After reading it, she took a deep breath. Facing her messy face and expression in the mirror, she forced a not-so-pretty, even stiff, but completely genuine smile.
Before leaving, Ji Qingyou had asked to use her bathroom. She was in there for five minutes without the sound of water running. At the time, Yu Qinjiu hadn’t understood why Ji Qingyou, who lived right across the hall, needed to use hers.
But now she knew.
Ji Qingyou had anticipated her thoughts, penetrated her heart like a reflection of her soul, knowing she would feel helpless and flustered again when she looked in the mirror.
So.
Dr. Ji, who didn’t just treat illness but was always healing, Dr. Ji, who wasn’t good with words but was skilled at capturing details, who would buy an Ultraman watch for Yu Zhijiu who loved Ultraman, would also, after something like this happened to Yu Qinjiu, draw a pair of rabbit ears on her mirror and leave her a note:
“Since I know the password to your place, I thought I should exchange it with a secret. I’ve thought about my secrets from childhood to now, and there aren’t many I haven’t shared with you. But the one I most want to share with you today is—you are the prettiest five-year-old girl I have ever seen.
No one has broken that record so far.”
The words on the note were written hastily, and after writing them, Ji Qingyou seemed to feel something was off. “Five-year-old” was added in smaller letters underneath.
There were no overly sweet words in this note, and it even categorized the twenty-eight-year-old Yu Qinjiu as a “five-year-old girl.” But that didn’t stop her from feeling happy.
She even found herself thinking that if Ji Qingyou had written: “You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen.”
Without the “five-year-old” qualifier.
She might not have been able to believe it so easily, nor would she have been so comforted.
This sentence was like melting the rusty iron net around her heart. A gentle, warm breeze blew in from outside the net, calming her flustered, uneasy emotions and drawing out some long-suppressed fantasies.
Repressed reason said: You shouldn’t cross the line anymore. Being able to meet again should be enough. A long-term friendship is more suitable than a brief, ambiguous fling. Meeting Ji Qingyou again was already hard-won. You absolutely cannot let this relationship become like the last ten years, where you completely cut off contact.
The illusory emotion said: But she said I’m the prettiest five-year-old girl. Not fifteen, not twenty-five…
But five years old.
After washing up, Yu Qinjiu placed the note Ji Qingyou had left carefully between the pages of a book.
She used it as a bookmark, neatly, not even damaging the torn edges. She kept the words intact, allowing them to remain in her life, serving as a miracle of healing in that moment.
She put the book away and was about to sleep when she accidentally bumped her phone on the bedside table. The screen lit up instantly, showing several missed calls.
Her breath caught in her throat, like a fish bone stuck there, impossible to swallow or dissolve.
A suffocating feeling nearly drowned her.
She took a few deep breaths, pulled out her SIM card, snapped it in half, and threw it into the trash can with all her might.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed, staring gloomily at the broken SIM card in the trash. After a few minutes, she averted her gaze, turned on the small bedside lamp, and took out an old Sony DV and a developed photo from the drawer.
The photo was from ten years ago, taken with this DV. It was a bit old, the colors slightly yellowed. On the back was a message handwritten by Li Nanli:
There’s no feast that doesn’t end, except for Yu Qinjiu and Ji Qingyou!
Back then, everyone thought Yu Qinjiu and Ji Qingyou would never be apart. Even if the world ended, they would always be the best of friends. Even Yu Qinjiu herself thought so.
That’s why Li Nanli gave this photo to Yu Qinjiu after the graduation ceremony, adding the inscription.
The photo was taken one day in high school. Yu Qinjiu had drawn two rabbit ears on the window behind Ji Qingyou. She signaled to Li Nanli, who casually asked Ji Qingyou a question. When Ji Qingyou looked up, Li Nanli captured the moment, a photo of a young, innocent, and bewildered girl.
It was a rainy early summer day, the world outside stormy. The glass windows in the classroom were slightly misty, giving the photo a sense of imminent rain, as if you could almost smell the earthy scent of the rain.
The usually cool, emotionless girl held her pale neck straight, a look of surprise on her face as she met the DV. Her dark pupils reflected a flickering light, her eyelashes long and delicate, her eyes bright and soft, like the nascent light of dawn.
Seventeen-year-old Ji Qingyou possessed a kind of transparent, youthful beauty.
Li Nanli’s DV didn’t just capture this one photo. It also held several carefully preserved videos. After graduation, when she heard that Yu Qinjiu was going abroad and might never return, Li Nanli was surprised but still met with her and eventually gave her the DV.
Yu Qinjiu asked why.
Li Nanli thought for a moment, leaning on her cheek, and said cautiously, “Because I don’t have anything else to give you. It was already broken anyway, and the memory card got water damaged once, so it’s not worth much. But I thought it had a lot of records of Ji Qingyou on it. I don’t know if it can be fixed, but I figured, just in case… if it can, and if you miss her after you go abroad, you can look at it more often.”
At that time, Li Nanli didn’t know what had happened between Yu Qinjiu and Ji Qingyou. She still thought they were just a pair of best friends that not even the apocalypse could separate.
