Originally:
A sudden downpour was sweeping the city as I waited with this man under the awning of a street-side florist.
There was the fragrance of wilting roses in the damp cold air. I stood there. Saw him running this way with his motorcycle helmet.
Flat head, sharp eyes, wearing a sooty cloth shirt.
Not knowing then that we were headed in the same direction.
Both headed to catch a wedding.
Rin and his bride had a big wedding reception in a hotel.
I made bored small talk to the florist. The dried flowers look like mummies, soulless.
The owner laughed and said, "Flowers don't sell well, they're emaciated after one night.
That's because it can't wait for the hand that wants it. I pulled out a wilted rose and told him that it must have waited a long time.
The man looked at me with a smile, amused, but said nothing.
The first words he spoke to me were five hours later.
I walked out of the hotel lobby and he was waiting at the door.
I'll walk you back, he said. You're drunk.
It was still raining, but it was just cool raindrops that gently hit my parched face.
He drove the car very slowly, and I thanked him for his silence and speechlessness, which made me shed silent tears behind his back.
As a child, a somewhat eccentric girl.
Favorite thing to do was to run off alone to catch butterflies in the meadow by the lake.
Then fostered at her grandmother's house in the suburbs.
The butterflies were kept in a cardboard box.
One day, a butterfly died.
The fearful thought that all these beautiful beings would leave me. Unable to resist.
Without asking anyone how it should be.
Ran down to the lake one afternoon and dug a hole, then buried the butterflies, still fluttering their wings, one by one, alive.
The bright sunlight stung my eyes and my fingers were covered in powder from the butterfly wings. It was sticky like colorless blood.
Finally it was safe. There was no change that could make me ache ......
I imagined my heart shattering like glass. Shattering in an instant with a shrill, sharp, faint ringing sound.
Purely a beautiful girl. Thick, long hair, and eyes with a slight curl at the corners.
I was the girl with the best grades in my class at the time, but always read novels during class.
One day the math teacher couldn't stand it any longer and told me to stand outside the classroom, regardless of the fact that I was still a girl who was a class officer.
I walked alone to the campus. The silent playground had only sunlight and flocks of birds.
It was a moment of deep fear, when all the people left me.
As soon as the bell rang, I saw Net run quickly toward me, then look at me without saying a word.
I sat under the basketball hoop, expressionless.
You're so brave, Net said.
Years later, I still think about that moment constantly.
I walked toward the door in full view of everyone. The sun was shining like water outside the classroom, and behind me was a silent darkness.
All my pride and shame crumbled silently in that moment.
He walked me to the entrance of the building. In the shadows of the corner, his hand patted my cheek.
Sleep well, okay? Don't think about anything.
Suddenly it felt like he knew everything.
His eyes saw through the darkness behind every tear.
I pushed his hand away and headed upstairs.
When I saw Rin, he was walking out of the classroom next door.
The sunlight spilled thinly over his dark hair, and it was a bright, pleasant face.
Until the day I die, I'm a person who moves to beauty.
That painful touch, like a hand, gently held my heart.
I was fourteen.
There were many occasions when we would run into each other.
He was the president of the class next door. Rumor had it that many girls liked him a lot.
But he was one of those gentle and clean-cut boys who kept his distance from everyone.
Then I was an outgoing and withdrawn girl, often wearing white cotton dresses. And didn't like to talk.
Sometimes I would run alone, barefoot in a pair of sneakers, in the playground at dusk.
Liked the big playground at twilight, silent and empty, seeing the flocks of birds flying through the sky.
I ran lap after lap, experiencing the struggle of my heartbeat in the fierce wind until I was exhausted.
Six years later, Lin came to visit me at my house for the first time.
He had gotten into college up north and came to say goodbye.
In the meantime we went to different major high schools and wrote bland, ongoing letters for three years.
Maybe that was his style, cautious, slow, but persistent.
And for me, it was a silent festering.
I hide all the imagery and fierceness.
Rin stood in the yard, it was a clear summer evening, and the wind smelled of blooming rosebuds.
He was wearing a light blue shirt, and on his shoulders were falling pink and white petals.
I reached out and gently brushed the petals off his shoulders.
Rin smiled and bowed his head.
We both knew we wouldn't say any more words to each other.
We just carry on.
The campus library of literature and history, the old brick house.
