Q: Why can people absolutely not go “love-brained”? Is it really that bad?
A: The term “love-brained” that I’m using isn’t meant as an insult. Of course, I’m not saying it’s something to be praised either—Chi Buyu.
–
In this world, the only person who called her “Cui Muhuo”—and kept calling her that persistently for eleven whole years without any intention of stopping—was Chi Buyu.
The name Cui Qijin was indeed a mouthful.
It came from her mother, Cui He, a professor of forest engineering, and her father, Yu Hongdong, a vice professor of energy chemical engineering.
If anyone else learned the origin of her name, they would probably sigh that Cui Qijin was truly the crystallization of her parents’ love.
Of course, Cui Qijin couldn’t include her parents’ titles and lifelong careers every time she introduced herself. That’s why she absolutely hated self-introduction sessions.
And she still remembered that one particularly well—
It was 2013, and Chengdu’s summer wasn’t nearly as scorching as it is now. High school classrooms didn’t have air conditioning yet. The giant panda Hehua, who would later go viral online, was still seven years away from being born at the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. Just two months earlier, David Tao had performed in Chengdu, and at his Little People Fantasia concert, the whole crowd had sung along to most of “Ordinary Friends.”
Cui Qijin had come down with a nasty summer cold, as she often did.
Chengdu was hit with a rare downpour. Pale-faced, she stood on the steps of the gymnasium, her military training uniform soaked with clammy sweat. Facing rows of fresh-faced students in their own uniforms, she squeezed her eyes shut and said, word by word—
“My name is Cui Qijin. The ‘qi’ from dwelling, the ‘jin’ from embers.”
By then, her head was already spinning, and just standing there had drained her strength. She vaguely heard murmurs from below.
“What the heck? Why would anyone name their kid with such weird characters? I can’t even remember it!”
She struggled to lift her eyelids. Her vision was a blur of green—every face reduced to a fuzzy dot.
She didn’t know who had just called her name hard to pronounce, or who shouted next, “Earthquake!”
Suddenly, the out-of-town students’ chatter turned to screams. Chaos erupted—some kids seeing their first quake treated it like a spectacle, whipping out their phones to film the rippling water in blue buckets with a mix of panic and excitement. Boys who’d been dying for a break seized the chance, yelling “Earthquake! Run!” and swinging around the gymnasium like monkeys. The instructor with tonsillitis bellowed hoarsely, “It’s just a small one—no need to run!”…
She had no idea how much happened in that dizzying whirl before she pitched forward.
Probably a bunch of muddy footprints from the rain-streaked steps all converged on her at once.
Dust swirled in the air amid the pandemonium.
No one looks great collapsing from exhaustion. She’d sweated buckets, so her face was slick as it smacked against the gymnasium’s wooden floor, likely twisted at an awkward angle.
Her vision turned into a pixelated, shaky camcorder feed, the focus shot.
Dazed, amid the stampede of feet rushing toward her, Cui Qijin’s gaze locked on a pair of high-top Converse canvas shoes—apple green…
With the military training pants rolled up; white socks hugging half her calf; and on those socks, two frantically jiggling brown dog ears.
Those shoes outran everyone, kicking up dust like a lone rider. They screeched to a halt so close they nearly kicked her in the face.
But the owner slammed on the brakes, panting hard as she squatted down in front of her. Lowering her head, her dark pupils gleamed under the brim of her cap, her skin ghostly pale. From Cui Qijin’s angle, she could only stare levelly at the vacant dog eyes on those puppy socks.
“You’re done for, classmate—are you okay—”
A jumbled voice rang in her ear. Cui Qijin squinted, unable to make out the face, and just shook her head. Her parched lips parted to say it was just a bad cold.
The girl seemed not to hear.
In a flurry, she yanked off her cap, leaning in with her ear close. Amid the shaking chaos and noise, her slightly off-center bun flopped onto Cui Qijin’s eyelid—messy and soft.
Freshly washed, with a sweet, cottony scent.
That’s when Cui Qijin spotted the red beauty mark in front of her ear, flushed even redder from tension. Amid the concrete dust, sour sweat, and rainy metallic tang… she caught her scent—
Like the signature sweet aroma of some island city’s fruit, washing away all the dizziness, mess, and clamor.
Cui Qijin blanked out for a few seconds and blurted, absurdly,
“Do you carry a mango during military training?”
The girl finally caught her words. Her bun drooped limply, swaying on Cui Qijin’s eyelid.
She turned her head, eyes wide as she stared.
Her face scrunched up. A soft palm tested Cui Qijin’s forehead, brimming with worry. Then she looked around and yelled at the top of her lungs,
“Someone call an ambulance! Muhuo Classmate’s brain is fried!”
That shout halted the riot, stopped the quake, and blew out Cui Qijin’s eardrums.
