045 Orange and Little Orange
At dinner time, Qin Ren made stir-fried yam with wood ear mushrooms and romaine lettuce with sesame paste. Then, the family of three all brought their bowls to the coffee table to eat, watching Calabash Brothers together.
The reason some film and television works are called classics is that no matter when you suddenly recall them and pull them out to watch, you will still be addicted and watch with great interest.
Bang—!
On the TV, the snake spirit’s winding body wrapped around the Calabash Brother’s body, strangling him and taking him to her cave. Luo Yao watched this and reminded Qin Ren earnestly.
“Qin Ren, did you see that? The snake clan always wraps around people’s bodies. This eminence is not targeting anyone, just wanted to remind you to be careful.”
“Learned how to point at the mulberry tree and curse the locust tree, have you?”
Qin Ren tapped her and, while he was at it, added a piece of wood ear mushroom to Yu Yourong’s bowl.
“Yourong, don’t mind her. Her good friend is visiting these few days, so her temper is very strange.”
“Good friend…?”
Yu Yourong bit her chopsticks and looked around. She didn’t see anyone else in the house.
Could Luo Yao’s good friend be the Sixth Calabash Brother?
“Good friend means her bleeding thing. It’s a nickname.”
Qin Ren explained.
“It’s also called ‘great aunt,’ ‘relatives,’ and so on.”
“Oh…”
Yu Yourong seemed to understand, but not completely. However, she probably didn’t have that kind of thing.
“Don’t be happy too soon, Little Fish. This eminence didn’t expect this either before I started using the band-aid.”
Luo Yao laid out the ugly truth.
“A good friend is not good at all. Anyway, when you also suddenly start bleeding one day, you’ll be able to experience the pain of not being able to drink iced Coke.”
“I don’t drink Coke. I drink milk tea,” Yu Yourong said calmly.
Coke is good iced, milk tea is good hot. But when you’re bleeding, you can only drink hot things, not cold.
Luo Yao suddenly felt so unwilling, so unfair. She huffed angrily and spat into Qin Ren’s bowl.
“What does it have to do with me?” Qin Ren stared at his bowl, dumbfounded.
“I don’t know. My good friend is here. Don’t reason with me.”
“…”
Qin Ren was speechless. This kid was faster than anyone at learning useless things like this.
————————
After dinner, the batch of clothes Qin Ren had bought for Yu Yourong online arrived. Qin Ren brought them back, opened them, and had Yu Yourong change into a new T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts.
The denim shorts were really short on Yu Yourong, but they were also a really good fit.
The girl’s perky hipline perfectly filled out the entire design, which allowed the legs of the shorts to fit snugly around her firm thighs. It wasn’t loose like on some people who are too thin, nor did it have the squeezed, tight feeling like on people who are too heavy. The slight bulge of flesh at the hem was just right, making her already long, slender legs look as if they had stepped out of an illustration.
“Ge…”
“!”
Yu Yourong had, at some point, hidden behind the sofa because Qin Ren had been staring blankly at her legs.
“Ahem, cough… they suit you very well!”
Qin Ren gave a thumbs-up. The Pixiu beside him took a bite out of it.
“Hiss! What are you doing!” Qin Ren glared, blowing on his thumb.
“This eminence was sleepwalking.” Luo Yao made up a perfunctory excuse, holding her phone and searching Baidu to see if there was a way to temporarily gouge out a man’s eyes.
“Try on the shoes too.”
A good horse needs a good saddle, and good legs need good shoes. Qin Ren called for Yu Yourong to sit down and also opened the new shoes and socks he had bought.
Five pairs of socks in black, white, yellow, cyan, and pink. Yu Yourong was always amazed by the dyeing technology on Earth. These pure, bright candy colors also stirred up something in her called a “girlish heart.”
However, since Yu Yourong had been wearing Luo Yao’s white socks for the past few days, she still chose a pair of pure white cotton socks first. She placed her right heel on the sofa, gently hooked open the sock opening with the tip of her thumb, rolled it down to the toe, and then slowly pulled it on from the tip of her foot…
“Ge.”
“Huh?”
Yu Yourong noticed that Qin Ren’s eyes had become like they were when he was looking at her legs just now. Her movements paused hesitantly, and she felt her face grow a little hot.
“This… are you going to watch this too…”
“Huh? No… I…”
Qin Ren felt this question was a bit strange.
Because logically, Yu Yourong was just putting on a sock. What difference would it make if he watched or not?
