Chapter 47

Ding Ya hadn’t expected Shu Chi to cry.

With the indoor lights off, only the faint light from outside filtered in. It wasn’t bright. Ding Ya could only see the outline of Shu Chi’s form.

In that moment, filled only with the sound of rain and the distant Pingtan singing, amidst the smell of extinguished candles and the fragrance of cake, Ding Ya whispered Shu Chi’s name—”Shu Chi.”

Shu Chi made an “mm” sound.

Ding Ya looked at the blurry silhouette across from her. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she hesitated. “What if one day…”

She wanted to say: What if I lied to you? What would you do? But in this situation, there was a rustling sound from Shu Chi’s side. She was wiping her tears.

Shu Chi sniffed again, noticing Ding Ya hadn’t continued. She asked, “What’s wrong?”

Ding Ya’s courage failed her. She shook her head. “I’m afraid you’ll be unhappy.”

Shu Chi shook her head. “How could I be unhappy? I’m just… too surprised.”

She finished speaking and got up to turn on the lights.

The moment the room lit up, Ding Ya saw that a faint, red flush had bloomed across Shu Chi’s somewhat fierce features, staining them with a fragility that didn’t match her age.

It was like a sheet of paper trembling in the wind, so thin Ding Ya could poke right through it without trying.

But in reality, Ding Ya was the paper one.

Shu Chi reached out to pull the blown-out candles from the cake.

The whole cake set, candles included, was a throwback style. The old-fashioned cake had two red frosting flowers, arranged with green leaves. At a glance, it was full of a lively, cheerful energy.

Shu Chi asked Ding Ya, “What did Sister Qi say to you?”

Ding Ya: “She didn’t say much else. Just told me where to pick up the cake.”

Shu Chi was about to remove the last candle when Ding Ya grabbed her hand. She looked up at Shu Chi and asked, very seriously, “Did you make a wish?”

Shu Chi looked into Ding Ya’s eyes for a few seconds, then shook her head. “I forgot.”

She added, “It’s not important.”

But Ding Ya was insistent. “It is important. How can a person not have wishes?”

She smiled at Shu Chi. “Let’s light them again. You must make a wish. Wish this year, wish next year, wish every single year.”

Shu Chi was silent for a few seconds before asking, “Does that mean you’ll be by my side from now on?”

Ding Ya didn’t dare meet her eyes. She turned around to switch the lights back off. Her “mm” was far from resolute, a complete reflection of her guilty conscience.

The candles were lit again. This time, Ding Ya didn’t sing. While Shu Chi’s eyes were closed, she snapped a photo.

Shu Chi blew them out again. Unfortunately, she couldn’t extinguish them all in one breath; it took two tries. She asked hesitantly, “Is it okay like that?”

Ding Ya could easily imagine Shu Chi’s past.

What kind of family, what degree of neglect, would lead to someone reaching this age without ever truly celebrating a birthday?

So much so that it became a shadow, a birthday turned into a death anniversary.

Ding Ya said, “You haven’t celebrated for so many years. We can light them many times. I even grabbed extra packs of candles.”

She said it with complete earnestness, her carefully applied makeup even more striking under the lights. Shu Chi smiled. “By the time we’re done, the cake won’t taste good anymore.”

Ding Ya shook her head. “No way. This time, you cut it.”

Shu Chi recalled her own usual habits and asked Ding Ya, “What else did Jing Yuqi tell you?”

She picked up the piece with the red flower and offered it to Ding Ya. Ding Ya was holding her phone. “She also told me about your little sister.”

After saying it, Ding Ya added, “Is it something you can talk to me about?”

Shu Chi’s expression didn’t change much.

Her coat was draped over the back of a chair. Inside, she wore a black sweater vest, somewhat loose, over a base layer with very narrow cuffs.

This style of clothing was made for someone with a large frame. Ding Ya would never wear it.

It looked oversized no matter how you looked at it. On Ding Ya, it would definitely feel like a child wearing an adult’s clothes.

But it suited Shu Chi perfectly. She was no longer the down-and-out woman Ding Ya had secretly glimpsed years ago. She emanated a mature allure that easily made Ding Ya’s head spin.

Shu Chi nodded. “You’re not an outsider.”

Her own slice of cake also had a flower on it. The cake carried the flavor of childhood, as if prying open a door Shu Chi rarely spoke of. “No one in my family celebrated birthdays.”

Ding Ya remembered the way Shu Chi had eaten cake the last time. She took tiny bites of the cream, like a kitten lapping at a milk cap, bit by bit.

But a cat’s tiny bites were natural. With Shu Chi, it was clearly because she didn’t dare eat much. And it wasn’t a fear of getting fat. It just gave Ding Ya a sense that Shu Chi found it incredibly precious.

Even though her circumstances were fine now.

