Chapter 7: MAMA-07

MAMA-07: Do you like me?

Saying it like that made it sound even stranger, but a little child wouldn’t understand. The kid already knew Aunt Wanji had no mom or dad. Hearing this, she remembered the old lady she and her mom had visited in the hospital.

Jian Wanji’s family ties were thin; she hadn’t started a family. Zeng Baian often told her daughter to care more for Aunt Daji when she grew up.

“Auntie, are you missing your mommy very much?” the little child asked earnestly.

Jian Wanji let out an “uh” sound. She knew the little girl had misunderstood. Zeng Baian had a fiery, impetuous personality, but her child was not much like her—very sentimental, likely taking after the father more.

Still, very considerate. Sometimes overly so, just like now. Jian Wanji had no idea how much her friend had dramatized to her daughter about her future as a lonely old woman, destitute and helpless, paralyzed in bed without even someone to bring her tea. Right now, she just felt a headache.

“…More or less.” She couldn’t bear to shatter the child’s fantasy. She glanced at Mi Shanxin; the other woman seemed resolute. Jian Wanji had no choice but to take the kid away first. “Yueyue, who’s picking you up today? Should I take you…”

“Teacher, just say yes to Auntie.” The child ran up to Mi Shanxin, looking up at the teacher who had tied back her stray hair to look more energetic for class. “She lost her mommy and daddy when she was about my age. She’s very pitiful.”

“Yueyue, stop.” Jian Wanji felt embarrassed herself. She wasn’t exactly being ethical, insisting on Mi Shanxin specifically, but she hadn’t planned on using this to gain sympathy.

Though plenty of people lost their parents by forty, having both parents alive was the most ordinary kind of happiness. It wasn’t something just anyone could get. She picked up the child, suddenly appearing very gentle. “Teacher also has things to do. How about I take you downstairs to wait for your mom and dad, okay?”

“Okay.” The child was carried away by Jian Wanji. Before leaving, the woman turned around and said goodbye to Mi Shanxin, “See you tomorrow.”

She clearly wasn’t planning on giving up, looking like she intended to come again tomorrow.

Mi Shanxin tidied her teaching materials, put on her backpack, and went downstairs, just in time to see Jian Wanji handing off the child on the first floor.

The person picking up the kid wasn’t the short-haired woman from yesterday; it should be the woman’s husband. He exchanged a few words with Jian Wanji and left with the child.

The center had classes all day long, and the schedules were staggered.

Mi Shanxin had no living allowance during the holidays. Her father gave her living expenses via bank transfer, a thousand yuan a month. For an ordinary university student in Ning City, that only sustained basic life functions. Paid entertainment was pure fantasy.

Her mother had asked about her living expenses. Once she found out Mi Shanxin only got a thousand yuan, she occasionally sent her some money too. But she would also complain to Mi Shanxin, saying she was now on salary, dealing with the younger sister who needed both doctor visits and a special school, stretched too thin, and so on.

Mi Shanxin often faced long walls of voice-to-text messages and didn’t know how to reply.

Initially, she racked her brains to offer comfort, but later realized her mother simply ignored her lengthy responses and continued sending her own. She understood she was more like a breathing electronic mailbox.

Maybe an AI would be more human; Mom should get that kind of device for conversation.

Mi Shanxin had repeatedly failed at part-time jobs before. Even during college, the stage where most people were at their most energetic, she suffered from poor sleep and a weak body, struggling to earn even a little money.

Now, the vlog path seemed blocked too. Only the part-time job at the center could fill the gaps in her life.

When she’d mustered the rare thick-skinned courage to ask her father for more, he’d retorted that he was also paying the household utility bills.

His attitude was crystal clear. Mi Shanxin couldn’t be bothered to mention the miscellaneous daily expenses or the maintenance of aging equipment.

Her relationship with her relatives was worse than a typical landlord-tenant one. Her dad said he’d already done his utmost; otherwise, once Mi Shanxin turned eighteen, he wouldn’t have been responsible at all. At least he still paid tuition and living expenses.

