The cool touch of her rouge made Su Jinli shudder. That year at the poetry club gathering, she'd worn a red dress and recited limericks, startling the old scholar so much that he dropped his teacup, while Jiang Yan, hiding behind the rockery, was laughing so hard. The color of her rouge now was remarkably the same as the hem of her skirt in her memory.
"Like." Su Jinli nodded, her voice trembling slightly.
Jiang Yan stared at the red dot on the back of her hand, and suddenly pulled out a piece of candy from his sleeve pocket. "Miss Jinli, look at this phoenix... It's just like the color on the back of your hand." He raised his head, and the light in his eyes that had sparkled when he proposed to her rekindled, "Miss, are you willing..."
"I do." Su Jinli spoke first, afraid that his words would be blown away by the wind. "Jiang Yan, I am willing to marry you."
Xiaoyue clapped and cheered on the side, Su Heng turned his back to wipe his eyes, and Su Qingyao lowered his head to adjust the position of the palette. The sunlight passed through the grape trellis, casting mottled light and shadows on them.
The afternoon sun was a bit lazy. Jiang Yan sat on a rattan chair under the porch, holding a lacquered wooden box in his arms, searching for something. Su Jinli covered him with a fox fur coat, but she saw that he was holding a small jade ring on his fingertips, with the word "Yan" faintly engraved on the ring face.
"What are you looking for?" she asked softly.
"Dowry..." Jiang Yan didn't even raise his head, his white hair falling down to cover his eyes, "I promised Miss Jinli that I would marry her in a grand ceremony..."
The wooden box was filled with old items: faded sugar-painted bamboo slips, a chipped copy of the Diamond Sutra, a baby tooth she'd lost in her youth, and several letters wrapped in blue cloth. Su Jinli picked up a letter. The envelope was inscribed in his youthful handwriting: "Jinli, personally." She opened it, revealing a single sentence: "Today, the ginkgo trees in the Hanlin Academy are scattered all over the ground, like broken silver on a girl's skirt."
"Found it!" Jiang Yan suddenly held up the jade ring and examined it carefully in the sunlight. "This is what my mother left for me. She said she wanted to give it to my future wife..." He turned his head, his eyes as clear as a teenager's. "Miss Jinli, do you think this ring suits your taste?"
It was a relic of Jiang Yan's mother's. He had taken it out on their wedding night and said that when he had money in the future, he would definitely buy her a better one. Su Jinli looked at the lines on the ring, worn away by time, and remembered her mother-in-law holding her hand before her death and saying, "My son is not worthy of you." Tears finally burst out.
"Jiang Yan..." She choked and couldn't speak.
"Don't cry, girl." Jiang Yan clumsily wiped her tears, the ring rubbing against her cheek, "If you don't like it, I... I'll find another way..."
"I like it." Su Jinli grabbed his hand and put the ring on her ring finger. The ring was a little loose, but it fit her knuckle perfectly. "Jiang Yan, look, it's perfect."
The autumn wind blew up the fallen leaves under the porch, and a golden ginkgo leaf landed on the letter paper in the wooden box. Jiang Yan looked at the jade ring on her ring finger and suddenly smiled, as satisfied as if he had snatched the last sugar painting on the street fifty years ago.
"Miss Jinli," he said softly, his eyes reflecting her tears, "now, you should marry me, right?"
Su Jinli looked at the pure anticipation in his eyes, as if she were seeing the young scholar who had promised her in the dilapidated temple that he would "live up to her in this life." She nodded vigorously, tears dripping onto the ring, reflecting tiny glints of light.
"Well, Jiang Yan, I will marry you."
The old pomegranate tree outside the corridor swayed gently in the autumn breeze, as if bearing witness to this wedding that had spanned fifty years and been repeated countless times. Su Jinli leaned on Jiang Yan's shoulder, listening to his gradually steadying breathing. Suddenly, she felt that even if he forgot the time and his name, as long as he remembered to marry her, all the years had only served to make this encounter even more unforgettable.
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