The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 17

Hey!

Maybe your hand skills aren’t very good.

[How long must I practice?
To hide the overwhelming feelings behind a casual tone.]

            

---

When leaving the banquet, Tao Tianran glanced at the pear tree standing by the entrance.

After finding a designated driver to take her home and walking through the neighborhood toward her building, her phone buzzed in her handbag.

She pulled it out to check—a message from the property management group chat: 【The property management fees are ridiculously high, but the streetlights just keep breaking and breaking and breaking.】

            

【Are they trying to force us not to pay? @Butler】

【@Butler】

【@Butler】

            

…

Tao Tianran looked up. On her short walk home, one small, dim yellow streetlamp had stayed lit the whole time.

Like a moon dragged out from memory.

            

After unlocking the door with her fingerprint, she tossed her handbag aside. Tao Tianran showered, wrapped herself in a bathrobe, and sat at her desk, spreading out drafting paper, recalling the image of tonight’s banquet hostess.

She had used this fountain pen for so many years. A small ink stain seeped out, spreading near her fingers.

Tao Tianran looked at it, reached over and rubbed it gently, thinking it too looked like a small, blue moon.

            

When her phone rang again, Tao Tianran glanced at it and answered. “Hello.”

“Tianran ah, are you coming back to Gangdao¹ for the New Year?”

Tao Tianran put the call on speaker and tossed the phone aside, her fountain pen continuing to trace across the drafting paper as she replied in Cantonese: “Not coming back.”

            

“Why not? Grandpa misses you. All your brothers and sisters are coming back too.”

“Too busy.” Tao Tianran only said that, then reached over and hung up.

---

Qin Ziqiao watched Cheng Xiang, who was squatting on her computer chair, with a headache. “So I said—shouldn’t the life of a wealthy heiress be really rich and full?”

            

Cheng Xiang crunched on potato chips: “Mm-hm.”

“Then go clubbing! Go drinking! Go build champagne towers with wads of cash pouring down!” Qin Ziqiao sucked in a breath. “Why are you always freeloading at my place?”

“I’m afraid you’ll be lonely.”

            

“Ugh!” Qin Ziqiao grabbed a throw pillow and chucked it at her. “Are we even that close?”

Cheng Xiang caught the pillow and hugged it, resting her chin on her elbow. “You should give some advice too. How exactly should someone like Tao Tianran be pursued?”

“Maybe, with an iceberg like that, you can’t follow the usual playbook.”

            

“How so?”

“Normally when chasing someone, you’d bring them breakfast, right?”

Cheng Xiang thought about it. “Tao Tianran doesn’t eat breakfast. She only drinks coffee.”

            

“Then coffee, same principle.” Qin Ziqiao rolled her eyes. “You can’t bring it every day, and you can’t do Monday-Wednesday-Friday, Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday either.”

“Then I should…?”

“For example, you bring it Monday and Tuesday. Don’t bring it Wednesday or Thursday. Then Friday—suddenly bring it again. Next week, reverse the pattern.” Qin Ziqiao said profoundly, “She’ll definitely think you’re so unpredictable, so mysterious, so unfathomable.”

            

“…” Cheng Xiang: “Did you develop this bizarre logic from reading apocalypse novels?”

“Mm-hm.” Qin Ziqiao nodded. “Fighting monsters is like this—you can’t let the monster figure out your thoughts.”

Cheng Xiang looked at her with a complicated expression.

            

Qin Ziqiao grabbed another throw pillow and threw it at Cheng Xiang. “If you don’t believe me, try it! I’m telling you, Xiao Xiang suffered because she was too dumb—Tao Tianran saw right through her.”

Cheng Xiang tucked the pillow under her elbow.

“Right.” She smiled and touched the bridge of her nose. “A dummy. A big dummy.”

            

---

Cheng Xiang didn’t end up buying coffee for Tao Tianran.

Because Kunpu had its own coffee machine. Hahahaha.

She started making coffee for Tao Tianran. At first, she thought Tao Tianran would refuse, but later—huh, why was Tao Tianran so busy in the mornings? Even Tao Tianran’s assistant was rushed off her feet early on.

            

She made the coffee and brought it into Tao Tianran’s office. Tao Tianran thanked her without looking up—did she even notice it was her who made it?

This couldn’t go on!

Until one day two weeks later, Tao Tianran returned from the Big Boss’s office holding a stack of drafting paper and saw Cheng Xiang standing in her office, holding a cup of coffee, hand raised to touch her nose.

            

Tao Tianran asked calmly, “For me?”

She genuinely didn’t care who made the coffee.

Cheng Xiang touched the bridge of her nose, looking like a small animal caught off guard: “I don’t know either.”

            

Tao Tianran frowned slightly. “You bring coffee into my office and you don’t know if it’s for me?”

At this moment, Cheng Xiang was counting on her fingers in her mind: Made it last Monday, made it Tuesday, didn’t make it Wednesday… But Thursday?! Did she make it Thursday or not?! This determines whether she should make it this Thursday, damn it!

