◎That was her doomsday◎
On the last day of 2022, Ji Qingyou went home for dinner. Qin Bailan wasn’t as busy this year and had been studying cooking. She had even personally prepared a whole table of dishes.
But Yu Muzhou wasn’t there. It was said he was tied up with some company emergency.
“He’s practically a hands-off boss. Can he be busier than a few doctors like us?” Qin Bailan looked up and took off her glasses. Even with a few more strands of white in her hair, the sharpness in her eyes when she looked at someone hadn’t diminished one bit.
“There’s some trouble at the company. If he’s the one in charge, of course he has to go.” Qin Shuangchi was explaining, but the piece of fish she had picked up hadn’t made it into her mouth yet. Her chopsticks were gripping it tightly.
Her brows were also tightly furrowed, the corners of her eyes slightly lifted. Her expression was exactly the same as Qin Bailan’s. When she wasn’t smiling and looked at someone with slightly level eyes, she seemed a bit angry.
“Anyway, when he’s done dealing with this, I’ll make him come over and apologize to you in person.”
Qin Bailan snorted through her nose. “The wedding is next month, and he’s still busy with the company, without even the time to have a meal with his elders.”
“It’s because of the wedding that he’s busy. I’m busy at the hospital every day, and he’s the one handling all the wedding preparations.” Qin Shuangchi shoved the piece of fish into her mouth and sighed. “I know you don’t like him, but I’ve been with him for ten years. We’re getting married next month. Can’t you treat him a little better? Stop only picking out his flaws and say something good about him for once.”
“He has to give me something worth praising first. I can’t even see a shadow of him. Last time he came to the hospital for the premarital checkup, he rushed in, gave a gift, said hello, and left.” Qin Bailan’s tone was still dissatisfied.
“What more do you want?” Qin Shuangchi put down her chopsticks, stopped eating, and stared at Qin Bailan. “Do you want him to sit in the hospital, wash his hands seven times, put on scrubs, and follow you right into the OR?!”
“Every time I say a few words about him, you start protecting him like a mother hen!”
Qin Bailan slammed down her chopsticks, and the atmosphere at the dinner table immediately became tense.
In Qin Bailan’s eyes, there was never such a thing as a mother-in-law looking fondly at her son-in-law. It was only ever a case of the more she saw him, the more annoyed she got, and the more faults she found.
Ji Qingyou was always quiet. She rarely spoke at the table.
She silently picked up the dirty chopsticks and took them to the kitchen. Then she got a new pair and placed them on Qin Bailan’s bowl, picked up a piece of vegetable with her own chopsticks, and sat down again to continue eating in silence.
Qin Bailan and Qin Shuangchi’s quarrel was quick, and their anger subsided just as fast.
“Alright, alright, I won’t talk about him. It’s your own business anyway. No matter how dissatisfied I am, it’s your life.” Qin Bailan sighed, picked up her chopsticks again, and remembered something else. “Little Jiu came to see me at home a couple of days ago. She brought a bunch of gifts. That girl, I haven’t seen her in so long, I could barely recognize her. She was a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl back then, but now she’s blossomed. She’s beautiful and polite. She even played a whole afternoon of Fight the Landlord with me. I told her I didn’t want to waste her time, but she said she had taken two months off specially to come back and rest.”
“When did she come?” Qin Shuangchi glanced at Ji Qingyou, noticing her eating rhythm had suddenly slowed down. The piece of green vegetable she had picked up was still in her bowl, untouched.
Qin Bailan frowned, trying to remember. “The 27th, I think.”
Ji Qingyou’s fingertips moved slightly, but she said nothing.
Qin Bailan continued, “She and her mother haven’t been back in over ten years. I guess she’s back for your wedding?”
“That’s not necessarily true.” Qin Shuangchi glanced towards Ji Qingyou. “Muzhou told me that Little Jiu didn’t contact them when she got back. She came to see me at the hospital on the 27th too, talked with me for a bit. She didn’t mention her brother or her father at all.”
