Lin Qinghuan went to Nanjing for the first time because her mother said something - "When the sycamore leaves in Nanjing fall, it's like gold is falling." Her mother did not wait for that autumn. When she was twenty-four years old, she moved into a small house on the fifth floor in Qinhuai District with her suitcase alone, and opened the door of a store called Wutong Bookstore.
Song Huaiyu was sitting by the window, with a book spread out in front of him and a cup of osmanthus latte in his hand. When she raised her head, her eyes were like amber soaked in water.
They met in the autumn of Nanjing and fell in love in the winter of Nanjing. The twilight on the city wall, the porridge cooked when they were sick, the sofa occupied by cats, a fading silver ring - they used these small things to spell out a common future. Later they went to Shenzhen, where there was the sea, the ever-falling banyan leaves, and each other's palms and heartbeats.
Later, Song Huaiyu returned home.
Lin Qinghuan was cooking noodles in the kitchen when she received the call. The water in the pot was rolling, the noodles were flipping in the boiling water, and the jasmine on the windowsill trembled slightly in the dusk. The voice on the other end of the phone said - "She can't come back."
A year later, Lin Qinghuan saw Song Huaiyu in the window of the bookstore in Nanjing.
She held the hand of a little girl, and a gentle man stood beside her. The sun fell on her shoulders, and she lowered her head and smiled at the child. Lin Qinghuan stood across the street, looking at the picture without walking over.
"There is no sea in Nanjing," she later wrote in her letter, "so I couldn't swim to you."
This is a story about "too late". About two letters, a cat, a ring, a plane tree and a sea that can never be reached. About one person who left first, and another person who chased for a whole year until the parasol trees in Nanjing turned yellow again, and then discovered that for some people, what you thought was forever is actually just the time for a gust of wind in autumn.
The full text has been completed. BE warning, prepare tissues
Intention: Some people have already run out of luck just by meeting them, and the rest of the way will be missed no matter how they go. Lin Qinghuan chased her for a whole year, until the parasol trees in Nanjing turned yellow again, only to realize that there are some distances that cannot be caught up by running - such as life and death, such as she has moved forward but you are still in the same place.
