Her voice floats through the tiny speaker like cherry blossoms on a spring breeze, delicate and ethereal. “Hello? Can you hear me?” Lin Wei adjusts the volume, hands trembling slightly.
“Crystal clear,” I respond, wondering if she can hear the rapid beating of my heart through the wireless connection between us. Five years since I last saw her face to face, yet her voice remains unchanged - that gentle lilt that once narrated our shared dreams under starlit skies.
Memories cascade through my consciousness like autumn leaves… Coffee shop encounters where her laughter mingled with the aroma of freshly ground beans… Her emerald dress catching the sunset as we walked along the river… The day she left, rainfall masking both our tears…
“I’ve been thinking about that summer,” she says, her words threading through my stream of thoughts. “Remember the fireflies?”
“How could I forget?” Images flash rapid-fire through my mind: Mason jars glowing with captured stars, her eyes reflecting their light, fingers intertwined as we lay in dewy grass. “You said they were nature’s way of proving magic exists.”
A soft chuckle ripples through the speaker. “I was quite the romantic back then.”
“Back then?” The words escape before I can catch them. “What about now?”
Silence stretches between us, weighted with unspoken possibilities. I watch dust motes dance in the shaft of afternoon sunlight piercing my apartment window, each particle suspended in time like the moments we shared.
“I’m coming back to Shanghai,” she finally says. My heart performs an elaborate gymnastics routine. “The tech company offered me that position we talked about years ago.”
More memories surface: Late-night conversations about her dreams of developing AI that could help children learn, my promise to wait until she achieved her goals, the bittersweet parting at the airport…
“The cherry trees still bloom in Zhongshan Park,” I say, voice barely above a whisper. “Every spring, I walk there and remember…”
“Stop,” she interrupts, but gently. “Don’t tell me about remembering. Tell me about now. Tell me about tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. The word echoes in my mind like a bell tone. “Tomorrow I could meet you at that old café near People’s Square. The one with the crooked sign and the best oolong tea in the city.”
“Still there after all these years?”
“Some things are meant to endure.”
Another pause, shorter this time. “Like us?”
The speaker crackles softly with her breath, and in that small sound I hear years of growth, of parallel lives seeking convergence, of love that refused to fade despite time and distance.
“Especially like us,” I reply, certainty flowering in my chest like the cherry blossoms we once admired together.
“Three o’clock then,” she says, and I can hear her smile. “Don’t be late this time.”
“I wouldn’t dare. Five years is long enough to keep you waiting.”
After we disconnect, I sit in the growing dusk, watching the city lights bloom beyond my window. The small speaker sits silent now, but it hums with promise - of reunion, of second chances, of tomorrows filled with possibility.
Some stories, I realize, don’t end with goodbye. Sometimes they pause, take a breath, and begin again - like a conversation through a tiny speaker, carrying whispers of love across time and space until hearts find their way home.