Chapter 8

The winter evening wind was light and cold, but their linked hands were warm.

Zhou Siyou pulled Zhong Qing along, striding forward with big steps.

Zhou Siyou felt as if she were walking on the wind itself, and her heart drifted along with it.

Then Zhong Qing’s voice came abruptly from behind:

“Do you even know where we’re going?”

Zhou Siyou stopped in her tracks, brow furrowing.

She had been about to reply: You’ve only been back a few days. You think you know this area better than I do?

But what came out was the tone of a humble student. “No idea, Teacher Zhong. Please, lead the way.”

Zhong Qing swatted her hand away. “Just follow me properly.”

Zhou Siyou nodded obediently. “Okay.”

“That way.” Zhong Qing tugged lightly at her sleeve, pointing out a direction.

“Okay.”

Zhou Siyou followed along without complaint.

Along the street, voices murmured and bustled. Passing breezes collided and folded into one another, overlapping into four or five shadows.

Zhou Siyou watched those strange, shifting shadows settle on Zhong Qing’s hair, like flowing light.

The crosswalk countdown hit zero, and they stood waiting at the signal.

Zhong Qing spoke again. “Jiang Jin is a housewife.”

“Ah…” Something seemed to occur to Zhou Siyou, and she answered without thinking. “What a terrible thing to be.”

“I know. But don’t interrupt.” Zhong Qing shot her a faint sidelong glance, then repeated herself. “Jiang Jin is a housewife. After marriage, her daily routine is making food, cleaning the house, going out to buy groceries, coming home to cook. Day after day, the same.”

“Doesn’t she have any other hobbies?” Zhou Siyou asked.

“She does,” Zhong Qing said.

But after that single word, she offered nothing more. The implication was obvious enough: She does. But you’ll have to find the answer yourself.

The light turned green, and Zhou Siyou stepped forward first.

Walking shoulder to shoulder with Zhong Qing, she said, “I bet the time she spends out of the house is Jiang Jin’s favorite part of the day. Wandering the neighborhood streets a little longer after buying the groceries. That’s the only time she belongs entirely to herself.”

Zhong Qing didn’t respond, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

She simply continued. “Jiang Jin and Yuan Qinghua, our female lead and male lead, were student and teacher over a decade ago. Jiang Jin was bullied at school and left with a permanent scar on her wrist. That’s also why she so often ties a colorless ribbon around it.”

“Maybe Jiang Jin understood that in some cases of violence, fighting back only invites worse violence. But for some people, not fighting back simply isn’t an option.”

“Killing him alone would be too hard. Jiang Jin would sooner drag him down with her. And at that moment, the male lead, the music teacher, appears.”

A car sped past. Zhong Qing pulled Zhou Siyou toward the other side of the street, her tone unhurried. “But like you said during the audition wait, none of these relationships hold up under scrutiny. Yuan Qinghua’s so-called rescue is more like a retelling of Lolita.”

“Then… in the church. Was it Jiang Jin who killed that person?”

Zhong Qing didn’t answer. Instead she asked a question of her own. “Zhou Siyou, do you know who Giulia Tofana was?”

Zhou Siyou shook her head.

In the night wind, Zhong Qing looked away, then suddenly let out a soft laugh. “Look it up when we get home. I’m not explaining it to you now.”

The smile vanished as quickly as it came, so brief it felt like an illusion.

Yet it left Zhou Siyou stunned.

It dawned on her that the Zhong Qing of the past had simply been quiet, not someone who never smiled.

Only after everything happened, smiles like that… truly became rare on Zhong Qing’s face. Smiles that came on their own, anyway.

Each lost in her own thoughts, they walked in silence from the street onto the mountain path.

Only the last trace of sunset glow remained in the sky. Looking up, at the end of the trail stood a short, low hill.

Are we climbing that? Zhou Siyou glanced up, puzzled.

But she couldn’t be bothered to ask.

She would just follow Zhong Qing anyway.

The moment she set foot on the trail, Zhou Siyou blinked, then spoke up, a little uncertain. “But, Zhong Qing, about the script, I still have one more question.” She went on, “The scar on Jiang Jin’s wrist… Self-harm? A failed suicide attempt? It’s not that, right?”

Zhong Qing stopped walking.

“You know, Zhou Siyou. On certain matters, or to a certain degree, I see things the same way you do. Suicide is cowardice. Sometimes giving up on yourself might look like the easy way out, but we find it far harder to tolerate the smugness of our enemies. I’m like you in that respect. So you and Jiang Jin… ought to be alike as well.”

She never answered directly, yet she had answered all the same.

Zhou Siyou let out a half-understanding “Oh.”

The wind on all sides grew faint, and so did the sunset colors in the sky.

Zhong Qing glanced at the time and quickened her pace, pulling Zhou Siyou up the trail at a brisk clip.

As she walked, Zhong Qing thought back to that phone call in the dead of night.

The person on the other end had claimed to be the executive assistant of an investor, wanting to discuss casting decisions with her, “out of respect for the investor’s boss.”

The man’s overly familiar tone had displeased her. “I don’t know any Boss Li. All I know is that this is my script.”

With that, she had hung up.

He called back. Zhong Qing muted her phone and let it ring.

Facing the flood of materials now laid before her, she still filtered and chose through the lens of her own understanding and experience.

…Or perhaps it was because she simply couldn’t bring herself to point the camera at anyone else.

Zhong Qing had never been in the habit of taking her plays apart and spoon-feeding them to anyone.

But facing Zhou Siyou now, she found herself explaining the production all the same.

The script, the characters, the background, her own opinions. Everything, down to the smallest detail.

~

A quarter of an hour later, they reached the low summit.

The hill was simply too small, hardly a prime spot for watching the sunset.

But it did let them witness the sun’s dying light before the last bold strokes of cloud faded from the sky.

In a bamboo pavilion on the hillside, Zhong Qing spread a sheet of paper over the stone bench and sat down. She took an iPad out of her bag, picked up a stylus, and began sketching the afterglow.

Zhou Siyou leaned against her, watching her, her thoughts drifting aimlessly, as though she had nothing better to do.

Would Jiang Jin like watching the sunset? Or would she love the sunrise more?

Zhou Siyou’s thoughts wandered without direction, but her gaze kept drifting back, settling on Zhong Qing’s cheek beside her.

She’d been having illusions all day, Zhou Siyou thought.

Why else would she mistake flickering points of light for musical notes, or see the endless stream of traffic as wind sweeping through a hall, or shadows as splashes of color?

Nothing looked quite real. Everything felt like a mirage.

Just like right now, feeling the sunset wash over her, yet somehow catching faint threads of chamomile drifting in it.

…Chamomile?

Since when did the wind smell of chamomile?

Zhou Siyou fixed her stare on the person beside her, eyes burning.

Zhong Qing kept sketching, head lowered, entirely unbothered by the intense gaze.

Too embarrassed to lean in closer, Zhou Siyou just asked quietly, “Are you wearing perfume? It smells like chamomile… with a bit of geranium, maybe.”

Zhong Qing still didn’t look up, only said flatly, “Probably just laundry detergent that didn’t rinse out.”

Zhou Siyou: “…”

The chamomile breeze in her mind died down. The wind stopped blowing.

Zhou Siyou shut her mouth.