When dusk spreads over the eaves of Chang'an City, the locust flowers on Zhuque Street are falling to the ground. The fragrance is light, floating in the cool breeze of the evening, like someone has crushed a handful of old moonlight and sprinkled it on the bluestone.
Shen Yanzhi stood in the corridor of the Ministry of Justice's official office and looked at the flowers.
His official robe was crimson. The crimson color should have been flamboyant, but when it was worn on him, it was as calm as a pool of deep water. A colleague passed by and called "Senior Master Shen", and he nodded slightly, with a well-placed smile on his lips. That smile has been practiced for many years, not too much, not too little, just enough to make people feel friendly, but not too close.
When he looked at the flowers falling in front of the steps, one, two, and he couldn't count the number, he suddenly remembered a certain evening many years ago.
At that time, he was still in Jiangnan, endorsing under the century-old locust tree in the old residence of the Shen family. The book was "The Analects of Confucius". When I recited the sentence "A gentleman has no weapons", a clear voice came from the wall - "Shen Yanzhi, you recited it wrong. It should be 'a gentleman has no weapons', but the next sentence is 'Zhou Bubi'."
He looked up and saw Gu Qingya sitting on the wall, his legs dangling and half a piece of sweet-scented osmanthus cake in his hand. The setting sun shone from behind him, coating his whole body with a layer of gold, even his eyelashes were bright.
"Why did you climb the wall again?" Shen Yanzhi said.
"How can I bring you sweet-scented osmanthus cake if I don't climb the wall?" Gu Qingya jumped down and stuffed the remaining half piece into his mouth, "My mother made it newly, is it sweet?"
Sweet. Of course sweet. That was the sweetest osmanthus cake that Shen Yanzhi had ever tasted in his life. It's so sweet that he has lived in Chang'an for ten years now and has never tasted such a good taste again.
The wind in the corridor suddenly became stronger, and a few locust flowers flew deep into the official office. Shen Yanzhi couldn't help but follow the flower for a few steps. When he reached the moon gate of Erjin, his footsteps stopped.
There is a person standing on the other side of the moon gate.
The man was wearing a green round-neck robe, with a jade pendant of excellent quality hanging around his waist. He was looking up at a lantern hanging on the corner of the eaves. The lantern was not lit yet and was just a gray shadow in the dusk, but he looked at it very seriously, as if it was something extraordinary.
Hearing the footsteps, the man turned around.
The moment their eyes met, Shen Yanzhi suddenly understood something - it turns out that the so-called fate is that the page you thought you had turned long ago has actually been waiting in the wind, waiting for the right time to fall back into your palm.
"Shen Yanzhi." The man called him, his tone as normal as if he met him on the street in the morning, "The flowers here bloom later than those in Jiangnan."
It's Gu Qingya. Gu Qingya, who had not seen each other for ten years, had lost some weight, but his facial features were still the same, with a careless smile, as if the time between them was not ten years, but just a nap.
Shen Yanzhi's hands clenched slightly in his sleeves, but there was just a faint smile on his face.
"Why are you here?"
"I was ordered to enter the capital and serve as the young minister of Dali Temple." Gu Qingya took two steps closer, suddenly reached out and picked up a piece of Sophora japonica from Shen Yanzhi's shoulder, "In the future... I'm afraid I will come to bother Minister Shen often."
The petals were thin between Gu Qingya's fingers, and there was a little bit of skylight that was almost dark in the white. Shen Yanzhi looked at the flowers and Gu Qingya's eyes, and suddenly felt that the ten years of wind and frost in Chang'an had melted away in this moment.
The dusk drum sounded, once, twice, spread throughout the city. The lantern was finally lit, and the dim yellow light spread, making the shadows of the two people very long, and slowly, they overlapped each other.
Some stories should have started many years ago. But what really matters is always the moment of reunion——
You are still here, and so am I. And this time, we don't plan to be separated again.
Concept: Two men in ancient times