Not very long. Almost a whole day, right at the stone lion’s feet.
Like a fool, she’d waited from the morning gale all the way to the evening rain.
That stretch of time felt eternal.
Every time the thought of going back crossed her mind, she’d think of last winter, when she’d yanked out her IV needle and tried to run off. After that incident came to light, Tang Yuanzhou had shut her in the house for a whole month.
This time wasn’t as bad as secretly pulling out a needle, but sneaking out behind Little Hei’s back was still a slap in Tang Yuanzhou’s face.
She knew the rules and broke them anyway. Tang Yuanzhou’s temper was genuinely bad. If he blew up, he might nail her windows and doors shut, let alone take her to any hospital.
So even though she was frozen numb, she forced herself to stay.
Until the rain came. The sugarcane vendor at the alley entrance took pity on her and, before packing up to go home, tied an umbrella to the stone lion’s neck.
The umbrella sheltered her head.
Shivering, she sat at the foot of the proud, majestic stone lion.
The whole scene was beyond stupid.
…
Over the past two days, Zhou Yi had replayed her idiotic behavior of waiting all day for Mu Qinglin more than once, trying to find a good explanation. Otherwise, not only would her dignity be gone, her parents’ coffins might not be able to hold them down.
But after racking her brain, there was only one plausible explanation: she’d been bewitched by a ghost, and she hadn’t caught that ghost yet.
No evidence, relying on the supernatural. Saying that out loud would be more humiliating than just lying there and taking the mockery.
She absolutely could not admit it.
Zhou Yi pulled her gaze back from the corner of her eye and said with a tone mixing impatience and guilt, “I told you, I was filling up my portfolio. Didn’t have time for you.”
“Mm…” Mu Qinglin responded. She slid her hand down a bit and switched to the coldest spot on Zhou Yi’s wrist. “I don’t believe you…”
Zhou Yi turned her head and opened her big eyes wide. “Do I care whether you believe me?”
Mu Qinglin met her gaze. “If you weren’t waiting for me, how did you get caught in the rain? Want me to call the station and ask the weather forecaster colleague what time it rained yesterday?”
“…” Zhou Yi instantly wanted to say “how about you hand me that stool after all.”
Before she could, Old Hu’s daughter, Little Hu, finished giving a child their injection and poked her head in with a smile. “Little Jiu, has the hand warmer gone cold? Huh, who are you?” Little Hu found Mu Qinglin unfamiliar and asked curiously.
Mu Qinglin withdrew her hand and straightened up. “Little Jiu’s friend.”
Little Hu nodded seriously. “You look way more reliable than Little Hei.”
“Then I’ll leave your Little Jiu to you. When it gets cold, take it out and heat it up again.” Little Hu pointed at the hand warmer tucked under Zhou Yi’s hand. “She started complaining about it being cold the moment the needle went in. Made my head spin. I’m going to hide in the back.”
Zhou Yi was incredulous. “I only called you once!”
“Once is enough.” Little Hu smiled at Mu Qinglin. “Thanks for your trouble.” With that, she adjusted her nurse’s cap theatrically and ducked back into the injection room.
To one side, someone’s breathing was hijacked by resentment.
Mu Qinglin stood there for a few seconds and asked cautiously, “Should I heat it up?”
Zhou Yi pretended not to hear and shouted toward the door, “Little Hei!”
Little Hei had just sat down at the steaming bun shop. “Granny Miao, give me two big portions of everything Little Jiu usually likes!”
Granny Miao heard and immediately asked, “Little Jiu can eat now?”
“No…” Little Hei rubbed his hands with a grin. “I’ll eat an extra two portions for her. When I get back, I’ll make her drool.”
Granny Miao: “Everything Little Jiu likes is sold out.”
Little Hei: “…”
Zhou Yi didn’t know what was happening outside. Like a wax figure, she stared at Mu Qinglin pull the hand warmer out from under her hand and head next door.