There were dark and empty wooden stairs, and moss crawling all over the walls.
Jing and I always sneaked there during our study sessions.
I remember the afternoon sunlight pouring like running water into the dusty-smelling room.
We sat on the high windowsill and looked out at the peaceful playground.
There was also a very old cherry blossom tree that bloomed as if it were going to burn in the springtime with its pinkish-white, pinkish-white blossoms.
It was there that Net took the letter Matson had written to her and showed it to me.
Matsu was a quiet boy in his class. We were all surprised that he would write such a letter.
Jing said that he was completely different from the person I thought he was.
I like the kind of man who smiles wickedly and is handsome as hell. How about you, Ann.
I don't think I've ever thought about it.
I know, you like the ones like Lin. You two are the best at pretending as if nothing is wrong.
Did you ever think that one day Rin might kiss you?
He will.
Are you sure?
Yes, I'm sure.
Rin's letters came, one by one, from the far north.
Every time I read a letter, I stuck it in my Bible on my pillow.
It was my favorite book. Every night I would flip it open and read a passage in dense, traditional characters before falling asleep.
Lin's letterhead was always the soft kind that was a little slightly yellowed.
He told me at great length about his single-parent family and his experiences growing up in the shadows of childhood.
I remember your eyes, Ann, the way you looked at people with brightness and abandon.
I felt like your soul would slip through my fingers like the wind.
But still, over and over again, terrified, I reach out my hand.
Warm, ambiguous phrases bloomed like flowers in Rin's letters.
I read them over and over again. Over and over again, experiencing the joy of despair that turns inside like a tidal wave.
When he called, I was on my computer, rushing to write a manuscript, busy as hell.
There was very loud music playing on the side.
Are you having a ball? He said.
No, I'm busy.
Wanted to ask you to a concert.
I don't like listening to that kind of serious stuff. I like this, noisy chaotic kind.
I put the microphone to the speaker and couldn't help but smile thinking he'd be shocked.
And sure enough, there he was, saying, you're such a little kid.
I'll call you sometime, okay? I said.
OK.
I felt his patience. But I was not impressed with him.
For a long time, I lived an unusually quiet life.
Working on the computer at work and writing on the computer at the end of the day.
A part-time radio job was a lot of work, and every day I had to come up with a stack of scripts for the program.
Not any more time free to meet boys and date them.
Favorite rest was to draw the curtains tight and sleep unconscious in a dark room.
Gradually, speech was lost.
Went to a concert with a strange man. Constantly finding things to talk about, smiling at him, or being a good listener.
Either way, it was something that made me feel exhausted.
I remember the feeling of his hand gently touching my face.
He said not to think about anything.
I had only ever shed tears in front of this strange man.
Easily, on a rainy night.
Without tears, the heart is a dry lake.
Memories of a very heavy snowfall.
Big snowflakes, falling in the silent sky, silent and fierce.
The two girls lay on the windowsill, holding their breath.
Net said, I wonder what will happen to us afterward.
The girls were sixteen and about to enter high school.
Jing said, no matter what, let's not be separated, okay, Ann.
Think about it, when we're thirty, sunbathing in the park together, knitting sweaters.
Our kids playing in the grass will be just as good as we are.
The entire playground in the twilight outside the window was covered in a flurry of snow.
Matsu held up an umbrella and waited stubbornly at the entrance to the building.
Net frowned at him. Yasu, let's go down the other exit.
The two girls slipped downstairs quietly, and as soon as they were out of the school gates, they were laughing and squealing as they ran towards the snow.
Jing's face froze painfully red in the snow, she suddenly hugged Ann tightly, Ann, promise me you'll always be with me.
I imagine breaking down silently in front of him again.
I want to tell him about all the unrequited love and fear in my heart.
The sticky powder on my fingers is the colorless blood from the butterfly's wings.
I murder them calmly. The sunlight stung my eyes.
Promises and deep love, tides with no way out, drown me again and again.
Losing me my freedom, feeling suffocated.
But in reality, I'm just a girl who hasn't touched the sunlight for a long time.
Writing late into the night in a washed-out white cloth dress.
All the passion and imagination turned into festering scars at the bottom of my heart.
When I came home from vacation, Lin came to see me.
We went out for a walk, a long quiet walk.
Along the big, empty road by the river, you could walk all the way to the fields in the countryside.
