This quiet game of tug-of-war wasn’t happening between Ji Qingyou and Yu Qinjiu. Instead, it seemed to be happening… between Yu Qinjiu, Ji Qingyou, and Yu Qinjiu’s mother.
This made her wonder:
And what about Ji Qingyou? Whose side was she on?
–
The camping ground on Saturday was very lively. By the time they drove there, the park was already full of people, gathered in groups.
Some groups of young people were taking pictures with picnic blankets spread out, displaying colorful food. Some families were playing with kids strapped to their backs and blasting music. There were also corgis running wild all over the park, restrained only by their leashes.
Their chosen spot was near the river, next to a tangli pear tree full of blossoms. The pure white flowers were studded among the green leaves, awakening the vitality hidden within this spring.
Brittany seemed very interested in setting up the tent. She willingly worked alongside Ji Qingyou, who could assemble anything just by reading the instructions, and Yu Qinjiu, who, despite yawning continuously, was also very keen.
Lin Yingxiang and Qin Bailan sat on camping chairs, watching the flowing river with solemn expressions, as if engaged in a secret conversation. But if you listened closely, they were still debating the strict criteria of whether “forty years old” qualified as middle-aged or old.
Qin Shuangchi, observing all this, sensed something was off. Her gaze darted around, but she could only purse her lips and look away.
Her eyes scanned the area, finally stopping on the particularly eye-catching Ji Xiruan, who was standing out in a patch of grass. Unlike her usual uniform at the hospital, today Ji Xiruan was wearing a magenta knit sweater and wide-leg jeans, with a colorful ethnic-style sash around her waist.
She looked exceptionally vibrant.
Qin Shuangchi realized this was the first time she had met Ji Xiruan outside the hospital.
“Dr. Ji, you look really pretty today.” The compliment was sincere.
Ji Xiruan was stunned for a few seconds, flustered as she smoothed her hair. “Thank you, Dr. Qin.”
Li Nanli, who was beside her, couldn’t stand it anymore and nudged her elbow.
Ji Xiruan understood. “Oh, oh. Dr. Qin, you look really pretty today too.”
Qin Shuangchi laughed, bending over. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” Ji Xiruan asked back.
Qin Shuangchi thought for a second. “Just that I think you’re pretty.”
Ji Xiruan’s voice dropped to a mosquito-like mumble. “Oh.”
Li Nanli watched them for a while, clicked her tongue, and turned to leave, but was grabbed by the blushing Ji Xiruan.
“Where are you going?” Ji Xiruan asked.
Li Nanli pried her fingers off one by one, pointing to a group of young people camping nearby. “A handsome guy over there invited me to play some games with them. I’m going.”
With that, she walked over.
Ji Xiruan stared at her, finally letting out a sigh. “Pay attention, will you? Don’t over-exert yourself.”
With a wave of her hand, Li Nanli indicated she understood.
Ji Xiruan breathed a sigh of relief, but felt Qin Shuangchi’s gaze on her. She stiffly turned her head back and gave a dry laugh. “What are you looking at me for, Dr. Qin?”
“Just think you’re really cute.” Qin Shuangchi was very direct. “I didn’t notice it in the hospital before. Now that you’re out, I see that Dr. Ji is really quite adorable.”
Ji Xiruan pursed her lips, glanced at her, and said very seriously, “Actually, I’m not really the cute type.”
Qin Shuangchi was taken aback.
Ji Xiruan continued, “I’m Rh-negative.”
Qin Shuangchi didn’t get it.
Ji Xiruan frowned. “Not funny?”
Qin Shuangchi burst out laughing. She laughed so hard she couldn’t stand upright under Ji Xiruan’s serious gaze. Finally, she patted her shoulder and nodded. “Funny. Funny and cute.”
Xiruan hissed, sucking in a breath. “Dr. Qin, you don’t know your own strength again…”
“Sorry, sorry.” Qin Shuangchi hastily gave her shoulder a gentle rub. “Are you okay, Dr. Ji? I used to fight with boys a lot when I was a kid, so I tend to use too much force.”
