Winter's First Big Snowfall

That early morning, I was woken by a silence. Not a silence of absence of sound, but a silence where sound had been stolen. Outside the window, there were usually car noises, bird chirps, the sizzling of oil from the breakfast shop downstairs, but that day there was nothing. It was as if someone had slowly turned the world's volume knob to zero. I pulled back the curtains and saw white, not emptiness, but a full white—the rooftops, the road, the treetops, the motorcycles parked by the roadside, all covered by the same thick blanket. I put on my coat and went outside. When my feet stepped into the snow, it made a strange sound, like biting into a very large marshmallow. Each step left a deep footprint, but I knew that in a few hours, these footprints would be filled in by new snow, as if no one had ever walked there. The convenience store at the alley entrance was still lit. The clerk smiled at me through the glass. I bought a can of hot coffee and drank it under the eaves. The steam from the coffee mixed with the cold air, forming a small white mist that rose and then disappeared. Watching that mist, I suddenly felt like I was the same—appearing in this world, leaving some warmth, and then slowly dissipating. The snow was still falling. Not the urgent kind of snow, but the kind that comes slowly, piece by piece, as if they weren't sure where they were going, just falling first. It landed on my shoulders, on the lid of the coffee can, on the rearview mirrors of the motorcycles lined up by the eaves. Each piece was small, but together, they formed an entire sheet of silent white. I remembered when I was very young, the first time I saw snow. Back then, I thought snow was candy falling from the sky.