The atmosphere was dull, the window glass suddenly seemed to be knocked by something, continuously emitting a “pa pa pa” sound, followed by the panic sound of closing windows sounded one after another.
It has begun to rain again, without warning….
Wen Tong looked at the sudden increase in rain outside the window, frowned, and complained, “This is the first rain this week? My clothes are going to get dry and moldy.”
Xiao Yuqing smiled lightly and said, “I heard that a typhoon is coming again. You’ve lived here for so many years, are you still not used to the weather here?”
Lin Xian got off the treadmill, leaned against a pillar for a short rest, also looking out the window at the pouring rain, and asked Xiao Yuqing with some concern, “Aunt Xiao, did we bring an umbrella?”
Xiao Yuqing gently shook her head, “I didn’t bring it this time. I used it two days ago and left it on the balcony to dry but forgot to put it in the car.” She reached out and wiped Lin Xian’s forehead with a towel and reassured her, “Don’t worry, we only need an umbrella for the short way out of the garage, it may stop raining in a while.”
When Wen Tong heard about the typhoon, she remembered the typhoon more than half a month ago, Xiao Yuqing did a foolish thing, remembered how her heart was in turmoil at that time, and her tone became bad, reminding her, “This time, when the typhoon comes, your home is ready with the common medicine. Don’t do something foolish that will make people jump.”
Xiao Yuqing was gentle and not aggressive even with the glare. She helplessly retorted Wen Tong: “What you said, are you cursing me and Xian Xian?”
Wen Tong froze for a moment, carefully recalled the moment, only to react to her words, saying it was not quite right, and couldn’t help laughing. But she still raised her eyebrows and said stiffly, “It’s the listeners who have a heart1.”
“Yes, yes, yes, you’re all right.” Xiao Yuqing hooked up the corners of her lips and answered her, in a tone as if she was afraid that Wen Tong would not hear the perfunctory.
Lin Xian watched them bicker back and forth, watching Xiao Yuqing’s rare display of liveliness, and could not help but have a smile.
The atmosphere was finally relaxed again.
The three people did not intend to run again, so they went to the rest area and sat down around a table to rest temporarily. As if remembering something, Wen Tong suddenly asked Xiao Yuqing, “The National Day tour we agreed to before, you won’t suddenly stand me up again, will you?”
Xiao Yuqing arched her eyebrows, but did not directly answer Wen Tong’s question, instead, she turned her face sideways and asked Lin Xian in a warm voice, “Xian Xian, what are your arrangements for the National Day?”
Lin Xian didn’t think twice and answered truthfully, “I had agreed with my mom and dad during the summer vacation that I would go to six countries in Europe on the National Day as a reward for my entrance to Jiangnan University.” She had lived with Zhou Qin and the others in the United States for a year, during which she also visited Canada. North America left her with an impression of bold and enthusiasm, which she also liked, but she inexplicably yearned more for Europe, for its long history and romantic style. This European tour was something she had been looking forward to for a long time.
Hearing that Lin Xian had already made arrangements, Xiao Yuqing put her heart down and turned her head to lightly agree with Wen Tong, “Then I’m fine, let’s follow the original plan.”
Wen Tong raised her eyebrows and gave Xiao Yuqing a discontented look, “Why do I feel like a spare tire.”
Xiao Yuqing laughed and scolded her, “What are you talking about in front the child.”
Lin Xian bit her lip, a little concerned, she was not a child anymore. But in the end, she just tilted her head and asked Xiao Yuqing, “Aunt Xiao, what are your plans for the National Day?”
“Your Aunt Wen and I are going to go to Changchun, all the way from the ancient city of Liuzhou to Han Jiang and Xueyuan. It’s a pity that at this time of the year, there is no chance to see the snowy mountains of Yunhu Snow Mountain.”
Lin Xian’s heart immediately yearned for these places that Xiao Yuqing mentioned. They were also places that she had marked on her tourist map as must-see places in her lifetime. She said from the bottom of her heart, “I want to see it too, it sounds very beautiful…”
Xiao Yuqing scratched her nose, calming the girl’s restless heart, “There will be opportunities, moreover, Europe is also very beautiful, each with its own style.”
