Yours Forever
Chung Ling

The north wind was biting the old gentleman Mr. Shi's throat like needles, so he quickly buttoned up the collar of his blue cotton-padded coat. Mr. Shi went into the janitor's closet in the park, brought out his broom and bamboo dustbin, then walked over to the swing. He was about to sweep the leaves on the ground when he suddenly opened his eyes wide. He was surprised when he saw a mysterious object lying on the bench ahead of him.
"What's that weird thing on the bench?" he said to himself. "A big black bag? But who's left it there? How come there's such a huge bag?" Only when he gazed at it did he recognize a human head on top of the large bag—it was a man's head with short black hair.
"Indeed, old age comes with bad eyes," he thought. "Definitely it's two lovers wrapped in the man's black overcoat. The park is a place for lovers, but I've never seen two dating at 8:30 in the morning, under the dark clouds, in the biting wind.
"That little world must be nice and warm inside." Somehow the old man thought of his old wife's plump body under his own quilt, but she had gone, for two years already. Broom and dustbin in hand, he turned about and started walking away from the lovers. "I'd better leave them alone."
Mr. Shi, instead, went to another corner of the park and started sweeping the ditch there. Covering the clear, shallow ditch were piles and piles of dark yellow leaves and orange leaves. He stopped at a spot where he saw paper fragments scattered all around, including an ID card crumpled into a ball and business cards torn into pieces.
"It must be someone who has cleaned out their wallet." He swept them away at a stroke, his broom bringing up a photograph, which then floated back onto the clear ditchwater with a face smiling at him. It was a small black-and-white picture of a girl. He picked it up and found it had turned yellowish. It showed a girl with delicate features and with shoulder-length hair. Mr. Shi looked at the reverse and found the following handwritten words:
My dearest Guo Cai:
It's yours forever!
Yours,
Li Yun
On this day of this month of this year.
An invisible smile emerged from the curved corners of his mouth as the photograph fell his hand drifting onto the huge pile of fallen leaves inside the ditch.