The rain outside was blown in by the wind through the window. The pane was the old-fashioned latch type. Rain beat against it, making the frosted glass look like water streaming down from flower stamens.
Shu Chi suddenly wanted to wipe away that water streak, because Ding Ya’s reflection was cast upon the glass, making it look like Ding Ya was crying.
But Ding Ya was clearly smiling.
“There is one.”
Shu Chi nodded. The home-style dishes were fairly standard. She noticed that dishes which normally came spicy had all been made mild this time—only the fish retained a faint, unavoidable hint of heat.
She knew Ding Ya had requested it.
But realizing this stirred a very strange feeling in her heart. Like the sensation of eating old-fashioned buttercream cake as a child.
Cloying in her throat. Drinking water didn’t help. Even lying in bed at night, she could still feel that heavy sweetness rushing to her head.
But there was a subtle happiness to it.
Being cared for, being looked after—it felt good.
Shu Chi wasn’t the eldest daughter. As a child, she’d been looked after by her older sisters too. But whenever they weren’t playing, after school, they had to help with farm work.
Either starting the fire to cook, or watching the youngest brother.
Special attention was rare, because the family truly had nothing special to give.
It was mostly being included in the scope. The “you” was scarce.
Living in that kind of environment, your senses sometimes got numbed. Gradually, the “I” was devoured. Didn’t matter anyway.
Served no purpose. No benefit to giving “me” special treatment.
Life had to go on. Money still had to be earned. You kids better grow up fast. Don’t give Mom and Dad trouble. Start helping with expenses soon.
A single “Okay” from Shu Chi could sum up all the holiday phone calls.
Before the age of twenty, she rarely said no.
She also didn’t know what regret was. Just like she didn’t know what “I can too” meant.
All she knew was: Someone thinks of me, and I’m very happy.
This time, Ding Ya didn’t press further. She ate her fish unhurriedly. From the corner of her eye, Shu Chi’s expression was starkly lit by the overhead bulb, tinged with the haziness of someone sinking into memory.
Her eyes too.
In that moment, Ding Ya felt with piercing clarity her own desire for Shu Chi.
And also an inexplicable certainty—that Shu Chi would keep talking.
No need for her to deliberately guide it anymore.
“I just wanted to thank her.”
Shu Chi suddenly smiled. “Wanted to say it to her face.”
There was a bottle of soda by her hand too. Shu Chi didn’t have the habit of biting straws. She didn’t even really care about dressing up, even though her clothes weren’t cheap, nor her accessories. Even that watch cost several months of Ding Ya’s salary. Yet she still gave off an overwhelming sense of down-to-earth solidness.
“That’s it?”
Ding Ya was eating very little. A single chopstick-full seemed less than what a kitten would take.
Shu Chi said, “Liked her once. But not compatible.”
She took a sip of cola. The carbonation rushed her mouth. Shu Chi instinctively puffed her cheeks slightly. “She’ll never know how much, to me, she…”
Shu Chi normally wasn’t good at praising people. The word slick talker would never apply to her in this lifetime.
But her business partner Jing Yuqi wished she were like that. At least she wouldn’t seem, at thirty, like some lonely old person—looking as if she had nothing left to look forward to in life.
Ding Ya’s hand, gripping the soda can, suddenly tightened a little.
She heard Shu Chi say two words with a smile—
“Precious.”
Ding Ya asked, “Then why don’t you just message her and say you want to meet?”
Shu Chi shook her head. She ate a mouthful of rice, slowing down again. “She might already have a new life.”
Ding Ya suppressed the emotions in her heart. Her tone was unreadable as she said, “You said yourself it’s just a might.”
Shu Chi said, “I don’t mean much to her.”
Her eyes instantly turned desolate. Maybe there were words in her heart she hadn’t spoken yet.
Ding Ya said, “Wasn’t she your online romantic partner?”
Shu Chi made an “Oh” sound. “Probably.”
Ding Ya had no appetite. She felt like she’d been soured by something. Or maybe the five-spice in this braised fish was too pungent.
For a split second, she nearly couldn’t keep her expression in check.
