Warm Tea Together on a Rainy Night

Two-way healing/reunion after long separation When the orphanage in Wutong Lane was covered with ivy, their paths crossed for the first time. He was the docile brother in the courtyard. He would wipe her tears when she was crying, and give hot buns to the smallest one. But no one knew that the hands hidden in his sleeves were always clenched and turned white - he wanted to guard this place and all traces related to her, as paranoid as guarding the last ice floe. She is a forgotten shadow in the corner. She always sits under the locust tree in the orphanage. Her eyes are as pale as fogged glass, and she is three feet away from everyone. The dean said that she had a cold temper and that he was the only one who had seen her. She would gently stuff the candy wrappers she had secretly saved into the nests of stray cats. Later, they walked out of the iron door. One of them became a gentle architect. Every stroke on the drawing was precise and flawless, but he repeatedly traced the old windows of the orphanage late at night. The other became a taciturn ancient book restorer. When his fingertips brushed the yellowed pages, he was focused and gentle, but when he heard the word home, his eyelashes would tremble slightly. Reunite in a rainstorm. He stood behind her holding an umbrella, just like he did under the eaves of the orphanage many years ago; when she turned around, she looked into his eyes, and in that seemingly calm tenderness, there was hidden an almost stubborn care that she had never understood before. He weaved a net with gentleness, which seemed loose, but tightened inch by inch, gently lifting her out of her self-enclosed cocoon; she wrapped a little glimmer of light in her cold shell, and opened a gap in his paranoid barrier to let the wind in. It turns out that some redemption never comes suddenly, but two people who have been scratched by time find a way to let the wounds coexist in each other's folds - he is no longer trapped in the obsession that must be protected, and she is finally willing to let someone melt into her heart that has been frozen for many years. When the phoenix tree sprouted new leaves again, he held her hand and walked under the old locust tree in the orphanage. The sunlight filtered through the leaves and fell on their intertwined hands, like the unspoken and clumsy guardianship many years ago. Purpose: Growth and healing