Chapter 44: The Strange Embrace Part 1

“Cui Muhuo?”

“…Yeah.”

“Are you…” Chi Buyu’s voice still sounded faint, whether from choking on too much water or from hesitation, Cui Qijin couldn’t tell.

“No.” Cui Qijin denied it quickly.

Chi Buyu fell silent.

Cui Qijin coughed twice. Her forearm still covered the upper half of her face, pressed down tightly, refusing to budge. Water droplets pattered from her sleeve, falling onto her cheeks—enough to conceal the salty, bitter tears trickling from the corners of her eyes.

“I didn’t… cough, cough, cough…”

Cui Qijin choked up more water. For a moment, her mouth and nose burned with spiciness, the pain even tugging at her lungs.

After a couple more coughs, a flurry of panicked rustling sounds arose—as if someone who had been lying on the grass beside her, just like her, had hurriedly rolled over in a full somersault to her side. Then, with her own drenched palm, Chi Buyu gripped Cui Qijin’s wrist—the one shielding her face—and her voice came out urgent.

“Let me see!”

Cui Qijin refused. They remained locked in a stalemate. Chi Buyu wouldn’t let go either, clutching her tightly. Water from her body, her face, her hands—all rained down onto Cui Qijin’s cheeks, collar, and the hollow behind her ear, mingling with the droplets already falling from Cui Qijin herself. Together, they dripped onto the tender blades of grass.

The scent of fresh grass grew richer, soaked through. The sunlight heated the water stains into warmth. Cui Qijin’s pulse jumped wildly in the soft cradle of Chi Buyu’s palm. After a long while, she heard Chi Buyu exhale into the nearly stagnant air, only to dissolve into pained coughs. Her wrist twitched, then hesitantly released its grip. Peering through the gap—

Blinding white sunlight stabbed in. Blurrily, she could only make out Chi Buyu’s sodden face.

Nothing else came into focus.

She could only discern a hazy silhouette. In a hoarse voice, she asked, “Chi Buyu? Are you okay?”

Chi Buyu gazed at her amid coughs. The hand gripping her wrist lingered without releasing, drawing closer as if for a better look. Cui Qijin could tell Chi Buyu’s own eyes were red-rimmed, yet she kept staring. Then, cautiously, she reached out, her fingers gently brushing the corner of Cui Qijin’s eye.

Skin met skin, warm. Tears mingled with lake water, seeping into her fingertips.

In that instant, Cui Qijin instinctively lowered her lashes, trying to evade.

Chi Buyu froze. After a beat, she murmured in a daze, “You’re really crying again.”

Twice in one day. Since she’d become aware enough to understand things, Cui Qijin had never experienced this. Tears were bad, a sign of naughtiness that made adults angry, convinced the child was immature. Professor Cui and Professor Yu’s child had to be the model of maturity—no tantrums, no holding them back from their teaching duties. She was supposed to be an exemplar, held up high for all to see.

“It’s just from the coughing. Physiological tears, nothing more.”

Cui Qijin stressed it stiffly, then wiped her sodden eyelids with the back of her hand—a futile cover. She glanced at Chi Buyu’s reddening eyes.

“You’re one to talk.”

She tried to shift the topic.

Chi Buyu looked at her. Whether it was an illusion or not, Cui Qijin felt those eyes growing redder by the second. After a few dozen seconds, they resembled a pair of tomatoes sun-steamed to ripeness.

And yet those two tomatoes stayed utterly silent, only deepening in hue.

Cui Qijin sat up on the grass, patting herself down. She discovered that the tissues she always carried were thoroughly soaked; when she pulled them out, they tore apart into soggy, sticky shreds.

Her hands were now covered in a mess of paper bits. She felt dejected, like a child caught red-handed in mischief. Just then, she heard Chi Buyu sniffle and say abruptly, “Want a hug?”

“What?” Cui Qijin’s first reaction was confusion.

The refusal slipped out before she even processed what Chi Buyu had said.

She paused, avoiding Chi Buyu’s gaze. “You’re not… scared, are you—”

As she spoke, she glanced down at the scraps clinging to her hands, impossible to shake off. She rubbed her fingers together, then let her empty hand drop back into her pocket.

The moment her hand slipped into the pocket, enveloped by damp fabric, a blurry figure lunged forward. Soaked through, it enveloped her without warning—

Chi Buyu’s chin pressed firmly into the crook of her neck, face buried against the nape of her ear, arms wrapped around the back of her neck. Damp strands of hair clung to her skin, warm against her body heat. Water carrying a hint of warmth trickled down her shoulder—like tears, yet not quite.

The voice murmuring into her ear was intimate, a sob or perhaps a woman’s labored breath.

Cui Qijin’s hand remained in her pocket.

She couldn’t react right away. Then, sniffling in her ear, Chi Buyu said, “I need it. I need a hug.”

Cui Qijin saw their shadows cast on the vibrant green grass—hers murky and dark, Chi Buyu’s more translucent, brighter. Suddenly, the shadows overlapped perfectly, seamless, like intertwined shrubs or some sea plant abruptly thrust into sunlight.

Breaths trailed along her neck, mingled with falling water.

