STT – Chapter 21
by Little PandaDo Not Harbor Extravagant Hopes
As soon as day broke the next morning, after Lu Zizheng and Lian Xuan had breakfast, Lian Xuan got behind the wheel and they set out on the road back to Linzhou. Along the way, Lian Xuan offered a sincere and earnest apology to Lu Zizheng for her loss of control and impulsiveness the night before. Lu Zizheng merely smiled and told her not to worry, though she couldn’t help but feel a touch of emotion. During the day, Lian Xuan was always composed and proper, knowing when to advance and when to retreat. Yet at night, she repeatedly lost her composure and appeared so fragile and broken. Which one, after all, was the real her? Lu Zizheng couldn’t tell, and she wondered if Lian Xuan even knew herself.
Along the way, Lian Xuan received several phone calls in a row, all of them inquiring about her whereabouts after her sudden departure the night before. Lian Xuan only replied indifferently that she had gone to see a friend on short notice.
The final call rang several times. After glancing at the caller ID, Lian Xuan was unwilling to pick up, eventually turning her phone off altogether. She glanced at Lu Zizheng with a touch of guilt, hoping Lu Zizheng would ask why she hadn’t answered—as that would prove she still cared, even if only a little. Yet she also hoped Lu Zizheng would not ask, because she didn’t know how she could openly explain the existence of Zhou Zhongan…
Yet Lu Zizheng seemed not to notice at all. She simply kept her head lowered, both hands resting on her phone, her expression tinged with hesitation. Lian Xuan’s heart sank gradually…
Lu Zizheng was indeed hesitating. Because she’d been held up by Lian Xuan’s affairs the night before, it’d been too late to disturb Jiang Huaixi. Yet her heart was constantly occupied with worry over Jiang Huaixi’s fever and illness. Right now, she was debating whether to send a text to ask about her illness, but she worried it was too early and Jiang Huaixi was still asleep, meaning a text would disturb her sweet dreams.
After debating back and forth, her concern and worry won out in the end. Moving her fingers, she sent a brief, concise text: “Is your cold better?”
Once the message was sent, however, it was like a stone sinking into the ocean. Even by the time Lian Xuan dropped her off at her home in Linzhou, Lu Zizheng had not received any reply from Jiang Huaixi.
Lu Zizheng sat at her study desk, resting her chin in her hand. For a long while, she stared at the back of the snowman photo on the desk, looking at the words, “May we live long, sharing the beauty of the moon even from a thousand miles away1,” and that half-drawn full stop. She tapped her forehead, finally slipped the photo back into a drawer, turned off her phone, pulled out her documents, and began to work.
Don’t think about things you shouldn’t. Don’t harbor extravagant hopes.
Once Lu Zizheng got busy, she forgot everything else, failing to eat both lunch and dinner. It wasn’t until she received a call from her mother on the home landline that she shook herself awake as if from a dream, only to find the sky had already turned completely dark.
Mother Lu first asked with some confusion why her mobile phone was turned off. Lu Zizheng glanced at the dark screen of her phone and casually replied that it had run out of power.
Mother Lu couldn’t help but nag her a bit. “If your phone’s running low, you’ve got to remember to charge it! If you were out and about, I wouldn’t be able to reach you on the landline either. Do you know how worried I’d be? You’re already such a grown child, yet you still make me worry so much.”
Lu Zizheng obediently agreed with her mother, promising she’d pay more attention next time.
Mother Lu then asked if she had eaten yet, since it was so late. Lu Zizheng didn’t dare tell the truth, so she fibbed to her that she’d eaten long ago, telling her not to worry.
Finally, Mother Lu said, “This Friday is New Year’s Eve. Don’t make any other plans. Come home for dinner; I’ll make dumplings for you.”
Lu Zizheng had no reason to refuse, so she readily agreed with a smile. Holding the receiver and listening to her mother speak of food, her stomach began to feel empty. Guessing her mother was about to hang up, she started pondering where to go eat once the call ended. Her thoughts couldn’t help but drift back to their college days, recalling the campus gourmet food map Jiang Huaixi had hand-drawn for her…
Yet, to her surprise, Mother Lu was not finished. She added one more question: “Is Huaixi busy this Friday?”
Lu Zizheng immediately caught her mother’s underlying hope of inviting Jiang Huaixi to join them. Remembering the previous two rejections and the unanswered text from earlier, Lu Zizheng’s eyes dimmed for a moment. She lowered her voice and gently tried to persuade her mother. “On such an important holiday, she’s bound to have other plans for the evening.” Then, softening her voice to act cute, she whined, “Mom, isn’t having your beloved daughter here with you enough? Can’t we just enjoy our own world of two?”
