A name suddenly popped up at the bottom of my phone's Bluetooth list. There was no icon, just "Bose SoundLink I". I froze on the sofa, staring at the string of characters. After a few seconds, I remembered it was still lying in the storage box under the bed. When I dragged it out, the box was covered in a thin layer of dust. Lifting the lid, the black nylon surface was frayed, and the metal mesh on the front had a dent in the lower right corner, as if someone had shoved it with a knee. I pressed the power button, and the little green light hesitantly lit up, then beeped twice. It could still turn on.

In 2012, I had just graduated. My first month's salary was 4,300 yuan, and I used 1,800 yuan of it to buy this SoundLink I. Back then, Bluetooth speakers were still relatively new. A colleague bought a small Bose SoundLink Mini, but I insisted on buying this big one, thinking its sound was thicker and the bass deeper. The machine wasn't heavy, but it had a substantial feel to it. It was flat, and the front was covered with black fabric, feeling like an old backpack. What's most special is the replaceable cover. I bought an extra blue one; it magnetically attaches, snaps in place with a "snap," and the edges align perfectly—a satisfying sight for someone with OCD.

Back then, I rented a room in an urban village, on the seventh floor with no elevator, and it got scorching hot in the afternoon sun. When I got home from get off work, I'd turn on the fan first, then pick it up from the bedside table, press the Bluetooth button on the side, and wait for my phone to connect. The walls in my rented room were thin, and my neighbors were always banging on them, so I had to keep the volume down to no more than three notches. It played Eason Chan, Song Dongye, Lao Lang—anything sounded rich and full. The vocals, coming through the metal mesh, had a warm, woody quality, like someone sitting across from me talking slowly. On weekends, when friends came over, we'd buy a few cans of beer and a bag of peanuts, connect the computer to it, and a few of us would squeeze around the bed listening to Wan Qing's "Kill That Shijiazhuang Man." When the chorus started, nobody spoke. Looking back now, it didn't seem so difficult at the time.

Later, when I moved, I carried it in the moving company van. Rain seeped in through the cracks in the windows, so I wrapped it in an old T-shirt. I moved to a shared apartment, then to a studio apartment, and finally to a small two-bedroom apartment after getting married. It followed me everywhere, from the bedside table to the TV cabinet, and from the TV cabinet to the top shelf of the bookshelf. I went through three different phones in between; Bluetooth pairing became increasingly difficult, sometimes requiring three or four attempts to find it on a new phone. The battery life also deteriorated, shrinking from seven or eight hours to forty minutes, eventually requiring it to be constantly plugged in. The magnetic cover had long since stopped holding firmly, falling off with the slightest touch, so I simply left it uncovered, exposing the metal mesh.

One year during Singles' Day, I bought a smart speaker that could play music and even report the weather with a simple voice command. That SoundLink I was casually stuffed into a storage box under the bed, alongside my old router and a broken external hard drive. When I took it out, there was an original charger underneath it—round connector, yellowed cable, dark oxidized plug. I cleaned it, plugged it back in, and tried searching with my phone. On the third try, it connected.

I played "Rice Shop," and as soon as the accordion intro started, I paused, stunned. The sound was the same as I remembered; the bass was a bit muffled, like it was through a half-blanket, but when Zhang Weiwei opened her mouth, her voice was solid, landing steadily in the center of the room. Outside, the sky darkened. I didn't turn on the light, just sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the whole song. My phone screen lit up, the battery indicator flashed, and I turned the speaker off. Those two "beeps" fell into the darkness, like a drop of water falling into a kettle, muffled.

It was still just a mute thing that could only play music; it had no voice assistant, couldn't connect to Wi-Fi, and could do nothing but make sounds. But hearing it ring out, some days would slowly seep back through that metal mesh.

BOSE 2300mah 11.1V/12.4v 404600 Battery for Bose SOUNDLINK I II III