Chapter 15

The next morning.

Ignoring those who had drunk themselves into a stupor and were still sleeping it off, Yun Chun grabbed the bank card Lu Zhi had given her the day before and headed to the bank.

In front of the ATM.

Hiring those people had cost her a pretty penny, and it truly pained her to think about it. So, in a rather stingy move, she decided to deduct the expense from this “betrothal gift.”

After all, if it weren’t for Lu Qingxue’s parents, none of this would have happened.

Of course, before leaving Lü Feng’s house yesterday, she had also squeezed a little money out of him. But Lü Feng had just lost his card, so he wasn’t about to hand over much—just tossed her five hundred. Five hundred would do; every bit helped to offset her losses, and she’d cover the rest herself.

Thus, Yun Chun only planned to withdraw half of the hiring fee from the card.

She entered the PIN that Lu Zhi had told her yesterday. As the machine whirred to life, Yun Chun rested her fingers on it and tapped idly out of boredom.

After two light taps, the selection screen appeared.

She didn’t withdraw the money right away. Instead, she clicked on the balance option, curious to see exactly how much they had given Lü Feng.

He had said “tens of thousands”—was it thirty thousand, fifty thousand, or maybe eighty?

When the balance flashed on the screen, Yun Chun thought for a moment that she was seeing things.

She was quite a bit taller than the machine, and she hadn’t bent down for the first look. The number startled her so badly that she jumped.

For the second look, she not only bent over but practically stuck her head into the machine. She even squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds, convinced it had been a hallucination. But when she opened them, the number was still there, and she couldn’t accept it.

Balance: 176,332

She still had the receipt for yesterday’s gold bracelet from Lu Zhi, and it listed the price as 3,668.

Added together…

One hundred eighty thousand!

The Lu Family had spent one hundred eighty thousand to buy her birth chart! One hundred eighty thousand to arrange a ghost marriage between her and Lu Qingxue! And Lü Feng had called it “tens of thousands” when it was actually one hundred eighty thousand!

No wonder Lu Zhi had clutched the card so tightly, unwilling to let go!

No wonder Lü Feng had looked at her like he wanted to kill her!

Yun Chun felt like she was in some surreal fantasy.

Her finger hovered over the screen as she murmured, “Units… tens… hundreds…”

She re-entered the PIN to confirm: one hundred seventy-six thousand and change.

If they’d said this much upfront, she would have handed over her birth chart with both hands! Hell, she’d have been happy to hold a full wedding ceremony. What did it have to do with Lü Feng anyway?

The staggering sum of one hundred eighty thousand had temporarily blinded Yun Chun, leaving her mind foggy for a couple of seconds.

Once she snapped out of it, she swallowed hard and tremblingly tapped to retrieve the card.

For some reason, seeing all that money made her suddenly too scared to deduct anything from it.

But then she remembered the hefty hiring fee she’d shelled out for no good reason, and she turned back to the machine.

After inserting the card, she silently called out in her mind:

Sister Qingxue! Sister Qingxue! Sister Qingxue!

Come out quick!

Come on out!

About five seconds later, a voice spoke in her ear: “What’s wrong?”

Hearing Lu Qingxue’s voice, Yun Chun’s first thought was: Speak of the devil and she appears!

Yun Chun glanced around but saw no sign of Lu Qingxue. Figuring she was hiding, Yun Chun still blurted out in surprise, “You can actually come out during the daytime?”

Lu Qingxue hummed an affirmative. “If you call for me, I’ll come. No need to find it strange.”

Yun Chun didn’t dwell on it—there was something even more shocking. She pointed at the machine’s screen. “Look at this!”

“What?”

“One hundred eighty thousand!” Yun Chun couldn’t hold back her astonishment. “Your parents actually gave Lü Feng one hundred eighty thousand!”

And Lü Feng had told her it was just tens of thousands!

He’d even tried to brush her off with a measly ten thousand!

A faint response came through the air, laced with Lu Qingxue’s amusement: “Mm.”

Yun Chun was baffled. “Why aren’t you surprised at all?!”

After a long pause, Lu Qingxue replied, “If I were alive, the betrothal gift for you would be double that. Dead, it’s just going through the motions.”

If one hundred eighty thousand was “just going through the motions,” then Yun Chun would gladly sell her birth chart to a bunch of people and go through it a dozen times!

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than something thwacked the top of Yun Chun’s head.

It was a light tap, but she dramatically clutched her scalp anyway and blinked in the direction of the strike.

Though she couldn’t see Lu Qingxue, her intuition told her that was exactly where the woman was.

Out of habit from always looking up at Lu Qingxue, she tilted her gaze upward just a bit.

And there, in the corner, was a security camera staring down.

