Chapter 36: “Partly Cloudy Turning to Light Rain” Part 2

Chi Buyu seemed to be mad at her.

Or maybe not.

Cui Qijin suddenly had this feeling, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. If Chi Buyu was angry, then what exactly was she angry about?

Chi Buyu didn’t make it easy for her to figure out, either. She huddled together with Chen Wenran, blasting an intensely suspenseful soundtrack from a Bluetooth speaker—likely the background music from some mystery puzzle game.

And so they had come to Leshan to soak in the hot springs, where they played a UNO version of Truth or Dare right there in the steaming pool.

Cui Qijin felt utterly bored, wondering why she was even bothering to play along. Yet in the very first round, she inexplicably zoned out. She accidentally let Chi Buyu play a yellow 4, landing Chi Buyu in second-to-last place.

Cui Qijin ended up dead last.

This time, Chen Wenran hadn’t brought any Truth or Dare cards. She rubbed her hands in anticipation, studying Cui Qijin’s expression for a good long while. Unable to come up with a good first question, she passed the opportunity to Chi Buyu.

Chi Buyu suddenly had her chance to ask a question.

She hesitated for a moment.

Glancing at Cui Qijin, she wavered, then took a bite of the hotel-delivered sushi. Her eyelashes fluttered as she seemed lost in thought.

Cui Qijin assumed this whole UNO game was aimed at her. After all, back on the high-speed train, Chen Wenran had already declared her intent to dig up every last detail of her…

Her romantic history.

And now, with the chance to ask a question in hand.

Yet everyone twisted and turned awkwardly, none of them bold enough to actually voice it. They must all have been thinking about how off she’d been the night before.

Even Chi Buyu, who had seemed vaguely upset all day and kept declaring, “I’m going to beat you today,” only managed to squeeze out the words when her moment arrived:

“You like…”

Cui Qijin clenched her fingers.

Ran Yan and Chen Wenran held their breath.

Chi Buyu pressed her lips together, then ducked her head with a soft sigh before finishing, “…which kind of plant?”

Chen Wenran let out a bored “Pfft.” Before Cui Qijin could even respond, she jumped in. “Bird of Paradise, Chinese Evergreen, mango tree… Isn’t that just picking anything?”

Ran Yan shook her head. “No, that’s not right.”

Chi Buyu looked curiously from Ran Yan to Cui Qijin. “Ranran, how do you know it’s wrong?”

Cui Qijin slightly relaxed her tensed spine as the water lapped up from behind, submerging her vertebrae.

This game was destined to force the truth out of them.

She breathed out a few soft words.

“Colorful Leaf Taro.”

Chi Buyu froze for two or three seconds, repeating “Colorful Leaf Taro” under her breath. Something seemed to flicker through her moist eyes; her lashes dipped, a hint of confusion crossing her face. But that confusion was quickly swept away.

“Colorful Leaf Taro?” Chen Wenran piped up. “What’s that?”

“The one on Cui Qijin’s balcony at home,” Ran Yan explained as the eyewitness. “You’ve been to her place so many times—didn’t you see it?”

She glanced at Chi Buyu, who was still gazing downward lost in thought. “Shuishui’er, didn’t you see it either?”

Chen Wenran shook her head. “Nope, maybe I just didn’t notice.”

Chi Buyu looked up a beat late, giving Cui Qijin an odd glance before shaking her head. “I didn’t see it.”

Cui Qijin stared at the rippling water surface, disturbed by the cluster of bodies. In a low voice, she said, “Next round.”

Chen Wenran’s mere oversight was, of course, nothing like Chi Buyu’s claim of not having seen it. Because every time, before Chi Buyu arrived, Cui Qijin would move the Colorful Leaf Taro to the master bedroom balcony—a spot with plenty of sunlight.

How could she let Chi Buyu see something so dangerous as that Colorful Leaf Taro? Not only did that string of gibberish need to vanish from the online world, it should disappear from Cui Qijin’s own life as well.

She had done many such things, and the evidence was everywhere if one looked.

If she ever told anyone, they would think her utterly horrifying—deceitful from start to finish, hiding behind a facade of righteousness while misleading another person for so long.

In every moment facing her, she had never truly had a clear conscience.

In the rounds that followed, Cui Qijin found herself caught in an internal tug-of-war. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to win or lose.

Sometimes, in a fit of self-defeat, she wanted to just throw the game and lay everything bare, clean and complete.

Other times, timid as a mouse, she reactivated her defenses, urgently warning herself not to lose, not to reveal even a hint more.

She was still so conflicted.

Speaking the truth was a kind of reward, after all—one couldn’t get the chance forever.

A few rounds later, they had exhausted their questions. Ran Yan and Chen Wenran were both pruned from the soak. They tossed their cards aside and decided to wrap up with one final question before heading off for a nap.

So the last truth-telling opportunity went to Chi Buyu.

And the one with the power to ask was Cui Qijin.

She had the chance to learn the truth and initially planned to brush it off.

But then Ran Yan casually remarked, “Shuishui, you can ask anything, okay?”

