

"And then on the third day I sat down and read the contract again," she went on, "and I realized that if you had said you wanted me to stay, I would have stayed. And I would never have known whether I stayed because I loved you or because I was afraid of going alone."

The tears came then, though her voice stayed level.

"I don't want to spend my whole life wondering about that."

Phum felt the plastic handles cutting into his palm. He shifted the bag to his other hand.

"I didn't want you wondering either."

"Are you going to be all right?" she asked. It was a real question, not a polite one.

"Tomorrow at six I'll still be walking," he said. "And the day after that. And the day after that."

"Alone?"

"Alone," he said. "But still walking."

Baitoey nodded slowly, the way you nod at an answer you've been waiting twelve days to hear. She stepped in and hugged him, short and tight. One of Phum's hands still held the bag of chili paste; the other came to rest on her back. He caught the same faint smell of soap he'd known since one evening in the office kitchen.

She pulled away first, bent to shoulder her carry-on, took two steps, and turned back.

"Phum," she said — just his name, without the *phi* in front of it, for the first time since they'd met.

"Yes."

"Thank you for letting go."

Then she turned and walked into the queue, handed her passport to the officer, stepped past the last rope, and did not look back — which, Phum knew, was not because she didn't want to.

---

He and Baitoey's mother stood there another few minutes, until they could no longer see her.

"Could you take me to Mo Chit, son?" her mother asked, in the level voice of someone who had already done her crying somewhere on the coach. "I don't really know the way."

"Of course."

On the train into the city, Baitoey's mother sat by the window and watched the fields and the industrial estates go past without speaking for a long time. It wasn't until after Lat Krabang that she said anything at all.

"When her father was still alive, Baitoey never went further than school," she said. "She was afraid to leave me alone in the house."

Phum didn't know what to say, so he nodded.

"I'm glad she's going," her mother went on, still looking out the window. "It hurts. But I'm glad more than it hurts."

Phum sat with that sentence all the way to the end of the line.

---

He got back to his room a little after six that evening, put the bag of chili paste in the refrigerator beside the bottles of water, washed his hands, showered, and sat down at the small desk in the corner.

The paper sticker on the edge of his monitor was still there, the blue ink fainter than it had been three months ago.

He picked up the new grey cloth notebook, opened to the first page with her handwriting in the corner — *Volume Two* — and wrote beneath it in his own pen.

"Saw Baitoey off today. Flight 10:40, lands in Singapore at two.

Didn't cry. Don't know whether that's good or not.

Tomorrow, 6:00, the train park."

He closed the notebook, set his alarm for five fifty the way he did every night, put his phone on the desk instead of beside the bed, and turned off the light.

In the dark he thought about what she'd said before she walked into the queue — about how carefully she'd chosen it. Not thank you for waiting. Not thank you for understanding. Thank you for letting go.

He lay there for a while wondering whether letting go was supposed to feel lighter than this, and arrived at the answer that it wasn't. Nobody had ever promised it would feel light.

At 23:14 he fell asleep.

---

The alarm went off at five fifty the next morning.

Phum opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling for ten seconds. The old familiar voice came back to whisper that he didn't have to go today. There was no one waiting at the entrance now. No one would know. No one was counting.

He lay there and let it finish.

Then he sat up, took the T-shirt and running shorts he'd laid out on the chair the night before, put his shoes on at the door, and rode the elevator down into a morning that was still faintly cool.

At five past six he reached the train park.

The older man in the yellow tank top came past first, the way he always did, and nodded at him the way he'd nodded every morning for the last two months. Phum nodded back.

The left lane stayed empty beside him for the whole loop.

He finished it the way he did every morning, and then, without deciding to, walked a second one, stopping only when the sun was fully up. Breathing hard at the metal railing where she used to stretch, he took out his phone and opened the habit app.

The number on the screen was 98.

He looked at it for a moment, then tapped into the day's entry and typed a single short line before putting the phone in his pocket and walking out of the park to catch a motorbike taxi to work.

The new team had its first meeting at nine, and he was the one who had to open the room.