The night sky is starry in summer. The cool breeze is like water, and the air is filled with the damp scent of plants.
We walked without many words. Nor did we look at each other.
Sitting down to rest on a ridge by a rice paddy. The silence of the night resembled a sleeping face.
I've always wanted to have a farm someday, Rin said.
We'd be together, and you'd have lots of kids, sitting around the dining room table every morning, waiting for me to boil milk for them.
I smiled as I listened to him and watched him take my hand gently in his.
Then kissed it over one finger at a time.
That was our best time. I know.
It happened with a silent goodbye.
His phone rang in the late night silence.
Not sleeping yet?
Insomnia.
You need to sleep well, you know? Girls are bad for themselves like that.
What are you doing?
What a willful child. He laughed softly on the other end of the line.
This patient man paid no attention to my perfunctory and repetitive behavior towards him.
I'd heard about the huge advertisements he'd pulled in for his organization, no miracle for such an indomitable man.
He usually gave me a call after a week or so to remind me of my appointment with him. Firm but not forced wit.
I just wanted to see you. Ann. Trust me.
Ann saw him in front of the bar.
He looked the same as the first time he had seen him.
Flat head, sharp eyes, smoky gray shirt.
Here's your favorite music, he said. You crazy girl.
He was suddenly a bit at a loss for words. You're actually making me nervous.
He said a little strangely. No girl would ever make me this nervous.
That's what you have in mind. Anne never showed any mercy when she spoke to him.
The small space where the music boiled over was filled with the smell of tobacco and intense music.
Each face, bright and dark, seemed to be a mask.
Hiding crippled souls for pleasure.
Only the music is real.
Surging like the tide, beautiful and fearful, drowning all one's thoughts.
Ann ordered a soda and sat at the bar as she waited for her favorite tune.
He watched her as she looked on like no one else was watching, not saying a word without talking to him.
He had always thought she was a willful child. But sometimes her directness and uninhibitedness was confusing.
Do you like me? She suddenly turned her face to him.
Bright eyes that looked indulgently at his embarrassment.
Think you're special. He said. I think we need to get to know each other.
Do we? She smiled. Actually, I'm a particularly boring person, and I'll be tasteless once you get to know me.
Let me get to know then.
She let out a laugh.
Her laughter was as unbridled as her eyes.
I can't remember if I ever fantasized about a favorite man.
His hair, his eyes, his scent, his voice.
I just know that if he was there, I would recognize him in a crowd.
In the wilderness of destiny, there may be no clue to each other, just displaced with the wind.
Like drifting seeds.
But I still have a great deal of time on my hands.
Before becoming older and older, before dying.
Waiting for a date with him.
Waiting for him to come as promised.
I don't know how many decades of one's life one can give to another.
The day Lin came back from graduation, I went to the train station to pick him up.
I waited in the night, watching the crowds pouring out of the exits.
Suddenly I felt confused inside.
The young man under the rosebush, and countless starry summer nights,
and the yellowed letterhead in the bible, have sustained our imagination for a whole decade.
There was no security in the slow perfection of imagination.
Looking back on it as if it were a night of ethereal fireworks. Silently extinguished.
I think about how I may never have loved him.
I don't know what love is.
But that very night, I realized that there was nothing solid and reliable between us.
We reached out to each other in fear, our souls like the wind, but they slipped silently through our fingers.
He walked her home. Insisted on walking her to the door.
Come in and sit down then. She opened the door.
The floor was full of books, magazines, English newspapers, CDs.
A whole shelf of books piled up to the roof.
One wall of the room was filled with dark wooden picture frames containing enlarged black and white photographs.
She took them in Wuyi, Fujian, of the valley's morning mist.
Silent sunrise over the sea.
The sky with flocks of birds flying over the countryside fields.
And herself. The girl with the bland look on her face.
Sitting on the gravel by the railroad tracks in her white cotton dress.
Leaning against the glass window of the coffee shop, which looked out on the twilight throng. A single back on the beach, the wind blowing the ends of her hair and her cloth dress.
He looked carefully at her photographs one by one.
The photos were washed and yellowed, and looked disheveled.
Have you traveled much?
Yes, every year. The soul needs to wander.
She sits barefoot on a pile of newspapers while flipping through CDs.
Listen to music? I've been listening to KAVIN KERN on piano lately, and it's not bad.
