Chapter 120: Darkness
The snow had stopped for a while, but it soon started to fall again, turning the world into a vast expanse of white. It looked a little desolate, but the track was still bustling with people. The first snow of early winter seemed to carry a special meaning. A girl held a boy’s hand in her pocket, and the two of them, their noses red from the cold, smiled happily.
It’s almost Christmas Eve… Su Yu thought to himself.
“Hey… what do you think of this?”
An Zhi puffed out her cheeks and stared at her masterpiece. She turned around and nudged Su Yu behind her, asking, “Give me some advice. Why are you just watching? This is my first time making a snowman.”
“What?” Su Yu came back to his senses. He looked at the thing on the ground, which was made of two equally large balls of snow, with two water bottles stuck in it as arms. “Ugly” was probably not enough to describe such an abstract thing. He could only say with a heavy heart, “Not everyone is good at this kind of thing. It’s not bad for the first time. Let’s go back. We can try again next year.”
“What? If it’s ugly, just say it… I don’t want to go yet. Who knows when there will be such a heavy snow again.” An Zhi stubbornly turned her head back and rolled a snowball on the ground with her red, frozen fingers. The snowflakes fell on her dark hair. She let out a whimper and buried her head in her scarf, muttering, “I’ll take a picture for you when it’s done. If you’re cold, you can go back first.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
“No!”
An Zhi said with certainty. She breathed out a white mist. Her fingers, which were on the snow, felt so stiff that they had no sensation. If it had been the old her, she would have probably run away long ago. She didn’t know why, but she felt as if she were throwing a tantrum.
It was all that boy’s fault, the one she had poured milk tea on. She should have poured the whole cup on his head back then. An Zhi secretly cursed that boy to fail all his final exams. She lowered her head and silently rolled the snowball, wondering if that guy behind her had left yet. She was a little too embarrassed to look back. If he had left, she would also sneak away. It was so cold… it was much more comfortable to hold a cup of hot milk tea. She was clumsy, and her hands were clumsy. She had accepted her fate.
An Zhi stopped and shrunk her neck, peeking behind her. But her eyes met Su Yu’s smiling eyes. She glared at him fiercely and looked at the snowball behind him, which was several times bigger than the one in her hand. A strong sense of defeat rose in her heart. She lifted her head and looked at Su Yu, wrinkling her small nose, her tone a little fierce. “Why are you still here? Aren’t you cold?”
“The Youth Association is going to take attendance later. It’s not often that I participate in an activity. I have to leave a name, right?” Su Yu rolled the snowball at his feet to An Zhi.
“Then… is this snowball for me?” An Zhi looked at the round snowball at Su Yu’s feet. It was much better than the crooked thing in her hand. She was a little tempted. As long as the snowman was built, who cared who had rolled the snowballs? She had completely forgotten her earlier momentum.
“Yeah, take it. Otherwise, they’ll finish clearing the snow soon.”
“Oh, then I’ll treat you to roasted sweet potatoes to warm your hands later. Let me tell you, the roasted sweet potatoes at the school gate are so sweet. I had two yesterday.”
An Zhi was not polite either. She took Su Yu’s bigger snowball and put it on the ground as the body, and then put her smaller one on top as the head. She was overjoyed when she saw the snowman’s proportions suddenly become normal. She stomped her feet, and her hands and feet didn’t feel so cold anymore.
Su Yu then picked up two three-pronged branches and stuck them on as arms. He used a few stones as a nose and eyes, and it barely looked like a person.
But An Zhi was extremely excited. She took countless pictures with her phone from all angles and even asked Su Yu to take a few pictures of her with the snowman. The girl was undeniably photogenic. She stood in the snow in a bright yellow outfit, particularly eye-catching.
“Um… let’s take a picture together too.”
The little girl’s face was red from the cold. She held up her phone to Su Yu, a misty haze in her watery, deer-like eyes, as bright as sparkling stars.
“Sure, let’s take one. It’s a good memento.”
Su Yu agreed without much thought. He and An Zhi stood behind the snowman. But An Zhi held her arm high, but she was still a little dissatisfied with the angle. Her legs were already short… and they looked even shorter now. She, who usually had to stand on her tiptoes to take pictures, couldn’t tolerate such a photo in her album.
“Um… you squat down. Squat down. It will look better.”
An Zhi tricked Su Yu into squatting down. After she lowered the camera, she was suddenly much taller. With a little more tiptoeing, a pair of long legs appeared in the photo. She giggled, very satisfied with the photo.
“Can we go now? The snow won’t melt for a while. We can see it tomorrow too.”
The Youth Association was about to finish up. They were calling people to register. Those who had participated in the activity could get some points, although he and An Zhi hadn’t done anything because of the argument in the morning.
“Oh, okay. Let’s go.”
An Zhi looked around the crowd, as if she were looking for someone. But in the end, she didn’t see anyone. She pouted in disappointment and ran a few steps ahead of Su Yu.
