The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 15
by Little PandaLove Letter
“Hello, Tao Tianran.”
[So the most hurtful sentence,
is not “I like you,” but “I’m used to it.”]
The process of pursuing Tao Tianran, from Cheng Xiang’s perspective, was a painful memory she couldn’t bear to look back on.
At that time, Tao Tianran had become an instant celebrity at Attached Seventh High School, and Cheng Xiang was dragged along as “the one who fainted from Tao Tianran’s beauty.”
Every time Cheng Xiang walked down the hallway with her backpack, she could hear people whispering behind her: “Look, that’s the one who fainted from Tao Tianran’s beauty!”
Cheng Xiang: β¦
She was the dark moonlight that shone into daylight, cool and clear, capturing everyone’s eyes.
A month after transferring, Tao Tianran walked alone, never speaking a word to anyone.
During that period, Cheng Xiang was locked in an ongoing battle with Director Ma over her desire to take the art entrance exam. Director Ma had cut off her allowance.
Qin Ziqiao had waved her hand grandly, declaring she’d split her living expenses with Cheng Xiang. For a solid week, they ate only half a lunch tray each, sitting in the cafeteria and starving while inhaling the scent of chicken legs.
Until a tall sports rep1 tossed a basketball at Cheng Xiang’s feet and stepped on it, then sat across from her, radiating sweat: “You sit in front of Tao Tianran, right? Can you write a love letter for me?”
Cheng Xiang’s first reaction: “Are you kidding⦔
“Forget it then.” The boy held his basketball and stood up. “I thought you might be closest to her.”
“Wait.” Cheng Xiang stopped him.
The boy looked down.
Cheng Xiang said, “I’ll write it, but I’m charging a fee.”
Qin Ziqiao yanked at Cheng Xiang frantically, whispering through her teeth: “Have you lost your mind from hunger?”
Cheng Xiang lightly patted Qin Ziqiao’s hand, gazing up at the boy: “Is that okay?”
The boy paused: “Sure.”
“And I decide everything that gets written. You can’t make suggestions. Deal?”
“β¦Deal.”
That day, Cheng Xiang didn’t go to dinner with Qin Ziqiao.
She sat alone in the empty classroom. Sunset poured thick and golden through the windows. Tao Tianran’s desk lay quietly behind her, pressing against the curve of her spine.
On an open page of her exercise book, she wrote:
γHello, Tao Tianran.γ
She never wrote something as mushy as “Dear Tao Tianran.”
She simply wrote, stroke by stroke: Tao, Tian, Ran.
Her hair was too fine and soft, so she always kept it in a shoulder-length bob that couldn’t be tied back. When she lowered her head, it tickled the tip of her nose. When she did homework at home, she wore a wavy headband to push her bangs back, revealing her entire forehead with absolutely no regard for her image.
She glanced left and right. It was dinner hour β impossible for anyone to be in the classroom.
So she secretly fished out the headband from her backpack and slipped it on.
They say suffering produces art, and hunger produces inspiration. She felt a thousand words surging in her chest, waiting to be expressed. A wickedly smug smile lifted one corner of her mouth.
A soft sound came from the classroom doorway.
Cheng Xiang looked up, her smile still lingering.
!!!
Tao Tianran stood there.
β¦Why hadn’t she gone to dinner?!
She seemed not to notice Cheng Xiang’s existence, walking straight toward the back of the classroom. As she passed Cheng Xiang, Cheng Xiang circled her arms tightly over the exercise book.
Tao Tianran sat down in the back row. The sound of pages turning drifted over β rustle, rustle β like a little bear rolling fuzzily down a clover-covered hillside.
“A little bear rolling fuzzily down a clover-covered hillside” β when Cheng Xiang later read a similar sentence in a famous novel, that was the moment she remembered.
Such pure happiness.
She silently scooted her stool forward, not letting the edge of the desk transmit her heartbeat to Tao Tianran.
Her hands covering the exercise book opened. Her fingertips were stained with black ink from the fountain pen. Tao Tianran’s name was imprinted on her fingertips.
She lowered her head and continued writing in the exercise book: γToday I want to tell you about the hillside behind the school, the one covered in clover.γ
And the person this letter would reach was sitting right behind her.
This romantic scene lasted until Qin Ziqiao returned from the cafeteria.
She placed a carton of milk on Cheng Xiang’s desk, casually saying, “I’m heading back to my seat,” when her steps suddenly halted. Her eyes went wide as she stared at Cheng Xiang.
Cheng Xiang: “?”
Qin Ziqiao: “Why are you wearing a headband at school?”
Cheng Xiang screamed and fled the classroom.
It was over. Completely over. She never wanted to speak to Tao Tianran again.
But during that period, her ghostwriting service developed into a full black-market operation that kept her and Qin Ziqiao fed throughout their rebellion against Director Ma.
Qin Ziqiao asked, “Where do you get so much to write to Tao Tianran about?”
“Hahaha.” Cheng Xiang twisted her fingers. “I don’t know either.”
Qin Ziqiao, deploying the limited emotional techniques she’d just learned from an apocalypse novel, pointed meaningfully at Cheng Xiang: “The one who falls first can’t confess first, got it? You have to dangle the bait. Make them take the hook willingly.”
During that time, Cheng Xiang buried herself in writing many letters to Tao Tianran.
Sometimes in the classroom awash with twilight, sometimes in the small courtyard basked in moonlight, with the parasol tree2 growing inside the house behind her.
Sometimes Tao Tianran was behind her. Sometimes not.
She wrote about the small hill behind the school β in spring it was covered with clover, in autumn it bloomed with dogwood3. She wrote about the school’s permanently closed planetarium, spherical, supposedly containing high-powered telescopes that could see shooting stars. She wrote about the small pond covered with a layer of duckweed, where someone was rumored to have drowned β though she didn’t know if that was true.