Mi Shanxin deliberately hid behind the large fortune plant, wanting to wait until Jian Wanji left.

Just then, her mother suddenly called.

The woman rarely called Mi Shanxin proactively; most communication was on WeChat. Mi Shanxin answered, letting out a “Hello.”

“Shanxin, do you have any money in your WeChat right now? Transfer me five hundred kuai.”

Mi Shanxin: “What’s wrong?”

Mom: “My bank card isn’t working. I’m at the supermarket checkout with your sister.”

Mi Shanxin: “You need five hundred?”

Mom: “Don’t tell me you don’t have five hundred. Your dad definitely gives you money for the New Year, right?”

Mi Shanxin didn’t bother explaining and just transferred the money.

She didn’t have much cash left in total anyway. The bank card her grandpa had mentioned on his deathbed—her father had taken that too. The promise about tuition was made by the old man to his son before he breathed his last. With all the neighbors present, he’d even recorded a video to ensure his granddaughter could finish college.

It didn’t matter whether Mi Shanxin actually got into the Calligraphy Department or was transferred to a different school—she had to attend.

This was probably the only thing the old man, a security guard his entire life, had insisted upon.

He and his wife had worked diligently all their lives, sending their eldest son to a top university, the younger one abroad for study, and then supporting their granddaughter learning calligraphy to get into college. Still the belief that knowledge changes destiny.

Mi Shanxin didn’t know if her grandfather had regrets. Her father’s filial piety was barely adequate—no real care or concern. Visiting home for the holidays, he’d even take away the organic vegetables given by grandpa’s friends who farmed in the suburbs. Even the seeds got packed up.

She didn’t understand when she was young; as she grew older, she understood why Mom got divorced. Dad was too stingy.

How someone so miserly could remarry, Mi Shanxin didn’t get that either. Thinking deeper was a waste of energy; she’d rather sleep.

“Heading home?” A voice suddenly sounded. Mi Shanxin jumped, startled, almost leaping up.

Jian Wanji let out an “Huh?” “Didn’t you say my perfume makes you want to vomit? Why no coughing now?”

Mi Shanxin turned off her phone screen. “Eavesdropping on someone’s privacy is rude.”

Jian Wanji was still smiling, as if being openly insulted didn’t change her attitude, which only made the other person angrier.

“Didn’t see it clearly.” Jian Wanji said. “The screen is shattered like that and you still haven’t replaced it?”

Mi Shanxin: “What’s it to you?”

Jian Wanji: “I wish it was something to me.”

She was tall, and still wore high heels. Mi Shanxin had thought as a child she could grow to 170 cm, because her dad was quite tall. Her mother was also 165 cm. Reaching her mother’s height was a struggle; even 160 cm seemed far off. Li Yin always said it didn’t matter, this way she could hold an umbrella for her.

When the sky falls, we tall people hold it up, right?

Unfair, Mi Shanxin thought. Even standing on two bricks, she wouldn’t be taller than Jian Wanji.

Why did tall people now wear such high heels too? No wonder Teacher Wang told her to act a bit more like a teacher, otherwise she’d never manage teaching middle schoolers. Did educating students require stilts? They meant she lacked presence.

Mi Shanxin stared at Jian Wanji for a long while. The lobby on the first floor was bustling with people coming and going. The fortune plant was huge, easily concealing two people.

The ceiling lights were sliced by the bamboo-like leaves. Mi Shanxin’s pale, bloodless face was dappled with fragmented light and shadow, making her look even more like a wandering spirit.

Jian Wanji thought: Skinny as a rail, ill-fitting clothes, peeling backpack, her thermos looked like battle-damaged gear. How did her parents raise a kid to this ghastly state?

A stray dog raising itself would do a better job than she was doing for herself.

As Jian Wanji was formulating her words, the girl staring at her suddenly said: “Do you like me?”

