Chapter 30: “Drunk on Spring Rain” Part 1

How many different kinds of pretty candies were there in the 7-Eleven?

Chi Buyu probably had no idea. As Cui Qijin rang up their purchases at the checkout, her mind automatically tallied them—candies, chocolates, throat lozenges, and the sticks of gum on the counter…

Thirty-nine in total.

After living in Chengdu for so many years, Cui Qijin had never realized that this 7-Eleven at the end of Love Adrift Street stocked a whopping 178 types of candy—and thirty-nine of them were the ones Chi Buyu deemed pretty. It was as if, all of a sudden, she’d noticed how misty and drizzly Chengdu’s spring nights could be.

Steam clouded the glass windows, the wheelchair jammed against the doorframe. The umbrella lay propped by the entrance, still dripping mango-colored rain. The convenience store door chimed open and shut every so often, while all their purchased candies lined up in a row on the narrow table by the door.

Chi Buyu propped her cheek on her hand beside her, laboriously chewing a green-apple-flavored candy wrapped in apple-green packaging.

She mumbled around it, “Cui Muhuo, why’d you suddenly come over?”

The spring night was thick with dampness.

Countless people hurried past them, and she sat right there beside her… smelling like a freshly picked green apple.

Cui Qijin realized she suddenly enjoyed watching the rain. She leaned back in the high stool, saying distractedly, “I came out to watch the rain.”

“To watch the rain?”

Chi Buyu looked baffled by the answer. She chewed her candy for a bit before forcing it down and saying, “Since when do you like rainy weather?”

Cui Qijin stared at the swaying rain threads outside, then at Chi Buyu’s reflection in the glass window—her outline blurred, but her eyes still unmistakably bloodshot. She must have cried for a long time.

“No idea,” she said, propping her chin on her hand.

Then, out of nowhere, she added, “But does coming out in the rain mean you have to like it?”

Chi Buyu blinked in confusion.

Her damp eyelashes trembled like a rain-soaked green apple. After thinking for ages, she spat out, “You’re so philosophical, Grandmaster Cui.”

Cui Qijin laughed. She didn’t even know what she was saying herself. In truth, rainy days would dirty her wheelchair, leave the scent of this particular downpour on her clothes, and pelt her slippers with one sour drop of rain after another…

On that note, rainy days seemed pretty awful. Maybe she shouldn’t like them after all.

As that thought crossed her mind, her gaze flicked to the candies on the table, pushing aside the muddled contradiction.

“Found any? Something to replace the toffee?”

Chi Buyu shook her head, then popped a coconut candy into her mouth. She pursed her lips and said, “Coconut candy’s still the best.”

“Coconut candy?”

Cui Qijin eyed the riot of colorful candies on the table and said bluntly, “Then should I return all these?”

Chi Buyu’s eyes went wide.

She scooped all the candies into her arms in a messy pile, puffing up like a pufferfish ticked off at her. “We already bought them for someone—how can you return them now!”

Cui Qijin laughed again at her panicked expression.

She reached out and expertly flicked Chi Buyu’s forehead, drawling, “Dummy.”

Turning her face, she watched Chi Buyu guarding her treats. “I said I was treating. How come you didn’t pick anything pricier?”

She’d gone for the cheapest coconut candy of all.

They wholesaled online for just 13.43 yuan a bag of eighty. And these two pieces were the freebies that came with the Neapolitan pasta Cui Qijin had ordered today. She didn’t eat candy herself, but wasting food felt wrong, so she’d thought of a certain sweet-tooth who even liked her scrambled eggs with tomato sweetened up.

She’d pocketed them on a whim, never expecting they’d come in handy.

Cui Qijin figured Chi Buyu would jump up in protest, arguing that coconut candy’s deliciousness had nothing to do with price.

But Chi Buyu just froze.

Then, with agonizing slowness, she slid her elbows off the table until her face pressed fully against her forearms. The redness around her eyes spread uncontrollably.

Crying again?

Cui Qijin mentally replayed her own tone—had it been too harsh? Chi Buyu stared at her for what felt like forever, and Cui Qijin wondered if she shouldn’t have teased her about picking pricier ones… Chi Buyu really was easy to make cry.

Cui Qijin rubbed her forehead.

After a long hesitation, she said awkwardly, “If you really like coconut candy that much, I can buy you eight hundred pieces.”

Chi Buyu didn’t reply. She just stayed slumped over the table, chin pillowed on her forearms, head tilted as she gazed at Cui Qijin with reddened eyes, motionless.

“Eight thousand?”

Chi Buyu’s lashes fluttered, her mouth pursing.

“Eighty thousand?”

Her mouth pursed even more.

“Eight hundred million—no more than that,” Cui Qijin stressed.

Chi Buyu sniffled, the tip of her nose turning pink too.

Cui Qijin warned, “Don’t get too greedy.”

Chi Buyu still said nothing, looking like she was about to burst into tears but holding it back with effort.

Cui Qijin sighed. “Any more, and you’ll turn into a coconut tree next life…”

Halfway through, she caught sight of Chi Buyu’s crumpled face. Chi Buyu was on the verge of tears. Even so, Cui Qijin didn’t back down and finished her sentence firmly.

