Huanying! Welcome to Shanghai, China. The place of all the peculiarities. Where everyone have their own stories about the families living there, especially the Xu's. Their ancestral house that they own for many generations have an infamous garden w...
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Caution : Timeline were posted above every cuts 😉
(After Mei came back)
There was an art to the female posterior. That's all there was to it. Well, that was most of it.
The young runners of the university track had such verve, tone and probably best of all, if Alex felt the need to give them something, he could never catch them. Obviously, his gift knew that and never decided to kick in at the track during school year. He just grew tired receiving strange looks whenever he gives something to a stranger.
That morning, instead of going to the track, Alex decided to went downtown before the shops opened. There were always runners around the square. He followed a few of them until he came to Jun's grocery store and happened to look in the window. It's still early before the man showed up but there he was, checking the stocks on their cold sections. Alex noticed the rumpled clothing, an obvious indication that he'd spent the night there. Alex supposed the rose geranium wine didn't work on Ming Jin or maybe Jun decided not to use it after all. Sometimes people who had been together for a long time got to imagining that things used to be better, even when they weren't. Memories, even hard memories, grew soft like peaches as they got older.
Jun and Ming Jin were a steadfast couple, everyone knew that. The fact that they were gay had been overlooked after a long time ago, when it was obvious they were one of the always-togethers, a distinction for very old couples. He knew Jun. He knew that what people thought was important to him. He was a lot like his father that way, though he'd never admit it. Once someone told Jun something critical, he would hold on to it for a long time, change everything he did so that he wouldn't face the same criticism again. He would hate it when people know that he and Ming JIn were having problems. Jun was an always-together. He had so many expectations to live up to.
Alex knew he should leave but he decided to wait for a moment to see if his gift would kick in. He stared at Jun but nothing occurred to him. He had nothing to give him but advice, and most people were not inclined to take that too seriously. Alex was neither mysterious or as clever as his Xu relatives who had always lived on their big, old houses. But he did have the gift of anticipation. From the time he was a young boy, he brought his mother dishcloths before the milk was spilled, he closed the windows before there was even a hint of a storm and many more.
Alex had been married once, a long time ago. The first time he met his wife they were six years old and he gave him a small black stone he'd found on the road that day. That night, she used it to tap on his window to get his attention and they became the best of friends. After twenty-eight years of marriage and not once feeling the need to give her something again, he was seized with the need to buy his wife a new dress. It turned out to be because she didn't have a decent one to be buried in when she died the following week. He tried not to think too hard about his gift, because then he would think about how frustrating it was not to know why people needed the things. Sometimes at night when his house felt particularly empty, he still wondered what would have happened if he hadn't bought his wife that dress.