This behavior, in Ding Ya’s eyes, was like a large animal treasuring a small piece of cake. It made Shu Chi seem exceptionally pitiful.

It melted the hearts of those watching her.

Shu Chi: “We didn’t celebrate birthdays, but I usually remembered to buy myself a little something. If I had no money, I’d just eat something tasty.”

Some rituals were things parents couldn’t provide. Kids good at entertaining themselves learned to grant themselves small freedoms.

Her second sister would put five one-mao coins together to buy a low-quality chocolate bar and celebrate making it another year older.

Shu Chi’s personal celebration was eating an extra bite of rice, or taking out one of the milk candies she’d gotten at a relative’s wedding and dissolving it in a cup of hot water to drink.

She said, “I had a little sister. If she were still alive, she’d be about your age.”

Shu Chi was still taking tiny bites of the cream, just dabbing a little on her tongue to taste. Ding Ya took a photo of the flower-topped cake slice before putting her phone down. She cleaned her hands again and then looked at Shu Chi.

Shu Chi’s eyes rested on the cake. “She drowned. In a pond.”

It was summer that year. The village had a pond. It wasn’t very big, but the area around it was empty.

After school, kids would play hopscotch by the roadside. Shu Chi’s grandmother would take her baby sister, just learning to walk, to the side of the pond to do laundry.

Both parents were away working. Children were all left in the care of the elderly.

Her little sister was tiny, but her hair was jet black. Shu Chi adored her. Every day after school, what she looked forward to most was taking her little sister out for a stroll.

Even though the village was tiny, a short walk in any direction led to the village entrance.

That day, the weather was bad. As evening approached, a storm was brewing. Shu Chi, carrying her schoolbag, went straight to the pond. Her grandmother came there to wash clothes every afternoon.

Her little sister would always be right beside her, playing nearby.

There were no houses around that area, just a centuries-old locust tree.

When Shu Chi arrived, all she saw was her little sister in the water. She started running, but her grandmother’s expression stopped her in her tracks.

“My sister fell in accidentally.”

Shu Chi took another bite of the cake, a big one this time, as if to swallow down the sob in her throat. She glanced out the window at the same time.

The rain was still falling. A strange city, strange rain. Was it raining back in her hometown too?

Back when she worked at the textile factory, there were sixteen people to a bunkroom. Everyone talked about missing home. Shu Chi was a mute, always silent.

And she never missed home either.

She saw her parents maybe a few times a year. Her grandfather was bedridden year-round. Her grandmother raised the children with the money her parents sent. The uncles on her father’s side rarely visited.

Later, her two older sisters went off to work. Shu Chi lost her little sister and gained a “brought” little brother whom her grandmother cherished.

Shu Jian wasn’t a bad person, but Shu Chi just didn’t like him.

She never missed home. Yet, like her sisters, she still had to send the money she earned working back there.

Anyway, she was a mute. No one called her.

Her parents couldn’t text. Her sisters had families of their own. Shu Chi, alone, was a family.

It was only later that she learned you could also have a home online.

A virtual house. A virtual vegetable garden. A virtual parking lot. A virtual world of my own.

And a virtual… love.

Ding Ya understood.

Her understanding of Shu Chi was [Book Late]. Even now that they had met in the real world, with real identities, she could still only piece this character together from fragments.

But today, in this place, Shu Chi had told her everything.

It wasn’t that Shu Chi was unwilling to speak. Back then, she simply couldn’t.

Before she was eight years old, she was still a normal person.

From eight to twenty—for twelve whole years—she hadn’t uttered a single sound.

In all those countless days and nights, when Ding Ya sent voice messages and complained about how heartless this person was, the only response she ever got was a single typed line: I’m sorry.

That [Book Late] never explained.

That [Book Late] was so dumb.

And Ding Ya now understood all of Shu Chi’s deceptions.

Ding Ya couldn’t guarantee that, placed in the same position, she could have walked the same path Shu Chi had to reach where she was today.

She might not have escaped the predetermined fate either: work, marriage, children, repeating the cycle for a lifetime.

Shu Chi: “My parents thought I was strange.”

She smiled, but her eyes, red from crying, looked particularly stark under the paper-carved lantern light, casting shadows that seemed to weep blood.

“That year,” Shu Chi paused. Ding Ya poured her another glass of wine. “Have a little more.”

Ding Ya clinked glasses with her.

Shu Chi nodded. “After I left the textile factory, I went to Banyan City. The students in the university town there were my age. I often thought…”

“Why did I have to go back home to get married?”

There were many students in the university town. Back then, Shu Chi was a migrant worker delivering food, head down, wearing a cheap windbreaker bought from a street stall. She took other odd jobs too.

Like running errands for the students.

There was a female student who wanted to confess her feelings. She hired Shu Chi to buy light strips from the lighting city for her. It was an era when food delivery apps weren’t yet mainstream, and online shopping itself was still a new word.

