In that instant, the loneliness in her eyes was perfectly masked by amusement.
“What are you looking at me for? Look at the fireworks.”
Qiu Yiran didn’t know how to describe her feelings in that moment.
Her heart in turmoil, she tiptoed to peer at the chaotic, noisy crowd ahead, then suddenly took Li Chunfeng’s hand.
Even interlocking their fingers.
Because she was afraid they’d get separated.
Li Chunfeng froze in that moment, unsure what she was doing. But the next second—
Qiu Yiran was already pulling her, weaving through the surging insect-like crowd toward the front.
Though tall, they were both quite slim. So they were like two long dragonflies darting through the throng.
The two dragonflies, hands clasped, pushed past many people.
It was difficult, but they managed to inch forward amid the chaotic explosions.
The fireworks grew louder, and the English and French countdowns mixed in the crowd became clearer—
“Five!” “Cinq!”
In the cold weather, Qiu Yiran’s palms were actually sweating, warming Li Chunfeng’s hands and feet—which never warmed up in winter no matter what—and making them sweat profusely.
“Four!” “Quatre!”
The people around them were like walls they kept bumping into. Li Chunfeng staggered along like a lost child, following her navigator Qiu Yiran through the crowd with great difficulty.
“Three!” “Trois!”
They pushed through the multicolored crowd, almost reaching the front row. The foreign street chatter was a jumble, but one familiar phrase in Chinese pierced through the noise and fireworks, landing precisely in Li Chunfeng’s ears—
It was her saying, Li Chunfeng, hold on to my hand tight.
“Two!” “Deux!”
They’d reached a spot very near the front, the Arc de Triomphe right before them. Streetlights gleamed, shoulders rubbed in the jostling crowd as everyone raised their phones. The whole world was rowdy, no familiar faces, yet it smelled like potato stew chicken, braised fish, and vinegar stir-fried cabbage.
“One!” “Un!”
Qiu Yiran suddenly turned around.
Her hoodie hood had somehow been pushed up over her face during the squeeze, and she yanked it off in one go.
Crackling and popping, the fireworks exploded, her face suddenly bathed in multicolored light—
Her cheeks still flushed red from the alcohol, lips slightly parted.
The sky was black as oil, fireworks bursting like kaleidoscopes. White breath hovered between their eyes. It was so noisy, everyone talking, and Li Chunfeng couldn’t hear what she said.
She could only vaguely guess those four words from her lip movements—
“Happy New Year.”
Because there were few Chinese people there.
So Chinese—the world’s most spoken language—became their secret code.
Li Chunfeng cupped Qiu Yiran’s face and kissed her firmly.
Sure enough, she tasted just like roasted cotton candy.
–
In the end, Qiu Yiran fainted outright.
That night, she’d drunk a lot, and it was such a crowded place. Making it to the front row had already taken all her endurance to avoid fainting and causing a stampede.
She didn’t remember what happened after.
When she woke up, she found herself at Olivia’s house. She was still in yesterday’s clothes, which carried the lingering scent of alcohol.
She distastefully took off her jacket and found the Christmas snow globe inside—
The one from Li Chunfeng’s house.
She stared at it blankly for a long time, completely unresponsive.
Until Olivia pushed the door open, holding a cup of honey water. “Awake?”
Qiu Yiran, still groggy, took the honey water from Olivia and stared at it for a moment before asking in confusion,
“How did I get here?”
Olivia said, “Your little wife brought you over.”
Qiu Yiran strained to lift her head, firmly protesting Olivia’s wording.
“Why do you keep calling her my little wife?”
Olivia shrugged. “Because you never told me her name.”
Qiu Yiran shook her still-aching head and said listlessly, “Her name is Li Chunfeng.”
“You have to remember it clearly.”
Qiu Yiran sipped the honey water and added, “Because she’ll definitely become an excellent model someday.”
“You’re still planning to help her?” Olivia asked.
Qiu Yiran shook her head. “Not for now.”
“Then how are you so sure?” Olivia found it odd.
But Qiu Yiran fell silent.
Olivia saw her dazed state and didn’t ask more, leaving the room.
The room felt empty again. Qiu Yiran belatedly realized—she was still holding the Christmas snow globe.
Unthinkingly, she pressed the switch.
The Christmas tree inside began to spin, and the cheerful music played again—
“Jingle bells, jingle bells”
“Jingle all the way”
…
After one song, she finished the honey water sip by sip, then slowly realized—
How did Olivia make her honey water this sweet?