“…to pay off the debts of this one.”

Finally, Chi Buyu made a sound—like she’d finally held back the sobs, or maybe like Cui Qijin’s words had made her laugh despite herself. In any case, it was a messy mix of crying and laughing, an expression that didn’t suit her at all. Chi Buyu’s face wasn’t made for tears; it was for smiles—joyful, carefree, reckless ones.

The chaotic expression lingered for a while before Chi Buyu lifted her chin, her first words coming out in a fierce, pouty whine. “Cui Muhuo, you always tease me into laughing at times like this!”

Cui Qijin thought Chi Buyu had the wrong idea about her. She opened her mouth to say, “When did I tease you?” But before she could, Chi Buyu sniffled her red nose and blurted, “Cui Muhuo, you’re such a good person.”

In the end, Cui Qijin couldn’t get the words out.

She wasn’t used to praise, especially not the earnest kind from Chi Buyu. It sparked an almost allergic reaction in her.

She pressed her lips together and stood abruptly.

With a hand on her waist, she walked to the shelves, grabbed a pack of tissues, paid for it, and tossed it toward Chi Buyu, who was staring at her eagerly.

“Wipe your tears.”

Chi Buyu, eyes still red, lied through her teeth. “I don’t have any tears to wipe.”

Cui Qijin looked away. “If you want to cry, cry. It’s not embarrassing.”

Chi Buyu went quiet.

After a moment, she tore open the tissues.

With a soft rustle, Cui Qijin glimpsed it through the reflective glass: Chi Buyu pulled out a sheet and draped it fully over her face, then mumbled from beneath it, “I’m scared you’ll think I’m embarrassing.”

Cui Qijin kept her friendly tone toward someone in a bad mood. “I wouldn’t think that.”

Chi Buyu said, “Okay.”

Then she fell completely silent.

Cui Qijin’s hand, resting upside down on the table, clenched into a loose fist. After a bit, she noticed the rain had stopped outside—but the sound of it seemed louder, pattering relentlessly right by her side.

“That was so scary just now.”

Chi Buyu was crying again. Her voice broke like scattered raindrops, one by one, drumming against Cui Qijin’s eardrums.

“So many people, so many cars, and I was just walking down the street when suddenly—bam!—this huge noise. So I went to look…”

Her sobs overflowed like rainwater, nearly flooding her throat and drowning her whole respiratory system.

“I heard people say it was a car crash, but I looked back anyway, and there was blood everywhere on the ground—bright red, all sticky. A lady lying there in the road… she was still moving. It was so close, too close. I was chewing the toffee you’d given me, and then I heard crying, shouting—so many people. I was terrified. Later, I threw up for ages, puked up tons of water, but the toffee still tasted so gross, so gross. Cui Muhuo, I… I can never eat toffee again…”

What was she supposed to say to someone sobbing like that? Cui Qijin had no clue.

She was terrible at dealing with tears—something she’d never really had herself. She didn’t know why Chi Buyu brought out so many things she was bad at.

Maybe she should point out—Chi Buyu, this is all backward storytelling. Starting with some random line about never eating toffee again, only now getting to the full story. No one would follow. If this were a tale, your audience would’ve bailed at the start.

But she couldn’t say that.

No Irish Mist tonight—she hadn’t touched a drop—yet still, she couldn’t voice what she ought to.

She saw her own reflection in the fogged glass, gradually unclenching her fist. Slowly, she raised her hand until it settled gently on Chi Buyu’s back…

The touch felt strangely wondrous.

Like cradling a bird with a wounded wing, or a fish with a damaged fin—a leaf blown down by the wind, a flower soaked by rain. Fragile, beyond control.

She recalled the car crash news Chen Wenran had sent in their WeChat group. Her eyes drifted to the bus stop sign across the street, its ad scrolling from “Care for Yourself” to some fancy cocktail. The back beneath her palm quivered faintly.

Her own palm and fingertips seemed to tremble in response. Hesitantly, she ventured, “Want some booze?”

–

Half an hour later, she regretted asking.

Truth be told, she’d regretted it the instant the words left her mouth.

Even now.

Alcohol was a sedative, sure. But she always championed healthy living and opposed booze.

Chi Buyu, though, saw it differently.

One second, two, three after she spoke… Cui Qijin tried to take it back, but Chi Buyu shook her head first, letting the tissue slip from her face. She revealed her reddened eyes and said, hiccuping through sobs, “Will drinking make me forget tonight?”

In that moment, Cui Qijin couldn’t say no. She glanced at the array of candies on the table and sighed. “If candy won’t do it, booze definitely will.”

And so they drank in the twenty-four-hour 7-Eleven. Chi Buyu, having cried herself out, was determined to erase the awful memory. She wiped her tears fiercely and insisted on treating Cui Qijin to drinks.

They even pulled up cocktail recipes right there on the spot, lining up seven frosty glasses on the table like soldiers at attention. They’d bought vodka, Midori, gin, coconut rum, Jägermeister—everything—and dragged over bottles of mixers. Cup by cup, they measured out proportions and tasted each one.