The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 16

Straight Ball

“You like me?”

[Afraid of thinking too much, yet afraid of not daring to think enough.
You are that speck of ash caught between one mood and the next, impossible to pry loose.]

            

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“By the way, Teacher Tao, is there an event tonight?”

Cheng Xiang was gradually realizing that some money wasn’t so easy to earn. For instance, being a jewelry designer required not just talent and brilliance, but also additional work socializing with people.

Clients had to be emotional, relaxed, engaged—only then could they describe with such vivid feeling and tears the person they wanted to gift this jewelry to, or the memorial meaning they wanted to give themselves.

            

This work couldn’t be delegated to an assistant, either. Many people couldn’t articulate what they wanted; it relied entirely on the designer’s own precise insight.

Like tonight.

The banquet host was a Gangdao client’s wife, running a gallery in Beicheng. The invitation had been handed to Tao Tianran by her husband. With so many people attending, two more wouldn’t be noticeable. He intended for Tao Tianran to observe at close range the person who would be wearing this aquamarine ring.

            

Tao Tianran leaned against the wall in the corner.

Cheng Xiang had never seen Tao Tianran in formal wear before, even though they had dated for two and a half years.

Tao Tianran wore a black velvet halter gown. Her slender right-angle shoulders met prominent shoulder peaks; the velvet material, in a sense, accentuated that angular quality. Only her face was soft—long hair pinned up, revealing her graceful, slender neck.

            

Her face was dominated by a pair of fine eyebrows, no eye makeup, lips a fainter shade, almost bloodless, drawing attention entirely to those two small dark moles.

She stood leaning against the wall, one delicate wrist resting against her side where her skirt fell.

Cheng Xiang wasn’t standing with her. Cheng Xiang was in the dance floor herself.

            

Eldest Miss Yu’s wardrobe held too many dresses suitable for tonight. It reminded Cheng Xiang with a slight pang of the past, when Tao Tianran had asked if she wanted to go to the company’s annual party together. She’d fingered her down jacket that had picked up the smell of green pepper and pork from the company hallway, and whispered that she’d better not go.

But now, she would laugh to her heart’s content, make noise to her heart’s content.

Yu Yusheng’s figure was lithe and supple, well-suited to this kind of flowing jazz. A moonlight-gold strapless gown clung to her, cinching a slender waist. Long wavy hair was styled into nothing, falling lazily over her shoulders, her face nearly bare of makeup—only her soft lips painted a rose tone.

            

Tao Tianran stood in the shadows, watching her.

Cheng Xiang felt that gaze, and couldn’t say what flavor filled her heart.

She turned back, and as she gently swayed her shoulders, she cast a light glance toward Tao Tianran, smiling at the corner of her lips.

            

Tao Tianran’s gaze was cool, her posture leaning against the wall unchanged. Only when a server passed by with a tray did she take a gin and tonic.

When she tilted her head back to drink, her thin eyelids lowered.

Cheng Xiang stopped dancing. Her partner wasn’t prepared and bumped lightly against her shoulder blade.

            

“Sorry.” She apologized and squeezed out of the dance floor.

She claimed her coat from the server and walked out of the banquet. Wearing Eldest Miss Yu’s peerless face, a fur coat draped over her gown, even haphazardly arranged, she looked beautiful.

She fished the cigarette case from her handbag, and when she reached for the lighter, her fingertips touched the stomach medicine box inside. Her mood turned inexplicably irritated.

            

A man in formal wear walked over: “Looking for a lighter?”

He struck the flint of the lighter in his hand.

Cheng Xiang smiled and shook her head. After the man left, she walked to a wind-sheltered spot, and this time, finally retrieved the lighter from her handbag.

            

She’d expected Eldest Miss Yu’s lighter to be a more delicate, compact style. Unexpectedly, it was a matte black Bian stone¹, heavy and substantial in the palm.

A stark contrast to Cheng Xiang’s past impression of her.

Lighting the cigarette, Cheng Xiang took a drag, then exhaled through her lungs.

            

Wow, she could smoke after becoming Yu Yusheng! She instantly felt incredibly cool.

Outside the banquet hall, a massive pear tree demanded one’s gaze. Fluttering in the air—were they pear petals or snowflakes?

They drifted onto the shoulder of her black coat. Cheng Xiang gently brushed them away.

            

She remembered that when she was with Tao Tianran before, they had treasured every winter snowfall, joking that it meant “together until our heads turned white.”

Cheng Xiang slowly exhaled another plume of smoke, lifting her hand to rub the tip of her nose.

She hadn’t known how to smoke before. In their high school days, girls secretly smoking was still a somewhat literary, somewhat cool thing. She and Qin Ziqiao had tried twice together, not even inhaling, and still choked half to death.

            

In the end, they sighed: “We’re so uncool.”

“We can’t even pretend.”

Later, crouching by the wall at a bar watching those model-perfect beauties² smoke, they tried again. Still failed.

            

Now Cheng Xiang held a cigarette between her fingers, thinking—so this is what smoking felt like.

As if all emotions were washed once through the lungs.

After finishing the whole cigarette, she returned to the banquet. The spot where Tao Tianran had been leaning against the wall was empty.

            

Cheng Xiang asked a server: “The lady who was just here?”

