Chapter 24: “Little Turtle” Part 3

Spotting Cui Qijin, Yu Chenxing shed her kid vibe in an instant. She pulled on an identical poker face and bolted to the bus without looking back.

Chi Buyu shook her head, dazed. She watched the bus speed off, then glanced at the nonchalant Cui Qijin shuffling along, none the wiser. Not wanting to stir trouble between the sisters by spilling, she kept it bottled up. God only knew how much it bugged her not to ask.

Until the second time she ran into Yu Chenxing.

The girl was back at the school gate, waiting silently again. After ages, and once Chi Buyu had bought pineapple ice, she finally spoke—

Some kids at school were bullying her. Boys in her class called her “brace-face,” sketched caricatures of her bucktoothed grin in their language textbooks, and passed them around. The real sting wasn’t the drawings—it was the snickering stares, the meaningful glances, the weird way they’d scoot away when she sat down…

Chi Buyu didn’t ask why she hadn’t told her family or Cui Qijin. She was livid on the spot, teeth gritted, pineapple ice forgotten. She marched straight to Yu Chenxing’s school, swapped her uniform for her cousin’s T-shirt and jeans, lollipop stick in mouth, and laid into those bully soft-target boys with a fierce glare and some choice threats.

Later, she bought some fresh pineapple ice and spent a long time agonizing over the portions, giving the one with a bit more to Yu Chenxing and digging a big spoonful out of the smaller one for herself.

It took her two or three minutes to recover from the brain freeze before she managed to grimace and ask if those kids were still bullying her.

Yu Chenxing took small bites of her pineapple ice and whispered, “Now they all say I have a super weird sister, so no one dares bully me anymore.”

And the super weird sister herself—Cui Qijin—fell silent for a long time after learning her reputation had been thoroughly trashed at an elementary school. She had nothing to say to Chi Buyu.

Chi Buyu thought Cui Qijin was blaming her for meddling or ruining her image, so she meekly stripped off her T-shirt and denim skirt, changed back into her school uniform, crunched the lollipop to bits, and rushed to apologize.

Later on…

She saw Cui Qijin, right after school one midday, dash to the mall and emerge in an outfit identical to her own—a T-shirt and denim skirt. During lunch break, she took a long, long bus ride to Yu Chenxing’s school gate. She didn’t speak, didn’t approach anyone. She just mimicked Chi Buyu’s stance, standing there silently through the entire noon hour before heading back.

After witnessing this several times, Chi Buyu racked her brains until, one day, with a nudge from her older female cousin, she finally figured it out. This way, those cheeky little boys who never learned their lesson would know, whenever they passed the school gate, that Yu Chenxing’s super weird sister wasn’t a one-time thing—she was always right by her side.

【She’s just sometimes a bit dumb.】

Chi Buyu typed those words into the chat box. Before sending, she glanced at Cui Qijin again—

Cui Qijin sat there with her neck held straight, as if absorbed in a magazine. Her long hair was casually pinned up with a shark clip, her chin slightly tensed.

When she concentrated, she’d irritably brush the strands falling to her jaw behind her ear. When deep in thought, she’d unconsciously chew her finger.

When her eyes grew tired, she’d remove her glasses for a bit and gaze at the potted plants on the balcony. Even lying stiffly flat, she couldn’t stay idle—she’d fondle one plant’s leaves, then reach up to touch another…

Then, as if by magic, she pulled a bottle of eye drops from the bag hanging beside her chaise longue. Lying flat, she raised her hand high, then slowly lowered it to administer drops to herself. If she missed, she’d fumble for her glasses, put them on with neurotic precision to check her aim, take them off again, and redo it… over and over, never minding the hassle.

She even set an alarm to remind herself to do eye exercises, then actually put on her earphones, lay there, and mechanically tapped her phone to start massaging her temples…

As a kid, Chi Buyu had always slacked off, skipping eye exercises to sneak peeks at the latest issue of Yilin from the newsstand. She skipped the stories, only reading the jokes and fairy tales.

But now, all grown up, she propped her chin in her hand and watched Cui Qijin complete the entire boring routine. And after that, she stared at her back for a good long while.

Turns out Cui Qijin could look a little dumb sometimes. Not the unintelligent kind of dumb, but…

A well-behaved, awkward kind of dumb?

Chi Buyu couldn’t quite pin down the feeling, but in a lapse of attention, she suddenly wondered—did that fierce first love of hers often see Cui Qijin like this?

—Setting alarms for eye exercises, aligning her glasses before eye drops, chewing her finger when focused…

Cui Qijin.

At the thought, Chi Buyu felt her heart twinge uncomfortably. She wanted something to hug. Glancing around, she grabbed a throw pillow, cradling it softly under her chin.