“No wonder.” Qin Bailan nodded. “When I mentioned the wedding, she said her mother wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be coming. I felt a bit sad for her. Even if things got ugly back then, it’s been so many years. I thought they might have let it go by now.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s normal that she wouldn’t come.” Qin Shuangchi said, then added out of the blue, “You’re not going to say you don’t want Muzhou as a son-in-law, are you?”
“I never said I didn’t want him.” Qin Bailan frowned. “I just think he’s sometimes too indecisive, not very impressive.”
“That’s a good thing.” Qin Shuangchi laughed suddenly. “I like someone I can control.”
“When it comes to the Yu family children, I still like Little Jiu more. She’s a sweet talker, knows how to charm people, and she’s beautiful and generous.” Qin Bailan muttered.
Qin Shuangchi drawled, “Then why don’t I just marry Little Jiu and bring her home as your daughter-in-law?”
“Get out of here, get out.” Qin Bailan pursed her lips in disgust. “Don’t be so loose-lipped all day.”
Then she looked at Ji Qingyou, who was eating quietly. “Why aren’t you done with your meal today? You usually finish in five minutes.”
Ji Qingyou’s gaze seemed to be fixed in mid-air, as if she was spacing out.
Qin Shuangchi joked, “I heard she’s already met Little Jiu twice. Little Jiu came looking for her on the very first day she was back. You might as well let my little sister marry Little Jiu.”
“Three times.” Ji Qingyou corrected the data error in her words.
Qin Shuangchi waved her hand. “Fine, three times. Looks like you and Little Jiu are still pretty close.”
Qin Bailan reminisced, “I remember when you were all very young, the adults took the four of you out to eat fried chicken. Little You would always get two drumsticks. Shuangchi, you two were a bit older, so you wouldn’t fight her for them. Little Jiu was so tiny back then, but she already knew to give them to Little You. I asked her why she gave both drumsticks to Little You, and she said she was worried Little You was so weak, if she didn’t eat the drumsticks, she would faint from crying.”
Qin Shuangchi laughed until her eyes were slits. “It’s because of their first meeting. Our Doctor Ji ate cream and had an allergic reaction, and it scared Little Jiu half to death.”
“The doctor said if Little You had eaten one more bite, it would have been serious. From then on, Little Jiu protected Little You everywhere she went. She said she had to be responsible for her, so she couldn’t let her have an allergic reaction again.”
Ji Qingyou’s throat felt a bit dry, so she picked up her water glass and took a sip.
“Right,” Qin Bailan said. “So, you haven’t been in touch all these years?”
“…No.” Ji Qingyou drained her water glass, but her fingers were still tightly gripping it.
Qin Bailan sighed regretfully. “That’s a shame. You should keep in touch more now that she’s back. You two were such good friends back then, stuck together like glue. Your sister said not even the end of the world could separate you two.”
“Tell me, you two didn’t have a fight, did you? Why did you suddenly stop contacting each other?”
“Clang——”
The chopsticks fell onto the glass tabletop with a crisp sound.
Ji Qingyou realized the chopsticks she had been gripping tightly had fallen. She froze for a moment, bit her lip, and said, “I’m done.”
“So fast?” Qin Bailan said. “You haven’t finished your food, and you haven’t even touched the fish. Aren’t you the one who always says not to waste food?”
Ji Qingyou wiped her mouth. “I can’t eat any more.”
She then cleared her own bowl and took it to the kitchen.
When she returned to the living room, she picked up her coat and habitually put on her scarf. Noticing a small wrinkle, she paused for a few seconds, her fingers retracting slightly. In the end, she didn’t smooth it out. She said goodbye to Qin Bailan and Qin Shuangchi.
“The department has a party tonight. I’m leaving first.”
“Wait.” Qin Bailan sighed, got up, and took out a key. “Your sister told me you’ve been quite tired lately. I told you to live closer to the hospital, but you wouldn’t listen. And you don’t have a car. I’m not using this one, so you take it.”
