Writing About Rain: The Winning Entry, by Yinke

Two weeks after the exhibition “Pluviophile – The Rain Lover” closed, “Rain Stories”, a contest for stories of rainy days, has come to an end too, leaving lovers of scent with feelings not easily forgotten. Over the past two weeks, perfumer Rei Nguyen has read every story of rain, one by one, to choose the most striking entry. Each was a different picture, drawn from one person’s memories of rain. And now, after a moving search, Rei and the R Parfums team have at last found the winning entry in “Rain Stories”.

A story of rain by Yinke, winner of the Writing About Rain contest

In plain, spare prose, Yinke takes the reader through familiar scenes, and through them to feelings that ring entirely true. R Parfums congratulates Yinke, whose story of rain has won a 50 ml bottle of Pluviophile with a one-of-a-kind patina. Here, once more, are Yinke’s words. “I was born and raised in a province in central Vietnam. There, the rain tends to linger through the last months of the year, October and November. In those months it often rains hard, and it is bitterly cold. For all three years of high school I rode an electric bicycle to school, with lessons there during the day and extra lessons in the evening. I do not remember which evening it was; a weekday, probably. I had an evening lesson. It was quite cold, and raining hard. When it finished I went home and to bed as usual. A day or so went by, and then I heard from a teacher that on that night of heavy rain someone had come looking for me. It was my mother. She had come to bring me a raincoat. All at once I felt something warm, and a little bitter, well up inside me. Back then there was no phone. My mother could not call me, so she rode straight to the school to leave the raincoat, but by then I had already gone home. When I asked her about it, all she said was ‘mẹ lo con ướt mưa’ (‘I was afraid you would get wet in the rain’). Five words. It could not have been put more simply. And I have kept that memory with me ever since. Now I live far from my parents. In Saigon it is the season of sunny mornings and rainy afternoons. The rain is heavy, and it never gives any warning. On many days I get home soaked from head to toe. And I miss my mother so much. I always listen to Michael Bublé’s ‘Home’ when I write about her: a song sung by someone far away, who knows they are lucky and only wants to go home. This rainy season I am still in Saigon, far from home. And there is nothing I want more than a flight home. P.S. My mother will never read these lines. Nor will she know that I still remember that day. Even so, I hope she knows I love her, mom.” July 21st, HCMC. Yinke