She had been fooling around for too long, and her hair had become soft and fluffy. A few strands of hair had escaped from her hairpin and were bouncing with her steps. The snowflakes that had fallen on her hair also scattered down.
“Why is your hair covered in snow?”
Su Yu brushed the snow from An Zhi’s head, but the little girl suddenly bristled and took a few steps back, baring her teeth like a little cat. “Don’t… don’t touch my ahoge! Is that something you can just touch?”
“What ahoge? I’ve never seen you be so dramatic before.”
Su Yu watched as An Zhi shrunk her face into her scarf like a little turtle, only her eyes staring at him, a little wary, and she was spouting nonsense. “Ahoge… ahoge is…”
But the phone in her pocket suddenly rang. She took it out and glanced at it, the light in her eyes dimming. She muttered unhappily, “Sister said she has something to do and isn’t coming out. I was thinking of going to eat hot pot together. She’s always cooped up in her dorm. Su Yu… is Qian Ge’s family really in a bad situation? She has to go to work part-time whenever she’s free.”
“Qian Ge…” Su Yu’s smile froze. He looked at the marks left on the ground after the snow had been cleared and nodded. “Yeah, her parents divorced after the gaokao. She’s with her mother now, but her mother is not in good health…”
Su Yu frowned. The tips of his nerves were pricked by an electric current, a slight pain. He suddenly remembered something that had been buried in time for a long time. Now he brushed away the dust and remembered, Xia Qian Ge’s mother… what had happened to her in the end?
Xia Qian Ge had never told Su Yu about her mother. Even after the two of them had moved to a strange city and lived together, Xia Qian Ge had only told her that her mother had been sent back to her relatives in her hometown to be taken care of, and that she would send a large sum of money back every month. But in the end, Su Yu had only seen Xia Qian Ge’s mother once or twice at school.
She was a middle-aged woman who still had her charm. Most of her youthful features were still there. She had the typical gentleness of a woman from a southern water town, looking young, no more than in her early thirties. Xia Qian Ge’s eyes were very similar to hers, clear black and white pupils, but they always seemed to be covered with a layer of mist, making it hard to see the emotions inside.
Her health seemed to be very poor. A thick sickness lingered between her eyebrows. She frowned, and one could vaguely see a few traces of death. And she was always coughing, making one feel as if she were about to cough up a handful of blood at any moment.
How could a body that looked so sick have never been ill once? But Su Yu had never seen Xia Qian Ge call home, nor did she go back for the New Year. The money she sent back was always the same amount. It seemed that there was never a time when she was sick and in urgent need of money.
But… that seemed to be Xia Qian Ge’s only relative now.
…
Near noon, the snow was still falling sparsely. After a frenzy of activity, the beautiful snow scene was a mess. Under the white snow, the black and gray mud was mixed with the water from the melted snow, creating a slippery and muddy path. A few janitors were scraping the remaining snow on the side of the road with their yellowish-green bamboo brooms, cursing at the students who had thrown snowballs at the windows.
Without the cover of the white snow, the track became bare again, a little ugly. Only a few somewhat broken snowmen were left standing on the lawn, enjoying their last moments, and then slowly melting on a certain sunny day.
Xia Qian Ge looked down at the snowman at her feet. Its comical and cute appearance was exactly like in the photos. The girl seemed to have posted on her moments right away to celebrate this early winter snow, a very excited message with a few photos. In the photos, the girl stood next to the snowman, her slender, pale neck covered by a plaid scarf. But the way she was shaking her head, trying to show her face, was particularly cute.
On the other side of the snowman, a handsome boy was squatting, his face covered by a piglet pattern, which made people wonder. But Xia Qian Ge knew exactly who the boy was. Not long ago, she had seen the boy smiling and brushing the thin snow from the girl’s head, his smile sunny and fresh, making her heart beat a little faster.
But unfortunately… the girl in the boy’s clear pupils at that moment was not her. She suddenly realized that some things had just been covered up by the sweetness between her and the boy these past few days, just like this layer of snow on the mud. After it was cleared away, it was still the dark, muddy black soil.
So his light was not only given to her. So he did not only smile so brightly at her. So… the like in his eyes could also dissipate with time.
She seemed to have fallen into the deep sea again in a daze. The black mist was everywhere in front of her, and the temperature was so low that her whole body was cold. A gloomy and cold wind blew past her face. She frantically waved away a cloud of black mist, but her whole body was swallowed by another, bigger cloud of black mist.
She could still see that beam of light, but this time she no longer struggled to call for help. In the darkness, her eyes suddenly opened, full of mockery. She felt that she had just tasted a little sweetness and had started to have those naive thoughts again. Just with that little bit of light? How could it save her? Save her battered soul?
What other way was there for that little bit of light but to be swallowed by the darkness