Jian Wanji, normally so glib: …

She looked like she’d swallowed a fly, her expression panicked. She even glanced around furtively for a moment, as if she were stealing something. “What are you saying, Student Shanxin, Teacher Mi!”

This person was probably used to being chummy with others, her sense of social distance practically zero. Combined with that frivolous and flirtatious voice, Mi Shanxin suspected she could chat for ages with someone she’d just met.

She enjoyed seeing people like this flustered. It was fun.

Right now, Jian Wanji didn’t dare be handsy, keeping a proper distance from Mi Shanxin. She was practically swearing to the heavens. “Of course not, don’t listen to a child’s nonsense.”

“I want you to act as my mother, not be my mother. Do you understand the difference?”

“Acting, OK?”

Jian Wanji almost bit her tongue. Her gestures were exaggerated, her permed, off-center bangs swaying back and forth, much like the waggling ears of a lop-eared dog.

A woman old enough to have given birth to me should be intimidating. How could she be cute?

Mi Shanxin stared at Jian Wanji. Her eyes, dark as lacquer, finally caught a tiny highlight in the light—like the moon that shines only because of the sun, possessing no luminosity of its own.

Yet she operated independently, spinning on her own axis until death, accidents aside.

“Role-playing, I understand.” Mi Shanxin looked at Jian Wanji. “You’re just sexually harassing me. Lecherous.”

Even someone as weathered as Jian Wanji couldn’t help but gasp sharply at those six words, stepping back twice. She almost looked at Mi Shanxin with teary, wounded eyes.

“That’s going too far, Student Shanxin. I have absolutely no thoughts in that direction about you.”

Mi Shanxin asked: “Are you straight?”

Without waiting for Jian Wanji to answer, she revealed her own orientation: “I’m not.”

Jian Wanji: …

She realized this child didn’t conform to norms in either behavior or speech, shattering all her preconceptions. Despite being so much older, she felt like a cat being kneaded on a chopping board, only able to mewl with tearful eyes.

Jian Wanji didn’t know what to say and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

But Mi Shanxin showed a rare smile. She smiled so infrequently—there was hardly anything joyful in her life, and even funny videos left her expressionless. This pull at the corner of her mouth was more like a horror film.

No joy, only triumph. Slightly eerie, her delicate, fine features just barely maintaining a thin veneer of beauty.

“Don’t go!” Jian Wanji refused to give up, catching up in a few quick strides. “This has nothing to do with me commissioning you to act.”

“If you still don’t believe me, you can come with me to the hospice ward.”

“If my grandmother really mistakes you for my mother, you’ll agree, okay?”

Jian Wanji shed her facetious grin. She frowned, reaching through Mi Shanxin’s sleeve to grasp her arm, like holding a discarded prop doll.

Too thin. She was probably wearing several layers under that hoodie, yet she didn’t look bulky. That frame was likely even more slender than expected.

Mi Shanxin didn’t pull away. They stood at the entrance of the center’s building, the occasional parent and child passing by. The winter wind howled outside; it was already dark.

Yesterday’s meeting with Li Yin counted as their second post-winter-break dinner. The next one might have to wait until the semester started again.

Mi Shanxin grew up in Ning City. She had many classmates, but wasn’t close to most.

The “medium-rare” friendships were formed in high school, more like a group centered around Li Yin. Mi Shanxin wouldn’t meet anyone else from that group one-on-one; there was nothing to say anyway.

They needed Li Yin, not Mi Shanxin.

Right now, Jian Wanji’s gaze at Mi Shanxin was like a flame.

You’re the only one who will do.

As if Mi Shanxin could truly be needed this way.

Mi Shanxin’s heart rarely stirred. She looked at Jian Wanji with a gaze hard to read as fervent, and said calmly: “Fine, then treat me to dinner.”

“I’m very hungry.”

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Someone won’t be able to escape now. [Cai Gou (rookie dog) meme]