Ji Qingyou was stunned for a few seconds. Time seemed to slow down. She lowered her eyes.
“I don’t really drink coffee these days. But if I do…”
“I’d probably still choose a mocha with no cream.”
Yu Qinjiu’s eyes curved into beautiful crescent moons in that instant. She even raised her black coffee and lightly clinked it against Ji Qingyou’s cup.
“Good thing. You’re still the same.”
The wind suddenly picked up, seeping through the gaps in her clothes. Yu Qinjiu’s face seemed to grow a shade paler in the wind. Ji Qingyou clenched her fingers and asked again,
“You’re not sick, are you?”
“No,” Yu Qinjiu shook her head, denying it. She lightly stomped her feet, her full red lips slightly parted, exhaling a puff of white air.
She raised her hands, breathed on them a few times to warm them, then handed the black coffee back to Ji Qingyou. “Hold this for me.”
So now Ji Qingyou’s left hand was also occupied with a cup of coffee. The dark green watch on her left wrist peeked out from her sleeve. The moment it came into view, Ji Qingyou instinctively wanted to cover it, but her hands were full of coffee.
Yu Qinjiu noticed her intention and softened her voice. “No use hiding it. I already saw it yesterday.”
Ji Qingyou looked down.
Yu Qinjiu’s hands were free now, so she rubbed them together, then reached out and gently took off the watch from Ji Qingyou’s wrist. The moment her fingertips touched Ji Qingyou’s palm, there was a slight numbness.
A tingle, like an electric shock.
And her fingers were warm. Yu Qinjiu always paid special attention to that.
With the watch removed, Ji Qingyou’s wrist felt strangely empty, as if she had lost a safe anchor point in the world. Her fingers twitched involuntarily.
Yu Qinjiu examined her watch for a long time. Finally, she put the old watch into her bag. From the pocket of her beige coat, she pulled out a square box.
She opened it. Inside was a new watch, still dark green.
Ji Qingyou pursed her lips. “You don’t have to…”
“If I don’t buy you a new one,” Yu Qinjiu cut her off, gently putting the new watch on her wrist. When she looked up, her curved eyes were beautiful.
“Were you planning to wear that one watch for the rest of your life?”
Ji Qingyou didn’t answer. Because it seemed she really was planning to do just that. Even though she had taken good care of the watch, after more than a decade, there were inevitably some bumps and scratches.
“I didn’t get a chance to give you your birthday present the day before yesterday. I happened to be passing by today, so I thought I’d just give it to you.” Yu Qinjiu explained softly, then pulled out another slender gift box from her pocket. She looked left and right, realized Ji Qingyou had no free hands, so she simply tucked it into the right pocket of her white coat.
But it was obstructed by the bulky set of pens in her right pocket, so she had to put it in the left pocket instead. Ji Qingyou felt a bit awkward being so close, but she didn’t dare step back.
The lingering, sweet fragrance enveloped her. Even after Yu Qinjiu stepped back a few paces, it still hadn’t dissipated, making Ji Qingyou’s earlobes feel hot.
Afraid Yu Qinjiu might notice, she took the initiative to ask, “Why two birthday presents?”
This question seemed to stump Yu Qinjiu. She thought for a moment, then pointed at the set of pens clipped to Ji Qingyou’s chest pocket. “Because it’s buy one, get one free?”
Ji Qingyou didn’t understand.
Yu Qinjiu took the black coffee from her hands, didn’t drink it. Her gaze settled on the snowman in the open space. After a long moment, she asked, “Do you still remember why I gave you a watch and pens when we were kids?”
Ji Qingyou followed Yu Qinjiu’s gaze to the snowman. She understood what Yu Qinjiu meant. Her throat felt dry.
“Back then, when you heard I really was going to become a doctor, you got pretty anxious. I don’t know where you heard that doctors often lose their pens, so on my eighteenth birthday, you gave me a set and said you’d give me a new set every year.”
“The watch was also a gift from that year, but it was a graduation present. You told me that every second a doctor spends is difficult, but precious, so you hoped that…” She felt the new watch on her wrist start to heat up. She continued.
“In the difficult moments, the precious moments, I would never feel like I was fighting alone.”
Later, Yu Qinjiu hadn’t been able to give her a new set of pens every year.
But Ji Qingyou had still worn this watch, used this set of pens, until now.
“You remember that clearly?” Yu Qinjiu seemed surprised. Then, the surprise in her eyes was replaced by a flicker of mischief. “As expected of the diligent genius, Ji Qingyou.”
