Lin Qinghuan’s first trip to Nanjing was because her mother had once said, “When the plane tree leaves fall in Nanjing, it looks like gold raining down.” Her mother never lived to see that autumn. At twenty-four, Lin Qinghuan dragged her suitcase alone to a small fifth-floor apartment in Qinhuai District, then pushed open the door of a shop called Wutong Bookshop.
Song Huaiyu sat by the window, a book open in front of her and a mug of osmanthus latte at her side. When she looked up, her eyes were like amber steeped in water.
They met in autumn in Nanjing and fell in love in winter. The dusk on the city walls, the congee cooked when one of them was sick, the sofa claimed by a cat, a silver ring whose color would fade: with these little things, they pieced together a future together. Later, they went to Shenzhen, where there was a sea, banyan leaves that never seemed to stop falling, and each other’s hands and heartbeats.
Later still, Song Huaiyu went home for a visit.
When Lin Qinghuan received that phone call, she was making noodles in the kitchen. Water bubbled in the pot, noodles tossed in the boiling water, and the jasmine on the windowsill trembled gently in the dusk. The voice on the other end said, “She isn’t coming back.”
A year later, Lin Qinghuan saw Song Huaiyu in the window of that Nanjing bookstore.
She was holding a little girl’s hand, with a gentle-looking man standing beside her. Sunlight fell on her shoulder as she smiled down at the child. Lin Qinghuan stood across the street, looking at the scene, and did not go over.
“There’s no sea in Nanjing,” she later wrote in a letter. “So I couldn’t swim my way to you.”
This is a story about “too late.” About two letters, a cat, a ring, a plane tree, and a sea that could never be reached. About one person leaving first, and another spending a whole year chasing after her, until the plane trees in Nanjing turned yellow again, only to realize that some people you think will be yours forever are really just a gust of wind in autumn.
Complete. Be warned: this is a tragic ending. Keep tissues handy.
Theme: Some people use up all their luck simply by meeting. No matter how you walk the road that follows, you are bound to miss them. Lin Qinghuan chased for a whole year, until the plane trees in Nanjing turned yellow again, before realizing that some distances can’t be crossed just by running, like the distance between life and death, or the distance between someone who has moved on and someone still standing where they were.