Lin Xian thought for a moment, then was relieved, Aunt Xiao is right, there is always a chance. However, her eyes turned and she had a new melancholy, “If only you had no arrangement to go with us, Aunt Xiao.” The more she thought about it, the more despondent she became, “If only we could walk together on the Champs-Élysées in France, cruise on the Rhine in Germany, and embrace the sea of tulips under the windmills in the Netherlands….” Her voice got lower and lower, and finally, she stopped…
Because she found that Xiao Yuqing’s face, as her words fell to the ground, became increasingly pale and rigid. But in the end, when Lin Xian looked suspiciously, she still tenderly gave Lin Xian a reluctant smile, “It’s a pity, I …… once there was a time, I also wanted to go too…” The look under her eyes, Lin Xian could not read the obscure and difficult to understand. Like looking at her, but also, looking through her, to a distant past that Lin Xian could not reach.
Lin Xian lowered her head, her heart secretly blamed herself, why did she have to talk so much? Was it, where did she touch Xiao Yuqing’s sad place…
Fortunately, Wen Tong interrupted and raised her voice to scold Lin Xian, “Lin Xiao Xian, you’re not being kind like this, digging in front of me2.”
Lin Xian was scared by Wen Tong’s aura, and was busy defending herself sheepishly, “I didn’t…”
Xiao Yuqing at the side, gently laughed out loud.
However, the atmosphere in the end could never return again.
On the way back, Xiao Yuqing got in the car and turned on the car music, one song after another, either cheerful or soft songs endlessly. Lin Xian still felt that the atmosphere was quiet, silent, and unusual…
Occasionally, she would look sideways at Xiao Yuqing and always see the soft lines of her side profile, with a quiet gentleness that is no different from the usual. She appeared to be well concealed, but Lin Xian still felt that her eyebrows and eyes were filled with a different depression and gloom than in the past.
Lin Xian retracted her eyes and quietly looked out the car window at the fast receding busy street scene; people were coming and going, vehicles were flowing, were they passers-by leaving or returning home? She looked at the tall buildings on both sides of the road, looking at the bright or dark lights in the tall buildings, thinking, under each light, there was at least one person and there would be a story that belonged only to them. So here, how many stories were there?
What is the story that belongs to Xiao Yuqing?
Obviously, they were now sitting so close to each other, but Lin Xian still felt that she seemed to be far away from Xiao Yuqing, very far away….
Another red light came, the traffic stopped, and they also stopped. Lin Xian inadvertently saw the convenience store not far away, there were three or two people standing in front of the counter, waiting for the boss to load up a golden corn on the cob. She suddenly turned her head, breaking the silence that had been there the whole way, and said to Xiao Yuqing with some cheerfulness, “There is corn for sale in front.”
Xiao Yuqing finally drew her mind back from the past, turned her head, the corners of her lips raised a curve, and asked her, “Do you like to eat corn?”
Lin Xian nodded, “En, even if it’s just steamed, it’s very fragrant and sweet and if you put some in when you braise ribs, the whole soup will taste even better.”
Xiao Yuqing did not deny it and just smiled.
The red light passed, the green light came on, the traffic started to move, and Xiao Yuqing followed the car in front of her and started to move forward, but gradually deviated from the main road. She stopped at a temporary roadside stop not far from the convenience store, unbuckled her seat belt, and opened the door while admonishing Lin Xian, “It’s still raining outside so it’s not convenient to get out of the car. Just wait for me in the car for a moment, I’ll be back soon.”
Lin Xian had not yet reacted to what she was going to do, when she saw her get out of the car and closed the door sharply, then lifted her hand to cover her head, and went around the car, avoiding the puddles on the ground, and ran clumsily towards the convenience store not far away.
Lin Xian’s eyes followed the slim and beautiful figure as it moved, and suddenly she felt that her heart was hit hard by something. She stared closely at the figure not far away where Xiao Yuqing and the boss gestured about something and then took the boss’s loaded corn to the store checkout, and finally, she could not help but raise a big smile.