She joked, using Ji Qingyou’s old nickname. Then she said,
“Actually, it’s because I have to make two birthday wishes every year. So I hope you get two birthday presents this year too.”
Ji Qingyou didn’t quite follow Yu Qinjiu’s logic, but Yu Qinjiu’s logic usually defied logic. She didn’t have time to ask, because her department called, and she had to rush back.
Before they parted, Yu Qinjiu stood in the snowy landscape and waved at her. Her fair palm had a few vivid red marks again. This time, they didn’t look like they were pressed by a hard edge, but more like pinch marks.
Her pocket was no longer bulging. It was flat.
She just stood there, staring at the snowman in the open space, as if lost in thought, not knowing what she was thinking.
Her figure shrank smaller and smaller, until it became a tiny dot.
Ji Qingyou found it strange, but the urgency of a patient didn’t allow her to dwell on it. After everything was done and she finished her shift, she found herself walking back to that open space.
Yu Qinjiu was, of course, not there.
But the snowman with the three branches sticking out of its head was still there. The difference was that this snowman, which looked somewhat like a robot with three branches for hair, was now wearing a scarf.
A red plaid scarf, just like the one Yu Qinjiu had been wearing around her neck today.
Ji Qingyou walked over and stopped. She gazed at the snowman. She straightened the scarf on the snowman. As she pulled her hand back, a gust of wind blew, and she caught the familiar scent of the scarf.
And the smell of snow.
The snow had a slightly astringent scent, mixed with the moist, rose fragrance of the scarf. It smelled like the light layer of bubbles on top of a rose soda. Fine and dense, yet with a bit of a punch.
So this is what snow smells like.
Ji Qingyou inexplicably wanted to preserve this scent. She reached out and pinched a bit of loose snow from the snowman. She watched it melt.
As she did, she noticed the new watch Yu Qinjiu had bought her on her left wrist.
She stood in the snow, looking down at the time on the watch.
For a moment, she felt as if all the hands on the watch had started spinning rapidly in reverse.
A huge gust of wind blew overhead, carrying that astringent, pungent, sweet smell of snow. It ruffled her hair and swept away the plaid scarf from the snowman’s neck.
Suddenly, snow began to swirl through the empty air, falling on her shoulders, as if taking her back many years.
In that instant, she shrank, becoming a child. The snowman before her no longer wore the plaid scarf, but still had those three branches on its head. A child stood sideways to her, bundled in a thick down jacket, wearing pink, fluffy earmuffs, a red plaid scarf around her neck. Her face and the tip of her nose were red from the cold.
It was Yu Qinjiu. Little Yu Qinjiu.
Little Yu Qinjiu struggled to take off the scarf from her own neck, then wound it around the snowman, circle after circle. She turned back to Ji Qingyou, tilting her chin up, panting as she said,
“In the future, whenever you see a snowman with three branches on its head, you’ll remember that I once said a snowman with three branches is a robot. And you’ll remember that after I put the scarf on the snowman, I said…”
She paused for another breath, exhaling a puff of white vapor. She ran over, rubbed her hands warm, and touched Ji Qingyou’s cold-reddened face. She smiled, her eyes curving.
“I love robots the most.”
The nickname “robot” had been around since they were kids. But in the eyes of some children, it wasn’t a friendly joke. It was a subtle malice, a weapon. Because she didn’t talk much, didn’t cry or laugh much, and did everything at specific times. When the teacher asked about her hobbies, she wrote down “studying” on the paper. Ji Qingyou had hated that nickname. But after that day, she didn’t seem to hate it as much.
She had lost the liveliness of a child very early on.
It was as if she had always been kept in a thick fishbowl, separated from everyone by a layer of transparent glass. All her emotions were trapped in a dull, heavy cage. She lived her life methodically, carrying this fishbowl on her back. Boring, dull, unchanging.
One day, a person appeared in the dull world outside the glass. She was born with colorful graffiti. One by one, she stamped bright, vibrant marks on Ji Qingyou’s gray fishbowl. So there were strawberry candies, mochas without cream, a snowman with three branches and a scarf…
The world had embedded Yu Qinjiu into the most intimate position in Ji Qingyou’s life. Ji Qingyou naturally wanted to accept that intimacy, even wanted to make the glass around her brighter, more interesting.
But the more she longed to get close.
The easier it was for the fishbowl that imprisoned her to swallow that interest whole.