周四早上六点，铁路公园靠池塘那一侧的草地上还浮着一层薄薄的雾。跑步的人一波一波地迎面过来，时间点阿普早就记熟了——穿黄色背心的大叔总是最先，接着是那对走得快到几乎算跑的夫妻，然后是牵着一只胖比格犬的女人，那狗看上去从来都不太想走。

阿普和拜黛像每天早上一样走在左边那条道上。已经两百多米没有人说话了。

从在入口看见她的那一刻起，他就知道今天早上和别的早上不一样。她比他早到十分钟，这是常事，可今天她没有像平时那样扶着铁栏杆压腿。她只是站在那儿，看着还带着露水的路面。

"我给他们答复了。"走到第一个弯道时，拜黛开口说，"昨天晚上十点。"

阿普没有停下脚步。他的脚仍按着原来的节奏往前迈，因为如果在这里停下来，这一刻就会变成一个比她想要的更大的场面。

"你怎么答的？"

"我接受了。"

太阳从东边那排楼房上方升起来，池塘上的雾开始变淡。路边灌木丛里传来麻雀的吵闹声。几个星期以来，两个人的球鞋踩在柏油路上的声音第一次错开了拍子，而阿普把那个错开的节奏听得比应该听到的还要清楚。

"什么时候？"他问，声音出来时比他预想的还要平。

"二十九号。一号就得去报到。"

二十九号。还有十二天。他不由自主地把它换算成早晨——十一个早晨，如果把她起飞那天也算上，就是十二个。随后他察觉到自己正在做的，正是他对着习惯追踪软件里那些数字做过的事：数它们，好让它们变成能握在手里的东西。

"那还能走十一个早上。"他说。

拜黛侧过头看了他一眼。"你算得真快。"

"职业病。"

她笑了一声，气多过声音，然后又沉默下去。他们走过那座木亭子，一群上了年纪的人正在里面慢慢地打太极，长凳上的蓝牙音箱里飘出中文歌。

"我以为按下发送的时候我会哭。"拜黛说，"可按完之后特别安静，像发了一封请病假的邮件。"

"那你现在觉得怎么样？"

她想了很久，久到他们走过了弯道口那棵大雨树。

"害怕。"她说，"但和我这辈子一直害怕的那种不一样。这种害怕里，还想继续往前走。"

阿普点点头。他想说点比这更聪明的话。他想说这样很好。想说他为她骄傲。想说从她说出"接受"两个字起，他的胸口就一直闷得喘不太上气。可这些话说出口，都会变成让她反过来安慰他。

"先把这一圈走完好吗？"他问，"还有八百米。"

"好。"拜黛说，"走完它。"

他们像每天早上一样走完了整整一圈，又像每天早上一样在入口分开。上摩托车之前，她回过头说："明天六点，跟平时一样。"阿普说好，就像他每天都说的那样。

---

拜黛在 Briskly 的最后一天，是月底的那个星期五。没有下雨。热得到了下午办公室的空调有点压不住。

下午三点，沙发区中间的矮桌上摆了一个蛋糕。巧克力的，阿山从通罗那边一家店订的，上面用白色奶油挤着 GOOD LUCK BAITOEY，最后那个 Y 挤得太靠边，几乎要掉下去。

阿山讲了不到两分钟。他说拜黛在公司待了一年多，却把整个产品的样子都换了。他说如果哪天她想回来，位子还在这里。然后他大声笑了一下，好盖住句尾开始发抖的声音。

蛋糕是帕切的。第一刀切得太大，整块塌在了纸盘上，他连忙说自己本来就是要这么切的。能哥走过来握了握她的手，说："去好好干。别像我这样拼命。"说完就比平时更快地走回了自己的座位。

阿普整场都站在圈子外面，吃着帕塞进他手里的那一小块蛋糕，甜得卡在喉咙里。那半个小时里他一句话都没说——不是因为没有话，而是因为屋子里所有人都已经替他说了。

---

到了六点，人几乎都走光了，只剩下新项目组还坐在屏幕前。拜黛把桌上的东西装进一个纸箱，东西不多——一台副屏、一块鼠标垫、洗干净的咖啡杯、她上班第一天就摆在桌上的那盆种在陶土盆里的小植物，还有抽屉里叠着的三四本书。

"我帮你搬吧？"阿普问。

"我拿得动。"拜黛说着把箱子抬了起来，"……不行，好重。"

他一句话没说就把箱子接了过来，跟着她走到电梯口，两人在一支闪了好几个月也没人报修的日光灯下静静地等着。楼下已经有一辆出租车在等了。

阿普把箱子放在后座上，把那盆植物扶正，免得土洒出来，然后关上车门。

"星期一还照常走的。"拜黛说，"我到二十九号才走。"

