Borrowing Light(5)

The third time Shen Rikui stepped into the "forest" cafe, there was something more in her hand, a neatly folded letter.

It was found in the drawer of the old bookcase in Margaret's house this morning.The envelope was yellowish, the paper clean, and there was a line in French written in beautiful handwriting: "À celui qui croit encore à la douceur."-To those who still believe in tenderness.

She did not open it.It just struck her that the letter had a marvelous sense of destiny.Like her coming to this town and meeting Lin Yu, it was tugged by something gentle in the underworld.

"Did today bring new inspiration?"Lin Yu saw her and smiled at her as usual, his voice clean and low and soft.

She smiled and nodded, placing the letter on the table and flipping through her sketchbook.

"What about you?"She asked, "What's the special today?"

Lin met with a wink, "You inspired me.Toasted orange latte with a hint of caramelized cinnamon."

"Why was I the one who inspired it?"

"You always smelled like citrus."He said, half-seriously, half-teasingly, "Like sun-dried orange peel, which softens when you put it by the fire and roast it slowly in the winter."

"Then can you tell your muse your dried orange recipe?"Shen Riqiu joked.

Lin Yu, however, replied seriously, "Then if I tell you, you can't tell anyone else.It's a secret between us."

Shen Riqiu repaid with a warm smile and a sincere promise.

The recipe was simple, with a clean ingredient list and only three ingredients, oranges, rock sugar and lemon juice.

The practice is also simple, peel all the white orange flesh on 1 pound of oranges, mixed with 50 grams of icing sugar and cook until bubbling with a little lemon juice, drain the water and oven 100 degrees for 2 hours.

"Really delicious things are the simplest, everyday food can also bring amazing flavor."

Shen Rihui lowered his head and smiled, not commenting.

The position by the window was the same as yesterday, and the sunlight fell right on the tabletop.She drew an illustration of a roasted orange, like a warm food page in a picture book, with a few lines of small letters, "Write a letter to winter, fill it with a candy, a slice of roasted orange, and a sentence about the future being promising."--Shen Sunflower's third day.

As the aroma of coffee fizzes in the air, a new guest pushes in the door.It was two young men with easels, looking like travelers who had come to sketch.Lin Yu greeted them gently, as if he had long been accustomed to people using "The Forest" as a stopover on their way.

Shen Riqui looked at the two men sitting in the corner seat and suddenly realized that this café was indeed very much like a letter that was slowly being opened.Every person who stops to drink coffee is a person who reads the letter.

She looked down at the letter, hesitated, and ultimately didn't open it.

"Can I leave it with you for the night?"She picked up the letter and asked Lin Yu softly, "I'm not ready to read it yet."

Lin Yu didn't ask why, but only took the letter and carefully placed it in the wooden box on the side of the counter.

"Whenever you want to read it, I'll return it to you."

"Thank you."She looked at the seriousness in his eyes and suddenly felt that this man was also a letter, clean and quiet, but harboring the possibility of something hot and steamy.

When the coffee came up, she leaned back in her chair and looked out the window at the laurel trees, feeling her heart soften a little.

She wrote a poem-like sentence in the corner of her sketchbook, "If life is a flowing landscape, then I hope, there is a stop, called the forest."

Then she took a sip of her roasted orange latte.

It was a little hot, a little sweet, and a little ... like him.