Panda Cub – Chapter 16
by Little PandaLazybones
A glass of milk.
“Don’t you know her well enough by now? For all we know, she’s off drinking with some beauty at a bar at this very moment,” He Ying drawled.
Jing Dan: “…”
Huh. That actually tracked.
Once she’d made peace with that, she stopped dwelling on Hu Tu and bent her head to keep eating the food He Ying had prepared for her.
Watching her tuck in with zero ceremony, He Ying shook her head — she really had been demoted to tool-person status.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Seeing that the other woman had spent the whole meal serving her, Jing Dan finally felt a flicker of shame.
“Ah.” He Ying opened her mouth.
Jing Dan: “…What are you doing?”
He Ying lifted a gloved hand slicked with red chili oil and said, all innocence, “Look at the state of me. Do I seem like someone who can feed herself right now?”
Jing Dan: “…”
“Feed me or don’t — either way, my mouth is getting tired of hanging open.” Laughter lurked in the creases of He Ying’s eyes as she watched the other woman’s silence, thoroughly entertained.
Jing Dan wavered. But there was the pile of shells He Ying had cracked open for her on the table, and — her mouth had gone short from eating the woman’s food1 — turning her down flat now would make her look awfully cold, wouldn’t it?
She agonized until her stomach actually ached, and yet the motion of feeding He Ying struck her as bizarre in some indefinable way. She’d never even fed Hu Tu before…
Taking in that conflicted expression, He Ying shook her head and declined to tease her any further, stripping off her gloves. “Never mind. I’ll do it myself — I’d starve to death waiting on you.”
Jing Dan: “…”
Privately, though, she breathed a sigh of relief. At last she’d been spared that strange little ritual.
Out of the corner of her eye, He Ying caught the reaction and turned thoughtful. She seemed unaccustomed to gestures like these — her sense of boundaries ran remarkably strong.
By the time the late-night supper was finished, Jing Dan’s opinion of He Ying had softened considerably. At the very least, she’d stopped mentally branding the woman a fox spirit2.
“Go back and rest properly. Tomorrow I’ll take you out… for something delicious.” He Ying had originally meant to say “out to have fun,” but the moment she met those clear, limpid eyes, her sentence took a sudden swerve.
For this woman, food was likely a far more tempting proposition than fun. How she kept such a flawless figure while eating this much, though, was anyone’s guess.
Sure enough, she watched those eyes ignite on the spot.
Jing Dan nodded to indicate she understood.
She then made haste to shoo He Ying back into her own room and get the door shut — no standing about in doorways.
Once she was back inside, He Ying looked down at the bathrobe she was wearing and shook her head with a rueful smile. So the girl’s sense of boundaries wasn’t the only thing that ran strong — her sensibilities were quite traditional as well. Could this honestly be counted as revealing dress?
Early the next morning, He Ying was up and freshly washed long before anyone else. She put in a brisk half hour of exercise, showered the sweat away, and glanced at the time — eight o’clock. Figuring the other two should be on their feet by now, she finally fired off her messages.
To her bewilderment, both messages sank like stones into the sea. Not a whisper came back.
He Ying: “??”
Surely not. Neither of them awake?
She held out until nine o’clock, finished her own breakfast, and messaged again — with precisely the same result.
He Ying: “…”
What were those two playing at? Hu Tu was one thing, but Jing Dan — since when was even food powerless to drag that girl out of bed?
She phoned Hu Tu first. It rang and rang, for so long that He Ying was on the point of hanging up when the call finally connected — and out of the receiver came Hu Tu’s voice, wrung dry with exhaustion and slurring into mush. One listen and it was obvious she hadn’t woken up yet.
He Ying: “…Where are you right now?”
Had this woman really landed someone to her taste in a single night?
Hu Tu: “I — I’m at — mm, quit it, no more…”
What followed down the line was a haze of muffled humming and soft whimpers, threaded through with Hu Tu’s broken attempts at speech. He Ying hung up, face blank.
She glanced up toward the door. Slipping into Jing Dan’s room would have been easy enough, but she refrained. Instead she took out a book and read in silence, waiting for the lazybones in the next room to wake.
