Chapter 23: MAMA-23 Part 1

Jian Wanji didn’t reject other people’s closeness, and had been told before that she lacked a sense of boundaries.

Social distance was something Zeng Baian had to repeatedly remind her about, warning her many times: if you don’t have that kind of intention, try not to tacitly allow intimate gestures.

They’d always gone to a girls’ school, where they mingled with female classmates through puberty. That hadn’t affected Zeng Baian’s rigidly straight orientation at all.

Even though Jian Wanji had never admitted her own orientation, her friends just thought she was playing coy. Some things were too obvious. Jian Wanji’s gaze lingered meaningfully on women, and she had zero interest in men. But to push her one step further, into dating—she’d refuse in a hundred different ways.

Perhaps because she’d been a messenger too many times since her school days, Zeng Baian often vented the pressure other girls put on her onto Jian Wanji. She’d repeatedly suggest Jian Wanji tune down her central air-conditioner state. In the end, she’d cultivated an image that, on the surface, suggested a vast romantic history, yet not a single peach blossom had ever actually bloomed. It was truly unique.

If it were anyone else, Jian Wanji would’ve just laughed it off. But Mi Shanxin was different.

The girl was so rigidly earnest, stuck right on the line between easy-to-fool and stubborn. She was like a sliding weight on a scale, ready to roll to the edge. “Capricious” was too strong a word. But compared to monetary temptation, she clearly cared more about the additional contract terms.

“Then…” Jian Wanji pulled her hand away, and like positioning a display doll, set Mi Shanxin upright. “Then I’ll take you home first.”

Mi Shanxin nodded. “What time does your gathering start?”

Jian Wanji glanced at her watch. “Eight. It’s fine to be late.”

She hesitated a few seconds, then asked, “You can fall asleep this early?”

Mi Shanxin: “I’m very sleepy. I might not be able to fall asleep.”

She knew her own state well—forcing herself to stay awake in class, forcing it when pretending to be a mother-daughter pair with Wan Qingqing. Even eating was just maintaining vital signs. While braised pork was very good, she hadn’t planned on eating it at every meal.

Between heaven and earth, sleep was the most important. She stared at Jian Wanji, a bit of tension leaking out despite herself. “Do you want to break the contract?”

Jian Wanji shook her head. “How could I? Let’s go.”

She was usually very talkative. Even if Mi Shanxin was silent in the car, she’d call out “Treasured Student Shanxin” in that drawn-out way. Today, she was completely silent the entire drive, as if she’d taken a potion to go mute.

Mi Shanxin curled up in the passenger seat, the seatbelt strapping her in like a thin sheet of paper. The roadside colored lights spilled across her face, as if she, too, was being carelessly splattered, and even if dirtied, wouldn’t complain. She was someone Jian Wanji could do whatever she wanted with.

That kind of realization was too terrible. Jian Wanji had rarely felt so troubled.

In the past, even when a major work blunder led to losses that made Sui Yuqian howl, Jian Wanji had smiled through it. Only when it came to this area, she found it hard to be grinning and casual.

Nor could she blame Mi Shanxin. Given her age, even if Jian Wanji herself was the one caught, not the one who proposed it, she’d still be nailed to the pillar of shame.

The woman who’d been shameless at first meeting considered herself to have little moral sense, yet still felt the speechless frustration of someone overturned in a sewer ditch.

But the instigator was innocent and frail, breathing so faintly against the seatback. Her eyes were half-closed, occasionally opening, clearly struggling between sleepiness and the agony of sleeplessness. Anyone would pity her.

As they neared Mi Shanxin’s home, Jian Wanji asked, “Does your friend know about… this kind of thing?”

She’d only interacted with Mi Shanxin a few times, but had already mapped out her social circle.

She had one and only one best friend, but she was not necessarily that friend’s best friend.

They weren’t in the same university. The friend was a local, and they’d meet up for meals. The friend cared a lot and actively brought her to student activities.