Ji Qingyou was demure. “No need, Mom. I actually live pretty close to the hospital now. It’s only five kilometers away.”
“I knew you wouldn’t take it.” Qin Bailan punched her shoulder, exasperated, then smoothed out the wrinkle on her scarf. “Your twenty-nine-year-old little head carries so many things every day.”
Even as she said this, she went to the bedroom and brought out a pair of gloves. She put them on Ji Qingyou, muttering, “It’s cold outside. I just warmed them up. A surgeon needs to protect their hands, you know?”
“…I know.” Ji Qingyou felt her palms wrapped in warmth, mixed with a faint scent from Qin Bailan’s bed, a light laundry detergent smell.
When she was little, she was often sick, so Qin Bailan frequently let her sleep in her bed. The warm quilt would sometimes have Yu Qinjiu crawling in, and sometimes Qin Shuangchi would join them too.
Ji Qingyou lowered her eyes. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Say thank you again, and I’ll hit you on the head with a hammer.” Qin Bailan was exasperated. “We’re family. What’s there to thank?”
Ji Qingyou hummed in agreement.
Qin Shuangchi added, “Be safe, Ji Qingyou. Don’t stay out too late at the party, and stay away from allergens.”
A very ordinary reminder.
Ji Qingyou paused for a moment, said “Okay,” and went out the door.
Qin Bailan watched from the doorway until she got on the elevator before coming back in and sighing lightly. “I don’t know who this child takes after, always so quiet.”
“Who else? She takes after you, her mother.” Qin Shuangchi said lightly.
Qin Bailan didn’t argue with her. She just said, “She wasn’t as quiet as a child. Back then, Little Jiu would mess with her all day, so she talked a bit more.”
She paused, a little worried. “I still think she and Little Jiu had a fight back then. Why else would they go all these years without contact? It’s not like the world really ended. Communication is so easy now. How could they just stop talking to each other for no reason?”
Qin Shuangchi drawled lazily, “The question is, do you think, with Little You’s personality, what kind of fight could she have with Little Jiu?”
Qin Bailan was taken aback. “That’s true. She was always the one giving in to Little Jiu. She’d get impatient explaining things to others after one try. But with Little Jiu, she could explain it ten times and still be ready for an eleventh.”
“Exactly. But Little You is also stubborn.” Qin Shuangchi said, then smiled a little, adding a sentence only she could hear. “They might not have had a fight, but there was still a doomsday.”
It happened to be 2012. The year Yu Qinjiu went abroad. The year she cut off contact with her family, with Ji Qingyou, and with everyone back home.
Rumor had it that December 21, 2012, was the end of the Mayan calendar.
So that day was rumored to be the end of the world.
Qin Shuangchi was on the night shift at the hospital at the time. It was already the early morning of the next day, the day after the supposed doomsday.
Ji Qingyou, who had just started college not long ago, came to the hospital to find her. In front of her, she ate a strawberry-flavored cream cake. It contained cream, which was Ji Qingyou’s allergen.
Ji Qingyou said, “I know I’m allergic to cream. But today, I really, really wanted to eat it, just once. You’ll save me, right, Sis?”
It was the first time Ji Qingyou had ever been so willful.
Doing something she wasn’t supposed to do, knowing she shouldn’t.
Qin Shuangchi panicked. She took Ji Qingyou to have her stomach pumped.
Just before she passed out, Ji Qingyou clutched Qin Shuangchi’s sleeve tightly, her eyes squeezed shut.
After that, Ji Qingyou was never that willful again. She never touched cream again, never ate sweets, especially strawberry-flavored ones.
Qin Shuangchi had always thought that Ji Qingyou was just that kind of person, with no emotional ups or downs.
But looking back, she suddenly felt that the Ji Qingyou of the past wasn’t as indifferent as she is now. She had a willful, childlike side, too.
When did that change?
Qin Shuangchi thought about it. It was that year. The accursed 2012. The shattered 2012. The year that split the trajectory of their lives.
Later, she understood.
In a sense, 2012 really was the end of the world.
