On the third rainy day after Lin Wanxing moved back to the old district, she found a faded tin box in the attic.
Inside, along with half a piece of un-melted mint candy, was a note in a boy’s handwriting:
“When the gardenias bloom, I’ll take you to see the river.”
She thought it was a dream from the summer she was seventeen, washed away by a storm, until one night she worked late and saw a man in a white shirt standing beneath the streetlight at the mouth of the alley.
He held a gardenia still glistening with dew. When he smiled, the mole at the corner of his eye was exactly as she remembered:
“Lin Wanxing, I’ve been waiting twelve years for the gardenias to bloom.”