Not long after, Xiao Yuqing came back. She was still standing by the car door, gently shaking off the rain, but Lin Xian was impatient to open the door for her, and was moved and heartbroken to scold her, “I just said it casually, the rain is so heavy, why did you run off like this, look at how wet your clothes are.”
Xiao Yuqing just got into the car, handed the corn to Lin Xian, started the car, and soothed the girl with her gentle eyebrows, “It’s okay, we’ll be home soon I’ll just take a shower and change my clothes later.” After saying that, she looked at the corn in Lin Xian’s hand and gestured to her, “Eat it while it’s hot, see how it tastes, it smells quite good.”
Lin Xian opened the bag and the sweet smell of corn immediately filled the small car. She gently took a bite, feeling the warm, sweet, and fragrant taste of the corn between her lips and teeth, just like her state of mind at the moment. She turned to Xiao Yuqing, smiling radiantly, and said from the bottom of her heart, “Delicious.” After saying that, she stretched out the corn, raised her eyes, and bent her eyebrows to encourage Xiao Yuqing, “Aunt Xiao, you also take a bite to see.”
The young girl’s face was undeniably joyful and as she spoke her eyes flowed, a youthful glow that Xiao Yuqing had never seen before. Xiao Yuqing’s heart could not help but soften. It’s so easy to satisfy. She couldn’t bear to refuse Lin Xian’s invitation so she turned her head sideways and on the other side where Lin Xian had bitten, she gently took a bite and chewed slowly, then, also echoed her, “En, it’s delicious.”
The curve of the smile on the girl’s face became more and more obvious.
The rain stopped when they arrived home, just as suddenly as it came. When she got out of the car, Lin Xian walked next to Xiao Yuqing, in the light she suddenly noticed that the side pocket of Xiao Yuqing’s slim sweatpants seemed to contain a long, square, flat thing, which was not too thick and therefore only slightly bulged out.
Lin Xian frowned, thinking back, when they left, did she have it at the gym?
It seems, there wasn’t?
Did she buy it at the convenience store?
When they returned home, they split up and went to take a shower. Lin Xian finished her shower and blow-dried her hair and even finished washing her clothes. But she didn’t see Xiao Yuqing come out of the bedroom, so she couldn’t help but worry a little.
When she approached Xiao Yuqing’s bedroom, she finally heard the rumbling sound of the hair dryer starting up in the room. Lin Xian was puzzled, did she wash for so long?
The door to the bedroom was open, Lin Xian raised her hand and was about to knock on the door when she saw that Xiao Yuqing had her head slightly lowered, her eyes downcast, one hand holding the hairdryer, and the other hand was lifting the wet hair at the back of her head.
However, both of her hands have been maintaining the same action for a long time, without changing. Lin Xian even felt that she could smell the hair overheating, as if it had been burnt
Lin Xian’s eyes slowly dulled down. She turned around and went back to her room and after sitting dumbly on the bed for a while, she jumped out of bed and went to her desk and opened her computer.
Shortly after, she picked up her laptop and once again went to Xiao Yuqing’s bedroom, raised her hand, and gently knocked twice to draw her attention, “Aunt Xiao, can I come in?”
Xiao Yuqing had already finished blow-drying her hair and when she saw Lin Xian she looked at the computer Lin Xian was holding and nodded with a soft expression, “What are you doing with that?”
Lin Xian jumped into the room and sat next to Xiao Yuqing, blinked her eyes, showed Xiao Yuqing the opened computer interface, and begged her, “Aunt Xiao, let’s watch a movie together. The other evening the school theater was showing it, but I was in a hurry to come back for dinner so I didn’t get to see it.”
Xiao Yuqing didn’t ask what kind of movie it was, but just looked at the watch she had taken off and put on the bedside table when she took a shower. It was just past nine o’clock, she thought, the movie will be over in two hours at most, it’s still not too late, so she rubbed Lin Xian’s head, and indulged her, promising, “Okay, then you come up, let’s watch it together against the bed.”
Lin Xian was immediately overjoyed and couldn’t wait to climb into bed after kicking off her slippers.
