“Are you free lately?”
Cui Qijin said this over the phone, her tone impossible to discern.
Chen Wenran was utterly stunned.
Before she could respond, an abrupt busy signal echoed from the other end as the call ended.
Did she dial the wrong number?
Chen Wenran sat there in a daze, her finger hovering over the callback button. Just before she pressed it, she hesitated and stopped. One second. Two seconds… Five seconds—
Her phone rang. It was Cui Qijin calling back.
As expected from that same flip-flopping, self-tormenting personality of hers.
Chen Wenran sighed and answered, putting on an exaggeratedly playful tone. “What’s up, Grandmaster Cui? Need me for something? Chat services are fifty bucks an hour, no haggling.”
Cui Qijin fell silent for a long moment.
It felt like she might hang up again without a word.
Chen Wenran rushed to explain, but Cui Qijin spoke first.
“Should I come to you, or should you come to me?”
Chen Wenran blinked in surprise. “What?”
Silence returned from the other end. This time, even her breathing seemed to vanish, as if her phone had been swallowed by some glitch in the signal.
Chen Wenran assumed it was a bad connection.
She pulled the phone away to check the screen, switched to speakerphone. After a long pause, a transfer notification popped up. She tapped it open—six transfers of fifty bucks each.
At the same moment, Cui Qijin’s voice returned, faint and scattered by the spotty signal.
“Where are you?”
Still no real tone to it, but it was enough to put Chen Wenran on high alert.
“How about I come to you? I just finished a site visit this afternoon, so I’m free. You’ll be home after six, right?”
Cui Qijin’s response seemed sluggish.
Only after a long delay did she slowly utter two words.
“At home.”
Then she hung up.
Something felt off to Chen Wenran. Based on past experience, Cui Qijin was the type to swallow her broken teeth and suffer in silence. She’d even rip open her own stomach to prove there was no pain inside if someone pried too hard.
Even when they’d seen the evidence with their own eyes after Leshan, Cui Qijin had already prepared herself. She was determined to break down those indescribable agonies alone, grind them to dust, and dissolve them into her limbs where no one could reach.
Precisely because she understood this side of Cui Qijin so well, Chen Wenran hadn’t asked a single question since their return from Leshan. She didn’t want to force Cui Qijin to divert energy from processing her pain just to fend off inquiries.
But now…
Cui Qijin was reaching out to her first?
Chen Wenran didn’t dare delay. After work, she told Ran Yan and drove to Cui Qijin’s place in a distracted state.
By the time she reached Love Adrift Street, she was stuck in traffic for twenty minutes amid a massive crowd. Glancing at the time—half an hour to six—she hesitated and sent Cui Qijin a WeChat message:
【Are you at home or the studio right now?】
It was five-thirty, prime work hours for Cui Qijin. Under normal circumstances, Chen Wenran wouldn’t expect a reply.
But this time was anything but normal.
Two minutes later, Cui Qijin responded:
【At home】
Followed by another:
【Just punch in the code when you get here】
!
During work hours, replying to WeChat—and still at home, telling her to let herself in.
The more Chen Wenran thought about it, the worse it seemed.
She raced over in a frantic rush, punched in the code, and the door unlocked. Heart in her throat, she held her breath and stepped inside. She wouldn’t exhale for a long time.
Was this Cui Qijin’s home?
How could there be… so much stuff? How could it be… such a mess?
The living room carpet was littered with magazines flipped open by the breeze, scattered haphazardly. Several wooden chairs blocked the path, left askew after use. The TV blared at max volume, playing that ancient Taiwanese idol drama. Drug packets lay tossed on the sofa, an open medicine box sat uncovered on the TV cabinet, unopened cans of beer were scattered about, her frame glasses hadn’t been put away, an open suitcase slumped to one side with clothes spilling out, and the trash bin overflowed with mango pits that hadn’t been cleared.
Where was Cui Qijin?
The door clicked shut behind her, the password lock chiming loudly: “Door locked.” The sound was sharp and jarring, but the supposedly “at home” Cui Qijin showed no sign of stirring.
Chen Wenran wandered around in bewilderment.
At last, amid the wildly overgrown tropical plants on the balcony, she spotted Cui Qijin’s shadowy figure.
She was sitting, her side and back to the door, not even wearing her glasses—like that day under the tree. Her arms wrapped around her knees, wrists dangling, the two knobs of her spine protruding slightly beneath a curtain of thick, loose black hair.
She blended in like just another one of those potted plants. No telling what she was staring at. In any case, she’d hidden herself among them, showing no wariness or reaction as Chen Wenran approached.
“What are you looking at?”
Only when Chen Wenran drew near did she notice the items in Cui Qijin’s hands: a golden mango in her left, an unopened can of beer in her right.
What kind of odd pairing was this?
Looking up further, Chen Wenran saw that Cui Qijin’s face wasn’t tear-streaked or puffy-eyed as she’d imagined. It looked normal—ghostly pale as always. In fact, from all the sun exposure, it even had a faint rosy glow beneath the white.
“This colorful leaf taro is blooming beautifully.”
Cui Qijin tilted her chin slightly, her voice baked lazy by the sun.
“There are no clouds today. I’m keeping it company in the sun for a bit—it’ll bloom even better. Maybe with a few more cloudless days and a touch more patience, its leaves will turn even more vibrant.”