Yun Chun: “…”

She was afraid that talking to Lu Qingxue would get caught on camera, making the bank staff think she was some nutjob chatting with thin air. That’s why, when calling for Lu Qingxue, she’d pulled out her phone and held it to her ear like she was on a call.

Now, one hand held the phone aloft, the other cradled her head as she drew in a slow breath.

Yun Chun gradually shifted her gaze away from the camera to the ATM, slowly lowering her hand from her scalp—as if the glance up had just been an absent-minded habit while on the phone.

A gentle admonition sounded in her ear: “No thinking about those harebrained schemes.”

Yun Chun puzzled, “Can you read my mind?”

It had been the same yesterday—she’d barely formed a thought before Lu Qingxue nipped it in the bud.

“It’s the look in your eyes that gives you away,” Lu Qingxue replied with a laugh. “Whenever you start scheming some shady way to make money, a different gleam sparks in them.”

Uh…

Was that true?

No way, right?

Did her emotions show that plainly on her face?

Well, maybe not to most people. It was mostly that Lu Qingxue knew her too well. A slight roll of Yun Chun’s eyes, and Lu Qingxue could guess whatever mischief she was plotting.

But Yun Chun didn’t realize this.

She began to suspect that the expression management class she’d taken back in the day had been a total waste.

On the T-stage, her expressions had never faltered once.

After a few seconds of silence, Yun Chun explained, “I was just thinking about it. I wouldn’t actually do it.”

One Lu Qingxue was already turning dark circles under her eyes black and blue. Any more, and she’d be joining them down there, heh.

“I want to take out fifteen hundred from it. Is that okay?”

“The money’s yours to begin with. Take as much as you want.”

“Just fifteen hundred.” Yun Chun loved money, sure, but she had principles. She wouldn’t take what wasn’t rightfully hers.

The fifteen hundred was half the cost of hiring those people, and it was the Lu Family’s responsibility anyway.

Lu Qingxue didn’t argue and simply went along. “Up to you.”

With Lu Qingxue’s approval, Yun Chun finally withdrew the cash.

She stuffed the bills into one pocket and carefully tucked the card into another.

On the way here, she’d been tossing the card in the air like a toy. Now, she kept patting her pocket every few seconds to make sure it was still there.

