Peaches and Plums Don’t Speak – Chapter 95
by Little PandaLeaving Home
“Meng? Mengmeng?” Anzhi called out in surprise.
The young woman before her had brownish, slightly wavy lob haircut1, fair skin, and wore colored contacts. She threw her arms around Anzhi, her eyes crinkling with laughter. “An’an, An’an! Hahaha, we meet again!”
She looked nothing like her middle school self with thick glasses and two little braids, but the tone was unmistakably hers.
Anzhi hugged her back. The two of them stood there laughing and jumping, holding each other and squealing.
“You got into here too! You’re amazing!”
“Hahaha! I made it in! I just knew you’d be here!”
“We said we’d go to the same high school…”
“It’s okay! We can be at the same university!”
The two girls kept talking over each other and laughing.
Liu Yiyi covered her ears and stepped back a few paces. “Youth, oh youth!”
“I’ve never seen Xiao Anzhi this happy before!”
She glanced at Yan Xi, who was watching them with a smile in her eyes. This wasn’t the first time Liu Yiyi had seen such a gaze.
“Let’s give them some space to talk,” Yan Xi said.
There was a small garden in front of the dormitory.
Liu Yiyi and Yan Xi sat in a pavilion. Not far away, Yang Mengmeng pulled Anzhi to sit on a horizontal railing.
“I went back to my hometown back then… Not long after, my grandfather got sick and was hospitalized. I was going to school in town and didn’t know. After my grandfather passed away, we moved to town, and then my father’s business wasn’t going well, and he and my mother were fighting about divorce. There was so much happening, I didn’t have the heart to reply to your messages.”
Yang Mengmeng told her about everything that had happened over these three years. “You know my grades were originally really good, but later because of all these things, I couldn’t focus on studying at all. I felt even more ashamed to contact you—you helped me so much when I was preparing for the high school entrance exam…”
“But you still did great! You got into the University of Science and Technology!”
“I crammed like crazy in my senior year. I signed up for cram school and studied like I didn’t need sleep. Finally I got in by scoring just above the cutoff2, haha. The scores for the School of Mathematics were a bit low this year, so I got really lucky!”
“You’ve changed so much, I almost didn’t recognize you!”
“Do I look good? I just got my hair permed and colored. Your hair color is really nice too!”
The two girls huddled together chirping and chattering, as if they had endless things to say.
Liu Yiyi came over to take them to eat. “Lunch first. You’ll be living together from now on, plenty of time to talk!”
Yang Mengmeng giggled. “Jiejie, where are we going to eat?”
Liu Yiyi was quite pleased with being called ‘jiejie.’ “We’ll eat out. Jiejie’s treating you.”
Yang Mengmeng looked at her stylish outfit and exquisite makeup, her seductive eyes seeming to send electric signals even to women, and immediately became starstruck. “Jiejie! You’re so beautiful! I’m Yang Mengmeng. What’s your name, Jiejie?”
Liu Yiyi: “Eh, your name is quite similar to mine. I’m Liu Yiyi.”
“Wow! Liu-jiejie! We both have reduplicated characters3 in our names! But your name comes from the Book of Songs, right? So poetic—’When I left, the willows were swaying.’ Unlike my name, my mom is a Qiong Yao fan4. She watched Misty Rain5 and named me Yang Mengmeng!”
“Mengmeng is a really cute name too!”
Yang Mengmeng was a little chatterbox, and Liu Yiyi was a big chatterbox. The two of them regretted meeting too late, walking together in front, while Yan Xi and Anzhi followed silently behind.
“Auntie, how did you know Mengmeng was coming to the University of Science and Technology too?” Anzhi asked curiously.
“Oh, she called me first. Said she didn’t dare call you herself, afraid you’d blame her for not contacting you for so long.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Yan Xi winked at her. “Because I wanted to give you a surprise!” When she smiled, she would habitually quirk the corner of her lips first, then her eyes would crinkle, and the whole world seemed to freeze in place.
Anzhi stared at her blankly. Yan Xi had already reached over to ruffle her hair, continuing to walk forward.
Anzhi felt she needed to think, to think—right, she had already decided to give up on Yan Xi.
She couldn’t think about it anymore.
They went to eat hotpot. Yan Xi ordered a split-flavor hotpot6.
“An’an, you still can’t eat spicy food?” Yang Mengmeng teased her.
“Mn.”
Only Anzhi couldn’t eat spicy food. The other three were people who couldn’t live without spice. Fresh tripe7 was placed on ice, thinly sliced snowflake beef8, and duck intestine, kidney, gizzard. There were also mushrooms, round gluten puffs, and fried tofu skin that Anzhi liked.
The drinks were lime soda and soy milk.
“Anything else you want?” Yan Xi asked Yang Mengmeng.
“Thank you, Yan-jiejie, this is enough,” Yang Mengmeng said politely.
Liu Yiyi poked her. “Three more plates of beef.”
“Aren’t you on a diet?”
“Hotpot doesn’t make you fat.” Liu Yiyi said, reaching over to pour Yang Mengmeng a glass of soda. “Mengmeng, please take good care of my Anzhi from now on.”
