There is a sound that only the heart can hear — a murmur that begins as a flicker of doubt, a tremble at the edges of certainty. It is this sound that follows us through life, quietly threading through every decision, every love, and every loss. In Dali, China — a city where mountains wear clouds like crowns and the lake whispers secrets to the shore — this echo resonates louder than anywhere else. The Bai people, with their ancient customs and deep reverence for nature, have long believed that uncertainty is not a flaw but a compass.
This is the story of two people who would be drawn to that sound, each carrying their own burdens of certainty and doubt. A woman wise beyond her years and a man with cracks in his foundation. Their story begins where all true stories do — at the edge of something familiar and the beginning of something unknown.
Their keyphrase, the one that will haunt them from first glance to final breath, is this:
“What if it’s not as it seems?”
The old town of Dali wakes slowly, like a cat stretching in the sun. The narrow stone streets, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps, gleam with the dew of early morning. White-walled houses with curved, swallow-tail roofs hug the pathways, their doors painted in the deep blues and reds that the Bai people consider protective. The air smells of sweet rice cakes steaming in bamboo baskets and the faint tang of camphor trees swaying in the breeze.
On this particular morning, Lin Xiu stood at the edge of Erhai Lake, her eyes fixed on the horizon where Cangshan Mountain met the sky. Her fingers traced the old jade pendant hanging from her neck — a habit she wasn’t even aware of anymore. She had lived in Dali for three years now, having fled from the noise of Shanghai’s glass-and-steel world in search of something quieter, something truer. Here, she’d found it in the steady rhythm of the fishermen’s paddles and the slow shift of clouds over mountaintops.
But something was different this morning.
The air had a charge to it, like just before a storm. It wasn’t a change you could see, but one you could feel in your bones. Lin Xiu glanced at the path behind her, leading back to the Old Town Market. People were beginning to stir, vendors setting up stalls of fresh persimmons and wild mushrooms. Her gaze caught on a figure walking up the path.
He wasn’t from here. She knew it instantly.
He wore a coat too heavy for the season and walked with a gait that suggested he didn’t know where he was going but refused to ask for directions. Foreigners weren’t uncommon in Dali, but this man didn’t have the easy, camera-swinging curiosity of a tourist. His eyes weren’t scanning the buildings, but the people — as though he were looking for someone in particular.
He stopped when he saw her.
For a moment, neither of them moved. The faint hum of the world around them continued — the bell-like chime of bicycle bells, the rustle of leaves, the distant splash of a heron diving into the lake.
It was Lin Xiu who broke the silence.
“Are you lost?” she asked in Mandarin, her tone practical, unassuming.
The man tilted his head, as if measuring her words. Then, to her surprise, he replied in fluent, if accented, Mandarin.
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What if it’s not as it seems?” she asked, tilting her head in return.
The man smiled then — slow, sharp, and just a little bit tired. “Then I suppose I’ll have to find out.”
His name was Ethan Wei. He told her this over tea in the small courtyard of her friend Mei’s teahouse. It was one of those places with hand-carved wooden stools and plants growing out of every crevice, the air thick with the perfume of osmanthus flowers. Lin Xiu noticed that he never gave her his full name at once. Just “Ethan” at first. Then, much later, the “Wei.”
He was from Vancouver, he said, though his parents were from Sichuan. He had the restless look of someone with too many open doors behind him and none ahead. She knew that look. She had worn it once herself.
“You came all this way for what?” she asked one afternoon as he folded a paper crane with sharp, precise creases.
“To disappear,” he replied without looking up.
Lin Xiu leaned back, arms crossed. “People who disappear don’t answer questions like that.”
His fingers hesitated on the next fold. A shadow flickered across his face, gone as quickly as it came.
“And people who see too much usually get hurt,” he countered, his eyes meeting hers.
They stared at each other for a beat too long. Somewhere in the distance, a street performer began plucking an erhu, the music warbling through the air like a bird caught between flight and fall.
Lin Xiu didn’t look away first.
“Sounds like you’re not sure,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “What if it’s not as it seems?”
He let out a breath — part laugh, part sigh. “Then I’ll be in good company, won’t I?”
Days turned into weeks. They walked the same paths around Erhai Lake, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Ethan had a way of turning silence into something shared, not awkward. He never spoke of his past unless she asked, and even then, his answers were threads that never quite led to the full tapestry.
But she didn’t mind.
In him, she recognized something she’d once been — someone running, but not sure if they were running from or toward something. The lake reflected their faces back at them, fractured and rippling. She told him about the jade pendant around her neck, how it had been her grandmother’s, and how her grandmother used to say it held the wisdom of every woman who’d ever worn it.
“Does it work?” he asked one night as they sat on the shore, the lights of Dali’s Old Town flickering like fireflies behind them.
Lin Xiu’s fingers brushed the pendant. Her thumb traced the edge, worn smooth from generations of touch. She glanced at him, her eyes sharper than the night air.
“Depends,” she said. “On what you’re asking it to tell you.”
Silence again, but this time it hummed with unspoken things.
“What if it’s not as it seems?” she asked, barely a whisper.
He didn’t answer right away. He glanced at the lake, his reflection broken by the movement of the water. “Then I guess that’s why people like you wear pendants like that.”
It wasn’t the storm that ended it, though it could have been.
Dali’s summer storms are fast and wild, sweeping in from Cangshan like a beast on a hunt. The night it happened, the rain lashed down in sheets, lightning cutting through the clouds with white-hot fury. Lin Xiu stood in her doorway, watching him walk away. His coat was too heavy again. She wondered if that was his way of carrying the weight of things he refused to leave behind.
“Don’t go like this,” she said, her voice lost in the rain.
He didn’t turn. “What if it’s not as it seems, Lin Xiu?” he called back, his voice raw as the storm.
Her hands gripped the doorframe. “Then face it.”
He stopped. Water dripped from his hair. He turned, his face caught in the glow of a lightning flash.
“You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “I never learned how.”
“Then I’ll teach you,” she said, stepping into the storm, her eyes locked on his. “But you have to stay long enough to be taught.”
Their story isn’t finished. It never will be.
Because the echo of uncertainty never stops. It hums through our choices, our doubts, and our loves. Every time you hear it, remember:
What if it’s not as it seems?
Leave a Reply