–
Before leaving—Li Chunfeng had asked Olivia to make Qiu Yiran a cup of extra-honey honey water.
She hadn’t expected Qiu Yiran to faint after that kiss.
To go completely limp and collapse into her arms, head covered in sticky sweat.
Really like a melted roasted cotton candy.
—It left Li Chunfeng stunned on the spot for a long time. Of course, she hadn’t anticipated it.
She hadn’t expected Qiu Yiran to pay first, or to buy all those seasonings to teach her simple, delicious noodle recipes, or to sweat buckets squeezing them to the front for the fireworks…
Or that she herself would kiss Qiu Yiran.
Even less that Qiu Yiran would faint so thoroughly from the kiss.
It made her stand there laughing like a fool, because this person always surprised her.
Even though they deceived each other, suspected each other.
There still seemed to be so much that was extraordinary.
Finally, a kind person standing in front of them turned around with effort to remind her,
“Your wife seems to have fainted?”
Li Chunfeng snapped back to reality. “Ah—”
“Yes,”
she laughed softly, carefully wiping the sweat from Qiu Yiran’s forehead, and said very gently,
“My wife fainted from kissing me.”
At that moment, the whole cotton candy Earth was cheering for 2020. The crowd roared, fireworks crackled.
So later, when she recalled it, Li Chunfeng always thought that kiss tasted like freshly roasted cotton candy.
Afterward, she struggled to carry Qiu Yiran out of the crowd and, after hesitating, delivered her back to Olivia.
—Because this was the wife divorcing her.
If they woke up together the next day, Qiu Yiran would probably run away again.
But Li Chunfeng had no intention of explaining the kiss.
At least for now, they were still legal partners. Kissing violated no laws.
After that day passed, Qiu Yiran never contacted Li Chunfeng.
Instead, Li Chunfeng called her many times, but none were answered.
Qiu Yiran was probably avoiding her.
But Li Chunfeng didn’t know why.
During this time, she got a call from Feng Yu back in China.
Feng Yu had called many times before, all rejected.
Having tasted rejection herself, she picked up. Feng Yu said cautiously on the other end, “You’re really going back home?”
Li Chunfeng hummed in affirmation. Maybe because 2019 hadn’t been as empty as before, she’d figured a lot out.
“Actually, you were right. There’s no point persisting anymore.”
“That’s because I’m a coward!”
Feng Yu grew anxious. “Why learn from me when you could do better!”
Li Chunfeng sighed. “I’m not learning from you. Our situations are the same.”
“They’re not.” Feng Yu sounded resolute. “We’re different.”
“Didn’t I tell you, Li Chunfeng? I knew of you before going abroad. I watched your award-winning runway video. You have no idea how envious I was. Honestly, a big reason I decided to model was you—plenty of others probably feel the same…”
“Who knew after coming to Paris, we’d end up signed to the same shitty agency? I told my mom, and even she—who sells fish at the market—thought it was a pity!”
Qiu Yiran was the one giving up, yet Feng Yu was more worked up than her.
“Anyway, if you’d developed well back home and landed a good agency in Paris, you never would’ve ended up like me.”
Li Chunfeng felt she couldn’t get through. “That’s all ancient history.”
Feng Yu wanted to say more. “But—”
“Feng Yu.” Li Chunfeng cut her off, her tone rational, not emotional at all.
“I’m twenty-two already. Sticking it out here longer won’t change the outcome.”
Feng Yu went quiet, but her breathing sounded like she was holding back.
“Right.” Li Chunfeng didn’t want to argue more and changed the subject. “That photography collection you asked me to buy—”
“Mail it back to me! If you bring it yourself, I don’t want it!” Feng Yu snapped irritably.
“…” Li Chunfeng lied with a straight face. “I didn’t buy it.”
“What?” Feng Yu sounded like she might leap through the phone. “You didn’t buy it?”
Li Chunfeng hummed, pettily adding, “I can’t carry that much. Just have a proxy buy it for you.”
With that, she hung up.
The photography collection still sat quietly at the bottom of her suitcase.
She’d decided to go back home and was packing her luggage these past couple days.
She planned to take the collection with her.
But the magazines they’d scrimped to buy? No way to keep them—they had to be sold.
Except—
She kept one.
Because the magazine cover featured Qiu Yiran.
The magazine cover printed the words Qiu Yiran had once said—
“I feel like I’m just someone stealing glances at the world.”
“But the eyes I stole just happened to be seen by more people.”
Her eyes never looked down on anyone.
