“… Huh?”
Playing dumb, Chu Jian reached in and dug around randomly in the mini fridge, but she had completely forgotten what she was even searching for.
She decisively pressed the “end” button and hung up the call, not giving Tong Fei the slightest chance to utter another sound.
At the same time, Jian Bianlin turned sideways behind her, and extending his arm over, he pulled out a bottle of grapefruit juice from the little compartment on the second shelf of the refrigerator and stuffed it into her arms. This was her favourite drink.
As Chu Jian murmured a thanks, her gaze crossed with his.
She swore, he must have heard… Actually, they definitely had not done “it.” But, she still ended up recalling some memories that should not be recalled. That year, the two of them were taking a ferry across the river. There were many people. Motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles were all piled on as well. She and he had been jostled into a corner, separated from her parents as well as his dad by layer upon layer of people. While she was anxiously worrying over whether her brand new, cotton outfit was going to rub against the tires to the right of her and be dirtied, he had caught her completely off guard by suddenly obstructing her line of sight. The feeling at that moment had been… her lips were wet and… had been bitten…
Chu Jian resolutely put the grapefruit juice back, pulled out a bottle of her most hated kind of juice—carrot—and walked away.
The whole night, she never left her room again.
At the crack of dawn the next morning, her dad and mom said they were returning to Hangzhou to sweep her [paternal] grandfather’s gravesite. She rolled over, wanting to continue sleeping, and so was utterly unprepared when her mom dragged her out of bed to tell her that there was chicken soup in the kitchen. In passing, her mom also informed her that Jian Bianlin was leaving on an afternoon flight today, and sadly for him, there was no one to cook for him at lunchtime. She instructed Chu Jian to heat up the chicken soup and invite him over, and then the two of them could drink it together.
“No, I don’t want to. Why don’t you bring it over to him now? Give it all to him. I’m not going to have any…” She expressed her objection.
Thus, her dad and mom began taking turns reprimanding her for not being mature and good-mannered. They lectured her to the point that she was begging for mercy before they finally left. But in the end, she slept in past ten o’clock. When she crawled out of bed and shuffled out of her bedroom, hugging a pile of dirty clothes, there was a very obvious tall figure already in the kitchen, washing his face with cold water… Piping hot chicken soup had been placed on the eating bar.
The television was turned on, its volume low. Playing on it was a rerun of The Voice of China[1], and it so happened that it was showing the opening sequence where Na Ying was singing Jay Chou’s Qing Hua Ci [Blue and White Porcelain].
Na Ying’s rendition of Qing Hua Ci [Blue and White Porcelain] for the opening of The Voice of China, Season 4 begins at 3:45
[4:36] “The sky’s azure colour waits for the misty rain,
And I am waiting for you
The chimney smoke spirals up gently,
Separated by the river for millions of miles…”
“My mom gave you the key?” Amid this elegant, mellow singing, she was on the verge of breakdown.
Cupping some cool water in his hands, he splashed it onto his face. His action was a little too forceful, though, and water splattered onto his body as well as his long, black workout pants.
