It took him ten years to go from the old neighborhood to the world.
Then, on a rainy day, he found his way back to someone.
Xie Xufeng went abroad at fifteen. By twenty-five, he had become the Asian face closing Milan Fashion Week’s grand finale. He thought ten years would be enough to change everything, until one rainy night, outside his own home, he heard piano music coming from next door.
Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude.” Still not quite perfect.
The pianist was Ji Yusheng, the neighbor boy who had tugged at his sleeve when he was ten and said, “Bro, come back soon.” At eighteen, Ji Yusheng had failed to make it through an audition show. Now twenty, he stayed in the old house with an old piano, practicing the same piece for ten whole years.
A rolling orange brought them together again before either could brace for it. Xie Xufeng looked at the young man before him, no longer a boy, and all the things he wanted to say came down to two words:
“Yusheng.”
It turned out the greatest distance in the world wasn’t between Milan and the old neighborhood. It was the more than three thousand days between “Wait for me to come back” and “You really came back.”
But that’s all right. From now on, you play, and I’ll listen. Every day will be our tenth year.