It made her black out completely. And later, she always suspected that’s when her ear developed some incurable glitch—it itched whenever it got wet.
That was the first time in her life Cui Qijin rode in an ambulance. Two kilometers cost 123 yuan—for a bad cold that could’ve been fixed at the school infirmary.
It was also the first time someone called her Cui Muhuo, right after her most hated self-introduction.
The first time she’d asked a stranger if she carried a mango—a rude, bizarre question.
So by the time they actually reached the ambulance.
The stretcher was narrow and shaky. On her left sat two whitecoats and the hoarse-voiced instructor debating when she’d passed out and what her symptoms were.
Also squeezed in was a girl in military training gear, hat not yet back on, her slightly askew bun bobbing, stray locks sweat-stuck and plastered to her face.
Definitely the apple-green one.
While answering the whitecoats’ questions, the girl glanced over and saw she was awake. Her wrinkled face eased a bit. She leaned in, extended a hand, and whispered,
“Hey, Cui Muhuo Classmate. I’m Chi Buyu.”
She met her eyes squarely for half a second, then patted her forehead reassuringly with what she held. “I’m not a bad guy—don’t be scared. The school clinic’s still closed, so the instructor and I are taking you to the nearest hospital.”
The words landed softly.
Cui Qijin felt something cool tap her forehead—not too light, not too hard. Cooler than body heat. She reached up instinctively—
Nothing there.
Instead, she heard a muffled laugh.
The next second, that cool thing was tucked into her hand by soft fingers.
Looking down, it was a yellow mango—perfect handful size, chilled.
She’d given her a mango. A real one. On an ambulance that was jolting her stomach into rebellion.
So sudden.
“What’s this?” she asked blankly.
That question seemed to split the mango’s skin.
Her stuffed-up nose from the cold flooded instantly with lush, crowding mango sweetness—three parts bliss.
“Huh?” Chi Buyu still gazed down at her, her bun drooping softly.
Puzzled, then worried, then deadly serious. She reached out to feel her forehead again, her palm soft against it.
“You’re not even feverish…”
Fresh off a downpour, in the chaotic buzz of a minor quake and wailing ambulance, all sounds smeared indistinct like oil-slicked outlines.
Only this girl’s voice rang clear—thin, trailing off at the ends, like half a frosted mango split open on a sweltering day.
In that moment, Cui Qijin really thought her brain was toast.
How else could half an ice-cold mango be telling her, “It’s a mango for you.”
Of course she knew it was a mango. But… why give her one out of nowhere? Where’d it come from? Had she really carried one during training?
Cui Qijin sat stunned, clutching the cool fruit. Maybe the cold had depleted too many white blood cells—her head still throbbed, no better.
She still found the whole thing unbelievable.
The ambulance walled off summer and reality. Sunlight leaked in; the old van sweltered. Wheels jolted through the din forward—fast, slow—suddenly she felt it was a lonely rocket blasting into space.
Chi Buyu sat beside her. Seeing the mango about to slip, she reached over. Warm, soft fingers steadied Cui Qijin’s hand, securing the oversized fruit.
Then she bobbed along, gazing at her. On this lonely rocket, she curved her eyes in a bright smile and said,
“Try it later—see if it’s sweet. I bought it from the fruit stand at the school gate while waiting for the ambulance. Something-or-other… If you like mangoes that much, you can get more there anytime…”
In a flash, Cui Qijin recalled a Taiwanese coming-of-age flick she’d watched while feverish and sick. The harmlessly grinning heroine in a bay-style school shirt stood under a shady mango tree, handing an ice-cold, sweetly scented mango to a passerby. Parched and puking then, with no appetite, she’d dazedly thought that mango must be insanely sweet, refreshing, juicy—better than any fruit ever.
And Chi Buyu, at their first meeting, handed her just such a mango. Curving her eyes, she said,
“You can call me Chi Bushui or Shuishui. You know, metal, wood, water, fire, earth—the water between wood and fire.”
That mango wasn’t actually that sweet. The lonely rocket was a cold-induced hallucination. The classic five elements cycle was wood feeds fire, fire feeds earth, earth feeds metal, metal feeds water.
Wood, fire, and water were worlds apart—probably over a hundred million light-years.
From then on, she called her Cui Muhuo. The “tongue-twister” Cui Qijin everyone griped about eventually rolled off her tongue too. Somehow, though, she was still the only one in class who used it.
Somehow, that chaotic first encounter—the fake lonely rocket from her cold—that fresh, healthy, not-too-sweet mango—those two names mistakenly thought to match…
None of it turned her and Chi Buyu into friends.
“Can’t be ordinary friends~~~”
“Ordinary Friends,” released in 1999, sang from that 2013 summer all the way to the first snow of 2024.
