Chapter 18: “Ordinary Rain” Part 1

“I suspect I’m just a total love brain.”

The rain in Chengdu always came so lightly, quiet and subdued, never the roaring downpour. It preferred to fall at night, so elusive even the weather forecast couldn’t pin it down. People could never quite predict when it would arrive or what it might bring—or even if it would come at all.

It reminded her of the song playing in her earbuds: “Ordinary Friends.”

Cui Qijin hadn’t fully closed the car window, leaving just a slim gap. The fine mist drifted in like soft frayed edges, blurring the streetscape outside. She gazed at the hazy view while listening to the equally fuzzy voice of Chi Buyu, whose chin rested on the back of her seat. Chi Buyu’s eyelashes fluttered idly as she rambled on in fits and starts.

“Is ‘love brain’ a bad thing? I don’t know. If it were someone else, I might not think so—but when it comes to me, yeah, it definitely feels like a dig.”

Do you realize there’s a huge contradiction in what you just said? Maybe you owe all the love brains an apology.

“Do you know what I’m like when I fall for someone? Sigh… You probably think I’m not that smart anyway. And honestly, that time, I really wasn’t. My whole brain felt like it was gummed up with sugar syrup, filled with all these silly, pointless thoughts every day.”

“I’m a not-so-smart love brain. That’s what makes it a bad thing.”

You’re not that smart even when you’re not in love. But that’s not a bad thing.

“You just said you’re no good at relationships, but I don’t buy it. You’re so independent and clever. You wouldn’t be like me at all—you’d stay totally rational, probably never even get mad over nothing, right?”

Independent? Clever? Rational?

Were those good traits in love? Cui Qijin wasn’t sure. She only knew what Mo Wenwei sang: Was love a kind of spiritual opium, or just a boring pastime at the end of the century? Both options sounded pretty negative.

Come to think of it, “love” itself might just be a dirty word.

“You’ll laugh if I tell you this, but you’ve always thought it was stupid of me to fall for someone online, haven’t you?”

“Everyone says online relationships are unreliable. In grown-up terms, it’s like ‘one tug on the ethernet cable and poof, it’s gone.’ Wait, that’s not quite right. Weren’t we already using Wi-Fi back in high school?”

She remembered. Chi Buyu’s phone got confiscated by the homeroom teacher countless times, and she’d borrowed everyone else’s in the class. Unfortunately, Cui Qijin had lent hers too. One time, after getting it back, she discovered the whole class forwarding the same message—

【Heads up! Today is SpongeBob SquarePants’ birthday. The daughter of the Tencent boss loves SpongeBob, so here’s the deal: Forward this to fifteen QQ friends, and your account gets an extra sun and moon for a month! Don’t believe it? Try it and check your account fifteen seconds after!】

Chi Buyu had sworn up and down that it was fake, only to puff up her bangs in excitement the next second and say it was SpongeBob—what was the harm in trying?

“Anyway, it was only much, much later—long after that whole thing—that I started to suspect I might be a love brain.”

“Like, these days everyone says relationships need to be healthy and normal. You have to be independent, set boundaries, support each other, or they won’t last. I don’t even know if that’s true…”

“But I’m definitely not like that. Once I fall in love, I get way clingier, way more annoying. To put it bluntly, I’d be what people call ‘dramatic’… Over the tiniest things, my emotions would swing up and down, all over the place, totally out of control. You might not get it just from me saying it, so let me give you an example…”

Chi Buyu trailed off here, her nose turning red, as if from the wind carrying rain through the window.

“Like, like…”

She stumbled a few times, her tone growing dejected.

“Like this one time during PE class, I got my period in the school bathroom and didn’t have any pads. Normally, I’d just borrow from another girl in there or text a classmate—like you, or our Crab Boss Class Monitor. Oh yeah, what’s Crab Boss Class Monitor’s real name again? Why can’t I remember all of a sudden?”

Cui Qijin only remembered how well they got along—even scheming together on that SpongeBob birthday hoax.

“But I didn’t do that. I pulled out my phone, and my first instinct was to message this girl online. We hadn’t even met in person yet, and here I was, turning a tiny school mishap into something to cry to her about.”

