The rain began at 3:17 in the afternoon. Gu Yan called from the other side of the broken bridge, asking me to take a picture. I raised my phone, but the camera automatically focused on the woman across from me in a beige trench coat. She stood on tiptoe to photograph the willow fluff, a pearl earring swinging from her left ear. It swung so much that my hand trembled for seventeen seconds. The day she left three years ago, she wore the same pearl earring, swinging at the same rhythm.
“Qingye?” Gu Yan hurried over. “What are you taking pictures of?”
I locked my phone. The screen reflected my flustered face. “The rain.”
But rain is impossible to capture clearly, just like I can’t explain why, after three years, my palms still sweat when I see her.
