Chapter 30: “Drunk on Spring Rain” Part 3

Chi Buyu wriggled for a few seconds before twisting back anyway. Chin propped stubbornly on the armrest, she stared up.

“Call me a dummy.”

?

They’d just reached the opposite curb when one of the pedestrians who’d crossed with them shot a baffled glance their way before hurrying off.

As if they were a pair of weirdos.

“Your requests are pretty strange.”

Cui Qijin drawled slowly.

But she burst out laughing again, thinking to herself that it really was pretty strange—

Wandering the rain-slicked streets at the dead of night, clutching a bag of candy from 7-Eleven, fleeing in a panic from a women-only adult shop bathed in red light, one of them with a plastic bag labeled “Sustainable Development” jammed over her head, the other pushing a wheelchair in slippers while doubled over laughing…

Anyone who saw them would think it was odd. Like a scene from a children’s cartoon.

The wheelchair jostled over the asphalt road, and every so often, people would pass them by, casting curious glances. Cui Qijin ignored them completely, while Chi Buyu huddled in the wheelchair, her fingers gripping the armrests. She sighed and grumbled for a good while before saying in a deflated voice,

“I think I’m really pretty dumb.”

Cui Qijin sighed. “You’re reflecting again.”

Chi Buyu let out another “Sigh.” “It was the same back when I was in Hong Kong.”

The two of them became a pair of sighing wrecks on the street.

“People get sentimental when they’re drunk.”

“And just now, I was thinking… if you hadn’t been there that time in Hong Kong, I probably would’ve packed up and headed home the next day.”

“You think about a lot.”

“It’s true! That was my first time leaving home to go somewhere as far as Hong Kong. I was all set to make it big there, but then that happened. If you hadn’t come over, handled everything after the fire that night, found me a place to live the next day, and even gotten people to move my stuff in…”

“And just now, too. I was planning to sort out my mood before coming to find you, so I wouldn’t drag you down. But instead, I made you come out looking for me. You bought up all the pretty candies from 7-Eleven to cheer me up, drank with me without saying a word, and even when I made such a fool of myself back there, you didn’t call me an idiot…”

Her words tumbled out in a rush, giving Cui Qijin a headache. She cut off the sappy stream abruptly. “You sure talk a lot when you’re drunk.”

Chi Buyu swallowed the rest of her sentence halfway through and could only blink at her in grievance. “Fine.”

Cui Qijin’s eyes twitched at the corners. “Actually…”

Chi Buyu’s expression shifted instantly from grievance to eager anticipation. “Actually what?”

“…”

Cui Qijin’s face grew a little unnatural. “Nothing.”

She had just remembered that night in Hong Kong—

The rain was falling, and after Chi Buyu slipped on the slippers, Cui Qijin crouched down and asked if they fit right. If not, no need to tough it out; they could just buy another pair. Slippers weren’t that expensive, after all.

But Chi Buyu kept her face down for a long time. Only after a while did fat teardrops start falling, just like tonight.

Cui Qijin hadn’t noticed at first.

She even wondered if Chi Buyu had suddenly fallen asleep. She reached out to shake her hand—and then a single tear splashed onto the back of her hand. It was hot, scorching, sliding away with the rain. In that instant, Cui Qijin curled her fingers involuntarily. Then she heard Chi Buyu’s choked voice say,

“I’m so useless, Cui Muhuo.”

After that came a torrent of tears splattering onto her hand. It was in that moment that Cui Qijin realized she had never been good at catching someone else’s tears.

Her fingers went rigid as the hot tears slid down. She listened as Chi Buyu sobbed out, one word at a time, “I don’t want to be like this, but… but I just don’t know what to do.”

Cui Qijin tried to stay calm. “No one stays cool-headed after going through something like that.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s not.”

Chi Buyu’s tears were just as scorching. “Do you know… back in my sophomore year, I was going to apply for an exchange program, but in the end, I didn’t go.”

“Related to this?”

Chi Buyu nodded at first, then shook her head hurriedly. “I was scared back then, sure. But there was a classmate from my program going to the same school, so I figured it’d be fine with two of us. I was just excited about heading out…”

Cui Qijin stared at the teardrops clinging to her eyelashes.

She wondered what Hong Kong tears tasted like—why they made the onlooker feel so uneasy, why they seemed to flood her own mouth, making it hard even to speak.

She reached out her hand, and another tear, wet and heavy, landed between her fingers, seeping into the lines of her palm and halting her movement.

She asked, “And then?”

Chi Buyu finally looked up at her, her eyes bright red.

“Then, right before leaving, I found out my mom had gotten sick. She didn’t want me to know, so I could study abroad without worry. When I heard, I was devastated. I couldn’t understand why one trip abroad mattered more than my mom…”

“We fought about it. In the end, I insisted on staying, and I didn’t go. Later, her surgery went smoothly, and she recovered well.”