“What kind of thing?” Mi Shanxin asked, then realized, “Oh.” She understood. “No. She doesn’t know I like girls. Nor does she know it’s gotten this bad.”

Jian Wanji asked, “Why haven’t you told her?”

Mi Shanxin looked at her for a moment, then averted her eyes. “Would you do that kind of thing with a friend?”

Jian Wanji was speechless.

Mi Shanxin only looked cold and detached. Long-term malnutrition and poor sleep made her seem gloomy and weak. Her personality wasn’t cold—if she had a bit more energy, she might even be more talkative.

In her current state, merely maintaining the appearance of being alive took all her strength.

“What about at school? No one you like…” Mid-sentence, Jian Wanji remembered Mi Shanxin’s awful specific taste. “Alright, pretend I didn’t ask.”

“I had a crush on a teacher at school,” Mi Shanxin said, not avoiding the topic with Jian Wanji at all. Their relationship wasn’t friendship. Calling it boss and client was weakened by the role-play. It was an indescribable, four-sided relationship with a deadline. That, perversely, blurred the boundaries, making everything permissible.

“She was very kind to me. She introduced me to work.”

Jian Wanji glanced at the GPS and casually asked for a name.

Mi Shanxin asked strangely, “How did you know? Did you investigate me?”

“No need for an investigation. I spoke with the teacher in charge of admissions at your institution. She let it slip unintentionally.” Jian Wanji answered with a smile.

Mi Shanxin thought: No wonder she makes so much money in business. She can fish for information so easily.

Jian Wanji asked again, “Was that teacher also married?”

The girl with her eyes closed nodded.

Jian Wanji sighed ruefully. “Treasured Student Shanxin, you mustn’t be…”

“I don’t become the other woman.” Mi Shanxin knew what she was going to say. “I still have bottom lines.”

Jian Wanji was relieved. “Don’t assume all older women are good people. That’s not always the case.”

“Men are bad. There are bad women too…” She didn’t know why Jian Wanji was laughing. “You know very well. Taking care of a kid and paying money, but still maybe not getting what you want.”

Jian Wanji knew she was teasing her about that earlier comment regarding her and Zeng Baian’s relationship.

“You’re bad too,” Mi Shanxin said. “You hid a lot, tricked me into signing the contract.”

Her voice was very soft. Maybe she was too tired; the part of her that couldn’t sleep was eating away at her nerves. So compared to the filtered speech people use for socializing, Mi Shanxin was naturally unadorned.

“It was clear from our first meeting—you’d set your sights on me.”

“Hey, hey, now that’s a bit much.” Jian Wanji pulled the car over to the curb. Mi Shanxin’s home was in an alley; this was the only way. She felt Mi Shanxin’s words were very suggestive. “I admit I was in the wrong. I shouldn’t have said something like that to you. So if you want to call it sexual harassment, I’ll accept it.”

This would probably become one of the reasons Zeng Baian would laugh at her at the next gathering.

Because no one else dared speak to Jian Wanji like that. Her looks weren’t bad; her naturally upturned brows and eyes had only grown more genially bright with age.

At twenty, she’d looked too mature. At thirty-nine, she was just right, even seeming much younger than her peers.

There was no trendy new thing Jian Wanji didn’t want to try. A new hire once panicked when she ran into the boss queuing for a sweet treat, only to find the boss was very easygoing, paid her bill too, and stood under a roadside parasol tree, happily eating her dango all by herself.

“Isn’t it the same thing? Being your mother.” The streetlights outside weren’t very bright. Mi Shanxin looked at Jian Wanji. Even in the dim car, the woman’s face had strong, three-dimensional bone structure. Unlike Mi Shanxin’s, which was like a half-eaten scroll eaten by bookworms, the edges feathering and blurring, easily swallowed by the dark night.

“Fine, you…”

“Come sit at Mama’s place.” Mi Shanxin spoke softly as she got out of the car. Peering at Jian Wanji through the car door, she looked like a ruthless overseer of hard labor. “Get it over with quickly. Being late to your gathering is also not good.”