Joking aside, she couldn’t afford to lose it.

~~~

She spent fifteen yuan on a cab ride to the village where the Lu Family lived.

After getting out, Yun Chun started heading toward the Lu house based on childhood memories, but after one step, she doubted herself. She looked at the folks sitting along the street and asked in the local dialect how to get to the Lu Family’s place.

After confirming with a few villagers, she saw it matched what she remembered.

Yun Chun thanked them and set off.

She had walked this road a few times before.

All back when she was little. With every step, fuzzy memories flooded back.

Then a scrap of red paper fluttered past in the wind, drifting from in front of Yun Chun toward the rear. She paused, turning to follow it with her eyes as it receded into the distance.

And with it, her memories drew nearer.

Soon, she recalled the last time she had walked this narrow lane.

Back then, it had just been her and Lu Qingxue.

Every year during the New Year holidays in Lu Qingxue’s village, the village committee would pool funds to hire folk bands for a song-and-dance gala in the village—known as the “village gala.”

It was usually on the fourth or fifth day of the lunar new year, starting at eight in the evening.

During the Spring Festival, Lü Feng would roam the village streets from house to house, joining in wherever folks were playing mahjong or cards. That left just Yun Chun and her mom at home. On the night of the village gala, the two of them would head first to Grandma’s for dinner—dumplings, either the ones made on New Year’s Eve or fresh that day. Yun Chun didn’t like dumplings, no matter the filling.

But Mom would always coax her with a smile to eat a few more, saying they had coins hidden inside and that finding one meant good fortune for the new year. Only then would Yun Chun reluctantly choke down a few bites—five at most.

After dinner, once Mom had washed the dishes, she would take Yun Chun’s hand and stroll under the moonlight toward the heart of Lu Village.

The moon back then was different from now.

Even a half-moon would scatter its light across the ground, brightening the country lanes. Everything glowed under it—the snowdrifts by the road sparkling like diamonds. The dark sky twinkled with stars, and though the wind blew, the scarf Mom had knitted kept her neck toasty warm. No chill at all as she skipped along hand in hand with Mom, as if they were heading to the Moon Palace itself.

That particular night had been the last New Year the Lu Qingxue family spent in the village—right before they moved to the city.

Mom had led her from their place toward Lu Village, regaling her with myths or singing songs along the way.

A thirty-minute walk, and it had never felt long at all.

Lu Qingxue had been waiting at the village entrance early.

Spotting her, Yun Chun dragged Mom straight over. With her free hand, she grabbed Lu Qingxue’s and cried out, “Sister Qingxue~”

Lu Qingxue bent down and pinched her wind-flushed cheeks, red as apples. In a soft voice, she said, “Didn’t we agree you’d call me Sister Lu?”

Little Yun Chun had been quite rebellious back then. The more anyone told her to do something, the less she wanted to—maybe even on purpose, just to tease Lu Qingxue. So she shouted it again: “Sister Qingxue.”

Lu Qingxue smiled and agreed without insisting that she call her Sister Lu anymore. Instead, she took her hand and said to Yun Yueqin, “Auntie Yun, the evening party doesn’t start for another half hour. Why don’t we head to my house first and sit for a bit?”

Yun Yueqin smiled and said that would be fine.

But on the way to Lu Qingxue’s house, Yun Yueqin ran into an old acquaintance, and the two of them stopped to chat. Worried that the two children might get too cold waiting in the chilly weather, Yun Yueqin told Lu Qingxue to take Yun Chun home first.

Lu Qingxue nodded, and Yun Chun didn’t throw a tantrum either—because Lu Qingxue had given her a box of mung bean cakes from a yellow box. Her stomach was rumbling from hunger, and she was eyeing the snack, eager to devour it and fill herself up. Just a few steps away from Yun Yueqin, Yun Chun tore it open. The box was small and rectangular. Inside was a little plastic bag, and within that, six bite-sized mung bean pastries wrapped in tin foil.

She stood under a streetlamp and held out her hand to Lu Qingxue. “Let’s split them fair and square—you get three, I get three.”

Lu Qingxue bent down and took only one, popping it into her mouth. With curved eyes sparkling in a smile, she said, “Sister already ate earlier, but since Little Yun gave them to me, I’ll have just one. How about Sister gives the other two back to you?”

She pinched Yun Chun’s cheek again, feeling how icy cold the little one’s face was. Then she picked up a mung bean pastry and held it to Yun Chun’s lips. “But Little Yun should have a little bite first, okay? It’s easy to get a tummy ache eating in the wind. Let’s sneak one while the wind isn’t looking, and save the rest for home.”

That phrase—”sneak one while the wind isn’t looking”—left a deep impression on Yun Chun’s childhood.

Because that day, she opened her mouth and ate the mung bean pastry Lu Qingxue fed her. The moment it touched her tongue, it felt like she had beaten the wind.

What a thing to be proud of!

After that, Lu Qingxue tucked away the remaining four mung bean pastries, and took Yun Chun’s hand once more.

They walked through a dimly lit alley where shadows stretched long. Every household had red lanterns hanging outside, casting crisscrossing red glows on the ground along with bits of red confetti from burst firecrackers. Their shadows turned red too. Under the distant fireworks, those red shadows walked hand in hand toward home.

Back then, she had no idea Lu Qingxue would move away. That night, she was so happy that even when Yun Yueqin held her during the evening party, she kept holding Lu Qingxue’s hand—bare, ungloved, and always warm.

That Spring Festival was, for Yun Chun, all about the fragrant, chewy, melt-in-your-mouth sweetness of mung bean cakes.

Even after many years had passed, even after Lu Qingxue had moved away and they had lost touch for so long, the taste of those mung bean cakes would linger between her teeth during the Spring Festival days.

She would even buy a box of the same kind, the ones carrying her memories, and try to sneak a piece into her mouth in the wind.

But she never succeeded.

She always ended up tasting the wind.

She had only ever beaten the wind once. In front of Lu Qingxue.

The mung bean cakes were just a flavor now, and the person she longed for existed only in her mind.

The later song-and-dance parties were never as wonderful as that year’s.

In time, Yun Chun stopped going to them altogether.

As the years flowed by, she stopped dreaming of beating the wind. She stopped buying mung bean cakes. She stopped thinking of that warm hand holding hers.

Later on, she didn’t even celebrate Spring Festival anymore.

Because there was no one left to hold her hands.

A warm summer breeze brushed across her face.

Yun Chun squinted comfortably.

The alley was still the alley of her memories, but the people were no longer those from her memories.

She had grown up.

But the alley hadn’t changed much.

Following her memory, Yun Chun turned three streets and soon arrived before a red iron gate. The Lu Family home.

Unlike the neighboring houses, the Lu Family’s iron gate was flanked by green spring couplets.

When a close family member passes away, households hang spring couplets in colors other than red—usually white, yellow, green, purple, or blue—for two to three years.

And this year

marked the second anniversary of Lu Qingxue’s death.

Those pale green couplets, faded almost to white, stood in stark contrast to the red ones of her memories.