He looked at her as if nothing had happened.
He remembered her tears.
That rainy day, her face on his back, the rain was cold and her tears were warm.
You should have a normal life. He said. Marry me and I will let you live a normal life.
Her eyes widened in surprise.
I won't make you write these scripts anymore, just let you look at the recipes every day.
Cook for me and do the laundry. Go to bed early every day, no insomnia for you.
She didn't smile.
She watched as he brought his hand up and gently placed it in her hair, as carefully as he would caress a flower.
You showed me the wilted rose the other day, and you said it had waited too long.
But then you met me.
Promises, who can believe in promises.
The days just after graduation were intense and depressing.
Wanting to quit. Wanted to leave the city.
Arguing with my parents. Suddenly disappointed in life.
Took a half-month vacation and went to the long-desired Mount Hua.
It was dusk when I climbed to the top of Mount Hua, which is more than 2,000 meters above sea level.
There was another boy on the summit with a camera taking pictures of the rolling hills under the setting sun.
We were all carrying the same bulky hiking packs, wearing sneakers and fat cloth pants.
He smiled at me, and it was just the two of us on the summit.
The silent sky had turned a grayish-purple color, and a lone hawk kept circling at our feet.
Drink some wine? He took out two cans of beer from his bag to celebrate our arrival at Mount Hua.
Sitting on the rocks at the top, we drank and watched the sunset in silence.
Until the mountains fell silent and the night mist rose.
Don't remember saying much more.
It was when we parted that he suddenly said, what do you feel in the presence of something beautiful.
I said, it hurts.
Why?
It hurts to remember.
What if it doesn't hurt?
Then you have to forget.
At Xianyang airport, in an empty terminal, I spread the postcard out on my lap and wrote my last letter to Lin.
Lin, I'm leaving.
As I dropped the postcard into the mailbox, I heard my heart gently falling, silent and desperate.
The fantasies that had suppressed me throughout my adolescence, the pale and magnificent fantasies, turned out to be the unbearable lightness of such a life.
I chose to wait once again.
When I was in my third year of college, I met Anne for the first time after four years of separation.
Ann remembers the first time Net came to visit her at her school after she graduated from middle school.
She was in a major high school, and Net was in a vocational high school.
In the grass by the playground, Net told her that her parents were getting a divorce and that there had been a change in the family.
Matsu came to the school gate every day to wait for me, Ann. He came every day.
The sunlight poured down on Net's face as if it were a pale shadow.
It was at that moment, Ann thought, that they discovered each other's silence.
Perhaps both waiting for the other to say something. A promise or a comfort.
But pride and suspicion, like a crack, lay silent. Life was different.
They were both stubborn and insecure children.
On the rainy street, Ann saw Net looking toward her from behind the crowd.
Short wet hair and very red lipstick. Net looked past the still pretty girl with a high heart.
Ann had heard of her experiences. An uprooted life, parents separated, unable to find a job.
Living with Matsu for three years, she suddenly realized that Matsu was seeing another girl.
Jin smiled and ran to her, her hand resting softly in Ann's, just like before when they were together.
Will we get wet, Ann. Net leapt for joy.
But this was goodbye. They both knew that.
Jin had decided to go north.
I slapped him, Ann, hard.
Just in front of the girl.
His face was pale. That's when I knew we were definitely done.
As I ran down the stairs, I suddenly realized I couldn't hear my heart beating.
Ann. It was a really scary moment. No heartbeat. A blankness.
It was raining so hard the day he failed the entrance exam.
I was in my room and I felt him outside the door, and when I opened the door, he was really soaked.
I was having a bad time myself at the time. My parents were arguing all night, and the job I was looking for was unsatisfactory.
Only he was there for me.
I think I decided to be with him at that moment.
I always thought I would never fall in love with him.
But, I told myself, this is the man fate has thrust upon me now.
There was no room for illusions. Life is so heavy and realistic.
I let him kiss me for the first time. In the pouring rain, we both cried.
He said, I will be good to you for the rest of my life. I only want you in my life.
He bit my lips bloody.
After my parents divorced, we moved in together.
He went into stock trading and the days were never settled.
When I went to the hospital for surgery, I was hoping he would tell me to get married and have the baby.
But he said he had to get a job first.
I didn't know that he was actually tired of this life.
