Chapter 26
Regarding the matter of taking a Chinese stomach to a Thai restaurant, it seemed a little bit awkward.
However, if she had to say, Jian Xin also had a Chinese stomach.
So after a brief awkwardness, Jian Xin glanced at the rain outside and asked thoughtfully, “How about we wait for the rain to stop and go eat somewhere else?”
As she spoke, she propped her face in her hands and muttered, “Actually, I have a Chinese stomach too. I just thought this place was a bit more high-end, and you might like it more…”
Yan Lu: “Then what about this table?”
“We can take what we like to go, and just leave what we don’t. The money’s already spent, we can’t let our stomachs suffer, right?” Jian Xin said, pointing to the pineapple fried rice. “I quite like this.”
Yan Lu nodded and took a sip of her fruit tea. “I just don’t know how long this rain will last.”
That was indeed a good question.
That night, the rain in Jincheng fell heavily, and the entire night sky was dark without a single glimmer of light.
It wasn’t until around ten-thirty that the rain finally stopped.
The two of them sat in the bubble room, each playing on their own phone. Occasionally, when they saw something funny, they would share it with the other.
The food on the table had long since gone cold, but they would still take a bite from time to time. The pineapple fried rice that they were supposed to take to go was almost finished.
When the rain stopped, neither of them was hungry, but they were definitely not full either.
This time, they no longer cared about the environment or class. They drove for about ten minutes and went to an old, well-known street-side skewer shop to eat a steaming hot yuan-yang pot( double-flavoured pot)..
Late at night, this skewer shop was still full of customers, so lively that you had to speak a little louder to be heard.
The air conditioning in the shop wasn’t very strong, and the pot was steaming hot. By the end of the meal, both of them were covered in sweat.
But the taste of this street-side food was just that good, so good that they ate a lot while laughing and talking.
“Do you remember, back then, our dorm used a fake day-student card to sneak out of school, ran for a kilometer or two, and pooled our money to eat at a skewer shop,” Jian Xin couldn’t help but reminisce. “The skewers were so cheap back then, it only cost eight or nine yuan per person.”
“I remember,” Yan Lu said. “It was with Yang Tian and the others. Because the meat was more expensive, we tried to only take vegetables.”
“Of course we only took vegetables! The vegetable skewers were only twenty cents, and the meat skewers were fifty cents!” Jian Xin said, tilting her head slightly and staring at the boiling pot for a while.
When she came back to her senses, a smile couldn’t help but appear on her face. “I also remember, to eat more meat, we bought our own ham, cut it up with a small plastic knife before school ended, wrapped it in a napkin, and hid it in our bags to take to the shop. When the staff wasn’t looking, we would just pour it into the pot…”
Yan Lu: “You were always the one who did that.”
Jian Xin pouted. “If I didn’t do it, no one would. All of you were so timid.”
“Actually, I was scared too. It would have been so embarrassing if we got caught,” she said, shaking her head with a smile. “But later I found out that putting ham in the pot was as obvious as sleeping in class!”
“Later, when I had money, I went to see a movie with a friend and stopped by the school to take a look. I found that the shop was still there, so I went to eat there again,” Jian Xin said. “That time, I could finally afford to take any skewer I wanted. My friend and I had a great time. Later, when the auntie was counting the skewers, she suddenly smiled and said to me, ‘You didn’t bring any ham this time.’ My brain just exploded. I really wanted to find a hole to crawl into, okay!”
Yan Lu couldn’t help but laugh.
Jian Xin: “It was only then that I knew that they had always known about our little tricks. They just thought we were young, didn’t have much money, and liked to eat there, so there was no need to drive away customers over such a small thing, and they just turned a blind eye.”
Yan Lu: “And then?”
“I apologized, but they didn’t mind. They just said they hadn’t seen me in a long time, and when they suddenly saw me, they remembered what happened back then, thought it was interesting, and just said it casually…” Jian Xin said, taking a sip of her herbal tea. “She also said that regular customers get a discount and waived the cost of our drinks, and that was that.”
