My name is Lin Qi. I run a guesthouse in a small town, with an osmanthus tree in the courtyard.
Life is simple. I clean the rooms, change the sheets, water the flowers, and sometimes sit beneath the tree with a cup of tea. I thought this was how I’d spend the rest of my life.
Then a man moved in. His name was Cheng Xu. He didn’t say much and never drew attention to himself, but I always noticed him. He’d get up early to sweep the courtyard, sit daydreaming on the veranda when it rained, and work late into the night with the lights on.
Only later did I learn that he worked in tech, and that someone had set his company up. It was on the verge of collapse. He’d come to stay with me because he needed somewhere to catch his breath.
I never expected anything to happen between us. He’d stay a few days and leave, and my life would go on as usual.
But on the morning he left, he took a photo of the osmanthus tree in the courtyard. Later, when I visited his company, I saw that he’d put the photo on his desk.
That was when I knew I couldn’t pretend none of it had happened.
After he went back, things spiraled. Someone was threatening to sue him, clients wanted to pull their investments, and the company was running out of cash. He told me about it over the phone in an even voice, but I could hear it: he wasn’t afraid of losing the company. He was afraid of dragging other people down with him.
I closed the guesthouse and took a four-hour train ride to see him.
It was my first time in his office. It was small, with just over thirty people. Documents piled up on the desks, and diagrams I couldn’t make heads or tails of covered the walls. He wore a suit and spoke to his employees in a way completely different from how he spoke to me: decisive, direct, and without a hint of hesitation.
There were no grand romantic gestures. We just shared a few meals, walked home together a few times at night, and took shelter from the rain beneath the eaves.
His name is Cheng Xu. Mine is Lin Qi.
And that’s where the story