Chi Buyu lounged lazily in the water, her body gone boneless from the heat.

Floating there, her white swimsuit made her look like a goose paddling along. Hearing this, she glanced at Cui Qijin, huffed, and declared without hesitation, “Of course I can—anything at all!”

She emphasized, “No holds barred!”

No holds barred. No holds barred.

Cui Qijin gazed into Chi Buyu’s frank eyes, silently repeating the phrase to herself over and over. For an instant, questions flooded her mind—

Do you still hate me?

If I were that “Mine,” what would you think? Have you logged into that account again in all these years? You probably haven’t, but why not? Why didn’t you badmouth me to others? You… do you…

Even remember me anymore?

If you don’t remember, should I feel relieved or heartbroken? If you do remember… then what should I do?

“Cui Muhuo?”

A call drifted over through the steam to her ear. Cui Qijin heard the splash of water, and there was Chi Buyu, paddling closer. Lips pressed tight, she asked, “Why do you keep zoning out? What’s really going on with you these past few days?”

Cui Qijin snapped back to herself.

“Nothing…”

Her first instinct was to deny it, to struggle.

But then.

She went limp, her body sinking slightly—an instinctive mental surrender. Yet Chi Buyu grabbed her wrist, pulling her firmly to the pool’s edge to keep her afloat. Chi Buyu herself let out a relieved breath.

In that moment, with their wrists and palms pressed together again through the water, Cui Qijin’s pulse laid bare under Chi Buyu’s grip, she suddenly remembered something. So the SpongeBob Afraid of Water had, after all these years, overcome her fear. As an adult, she had truly learned to swim.

Water lapped over her neck, and in her daze, Cui Qijin met Chi Buyu’s gaze fixed on her—

Bright with steam, dense with worry, tension, and just the faintest trace of anger. She thought that if Chi Buyu’s eyes had been full of anger right then, she might have felt better. Chi Buyu had every right to be furious with her—furious beyond measure.

And she would willingly take it.

In that instant, countless ways to dodge the question flashed through her mind—excuses, justifications, just like all the times before.

But this time, she was helpless.

Perhaps it was the sheer volume of water working its magic, overwhelming her carefully built defenses without mercy. It stole the oxygen from her body, refusing to let her escape any longer.

So she heard herself ask softly, “Do you still remember what happened during our last breakup?”

The words hung in the air.

Chen Wenran and Ran Yan, who had been chattering playfully, fell instantly silent. They turned to stare at Chi Buyu, then at Cui Qijin.

Cui Qijin watched Chi Buyu.

Chi Buyu looked at her with faint surprise, still gripping her wrist tightly—wet and sticky, refusing to let go.

She froze for a long moment.

Then slowly released her hand, wrinkling her nose as if organizing her thoughts or dredging up memories.

After a while, she murmured in a daze, “The day I was supposed to meet her, it rained pretty hard in Chengdu. I bought the prettiest flowers, clutched the gift I’d gotten her, and wore what I thought was my most beautiful dress back then. I waited for her for almost three hours, and then…”

And then.

Cui Qijin echoed it in her mind. The hot spring water sloshed louder as a strangely calm voice rose within her, syncing almost perfectly with Chi Buyu’s.

—Until the mall closed, I never showed up.

—”Until the mall closed, she never showed up.”

It was raining again, it seemed.

The patter of light rain drifted in from outside, perfectly on cue.

Cui Qijin nodded, accepting the answer with poise, just as she always had whenever Chi Buyu brought it up in front of the others.

She thought she pulled it off flawlessly, without a hint of anything amiss.

Chen Wenran and Ran Yan reacted the same way. After hearing the story, they curled their lips, cursed the unnamed villainess a few times, then climbed out of the pool. They changed into bathrobes and sprawled out on the floor, yawning as they announced their plans for a nap.

Chi Buyu should have done the same.

Before today, whenever Chi Buyu mentioned wkeinauadqtqb, she hadn’t shown much emotion—just like that night on the late bus, when she’d brought it up herself and framed it as “hating the actions, not the person,” explaining her aversion to dating by calling herself a hopeless romantic…

That was why Cui Qijin had dared to ask today. It seemed wkeinauadqtqb and all those events had long become ancient history for Chi Buyu.

For some reason, hearing this answer brought Cui Qijin a slow, torturous kind of pleasure.

Yet Chi Buyu’s reaction today felt a little different.

She didn’t brush it off quickly.

Even after changing into her bathrobe and lying side by side with Ran Yan and Chen Wenran, cracking open eggs to eat, she kept chewing with puffed cheeks. Every so often, she’d sneak a glance at Cui Qijin, only to whip her gaze away the moment Cui Qijin looked back.

As if she were the one hiding something.

In the afternoon, after soaking in the hot springs with rain falling outside, the atmosphere was perfect for sleep.

Soon, Ran Yan and Chen Wenran murmured a bit of pillow talk before curling up together, twisting into a pretzel as they drifted off.

Chi Buyu glanced at the pair tangled up like that and scooted a little closer to Cui Qijin.