2 Chapter 2 Part 2

And you insisted you didn’t like it anymore.

After she said this, without waiting for Ji Qingyou to deny it, she walked a bit hastily over to a bench outside the convenience store. She put the scarf aside and patted the empty space beside her.

“Sit here and wait for me.”

“Wait for me” again. Yu Qinjiu loved saying that.

Ji Qingyou sat down. Yu Qinjiu pulled out a compact mirror and began to concentrate on touching up her makeup. Strangely, on this first night of their reacquaintance, they were sitting side by side on a bench outside a convenience store.

Yu Qinjiu was touching up her makeup. Ji Qingyou was eating a lollipop.

It was strange, yet not so strange. Because the person touching up her makeup was Yu Qinjiu. The person making Ji Qingyou eat candy was also Yu Qinjiu.

Yu Qinjiu had always had this habit of being particular about her appearance. Since high school, she’d often pull out a mirror to straighten the collar of her shirt under her uniform, or style her hair in various attractive ways.

And when she was done with her own, she’d come and bother Ji Qingyou.

Back then, Ji Qingyou would just quietly wait with a book, just like she was doing now.

But she didn’t have a book now, so she just patiently waited for Yu Qinjiu. Strangely enough, she was always especially patient at times like these.

There was also a strange sense of security.

The roof of the convenience store provided some shelter, but snowflakes still drifted in from under the bright streetlight, landing on her eyelashes, moistening her eyes.

It was strange. She was wearing glasses.

By all logic, the snowflakes shouldn’t be able to get into her eyes.

After finishing her makeup, Yu Qinjiu’s beautiful face was a shade brighter. Her eyes seemed larger, her eyelashes slightly upturned, looking carefree and radiant in the snowy night.

She wasn’t in a hurry to leave. Instead, she looked around and noticed a gaudy arcade machine nearby. The machine wasn’t just stuck in a game room; it was placed outside the shop as decoration, not really meant to be played.

But upon seeing it, Yu Qinjiu immediately went over and gave it a pat. She studied it for a moment, scanned the QR code, and looked back at Ji Qingyou.

“I haven’t played one of these in forever. Play with me for a bit, okay?”

Her voice was gentle.

Ji Qingyou remembered the year Yu Qinjiu went abroad: 2012. In the years before that, their overlapping childhoods were filled with arcade games.

It was now 2022.

Ji Qingyou still sat down beside Yu Qinjiu. They sat side by side, controlling the crudely drawn characters in a game they used to play often as children.

She pressed the buttons and instinctively chose Iori Yagami.

Yu Qinjiu laughed a little happily. “You actually remembered to leave Kyo Kusanagi for me.”

Ji Qingyou’s fingertips trembled. It felt as if, with that soft remark, her memories had drifted back to many similar winters from long ago. She and Yu Qinjiu often sat side by side outside some game room, wearing the wool beanies that Yu Qinjiu’s mother had knitted for them one winter. They were fluffy, a light, beautiful blue, enough to withstand the wind and snow outside. So they wore matching beanies and spent many winters together.

She always remembered.

In a certain snowstorm, Yu Qinjiu’s nose was red from the cold, but she kept rubbing her own red hands, breathing on them to warm them. Once her hands were warmer, she wrapped them around Ji Qingyou’s and asked, “Is that better?”

Ji Qingyou said, “I guess I’m not cold anymore.”

She was still cold, actually. But when her hands were wrapped like that, she couldn’t say anything else.

After Yu Qinjiu beat her, she would smile and squint, brush the snow off Ji Qingyou, and call her “Little Sickly One,” saying she’d ask her mom to knit her gloves with separate fingers.

Back then, they controlled the same characters as now. Kyo Kusanagi was Yu Qinjiu’s favorite, so every time they played The King of Fighters, Ji Qingyou wouldn’t choose him. Besides, she was never good at fighting games, and she never really liked playing them anyway.

She lost to Yu Qinjiu every time.

Ten years later, it was still the same.

Losing to Yu Qinjiu was fine. If she could go back, she’d happily lose a hundred times, ten thousand times…

Too bad there are very few “if onlys” in this world.

Too bad their relationship would be hard to go back to how it was, like scratches left on a mirror after a collision, hard to erase.

——The lollipop cracked under her teeth. The strawberry flavor in her mouth intensified for a moment, then faded, lingering.

Ji Qingyou clumsily controlled her Iori Yagami. After Iori was defeated by Kyo Kusanagi with a pained cry, her thoughts drifted out of the memory, reined in by a thread of clarity.

She took the remnant of the lollipop stick from her mouth and asked the first question.

“When did you get back?”

Yu Qinjiu’s fingers, red from the cold, were still resting on the joystick. She said softly,

“Today.”

