Old Rain Never Returns - Chapter 12
Chapter 12
The next day, a eulogy appeared on the front page of the Shenjiang Daily.
The title was “Old Rain Never Returns.”
There was no name.
There was no biography.
It only spoke of an old friend in these chaotic times who had once wandered onto the wrong path, but who had also held a lamp for others in the dark of night.
It wrote that he came in silence.
He left without a name.
The old rain had fallen.
Do not ask when it will return.
Old Qin finished reading it and remained silent for a long time.
“This isn’t a eulogy.”
Shen Zhaoxue put away the proofs.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a Marriage Contract.”
She smiled faintly.
She did not argue.
On the day of Shen Ting’an’s public trial, it rained again in Shanghai.
In court, he pushed all the blame onto the dead.
He blamed the situation.
He even blamed it on the so-called preservation of the family.
Shen Zhaoxue sat in the gallery.
She didn’t say a single word.
After the trial ended, reporters swarmed around her.
Someone asked if she felt hatred.
She only said, “Hating someone cannot bring the dead back to life. But making him pay the price allows the living to keep moving forward.”
Those words appeared in the paper the following day.
From then on, Shen Zhaoxue became the sharpest pen at the Newspaper Office.
She wrote about the black accounts of banks.
She wrote about smuggling at the docks.
She wrote about the old cases of the military government.
Some said she wasn’t afraid of death.
Some said someone was protecting her from behind the scenes.
Only she knew.
The person who had protected her had already departed at that dawn long ago.
During the first Qingming Festival, she went to sweep her parents’ graves.
She also wrote Zhou Huaiyan’s name.
After writing it, she crossed it out.
She thought, the living cannot accept money meant for the dead.
In the winter of the second year, Old Qin brought her an envelope.
“It’s from Hong Kong.”
There was no letter inside the envelope.
Only a boat ticket.
No signature.
A line of words was written on the back of the ticket.
“Does the Marriage Contract still count?”
Shen Zhaoxue sat by the window and stared at it for a long time.
The handwriting was thinner than before.
Yet it was still the Zhou Huaiyan she recognized.
It suddenly began to rain outside.
It wasn’t a downpour.
It was a fine, dense spring rain.
Falling against the old windows of the Newspaper Office, it sounded like someone knocking on the door from a thousand miles away.
Old Qin asked, “Are you going?”
Shen Zhaoxue tucked the boat ticket into the Marriage Contract.
That old Marriage Contract had never been burned.
The red paper had grown even older.
The creases were on the verge of tearing.
She pressed her fingertip over Zhou Huaiyan’s name.
She suddenly remembered three years ago.
The night before the wedding, she had scolded him in her dreams.
“You aren’t allowed to not show up.”
In the end, he still hadn’t come.
But this time, it was her turn to go to him.
She picked up her fountain pen and left a note for the Newspaper Office.
“Manuscript submitted. Return date uncertain.”
As she reached the door, Old Qin called out to her.
“Zhaoxue.”
She turned back.
“What if he isn’t there?”
Shen Zhaoxue smiled.
“Then I’ll treat it as a trip to see the sea.”
She opened her umbrella and stepped into the rain.
The docks were noisy with the sounds of people.
The blast of a steam whistle pierced through the fog.
Shen Zhaoxue stood in the crowd.
She suddenly remembered many years ago.
She and Zhou Huaiyan had once shared an umbrella on a rainy day just like this.
Back then, he had asked, “If I’m late in the future, will you wait?”
She said, “Depends on my mood.”
He laughed. “Then I’ll try my best not to be late.”
But they were, after all, three years late.
And another two winters late.
As the ship was about to depart, Shen Zhaoxue boarded the deck.
She didn’t look for anyone.
She simply stood by the railing, watching Shanghai slowly recede into the distance.
The rain fell into her hair.
Like an unfinished echo of years past.
Someone stopped behind her.
There was a very soft cough.
Shen Zhaoxue did not turn around.
But her eyes reddened first.
The person said, “Reporter Shen, going to Hong Kong alone?”
The voice was raspier than in her memory.
It was also more real than in her dreams.
Shen Zhaoxue gripped the handle of her umbrella.
She turned around slowly.
Zhou Huaiyan stood three paces away.
He wore an ordinary grey changshan.
He had lost a lot of weight.
His face was still pale.
His left hand leaned on a cane.
But when he looked at her, that hint of youth in his eyes had surprisingly not died.
They gazed at each other through the sound of the rain.
There was no embrace.
There were no cries.
No one spoke of forgiveness first.
After a long time, Shen Zhaoxue took out the Marriage Contract.
“Zhou Huaiyan.”
“Mm.”
“If you don’t show up again this time, I really won’t wait anymore.”
Zhou Huaiyan smiled.
Yet his eyes were red.
“I’m here.”
As the ship left the shore, the rain fell even more densely.
The old rain never returns.
But the old soul comes home.
