Chapter 20

Guan Xiangchen sat there in shock, unable to react for a long while.

In the middle of that dumbfounded stare, Qin Yue lowered her hand and let her feelings carry on for a few seconds.

“When I was four I was so tiny, so tiny that,” Qin Yue gestured against the table, “about this tall. I saw her when I was this big. It was winter. The snow fell for days and days, and for days and days I had fevers and coughs that kept coming back. The dean and the teachers tried everything and nothing worked. They’d stand in the corridor with faces full of worry, wondering whether I’d live through that winter.”

“How could it be that serious?!” It was as if lightning struck Guan Xiangchen. A deafening buzz filled her head and her eyes reddened in an instant. Coming to her senses and seeing Qin Yue, young and beautiful and sharp-minded, yet so spent she could only prop herself up against the chair back, she promptly swallowed back all the tragic words in her throat and forced her voice bright. “You’re fine now, aren’t you? Let’s not bring up those awful old things!”

Qin Yue nodded slowly, thinking back seriously. “Teacher Shen… no. She was only thirteen then. Not a teacher yet.”

Qin Yue rubbed her fingers together, pressing the unfamiliar syllables of Shen Jianqing against her lips for a few seconds.

“The day Shen Jianqing’s mother brought her along to volunteer at the welfare institute over the weekend was the sunniest day Jiangping had seen since winter began. The snow had just cleared but the air was still freezing, so when the teachers organized the kids to build snowmen and have snowball fights on the playground, I was left out. I’d only just started to get better and still couldn’t go outside. But having spent the whole winter curled up by the dean’s desk by the electric heater, I desperately wanted to feel the sun. I didn’t need to run wild and play like the others and give the teachers a headache chasing me all over the playground. Just let me stand in the sunlight. That’s all.”

Guan Xiangchen swallowed around her aching throat and suddenly understood. “No wonder you walk so slowly yet still refuse to carry an umbrella in this kind of weather. You were making up for a childhood debt.”

Qin Yue smiled and echoed, “Mm. A debt.”

“And her? If you couldn’t even go outside, how did you two meet?” Guan Xiangchen steered the topic back.

Qin Yue looked straight ahead. The corners of her mouth twitched slightly, and eyes that had been calm filled with light. “She’d chased the cat the gatekeeper kept all the way to the dean’s office window, and I, too short to reach the sill, had just grabbed hold of it to see whether standing on tiptoe would let me see outside.”

The welfare institute had been in poor shape twenty-one years ago. Even the dean’s office, easily the most presentable of all the offices, couldn’t escape the usual cramped gloom. So when thirteen-year-old Shen Jianqing, who had not yet been through any hair-raising incidents, finished scolding the cat and looked up to find a pair of bright, dark eyes staring up at her from below, she screamed.

The cat, still pinched by the ear but far too clever for its own good, took advantage of her panic, gave a mew, and slipped out of her hand, leaving the shaken girl staring oddly at a dark little head and a pair of unblinking eyes.

They held that stalemate for a good half minute before Shen Jianqing finally reacted. She raised her hand, made a fist with four fingers, and extended a single index finger to tap the glass cautiously. The old, loose pane rattled out a string of sounds. Four-year-old Qin Yue, startled, threw her mouth wide and yelped “Ah!”, and quickly ducked her head back down. Only two small, white, tender hands remained on the ledge.

Having confirmed their owner was human and not a ghost, Shen Jianqing stared at them a moment, then suddenly turned away. Quick, faint footsteps made Qin Yue’s head buzz with fright. A few seconds later came the creak of the door opening. Qin Yue’s little body flinched and she shrank down harder, nearly wrenching both arms out of their sockets.

So when Shen Jianqing came around the desk, what she saw was a little girl who might not even reach her stomach, dangling by her hands from the old concrete windowsill. Shen Jianqing was a little shocked. She held back a moment, then her mouth began to twitch, and she doubled over laughing.

“Hahaha, you, hahaha, what are you doing?!”

I’m hiding, Qin Yue thought. Hiding from what, though?

Facing the wall painted halfway up in green, Qin Yue’s small brow furrowed into a knot.

She had gotten a good look at this sister from behind the window: a white down jacket, a white scarf bunched at her neck, and a white hat on her head. When she’d pinched the cat’s ears and lectured it, her expression wasn’t serious at all. And then when she rubbed the cat’s head, well…

Qin Yue pressed her lips tight and stole a look back, then quickly hid again, her heart going pitter-patter.

