Chapter 33: Quicksand of Love Part 3

A massive gust blew through Chi Buyu’s freshly dyed hair. She insisted on stepping on the white line running down the asphalt road with every stride, arms outstretched to feel the wind rushing past her. She looked like a bouncing little zombie—and yet, amid the chaos, she laughed with utter abandon.

“Let’s take a group photo!”

“Let’s take a group photo!”

“Okay!”

“Okay!”

Chi Buyu twisted her head to look at Cui Qijin. She was grinning with squinted eyes, tilting her chin upward in a coquettish pout. Her voice rang out bright even in the wind, sharp and sweet in the spring air like half a chilled mango split open.

“You too!”

Cui Qijin laughed, but she nodded all the same. “Okay.”

They took more than one group photo. There was one of the four of them bent over, peering down at the ground—Chi Buyu declared Cui Qijin’s scowl the worst. There was another with everyone pulling weird faces, where Chi Buyu claimed birthday-star privileges and snuck in a pretty pose. Then there was the one where they all struck Tiga Ultraman poses, faces dead serious; Cui Qijin thought it was utterly childish, but in the exact second the camera clicked, she still threw up her hand…

The final shot had them lined up on a long bench, heads thrown back over the top. Chi Buyu set the camera on a line of grass and took the picture herself, capturing four pale-necked, red-lipped female ghosts with only half their faces showing.

Then a stray cat darted out of nowhere and knocked the camera over. The four of them dove into the grass to search, emerging covered in dirt and dust. They scared a passerby so badly that she shrieked, clutched her bag, and bolted ten meters away.

Chen Wenran was still bewildered. “Huh?”

Ran Yan calmly pulled out a mirror, checked herself, and snapped it shut.

Chi Buyu wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Are we zombies or something?”

Cui Qijin glanced at the smudge of dirt on her face, then at her sparkling eye makeup. “You look pretty ghostly, actually.”

They passed a rental shop that was open late into the night. The Drunk Ghost Couple suggested renting electric scooters to cruise along with the river wind.

They rented two scooters.

Chen Wenran plopped right down on the seat behind Ran Yan. Only then did she wink back at Cui Qijin, as if it had just occurred to her.

“You wouldn’t have the heart to split us up, would you?”

“Come on, river wind! I’m not riding with my girlfriend? Should I really ride with you instead?”

Cui Qijin glanced at Chi Buyu.

Chi Buyu glanced back at Cui Qijin and tilted her chin up. “I’m good either way.”

Cui Qijin shot her a look. “Can you even ride one?”

Chi Buyu admitted honestly, “Nope. And I’ve got night blindness to boot.”

Cui Qijin sighed in resignation and sidled up to the scooter. She noticed there was only one helmet on it and frowned, locking eyes with the shop owner.

The owner clasped his hands apologetically. “Sorry about that. Busy night—no helmets left. But I’ll give you a seventy percent discount.”

Ran Yan turned around. “You’ve only got the one helmet?”

Chen Wenran made a move to take it off.

“No need.”

Cui Qijin brushed off the Drunk Ghost Couple’s offer. She unhooked the helmet from the front of the scooter and looked Chi Buyu over. Chi had changed outfits before heading out that evening: a hoodie with shorts, a shirt tied around her waist, her hair loose and curly over her shoulders, pinned with a bright clip.

“You wear it—”

Chi Buyu had barely gotten the words out.

Cui Qijin was already sliding the helmet onto her head. She buckled it deftly, then pushed down on her fluffy topknot just as she tried to look up. Bluntly, she said, “Big winds by the river. Your brain’s not all there to begin with—don’t want it freezing solid.”

Chi Buyu bristled, ready to argue.

But Cui Qijin didn’t give her the chance. She swung her leg over the seat first, scooting forward a bit to make room.

Chi Buyu fell silent. Meekly, she climbed on behind, sitting carefully at a little distance. She reminded her, “Drive slow and steady, okay? We’re here for the wind, not the speed.”

“Got it.”

Cui Qijin acknowledged her with a nod.

Then she tipped her chin toward Ran Yan in signal.

Ran Yan twisted the throttle and pulled ahead. Their shirt tails billowed out instantly. Chen Wenran threw up a hand in a victory sign and let out an odd whoop.

Cui Qijin twisted her own throttle.

The scooter lurched forward. She trailed along slowly behind, the river wind whipping up around them. Strands of Chi Buyu’s fluffy hair drifted across the back of her neck, tickling her skin.

The scent of Black Opium faded, mingling now with the crisp, faintly sweet aroma of pineapple sparkling ice. Years later, whenever Cui Qijin thought back, the wind along the Leshan river always carried that exact smell for her.

They passed squat white roadside houses and railings glowing white under the streetlights. The scooter bumped over a speed hump, jolting them. Chi Buyu grabbed tight to the hem of Cui Qijin’s shirt, as if terrified she’d tumble off and crack her unprotected skull open.

In the rearview mirror, Cui Qijin caught sight of Chi Buyu’s face.

The round half-helmet framed her, wind-tossed hair framing the edges. The bright blue of the night lit up the skin around her eyes. Once the bump was past, she relaxed bit by bit, squinting her eyes like a white Pomeranian with its fur all fluffed and mussed by the breeze.

