Someone Once Waited Here

At the wedding, he married the well-matched daughter of the Lu family.

I stood in a corner and brewed him a pot of Biluochun, with the water at eighty degrees. He took a sip, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

Across the entire table, it was the only thing at the wedding that belonged to me.

My name is Ji Qinghe. I come from a scholarly family in Suzhou.

He is Shen Yanting, the eldest grandson of the Shen family, one of Beijing’s most prominent families. He was raised from childhood to be their successor.

We met beneath a ginkgo tree outside the red walls. He said, “Books don’t lie.”

I said, “You don’t either, right?”

He didn’t answer.

Later, he tracked me down to a guesthouse amid a sandstorm in Hebei. Holding my hand, he said, “Now that you’re here, I don’t want to let you go.”

Later, on a pedal boat at Houhai, he said, “Let’s be together.”

Later, his grandfather set a Yixing teacup down on the table. “Good tea, but the water’s wrong.”

And later still, the tea at the engagement banquet went cold.

I dumped the leaves in the trash, washed the pot, put it back on the tea tray, and walked out of Diaoyutai.

He ran after me and called out in the corridor. I stopped, but didn’t turn around.

Shen Yanting, you asked if I was afraid I’d get hurt being with you.

I was. But I was even more afraid of missing my chance.

Now I understand: you couldn’t even give me the chance to miss you.

Years later, he was transferred to the south. His temples had turned gray, and he had never remarried.

A friend asked if he regretted it.

He said, “The scar in my palm is one she helped me tend.”

“All these years, I’ve sent her only one thing: Biluochun picked before Qingming, every year. The water’s at eighty degrees, measured by my own hand.”

Some people are destined to be nothing more than part of each other’s past.

But becoming the past doesn’t mean they never had each other.