Chapter 20

“But the market took a downturn those first few years, and the livestreaming industry boomed instead, so we… we’re running a factory in Yunzhou now.”

“Auntie Mu is…?”

“Mu Yaoyao.”

Mu Yaoyao was… Si Jiamu’s mother, the woman Si Xueyi married after.

Which also made her Si Nanyu’s stepmother.

She had once assumed Qin Hua would despise this woman.

And now Si Xueyi had passed away, and Qin Hua was running a factory together with Mu Yaoyao?

The revelations kept coming from Qin Hua’s mouth, one after another, and not a single one was something Si Nanyu had been prepared for.

She’d managed to cope, but it hadn’t helped.

“Mom, is all of that true?!”

Si Nanyu felt her eyes stinging and swelling, though that was over the matter of Si Xueyi.

There was also a fire smoldering in her chest, because of Mu Yaoyao and Si Jiamu.

So when she’d seen Si Jiamu at her front door, it was because…

“You and Mu Yaoyao and her daughter, all living in the same neighborhood?”

She had confessed one thing, then two, so why balk at more?

Qin Hua, past the point of caring, pointed upstairs. “They live on the top floor. They come by sometimes.”

“So you’re all on good terms now?” Si Nanyu pressed, but this time Qin Hua didn’t answer directly.

Instead she paused before saying, “By ‘we’, I include you too.”

“Our relationships are all quite good now.”

That explained why Si Jiamu had called out to her so affectionately as “Sister” when she saw Si Nanyu at school.

And why Wen Qingyan had asked Si Jiamu to pass along a message.

Si Nanyu couldn’t quite put a name to what she was feeling.

There was sourness, certainly, and a dull, heavy ache too.

But somehow none of it seemed to matter very much.

Just because she had lost ten years of memory didn’t mean those ten years hadn’t happened to her.

“Mom, I’m heading home first.”

As for the “home” she shared with Wen Qingyan, Si Nanyu didn’t really feel any sense of belonging there. It was only because she liked Wen Qingyan that she could take for granted the right to be close to her.

Now it had become a place for her to hide, temporarily.

After getting home, Si Nanyu downed two large glasses of water in a row, trying to calm herself down.

It didn’t work, and she retreated into her room instead.

There were plenty of ways to blow off steam, but Si Nanyu wasn’t sure whether she needed one right now. Following pure instinct, she went looking for the instruments she was familiar with.

She had noticed a few days ago that this guest room seemed to be specially lined with soundproofing foam. As long as she didn’t make too much noise, very little would carry outside.

So she let herself go a little wild, running through the keyboard, the guitar, and even the drum kit.

Two full hours, without a single break.

By the time she finished, she was drenched in sweat.

So she took a shower and collapsed into bed.

Textbook avoidance. Avoiding the many facts she didn’t understand, and the way she chose to avoid them was simply to sleep.

She slept until the sky had gone dim, the room silent around her.

She lay on the bed staring blankly at nothing, and before long she heard the sound of the door opening. Assuming Wen Qingyan had come home, Si Nanyu snapped fully awake.

She had planned, since that morning, to go pick Wen Qingyan up. But by now… she’d probably missed her chance.

She hurried out the door. The Wen Qingyan she expected was nowhere to be seen; instead she found Ribs, along with the pet shop employee who had brought her back.

The employee clearly recognized her, greeting her with a light laugh. “Miss Si.”

Si Nanyu nodded, thanked her for the trouble, took Ribs from her arms, and saw her out.

Then she came back in, filled Ribs’s food bowl, and got ready to head out to pick up Wen Qingyan after all.

She still couldn’t drive, so she’d planned on taking the subway.

But before she could leave, while she was still changing shoes at the entryway, Wen Qingyan walked in.

Si Nanyu couldn’t say exactly what she felt. All she knew was that the moment she saw Wen Qingyan, the ache in her chest sharpened to an almost unbearable pitch, and she even wanted to throw her arms around her.

But she still didn’t dare, and she didn’t want Wen Qingyan to see her weakness, so she forced herself to say, “You’re back, Teacher Wen?”