She remembered now: that sister had smiled so beautifully when she patted the cat’s head. She’d even bent down close to the cat, like… like the way the dean patted her head, ever so kind.

So she probably wasn’t a bad person? If she wasn’t a bad person, there was no need to hide.

Qin Yue wavered. She rarely went out. Apart from the teachers and the children at the institute, she had almost never seen people from outside and didn’t yet know how to tell good from bad. She was so torn, and her hands were getting so tired.

She…

THUD!

From a height of 1.2 meters, she landed herself a solid fall right on her bottom.

The sister in front of her, who had just crouched down and was about to speak, froze like a wooden chicken. The wooden chicken stared at her without moving for a long while, pushed her hat up, and said, “I’m not a ghost.”

She knew that, of course. It was just, well… “Then are you a bad person?”

“Huh?” Shen Jianqing reached up to scratch at her temple, looking rather uncertain.

Qin Yue cautiously inched backward.

Then Shen Jianqing spoke up, brimming with confidence. “I’m a good person, I am!”

Qin Yue grew even more suspicious. “Can you prove it to me?”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Shen Jianqing was stumped. “Isn’t being a good person something you tell from the windows of the soul, the eyes? How do you prove something like that?”

Qin Yue didn’t care. She wanted proof, or else if she got kidnapped, the dean would be so worried.

Shen Jianqing hesitated a moment, then her eyes lit up and she spoke quickly. “If I can make your wish come true, does that count as a good person to you?!”

Qin Yue thought of the people who came to the institute bringing clothes, candy, and books. She nodded. “It counts.”

Shen Jianqing beamed. She popped her hips up and darted, hunched over, right up to Qin Yue. Qin Yue instinctively backed away, but there was a wall behind her, and her head went bonk against it. It hurt so much she wanted to cry. But she couldn’t cry. The dean said that when you cry, the bad people pull out lollipops from their pockets and trick you away.

Qin Yue bit her lip and tried hard to hold back. Halfway through holding back, Shen Jianqing suddenly stepped forward and swept her into a full embrace.

She froze on the spot, rigid all over, even her wide eyes stopped moving, and naturally she stopped fighting back the tears, her face flushing crimson.

Shen Jianqing immediately burst out laughing. “So a hug really is the best medicine for little kids.”

Meanwhile Qin Yue, gradually calming down, was thinking: this sister’s scarf was so warm inside, warmer even than her little sun, the electric heater that kept her company every day. And it smelled nice, too. The sister’s face was smooth as well, warm when pressed against it, so comfortable. And her hat…

Qin Yue quickly got lost in one “and” after another. By the time Shen Jianqing confirmed she’d stopped crying and tapped her head with a finger to pick the conversation back up, Qin Yue had already, of her own accord, nudged Shen Jianqing’s scarf open with her chin and buried her small face inside.

Shen Jianqing showed no displeasure at the forward behavior. She even deliberately tilted her head up and stretched her neck to give her more room.

“Little one, is there a gift you’d like?” Shen Jianqing asked over the top of Qin Yue’s head.

Qin Yue’s soft little face nuzzled against her neck, the voice muffled. “I want the sun.”

“Huh?!”

Her tone was full of astonishment and absurdity. But Qin Yue was too young then to understand what lay underneath, so she didn’t explain. She just tucked herself carefully into Shen Jianqing’s neck to warm up.

Shen Jianqing mulled it over a moment and ventured, “Do you mean one of those little sun toys you can put on a desk?”

Qin Yue paused, then shook her head. “I want the sun in the sky.”

Shen Jianqing blurted out, “I’d have to be able to fly up into the sky for that!”

The Shen Jianqing of back then spoke exactly like the one of now: when the words came too fast, she sounded fierce. Qin Yue shrank back in fright and pulled out of her arms, saying timidly, “Sorry, big sister. I don’t want it anymore.”

Shen Jianqing realized too late and quickly softened her voice to apologize. And Qin Yue believed her so easily.

That Qin Yue craved the sun so badly, and the grievance of never daring to ask the teachers for anything had been bottled up so long, that suddenly meeting someone willing to ask again and again what she wanted, someone who looked so caring she didn’t even mind a dirty, ugly little black cat, she simply couldn’t hold back from telling this person her wish.

