The plum rains in the old part of town always seem endless.
Lin Yu is a proofreader at a late-night newspaper, waiting by the last bus for a silence with no end in sight. Su Wan is the night watchwoman at an old bookstore, clutching a yellowed poetry collection and hiding a past she dares not revisit.
They meet beneath a fog-shrouded bus stop sign, walk together in silence through the rain, and quietly draw close over steaming cups of hot cocoa.
There are no passionate confessions or earth-shattering entanglements here, only a window seat on the late-night bus, a Republican-era bookmark slipping between old books, rain falling beneath the eaves as they listen together, and countless moments of tenderness left unspoken.
When the city is redeveloped and the old places disappear, they keep an unspoken distance between them, hiding their feelings in the mist and rain and burying their regrets in time. Years later, the old buildings have crumbled, the bookstore has closed, and the last bus has changed its route. He still remembers that rainy day: the angle of her umbrella tilting toward him, and the tears still glistening in her eyes.
Some encounters, it turns out, don’t need to last forever. It’s enough to remember. Like this city’s rain, they fall into your heart, year after year.
