He Shiyun won a huge amount of money on a scratch-off lottery ticket. She didn’t tell anyone. She’d been used to handling everything on her own since childhood, the good and the bad alike.
She chose an old town called Yunxi and bought an old courtyard house. The osmanthus trees in the yard smelled so wonderful they could make you stop in your tracks, and a fat orange cat had made itself right at home. She planned to settle down there, cook porridge, daydream, and grow flowers.
Gu Huaizhi was a lawyer. He’d won so many cases that he suddenly had no idea what to do once there was nothing left to win. He took a break, drove wherever the road led, and got lost in Yunxi Town, where he sat beneath a ginkgo tree for an entire afternoon.
Later, people in town said the strange man was always sitting in the wicker chair beneath the osmanthus tree, with an orange cat sprawled across his knees, staying there for half the day.
Later still, when someone asked how they’d met, He Shiyun thought for a moment and said, “He knocked on my door and asked if he could come in and sit for a while. Then he never left.”
Sometimes life’s best plan is simply to stop for a while, and find someone opening your door at just the right moment.
Watch the flowers bloom and fall, watch the clouds roll and relax