Jian Wanji: …

She didn’t know if her crash course of intensive study would allow her to “get it over with quickly.” Nor had she expected Mi Shanxin to live alone in a place with such poor natural light.

This was the city center. Demolition was unlikely, though some came to photograph the area for inspiration. Those who lived here were either tourists experiencing a B&B, or elderly locals.

It was understandable that Mi Shanxin, who’d grown up here, was so prematurely world-weary.

But a world-weary person’s body was still youthful and tender.

The woman sat on the only desk chair in Mi Shanxin’s cramped room, appearing outwardly composed, but in fact, her mind had been wandering for ages.

The bedroom in the old house was pitifully small. The space Mi Shanxin had to herself for over a decade was probably less than eight square meters. The bed was tiny, like a child’s one—maybe it actually had been since elementary school, the guardrails just removed. There was no bookcase; boxes of books were stored under the bed. One door of the wardrobe was broken and covered with a cloth. Jian Wanji didn’t need to make a special point to look to notice that all of Mi Shanxin’s hoodies were black or gray—more like bulk-bought at a fifty-percent-off sale.

The desk was barely a meter wide. Next to it was a rickety slanted table made of rough material, piled with some of Mi Shanxin’s professional tools.

She wasn’t sloppy in this area. Calligraphy brushes hung on a rack and were clearly well cared for. A cactus had died who knew how long ago, now serving as a holder for sticky notes.

Teacher Mi, who could work part-time at the institution, was good at both hard-tip and soft-tip calligraphy. The sticky notes held some rarely used characters, or reminders of what supplies had run out and needed restocking.

The most recent date was for sanitary pads. Jian Wanji was a little surprised. Seeing her Little Mother so thin and weak, with a blood-deficiency look, she’d assumed her periods were irregular.

The doctor’s instructions suddenly flooded back. Jian Wanji was rubbing her brow with a headache when the freshly-bathed Mi Shanxin walked in, bringing a chill with her.

The old house had no heating. In fact, there wasn’t a single air conditioner in the entire place.

Jian Wanji had sat for just a moment and her hands and feet were already ice cold. She resisted the urge to curl up her legs and asked Mi Shanxin, “Why take a cold shower?”

The girl had hastily blow-dried her hair. Even so, she was shivering from the cold.

Clearly, she was the one who’d asked Jian Wanji to do something, yet looking at the situation, it seemed reversed.

“The hot water takes forever. There hasn’t been much sun lately.”

Jian Wanji knew the inconveniences of old houses; she’d experienced them as a child. But it was so long ago, some details were blurry now.

Mi Shanxin was awakening all those distant memories. The age gap between them was leveled by the environment. For a moment, Jian Wanji even felt a pang of empathy.

“Change the water heater,” Jian Wanji said. Her overcoat was draped over the back of the chair. Any single layer she wore underneath was presentable. A mid-collar knit sweater over a layered shirt—it looked neither completely business nor entirely casual. One could easily imagine her in this attire, interacting with colleagues.

Mi Shanxin didn’t match Jian Wanji’s perception of what an “adult” looked like. To Mi Shanxin, her age was old, yet her personality wasn’t stuffy. She even seemed more energetic than Mi Shanxin.

The girl slowly sat on the edge of the bed. “Will you change it for me?”

“…That’s no problem.” The atmosphere was incredibly awkward. Jian Wanji kept feeling their transaction had taken on a different flavor.

She always liked to hold the initiative. A God’s-eye view gave her special safety. Yet in her transactional relationship with Mi Shanxin, she’d been reduced to the one being directed, as if nothing she said was right.

“We’ll talk about that next time. Do you want to lie down with me?” Mi Shanxin lay down on the bed. Her sheets and duvet cover weren’t a set. You could tell they’d been used for many years, as old-fashioned as the person herself.

This was the first time Jian Wanji had seen Mi Shanxin in so few clothes. The girl’s previous hoodies had been so wide and large, that even knowing she was thin and weak, she hadn’t imagined her so bony—she’d feel the bones even lying on a bed.