Then she’d think it wasn’t romantic enough and crumple up that page.
Every letter began with γHello, Tao Tianranγ, tucked into a small white envelope, slipped into Tao Tianran’s desk drawer.
One letter every day, never missing a single one.
Why did Cheng Xiang never buy those fancy, scented envelopes?
Obviously because she was running a business and white envelopes were cheap. Hahahaha.
This smoothly operating supply chain continued until the day Tao Tianran stood in front of her. Cheng Xiang was eating a bun Qin Ziqiao had brought from home, cheeks puffed as she asked, “Your refrigerator isn’t broken again this time, right?”
Qin Ziqiao shoved her.
Cheng Xiang looked up. Tao Tianran stood before her, backlit. Cheng Xiang let out a burp, then raised her hand to cover her mouth.
Tao Tianran asked, “Are you that free?”
Cheng Xiang: “Huh?”
Tao Tianran dumped all those letters in a cascade onto Cheng Xiang’s desk.
Cheng Xiang watched the white envelopes flutter down. Each envelope’s corner was marked with the date in her tiny handwriting β like a calendar flipping rapidly through time.
Tao Tianran asked, “Did you write these?”
Cheng Xiang instinctively glanced around.
During that period, something had happened at school. The principal had held a grand ceremony to thank Tao Tianran’s father for donating to the newly built library. Only then did everyone understand what “the Tao family” meant in Gangdao.
The boys started nudging each other’s arms: “Chase Tao Tianran? Want to be a trophy son-in-law?”
Rumors began circulating too: “Always wearing that cold face and ignoring everyone. Just because her family has money?”
Fewer and fewer people came to Cheng Xiang asking her to write letters for Tao Tianran.
Tao Tianran still walked alone. Only Cheng Xiang’s letters β whether paid or not β continued to be her only communication with the school.
At this moment, the boys whose eyes Cheng Xiang’s gaze swept over all avoided her stare.
Cheng Xiang raised her face and looked directly into Tao Tianran’s eyes: “I wrote all of them.”
“For who?”
Cheng Xiang smiled: “Didn’t you hear me, Tao Tianran? I said β I wrote all of them.”
Those good moods and bad moods.
Those rambling words, meaningful or not.
Cheng Xiang gazed into Tao Tianran’s pitch-black eyes and said gently, “I like you.”
Tao Tianran: “The money?”
Cheng Xiang froze: “What money?”
Tao Tianran pointed at those letters: “I heard you took money.”
“Oh⦔ Cheng Xiang licked her lips, remembering she still held half a fennel bun4 in her hand. “Bought food.”
Tao Tianran frowned: “You ate it all?”
“Not all of it⦔ Cheng Xiang felt inexplicably guilty. She handed the bun to Qin Ziqiao and dug two zoo tickets out of her desk drawer. “Qin Ziqiao’s mom works there, so she gets a discount. That’s how I could afford them.”
“Doβ¦ do you want to come?”
One sentence summed up Cheng Xiang’s grand passion back then: Tao Tianran was deeply moved, then rejected her.
Qin Ziqiao sat across from Cheng Xiang, hugging a sofa cushion, fishing a small piece of potato chip out of Cheng Xiang’s bag: “Whoever confesses first loses, understood? Dangle the bait. You have to dangle.”
She frowned, pinching the seasoning powder off her fingertips with distaste. Why did this White Rabbit5-flavored chip taste stranger the more she ate?
Cheng Xiang didn’t say anything. She just smiled.
After returning from the Gangdao business trip, it happened to be the weekend, so Cheng Xiang rested for two full days. Early Monday morning, she entered Tao Tianran’s private office to discuss the design proposal for the Gangdao client.
No wonder no one wanted to collaborate with Tao Tianran.
It was impossible to optimize her design proposals any further, and Cheng Xiang had to sacrifice her own time for seasonal theme designs.
Tao Tianran spoke at her usual rapid pace, though there were occasional pauses between sentences.
Cheng Xiang glanced at her, reached for her handbag, and fished out a box of stomach medicine6 to toss on her desk.
“Drinking to pass the time with a bad stomach.” She curled her lips in a careless smile. “Teacher Tao is rather too carefree, isn’t she?”
Tao Tianran glanced at the medicine box: “You have stomach problems too?”
“Hm?” The corner of Cheng Xiang’s eye lifted.
“Otherwise why would you carry stomach medicine around?”
Cheng Xiang’s eyelashes lowered. Her fingertip tapped twice on her notebook keyboard, looking at the meaningless characters in the open document, then clicked delete: “I’m used to it.”
Habit is the cruelest thing.
When you smile and say you’ve forgotten, wave your hand and say you’ve moved on, it betrays you with a featherweight touch.
Footnotes
- Short for 'sports committeeman' (tΗwΔi), the student class representative in charge of physical education and sports activities.
- The parasol tree (wΕ«tΓ³ng) is iconic in Chinese literature and is associated with longing, parting, and poetic melancholy. These trees are commonly planted in courtyards and along streets in northern China.
- The dogwood flower (zhΕ«yΓΊ). In Chinese poetry, dogwood is traditionally associated with the Chongyang Festival and longing for distant family members.
- A steamed bun filled with fennel greens and minced meat. The fennel gives it a distinctive aromatic, slightly sweet-anise flavor that is somewhat polarizing β people either love it or hate it.
- White Rabbit is a famous Chinese milk candy brand. 'White Rabbit-flavored' potato chips are an unusual sweet-and-savory novelty snack combining the creamy milk flavor of the candy with a salty chip base.
- A common Chinese over-the-counter digestive remedy (bΗowΓ¨idΔn), typically used for stomach discomfort, bloating, and indigestion.
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