"我知道。"

"我只是怕你从今天就开始跟我告别。"她说，想把这句话说得像玩笑，却没太成功。

阿普在那辆开着空调等候的车旁站了一会儿。

"我不太擅长告别。"他说，"不过我擅长早起。星期一见。"

拜黛笑了，上了车。出租车拐出巷口，消失在星期五傍晚的车流里。阿普又在原地站了一会儿，才上楼去拿落在桌上的背包。

---

那十一个早晨过得比它们应该有的速度快得多。

第七个早晨，从凌晨五点起就下大雨，两个人在公园的木亭子下站了四十分钟，一步都没走，聊起新加坡的食物，还有拜黛担心那边的辣不够辣。

第九个早晨，拜黛给了他一本灰色布面的小本子。没有包装，也没有卡片。"你那本快用完了吧？"她问。阿普接过来翻开，第一页是空的，只有右上角她用铅笔写的一行字——"第二本"。

第十一个早晨，也就是她起飞前的最后一个早晨，他们走了两圈，而不是一圈。谁也没有提议，两个人只是就这么走过了平时停下来的那个地方。

"你知道我们一起走了多少个早上吗？"快走完第二圈时，拜黛问。

阿普不用看手机。"六十四个。"他说，"不算我回大城那三天。"

她盯着他看了很久，久到他以为自己说错了。

"你怎么会记得这个？"

"我每天都记。"他说，"从第一天开始。"

她没有再说什么，只是往他那边靠近了一点，最后那一百米，两人的肩膀几乎挨在一起。

---

二十九号，航班十点四十起飞。

阿普七点二十就到了素万那普机场，比约好的时间早了四十分钟，因为他五点半就醒了，怎么也睡不回去。他坐在 K 排值机柜台附近的长椅上，看着人们拖着行李从高高的钢结构屋顶下走过，晨光从顶上落下来，在地面切成一格一格。

拜黛是和她妈妈一起来的。

他事先完全没有准备，可一看见，就立刻明白了她为什么没有提前说。拜黛的妈妈比女儿矮半个头，一头烫过的短发，背着一个大得不成比例、看上去也重得不成比例的皮包。她坐夜班大巴从孔敬过来，凌晨五点到的莫奇车站。

"这就是阿普？"拜黛的妈妈问，一口伊善口音一点没淡，毫不客气地从头到脚把他打量了一遍，"拜黛老提起你。"

"她说我什么？"阿普脱口而出，好奇心快过了他自己。

"就说单位里有个人，起得比她还早。"她妈妈说完笑了起来。拜黛用手捂了一会儿脸。

在值机柜台，拜黛那只大行李箱超重两公斤。三个人只好在柱子旁边席地而坐，在机场大厅中间把箱子打开，往外拿出一双鞋、两本书，还有一个塑料袋，里面是妈妈从家里带下来的三罐帕拉鱼酱辣椒酱。

"这个带不了的，妈。"拜黛说，"人家不让。"

"谁不让？"妈妈问，"盖子拧得紧紧的。"

"真的不让。"

最后有两罐落到了阿普手里，附带拜黛妈妈的一句吩咐：拿回去吃完，别放坏了。接下来的半个小时里，那个塑料袋在他手里越攥越热。

他从没想过，这十二天里他最害怕的一幕，里面居然还会有帕拉鱼酱。

---

九点二十，他们站在东边出境大厅的入口，队伍一直排到第二道围栏外面。

拜黛的妈妈先抱了女儿，抱得很短，是那种不太习惯拥抱的人的拥抱，在她背上拍了三下，用伊善话轻轻说了句什么。阿普没能全听懂，只抓住了"好好吃饭"和"记得打电话"。拜黛点着头，眼睛红了，还没有哭。

然后妈妈退开三步，转过身去，用超出实际必要的专注盯着航班信息屏。

拜黛转向阿普。

他看见她穿着一身他从没见过的衣服——一件素白的T恤和一条灰色运动裤，头发高高扎起，没有耳环，没有化妆。那是一个没有为任何人准备过的她。

"我排练了好多遍要说什么。"她告诉他，"全忘了。"

"不说也可以。"

"不行。"她咬了咬嘴唇，"今天不说，我会后悔十年。"

阿普等着，不催她，任由另一个航班的登机广播播完。

"那天在咖啡馆，"拜黛开口，"我问你想不想让我留下来，你不回答，我当时气死了。回家在心里骂了你两天。"