Yan Lu: “The boss is a good businesswoman.”
“If she wasn’t a good businesswoman, the shop wouldn’t have been open for so long,” Jian Xin’s words paused for a moment, then she suddenly said softly, “The last time I went back to Nanjiang, that shop was still open. The taste hasn’t changed much over the years—back then, we were reluctant to take anything, and we never had our fill. If we have time, let’s go eat there together again, okay? Maybe the auntie remembers you too.”
Yan Lu was silent for a moment, then lowered her eyes and replied, “If there’s a chance.”
Actually, “if there’s a chance” was often not much different from “I don’t have time.”
Not agreeing directly was a form of polite refusal.
Jian Xin thought for a moment and changed the subject. “You ate so little back then. Everyone said it was a good deal to take you out to eat.”
“It wasn’t you who paid,” Yan Lu said faintly. “I didn’t have any money back then.”
Jian Xin’s eyes curved, and she casually joked, “Then why don’t you treat me to this meal, as a repayment?”
“Okay.”
Yan Lu agreed so readily that Jian Xin frowned and waved her hand.
“What okay? I was just kidding!” she said, looking at Yan Lu seriously. “It’s my treat today!”
“You’ve already treated me to one meal,” Yan Lu said. “Over four hundred, not cheap.”
“Great author, although I’m unemployed now, I still have a source of income. You don’t have to take care of me like this, right?” Jian Xin said, her tone serious and stubborn. “I said, it’s my treat today. If I say it’s my treat, then I have to treat you to everything! It doesn’t count as my treat if even a single drink is missing! You eat, eat as much as you want, don’t be embarrassed! We’re all rich now, don’t wrong yourself like we did in school!”
With such a speech, paired with Jian Xin’s confident expression and grand tone, anyone who didn’t know would think this meal was incredibly expensive, requiring this person to spend a fortune to eat to her heart’s content.
However, when it came time to pay the bill, including the hot pot base, the two of them together didn’t even reach three digits, which was a lot cheaper than the last meal.
It was already past twelve when Jian Xin was sent home.
Because of the heavy rain, Yan Lu could only go home so late. She was so embarrassed that she kept apologizing as she said goodbye.
Yan Lu, however, seemed unfazed. She just said, “Rest early,” and turned to leave.
The moment she closed the door, Jian Xin sat in her wheelchair and stared blankly for a long time.
She and Yan Lu, have they buried the hatchet? Will it not be so awkward the next time they meet?
Perhaps this was a very good start.
She had found something that was once very important. Although she could never put it back in its original place, at least… it was a kind of recovery, right.
With this thought, Jian Xin let out a heavy breath, lowered her head, opened her phone, and sent a message to Yan Lu.
—Let me know when you get home!
*
It was almost one in the morning when Yan Lu got home.
She had left too early in the afternoon and hadn’t expected the planned dinner to suddenly turn into a late-night snack. She hadn’t prepared enough food for the two little ones, and the moment she walked in, she was greeted by a symphony of quacks and barks, demanding food.
“I’m sorry, Xin Xin, Cauliflower. Mommy came back late today. I’ll get you something to eat right now!” Yan Lu said, putting on her slippers. Without even changing her clothes, she hurried into the kitchen.
These two little ones at home were both picky eaters. They didn’t like the canned or bagged food bought online, only fresh food, which was very hard to serve.
Yan Lu, covered in sweat, bustled around in the kitchen for a long time. It wasn’t until they were both fed that she finally breathed a sigh of relief.
She opened her phone and saw that Jian Xin had sent her a message over an hour ago.
Picked Up a Heart: Let me know when you get home!
Perched by the Roadside: I’m home. Just finished making food for the duck and dog.
After replying, she thought for a moment and added another sentence.
Perched by the Roadside: I just saw the message.
Finally, she stared at her phone for a while. Seeing no reply, she tossed her phone onto the bed, grabbed a nightdress, and went into the bathroom to take a shower.