“I’m not saying I expected her to rush over with supplies or anything. It’s just… once I’m in love, I start expecting the other person to fix everything for me, to fill me up with all this emotional support. If they don’t, I wonder if they even love me, like the sky’s falling. Doesn’t that sound super weird?”

“You get what I mean, right? You’re so smart. You know I’m a handful even normally—I always do stuff like this. It’s not just that one time; there are tons of little things where I’d run straight to her first. And if she didn’t reply right away, I’d feel awful until after school when she finally did. Then I’d act like nothing was wrong while sulking inside.”

“Back then, it didn’t feel weird at all. I just felt so wronged, like I couldn’t help it. Now, looking back from outside that headspace, it’s like… we were all busy studying, and not everyone even brought their phones to school. Yet I had these huge expectations of her…”

Clearly, drunk Chi Buyu had another bad habit: word-vomiting everything out, then suddenly reflecting on random nonsense.

The community bus window took up half the side of the vehicle, its black frame edged with brown wooden trim, framing the glass like an old-fashioned television set.

Mist bloomed across it, colorful bus lights glowing through in hazy pinks and yellows, the edges fuzzy and chaotic. A gentle breeze scraped by, carrying occasional raindrops inside. Chi Buyu’s profile appeared in that vintage TV screen: her eyelashes, eyelids, chin, lips, ear…

All reflected in those dim, shifting patches of color, like a slightly faded close-up replaying events from a decade ago.

She squeezed her eyes shut with grave seriousness, as if determined to spill every last bit of it.

“But once I’m in love, I can’t control myself. It’s like the whole world shrinks to just that one person. If she doesn’t orbit around me, I get mad, I get sad—and it’s like that every day. I can’t even remember what my life was like without her.”

With a sigh like a closing statement, she added emphatically,

“But this is about the behavior, not the person. Don’t get me wrong.”

Cui Qijin hadn’t spoken the whole time. Chi Buyu seemed to notice now, cracking open one eye. She plucked the earbud from Cui Qijin’s ear and popped it into her own.

“Why’d you stop the music all of a sudden?”

Cui Qijin took the loosely fitted earbud, stowed it in its case, swapped it for the other one, and tucked it back into Chi Buyu’s ear. “This one’s dead.”

“Oh.” Chi Buyu waited for it to reconnect; the song resumed on its own. She picked at her fingers and asked, “Why were you so quiet just now?”

Cui Qijin glanced at Chi Buyu’s reflection in the window, then at the real thing tilting her head to stare back. Her hair ties were still in Chi Buyu’s hair, forming those two messy, sprouting buns that bobbed dejectedly, like a sad little lion.

Cui Qijin couldn’t resist reaching out and flicking Chi Buyu’s forehead lightly. In a flat tone, she said,

“Dummy.”

Chi Buyu didn’t argue this time that she wasn’t a dummy. Clutching her forehead, she scrunched up her face in defeat. “Maybe I am a dummy…”

Her voice trailed on forever.

The next stop felt like it was almost there, no matter how far. Through the window, Cui Qijin spotted the Truth or Dare Mango shop still lit up. She sighed.

“She’s already dumped you ages ago. And here you are, overanalyzing all this, even adding that ‘it’s the behavior, not the person’ bit. Where do they make dummies as gullible as you?”

“That’s not fair.”

Chi Buyu rubbed her cheek in confusion; the red mark on her face stood out more than before. “I just meant I was talking about my own issues with you, not rehashing that old relationship… Though yeah, I guess I am a bit of a love brain…”

She sneaked a glance at Cui Qijin, then quickly looked away, mumbling something under her breath. “…always…”

“What?” Cui Qijin hadn’t caught the last part.

Chi Buyu clamped her mouth shut, burying her head so her forehead smooshed fuzzily against the seatback. She didn’t repeat the mumble. Instead, she just said,

“Anyway, once I like someone, I turn into an idiot and mess everything up. Isn’t that the definition of a love brain?”

Cui Qijin eyed the fluffy back of her head and asked quietly,

“Why don’t you ever badmouth your first love? Didn’t she dump you and leave you feeling so wronged?”

