The Smell of Wind

There is a Renshou Lane beside the Jialing River. There is a yellow jujube tree at the entrance of the lane and a noodle restaurant under the tree. The steamer emits white steam every day, and the table by the window always faces the river. "The Smell of the Wind" is a companion piece to "Waiting for the Wind to Stop", going back twenty-two years. When Lin Jue was four years old, she fended off a boy who was grabbing her blocks at the corner of the building blocks, and she never backed away again. He measured the distance from the door to the window sill in five steps, carved grooves in the pine wood that fit her fingers, folded more than a hundred orange candy wrappers into squares of the same size, and pressed them into the iron box for twelve years. He never said it. Chen Yi was diagnosed with myocarditis in the second year of his life, so he started walking around the stairs on the west side for an extra eight minutes. I happened to see him riding around the corner of North District Road every day. She accepted thirty-two candies from him, but didn't eat any of them, until Christmas Eve in her sophomore year of high school, when he held her hand under the desk. Boil the soft-boiled eggs for six minutes and thirty seconds, ring the car bell twice short and one long, which is exactly five steps from the door to the window sill. The wind contains the fragrance of bone soup, the bitterness of orange candies, and the soapy smell of gray sweaters. This book is written for those who don't say "I love you" but only say "the wind has stopped". The wind is still blowing, but when it stops, they will meet again in the noodle shop on Renshou Lane.