“It’s fine.” Ji Xiruan shook her head.
Qin Shuangchi breathed a sigh of relief, but didn’t let go. She continued rubbing her shoulder. After a moment, as if remembering something, she laughed and said, “But we are quite fated, aren’t we?”
Ji Xiruan tensed her shoulders and asked cautiously, “Fated how?”
“Actually, I was adopted. I grew up in an orphanage until I was seven. You know that, right? Back then, our headmistress aunt was Rh-negative.” As Qin Shuangchi spoke, she seemed lost in memory. “I remember she was so busy with all of us kids, she couldn’t manage her own time. She had a child very late in life, already considered an older mother. She had severe hemorrhaging during childbirth. Conditions weren’t as good back then. For a mother with hemorrhaging to survive was very difficult, especially with such a rare blood type.”
Ji Xiruan watched her quietly.
She continued, “I don’t know where I found the courage back then. I led all the kids from the orphanage to the hospital. They were all crying louder than the next. Amidst those cries, I remembered that Rh-negative blood type was panda blood, and I also remembered that every mother who gives life takes a huge risk.”
“Is that why you became an obstetrician-gynecologist?” Ji Xiruan’s eyes felt hot, but she lowered them to hide it when Shuangchi looked over.
“It’s not that grand.” Qin Shuangchi laughed. “It was just a small seed planted in my heart. Come to think of it, I’ve been so busy with work these past few years, I haven’t visited the headmistress aunt in a long time. I think the last time I saw her was on a…”
“Plane.” Ji Xiruan took over. “You were saving someone. She was watching from behind with her daughter. After getting off the plane, you took her out to eat and secretly slipped five hundred yuan into her daughter’s bag. Her daughter was wearing shoes that were rubbing her feet raw, and was in a lot of pain but didn’t dare say anything. You noticed, and while eating, you went out and bought her a pair of shoes, and put medicine on her feet…”
She spoke in fragments.
Shuangchi grew more and more surprised. As Xiruan spoke, the memories quickly came back. Finally, she came to a conclusion. “You’re the headmistress aunt’s daughter?”
Ji Xiruan stared at her, was silent for a few seconds, then nodded with a smile. “Yes.”
“So we’ve met before. I had no memory of it at all.” Qin Shuangchi murmured. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“It’s nothing worth mentioning.” Ji Xiruan lowered her eyes slightly.
“I don’t bite.” Qin Shuangchi thought she felt pressured around her, like Ji Qingyou did, and frowned slightly. But then she remembered something. “No, wait. Actually, we’ve met more than once before.”
Now it was Xiruan’s turn to be surprised. She thought hard but couldn’t recall when else she and Qin Shuangchi had met. Her face was full of confusion.
“It’s normal you don’t remember. You were no different from a little monkey then.” Qin Shuangchi looked her over for a moment, then laughed and gently rubbed her head. Her voice was soft.
“Dr. Ji, you were the first little monkey I ever held.”
–
When Ji Xiruan ran over, her face bright red, Yu Qinjiu had only set up half the tent. But Ji Xiruan suddenly said “Sorry” to her, then dragged Ji Qingyou away. They were whispering about something, no one knew what.
Brittany scratched her head and continued following the instructions to set up the tent.
Yu Qinjiu watched Ji Xiruan and Qingyou’s secret talk with displeasure. She was distracted, so her hands got tangled up. Finally, she had to ask Brittany, “How did I just do this?”
Brittany looked at the messy bundle of tent fabric in her hands, but couldn’t find the clip in the tangle, so she could only shake her head.
Qin Shuangchi, who was free, came over to help. She straightened out the tent fabric in a couple of moves, but noticed that Qinjiu’s attention seemed fixed on Qingyou.
“She and Dr. Ji are just good friends.” Qin Shuangchi explained instinctively.
Yu Qinjiu was a little surprised to be caught, but smiled back at Shuangchi. “I know.”
Qin Shuangchi raised an eyebrow and didn’t say anything more.
After a few seconds, she brought it up again. “Do you remember that time Little You adopted a cat? Did something happen that we don’t know about?”