Then she slowly withdrew her gaze and, for no reason at all, started chewing her own finger. She deleted the message and typed a new one:

【Xingxing, I’m asking seriously—do you know if your sister has ever been in love?】

–

Time skipped to six in the afternoon. Cui Qijin finished her eye exercises right on schedule, golden light sliding across her phone screen to signal sunset.

Chengdu lay far west, so dusk came late. Sunlight drifted in on the breeze through the floor-to-ceiling windows, carrying the scent of sun-warmed grass and a faint floral note.

She looked outside—

Beyond the complex, the setting sun melted into gold. Two or three high schoolers in uniforms pedaled Qingju bikes past the buildings, under a mango-shaped hanging sun. They laughed and joked as their tires rolled through juice-like remnants of twilight, scorching across the shadows of roadside trees…

Had spring already arrived?

Cui Qijin carefully shifted onto her wheelchair, rubbing her brow. It must be an illusion.

“Chi Buyu?”

No response. It was so quiet.

Finding it odd, Cui Qijin steered her wheelchair around and spotted Chi Buyu curled up on the sofa—

The woman was bathed in twilight too.

On her denim jacket, her soft facial contours, her thick curled lashes swaying—it was golden, yet seemed to miss the true light source.

She’d fallen asleep at some point, her princess-style curls now mussed from sleep. One side of her face pressed tight against the sofa in shadow; the other blurred, as if dusted with moist golden sand.

The twilight was alive, fleeting, like a special illusion before spring in Chengdu.

Cui Qijin wheeled over, very slowly.

First, she saw the sofa, utterly trashed, and a throw pillow clutched tightly to Chi Buyu’s chest—no one had ever rolled around on her sofa like that. Chen Wenran always strictly respected her boundary rules. She regretted not mentioning it to Chi Buyu today.

Then there were the snacks on the coffee table: Oreos eaten down to a third, a single coconut crisp cookie nibbled, a butter cookie abandoned after one bite—all piled into a little mound. She suddenly realized she hadn’t offered Chi Buyu anything to drink; those must’ve been dry as dust.

A crumpled tissue lay open on the side table, wrapped around cookie crumbs—picked up from the sofa, clothes, carpet. But not thoroughly; some sneaky bits hid near Cui Qijin’s wheelchair. They were crafty.

Finally, Chi Buyu’s hand dangled off the sofa edge, straight from her sleeve. On her slender wrist, two intertwined hair ties—if she wasn’t mistaken…

Those had been Cui Qijin’s.

And smack in the center of Chi Buyu’s palm was her phone, on the verge of slipping free. It had stayed lit this whole time, playing an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. SpongeBob was weightlifting, his square teeth clenched in a manic grin. From what Cui Qijin recalled, he was wailing like a banshee here—but no sound came from the phone.

Cui Qijin sat quietly in her wheelchair, watching SpongeBob finally hoist the dumbbell before toppling headfirst. At that moment, Chi Buyu’s hand went limp too, and the phone tumbled onto the carpet.

The woman clearly had her eyes closed.

Yet she groped blindly in the air, caught nothing, then burrowed deeper into the sofa. Her full cheeks squished flat, lashes drooping, hair more disheveled. Fuzzy bangs curled messily at her forehead—not pretty at all.

Twilight danced along Chi Buyu’s lashes. The phone rolled at a tilt toward Cui Qijin’s wheelchair, bouncing along until it smacked her slipper toe and stopped, perfectly settled there, safe and sound.

It clinked and clattered—a bit painful, quite a racket. Chi Buyu didn’t stir, but Cui Qijin suddenly laughed.

She had no idea why. One glance around showed the whole place in chaos: uncleared cookie crumbs, pointless SpongeBob, half-eaten snacks neither tidied nor tossed, unreturned hair ties, ravaged sofa and pillow, phone at her feet… She ought to be annoyed, but she wasn’t. Maybe because—

That morning, she’d watched the sunrise here with her. That same afternoon, sunset.

There was something delightfully whimsical about it, enough to forgive all the mess.

In this twilight, Cui Qijin wheeled around her place, Chi Buyu’s gray-pink purse swaying behind her. It reminded her of the Brazilian turtle at home—back when it was tiny, when Cui Qijin was younger, not yet able to afford separating her studio from home. The turtle was always trying to climb out of its tank, stretching short legs onto her open files to sunbathe.

Back then, dusk crept up unnoticed. Suddenly, beside her hand or on her slipper, there’d be a little…

Well, back then it could only be called…

A little turtle.

Cui Qijin thought with wry resignation, then stiffly maneuvered her legs to grab a thin blanket from the sofa arm and drape it over Chi Buyu.

Until the sunset fully faded, she sat motionless in the gloaming, hands folded neatly in her lap for a long, long time—like…

She was afraid the phone perched on her slipper toe might slip away.