As the May night breeze, wrapped in the fragrance of roses, blew through the screen window, Chen Chunhua was staring blankly at the stoneware vase on the bedside table. In the vase was the white rose that Ye Qingliu had given her that day. The dew on the petals had long since dried, but they still maintained their bloom.
She took out the fruit candy from her apron pocket. The candy wrapper made a slight sound in the quiet night. In a trance, she thought it was the locust tree leaves that fell when Zhao Chengshu climbed over the wall.
The clock had just struck twelve when there was a knock on the door.
When she opened the door, she ran into Zhao Chengshu - he had taken off the neat butler uniform he wore during the day and was only wearing a washed-out blue shirt with the collar slightly open, revealing the brown age spots on his Adam's apple.
This look was too unfamiliar, like a faded key that suddenly opened the creaking wooden door in memory.
"Chunhua," his voice was hoarse, characteristic of late night, "can we chat?"
Chen Chunhua subconsciously gripped the door handle.
It has been some time since she returned to the Ye family, but she chose not to talk about her past.
On a summer night twenty years ago, he also stood outside her window, tapping the glass with stones, and asked her to go to the village entrance to watch fireflies.
Back then, she would secretly put on a blue shirt and run out in the dew, fearing to wake her parents inside. The moonlight now was the same as it was then, but the man before her had white hair at the temples and his eyes were filled with vicissitudes of life.
"Come in." She stepped aside and smelled his sweat mixed with the scent of cedar - that was the polish he used to polish silverware during the day, mixed with the heat of the summer night, and overlapped with the scent of green grass in the fields in her memory.
"Spring flowers......"
This name was like a rusty knife, stabbing into Chen Chunhua's heart.
She recalled that when she was nineteen, he had called her name under the moonlight in the same way, his voice as gentle as dew. But now, it only sounded like the vicissitudes of time.
Silence spread across the small room. Chen Chunhua looked at her own reflection in the wardrobe glass: her faded blue shirt had been replaced with the Ye family's uniform, and the wrinkles around her eyes were deeper than Zhao Chengshu's.
Only the silver bracelet on her wrist was shining, reminding her that she was not in the leaky adobe house of the Wang family.
"What happened back then is long gone."
Zhao Chengshu was silent for a moment, then he took out a yellowed piece of letter paper from his pocket and gently placed it on the table: "Take a look at this."
Chen Chunhua's breath hitched. That was the last letter she had written to Zhao Chengshu. The postmark on the envelope was clearly visible. She remembered the words "I'll wait for you" written on it. But instead of receiving a reply, she received a heartless letter stating, "I'm already married."
"I didn't receive this letter." Zhao Chengshu's voice was like a lake rippling with wind. "I only found it in a crack in the wall of the old house half a year ago when I was sorting out old things."
Chen Chunhua turned her head sharply, the moonlight illuminating the bloodshot veins in his eyes. She saw the postmark on the letter paper had been smeared by the rain, the edges as blurred as her tears from twenty years ago.
Memories suddenly flooded back - that day she went to town in the rain to mail a letter, the muddy road almost made her fall into the ditch, and the old lady in the post office laughed at her for being "in a hurry to deliver a letter to her lover."
"Then the letter I received..." Her voice trembled, and her fingertips gripped the edge of the stone table tightly.
Zhao Chengshu pulled out another piece of letter paper from his suit pocket. The paper was already brittle and the ink had faded. "This is what I wrote to you back then. I said I would come back next month to marry you."
He paused, his Adam's apple rolling, "I later learned that your family intercepted my letter and forged that heartless letter."
"Why are you telling me this now?" Her voice was chilling. "It's been twenty years. What were you doing?"
Zhao Chengshu's fingertips gently brushed the edge of the letter, and he suddenly rolled up his left sleeve. Chen Chunhua's gaze was drawn to a hideous scar—a scar that snaked from elbow to wrist, like an ugly centipede, glowing bluish-white in the moonlight.
"That year, I was working in the city, following a fellow villager to install an air conditioner." His voice was deep, as if he was telling someone else's story. "In a building more than 30 stories high, the safety rope broke. I grabbed the air conditioner unit and dangled in mid-air for two hours. By the time the firefighters arrived, my right hand was already broken."
Chen Chunhua's pupils suddenly contracted. She remembered the rumor that "Zhao Chengshu fell to his death" that had spread in the village, and the Wang family used this to persuade her parents, saying "the dead should not delay the living."
It turned out that he was not a heartless man, but was lying in the intensive care unit of the hospital and could not even hold a pen.
"I was in the hospital for half a year and had seven operations on my right hand." Zhao Chengshu moved his right hand, his knuckles making a slight sound. "After I was discharged from the hospital, I returned to the village. I thought that even if I was lame, I would still marry you. But when I reached the village entrance, I saw you holding a child, standing in the Wang family yard..."
His voice suddenly choked with sobs. Chen Chunhua seemed to see the scene from that year—she was wearing a faded blue shirt, holding a crying Wang Tiezhu in her arms, her hair in a messy bun behind her head, and her face was full of fatigue.
Wang Daniu was leaning against the door frame smoking, his mother-in-law was cursing beside him, and Zhao Chengshu was standing at the foot of the wall, watching all this.
"Why didn't you call me?" Chen Chunhua's voice was filled with tears. "I was..."
"Your eyes were filled with despair." Zhao Chengshu closed his eyes, as if trying to dispel the memory. "Your mother-in-law hit you with a broom, saying you couldn't even take care of the child. Wang Daniu was laughing beside them. I wanted to rush up and hit him, but my right hand..."
He raised his right hand, his fingers curled up as if grasping air. Chen Chunhua then understood why he always wore white gloves and why his fingers trembled when he polished silverware.
It turned out that the young man who once walked briskly in the fields had his wings broken by fate long ago.
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