Qin Yue stood stiffly before Shen Jianqing, twisting her fingers together, and encouraged herself for a long while.

“Big sister, I want to touch the sun.”

“I’ve been sick. I haven’t been outside once this winter. I miss the sun. I want to touch it.”

Shen Jianqing stared blankly. “By ‘sun,’ do you mean the sunlight?”

Qin Yue turned her head and looked longingly out the window, then looked at Shen Jianqing and nodded.

Shock flashed across Shen Jianqing’s face but she covered it quickly and asked gently, “What kind of illness do you have?”

Qin Yue couldn’t explain and could only shake her head. “I don’t know.”

“You can’t go out at all?”

“Mm.”

Shen Jianqing answered with a heavy hum and gazed for a long while in the direction Qin Yue had looked. Then she said to her with a brilliant smile, “It’s okay. Even if you can’t go outside, big sister can still let you touch the sun!”

Shen Jianqing sprang up, took off her scarf and hat and put them on Qin Yue, then pulled off her mid-length down jacket and bundled it right over Qin Yue, hem reaching her ankles. Shen Jianqing declared it “perfect.”

She took Qin Yue’s hand and hurried to the window, opening the pane a crack. Then she bent down, patted her head, and said softly, “Don’t be scared. Big sister will hold you while you touch the sun.”

With that, Shen Jianqing lifted Qin Yue, who showed nothing but a pair of eyes, set her up on the windowsill, steadied her firmly from behind, and said, “Reach out. Reach outside.”

Qin Yue remembered the temperature of that sunlight to this day. It wasn’t actually as warm as she had imagined. But the feeling of someone shielding her while at the same time indulging her, so terribly partial, so terribly doting, was something she couldn’t help replaying every time she closed her eyes.

“Replaying it and replaying it, the days went by one after another.”

Qin Yue’s body was too limp to hold her up. She folded forward onto the table and said, “The dean told me later that every winter I loved to prop myself by the window. I wouldn’t do anything, just lie there in a daze. She also said those years from five to eight were rough for me, yet I took my medicine more diligently than any year before. Xiangchen, do you know why?”

Guan Xiangchen’s throat was so clogged she could barely speak. “Why?”

“I had something to look forward to.” Qin Yue laughed, slow and faint. “I kept thinking she’d go back again someday. But I waited and waited, all the way until I turned eighteen and left the institute, and she never went back.”

Guan Xiangchen broke down in tears. She knew Qin Yue’s health was poor; she’d known ever since the day Qin Yue got sick for a week after climbing a hill that couldn’t really be called a hill. But she’d never known this was how her childhood had gone.

“A-Yue…”

“Hm?”

Guan Xiangchen didn’t really know what to say. She just wanted to call Qin Yue’s name. But since she’d answered, she had to say something, if only to pull her out of that solitary trip down memory lane. She tilted her head back and sniffed hard, then recovered her breezy tone. “What on earth happened to you after that? How is your personality at four so different from now? At four you were cuteness overload! Only too timid. Nothing like the tall, fearless image of you now, walking at night and doing the public a service on the side.”

Qin Yue propped up her left hand and rested it against her neck, her voice low. “At four I’d barely been outside and hardly met anyone, so I was timid. Once I started going out to school at nine, I slowly changed.”

Then, when she went to work so abruptly, her social life was pared down once again. That time, she pared it down herself. She wasn’t yet eighteen. Too young. To adapt to her surroundings and protect herself, she could only wrap herself in a shell with her own hands. At first the people around her would still come over and try to chat. But as time went on all they could say was that she was stuck-up, and they gradually gave up on her. That went on until she joined Lead Science and met Guan Xiangchen.

Guan Xiangchen’s instant friendliness toward anyone she clicked with came with a certain shamelessness, which was how she could ignore Qin Yue’s coldness on their very first day, drag her back to her place, connect her with a landlord to rent a room, and lend her the deposit and first month’s rent along with her first month’s food money.

That generosity, given without hesitation, came right on the heels of her harrowing eighteenth year. It was much like the sunlight Shen Jianqing had shown her. So she accepted the fact that she could have a best friend, and they had stayed close to this day.

And the person who appeared at the tail end of her eighteenth year and saved her worldview from collapse was none other than the Shen Jianqing she had been waiting for since she was four.