◎Winter Is Too Short, Her Memory Is Poor◎
Where Ji Qingyou stood was very dark. But as soon as Yu Qinjiu spoke, the motion-sensor light “snapped” on. The dim yellow light from above spread and extended, weaving into a transparent cocoon of light that wrapped them together.
Maybe it wasn’t a “snap.” It was just Ji Qingyou’s involuntary auditory hallucination.
Ji Qingyou walked over. The light cocoon seemed to sway and move with her. “Aren’t you cold?”
“A little cold.” Yu Qinjiu slightly raised her head to look at her. Her slightly damp hair made her face look pale, but there was a deep, surging childishness in her eyes, creating a soft, fragile impression.
“Shouldn’t you be asking why I’m here first?”
Ji Qingyou looked down at her. “As a doctor, I’m more concerned about your physical health.”
“Oh… right.” Yu Qinjiu said softly. Then she curved her eyes and smiled. Her voice was light and soft. “You didn’t expect that, did you? Your new neighbor is me. But I just moved in today, went downstairs for dinner, and forgot the password.”
As she spoke, she felt a little wronged about forgetting the password. But thinking it was also a bit funny how forgetful she was, she had a resigned, self-entertaining smile about it.
“Dr. Ji, how do you treat such a bad memory?” she asked, tilting her head.
“Eat more fruit and get more sleep,” Ji Qingyou answered succinctly. She remembered how the agent had asked for her contact info earlier today with no follow-up. Seeing Yu Qinjiu now, the situation was immediately clear. So she asked again, “Why didn’t you call me to help you move?”
“Dr. Ji is so busy, how could you possibly have time to help me move.”
Ji Qingyou didn’t quite agree with her statement, but she still reached out to help Yu Qinjiu up. As Yu Qinjiu stood up, she stumbled, and her pale fingers tightened on the damp sleeve of Ji Qingyou’s coat.
“You got rained on?” Yu Qinjiu frowned slightly after steadying herself, pinching the fabric of her sleeve. “Your sleeves are all wet.”
“It was just a light drizzle,” Ji Qingyou explained, then looked at Yu Qinjiu’s damp hair. Her throat tightened a little. “How long have you been waiting outside? First, come to my place and dry your hair.”
“Don’t want you to catch a cold,” she added.
“Okay.” Yu Qinjiu agreed with a smile. Before entering, she muttered, “I waited an hour. The locksmith said he’d be here in half an hour, but it’s raining today, so it’s understandable.”
She liked to talk to herself.
And she was always used to thinking from other people’s perspectives.
When it came to looking at the world, Yu Qinjiu always had a perspective that was one in a million. Thinking this, Ji Qingyou felt that maybe this was the reason Yu Qinjiu was suited to be an architect.
After entering the house, Ji Qingyou turned on the air conditioner, got Yu Qinjiu a pair of slippers, fetched a new towel from the bathroom, and made a cup of brown sugar ginger tea and a cup of cold medicine.
When she came out, she found Yu Qinjiu was not in the living room. Her damp coat and scarf were casually thrown on the sofa. They looked out of place in the otherwise meticulously neat living room—a bit sloppy.
Yet, it seemed to add a touch of vividness to the unchanging environment.
She stopped, standing by the sofa that carried traces of moisture. She stared at the two steaming cups of ginger tea and cold medicine in her own hands and the towel folded over her arm. She suddenly became aware of a certain link in the midst of change.
“I’m over here.”
A drifting, soft voice broke her stillness.
Ji Qingyou realized Yu Qinjiu was in the study. When she entered, the warm air from the air conditioner blew Yu Qinjiu’s faint, gentle perfume onto her face. It was like a soft rose-scented breeze melting in the snow.
“I saw the door was open, so I just came in.” Yu Qinjiu curved her eyes in explanation. “You won’t mind, will you, Dr. Ji?”
Ji Qingyou paused for a moment, then walked in and handed the brown sugar ginger tea she had prepared to Yu Qinjiu. “I know you don’t like medicine, so I made you this.”
She didn’t mention that when Ji Xiruan came to her house before, she had locked the study door in advance. It wasn’t that she didn’t like others entering the study because it contained private documents or secrets.
It was just that the study was her hiding place, giving her enough sense of security. She didn’t want others to break that security.
But Yu Qinjiu was an exception.
Because way back in early childhood, she had already taken up residence on her safe island.
“Remembering that clearly?” Yu Qinjiu took a sip of the ginger tea. The warm liquid entered her stomach, dispelling the cold from her body. Her brow smoothed out. She looked out of the study’s large floor-to-ceiling window, slightly squinting her eyes studying and feeling it, murmuring softly,
“A study with a huge floor-to-ceiling window, able to hear the distant ferry sirens faintly. From this angle, the rows of buildings look open and orderly. A little further, you can see the river…”
“And there’s a persimmon tree.” She took small sips of the tea, concluding her observation. Then she looked at her, her slightly curved eyelashes delicate and alluring. “And it’s so close to the hospital. How did you find this place?”
“The same way you would find a place.”
Ji Qingyou unfolded the towel and was about to hand it to her, but realized she was holding the cup and couldn’t take it easily. So she pursed her lips and gently placed the towel over her head.
The white towel contrasted exceptionally well with Yu Qinjiu, making her fair, delicate skin appear exceptionally translucent. Under the light, her beautiful, soft features seemed to radiate a soft glow.
She curved her eyes and smiled. The light-colored tear mole at the corner of her eye added a touch of seductive innocence.