Yang Mengmeng said, “Liu-jiejie, don’t be polite. An’an and I are old classmates!”
“My, what a sweet talker.”
“Liu-jiejie, what do you do? Are you a model?”
“Hahahaha, no, no. I’m a magazine editor-in-chief.”
The two of them fell into conversation again, lamenting how they should have met sooner.
Anzhi watched them with a smile. Yan Xi asked her, “Do you want to try this side of the pot?” She picked up some cooked beef for her. Anzhi ate it—it didn’t seem too spicy. Yan Xi picked up more tripe and beef for her. Anzhi ate everything and finally had to say, “Auntie, you eat. I’ll get it myself.”
“Then get me a piece of fried tofu bamboo. I want to try the flavor from that side,” Yan Xi said.
“Mn, the clear soup is pretty good.” Anzhi ladled her a bowl as well.
The big and little chatterboxes nearby simultaneously glanced at them without being obvious about it.
Throughout the hotpot meal, Yan Xi only took a few bites, drank a small bowl of soup, and kept helping to cook, listening to them talk, adding food to their bowls, and then going to the front counter to pay.
“Yan-jiejie is still so gentle,” Yang Mengmeng said with feeling.
After eating, they returned to campus. Yang Mengmeng and Anzhi walked in front. She leaned close and whispered to Anzhi, “Do you still like her?”
Anzhi nudged her gently with her elbow. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Mn.” Yang Mengmeng linked her arm through Anzhi’s and immediately understood. Anzhi also leaned closer to her. She couldn’t help but feel emotional—some people were just destined to be friends. Even after years apart, once reunited, they were still familiar as yesterday, without any sense of strangeness.
She turned her head to look at Yan Xi, who was walking behind chatting with Liu Yiyi. Before Yan Xi noticed, she had already glanced at her several times.
The graduate student dormitory9 was apartment-style. Each floor had five rooms, with two people per room, and there was an elevator. Anzhi was in a newly occupied building on the side facing the lake, on the fifth floor. Each dorm room was spacious, with windows and small bay windows, excellent lighting. Two 1.2-meter beds were each placed against a wall, with desks, bedside cabinets, bookshelves, water heaters, and air conditioning—the facilities were very complete. Yang Mengmeng was very happy, and Anzhi was satisfied too.
“I’ll head back now,” Yan Xi said. Outside the apartment building, maple trees were in full season, their red leaves carpeting the ground.
Anzhi nodded.
Yan Xi felt she had said everything she needed to say. There was nothing left to say.
The two stood facing each other in silence.
“Call if anything comes up,” Yan Xi reminded her again.
Anzhi nodded.
“Okay, I’m going,” Yan Xi said once more.
Anzhi smiled, her dimples showing, and nodded.
Liu Yiyi watched from not far away and wanted to throw her head back and sigh.
When Yan Xi got into the car, Liu Yiyi leaned against the window. “Hey, do you need me to keep you company tonight?”
“Why are you still here? Go home.”
“I’m just concerned about you, the empty-nest elderly10! I can temporarily abandon my handsome, dashing, sexy, talented husband to keep you company for one night.”
Yan Xi laughed. “Come on. You took Taotao away for over two months before, and I survived.”
Liu Yiyi: “That’s different! Back then you knew she’d come home. Now it’s not the same…” She raised her eyebrows.
Yan Xi pushed her hand away and ignored her, starting the car. All the way home—the University of Science and Technology was quite far from where she lived. Maybe Yiyi was right. Anzhi wouldn’t be coming back often anymore.
Yan Xi parked the car and turned off the engine. She entered through the main gate. She stood in the courtyard, head lowered. She didn’t need to look up to know the house was dark and silent. In the villa section of the residential complex, the buildings were separated by the width of a parking space. In the night breeze, the sound of laughter from neighboring families drifted faintly over.
Suddenly, Yan Xi had an urge to smoke.
She rarely smoked, had no addiction. Even Anzhi didn’t know she smoked.
She lit a cigarette, holding it between her fingers as it slowly burned.
She sat on the steps in the courtyard, stepping on her own shadow. Smoke curled up past her cheek. Yan Xi’s red lips exhaled gently, the smoke dispersing. She crushed out the cigarette and sighed slowly.
Ten years had passed in the blink of an eye.
Yan Xi suddenly pressed her hand to her chest.
Footnotes
- A long bob hairstyle (lob tou), where the hair falls between the chin and collarbone.
- Scoring just high enough to meet the admission threshold.
- A linguistic feature where a character is repeated, common in Chinese nicknames to sound affectionate.
- A fan of Qiong Yao, a famous Taiwanese romance novelist known for melodramatic love stories.
- A famous Qiong Yao novel and TV series. Yang Mengmeng is named after this work.
- A hotpot pot divided into two sections, typically one spicy and one non-spicy broth.
- Fresh tripe, a popular hotpot ingredient.
- Thinly sliced high-quality beef with marbled fat.
- Apartment-style dormitory for graduate students, with two-person rooms and good facilities.
- Elderly people whose children have left home.
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