Hidden truth, intricate love

The aroma of caramel apples wafted through the kitchen, and Lin Yue's hand, gripping the piping bag, suddenly trembled. Meteorite fragments vibrated in her apron pocket, their frequency strangely resonating with the oven timer. Li Hao, adjusting his newly purchased telescope in the courtyard, suddenly caught a glimpse of a strange iridescence floating on the windowpane—the fluorescent lines that should have faded in three days now flashed Morse code on the back of Lin Yue's neck.

"There's the Perseid meteor shower tonight." Li Hao wiped the fog off his glasses and noticed his wife drawing star trails on her baking gloves. The vibrations of the meteorite fragments suddenly intensified, and the moment the oven dinged and popped the caramel pudding, they both heard an electronic chime in their heads: "Binary Star System Gravitational Imbalance Warning."

Lin Yue's hand trembled, and her piping nozzle drew a sharp Z-shaped line across the pudding's surface. She was all too familiar with this symbol—she'd seen a similar gravitational wave equation in Li Hao's draft paper last week while tidying up her study. The sound of a neighbor's piano drifted through the French window. It was Debussy's "Clair de Lune." The vibrations of the keys caused the meteorite fragments on the dining table to levitate, forming a fragmented star map in the air.

"Would you like some of your special brandy coffee?" Li Hao suddenly broke the silence. As he turned the grinder, Lin Yue noticed a new burn on the inside of his right ring finger, shaped like a miniature version of Orion's belt.

Late at night, the study became a makeshift laboratory. Two laptops sat back to back, Li Hao's screen scrolling through radio telescope data, while Lin Yue's document contained a half-written application for an outbound assignment—the job description for general manager of the Berlin branch glowed a faint blue in the darkness. When the meteorite fragments were connected to an oscilloscope, the pulsating waveforms perfectly matched the brainwave recordings of both men from yesterday.

"Remember the blindfold challenge in the game hall?" Li Hao rotated the spectrum chart 180 degrees, and the meteorite signals suddenly formed frames in the wedding video. "These fragments are recording our empathetic memories." His rolled-up sleeves revealed a digital watch, and the screen saver changed to the fluorescent star map taken that night in the hot springs.

Lin Yue's document cursor hovered over the expatriate benefits section, the annual salary figure blurring into a galaxy-like speck in the moonlight. She stood up to reach for "A Brief History of Astrophysics" on the top shelf, but instead dropped a dusty sketchbook. Between the fluttering pages, a prenatal checkup report slipped out—September 2021, 9. The signature on the consent form for termination of pregnancy bore traces of her tears.

The meteorite suddenly erupted with a powerful flash, engulfing the entire room in a holographic projection. Lin Yue saw her twenty-two-year-old self huddled in the hospital corridor, her phone screen displaying the call log from Li Hao's lab. Meanwhile, on the other side of the projection, young Li Hao rushed toward a taxi in the pouring rain, a coffee-soaked letter of recommendation tucked into the pocket of his white coat—he had missed an academic conference in Geneva to accompany Li Hao during surgery.

"So you lied that day..." Lin Yue's fingertips traced her husband's soaked back in the air. Li Hao's glasses misted over. He had never known his wife once hid a cherry hairpin in her coat pocket—a gift for their daughter, whom she had never met.

As the morning light filtered through the projection of the star map, they slept in each other's arms in the middle of the floor. Overbaked cookies popped out of the oven, forming the shape of Orion. Lin Yue's right middle finger, stained with oscilloscope ink, unconsciously traced a function graph on Li Hao's back; his left hand, still tightly gripping the meteorite fragment, had its palm prints carved into tiny starbursts.

The holographic projection hadn't yet dissipated when the doorbell rang. Inside the courier box was a confirmation of cooperation from the Chilean Observatory and an encrypted contract for an assignment from Linyue Company. On the accompanying bilingual German-English instruction manual, small print appeared beneath the rainbow light: "The optimal observation distance for a binary star system is 0.5 light years."