Old Zhang appears at the town post office every day at five-thirty on the dot. He always hands over an address-less letter at the third window, with a faded drawing of railway tracks on the seal.

"Is it still going to the platform?" Clerk Xiao Lin has already skillfully pulled out a special envelope. The old man's age-spotted hand gently presses on the back of her hand as she adds the stamp, a gesture that has lasted for three years and forty-seven days.

Until a stormy night when the post office experienced an electrical leak, Xiao Lin discovered an entire box of undelivered letters while making repairs. On the bottom layer of yellowed stationery, water stains blurred the penmanship: "Today, Old Zhao from the boiler room asked to borrow matches; he always forgets to bring them. This reminds me of how you always hid the matches in the salt shaker..."

The torrential rain washed away the railway in the gully, exposing a rusted copper bell among the collapsed bridge piers. Thirty years ago, that landslide took away the young train conductor's wife but left the copper bell numbered 1983 forever in the crack of the platform.

While sorting through the belongings, Xiao Lin found that Old Zhang's time deposit balance was just enough to buy a soft sleeper ticket to the north for next month. In the dark blue uniform he wore for years, a half-broken copper train ticket holder quietly lay.