Because she noticed that Xiao Yuqing seemed to have been in a low mood tonight because of past events, Lin Xian saved some of her thoughts to divert Xiao Yuqing’s mind from dwelling on the past, and deliberately looked for a very famous comedy film of the 1990s with a high reputation and high marks, starring the famous Stephen Chow–“Journey to the West”.
Lin Xian didn’t notice the red lips that Xiao Yuqing had slightly pursed when she saw the film. But in the end, she still didn’t say anything.
The film really lives up to its name, Lin Xian laughed a little low and was repeatedly poked into laughter, laughing from ear to ear the whole time. Near the end of the film, the ending tune played, and the sunset warrior and a woman who looked like the fairy Zixia stood on a wall, staged in a love entanglement. Wukong possessed the warrior, walking coquettishly, with a pompous tone confessing his love, and Lin Xian could not help but laugh out loud again. It turns out that the classic mushy words of confession came from here.
The woman looked at Wukong who turned to leave and said, “That guy looks strange.” The warrior replied, “I saw, he looks like a dog.”
“Although the flowers will wither (only wish), they will bloom again (for you), the love of my life is faintly (waiting), outside the white clouds (looking forward). A sea of bitterness turns up love and hate, it is difficult to escape fate in the world…”
The film came to an end as the singing sounded and the Monkey King’s sluggish back gradually faded away.
Lin Xian was holding the computer with a smile on her face, and naturally turned her head to share her afterthoughts with Xiao Yuqing, but was alarmed to find that Xiao Yuqing next to her was still staring at the screen. She was biting her lips tightly, her ink-like eyes were dense with moisture, full of tears, and her eyes were already red.
Lin Xian’s heart thumped and for a moment she was at a loss for words. The next second, she withdrew her eyes, put both of her hands under the computer on her knees, secretly using ingenuity. After a few long seconds, she finally managed to unplug the laptop battery open.
All of a sudden, the screen went black.
Lin Xian pretended to be alarmed, as if she was frightened, and let out a soft “ah”, wondering, “What’s going on?”
Xiao Yuqing came back to her senses, turned her head sideways, and gently wiped away her overflowing eyes. She gently inhaled her nose, adjusted her emotions, and then, pretending to be natural, patted Lin Xian’s hand and comforted her, “Perhaps the laptop ran out of battery.”
Lin Xian sighed hopelessly, “Ah, I seem to have picked the wrong movie. Look, we should have actually watched a thriller, with this consumption, the effect must be very good.”
Xiao Yuqing was amused by her and gave a soft laugh, saying in a delicate voice, “Then I’m not watching it with you.”
Lin Xian, however, became more and more intrigued, her bright eyes had a bad smile, teasing Xiao Yuqing, “Come, come, come, Aunt Xiao don’t be afraid, I’ll tell you a ghost story. Once upon a time….”
Xiao Yuqing could not withstand the intimidation, afraid that she really will open her mouth, panicked, and covered Lin Xian’s mouth to stop her next sentence, preventing her mouth to speak.
Lin Xian felt the temperature of Xiao Yuqing’s finger on her lips, and felt the smile and protest coming from her beside her, and finally, she also laughed heartily.
During the night, Lin Xian once again had a rare insomnia, tossing and turning.
She unconsciously looked at the darkness of the night, looking at the ceiling, her mind was full of thoughts.
Why did Xiao Yuqing cry.
She cared inexplicably. She thought that she might not have understood the story of Journey to the West, but Xiao Yuqing did.
What did Xiao Yuqing see in the movie?
Fourteen years of time, fourteen years of distance, after all, how far is that?
For a moment, she wanted to understand, but didn’t want to understand.
The author has something to say:
Lin Xian: Chapter 25! I! Lin Xian! Climbed onto Aunt Xiao’s bed! Big smile (smug face)
Thank you Steven for supporting this novel!!
1 The speaker has no intention and the listener intends. I would explain but it can’t get any simpler than that.
2 “Digging in front of me” um I’m not too sure. The closest I can think of is that she was moping(?) because digging usually refers to quitting??
Lol that author note.
Everything reminding Yuqing of her past love today.