Diamonds during the rainy season
On the seventh day of the rainy season, a thunderstorm finally tore through the sticky clouds. Ayu was revising design drawings on her computer when the ceiling light in the living room suddenly hissed, plunging the entire building into inky darkness. Outside the window, lightning flashed like silver snakes, briefly illuminating the travel photos hanging on the wall—the sunset over Qinghai Lake frozen like burning silk, the icy lake in Yubeng Village shimmering with a deep blue in the sunlight.
"The power's out again." She fumbled for her phone, the screen's light illuminating the scattered candle stubs on the coffee table. A lemon-scented candle, only half-burnt, lay curled up in the glass jar, the wax solidified into wavy patterns, much like the coral fossils she'd found on Weizhou Island last year. Her phone showed the neighborhood group chat was in an uproar; the property management said repairs would take at least two hours.
The emergency light at the bottom of the wardrobe had long since run out of power. Ayu pulled out her canvas bag and stuffed her keys and some change into her pockets. The stairwell smelled of damp moss, and the beam of her flashlight shone in disarray on the stairs. Watermarks on the walls meandered into irregular patterns. When she reached the third floor, she heard an old woman's complaints from upstairs. The clatter of a metal basin hitting the ground mingled with the cries of a baby, all clearly audible in the darkness.
The apartment door rattled loudly in the wind and rain. As soon as Ayu pushed it open a crack, the rain, whipped up by the wind, lashed her face. All the streetlights were out, except for the faint red glow of the convenience store sign in the distance, like a strawberry floating in a sea of rain. She took a deep breath, about to rush into the rain, but stopped at the edge of a puddled flowerbed.
The red umbrella stood out starkly in the darkness. Zhong Hua stood at the foot of the convenience store steps, raindrops forming a beaded curtain along the umbrella's edge, splashing into puddles at his feet. As A Yu approached, she noticed half a withered ginkgo leaf clinging to the umbrella ribs, its veins dry like the veins on an old man's hand, yet still bearing clear wavy notches at the edges—exactly the same leaf they had found last autumn on Bo'ai Road in Dali Old Town. At that moment, Zhong Hua squatted on the cobblestone path, carefully wrapping the fallen leaf in a tissue, saying that the veins resembled the tide charts in his grandfather's nautical logbook.
"What are you doing here?" Ayu's voice was mostly drowned out by the rain. As Zhong Hua turned around, raindrops leaking from the umbrella soaked his cuffs, spreading deeper patches of color across the dark blue cotton fabric. "I saw on your WeChat Moments that there was a power outage," he said, shaking the plastic bag in his hand, "so I bought some candles and instant noodles." The red candles in the bag emitted a warm glow through the plastic, reminding Ayu of the golden sunset she had seen in the Dunhuang desert.
The two walked side by side into the rain, their red umbrellas casting shimmering reflections in the puddles. Zhong Hua tilted the umbrella handle towards A Yu, his own shoulder submerged in the rain. The distant streetlights, still lit, were reflected in the puddles like shattered stars; with each step they took, the "stars" swayed, breaking into smaller specks of light. A Yu remembered the night at Namtso Lake, the Milky Way hanging low over the lake's surface, how they skipped stones across the water, each ripple carrying fragments of stars.
“Do you remember this leaf?” Zhong Hua suddenly stopped, his fingertips gently pinching a ginkgo leaf on the umbrella rib. Raindrops dripped from the leaf tip, splashing tiny droplets on A Yu’s hand. “Last year in Dali, you said it looked like someone had bitten it.” His voice was slightly scattered by the wind, yet it carried a certain resolute gentleness. A Yu nodded, recalling that day in the ancient city, the sunlight filtering through the ginkgo treetops, casting dappled shadows on the bluestone slabs. She squatted on the ground watching the falling leaves twirl, Zhong Hua’s shadow falling upon her, like an unfinished silhouette painting.
Just then, a gust of wind whipped the umbrella open, and raindrops suddenly leaked through a small hole in the top, falling into Ayu's hair. She instinctively reached up to brush them away, her fingertips touching the cold water droplets, but she froze, startled by Zhong Hua's sudden pause. "Don't move," he said softly, with a focus Ayu had never heard before. A streetlamp flickered in the distance, and in the brief light, she saw Zhong Hua's eyes reflecting the glimmer of light in the puddle, his pupils shimmering with tiny, shimmering spots of light.
"What does it look like?" His fingertips hovered over her hair, not touching it, yet sending a slight shiver down Ayu's spine. Rain continued to fall, condensing into glistening droplets on the stray hairs on her forehead, each one reflecting the faint light from afar, like scattered diamonds on her black hair. Ayu suddenly remembered the sacred waterfall in Yubeng Village, when the frozen lake thawed, sunlight piercing through the beams of meltwater, countless ice crystals dancing within them, like imprisoned starlight. At that time, Zhong Hua stood by the lake, his jacket hood covered in snowflakes, and he said it was the closest he had ever seen to heaven.
“The frozen lake in Yubeng Village,” Ayu said softly, water droplets from her eyelashes falling onto her cheek with each blink. Zhong Hua smiled, raindrops sliding down his jawline and gathering into a thin stream at his collarbone. “Mm,” he moved the umbrella closer to her, “like crushed diamonds.”
The two stood in the rain for a long time, until even the convenience store sign flickered and went out. In the darkness, only the sound of rain and their breathing could be heard. Ayu could smell the faint scent of soap on Zhong Hua, mixed with the dampness of the rain, like the aroma of some familiar plant. She remembered a similar, comforting smell in the wind and sand outside her tent when she spent the night in the Gobi Desert of Dunhuang.
“Let’s go,” Zhong Hua broke the silence. “The instant noodles should be softened by now.” He gripped the umbrella handle tightly again, and the two stepped through deeper puddles, splashing water that soaked their trouser legs. Ayu suddenly remembered something and pulled a small tin box from her canvas bag. “Look,” she opened the box, inside lay half a dried flower, “bought from the same shop in Dali, intending to press it into a bookmark.” The dried flower was a pale purple forget-me-not, its petals curled up like a sleeping butterfly.
Zhong Hua stopped and looked at the flowers in the tin box in the occasional flash of lightning. "I bought them on the same day as this leaf." His fingertips gently brushed the petals. "You said forget-me-nots are like miniature hydrangeas, but I think they're more like the sunset over Qinghai Lake." A Yu smiled, remembering that day when the sun was shining brightly, and they were wandering through the alleys of the ancient city. A petal fell onto Zhong Hua's camera lens, but he insisted on taking a picture of the sunlight in her hair first.
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