"我猜得到。"

"到了第三天，我坐下来又把合同读了一遍，"她继续说，"然后我才明白，那天要是你说了想让我留下，我真的就会留下来。而我这辈子都不会知道，我留下是因为爱你，还是因为怕一个人去。"

眼泪就是在那时候下来的，可她的声音还是稳的。

"我不想用一辈子去怀疑这件事。"

阿普感觉到塑料袋的提手勒进了掌心。他把它换到了另一只手上。

"我也不想让你去怀疑。"

"你会好好的吧？"她问。这是一个认真的问题，不是客套。

"明天六点我照样去走。"他说，"后天也是，再后天也是。"

"一个人？"

"一个人。"他说，"但照样去走。"

拜黛慢慢点了点头，像是听到了一个她等了十二天的答案。她走上前抱住他，很短，很紧。阿普的一只手里还提着那袋辣椒酱，另一只手落在她背上。他闻到那股熟悉的淡淡的肥皂味，从办公室厨房的某个傍晚起他就记得的味道。

她先松开了手，弯腰把随身包挎上肩，走出两步，又回过头来。

"阿普。"她叫他，只叫名字，前面没有加"哥"——认识以来的第一次。

"嗯。"

"谢谢你放手。"

然后她转身走进队伍，把护照递给工作人员，跨过最后一道围栏，再没有回头。而阿普知道，那不是因为她不想回头。

---

他和拜黛的妈妈在那里又站了几分钟，直到再也看不见她。

"孩子，能送阿姨去莫奇吗？"她妈妈问，声音很平，像一个早在大巴上就把眼泪流完了的人，"阿姨不太认得路。"

"可以的。"

进城的轻轨上，拜黛的妈妈坐在靠窗的位子，看着田野和工业区一片片掠过，很久没有说话。直到过了拉甲邦站，她才开口。

"她爸还在的时候，拜黛从来没有去过比学校更远的地方。"她说，"她怕家里只剩阿姨一个人。"

阿普不知道该说什么，只是点了点头。

"阿姨很高兴她能走。"妈妈继续说，眼睛仍望着窗外，"舍不得是舍不得。可高兴多过舍不得。"

阿普带着这句话一直坐到终点站。

---

那天傍晚六点多他回到家，把那袋辣椒酱放进冰箱，挨着几瓶白水，洗了手，冲了澡，然后在房间角落的小书桌前坐下。

显示器边上那张纸贴还在原处，蓝色的字迹比三个月前淡了些。

他拿起那本新的灰布本子，翻开第一页，角上是她的字迹——"第二本"——然后用自己的笔在下面写：

"今天送拜黛上飞机。十点四十的航班，下午两点到新加坡。

没有哭。不知道这是好事还是坏事。

明天 6:00，铁路公园。"

他合上本子，像每天晚上一样把闹钟定在五点五十，把手机放在书桌上而不是床头，然后关了灯。

黑暗里他想起她走进队伍前说的那句话，想起她挑得多么仔细。不是谢谢你等我。不是谢谢你懂我。是谢谢你放手。

他躺着想了很久，放手是不是本该让人觉得更轻一点，最后得出的答案是：不是。从来没有人保证过它会是轻的。

23:14，他睡着了。

---

第二天早上，闹钟在五点五十响了。

阿普睁开眼，盯着天花板看了十秒。脑子里那个熟悉的老声音又回来了，轻声说今天不去也没关系。入口那里已经没有人在等了。没有人会知道。没有人在数。

他躺着，把那个声音听完。

然后坐起身，拿起昨晚就放在椅子上的T恤和运动裤，在门口穿好鞋，坐电梯下楼，走进还带着一点凉意的清晨。

六点零五，他到了铁路公园。

穿黄色背心的大叔照旧第一个迎面跑过来，像过去两个月每天早上那样朝他点了点头。阿普也点头回应。

整整一圈，他左边那条道一直空着。

他像每天早上一样走完了一圈，然后不知不觉又走了第二圈，直到太阳完全升起来才停下。他在她从前每天压腿的那道铁栏杆旁喘着气，掏出手机，打开习惯追踪软件。

屏幕上的数字是 98。

他看了一会儿，点进今天的记录，打下短短一句话，然后把手机塞进裤袋，走出公园，坐摩托车去上班。

新组的第一次会议在九点，而开门的人是他。