Thank goodness heartbeats can’t be detected by others. Thank goodness my face doesn’t blush easily.
Seriously. I suddenly feel like such a scumbag.
Makes me out to be a complete and utter liar.
“Besides gender and education, did you lie about anything else?”
Ding Ya finished her drink. She seemed to calm down a little. But Shu Chi turned her face to look at her.
Ding Ya wasn’t looking at her. She was staring at the alcohol burner, watching the tofu sear to the bottom of the pot, watching the cabbage leaves scorch black.
Just like her heart, disturbed by Shu Chi’s word precious.
Like the rain outside. So chaotic. So chaotic.
Paired with the wind running wild, Ding Ya actually felt a surge of wanting to come completely clean.
Those teenage impulses had long since faded. Ding Ya had rarely been impulsive her whole life.
She didn’t like sports, but she’d learned dance with her mother.
But she didn’t work hard, so her dancing was just so-so. She hadn’t planned to pursue it anyway.
She didn’t love studying, but studying was a student’s duty. So she crammed before exams. Ding Shuqing called her the classic type who only fattened the pig on New Year’s Eve.
Amidst all the excitements of her classmates’ youths, Ding Ya had always been a bystander.
She found it hard to empathize with that kind of excitement, yet she knew better than to spoil the mood. She blended in perfectly—a performance type, like the mediocre musician who faked it in the ensemble.
“No.”
Shu Chi was still eating, even puzzled that Ding Ya had stopped. “It’ll get cold.”
Ding Ya said, “I’m full.”
Shu Chi asked, “You’re really treating me to a meal and not eating yourself?”
Ding Ya gripped her chopsticks and sighed.
Why don’t you say there was more?
All those “Baby, I love you”s you said back then—were they real?
Though Ding Ya asked in her heart, she truly didn’t dare ask aloud anymore.
Given Shu Chi’s character, her sincerity made Ding Ya feel exceptionally shameless.
And also a faint sense of panic.
But Shu Chi didn’t seem to notice how many ripples her story had caused in Ding Ya. She said, with particular earnestness, “Ding Ya.”
“If that person really has a family now, don’t…”
She probably wasn’t good at saying these things. The second half started to stumble. Finally, she forced out: “You can find someone else.”
Probably feeling these words were a bit cold, Shu Chi added: “After all, you’re very cute.”
Ding Ya countered, “I’m very cute?”
Of course, she knew how much initial goodwill she got meeting people for the first time. Like her favorite games. Level by level.
Non-threatening to the same gender. Not much sexual attraction for the opposite gender.
After all, she wasn’t some universal heartthrob, nor some magnetic personality that charmed the masses.
At least within a limited scope, Ding Ya believed feelings could be obtained through tactics.
Like assembly instructions for furniture. Like a beginner’s guide for a new game.
But beyond the game, who knew whether a relationship guided by strategy would end in a bad ending or not?
Outside, the rain fell harder. The table next door had finished eating. New customers sat down—probably college students, chatting and laughing boisterously.
Shu Chi met her gaze for a few seconds and gave a sincere “Mm.”
Ding Ya sighed. “But my ex-boyfriend said cute is useless. When he liked me, he liked me a lot. But meanwhile, he also liked looking at women with hot bodies.”
Her complaint sounded to Shu Chi like… like being leaned on.
As if Ding Ya was crafting a unique sense of intimacy that belonged only to the two of them.
Shu Chi asked, “Why did you break up?”
She thought: Sure enough, people like me are the weird ones. Normal people, after an online romance ends, probably end up like Ding Ya.
It wasn’t that no one liked Shu Chi. She just wasn’t willing to accept any of them.
Jing Yuqi was furious at her lack of ambition. Sometimes she wanted to jab Shu Chi’s forehead and say, Just try it! Will you lose a chunk of flesh? Why don’t you just go become a nun!
Shu Chi wasn’t interested in becoming a nun either.
Mostly, it was a lack of feeling. Seeing someone and not wanting to look again.
No curiosity. No anticipation for the next meeting.
And certainly not being drawn in by them.
Ding Ya made an “Eh?” sound. “Are you curious? It’s rare to see you ask me something proactively.”