A four-minute-fifteen-second cassette tape crooned Chengdu’s blend of fresh trends and old-school charm from the past eleven years, fading quietly into silence during those final dark seconds.
Cui Qijin seemed to hear a soft click, as if the gears of time had slotted perfectly into place and locked shut under her hand.
In the hot, raucous winter tavern, she glanced down and spotted a shadowy figure outside the glass window, clad in a pair of brownish-yellow snow boots with flecks of fresh snow clinging to the edges.
The figure had apparently braved the cold to peer laboriously into the dimly lit interior before stomping its feet vigorously for warmth.
Chi Buyu must have thought she hadn’t seen clearly, for she huffed another breath onto the glass, scrawled two words with her finger, and prodded them emphatically through her fluffy glove—
Muhuo.
Cui Qijin snapped fully back to reality.
With swift efficiency, she snatched up the Octopus Bro mask. The moment she rose to her feet, the entire venue’s lights blazed on. Sandy was shouting into the microphone, “Let me see who’s still without a mask!”
At that instant, Chi Buyu was still sluggishly plastered against the window from outside, bundled in a fluffy coffee-colored coat with horn buttons, topped by a lake-blue knit earflap hat. Soft ribbons dangled alongside her silky brown locks, swaying gently in the breeze.
The sudden brightness made her squint and grimace, her eyelashes drooping with remnants of snow, her cheeks faintly flushed.
She looked just like a white Pomeranian in a padded jacket, harnessed to a sled and sporting a bumped nose. The tip of her own nose was red from the chill, pressed flat against the glass.
Her gloved fingers remained planted on the pane, flanking the two words she’d etched into the fog.
They resembled the stubby ears of a Pomeranian.
Those short “ears” slowly vanished as the mist dissipated. Chi Buyu gradually narrowed her eyes and peered inside.
To Cui Qijin, Chi Buyu had any number of infuriating habits, chief among them her stubborn refusal to wear glasses despite being nearsighted by three hundred degrees.
Cui Qijin found it particularly grating.
In truth, she sometimes wondered if that mule-headedness might prove useful elsewhere—but when it came to skipping glasses, it only invited disaster.
By the same token, Chi Buyu’s abysmal tolerance for alcohol deserved equal scorn. Cui Qijin’s own head for liquor wasn’t much better, but she made a point of abstaining unless conditions were fully controlled.
These thoughts ran through her mind as she stared at Chi Buyu’s eyes, narrowed almost to slits.
The next instant, Chi Buyu’s gaze finally shifted to her face.
The tavern lights flickered, and Chi Buyu’s eyes suddenly widened. She froze for several long seconds.
Then, abruptly, she clapped her left palm over them. The glove failed to conceal the slow flush creeping across her exposed face and neck.
This fool was clearly trying to fool herself into ignoring her blunder.
Through the now-clearing tavern glass, through the neon glow of “Today’s Love Weather Forecast,” through the painstakingly finger-scrawled “Muhuo”…
Chi Buyu sneaked a peek through the gaps in her glove, only to jerk her gaze away. Her voice came out muffled.
“Cui… Muhuo, how’d you end up here?”
The tavern thrummed like the boisterous climax of a blockbuster film, voices swirling in the haze.
Amid the turbid chaos, Chi Buyu stood out with crystalline brightness.
Cui Qijin could hear Sandy’s calls echoing inside, along with the whoops from others who’d spotted them.
She could also see the evasive yet audacious eyes peeking through the gaps in those fluffy gloves.
With a slow sigh, Cui Qijin set the mask she’d just fumbled with back down and stepped forward to block Chi Buyu’s view.
“You’d better hightail it out of here while you can.”
The thought—and the words—came naturally. Chi Buyu’s alcohol tolerance was simply atrocious.
A glance at the SpongeBob mask dangling precariously from Chi Buyu’s hand prompted her to add, unable to resist,
“SpongeBob.”
Of course, Octopus Bro’s hard-won sacrifice failed to send the dimwit SpongeBob packing.
Anyone who’d watched the show knew this was prime SpongeBob territory: Octopus Bro would never join forces with SpongeBob to flee the Krusty Krab.
Once the episode wrapped, the pair each received a glass of Irish Mist. Sandy delivered them with a beaming smile, insisting it was a treat, not a penalty—pure bonus.
Under the crowd’s watchful eyes, Cui Qijin played by the rules. Obeying them was a cornerstone of her philosophy, though she preferred crafting her own more often than not.
With Sandy filming on DV, Cui Qijin turned her face slightly aside and downed the Irish Mist in one go.
The tavern’s vibe surged into thick intoxication, the lights dimming to a sultry haze.
A dense coffee aroma lingered on her tongue as the First Snow event kicked off in earnest. Maskless Sandy took the stage to share her own first-snow tale, warming up the crowd.
