Jin Gui Oolong

The last time Cheng Zhiyou saw her grandmother was during the summer vacation when she was seventeen. At that time, she was sitting on the threshold of the main room, munching on watermelon, watching her grandmother squatting in the corner of the courtyard to loosen the soil for jasmine, her blue cloth shirt stained with mud spots like stars, and murmuring, "When Youyou comes back next year, I will pickle sweet-scented osmanthus for you." Later, her studies and work were like jointed bamboos, pushing her to the glass curtain walls of Beicheng - busy laboratories, coffee at three o'clock in the morning, and mobile phones that never stopped ringing. She gradually forgot that the rainy season in the south of the Yangtze River should have the moisture of bluestone slabs, and that the wind should carry the sweetness of water chestnuts. ---Until I received the news of my grandma's death. The yard covered with fragrant flowers in her will became her last link with the past. The cicadas in Qingxi Town are noisier than I remembered. Cheng Zhiyou dragged her suitcase and stood at the entrance of the alley. The white walls and black tiles turned into ink in the rain, and moss spread over the cracks in the bricks where she had carved her height mark. When the faded door knocker knocked, the old osmanthus plant in the corner of the courtyard was covered with scattered flowers, and there was a vague sweetness floating in the air, like grandma's arms. The days are as slow as the rain falling from the eaves.