The end of her voice was soft and lingering, like crushed ice whirred in a blender.
Shu Chi shook her head. “A girl like you—who would be willing to break up with you?”
Ding Ya cursed inwardly.
She’d heard plenty of compliments. From men and women, young and old. Some guys were stingy with praise and turned it into teasing.
Others sounded like they’d just been fished out of an oil field. The slightly normal ones just had no intentions in that direction.
Have I not met normal people before?
Why does her saying this make me want to kiss her so badly?
Ding Ya stared at Shu Chi. Their elbows were touching. Ding Ya shifted forward slightly, aligning their hands side by side. The size difference was obvious at a glance.
She tentatively placed her hand on the back of Shu Chi’s. “Him—he thought I was strange.”
Ding Ya didn’t have a deep impression of her cheap ex-boyfriend. In this moment, she’d even forgotten his name.
“He thought I wasn’t proactive.”
She withdrew her hand, adding a soft “ba” at the end.
“See, like holding hands. What I just did to you—would you call that proactive?”
Shu Chi didn’t know.
Her understanding of proactive was limited. The number of times she’d taken initiative in her life could be counted on one hand.
It was as if she’d been born into passive choices. No one ever truly welcomed her.
She was a girl, anyway. Sometimes she wished she were like her missing little sister—turned into that waterweed.
Shu Chi shook her head.
Ding Ya sighed again and leaned her head against Shu Chi’s shoulder as if it were the most natural thing. “How about this?”
Ding Ya’s perfume wasn’t strong. You could only smell it up close. Last time Ding Ya had thrown herself into her arms, Shu Chi’s dreams had seemed saturated with that fruity scent.
Shu Chi said, “I have no reference value.”
She very seriously explained something completely obvious: “I’m a woman.”
Ding Ya said, perfectly naturally, “Well, you played someone’s husband online. Same difference.”
Shu Chi made an “Oh” sound. “Pretty proactive.”
Ding Ya sat up a bit straighter and let out a humph. “See? Men are never satisfied.”
If Shen Mu were here, she’d be cursing Ding Ya in her head for twisting the truth.
That guy was clearly the one who got dumped by you.
But Ding Ya’s face was too deceptive. Shu Chi even comforted her with a sentence: “You just haven’t met the right person for you.”
Ding Ya really couldn’t eat any more. But she filled another bowl of rice for Shu Chi and pushed it toward her. “What about you? If this regret were fulfilled, would you consider starting a new relationship?”
Her tone turned light again, carrying a hint of teasing—or perhaps flirtation.
“You weren’t… preserving your chastity for your online wife, were you? What era is this, Boss Shu?”
She placed a chicken wing into Shu Chi’s bowl like feeding a little dog. “Didn’t expect you to be so old-fashioned.”
Shu Chi felt these words were off but couldn’t refute them. She sighed helplessly. “No, it’s not…”
She ate a mouthful of rice obediently, mumbling a vague defense—
“I’ve never even met her in person. Never even spoken with her. How could I have thought about all that?”
It was just that the future the other person had imagined—the material things she wanted—had become, somewhere along the way, the driving force behind Shu Chi’s silent progress.
All her life, it seemed there had never been an “I” in her life. And yet, oddly enough, it was her who gave Shu Chi a different kind of possibility.
Ding Ya made an “Oh” sound, but didn’t ask the question—
Back then, why did you absolutely refuse to voice chat with me?
Was an unpleasant voice the main reason?
After all, Shu Chi hadn’t told her the specifics of their chats back then.
Back in those days, Ding Ya chattered away, but Shu Chi had always refused to reveal her voice. Always text replies.
Ding Ya had long since contacted the owner of the hanfu shop.
The owner had originally thought a same-city courier for the photos would be fine, but Ding Ya insisted on coming in person.
She didn’t stop her either.
There weren’t many people in the garden today because of the rain. When Ding Ya and Shu Chi walked in, the owner had just finished removing makeup for a customer.
The two who entered seemed much closer than before. Before Ding Ya could speak, the owner spoke first—
“Are you two together now?”