Their gazes met accidentally in the air for a second. Ji Qingyou’s fingertips trembled slightly. She couldn’t help but think to herself—maybe it was that any color in the world could complement Yu Qinjiu.
She hurriedly withdrew her hand, no longer looking directly at Yu Qinjiu. She picked up the cold medicine that had been placed on the table and took a sip to calm this sudden rush of panic.
“How strange,” Yu Qinjiu said slowly.
Ji Qingyou shifted the cup of cold medicine to her other hand. “What?”
Yu Qinjiu finished her ginger tea, placed the cup on the table, and pinched the towel to dry her hair. “I can remember things like this so clearly, but I can’t even remember the password to my own house.”
She was referring to Ji Qingyou’s requirements for the study.
One night when she was seventeen, Ji Qingyou was explaining problems to Yu Qinjiu in the study. Suddenly, Yu Qinjiu pulled her to lie down side by side on the floor of the study. In the swaying moonlight, they looked out the window. That window was very small. Lying down, you could basically only see the stars and the moon, nothing else.
Yu Qinjiu was dissatisfied with this view. At that time, Ji Qingyou spent a lot of time in the study because she liked studying and reading. But Yu Qinjiu didn’t want Ji Qingyou to not be able to see anything when she was in the study. So Yu Qinjiu concluded then that she had to become an architect in the future, to design a unique house type. So that when you lie on the floor of the study and look outside, you can see, hear, and feel the wonderful world.
Back then, she had the innocence and boldness of youth, and she also carried the quiet, heavy Ji Qingyou along with her, starting to roam the universe.
And the universe Ji Qingyou wanted was: fluid yet orderly, vivid yet safe.
Very abstract requirements.
But Yu Qinjiu turned those abstract requirements into concrete ones that night: there had to be the kind of complete houses Ji Qingyou liked best; there had to be water and mountains, and if there were no mountains, then trees, and the trees had to be special, preferably not the sycamore trees that covered Nanwu City, but the persimmon tree in her grandmother’s yard; if she couldn’t find one, she would move her grandmother’s tree over; there had to be sound, because that night they were listening to the ferry sirens, so Yu Qinjiu embedded that sound in it too; there had to be a huge floor-to-ceiling window.
Ji Qingyou didn’t know how Yu Qinjiu had so many concrete ideas.
But she remembered that night, Yu Qinjiu vividly and richly described the colors of the future for her, connecting her to this vibrant world.
So when she learned that she and Yu Qinjiu were neighbors, Ji Qingyou was not at all surprised. Because it wasn’t a coincidence at all, but a logical trajectory following the rules of how gears turn.
The memory came to an abrupt end.
Ji Qingyou gently closed her eyelids. When she opened her eyes again, Yu Qinjiu was still in front of her, not a mirage. Her eyes were full of laughter, but not as innocent and carefree as in the memory.
There was always a kind of wavering, a feeling of not landing on solid ground.
But the more it was like this, the more one wanted to keep her by one’s side, hold her tight, bring her into one’s own airtight protective shield, and not let anyone shatter her.
But ironically, the protective shield also had inward-pointing thorns.
Ji Qingyou pushed the chaotic thoughts out of her mind. She lowered her head and took a sip of the now-cold cold medicine. Her fingertips lightly rubbed the rim of the cup. When the lingering smell of the medicine in the cup filled her nose, covering Yu Qinjiu’s scent, she finally spoke.
“Yu Qinjiu, why did you become an architect?”
Yu Qinjiu stopped drying her hair. The soft towel fell onto her shoulder. She turned her eyes sideways to meet Ji Qingyou’s gaze.
After a few seconds of confrontation.
She smiled lightly. “When I was little, I always thought I’d end up being a snowman builder for a job. But later, I heard that your house had caught fire. I thought, if only I had been there when your house was on fire.”
“Then I would have definitely found a way to save you. I wouldn’t have let you be locked in the study alone. I wouldn’t have let you have the aftereffect of ‘difficulty speaking for long periods of time.’ I wouldn’t have let you get laughed at for sounding like a robot every time you struggled to speak because of the respiratory burns…”
Ji Qingyou clenched her fingertips tighter, suddenly finding it hard to breathe.
“But there are no ‘what-ifs’ in this world. I can’t go back to your childhood, and I couldn’t save you back then.”
Yu Qinjiu clutched the towel in her hands, slightly lowering her head. “Later, I went looking for models, looking for photos. When the photos I had taken for you filled up an album, I was flipping through them and suddenly realized that none of these houses were designed well. The fire prevention devices in them were all overlooked.”
“I suddenly thought, if one day I gave you an album full of buildings I had designed, or if one day you lived in a house that made you feel particularly safe, and you remembered it was designed by me, wouldn’t that be incredibly fulfilling…”
As she spoke, she looked at Ji Qingyou, curved her eyes, and smiled. Her tone became lighter. “Okay, actually, all of the above are false, formulaic words.”
“Although I do hope the houses I design can give you a sense of security, the real, most fundamental reason I became an architect is…”
Ji Qingyou looked at her, her eye sockets feeling as dry and raw as if she were being swept back into that fire.
Yu Qinjiu walked over, spread the towel over Ji Qingyou’s head, and gently dried the moisture in her hair. She wrapped her in the towel, holding the ends, and slowly, gently pulled the distance between them closer.
Her eyes curved into beautiful crescents. Her voice was extremely, extremely soft.
“Winter is too short. I couldn’t make building snowmen into a career.”