Shu Chi bought several meters of light strips. After finishing her other jobs in the early morning hours, she helped the girl arrange them in an empty lot in the shape of a heart.

The girl’s friends helped scatter flower petals, wishing her a successful confession.

Of course, it was successful.

“It was the first time I witnessed something like that.”

Shu Chi looked at Ding Ya. “Though it probably doesn’t seem strange to you. The dormitory lights were arranged in the shape of a heart. That girl and her roommates coordinated one-by-one with the boys’ dormitory, and at midnight, they pulled off the whole confession together.”

To someone nowadays, it wouldn’t be novel.

But set ten years ago, even Ding Ya thought it was very romantic.

Though romance transcended eras. With a sincere heart, even a single blade of grass was romantic.

“At the time, I stood on the side, clapping,” Shu Chi paused. “It was wonderful.”

It was usually boys chasing girls. That was the first time Shu Chi knew a girl could pour so much thought and heart into affection for someone. Though apparently, the two of them had known each other for many years.

Continuing a bond formed in middle school, and confessed during university.

They embraced within the heart of light strips. The crowd around them cheered, some scattered flower petals. A campus that should have been quiet was bustling with onlookers.

In the days that followed, while delivering food, Shu Chi would still hear students discussing the event.

So this is what liking someone is?

Shu Chi felt it was different from the weddings she’d seen among her relatives.

And different from her parents too.

Or maybe, they were once like this, and that’s how they got married.

Just like when Shu Qing called her back then, completely forgetting her sister was mute, chirping away about having someone she liked.

She wanted to get married.

“My second sister is not like my eldest sister,” Shu Chi said, looking at Ding Ya. Noticing Ding Ya was listening intently, her heart trembled again. “She married for love. But it still ended up this way.”

The eldest sister got married purely because the man was suitable and their parents thought she had reached the right age. So she married.

Ding Ya asked, “And what about you? What are you afraid of?”

Outside, the rain intensified. A sudden clap of thunder split the night sky, but the Pingtan singing continued, unaffected. The melodic local dialect drifted up, graceful and lingering, punctuated by applause.

Ding Ya propped her chin on her hand, looking at Shu Chi. “So, do you want to marry me?”

Shu Chi froze.

A bit of cream clung to her lips, forgotten. She just stared blankly at Ding Ya.

“Is that allowed?”

Ding Ya shook her head. “It’s not allowed. We haven’t passed that stage yet.”

Her tone was perfectly composed, but her hands under the table were slick with cold sweat. Shu Chi couldn’t see the turbulent emotions churning inside Ding Ya.

Ding Ya looked at Shu Chi, inch by inch, as if she wanted to strip off her clothes entirely and savor every part of this person’s body all over again.

Those scars. The pain Shu Chi was unwilling to let her touch.

This person was never eloquent. Every sentence required Ding Ya to search for the meaning behind it.

But Ding Ya understood clearly now.

Shu Chi wanted to be loved.

But she herself didn’t even know how to say it.

The dormitory confession was love. Marriage was love. One person being good to another for a lifetime was love.

Birthdays were overshadowed by her little sister’s death anniversary. Because her little sister was never loved.

Because birthdays are love.

If you don’t love me, why did you give birth to me?

Shu Chi couldn’t voice it, but Ding Ya understood perfectly.

This person’s experiences had turned her into a thick, heavy book. It bore water stains, scorch marks, tear stains, but no one had ever opened it. Partly because she wouldn’t let them.

The [Bean Sprout] of the past hadn’t been able to fully read this book either.

The distance was too great, the internet too vast and distant. Love couldn’t rely solely on words.

If Ding Ya had dared to take just one more step back then, things might have been different.

But back then, Ding Ya was still too young.

And back then, Shu Chi hadn’t yet become this thick, heavy book.

Ding Ya had received so much. Her parents loved her, her brother loved her.

She had received love from friends. Even romantic affection from men wasn’t particularly hard to come by.

But she was miserly when it came to giving.

Her ex-boyfriend’s affection wasn’t pure. She loathed games that started with a bet.

The romances in shoujo manga were too unrealistic—where could you find a perfect, flawless lover?

Ding Ya could find a thousand and one reasons to reject it all. But right here, right now, looking at the woman across from her, eyes rimmed red, wearing a helpless and sad expression—

She thought: It really does depend on the person.

She rose slightly from her seat, leaned over, and cupped Shu Chi’s face in her hands. Across the table, she kissed her.

Dissolving the cream from Shu Chi’s lips, pressing that sweetness all the way down to her throat. Lips and teeth overlapped, far deeper than their previous fleeting, superficial pecks.

As if she wanted to dive right into this mute woman’s heart. Closing her eyes, Ding Ya could hear Shu Chi’s unspoken thoughts.

Shu Chi was like a lamb waiting for the slaughter.

So delicious.