The letter was written on a wooden courtyard chair on a spring afternoon, beneath a canopy overgrown with Virginia creeper.
Zeng Mu wrote this reply just as he had once put pen to paper for the girl he secretly loved-the first and only time he had done so before.
Only he and Ma Linya, its recipient, would know what the letter said.
Qidunston did not know its contents either, but when he saw the smile on Zeng Mu's face as he wrote, he knew that the young man was his former self, and Ma Linya was the Stee Jane of his youth.
"Ah, to be young~" Qidunston could not help sighing, then added, "Being old isn't bad either. Fine wine has nothing to fear from the years." As he spoke, he had already decided to leave the village tomorrow and travel to Vites Town, dozens of miles away, to visit Stee Jane.
Love in old age endured like a mountain spring; it did not depend on tending to each other morning and night.
Zeng Mu still did not understand why Qidunston did not live with Stee Jane, nor had he asked. Perhaps the finest love did not mean staying together without ever parting, but maintaining the perfect distance. Perhaps only love separated by space and distance held that dreamlike enchantment and intoxication-the ideal love that made one wish to remain in it forever.
The brief letter, barely over a hundred characters long, took two hours to finish. By then, Qidunston had finished his afternoon nap and emerged from his room, stretching and moving about.
Lamenting how quickly time had passed, Zeng Mu slipped the letter into an envelope and went into the kitchen. He melted some resin, mixed in a little crushed cinnabar powder, and sealed it, leaving a hardened