Chapter 65: Stolen Days

I and Gan Ling added up to sixty years old. Whether rounding or trimming the ends, we were undeniably adults.

No need to say too much—I got it and didn’t dwell on the causes.

After a while, I said, “Let me think about it.”

Gan Ling let go of my hand, keeping a fist’s distance between us. Like Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai with a bowl of water between them, a chasm opened up between us. I reached out and pinched Gan Ling’s finger, and suddenly Nüwa was patching the sky and filling the seas. Gan Ling said, “Think it over.”

It was like a solemn interview. Suddenly, I became the interviewer, with Gan Ling’s resume spread out before me. The resume detailed my tangled nepotistic relationship with this woman, my utter infatuation and entanglement with her, the many excuses in my heart, and how I still needed calm reflection before deciding to keep her on.

Before hiring her, I, Jiang Xiaohui, had ulterior motives, hiding news of Zheng Chenggang, like I’d stolen Gan Ling from somewhere. I felt a bit guilty like a thief. Shamelessly sleeping in her arms, I still had a shred of conscience and dreamed at night. I dreamed I was back at Plum Kindergarten teaching, with the kids in neat rows. Zheng Ningning, usually silent, suddenly raised her hand and asked why I’d stolen her mom.

Then it shifted—I was downstairs being stared at, practically naked, like Teacher Wen being mobbed by people. The neighbors’ eyes questioned my intentions. I kept stamping my feet, repeatedly quibbling with Zheng Chenggang and his daughter. She’s not your wife, she’s not your mother. The crowd united to refute me for ignoring the facts, calling me a shameless third party. From the crowd, a church elder suddenly stood up, pointed at me, and loudly proclaimed the commandments, rebuking me: “Repent!”

I’d only slept less than two hours, guilty as a thief, while Gan Ling was asleep.

I got up to play on my phone, slicking back my short hair as if I were wearing a too-stubborn wig and desperately trying to wipe it off. I rubbed and rubbed, pacing the living room, my mind heavy as I piled all the matters together like sorting through twenty-seven years of old clothes, not knowing where to start.

I’d watched a Netflix reality show where a Japanese woman named Marie Kondo made it big with her secrets to organizing and tidying. She was invited to families overwhelmed by clutter and mess. One family’s clothes piled up like mountains; Marie Kondo had them pull out all the clothes to see the quantity, keep what they liked, discard what they didn’t.

I couldn’t discard the matters, so I picked the ones I liked doing.

I could make spring rolls.

Neng County and Peng County were both pretty far north in China, so spring rolls weren’t our usual food. That made my ability to make them seem like I was handy. I didn’t have many standout skills—kinda knew a bit of everything but wasn’t great at any. I used some leftover curry beef to stuff the spring rolls, then when Gan Ling got up, popped them in the air fryer and made seaweed egg drop soup.

On the sofa, Gan Ling and I still sat at opposite ends, silently finishing the meal. Gan Ling got up to wash the dishes; I went to freshen up.

It was like a night where nothing happened—our way of getting along hadn’t changed.

The only change was that before leaving, Gan Ling specially came to the bathroom door to say goodbye to me.

“I’m off,” she said. I leaned over the sink spitting foam, watching as Gan Ling said goodbye, opened the door, and left.

I was twenty-seven. The most impressive thing I’d ever done was stand before three hundred people leading them in singing hymns, articulate, firmly believing there was a God in the world. Later, nothing was certain anymore; all my resounding views blurred. I relearned to think and speak, becoming different from before—my inner world determined what I could say. My world was reconstructing itself, and I actively chose the curse.

The entanglement with Gan Ling was like an item I couldn’t let go of. I briefly set it aside in a quiet corner to deal with when I had time.

Then I went back to work.

The grilled fish shop harbored filth, or maybe because I’d always swallowed my anger before, word spread and hooligans kept coming to our shop to grope my ass like a tourist spot.

Suddenly, I woke from that haze and threw the snot-wiped napkin I’d tidied at that hooligan’s head.

“Apologize to me! Touch me again and I’ll chop off your filthy paw!” I cursed. Surprisingly, he didn’t get mad or angry. Even in my worst-case scenario, I’d end up as the victim in the news, but instead, the guy who groped me and his buddies all burst out laughing, as if my anger was just coquettish pouting, falling into the category of “playful scolding.”

I angrily slapped the table. “What’s so funny? Apologize to me!”

He and his friends laughed even harder, as if groping me was just to see me mad.

If they’d stood up to slap me, I might not have been so furious, but their laughter made me feel humiliated. Yet I couldn’t find the right words, couldn’t string together a rebuttal. While I was still thinking, colleagues dragged me away to avoid trouble.

During the afternoon break, I leaned on the table as the boss held a meeting for us, talking about the noon incident.

“The most important thing is to watch your own safety. Haven’t you seen the news? That Tangshan incident still has follow-ups. Don’t provoke them—take the loss and move on. If they really get up to demand an explanation, forget the rest, he’s tall and burly, one swing of a stool and you’re done, let alone anything else. This isn’t something you can fight over. I’m not scared of trouble; I’m worried about your safety.”

The boss counted off the key points on his fingers, seeming to lecture me but really warning all the staff. I was twenty-seven, unmarried, childless—a total soft target. The soft target had her lower back digging into the table edge, legs curled up listening halfway through. My mind calculated my savings and family situation, brewing more and more resentment. After a bit, he finished, clapped his hands, said he’d treat us to ice cream, and dismissed the meeting.