Yu Qinjiu couldn’t bring herself to explain. She fumbled through her pockets and found her old Apple phone, which hadn’t been charged in ages. It was a gift from Yu Muzhou when he was in grad school and working part-time.
She stared at it for a long, long time. Finally, she pulled out the SIM card, snapped it, and gave the phone, which was quite valuable at the time, to Li Nanli. Her lips felt dry as she moved them.
“Then I’ll trade you this for it.”
Li Nanli shook her head, saying it wasn’t necessary.
Yu Qinjiu awkwardly shoved it into Li Nanli’s hands, leaving her with a “I don’t want it anyway, and it’d be a shame to throw it away,” and left the country with the DV Li Nanli had given her.
After it was repaired, a lot of data on the memory card was lost. Only a few precious videos remained, with low resolution and no way to fix them.
They were precious records Li Nanli had left, mostly about Ji Qingyou.
Walking to the cafeteria, Li Nanli asked Ji Qingyou what she wanted to eat. Ji Qingyou, holding a book and smoothing her wind-blown hair, said nonchalantly, “Yu Qinjiu already got it for me.”
During a certain PE class, Li Nanli filmed Yu Qinjiu playing volleyball. She then swung the camera over to Ji Qingyou, who was reading on a wooden bench, and asked her, “Where’s this hat from? I’ve never seen it before.”
Ji Qingyou pushed the camera away. Her soft face was split by the sunlight and the shadow of the hat brim, her drooping eyelashes clearly defined. She said softly, “It’s Yu Qinjiu’s.”
In a dimly lit KTV, the room was noisy. Someone was singing Jay Chou’s “Dandelion’s Promise” in the background, completely off-key. Li Nanli was laughing her head off but still aimed the DV at Yu Qinjiu, who was clinging to a bottle of pineapple beer like it was her own baby. “Looks like Yu Qinjiu is drunk.”
Then she swung the lens from Ji Qingyou’s knee to her face, practically shoving it in her face. “Quick, think of something?”
Ji Qingyou gave the camera a cold look and said only a few words. “Yu Qinjiu, let go.”
Yu Qinjiu obediently let go in the video, smacked her lips, and fell asleep. The beer can nearly slipped from her hand. But before it could, Ji Qingyou had already grabbed it and thrown it in the trash, also carefully cradling Yu Qinjiu’s head to rest on her own lap.
Amidst the chaotic background noise, Li Nanli sighed, “Only you can do that.”
The set video looped automatically.
The scene shifted from the dim KTV to darkness. This was a video Yu Qinjiu had watched countless times, its faint light illuminating countless silent nights. It was so small, yet it was the last plank she grabbed onto as she surfaced.
She guessed it was recorded on that rainy day. After taking Ji Qingyou’s photo, Li Nanli had frantically stuffed the DV into a drawer and accidentally hit the record button. The view was pitch black, only the sound recorded.
In the noisy classroom, the sounds of conversation were fragmented. The fan creaked. There was the sound of Ji Qingyou closing the window, wiping the marker marks off the glass, then sitting back down and writing on her test paper.
The video lasted thirteen minutes and twenty-four seconds.
At twelve minutes and fifty-four seconds, Li Nanli suddenly started a topic with Ji Qingyou. “Hey Ji Qingyou, I heard next year is the apocalypse. Do you believe it?”
The sound of a chair scraping was heard. Ji Qingyou’s cool voice sounded amidst the pattering rain. “No.”
“But what if?” Li Nanli persisted. “What if December next year really is the end of the world? What would you do on that day?”
“Nothing.” Ji Qingyou’s disinterest was a stark contrast to Li Nanli’s curiosity.
Rumors were popular back then. For example, the apocalypse would bring three consecutive days of darkness, the sun wouldn’t rise on December 22nd, and there was the mysteriously prophesied safe haven of Bugarach, a small French village.
Li Nanli wasn’t satisfied with her answer. “Other people’s fantasies could be material for a story, but you just plan to do nothing?”
Ji Qingyou didn’t speak, letting the noisy classroom sounds continue for a few dozen seconds before she hesitantly spoke.
“I’d probably still be in the study, reading, studying…”
Her voice gradually faded, becoming unclear. Then came a bout of chaotic, piercing noise that drowned out the rest of her words.
Yu Qinjiu placed the DV on the bed and hugged her knees. Her gaze turned towards the window. The sky was already lightening, the winter’s typical grayish-blue covering all the city’s buildings, coating them in a dull color.
She slightly lowered her eyes, counting down four point five seconds.
The dim video jolted. It was probably Ji Qingyou getting up from her chair. Li Nanli muttered, “Alright, even studying during the apocalypse.”
After this line, a passing boy yelled, “Hey class monitor, can I borrow a pen?” A girl from somewhere threw a book at him, muttering, “Move away, your stench is getting on me.” A physics teacher passing by knocked on the door to call the class rep out to grade papers.
After these few lines played, after another one point two seconds, seventeen-year-old Ji Qingyou would appear again. Amidst the noisy, chaotic environment, her distant, gentle voice would drift over from 2011.
“With Yu Qinjiu.”