But since Yu Yourong had specifically asked, Qin Ren felt that the act of “watching a girl put on socks” had somehow become a somewhat ambiguous matter.
“You… don’t overthink it. Hurry up and put them on. After you’re done, we’ll go out for a walk.”
In the end, Qin Ren chose to change the subject. Yu Yourong nodded and continued to put them on.
The soft cotton of the brand-new socks was very comfortable. As they were gradually pulled on, there was a soft, dense sense of security. The girl’s toes tentatively wiggled a little in the tip of the sock first. After confirming the fit, she pulled them up bit by bit along the delicate curve of her arch, from the sole to the heel, then up to the ankle, and finally, they gathered at her slender ankle, leaving a shallow, folded-over lace trim.
After putting on one, she put on the other.
Her delicate feet were small, and the soft white cotton socks were also small. After putting them on, the girl’s feet looked like two snow cones. Qin Ren casually glanced at them once or twice, then two or three times, and after three or four times, he felt his tongue go dry with a guilty conscience. He didn’t dare to look anymore and called the two girls to go for a walk in the park.
——————————
The park near Longhu Residential Community was close to Chengdu’s Eastern Suburb Memory, an area like a startup park where young people gathered. So every evening, you could see some young people skateboarding and street dancing in the park. Recently, a group of rappers had also appeared.
People’s joys and sorrows are not interconnected. When passing by these young people, Qin Ren only found them noisy.
The High Immortal’s evaluation was even more direct.
“Like gorillas chanting scriptures.”
She could only cover one ear with her hand, because the other hand had to be held by Qin Ren, so it wasn’t free. This made Luo Yao even more annoyed.
“Next time we go out, I’m only bringing one ear!”
After returning home from their walk, Luo Yao was in a sulk. The sound system of those chanting people today was so loud, even more annoying than the plaza dancers.
“Alright!”
Qin Ren expressed his support.
“Bring the other one for me to have with my drink. It should be fragrant and crispy.”
“You actually want to eat my ear.”
Qin Ren was indeed a pervert. Today he wanted to eat Luo Yao’s ear, tomorrow he would want to eat her little feet, and in the end, he would fantasize about eating the entire Luo Yao, making it seem as if he were the Pixiu.
“Even if you want to eat it, you have to wait until it’s clean. Go take a shower.”
Qin Ren glanced at the text message he had just received on his phone.
“The property management said the water will be cut off at 10 tonight.”
Yu Yourong was carefully wiping the little white shoes her brother had bought for her with a damp paper towel. Upon hearing this, she also immediately got up to get her change of clothes and bath towel from the balcony.
According to the current time, the two girls should be able to finish if they showered together.
As for Qin Ren, there was no need. He had already showered and changed before dinner because it was too hot.
“As for the modeling…”
Qin Ren stretched. He looked at the progress and deadline of his freelance job and didn’t really feel like working on it tonight.
Anyway, it was a job for a state-owned enterprise. Making good use of procrastination could be considered doing as the Romans do.
So Qin Ren decided to slack off. He lay down on the bed, preparing to find some newly bought movies on Bilibili to watch for the first time in a long while.
“Huh? When did the Zack Snyder’s Justice League cut become available?”
After scrolling for a while, Qin Ren actually found something he was interested in, and it was free for all users on the site. Just as he was about to click on it and get a freebie, a video call notification popped up on his phone.
It was [Orange].
Not [Little Orange], but Cheng Siyu’s sister, his “ex-girlfriend” Cheng Siyun.
“How did she know I’m free tonight…”
June and July had been incredibly busy. The last time they had a video call was the last time. Qin Ren couldn’t help but smile softly, a rare, warm sweetness in the curve of his lips. Just as he was about to accept, his phone chimed again.
Ding-dong—
This time, it was [Little Orange].
***
Translator’s Notes
-
Point at the mulberry tree and curse the locust tree (指桑骂槐): A Chinese idiom that means to scold someone indirectly by criticizing something else.
-
Sixth Calabash Brother (六娃): One of the seven protagonists from the classic animated series Calabash Brothers. The Sixth Brother has the power of invisibility. Yu Yourong is wondering if Luo Yao’s “good friend” is invisible.
-
Great aunt (大姨妈): A very common slang term in Chinese for a woman’s menstrual period.
-
Eastern Suburb Memory (东郊记忆): A real cultural and creative park in Chengdu, converted from an old factory complex. It’s a popular spot for young people, art, and music.