With the warmth gone from her hand, the lingering coldness on her wrist felt especially sharp.
Zhou Yi glanced over expressionlessly. Her breathing gradually steadied.
Before long, Little Hu’s clear voice came from outside. “What happened to your foot?”
Zhou Yi the wax figure instinctively knew what Little Hu was referring to, but she didn’t look at the small stool Mu Qinglin had already tucked into a far corner. She just blinked, covering her ears and stealing her own bells. Then she heard Mu Qinglin say: “Sprained it getting off the bus.”
Mu Qinglin’s voice was muffled as if wrapped in cotton, clearly trying to keep it down.
Little Hu, on the other hand, was a megaphone. “What are you rushing for? What if it’s fractured?”
Mu Qinglin: “Got myself in trouble. Hurried over to apologize.”
Apologize?
To her?
So urgent she sprained her ankle?
Zhou Yi planted her feet on the ground and casually leaned a little toward the injection area.
“Sit here. Let me take a look,” Little Hu said.
Mu Qinglin: “It’s fine. I can tell.”
“By the time you can tell, you’ll need a cast.”
“Then I appreciate it.”
Little Hu directed Mu Qinglin to take off her shoe and pull up her pant leg. The diagnosis came quickly. “No problem, actually. But I have to ask. How do you manage to sprain an ankle and scrape the skin off?”
Zhou Yi’s eyes darted to the corner and the small stool. She heard Mu Qinglin say: “I’ll study that carefully when I have time.”
Studying how yarn gets wound into a ball would be more worthwhile than this.
Zhou Yi muttered internally, then thought: why not just sell her out and let Little Hu see what a vicious person she was?
Before Zhou Yi could figure out an answer, Mu Qinglin had returned with the reheated hand warmer.
Zhou Yi closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
Mu Qinglin didn’t call her out. She placed the hand warmer back under Zhou Yi’s hand, carefully pressed the IV tube out of the way, and pulled Zhou Yi’s sleeve over as a buffer to prevent burns.
After that, Zhou Yi heard her sit down in the seat next to her and let out a long breath. It sounded like the sigh Tang Yuanzhou let out after working nonstop for days and finally getting a rest.
The difference was that Tang Yuanzhou didn’t hold back at all. Mu Qinglin’s exhale was soft and drawn out.
Another way to describe this behavior would be: careful not to wake her?
Or was it to hide her fatigue?
Outside, the cold wind carried the depths of winter. The sound of dense raindrops sweeping across the glass could be faintly heard, along with the shadows of ancient trees by the Yong’an River cast onto the window.
Flickering, swaying, unsteady.
“Little Jiu, have you thought about it? How long did you wait for me that day?” Mu Qinglin suddenly spoke, her voice directed at Zhou Yi.
Zhou Yi couldn’t keep up the act. Inside, she felt stifled and awkward.
Was “Little Jiu” a name just anyone could call?
And twice in a row at that. Shameless.
Zhou Yi opened her eyes and asked bluntly: “You already know, so why ask?”
Mu Qinglin: “I want to hear it from your own mouth.”
“Does that make you look good? And highlight how stupid I was at the same time?”
“No…”
“Then what?”
There was a hint of a smile buried in Mu Qinglin’s eyes. “Second-hand accounts don’t carry emotion. Hearing it from you, even just a few words, would leave a deep impression. I want to learn my lesson so I never make the same mistake again.”
Why did it need to be that deep?
And learn a lesson, tsk…
Was it because it mattered?
Zhou Yi felt like she mostly understood what Mu Qinglin was saying, but the thread she could pull to see things clearly kept drifting. She couldn’t grab it.
After a moment of silence, Zhou Yi pulled the hand warmer down into her lap along her vague train of thought and said grudgingly: “About a day. Freezing to death.”
There it was.
To think that something could reduce a prickly little hedgehog to this. In this moment, Mu Qinglin felt utterly unforgivable.
“There won’t be a next time,” Mu Qinglin said with certainty.