Finally having washed away the heat, Yan Lu sat back down in front of her computer, combing her wet hair.
There were still a lot of signature pages on the desk. Just looking at them made her hand ache.
Yan Lu sighed, put down her comb, picked up her signing pen, and once again began to sign.
At three in the morning, a light rain began to fall outside the window.
The rain pattered. Cauliflower waddled to her feet and quacked at her a couple of times with its head tilted up.
Yan Lu looked down at it. “Xin Xin is already asleep. Why aren’t you sleeping yet?”
Cauliflower stood on its tiptoes, flapped its wings, and hopped in place with another quack.
Yan Lu thought for a moment, then picked it up from the floor and placed it gently on her lap.
“Since you can’t sleep, you can keep Mommy company while she works,” Yan Lu said, rubbing its little head and complaining softly, “They need these signatures so urgently. They said they hope to get them done before the drama’s popularity fades. There are still a few more boxes outside. I’ll never dare to agree to sign them all during the pre-sale again…”
The little duck shrank its neck, leaned against her stomach, and gently closed its eyes.
“You little one, you don’t sleep in your duck nest anymore. You just love to sleep on me, right?”
“Quack!”
“Then you can sleep peacefully. Mommy still has to write for a while.”
“Uh-huh—”
Yan Lu smiled and picked up her pen again.
This duck is getting clingier than the dog lately, she thought.
If this goes on, Xin Xin will get jealous…
*
Dorm 509 was livelier than any other dorm.
Jian Xin had brought a pair of light green speakers from home to the dorm. Every day before lights out, she would connect the speakers to her MP4 player and play music in the dorm until the power was cut.
At first, she would sit on Yan Lu’s bed every day, sharing a pair of earphones with her, and sharing her favorite music.
Later, someone casually joked, “Jian Xin only ever shares her music with Yan Lu.”
Jian Xin looked at the only two earphones and thought for a moment. That weekend, she went home and ordered a small portable speaker on Taobao.
From then on, the two people’s earphone cord became the six people’s small speaker.
Jian Xin’s taste in music was always good, and everyone in the dorm loved to listen. Even the dorm supervisor had asked for the song titles several times during her rounds.
There are some people in this world who seem to be naturally likable, able to get along with everyone around them wherever they go.
In Yan Lu’s eyes, Jian Xin was such a person.
Before Jian Xin came to 509, the atmosphere in the dorm had always been faint. People didn’t talk much and usually did their own thing. At most, two or three people would eat together every day, and they would never ask Yan Lu to join them.
But it was different recently.
Whether during the lunch break or before bed at night, there were more and more topics in the dorm, and everyone’s relationship was getting better and better.
For example, if someone suddenly got hungry at night and secretly made a packet of instant noodles, then everyone would come over for a bite.
In the dorm, this bite was called “protection fee.”
The meaning was, if the dorm supervisor came to check while you were making instant noodles, everyone in the dorm would do their best to cover for you and would never let you get caught by the teacher!
Another example, before every monthly exam, everyone would cram together at the last minute.
The whole dorm would be filled with the sound of people reciting things loudly, as if they had to compete in volume to memorize it.
And another example, everyone would occasionally eat together at one table.
It was around the beginning of May when a very cheap skewer restaurant opened near the school—the hot pot base was free, vegetable skewers were twenty cents, and meat skewers were fifty cents. The taste was very good.
After eating the cafeteria’s big pot rice for so long, they would occasionally crave some heavy-flavored small hot pot.
At Jian Xin’s suggestion, everyone in the dorm calculated and thought that this meal wouldn’t be too expensive. So they found someone to make fake day-student cards, and, taking advantage of the busiest time after school, they snuck out of school, ran all the way to that skewer shop, and happily ate their fill.
The taste of that shop was indeed very good, and the price was also very cheap. From then on, whenever they were craving it, they would go to eat there together.