Chi Buyu propped up her forehead, her voice muffled.

“Aren’t you the same? You never mention her, good or bad. Even after all this time, you won’t tell us what she looks like or anything.”

Cui Qijin parted her lips.

Before Cui Qijin could say a word, Chi Buyu continued on her own. “But badmouthing someone isn’t a good habit either, right? Especially when there’s no way to confront them directly. It’s been so many years, and there’s no proof left. If you only hear my side of the story, you might believe me if I said she was some foul-mouthed deadbeat who borrowed money to blow at the internet cafe playing Audition and never paid me back. You’d all believe me and curse her out with me. But that’s not what I want. I’ve said all the facts that matter. She did agree to meet and then ghosted me for the entire night—that was her fault. I blamed her for it. For a long time, I felt like the sky had fallen, like I hated her so much, like she was this awful, awful, awful woman. But so much time has passed now. Even if I made up a bunch of other nasty nonsense about her, it wouldn’t make me feel any better…”

You’re so strange. You blame her. You hate her so much. You think she’s an awful, awful, awful woman. But you still won’t badmouth her. Cui Qijin repeated it all in her mind, devoid of emotion.

Normally, wouldn’t people vent by trash-talking nonstop to others? Wouldn’t that make them feel better and help them move on? So why wasn’t Chi Buyu doing that?

Could it be that after all this time, Chi Buyu was still hung up on that vague, ethereal first love…?

Cui Qijin’s expression grew peculiar. She licked her lips. “Why?”

“It’d make me look like I have terrible taste!” Chi Buyu declared righteously.

“And it’d make me seem like some lovestruck fool ready to head up the mountain and forage for wild veggies. To have fallen so hard for a woman like that back when I was a teenager, carrying on like it was the end of the world—how stupid is that!”

…That was Chi Buyu.

She liked staring into people’s eyes when she talked—actually, just to check if she looked pretty in their reflection… Chi Buyu.

So it wasn’t lingering feelings after all.

Cui Qijin was momentarily speechless. After a pause, she managed four words. “You’re right.”

After spilling so much that evening, Chi Buyu seemed in slightly better spirits. She slowly lifted her head to gaze at her. “This time, your take should align with mine, right?”

“Me?”

Cui Qijin hadn’t expected the conversation to swing back to her. Her jaw tightened. For some reason, she suddenly couldn’t find any rationale to justify her own actions.

When she was very young, she’d declared strawberries sour. Professor Cui had told her to be rigorous: before stating any opinion, Cui Qijin should carefully consider if she had supporting evidence. Otherwise, she was lying. Lying was very bad.

Later, she learned that strawberries were neutral in pH among fruits. So she’d lied—and apologized to the strawberries.

But now, Chi Buyu was staring at her again. And Chi Buyu had just poured out all this random, messy stuff, making any evasion on her part seem especially heartless.

Cui Qijin thought for a moment. The bus seemed to be pulling into the stop; its speed had slowed without her noticing. So she straightforwardly chose heartlessness. She’d never had much of a conscience anyway.

She reached over and plucked the earbud from Chi Buyu’s ear, tucking it away. Then she grabbed the paper bag draped over the seatback and casually plopped it onto Chi Buyu’s forehead. Amid the rustling, she said softly,

“I’m not like that.”

I’m an out-and-out bad woman. Bad women don’t have thoughts as upright and open as yours.

The words had barely left her mouth when the bus braked. Momentum threw them forward slightly, and with a hiss, the doors slid open. She wasn’t sure if Chi Buyu had even heard.

Dazed, Chi Buyu lifted the bag off her forehead. For an instant, she looked bewildered, then bit her lip.

“So… what are you like, exactly?”

Cui Qijin rose from her seat, shrinking back into her oversized padded coat. She turned her face slightly to glance at the rain-streaked window outside, her expression indistinct. In a low voice, she urged, “We’re here. Get off.”

With that, she didn’t wait and stepped off the bus first.

In a couple of strides, she reached the shelter of the bus stop sign. Glancing back, she appeared lazily aloof in the pale light, her lips pressed into a straight line—as if she had zero interest in discussing that old relationship.