They always met others on the same level, inspiring who knew how many young people like Li Chunfeng.
Li Chunfeng stared at those words.
For a long time.
Then she suddenly tore off the cover and slipped it into that thick photography collection.
There was still half a bottle of red wine in the fridge—the one Qiu Yiran had brought that day.
There were still a few packs of seasonings in the kitchen—Qiu Yiran had paid for them before and promised to teach her a few simple, tasty noodle dishes, but never did.
Li Chunfeng had tried making them clumsily a few times on her own and found they tasted awful.
But after thinking it over, she still stuffed the seasonings into her suitcase.
Finally, she sold what she could of the old furniture, kitchenware, and knickknacks she’d scavenged for the apartment, threw out the rest, and tidied everything up thoroughly…
She realized her entire life in Paris fit into one suitcase.
The suitcase contained a photography collection, a magazine cover page, a few packs of seasonings, and a bunch of lightweight clothes.
The day before returning to China.
Li Chunfeng sent Qiu Yiran a bunch of text messages—
【I’m going back to China. Aren’t you planning to divorce me?】
【After I get back to China, I’ll change my number. You might not be able to find me anymore.】
【Are we really not meeting up?】
【Are you mad at me?】
【Why are you mad at me?】
【Sorry.】
【I’m leaving.】
……
It was probably to the point where anyone would call it harassment, but she still got no reply.
Li Chunfeng wondered if Qiu Yiran had straight-up blocked her.
Time really flew by.
Li Chunfeng had once thought every day in Paris was agonizingly long and hard to endure.
But once she resolved to leave, she realized how quickly it had all passed.
On the day she was set to catch her flight—
She sat in her apartment in the Paris 18th District for a long time. Even in the 18th District, the apartment’s location was bad, with poor lighting.
She sat on the now-barren sofa and still didn’t get enough sunlight in the apartment.
She felt like a discarded, frustrated mushroom that had never thrived, holding the remaining half bottle of red wine without drinking it or pouring it out.
Thinking of that metaphor made Li Chunfeng laugh. She didn’t know when she’d gotten so creative.
Then she dragged her suitcase, ready to set the red wine down as a memento and leave—but at that moment, she received a phone call.
The voice on the other end belonged to a stranger, a French person, who spoke to her in French, saying the moving truck she’d booked would arrive in about thirty minutes and asking if there was parking at her apartment building.
This wrong-number call felt like one last desperate plea to stay.
Li Chunfeng had been held back many times by such mistaken moments: a plate of Italian pasta from her landlady, an ad shoot she and Feng Yu had glimpsed while passing by the Seine River, the extra two hundred yuan bonus from her part-time job at the fried chicken shop, and that one line from Qiu Yiran’s magazine…
So many times, little things like that had kept her there.
But this time, Li Chunfeng calmly said, “Sorry, you have the wrong number.”
The French person on the other end paused for a moment, then muttered,
“I didn’t dial wrong. Aren’t you Ms. Spring? Isn’t the address in the 18th District? Oh, and your order note says—”
Order note? Li Chunfeng froze.
The French person on the other end seemed puzzled by the order note, because it was a jumble of French phonetic markings that didn’t make sense when read aloud.
But as a Chinese person, Li Chunfeng.
Though it took some effort.
She still pieced those French phonetics together in her mind into an awkward Chinese sentence:
“Li Chunfeng, please don’t leave Paris.”
At that moment, Li Chunfeng felt stunned—and right then, urgent footsteps suddenly approached from behind, stopping at the door.
She turned around.
And saw Qiu Yiran.
It had only been two weeks since they’d last met, but it felt like a century.
Qiu Yiran looked a bit thinner, but also paler.
She must have run straight there from far away. Her soft black hair was a mess from the run, the tip of her nose red from the wind, her scarf askew, and she was still catching her breath.
Yet she steadied her breathing with effort and stood at the door, looking utterly sincere as she said to her,
“Move in with me.”
After saying that, Qiu Yiran seemed to exhale in relief, then bent over and coughed hard several times, coughing for a long, long while.
Li Chunfeng remained frozen in place, unreacting.
Once Qiu Yiran recovered.
She seemed scared that Li Chunfeng hadn’t gotten the point, so she rushed right over.
Still panting, she snatched the red wine from Li Chunfeng’s hand.
“Li Chunfeng, I’m not mad at you. Don’t leave Paris.”
She clutched that half bottle of red wine tightly, forcefully, and said word by word,
“Besides, aren’t we married?”