Although they were always reluctant to take meat skewers, this didn’t stop them from having a particularly happy time every time.
The hot pot base of that shop was very good. To eat more meat, they even started to bring their own ham and secretly add it.
The ham was usually cut during the last class before school ended.
Yang Tian was in charge of this, and she would always sneak a little bit of the uncut ham beforehand.
Faced with the personal testimony of her deskmate and lower bunkmate, Li Zhu, she would always giggle and say, “What’s wrong? If the cook doesn’t steal, the five grains won’t be harvested!”
Finally, she would grinningly stuff the ham, wrapped in a napkin, into Jian Xin’s hand.
The matter of secretly adding their own ham to the pot, besides someone like Jian Xin who was fast and had quick reflexes, no one else dared to do it.
So, their plan to add more food could not have been achieved without Jian Xin!
But besides these times when they pooled their money to improve their meals, everyone in the dorm usually ate separately.
Jian Xin was an art student and would occasionally leave school for private lessons.
Vocal, music theory, sight-singing, piano, she always had a lot to learn, so she couldn’t eat every meal with Yan Lu.
In the past, when Jian Xin was not there, Yan Lu would always go to the cafeteria alone.
Until one time, Yang Tian and Li Zhu saw Jian Xin running out of the classroom with her schoolbag in a hurry before they left. They subconsciously looked back at Yan Lu behind them, and seeing her alone, they called out to her.
“Yan Lu, want to go to the cafeteria together?”
In Yan Lu’s memory, that was the first time, besides Jian Xin, that someone had been willing to ask her to eat with them.
At that moment, she couldn’t help but be taken aback. It wasn’t until her roommate waved again that she came back to her senses, hugged her small notebook, and hurried to catch up.
The days passed, and the weather gradually grew hotter.
The dorm had no air conditioning and no fan. Everyone in the dorm was so hot that they simply made their beds on the floor.
Yan Lu always slept on the very edge, next to Jian Xin.
She liked this feeling of sleeping on the floor, the feeling of—with a slight turn, they could touch each other. Even her dreams at night would be gentler than usual.
The dorm was not big, and the space for making beds on the floor was limited. Everyone was very close, and someone would always feel like talking.
As a result, one night, everyone got carried away while complaining about some of the boys in the class. They were reminded twice by the dorm supervisor but couldn’t quiet down. The next day, they were all standing in the head teacher’s office.
The head teacher looked at the six usually well-behaved little girls standing in front of him, all with their heads bowed low. He couldn’t bring himself to say much, just assigned each of them a self-criticism, and that was that.
That night, the dorm supervisor came to check the dorm. When she mentioned last night’s incident, Jian Xin was the first to stand up and shout, “Teacher Liu, we’ll never do it again!”
The moment her words fell, she was lightly tapped on the butt with a handbag.
“You won’t dare again? I think you’re the one who dares the most!” The dorm supervisor said, grabbing Jian Xin in a mock, but completely harmless, scuffle. “Playing and singing your little tunes every day, making instant noodles, and even secretly bringing in a birthday cake for Liang Shuangyi’s birthday, with the candles lit and everything. You really think I don’t know any of it, huh?!”
“Ah ah ah, I was wrong, I was wrong, Teacher Liu!”
“It’s always—’I was wrong, I was wrong!’” The dorm supervisor said, letting go of Jian Xin’s arm, both angry and amused. “Always humbly accepting, yet never changing!”
The next second, Jian Xin grabbed her wrist, shaking it gently and acting cute. Everyone in the dorm chimed in to beg for mercy, and the matter was thus dropped.
Finally, the dorm supervisor went to the other dorms. Yang Tian asked with wide, shocked eyes, “How did Teacher Liu know we secretly brought in the cake?”
“Sigh, she knows everything. She just turns a blind eye,” Jian Xin waved her hand and plopped down on Yan Lu’s bed. “As long as we’re obedient enough on the surface and don’t do the things we’re not supposed to do too blatantly, she can’t be bothered to manage so much.”
