Suddenly, Jiang Yan's eyelashes trembled, and he slowly opened his eyes. He looked at Su Jinli, his eyes no longer confused, but filled with a familiar tenderness, like the sky washed by water.
"Jinli." He called her softly, his voice hoarse.
"I'm here." Su Jinli hurriedly held his hand. The hand that once held a pen, a sword, and held her life was now so thin that it was just a bag of bones.
"I'm sorry." Jiang Yan's eyes fell on the silk flower on her temples. "I seem to have forgotten a lot of things."
"It's okay." Su Jinli shook her head and rubbed the age spots on the back of his hand with her fingertips. "Look, I still remember it." She took out the piece of sugar-painted bamboo from her sleeve pocket. Fifty years of caressing made the bamboo piece as smooth as jade.
"I even forgot about my golden wedding anniversary..." Jiang Yan's eyes welled up with tears. "Such an important day..."
"We can do it again." Su Jinli smiled, but tears fell. "Next spring, when the peach blossoms really bloom, we'll do it."
"Okay." Jiang Yan nodded and smiled, revealing a childlike satisfaction. "Jinli, thank you."
"Thank me for what?"
"Thank you..." Jiang Yan looked at her, his eyes as deep as the night, "Thank you for being willing to marry me. Even though I have forgotten about sugar painting, peach blossoms, and the golden wedding anniversary..."
"I'm willing to marry you, not because of what you remember." Su Jinli leaned over and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. "It's because I love you. I've loved you since the day you gave me the phoenix sugar painting."
Jiang Yan's tears finally fell, like a spoiled child. He held her hand with his backhand, his strength as weak as a feather, but with extraordinary determination: "Jinli, in the next life... we can still be together, okay?"
The sunlight outside the window was just right, filtering through the silk-flowered peach trees and casting tiny shadows on the ground. Su Jinli watched the light rekindled in her husband's eyes. That light contained neither the high spirits of a top scholar nor the scheming of a prime minister, but only the purest attachment of a man to his lover.
"Okay." She nodded vigorously, tears dripping onto the back of his hand. "In the next life, and the next life, we'll be together."
The autumn wind swept through the courtyard, swirling the silk blossoms on the ground like an everlasting rain of peach blossoms. The old pomegranate tree beneath the porch swayed gently, as if bearing witness to a love that has spanned fifty years and will never end. It turns out that true eternity isn't about the permanence of memory, but about remembering, even if I forget the whole world, that I still want to love you, marry you, hold your hand, and reminisce about the vicissitudes of life.
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