In the dimly lit café, with walls adorned with sepia-toned photographs, the scent of acidic coffee hung in the air, cutting sharply like a distant memory. Mei, a woman of striking yet cold beauty reminiscent of a Zhang Ailing heroine, sat gracefully, her fingers wrapped around a porcelain cup, the warmth barely seeping into her skin.

“It’s peculiar,” she murmured, her voice smooth yet laced with a hint of irony, “how this coffee tastes overly sour today.”

Across from her sat Li Wei, a man of gentle demeanor and quiet observation, his eyes scanning Mei’s features as if trying to decipher an unfathomable enigma. “Perhaps,” he replied, his tone contemplative, “it’s a reflection of something we’ve yet to catch up with.”

Mei let a small smile twist the corner of her lips, a gesture both amused and melancholic, her gaze steady on Li Wei. “And what could that be? We live in a world where time stitches and unstitches itself like an errant seamstress.”

Li Wei leaned back, his chair creaking as if with reluctance. “Do you remember the times before it all began? When the idea of穿越的was confined to fleeting thoughts or the pages of a novel?”

“Remembrance,” Mei said, her eyes drifting beyond the café’s rain-specked windows, “is its own journey. But yes, I do. A world unperturbed by sudden dislocation, unaltered by the whims of stranded travelers.”

Silence settled between them, thick as the fog loitering outside. Their regular meeting point had become their shared refuge amidst the chaos of a world unpredictably slipping through dimensions.

“Do you think,” Li Wei broke the silence, his question probing yet tender, “that we are trapped here by choice or by fate?”

“Perhaps a blend of both,” Mei replied, her voice softening into something almost tender. “A choice made long before we comprehended its gravity.”

Li Wei chuckled, though there was little humor in it. “Then we are truly living a 张爱玲生活 full of irony and elegance.”

Mei tilted her head, considering him with an affection she rarely allowed herself to show. “And, like her stories, our life is rich with the ordinary draped in the extraordinary.”

Their conversation meandered through reminiscence and philosophical musings, laced with the tacit understanding characteristic of those who have seen worlds rise and fall. The coffee, sour beyond measure, grew cold, a forgotten relic of earlier ruminations.

As the sky outside deepened into an indigo twilight, a bell from a distant tram echoed gently. Mei stood, her movements deliberate and unfaltering. “It’s almost time,” she noted, her voice carrying a layer of assured finality.

Li Wei rose with her, a question lingering between them, unasked yet all-encompassing. “Will we meet again across the folds and stitches?” he inquired, his eyes seeking promises she could not make.

Mei paused, her gaze capturing his with a depth that spoke volumes. “In a world where threads of time intermingle without pause, perhaps the question is not if but when.”

They parted without further words, the silence clinging to their departure like a bittersweet promise. Only time and its wayward paths knew the certainty of their journey.

As Li Wei stepped into the embracing cool of the evening, he pondered over their conversation, where the 酸的coffee of today mingled with the whispers of timeless transitions—a poignant passage from the ordinary to the realms of the extraordinary, leaving behind an aftertaste as profound as the spaces between moments and memories.