“So suddenly?” Ji Qingyou’s eyelashes dropped. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

“Yeah,” Yu Qinjiu’s voice was very low. “I thought so too, but…”

She looked at Ji Qingyou, and the words she spoke were as light as the scattered snowflakes.

“I heard Nanwu City was supposed to have its first snow today, so I rushed right back.”

Ji Qingyou’s fingers stiffened. She threw the empty lollipop stick into the trash can and asked,

“Isn’t the snow in London pretty?”

Why go out of your way to come back to Nanwu City to see it.

Yu Qinjiu seemed to still be staring at her. After a long moment, she spoke, slowly and clearly.

“No, it’s not very pretty.”

Ji Qingyou didn’t know what to say. A wave of unfamiliarity washed over her. She realized that in the decade or so they’d been together, it was always Yu Qinjiu who single-handedly filled the gaps between them.

Yu Qinjiu looked at her for a moment longer, then took out her phone to check the time. She stood up from the bench and said again,

“Wait for me here.”

Ji Qingyou said, “Okay.” And she continued to sit and wait for Yu Qinjiu. As she waited, she noticed the scarf Yu Qinjiu had left on the bench. It was already covered in snowflakes.

The snowflakes melted into water, soaking the scarf, then layer upon layer accumulated. This scarf, which had once warmed two people, had been drenched in the wind and snow for too long, and had become bitingly cold.

Ji Qingyou watched for a while. Then she picked up the scarf and shook it. She didn’t want the scarf to get cold, so she held it in her arms, waiting for Yu Qinjiu to come back out.

Yu Qinjiu didn’t keep Ji Qingyou waiting long. She walked out hastily, carefully holding a small cake with a candle on top, the flame almost blown out. She guarded it carefully until she reached Ji Qingyou. The candle was still burning. She sighed in relief and smiled.

“No cream. Make a wish.”

Ji Qingyou stared at the flickering, weak flame. After a few seconds, she realized it wasn’t a cake at all, but a rice ball sandwich with a candle stuck in it, all so Ji Qingyou could celebrate her birthday.

She suddenly understood why Yu Qinjiu had kept making her wait: buying the strawberry candy at the convenience store, taking the time to touch up her makeup in the freezing weather, inviting her to play The King of Fighters in the snow… a whole series of time-wasting actions.

Not because she liked it.

But just to give Ji Qingyou this birthday.

In that instant, the scratches on the mirror seemed to vanish.

“I said I’d pay double, and the clerk eventually agreed to look for a candle for me. But it took a while, so he said to wait. He just told me he went to borrow one from next door, and in the end, he didn’t even charge me double.” Yu Qinjiu recounted this, finding it amusing. She squinted her eyes in a smile, still carefully shielding the nearly extinguished candle. She urged Ji Qingyou softly,

“Hurry up and make a wish, or the candle will go out.”

The heavy snow swirled wildly, tousling Yu Qinjiu’s curls that fell on her shoulders, causing the faint candlelight to gently flicker. Ji Qingyou clasped her hands together and gently closed her eyes.

Yu Qinjiu counted down for her by her ear.

Three, two, one…

The dim, yellow candlelight illuminated the restrained, pale face. The eyes and brows behind the glasses appeared cold and indifferent in the snowy night, the features deeper than they were ten years ago.

Yu Qinjiu’s gaze lingered on Ji Qingyou’s face for a long time. She caught a glimpse of the dark green watch on Ji Qingyou’s wrist. Then she lowered her eyelashes, clutching the box in her pocket. The countdown ended, and when she looked up again, she smiled at Ji Qingyou.

“Okay.”

Ji Qingyou slowly opened her eyes. It was Yu Qinjiu’s soft, warm smile. She felt a bit dazed, as if the Yu Qinjiu before her was an illusory bubble that would burst into countless fragments with one touch.

When she blew out the candle, and Yu Qinjiu still didn’t disappear, Ji Qingyou finally sighed in relief. She almost said “thank you,” but choked back the words.

She shouldn’t be saying thank you to Yu Qinjiu anymore.

They were at least not in a relationship where they should be saying thank you.

Yu Qinjiu sensed her emotional shift and gently started a new topic.

“Happy birthday. Did you make a wish?”

Ji Qingyou unclasped her hands. Her fingers were a little red from the cold. She hugged the scarf, now damp and cold, in her arms, and said softly,

“I already made one before I got off work. So I didn’t just now.”

“Oh, I see…” Yu Qinjiu pulled the candle out from the ice cream. She asked, as if casually,

“Did it come true?”

A snowflake landed on the lens of her glasses, slowly melting, leaving a damp trace.

Ji Qingyou gripped the edge of the scarf and said, in a voice so soft that only the wind could hear it,

“Half of it came true.”

Because you seem to be doing well.

My birthday wish is only half fulfilled.