“I remember.” Yu Qinjiu said, her eyelashes drooping slightly, as if being pulled into a cruel scene. Her voice softened.
“When she was twelve, she found a blue and white cat she really liked on the roadside. That little cat would lick her hand, rub against her leg. It was the first time I saw her look so happy. She didn’t say anything, but I knew. Because at that moment, she felt she finally had something in this world that she truly loved…”
“Although I know you were all good to her, I don’t know if you can understand. It’s like, we have our own mothers to be spoiled by, we have our own homes and rooms where we can do whatever we want, or our own puppies and kittens. Things that belong to us, that are closely connected to us. This kind of possession makes you feel real, not just a guest in this world.”
“But she never felt she had that, until this little cat appeared.” As she spoke, Yu Qinjiu looked at Qin Shuangchi, her eyes showing an undeniable pain, as if she were the one who had lost the cat.
“It was a Friday. The weather wasn’t great. There was a faint, misty rain. She sat by the roadside without a word. She didn’t cry. She just dug a hole and buried the cat, wrapped in newspaper, inside. That was the cat’s previous home. I was with her. She washed her hands thirteen times. Then, very quietly, she told me that her cousin had taken the cat and killed it.”
Hearing this, Brittany stopped what she was doing and huddled closer to Yu Qinjiu, a little scared. “How could there be such a cruel person?”
Qin Shuangchi’s pupils contracted. “Killed it?”
“Mm, killed it. In a very cruel way.” Yu Qinjiu said calmly, her expression as if it had happened to her.
After spending every minute of her childhood with Ji Qingyou.
She could almost empathize with Qingyou completely. Recounting this, she felt a little suffocated. She couldn’t help but press her hand to her chest, which was starting to feel tight. An innate empathy system she shared with Qingyou.
“Why?” Qin Shuangchi’s voice rose, her emotions becoming intense.
Yu Qinjiu lowered her eyes. “Because she really liked that cat. Because she considered that cat the only thing she had ever truly owned in this world.”
“Just for that?”
After asking, Qin Shuangchi quickly understood. Yes, just for that. Because the people in her family harbored a kind of disgust and a desire to destroy Ji Qingyou. As if only by destroying Qingyou could they destroy the role of mother in Qin Bailan’s life.
And that cousin who killed the cat, probably didn’t even remember the incident, and would come to the hospital cheerfully with fruit to visit Qingyou and Shuangchi.
Shuangchi hadn’t noticed anything strange about Qingyou’s reaction at the time. She only sensed that Qingyou hadn’t eaten the fruit her cousin brought. Just like she had known nothing about what happened in Qingyou’s childhood.
Yu Qinjiu didn’t continue this topic.
But Qin Shuangchi was silent, watching Qingyou, who was standing under the bright sunlight not far away. She stood quietly under the sunlight and the tangli pear tree, whole and complete. No one remembered that her beloved kitten had once been killed in a cruel way.
Except for Yu Qinjiu.
She remembered the event happened on a drizzly Friday. She remembered it was something Qingyou had once considered as her own. She remembered Qingyou washed her hands thirteen times that day. She remembered Qingyou’s sadness. And she remembered that was Qingyou’s most beloved kitten, which would rub against her legs and lick her hands.
Yet Yu Qinjiu, who remembered everything about Qingyou so clearly, needed Qin Shuangchi’s prompting to remember where she had put the tent pegs she just took out. She would find out, when taking out her phone, that she had forgotten to bring her charger again. And when Brittany said she had also raised a kitten, she squinted in recollection and asked suspiciously, “Did you?”
Qin Shuangchi silently listened to the discussion between Qinjiu and Brittany, until a gust of wind woke her. Almost without hesitation, she contacted the friend who had the litter of kittens, asking for three little coal balls.
One for Ji Xiruan, one for Li Nanli.
As for the last one, she couldn’t say whether it was for Ji Qingyou or Yu Qinjiu, or for them to raise together as Lin Yingxiang had suggested. She only thought:
They all deserved to have a cat that could not be killed.
