Sweet Alcohol

Ji Qingyou is a doctor, a control freak who even writes her diary in an Excel spreadsheet. She adheres to a picky “Three No’s” principle and is accustomed to judging people and things with a “comprehensive six-point rating system.”
Yu Qinjiu is an architect, a beautiful drunkard who loves to do the rabbit dance when she’s drunk and forces people to be her audience. Her highest evaluation standard for everything is “I like it.”

It was precisely this taciturn, sickly Ji Qingyou and the unrestrained, guileless Yu Qinjiu who seeped into each other’s lives during their most raw and innocent stage.

At seven, when Ji Qingyou was bullied and cried in secret, Yu Qinjiu rushed back from her grandmother’s house, stood with her hands on her hips to scold Ji Qingyou, fiercely chased away the other kids, then pinched her nose and told her not to cry.
At twelve, Yu Qinjiu got into a fight and came back bruised and swollen. She held her chin high and let Ji Qingyou apply medicine, saying that no one would bully her anymore.
At fifteen, Yu Qinjiu, learning to do makeup, painted Ji Qingyou up like a monkey with a red butt, and then laughed so hard she got a stomachache and had to go to the hospital.
At eighteen, under the charming and dim lights, Yu Qinjiu, reeking of alcohol and blinking her hazy, beautifully upturned eyes, bestowed upon her a lingering and unripe kiss.

“Don’t you know when a girl tilts her head up and closes her eyes…”
“…it means she wants you to kiss her?”

That day, Ji Qingyou suddenly discovered:
The alcohol she had always resisted was, in fact, sweet.
*
At eighteen and a half, Yu Qinjiu went abroad and lost contact with her.
At twenty-nine, Yu Qinjiu descended from the heavens, once again overturning Ji Qingyou’s originally bland yet sufficiently rational life:

A new neighbor moved in across the hall from her—it was Yu Qinjiu.
She went to a KTV gathering, and the booth next door was occupied by Yu Qinjiu.

Later, when Yu Qinjiu, wearing a slip dress, was lying beside her, Ji Qingyou suddenly understood:
Sweet alcohol is the most addictive thing of all.

And later, Ji Qingyou learned:
She wasn’t the only one who remembered that kiss.
Yu Qinjiu had secretly kept many love letters that others had given her.
Yu Qinjiu had taken her high school uniform abroad and had nearly worn it until it developed a patina.
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“Fairy tales exist in this world.
As long as you clasp your hands together when you make a wish,
the fairy tale will arrive, and your birthday wish will be granted.”

“I always feel that friends are a more stable existence than lovers.”