Mother Lu chuckled. “Who says you’re my darling? Don’t flatter yourself. Alright, nothing else then. Go get back to your work.”
Lu Zizheng acted cute for a bit longer before hanging up. She patted her empty stomach, took her keys from the side, and prepared to head out to find some food. When she reached the front door and had already slipped on her shoes, she paused, then took off the shoes she’d just put on. She returned to the study to retrieve the turned-off phone from her desk, tucked it into her bag, and only then felt at ease stepping out.
The night was dark and cold, with pitifully few people out on the streets. The occasional pedestrian hurried past with a blank face—a far cry from the festive atmosphere of a few days ago.
Lu Zizheng walked slowly and leisurely, lost in thought, before eventually coming to a complete stop. She retrieved her phone from her bag and powered it on with crisp, decisive movements. She watched the screen light up, watched the SIM card register, and finally saw a notification pop up on the display: an unread message from Jiang Huaixi.
Lu Zizheng, after all, couldn’t help but curl her lips into a faint, content smile.
Even though she’d told herself a thousand times, ten thousand times, that she shouldn’t have expectations, she still couldn’t help but hope.
Opening her inbox, Lu Zizheng saw Jiang Huaixi’s reply resting quietly on the screen: “If I’m not better, do you plan to come and care for me without loosening your clothes2?”
Pursing her lips, Lu Zizheng smiled and wrote back: “Since you’re still capable of flattering yourself like this, it seems you must be better.”
After sending the text, she kept her phone in her hand and continued walking. With the smile still lingering on her face, her steps grew noticeably lighter.
Just as she sat down in a noodle shop and ordered a bowl of noodles, the phone gripped in her palm vibrated. Jiang Huaixi had replied.
“Do you have time this Friday night? I want to show you something.”
Lu Zizheng felt torn. She absolutely couldn’t break her promise to go back to her mother’s for dinner, yet she also knew clearly that she didn’t want to decline Jiang Huaixi’s invitation either.
She knit her brows and replied: “I have to go back and eat with my mother first. Can it be a bit later?”
In less than a minute, Jiang Huaixi wrote back: “It’s fine. Have a good dinner with Auntie. I’ll wait for you downstairs at ten o’clock. Help me say Happy New Year to Auntie.”
After replying with a simple “Okay,” her noodles were served. She tucked her phone back into her bag with a peaceful mind, picked up her chopsticks, and ate her meal bite by bite, finding it unexpectedly delicious.
On December 31, Lu Zizheng rushed straight to her mother’s house after work. Because of the holiday, the roads were heavily congested. She waited through bus after bus before finally managing to squeeze onto one.
By the time she arrived at her mother’s house, the moon was already high in the sky. Exhausted, Lu Zizheng pulled over a chair, sat down, and didn’t want to move another inch.
Mother Lu, cradling a dumpling wrapper in one hand and holding chopsticks to scoop filling with the other, glanced at Lu Zizheng slumped listlessly in her chair. She couldn’t help but laugh and chide her, “Getting this exhausted from squeezing onto the bus just once? I think you’ve been spoiled rotten by Huaixi.”
Lu Zizheng retorted weakly, “Mom, you’re overthinking it. Today was a special case. You have no idea how terrifying it was on the bus. To squeeze on, one girl couldn’t get her bag in, so her entire bag was clamped outside the doors.”
Mother Lu chuckled. “So, by that logic, being able to pack your entire self into the bus counts as a real skill?”
Lu Zizheng hummed proudly a couple of times, then remembered and said, “Huaixi asked me to pass along a message: Happy New Year.”
Mother Lu let out a sigh, her voice tinged with nostalgia. “I remember when you first brought Huaixi home several years ago, it was also on December 31. I made dumplings for her as well. She didn’t know how to wrap them, but she insisted on standing right next to me to watch. Her mouth was so sweet—one moment she was praising how well I rolled the wrappers, the next she was complimenting my filling, all while bringing me tea and pouring me water. I was so happy then, thinking you’d finally made a good friend, yet you were constantly pulling a long face at her3.”
Lu Zizheng pouted. “That’s only because she was afraid of being kicked out by me back then, so of course she had to flatter you to secure a major backer.”
Mother Lu scolded her unhappily, “You only know how to take advantage of Huaixi’s good nature to bully her.”