“I was going to come pick you up, but it was too late by the time…”

“What would you like to eat? I’ll make it right now.”

Si Nanyu busied herself fussing around, hoping Wen Qingyan wouldn’t notice anything off.

And Wen Qingyan indeed showed nothing, only glancing at her calmly before speaking at last. “Don’t bother cooking. I bought ingredients.”

“We’re having hotpot.”

Wen Qingyan’s presence was something special to Si Nanyu.

Just those two simple sentences, and her tangled emotions began to dissipate, a faint anticipation rising at the thought of sharing dinner with Wen Qingyan.

She loved good food, and she loved hotpot.

But what she loved more… was Wen Qingyan.

Wen Qingyan had received a message from Qin Hua while she was still at school, telling her everything that had happened that day.

That was why she’d bought hotpot ingredients for Si Nanyu, hoping to take her mind off things. It had worked, just as she’d expected.

Si Nanyu carried everything into the kitchen to fry up the hotpot base, while Wen Qingyan sent a WeChat message to Qin Hua from the living room, telling her not to worry.

“Mom, Nanyu’s mood is fine. Don’t worry.”

But after sending it, she began to worry herself.

Not about anything else, but about her and Si Nanyu.

Many years ago, when something had happened to Si Xueyi, Si Nanyu’s reaction had been neither big nor small. On the surface there’d been nothing wrong, but in the dead of night, Si Nanyu would always hold her hand, her voice thick with congestion, calling her name over and over.

So dependent. So fragile.

Nothing like she was now.

She said she’d lost her memory, but what she’d forgotten wasn’t just their ten years together. She’d forgotten so much more.

So much that it made Wen Qingyan’s heart race with unease.

Perhaps there were things she hadn’t forgotten.

She hadn’t forgotten the distance that had crept between them, starting from who knew when.

“Wen…”

“Hotpot’s ready.”

She’d even forgotten what to call her.

Wen Qingyan had her back turned, and when she turned around, Si Nanyu saw that her face was expressionless. The warmth from moments ago, when she’d mentioned hotpot, might as well have been Si Nanyu’s imagination.

Helplessness washed over her again, and Si Nanyu grew stiff and awkward, ferrying ingredients to the table trip after trip, hardly daring to look at Wen Qingyan.

They didn’t talk much during the meal. Gradually, a gloom seemed to settle over the mood once more.

Wen Qingyan wasn’t much of a talker either, but when the silence had stretched too long, she set down her chopsticks and said, very quietly, “Mom told me everything that happened today.”

“Nanyu…” At the sound of her own name, Wen Qingyan’s voice went soft.

Si Nanyu’s eyes stung from the steam rising off the hotpot, and she blinked hard several times before tilting her head back and forcing a smile. “I’m fine!”

Then, in a low voice, she went on, “Didn’t all of that happen years and years ago?”

She had already gone from eighteen to twenty-eight. She didn’t want Wen Qingyan to… think she was childish and immature, the kind of person who only knew how to be sad when something went wrong.

She had to keep her emotions reined in and be a mature adult.

But to her surprise, Wen Qingyan’s expression softened again. “You… don’t be too sad.”

“And… Mom is here.”

In the end, Wen Qingyan hadn’t been able to hold back those words of comfort, but she hadn’t dared include herself, hadn’t dared tell Si Nanyu that there was Qin Hua, and that there was her too.

Because she wasn’t sure what Si Nanyu thought of her.

A relationship that had spanned ten years, and Wen Qingyan had very little confidence in it.

So once she finished speaking, she kept her eyes lowered, unwilling to let Si Nanyu see her face clearly. Si Nanyu dawdled without a word, and only when it came time to clear the dishes did she stammer out a question. “And what about you?”

“Wh… what?!” Wen Qingyan’s heartbeat picked up. She had a vague guess as to what Si Nanyu was asking, but she asked again anyway.

Cheeks burning, not daring to look at her, Si Nanyu spoke in the softest of voices. “What about Teacher Wen? Will you… always be here too?”