The server, eyes everywhere: “She should have gone to the restroom.”

Cheng Xiang walked to the restroom entrance.

            

People who ran galleries had some artistic sensibility. Outside the restroom, a brick wall was deliberately distressed, evoking weathered ruins ground down by time.

Cheng Xiang leaned there, dazed.

After a while, she pulled out her phone in the dim light and sent a WeChat to Qin Ziqiao: 【I’m at a banquet with Tao Tianran tonight.】

            

Qin Ziqiao: 【And?】

【She’s been drinking.】

【Are you going to make your move?】

            

Cheng Xiang pressed a hand to her forehead, gazing blankly at the dance floor ahead, then lowered her eyes: 【Did she like drinking this much before??】

She’d typed two question marks without thinking, a strongly emphatic question.

Qin Ziqiao shot back directly: 【What are you trying to say?】

            

【I’m thinking…】 Cheng Xiang’s tongue traced a circle inside her mouth: 【Could Tao Tianran actually be… a little sad.】

Qin Ziqiao only sent three words: 【Thinking too much.】

The phone fell silent, leaving only the noise of music in her ears.

            

About three or four minutes later, the phone chimed again.

Cheng Xiang focused. Qin Ziqiao had sent: 【She didn’t even go to Xiao Xiang’s funeral. She never even said goodbye to Xiao Xiang.】

When Tao Tianran emerged from the restroom, she found Cheng Xiang standing there, handbag in hand.

            

The corners of her eyes tilted slightly upward, but her lashes hung down. Her chin lifted slightly like a cat’s, sharp and delicate, her gaze holding a hint of enchanting tipsiness.

Cheng Xiang felt she was a bit drunk. She hadn’t been drinking, but she was dizzy from smoke.

Tao Tianran walked past her. After two steps, she turned back.

            

The thin high heels Tao Tianran wore tonight had significant height. Cheng Xiang leaned bonelessly against the wall, so Tao Tianran’s gaze came from above, looking down.

Her eyelids looked even thinner, revealing a faint flush from alcohol.

Cheng Xiang’s tongue lightly grazed her white teeth: “Something wrong?”

            

“That’s my line.” Tao Tianran’s clear voice cut through the noisy music—not crisp, just clear. “What are you doing here?”

Cheng Xiang smiled, tilting her chin toward the restroom: “Waiting to use the bathroom.”

Tao Tianran closed her eyes briefly, slowly exhaling.

            

Cheng Xiang thought: How much did she drink?

When she opened her eyes again, Tao Tianran’s gaze was still cold: “At the Gangdao hotel.”

“Hm?” Cheng Xiang drawled lazily.

            

“You looked at me like that. Why?”

Tsk. After all these years, Tao Tianran was still a straight-ball player³.

Cheng Xiang tilted her head: “Why do you think?”

            

“You want to pursue me?” Tao Tianran was so direct she didn’t even add the prefix “I heard people at the company saying.” Her directness was sharp—and consequently, sexy.

Cheng Xiang dragged out the rhythm before slowly asking: “Does Teacher Tao think so?”

Tao Tianran looked into her eyes: “You like me?”

            

Cheng Xiang smiled.

She lowered her head, tongue pressing behind her teeth.

I like you, Tao Tianran.

            

I like your thin eyelids. I like the two moles beside your eye corners like punctuation marks. I like your clearly defined lips because they look so kissable. I even like that loose thread on your gown’s shoulder strap—how could a high-luxury gown have such an error?—but it makes your beauty look more vivid.

I like you for no clear reason.

I like you to the point of living and dying for it.

            

But.

Cheng Xiang lifted her chin, her smile innocent yet seductive. Her eyes were hooking, but her expression was like a small animal’s: “That question, Teacher Tao will have to answer herself.”

But, Cheng Xiang’s fingertips pressed against the rough wall behind her, scraping hard.

            

But the person who would have been like a small animal, showing you her belly and saying ‘I like you’—that person is gone.

You never said ‘goodbye’ to her.

And so she’s forever trapped in that one winter, in that great snow.

            

Tao Tianran nodded with closed eyes, her breath carrying distinct alcohol. Her thin wrist looked like it wanted to lift and press against her stomach, but it fell silently.

The corridor outside the restroom was extremely narrow. When she avoided a passing pedestrian, her steps slightly faltered. Cheng Xiang instinctively wanted to reach out and steady her, but her hand also fell silently.

“But I am curious,” Cheng Xiang smiled: “For someone like Teacher Tao, if someone really did like you—would you be repulsed?”

            

Tao Tianran lifted her eyelids.

In that moment she stood alone, illuminated by the banquet hall’s lights behind her.

“Probably not.” She raised her hand again, but it didn’t reach for her stomach—nowhere to anchor—and fell once more: “It’s been so long.”

            

Cheng Xiang’s eyelid twitched.

That was a sentence without head or tail, but she couldn’t, as “Yu Yusheng,” ask further out of social courtesy.

Her lips parted slightly, opened and closed, then opened again, and what she asked was: “Teacher Tao, did you see the pear tree outside the banquet hall?”

            

The way pear blossoms drifted down was like a grand snowfall.

So it turns out, the one who can never walk out of that first snow in winter is only Xiao Xiang.

The living have already stepped forward and walked on.

            

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