“Yeah?”
Chen Wenran didn’t quite get it. She glanced bafflingly at the perfectly blooming plant and muttered, “It’s pretty nice, sure.”
“But the weather forecast says it’ll be cloudy the next few days. Chengdu won’t give it the chance to grow even prettier.”
Cui Qijin added out of nowhere.
“I’m a little mad at Chengdu for that.”
After knowing her for so many years, Chen Wenran still couldn’t always follow Cui Qijin’s train of thought. It sounded disconnected, but there had to be some logic that only made sense in Cui Qijin’s head.
Chen Wenran wasn’t sure if she was talking about the plant or something else entirely.
Maybe someone else in the world could understand, but it sure wasn’t her.
Spotting the beer can gripped in Cui Qijin’s hand, Chen Wenran changed the subject.
“Have you been drinking?”
Cui Qijin turned slowly toward her. Without her glasses, her expression was hard to read, but her gaze was clear—as if she didn’t want to see clearly anyway.
“No.”
She denied it, shaking the can in her hand. “Just holding it like this feels nicer.”
“What about the mango?”
“Mango?”
Cui Qijin looked down at the fruit in her grasp, reacting sluggishly.
“Was gonna eat it.”
She extended her hand toward Chen Wenran. “Want some?”
Chen Wenran reached out instinctively.
The next second, Cui Qijin pulled back, blunt as ever. “Then go buy your own.”
Chen Wenran laughed in exasperation.
“Is this how you treat guests?”
Cui Qijin pondered for a few seconds, eyeing the mango and beer in her hands. She frowned, then finally set the beer down. She fished her phone from the chest pocket of her silk pajamas, tapped a few times, and Chen Wenran’s phone buzzed.
Cui Qijin slipped the phone back into her pocket and picked up the beer again, utterly nonchalant.
“You can buy some on your way out later.”
Chen Wenran had watched every move closely and realized with a jolt that Cui Qijin was still in her pajamas. One thought dominated her mind:
This isn’t right. Not right at all.
“Fine, whatever.”
Chen Wenran leaned against the balcony doorframe. “Since Grandmaster Cui’s already paid the chat fee, I won’t nitpick about the lack of mangoes.”
In truth, she hadn’t accepted the transfer yet.
Cui Qijin glanced at her, clearly questioning it.
Chen Wenran lifted her chin. “Good merchants collect payment after service.”
Cui Qijin nodded but said nothing.
Chen Wenran waited patiently, assuming she was gathering her thoughts. Minutes ticked by with no sign of her speaking.
She waited several more minutes.
Her legs were starting to ache, so Chen Wenran dragged over a wooden chair, straddled it backward, and rested her chin on the backrest, making an “I’m all ears” face. Still, Cui Qijin didn’t speak.
“If you don’t talk soon, those six hours will be wasted.”
Dusk was falling. Chen Wenran tapped her phone screen by way of reminder.
Cui Qijin looked at her but remained silent.
Fine.
Chen Wenran sighed inwardly several times, about to prompt her when Cui Qijin finally spoke, hesitant.
“I just…”
She rested her forehead against her wrists, her black hair tumbling down with gravity. Her tone turned wistful in a way Chen Wenran had never heard—like a particularly frustrated surrender.
“…don’t really want to be alone.”
In that moment, twilight blanketed everything. Behind them, the TV still blared at full volume. The idol drama wrapped up a heartfelt line and segued into its end credits song, filling the room with clamor.
Chen Wenran was suddenly speechless.
Cui Qijin didn’t want to be alone.
Cui Qijin had said it herself: she didn’t want to be alone.
The realization stunned Chen Wenran—and filled Cui Qijin with dread.
Since returning from Leshan.
She’d planned to drown herself in work, so that very night she’d opened her work email. But the client she’d been liaising with had already sent a thank-you note, praising her flawless completion of the project and expressing deep gratitude for their collaboration.
She’d forgotten that before Leshan, she’d already wrapped up one project. And no new inquiries had appeared in her inbox. Freelancing was like that.
Sometimes assignments poured in, piling up until you were exhausted for months. Other times, you hit a dry spell.
Unfortunately, she’d entered a dry spell.
Even more unfortunately, she’d completely forgotten how she used to get through past dry spells.
The greatest misfortune was that during this dry spell, she had to wait for Chi Buyu to process the secret she’d hidden for so long—then reach out, and meet her.
And so she malfunctioned like a machine without instructions, trapped in a void.
She couldn’t control herself. She couldn’t return to normal. It was as if the aftereffects of that blue-hand fruit hadn’t completely faded yet. Her tolerance for alcohol wouldn’t let her drown her sorrows, so she had no choice but to clutch one can of ice-cold beer after another, just like she had back in Leshan, to ease the ache.
Suddenly, she had no patience for tidying up her meticulously organized apartment, where every item had its precise boundaries. Suddenly, she couldn’t stand how slowly time dragged on. She picked up a magazine that interested her but set it aside when she couldn’t focus. She turned on the TV and endlessly rewatched that old Taiwanese idol drama about friends-with-benefits, hearing the characters spout completely contradictory advice: possessing something wasn’t the start of losing it; every period of possession filled those years to the brim…