“Wasn’t that for the best?”

“Not really. But it’s not about not going that time…”

Cui Qijin remembered Chi Buyu’s stubbornness back then, and her tears—like some highly concentrated liquid, carving wounds into the back of her hand one after another.

She also remembered the end of it—

The chaotic, rain-blurred streets of Hong Kong, red taxis streaking by like frames from a deliberately stuttered film. Chi Buyu in a black skirt, a fluorescent blue ribbon floating in her hair, like a love-struck butterfly that had wandered into the city. Neon lights from the unfamiliar city speckled her eyelashes as she rambled incoherently,

“That’s when I started thinking—why do I always make the people who love me so worried? Why Ranran, why you, why even Chen Wenran… no one worries about them like this, just me…”

In the end, she squatted by the roadside, hugging her bruised knees, her nose red as she concluded tearfully, “I guess I’m just a really unreliable person.”

Cui Qijin couldn’t remember what she’d said in response.

Maybe something like: This just means lots of people love you, and you’re lucky enough to love lots of people too. It’s a fortunate thing.

Or perhaps she’d squatted down beside her and laughed, saying, Why do you always overthink yourself like this?

But she did remember that, at least before that night, she’d always thought Chi Buyu was too easy to understand—

Chi Buyu’s mind was straightforward and pure, but sometimes she could be circuitous, hiding little secrets or mischief.

Chi Buyu was especially kind-hearted. She’d stop in her tracks for a roadside beggar spinning tales of “escaping the mountains after a second child, begging for bus fare,” knowing it was fake but still unable to walk away. Even if she forced herself past, she’d double back, empty her pockets of loose change, and later, spotting the flaws, sigh that it was better fake than real. She hoped no one in the world suffered like that for real.

When Chi Buyu got truly mad, she could curse with real venom—sometimes nasty, sometimes petty. She needed someone to peel her shrimp shells. Ever since college, she’d thrown herself into modern cheongsam design, wanting to model them herself and help every pretty sister or girl discover her own beauty. Chi Buyu didn’t actually like cats or dogs—chased for miles by one as a kid—but she also disliked fish because they were slimy and scary…

Cui Qijin had always thought she understood Chi Buyu perfectly. But in the end, maybe not.

Chi Buyu, Chi Buyu.

That name, that symbol, that person—they were all mixed up with unknowns and unpredictabilities.

“Chi Buyu.”

The call came in Chengdu, on a spring night thick with intoxicating breezes. Chi Buyu was curled up entirely in the wheelchair, the plastic bag removed at some point, her fair face fully exposed—like a beautiful tropical fish without fins, being pushed along slowly.

She was still staring at her. After a moment, she called her Cui Muhuo, then blurted out something nonsensical. “Just call me an idiot already. It’d make me feel better.”

Cui Qijin laughed.

She felt like she’d laughed too much tonight. She told herself not to keep laughing. But she couldn’t help it.

When the laughter faded, she called out again,

“Idiot.”

The idiot Chi Buyu lifted her chin and answered cheerfully. The idiot Chi Buyu had done plenty of dumb things tonight—not calling right away when trouble hit, not seeking shelter in the rain, getting blackout drunk and staggering around the streets, charging headfirst into that shop thinking it was empty, jamming a plastic bag on her own head…

But in truth, the self-proclaimed-smarter Cui Qijin had done her share of dumb things tonight too—finding Chi Buyu without calling to report in, getting soaked without remembering she had an umbrella, watching Chi Buyu drink herself silly without stopping her, calling Chi Buyu’s name over and over outside the shop without daring to go in and fleeing alone, missing several green lights while crossing the street because she was laughing at her…

“You know the human prefrontal cortex keeps developing until around twenty-five? I saw this blogger say the other day that it’s fine to do a few dumb things before then.”

“But I’m already twenty-six. Does that mean it’s still okay?”

And there was one dumbest thing—

“Yeah, it’s fine for you.”

The second they fled from the shop.

In the haste, Chi Buyu had grabbed Cui Qijin’s wrist. Countless people had passed them since, as they awkwardly wheeled along through neon-lit intersections, trampling the faded night rain over and over, spring breezes tousling their hair time and again. Chi Buyu had twisted around countless times to look at Cui Qijin…

But even now—

Her grip on that wrist hadn’t loosened. And Cui Qijin hadn’t seemed to notice they were still connected.

She even gazed into those dazed, blinking eyes, pushing the wheelchair steadily forward. After a while, she tightened her inexplicably feverish wrist—no good reason why—and added, not too cleverly,

“It’s fine for you among all humans.”

Not my fine—she emphasized sluggishly to herself in her mind…

Who knew who was the dumber one tonight, really.