Lu Zizheng felt incredibly wronged and cried out in grievance, “Mom, you’re biased! From the very beginning until now, she’s always been the one bullying me. You’ve never seen her true colors!”
Lu Zizheng felt that over the years, Jiang Huaixi had been constantly evolving, gradually turning into the exact shape that made her heart flutter. The Jiang Huaixi she’d first known, however, was domineering, baffling, and outrageously arrogant to an insufferable degree.
When she woke up in the hospital during her freshman year illness, Jiang Huaixi was already gone. Lu Zizheng wasn’t surprised; she was only contemplating how she could repay her this favor.
During their large lecture that afternoon, Lu Zizheng intentionally scanned the entire lecture hall but didn’t spot Jiang Huaixi anywhere. She felt a bit of relief; since she hadn’t yet figured out how to repay the favor, meeting again would feel a bit awkward.
Yet her relief didn’t last long before Jiang Huaixi appeared in front of her in an outrageously flashy manner. Right as class let out in the afternoon, Lu Zizheng stepped out of the department building and spotted Jiang Huaixi’s eye-catching Lamborghini parked by the curb. She paused. Given the unpleasantness of their very first encounter, her intuition told her nothing good would come of this either.
Sure enough, Jiang Huaixi pushed open the car door, got out, and walked straight toward her with her brows knit and her lips pressed into a tight line.
Lu Zizheng’s immediate reaction was to turn around and walk back to the department, and in fact, she did exactly that.
But before she’d taken even two steps, Lu Zizheng felt her arm tightly gripped. Jiang Huaixi’s cold voice sounded from behind: “Come with me.”
It was the peak transition time between classes, with crowds of students coming and going. Lu Zizheng felt everyone slowing down, watching them with keen interest.
What Lu Zizheng hated most in her life was being in this kind of situation, yet Jiang Huaixi repeatedly pushed her limits. Her expression darkened. She turned around and said coldly to Jiang Huaixi, “Let go.”
Jiang Huaixi acted as if she hadn’t heard, pulling her along with a slight tug. She frowned. “If I let go, will you come with me?”
The students nearby began to halt openly, gradually threatening to surround them. Lu Zizheng felt deeply embarrassed. Did she not think the gossip from that library incident last time was enough? If she kept making a scene with her, there was no telling what it’d turn into by tomorrow. Lu Zizheng’s brows knit so hard they almost formed a knot. She let out a heavy sigh, finally making a helpless compromise. She followed Jiang Huaixi away from the department building and got into her car.
Along the way, Lu Zizheng massaged her temples, asking with a headache, “Where are you taking me? What do you want to do this time?”
Jiang Huaixi only gave her a flat glance and tossed back, “Why ask so much? With your kind of looks, even if I abducted you, it’d be hard to sell you off. What’s there to worry about?”
Lu Zizheng was frustrated. Jiang Huaixi either couldn’t understand human speech, or she simply couldn’t speak like a human being. Every sentence she spoke managed to leave her completely speechless. Having lived cautiously for years and never arguing with anyone, she was no match for Jiang Huaixi. Driven to frustration, she could only fall silent and ignore her.
The car turned into a residential area, which Lu Zizheng recognized as the school’s Faculty Apartments. Jiang Huaixi parked the car. As she opened her car door, she told her as a matter of course, “Get out.”
Lu Zizheng sat unmoving. Jiang Huaixi raised an eyebrow and asked coldly, “Or do you want to be stared at here as well?”
Lu Zizheng’s gaze was cold enough to freeze someone solid, but Jiang Huaixi’s expression remained indifferent, completely unmoved.
Lu Zizheng finally admitted defeat. She threw the door open, stepped out, and then slammed it shut fiercely, the sound terrifyingly loud.
Yet a faint smile appeared on the corner of Jiang Huaixi’s lips. Compared to Lu Zizheng’s flat, lifeless mask, she much preferred this furious version of her. She turned around, coolly clicked her car key to lock the car, and took leisurely steps, walking slowly ahead of Lu Zizheng.
“Keep up.”
Footnotes
- A line from the Song Dynasty poet Su Shi's famous lyric, traditionally expressing a wish for loved ones to remain safe, healthy, and emotionally connected despite physical distance.
- A Chinese idiom meaning to care for someone so devotedly day and night that one does not even undress to sleep.
- A Chinese idiom literally meaning the nose is not a nose, the eyes are not eyes, describing someone looking extremely cross, cold, or constantly finding fault.
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