Chi Buyu held her so tightly that the dripping water from her body nearly burned holes behind Cui Qijin’s ears. Chi Buyu’s body temperature felt a bit low—probably from emerging too chilled from the lake.

When the human body grew cold, it needed shared warmth.

Cui Qijin hesitated, then slowly drew her hand from her pocket. Blurrily, she lifted her head and spotted two distant figures—likely Chen Wenran and Ran Yan—watching them.

Her hand, hovering midair, paused. Those two tactfully backed away farther.

So.

Her suspended hand finally settled on Chi Buyu’s slender back. Through the thin, wet fabric, she felt the slight ridge of her spine.

“Why are you crying so hard all of a sudden…” Her voice came out parched.

Chi Buyu clutched her tighter.

Cui Qijin patted her back. Chi Buyu even started gasping for breath.

What an odd creature Chi Buyu was—patting her back only made her sob harder, endlessly, shrinking into her embrace as if she’d suddenly diminished in size. Her tears were endless, wearing out Cui Qijin’s patting hand, stinging her own eyes with exhaustion.

“Let me… ask you a question…”

After crying for what felt like forever, Chi Buyu dissolved into a puddle of melting snow, or a cloud of evaporating mist.

“After college graduation, that group trip we’d planned—why did you suddenly back out?”

Cui Qijin hadn’t expected the question right then. Startled, she still answered, “At the time, I was planning to join that environmental project in South America.”

“Why the sudden decision?”

Why? The question sounded so childish once voiced.

Cui Qijin held Chi Buyu, silent for a long moment before replying, “Have you seen the piercings on Yu Chenxing?”

Chi Buyu probably didn’t connect it immediately. “I’ve seen them before.”

“Yeah.” Cui Qijin continued, “After she hit puberty, she went wild, piercing herself everywhere. She was never very obedient, always doing things that left Professor Cui and Professor Yu deeply displeased. But every time she added another piercing, they never outright said she was wrong. They’d only ask, ‘Do you really think that’s good?’ But Yu Chenxing’s different from me—she wouldn’t admit fault, wouldn’t apologize. Not that it was wrong in the first place; she had every right to decide how her body looked…”

“But she’d always end up fighting with them, huge blowouts. Sometimes she’d run away from home for days, and no one knew where she was. Professor Cui and Professor Yu would show clear emotional strain during those times, nothing like their usual selves…”

“And you?” Chi Buyu interjected suddenly.

Chi Buyu had stopped crying, though her breathing was still uneven. She held on steadfastly, quietly embracing her.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. What about you?” Chi Buyu was so persistent, so perceptive. “Why is there no ‘you’ in that whole story?”

Cui Qijin’s gaze dropped to the paper scraps on her fingers, nearly dried by the sun.

“After my eighteenth birthday, I told them I’d never marry. After graduation, I told them about South America. My rebellion seems to have come later than Yu Chenxing’s…” She crumbled the bits away, piece by piece, her voice laced with bewilderment. “Those were probably the two ‘piercings’ I tried carving into my own life.”

One was something she truly believed in. The other… she’d thought they might at least try to dissuade her from it. Maybe even hold her back. But she’d forgotten: for Yu Hongdong who’d gone to Shanghai, and Cui He to Harbin, her heading to South America or staying in Chengdu probably made no difference. She knew now that whether real piercings or the ones she’d declared, none were truly bad.

Yet their response was always a semblance of non-opposition without support. For so long, she’d wallowed in confusion, lost and directionless.

Sometimes she even wished she could pick a fight with them. She’d grown up without ever really quarreling much. The person she’d clashed with most—enough to be captured on film, misunderstood as mortal enemies, seen by many as irreconcilable foes—

Had only ever been Chi Buyu.

“That’s all?”

Chi Buyu wasn’t quarreling now. She was just silently shedding tears against Cui Qijin’s neck.

Cui Qijin tightened her arms around the Chi Buyu who would argue with her and make her cry. “Yeah, that’s all.”

“Cui Qijin.” Chi Buyu called her name again. Perhaps she’d decided to treat her as Cui Qijin from now on.

“Yeah?”

No matter who Chi Buyu thought she was, she’d always answer.

“Then why… didn’t you end up going?”

Why hadn’t she gone?

Cui Qijin rubbed the paper scraps on her hands—soft, damp. Suddenly, they reminded her of snow. She recalled the snowfall in Chengdu at the end of 2020—

“I moved to Love Adrift Street that winter. Chengdu was hit with a pretty big snowfall—about as heavy as this year’s, or maybe even heavier. The snowflakes were soft on the shoulders. The rental place was tiny: a studio up front, partitioned off into a little nook in the back with just enough room for a folding single bed, a cabinet, and a pot of pothos. The door was narrow. Sometimes, looking at it from outside, it felt like a little cave or a small burrow. But luckily, I didn’t have much luggage, just enough to fill that snug little space perfectly.”

“Just because it was a perfect fit?” Chi Buyu sounded a bit puzzled.

Cui Qijin thought, of course it was.

But before that snowstorm came a sweltering September. Love Adrift Street was thick with the cloying scent of tropical fruits, like a sultry aquarium stocked with pineapples and mangoes. On one restless night before heading off to South America, she’d wandered with heavy steps and paused in front of a shop called True Heart Big Mango.