Jian Xin was right. The dorm supervisor actually knew everything.
Take instant noodles, for example. The smell is actually very strong. Even though everyone would wave orange peels around and spray a little diluted toilet water after eating, trying to get rid of the smell, most of the time it was just fooling themselves.
For example, one time, right after the dorm supervisor finished her rounds, Jian Xin jumped up, locked the door, and happily started making noodles with Li Zhu and Zhao Yiran. But before the noodles were even ready, the dorm supervisor came back for a surprise check, scaring the three of them into rushing into the bathroom on the spot.
The dorm supervisor walked into the dorm, looked around, and asked, “Why are there only three of you? Weren’t there more people just now?”
Yang Tian opened her mouth and replied softly, “In the bathroom.”
“Oh.” The dorm supervisor glanced at the closed bathroom door, a smile playing on her lips. “Three people in the bathroom?”
“…” Yang Tian lowered her head, not daring to speak.
The dorm supervisor: “One of them doing their business and the other two catching it, is that it?”
Liang Shuangyi couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing with a “pfft.”
“Well, you three better hurry up then. That kind of thing should be done while it’s hot,” the dorm supervisor said sarcastically, turning and walking out of the dorm.
The three in the bathroom looked down at the instant noodles in their hands, suddenly feeling that the taste wasn’t quite right anymore.
When they came out of the bathroom, Yang Tian and Liang Shuangyi outside were already shamelessly clutching their stomachs and laughing wildly on their beds. Even Yan Lu was trying hard to suppress a smile.
“What are you laughing at!” Jian Xin placed the instant noodles on the table, hands on her hips, and asked loudly, “So, are you going to eat or not!”
“Of course we’re eating!”
Why wouldn’t they? This was the protection fee from three people, after all!
Yang Tian and Liang Shuangyi immediately climbed down from their top bunks, ran barefoot to the table, each took a bite, and returned to their beds, satisfied.
Jian Xin knew that at times like this, Yan Lu would never come forward. Everyone had times when they needed to make instant noodles and could mooch off each other, but Yan Lu didn’t. If she ate someone else’s food, she would feel like she couldn’t repay them. So at times like this, Jian Xin would always say she couldn’t finish and then hold out the noodle bowl for Yan Lu to help her eat a couple of bites.
At first, Yan Lu was always afraid that the other roommates would say something about it, just like how she was laughed at by others in the class for always mooching off Jian Xin’s dinner card. But after a while, she discovered that the gossip she had imagined never appeared. It seemed that because of Jian Xin’s appearance, her life had started to become different from before.
She couldn’t help but think, it would be great if it could always be like this. But she knew that all the liveliness had never truly belonged to her. Someone like Jian Xin could get along well with anyone. She was just one of them.
…
[Have you ever seen the sun on a winter night?]
[It is not dazzling, nor is it scorching to the point of being hard to breathe.]
[In this endless winter night, its light and heat are so gentle, the only light and warmth she can touch.]
[She knows, she knows.]
[There are more people around her now, more kindness.]
[But all of this is so unreal, as if it could dissipate like smoke at any moment.]
[Every time she returns home, all she sees is a mess on the floor, and that madman who only hits and scolds her.]
[The closed doors and windows imprison the nauseating smell of smoke and alcohol, and they imprison her too.]
[Lin Xiaoshuang did not walk into summer; it was summer that approached her winter.]
[How she wishes that summer would never leave.]
[If there comes a day when the winter night finally strangles her soul.]
[Li Xia… would you be willing to take her away?]
During evening self-study, the Chinese teacher sat at the podium, grading essays.
Jian Xin was sprawled on her desk, mouth agape, one side of her face red from sleep.
Yan Lu looked at the passage she had just written, silent for a long time.
Finally, she tore it out, crumpled it into a ball.
And stuffed it deep into her desk.
There were some stories she always hoped Jian Xin would understand, yet she was also forever afraid that Jian Xin would understand.
