After graduating from university and settling into a stable life, Lin Yixi wrote to the elder who had funded her education.
In the letter, she acknowledged all the support and help she had received over the years, and tucked a bank card and a note with its PIN into a book.
The letter crossed the ocean, bound for Japan, west of the island.
-
A spring and summer passed after the letter was sent, but no reply came.
Uneasy, Lin Yixi agonized over it for a long time. Then she slowly unfolded the yellowed piece of paper from her drawer and dialed the number she knew by heart.
"Hello."
A clear, magnetic male voice came from the other end of the line.
*
One bitter winter day after they got together, Lin Yixi had just left a banquet table. Her cheeks were flushed, and she couldn't hold her liquor.
Chen Weiqing went to a nearby convenience store to buy a bottle of mineral water. When he turned around, she was hugging a telephone pole and happily singing some nameless little tune.
It was a winter blanketed in fine snow.
Lin Yixi's scarf had fallen to the ground. Blushing, she spotted him and ran over, clinging to him like a koala.
"The moon is so big tonight," Lin Yixi said, pointing at a streetlight. "It's so big and round. Look!"
She turned his face toward her. "No, wait. Don't look at me."
-
A friend once asked Chen Weiqing why he had sponsored a woman his own age, and why he had gone to the trouble of inventing an elderly benefactor who didn't exist.
For once, Chen Weiqing fell silent.
"You're completely devoted to her. Your heart's always with that girl. Do you really love her that much?" the friend pressed.
Chen Weiqing replied in a refined tone, "Perhaps because she said the moon was beautiful tonight, and the corners of my mouth turned up, yet I still didn't look at the moon."
"I once found a girl in the snow. I never expected that, after all the twists and turns, she'd become my wife. At first, I was simply doing a good deed on a whim. Later, I was just grateful for the decision I made that night."
"I'm Chen Weiqing, Lin Yixi's husband."
--Chen Weiqing
Reader's guide:
"You said the moon was beautiful tonight, and the corners of my mouth turned up, yet I still didn't look at the moon." Quoted from Zhou Jiang.
Slow burn.
A sweet little romance.
Theme: None for now