Zhou Yi: “Pretty words are cheap. Show me with actions.”
Mu Qinglin: “Mm. We have a long road ahead.” She would make it up to her slowly. And this time still needed some explaining to settle things.
Mu Qinglin took out her phone, pulled up a video, and held it in front of Zhou Yi. “Something came up at work. I got pulled into an emergency assignment overseas for a few days. The workload was intense, and it was in a field I hadn’t touched in almost two years. If I didn’t want to fall on my face in front of others, I had to spend twice as much time catching up in private. Sometimes I was so busy I forgot to eat. The pressure was enormous.
Zhou Yi, I didn’t stand you up on purpose.”
Zhou Yi didn’t speak. Going from resistance to rapt attention, she watched the video bit by bit along the progress bar.
Mu Qinglin on camera, speaking English throughout, using difficult, technical vocabulary. Yet she was smoother than that time she’d reported on the Bastard’s arrest in Red Gate Alley, and perhaps even more at ease and eye-catching than in 《Safe Jiangping》.
At least that’s what Zhou Yi thought.
And…
When she’d reached over just now, the air she stirred carried a smell of travel and exhaustion.
She really had just come back.
Bearing all that pressure abroad, and the moment she returned she came looking for Zhou Yi to apologize, so flustered she sprained her ankle.
The knot of frustration in Zhou Yi’s chest loosened a bit. “Aren’t you a livelihood news reporter? Does our country have livelihood business overseas?”
“No…” Mu Qinglin was amused by Zhou Yi’s words. “It was for another channel.”
“Oh. So you’re a hot commodity.” Zhou Yi glanced at her. “Are you a big deal at your station?”
Mu Qinglin’s grip on her phone tightened. She slipped it into her pocket and smiled. “It’s the provincial station, after all. There are standards for hiring.”
Zhou Yi: “Oh…”
Probably.
Lu Chang had said that the spacious, bright high-rises outside Red Gate Alley weren’t places people like them, without education or experience, could enter. He’d also said the people there always seemed a cut above.
All of that seemed to be true.
Otherwise, how could a small livelihood news reporter, one that even Uncle Ge at the grain and oil shop didn’t like to watch, take on such a major assignment?
Something pricked at Zhou Yi’s heart. It felt deeply uncomfortable.
And she couldn’t explain why.
Before, she’d never thought people could be divided into high and low, or things into precious and cheap.
What was wrong with her today?
Zhou Yi squeezed the hand warmer hard. The sting from the needle site dragged her spiraling thoughts back.
Mu Qinglin had been watching Zhou Yi. Seeing her slump one moment and frown the next, still thinking she was angry, she added more temptation. “Would a gift make you stop being mad?”
Zhou Yi instantly didn’t want to talk. “Who wants a gift? I’m not a three-year-old.”
“Mm. You don’t want one. I’m the one desperate to give it.”
“…” After two seconds of silence, Zhou Yi held out her hand to Mu Qinglin. “Hand it over…”
Mu Qinglin fished a small badge out of her pants pocket and handed it to Zhou Yi. “A commemorative badge from this assignment. A governor personally gave it out. Only three people have this model. Out of production.”
Zhou Yi looked at it without much interest.
The badge appeared to be solid gold. Just selling it as gold would net a nice sum, not to mention the relief patterns with their distinct foreign character.
This badge was a token of friendship and also an acknowledgment of the work they’d done, traveling thousands of miles to accompany the visit.
Describing its significance with just “out of production” didn’t do it justice.
Zhou Yi looked up at Mu Qinglin. “Something this precious, and you’d give it to me?”
Mu Qinglin: “Why wouldn’t I? To me, it’s just another day’s work.”
But not everyone could do that job. And not everyone could receive such a badge from a governor’s hand. More importantly… this person had just gone on about being strapped and stressed, pitiful as could be. Who would have the nerve to accept?
Zhou Yi didn’t say that out loud. It would seem melodramatic. As for the badge…