I untied my apron and chest badge, threw them on the table. The upside-down chair on the table looked like a fallen kid. I pushed the chair back a bit to lean in, calmly grabbed my phone and pocketed it, waved goodbye.

The boss said, where are you going?

I said I was going home.

With no benefits or insurance, the tie was thin as a single door. Once I pushed out the door, the connection broke. I quit the group chat, ending my brief stint as a wage slave. I was unemployed again.

Gan Ling said that when everyone’s just a bunch of monkeys, there’s no distinction of professions. As long as a monkey has enough to eat, a place to sleep, and kids to raise, it’s doing great.

I said, but this is modern society.

Gan Ling said, then it’s just a bunch of advanced monkeys bouncing around bored and dangerous, so they need jobs to divert the monkeys with carrots, keeping them obedient while tributing better perks to the monkey kings. For us regular monkeys, not working is actually transcendence. If you can’t survive, go hit the workforce again.

Gan Ling would say anything to comfort me. Her tone had no anger or injustice. And thinking of her saying she’d go into business, determined to be a monkey that sees life’s truth but keeps bouncing anyway, made me want to laugh.

Gan Ling had sold clothes before, set up stalls, ridden a bike selling pancakes, sold flowers under overpasses, done house cleaning, property management in companies, customer service, even partnered on a small service company that folded right when the pandemic hit.

“So what kind of business next?” When I had free time, lots of thoughts came. I pulled out the cabbage and radish I’d soaked the day before. Gan Ling was washing her hair and didn’t hear clearly. A bit later, she came out seriously asking what I’d said. I repeated I was asking about her plans.

“Go see the sea,” Gan Ling said, rubbing her hair as she sat on the stool. “Blow-dry my hair for me.”

I washed my hands and got the blow dryer. Last time, Gan Ling had been sitting here while I dyed her hair. Pinching her strands, who knows what crossed my mind—I blurted out, “My hair’s shorter than yours.”

“What do you mean?” Gan Ling turned back, eyeing my short crop, wanting to laugh but holding it in. She turned away; I didn’t dare answer, dutifully blow-drying.

What I meant, I couldn’t even explain. Thinking back, it was a bit of a stereotype.

Like, among the lesbians I’d seen, there was always one with short hair, more masculine, the T, and one with long hair, the P. Unconsciously, I stereotyped myself into that frame, then panicked and jumped out. So rigid and dangerous—what T or P, or 1 and 0, top and bottom. I’d only seen that stuff in artsy works, knew little about it… Even if I knew a ton, why pin it on myself? Felt all wrong.

My mind all twisted with online knowledge I’d seen, Gan Ling suddenly tilted her head—turns out I’d scorched her scalp. I flusteredly adjusted the hair, apologized, focused on blow-drying. But Gan Ling suddenly said, “Even getting haircuts has to be a competition? Before, your hair was longer than mine, but your insight was shorter?”

“That’s not what I meant,” embarrassed to admit my real thought, I turned Gan Ling’s head back. “Sit still.”

After blow-drying, we leaned on the sofa watching cartoons. That evening, the topic barely progressed—I still didn’t know her plans. Not that I had to know.

Around eleven, bedtime. We stood there a bit, and I still opened the bedroom door invitingly: “Don’t mind.”

Gan Ling hugged the blanket and smoothed out the sofa, sitting down cross-legged to signal that she was planting roots right there.

I took half a step back into the bedroom. Gan Ling flopped onto the sofa bed with a creak. She patted the spot beside her, and I hurried over, kicking off my slippers as I rolled onto it. Gan Ling opened up the blanket and tucked me in. I rolled inside like a plump potato into a sack, facing her, and started feeling nervous all over again.

Gan Ling propped herself up on one arm to look at me. Suddenly, she said, “We can go see the sea early—in two weeks. How about it?”

I nodded, wanting to turn away and give her my back, but the weird atmosphere held me in place, light and unable to budge.

“You’ve never seen the sea.”

“Nope.”

“There’s not much to see.” Gan Ling’s tone was oddly strange. Despite her saying there was nothing much to see, I stubbornly insisted, “I’ve never seen it, so I want to go.”

“Then let me give you a preview. Do you know what it feels like when waves crash into your face?”

“What?” I was puzzled—what was there to preview about seeing the sea? Did it come with homework? The word triggered my old occupational reflex, and I wondered if I needed to take a bath to experience the sensation of floating.

Gan Ling suddenly leaned down and kissed me, her lips moist before lightly pulling away.

“What does it feel—” Before Gan Ling could finish asking, I realized this woman was just using it as an excuse to flirt. I wasn’t good at stringing words together, but I didn’t hate it either. Inside, I was giggling like mad, wondering how the cold, gloomy Gan Ling had turned into this. Two almost completely different Gan Lings overlapped on the same face—her brows and eyes lowered, her slightly high cheekbones always giving her a sharp, harsh air. But now, it didn’t seem harsh; it was just her natural sense of distance.

Yet within that distance, her expression of infinite closeness let me see that mocking sharpness drawn out in detail. I could tell she was seriously engaging with me, her eyes shimmering with waves like the sea. I couldn’t handle it. I doubted anyone could handle Gan Ling—what more me, who came to her empty-handed and defenseless. I hated Zheng Chenggang for stealing away all the beauty and trampling it to pieces. From the wreckage, I pieced together this Gan Ling, forever missing two parts.

I hated Zheng Chenggang. I worried day and night. Even when I went to Shen Liu’s place again, he refused to say a word. Sleepless, I was tormented by this destroyer.

The days Gan Ling and I spent together felt like they were stolen from Zheng Chenggang’s hands. None of it had ever truly belonged to him.