Cui Qijin glimpsed half her own face too.

Her hair was a mess, but the corners of her mouth curved upward—probably all thanks to the wind.

They didn’t know where the road led anymore. It grew wider, emptier, the other cars thinning out. Chen Wenran suddenly yelled, “What’s this?” Then blaring music erupted from the Drunk Ghost Couple’s scooter—the familiar tune of “Youth Memorial Album” kicked in.

The singer hadn’t even started yet. Chi Buyu and Chen Wenran were already belting it out into the wind, carefree and loud.

“Giving you my heart as a memento!”

Chi Buyu was never destined to be a Hong Kong or Taiwan pop star. Cui Qijin watched her hair fly everywhere, nearly into her own chest, and thought, You jumped the cue, Chi Buyu.

They wobbled along on their two little electric scooters, singing at the top of their lungs. Even Ran Yan eventually joined in. In that moment, it felt like the street held only them—no trace of Leshan, just fifty-two minutes from Chengdu by high-speed rail. It could have been Xiamen, Taiwan, Dali, or Tibet. And they weren’t twenty-six or twenty-seven anymore, but fresh graduates on a triumphant post-commencement road trip: four spirited Azure Pigeon girls running wild on some nameless road.

They looped back to the start and sang it again. The scooter’s speaker played only that one “Youth Memorial Album” track. Chen Wenran remarked that the owner’s playlist was pretty retro, but she wasn’t done yet. She killed the music and hollered into the wind instead, “Let’s chain songs!”

Without waiting for agreement, she jumped right in.

“Love’s like quicksand~”

Cui Qijin felt Chi Buyu fidgeting behind her. Cruising one ahead and one behind Ran Yan’s scooter, sure enough, Chi Buyu sang out the next line from her backrest.

“Knowing I should dodge it~”

Ran Yan picked up in the scooter’s buzz. “Can’t pull away.”

The wind roared past, tangling Cui Qijin’s hair with Chi Buyu’s. Cui Qijin stayed quiet, just listening as the three of them launched into a raucous, pitch-veering harmony.

“It’s one mistake after another, beyond my control~”

That night, Cui Qijin couldn’t recall how long the three of them sang or how far those two little electric scooters carried them. She remembered starting with full batteries and riding until they were nearly dead, the vehicles slowing to a crawl, nearly stalling out—singing some song or other, bumping over who-knew-what speed hump. She didn’t even know if Chi Buyu had hugged her waist out of excitement or fear…

Vaguely, she recalled the moment when the batteries were about to die, the wind on their faces softening as the speed dropped. The chain-singers started forcing “love” into every line—

Chen Wenran crooned, “The love in my memories couldn’t withstand the test of time.”

Ran Yan followed, “Endless thoughts of you, I call it love.”

Chi Buyu sang, “Love’s nothing but a kind of spiritual opium.”

…

She couldn’t remember which love song it came from, or which lyric sparked it, but Chi Buyu suddenly rested her chin on Cui Qijin’s shoulder. In the half-lit, fading street, she spoke without warning.

“I’m getting kinda dizzy from this scooter.”

Cui Qijin had been utterly relaxed on the ride. She just laughed generously at that, her laughter scattering on the wind. The breeze danced across their breaths, but suddenly the air felt thin.

Chi Buyu kept her chin pillowed there, her breath tickling Cui Qijin’s ear like a cat’s paw. As if wrapping things up, she softly hummed an indistinct lyric, then asked in that voice laced with pineapple sparkling water—soft, sticky, and sweet,

“What the hell is love anyway, Cui Muhuo?”

The scooter was grinding to a halt, though Cui Qijin didn’t know exactly when it would stop. She glanced ahead at the Drunk Ghost Couple, cuddling in the quiet, Chen Wenran’s arms around Ran Yan’s waist, the back of her head beaming with a grin. Then she checked the rearview mirror, where Chi Buyu gazed at her—the deep blue of the predawn or late-night town reflecting hazy starlight, her eyes every bit as dreamy.

“Didn’t you all just sing a ton about it?”

Cui Qijin tossed back casually. Deep down, she thought love was just one of those impossibly tricky things.

“Yeah.”

Chi Buyu laughed at that, hugging her waist tighter, her chin nudging Cui Qijin’s shoulder. She squinted into the wind with a sly, impish grin. After giggling like that for a bit, through the foggy haze on the rearview mirror, she fixed her gaze again. In a voice so soft it was nearly lost to the breeze, she asked,

“What about you?”

“Me what?”

“Your love?”

In that moment, the car slowed to the point where it could barely move forward any longer. Suddenly, Cui Qijin could no longer see the other vehicle that had just been ahead of them. Gray-blue birds winged across the sky, their shadows flickering beside their own car. She didn’t know if they had lost their way on this night, didn’t know where this nearly dead battery and these dreamlike birds would carry her… Perhaps from the very beginning, she had been trapped in some uncontrollable drift, struggling futilely without ever truly breaking free.

Dazed, she could only gaze at the one companion sharing the car with her—

Chi Buyu.

Chi Buyu.

The mercurial Chi Buyu, the Chi Buyu who always danced beyond any plan.

In that single second, Cui Qijin sifted through her memories of every utterance of “love” she had heard that night, only to find not one that struck so deeply…

None that defined her love so precisely.