On the operating table, in so much pain that I thought I was going to die.
The window that was open, saw a small patch of pale blue sky.
I asked myself, is this the love I want.
The man's hands were warm and cruel.
How could he let me fall inside such shame and pain.
Jing looked at Ann, her eyes wide open. But so empty that there was not a single tear left.
I always imagined you would come to see me. Ann.
Only you can give me that clean, knowing affection.
I remember when we were crammed into your bed and stayed up all night talking.
When I woke up, I all but realized that you had been holding my hand.
The time we broke up, I kept fantasizing that you would come visit me.
But I knew neither of us would.
Our souls are connected, just as fragile and stubborn.
We can't go a lifetime this long.
We're both girls.
In the dim, damp streets, I said goodbye to Net.
I said, "Can I go first.
In all separations, I was the one who went first.
Leaving someone before they leave is the only way to protect yourself.
The net said, Good.
She stood in the crowd, lonely and isolated in a poorly made dress of rayon.
I gently let go of her hand. Turned away.
Jet's cold, soft fingers hastily disengaged from my hand, like a dying butterfly, fluttering away silently.
My face suddenly paled at that moment.
It was like all the terrified fear I had let go inside that sunny afternoon.
Fantasizing away from all the shattered endings. All the deep feelings that had worn me down.
The memory of the sunlight stung my eyes again.
His hand, carefully placed in my hair.
I suddenly wanted to ask him, do you really know how to cherish a girl who hasn't aged.
Her dreams, her pain, all her waiting and sadness.
A woman's life is like a flower, to die in the heart of the hand that picks and folds her is happiness.
But we are all still so young.
Still holding on to the lonely watch.
I said to Lin, do you love her.
It was in a square in the center of downtown that Lin gave me his wedding invitation.
It was a girl in his unit who insisted on liking him, even breaking up with her old boyfriend.
It was exactly one month to the day I wrote to him.
Rin opted for a hasty marriage after a long silence.
It's time to fall in love. Lin said softly.
I'm just tired and want to rest.
We stood in the crowd of people coming and going.
Some vague memories shattered in the wind.
The cool breeze of a summer night, the scent of damp plants in the air, the silence of a star-filled sky.
And the boy under the rosebush with pink and white petals falling from his shoulders.
I reached out in a daze, only to see warm tears on my hand.
Rin's tears hit my fingers silently, drop by drop.
At Rin's wedding, I watched as he put a ring on the girl and turned his face to kiss her.
A sudden silence fell over me.
We said goodbye in the hustle and bustle of the city's dust and smoke.
I walked calmly and alone through the crowd.
The neon signs on the busy street began to shine in one place.
Seeing myself on the glass windows of the stores.
A woman in a washed-out white cotton dress. A pair of bright, unbridled eyes.
Gradually getting used to speechlessness in the silence of waiting.
My life goes on in peace.
Going to work day after day. Come home and write boring scripts for the radio on the computer while blasting loud rock music.
Once in a while, I'll go out on a trip and meet a stranger I can have a drink with at the top of a mountain and watch the sunset.
Or date a man who will have endless patience with my willfulness.
Or marry him, cook for him and do his laundry, and live out an uneventful life.
I grew to realize that my waiting was just a silent festering.
But everything went on.
I sat in the darkest corner of the student council meeting and saw the playground outside the window gradually filled with twilight.
Rin's voice echoed through the empty auditorium.
Accompanied by the girls' twangy flirting and crisp giggles.
In the crowd, Lin was handsome and composed.
He responded with a smile, witty and gentle, yet with the reserve of an honor student.
I watched him from afar.
That gentle melancholy thing in my heart gently surged like a tide.
But I didn't move.
Lin suddenly turned back to me and asked, "Ann, do you have any comments.
I shook my head almost lamely. Blushing under the attention of the crowd.
I was used to staying silent under his sharp tongue.
Growing up I was the girl who liked to be on the sidelines and watch what was going on.
Quiet, self-absorbed, blocking out all confidences and passions.
But I wanted to run to the playground.
The big, silent, empty playground with flocks of birds flying by in the twilight sky.
I wanted to run barefoot in my sneakers and run hard again.
The fierce sound of the wind and my heartbeat made me feel suffocated.
In dizzying pain and pleasure, it felt like I was flying as fast as a bird in the wind.
Over and over again.