In a daze, the residual liquid rolled down her throat. Cui Qijin half-lidded her eyes and beheld Chi Buyu, still sporting that lake-blue earflap hat, a few unruly brown strands escaping to her shoulder.
Chi Buyu herself clutched an empty glass as she took a seat diagonally across from her, her steps already wobbling.
Cui Qijin pursed her lips and dropped her gaze. No need to get involved. She lit up her phone screen—21:23—and twirled her empty glass. As the digits ticked from 23 to 24, someone tossed out a casual, “How’s Hong Kong treating you?”
It was the most ordinary of small talk.
Yet the next second, Cui Qijin’s eyes drifted over involuntarily, locking with Chi Buyu’s lovely, translucent gaze across the air between them.
The Irish Mist they’d swallowed seemed to drift visibly now, its flavor intensifying by fifty percent in a heartbeat—known only to the two who’d drunk it.
Their stares turned into a tangible tether, stretched and tugged back and forth through the ether.
Cui Qijin held steady; Chi Buyu gave a slight lip-bite.
At last, they both looked away.
Cui Qijin lowered her eyes nonchalantly, her sharp ears catching Chi Buyu’s sluggish reply.
“It’s… pretty good, I guess.”
Chin tucked, Cui Qijin offered no opinion.
Noticing the attention had shifted, Chi Buyu visibly relaxed her ramrod-straight posture. A slender, pale wrist emerged from her fluffy coat sleeve to pluck a mango mille-feuille. She bit in, cheeks bulging, the hat’s ribbons swaying along with her instinctive head-bob.
Half a year in Hong Kong, and she still had that habit of nodding whenever something tasty hit her tongue.
Like a food-hoarding hamster.
So Cui Qijin mused—until she faintly caught Chi Buyu trailing off with an upturned lilt: “Except it never snows there.”
She gripped her glass tighter and let out a sigh.
She’d meant to slip away, but the class monitor noticed something off and leaned in with concern. “What’s up, Cui Qijin? Feeling woozy from the booze? I just remembered you and Chi Buyu aren’t big drinkers. Sorry, I should’ve run interference.”
Pale-faced, Cui Qijin shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Really fine?” The monitor eyed her skeptically.
“Really.”
“Alright then.” The ever-responsible class monitor relaxed. “Looks like your tolerance has shot up. I remember you could barely handle one glass before. Now a full Irish Mist and you’re still bouncing around…”
She patted Cui Qijin’s shoulder. “Impressive!”
Cui Qijin figured her memory was faulty and corrected her. “The one-glass wonder is Chi Buyu. You got it mixed up.”
“Did I?” The monitor glanced upward in thought, then snapped her fingers in realization. “You’re right. It’s definitely Chi Buyu with the one-glass limit.”
Satisfied, Cui Qijin nodded. She dipped her eyes, a wave of dizziness washing over her. She felt watched, then not.
When she looked up again, she vaguely made out Chi Buyu staring her way, puzzlement in her expression—”How’d you end up in a place like this?”—her face a hazy blur of red.
In mere seconds, Chi Buyu’s image sharpened and blurred, cycling through a hundred fleeting expressions.
The lights swayed wildly. Cui Qijin shook her head, then spotted Chi Buyu loosely cradling a glass of half-consumed translucent blue liquid. Her second?
Straining her eyes to confirm, she caught Chi Buyu propping her cheek and gazing intently this way, her face nearly smashing into the table.
That gaze, softened and clingy from the Irish Mist, had melted into liquid blue rock candy, drifting hazily toward her.
Or maybe not.
Had she been the one confused? Was she the one with the one-glass limit, not Chi Buyu?
But then the class monitor chuckled in her ear: “Right—one glass limit is definitely Chi Buyu.”
Relief flooded Cui Qijin. Only for the monitor to add with utter confidence:
“Because yours is only half a glass!”
Cui Qijin jabbed the table with a finger, unconvinced.
“And when you’re drunk,” the monitor continued, “you smile at everyone like a blooming flower and say yes to whatever they ask.”
“Do I?”
“You do—” Midway through her natural reply, the monitor glanced at Cui Qijin—and froze.
Cui Qijin’s smile hadn’t faded yet. Her fixed stare shifted slowly toward the monitor.
And curved into a grin aimed right at her.
The monitor set her glass down with grave solemnity. “Oh no.”
Right on cue, a loud thunk echoed from across the way as Chi Buyu’s head thudded onto the table. Panicked voices shouted, “Chi Buyu! Chi Buyu! Chi Buyu!”
Startled, the monitor whipped her head around.
She’d only turned halfway when another resounding thunk boomed from their side. Someone yelped—
“Cui Qijin’s down too!”
The monitor’s head hung suspended midair, torn between directions. She smacked her forehead. “Eight years later, and you two are still neck-and-neck with that pathetic tolerance!”
It was all over. Just like that class reunion years ago.