Meanwhile, on the wide bed in Jing Dan’s room, a woman of cool, transcendent beauty slept with her eyes closed in perfect serenity, arms wrapped around her quilt as though cradling one fragrant, tender stalk of fresh bamboo shoot — cherishing it beyond all reason.
Time slipped past drop by drop. Only when the sunlight grew too piercing to ignore did the woman in the bed finally stir, hauling her captive quilt up over her head to shut out the glare — and dropping straight back into untroubled sleep.
And so He Ying waited, and waited. Nine o’clock became ten, ten became eleven, and with noon bearing down, she began to squirm.
What breed was this woman, exactly? Surely she hadn’t gone out carousing after her midnight snack too? How else could anyone sleep like this!
Thinking that this much sleep couldn’t be good for her, He Ying at last called Jing Dan.
“Hello—” A vague, blurred voice came through, soft and glutinous as warm sticky rice.
The words He Ying had been about to say caught in her throat. She felt a little like she’d committed some grave offense — the girl was sleeping so peacefully, and here she was, disturbing her for what?
“It’s noon. Anything you feel like eating?” Her voice softened without her noticing, until it carried almost a note of dread at startling the girl fully awake.
Still burrowed in her quilt, Jing Dan finally opened her eyes. She blinked twice, shaking off a good deal of the sleep, and then — belatedly — seemed to remember what she’d agreed to with He Ying the night before.
She shot bolt upright, snatched up her phone, and checked the time. It was already 11:40 — and just last night she’d said yes to He Ying taking her out for something delicious…
“Hello? Jing Dan?” He Ying was still calling from the other end.
“Ah — mm, wait, I’m getting up right now!” Jing Dan scrambled out of bed, chagrin creeping over her face. She’d given He Ying her word, and then she’d slept half the day away — wasn’t that plain and simple faithlessness?
Listening to the phone line beeping away, He Ying smiled in rueful surrender and rang to have a meal delivered straight to her room. At this hour, going out to eat was no longer on the table.
Some ten minutes later, a knock sounded at He Ying’s door.
She crossed the room and opened it to find a woman in a royal-blue shirt standing outside, its hem tucked into her trousers — though perhaps she’d left in too much of a hurry, for one button had been fastened into the wrong buttonhole.
The rare sight of a rumpled Jing Dan tucked a gleam of laughter into the corners of He Ying’s eyes. She stepped aside to let her in, then surveyed her outfit from top to bottom.
Perhaps the slender were simply born to wear shirts: even with a button out of line, it lent her a careless, rakish air. Yet that face was far too grave and proper. Proper and careless at once — a walking contradiction, and yet on her it fused into something flawless.
“Wait just a moment. Lunch will be brought up shortly.” He Ying closed the door, then pointed at her buttons. “You’ve done one up wrong.”
Jing Dan’s eyes went round at once. “We’re not going out?”
When she didn’t move, He Ying stepped forward and unfastened the crooked button herself, saying evenly, “At this hour? How would we even get out? I still have a show recording at 2 PM.”
The implication being that even if they went, there’d be barely any time to wander.
Jing Dan: “…”
Her brows drooped, faintly woebegone. She lowered her head, pursing her lips as she watched He Ying tidy her shirt for her.
If she’d known that, she wouldn’t have rushed so hard.
“There. Done.” He Ying buttoned the shirt back up properly, smoothed the creases from the fabric, and shook her head with a sigh. “Were you a sleepyhead in your last life? How can one person sleep this much?”
Jing Dan: “…”
She also had no idea how she’d come down with that little spell of insomnia last night.
“All right, sit. There’ll be food in a minute.”
He Ying pottered about the kitchen for a while, then carried a glass of milk out to Jing Dan.
Jing Dan’s eyes lit up at once.
The author has something to say:
Jing Xiaodan: Milk～
Footnotes
- 吃人嘴短 | chi ren zui duan | Lit. 'eating another's food shortens one's mouth.' Accepting food from a person makes it awkward to refuse their requests; the proverb's second half adds that taking their gifts softens one's hands.
- 狐狸精 | huli jing | In Chinese folklore, a shapeshifting fox spirit notorious as a seductress who bewitches men; in modern usage, a cutting insult for a man-stealing temptress.
Bribed by milk and help count money swindled from herself
Bribed by milk and help count money swindled from herself