She’d lost count completely!

            

Tao Tianran observed her expression, feeling the palm hanging by her side suddenly itch. She rubbed it lightly against her trousers.

“You know what, just assume I didn’t make it for you.” Cheng Xiang irritably walked out with the coffee, resolving to start over next week.

She sat down at her own workstation, glanced back at Tao Tianran’s office, and shuddered.

            

Tao Tianran was standing by the clear floor-to-ceiling glass, watching her. The next second, Tao Tianran pressed a button in her hand, and the blinds snapped shut.

Cheng Xiang rubbed her palm against her mousepad.

She remembered Qin Ziqiao asking her last night: “Why do you like wrinkling your nose and touching your nose and rubbing your nose?”

            

“Huh?” Cheng Xiang paused. “Do I do that?”

“Don’t do that.” Qin Ziqiao lowered her head to play with the tassels on the sofa.

“Oh.” Cheng Xiang nodded. “It makes me look really dumb, huh? Especially since this face is pretty decent.”

            

“No.” Qin Ziqiao lifted her head. “It’s because that expression makes people think of Xiao Xiang.”

Cheng Xiang opened her computer. Before starting work, she found her private chat with Tao Tianran on DingTalk.

She typed: 【Teacher Tao, if you’re free this weekend, would you like to go to the zoo together? Looking for inspiration.】

            

She read it over to herself, then deleted the words 【Looking for inspiration.】

Click, send.

After seeing it marked as read, she withdrew the message.

            

Look at you, Cheng Xiang! Using work messaging apps to flirt with your senior colleague! And honestly, office flirting is kind of exciting—especially when you know she’s sitting right behind you in her private office, that crisp white shirt buttoned all the way to the top.

So professional, serious, and ascetic.

Even her assistant is standing there holding a tablet, waiting for her response to the schedule, not daring to glance at her computer.

            

Cheng Xiang felt her palms sweating until the computer went “ding.”

Tao Tianran: 【Sure.】

Then—message withdrawn.

            

Cheng Xiang sat in front of the computer.

After a long while, the corner of her mouth slowly curved upward.

Did she want Tao Tianran to refuse or agree? This feeling was truly hard to define.

            

---

When Cheng Xiang waited in her car downstairs from Tao Tianran’s place, she still braced herself for the possibility that Tao Tianran might bail at the last minute.

If she was asking as Yu Yusheng, she should be more casual about it.

But somehow, Cheng Xiang’s heart was beating a little fast.

            

She checked the rearview mirror—huh, this long curly hair was usually pretty glam and behaving itself. Why was a stray strand sticking up now?

Cheng Xiang searched through the Eldest Miss’s Maserati but couldn’t find any hair product.

So she spat into her palm, rubbed her hands together to warm them, and was desperately trying to press down the stray strand² when Tao Tianran’s face appeared in the car window.

            

Cheng Xiang jerked back in surprise. “Teacher… Teacher Tao.”

Tao Tianran opened the rear door and got in.

Cheng Xiang turned around. “You’re early.”

            

“Habit.”

Cheng Xiang scanned her from head to toe.

The same white shirt and black trousers as always, a cashmere coat draped over her arm, now resting on the seat beside her.

            

She hadn’t dressed up specially.

Cheng Xiang didn’t know if that made her feel better—or worse.

As she started the car, she flipped her hair back, worried the strand would fly up again, then stopped the motion and smiled at Tao Tianran. “Teacher Tao, honestly my driving isn’t that great, so please bear with me.”

            

Tao Tianran looked out the window. “No problem.”

The car lurched forward abruptly. Tao Tianran instinctively grabbed the seat back.

Once they were on the main road, Tao Tianran’s brow furrowed deeper and deeper. Finally, she tapped the driver’s seat with a cool, pale finger. “Your driver’s license?”

            

Cheng Xiang’s driving posture was similar to boarding a plane—also like a quail³ about to launch.

She stared intently at oncoming traffic. “Huh?”

“Your driver’s license.”

            

“Oh.” At a red light, Cheng Xiang finally freed a hand to hand it over.

Tao Tianran looked down at it:

Eight years of driving experience.

            

Eight years, and she drives like this?

Tao Tianran closed the license and handed it back.

Cheng Xiang: “Don’t judge, Teacher Tao.”

            

“No problem.” Tao Tianran turned to look out the window again. “Maybe your hand skills aren’t very good.”

Hey! Cheng Xiang slammed on the gas.

What did she mean, her hand skills weren’t good? Did Tao Tianran not know how skilled her hands were?

            

Oh right, Tao Tianran really didn’t know. Back then, Cheng Xiang was so respectful toward her—she didn’t even dare let her hand linger on Tao Tianran’s chest for a moment without feeling she’d overstepped.

Heh. Just thinking about it felt bitter.

After parking, Cheng Xiang walked with Tao Tianran toward the ticket gate.

            

She asked, trying to sound casual, “Teacher Tao, have you ever been to Beicheng Zoo before?”

Tao Tianran: “No.”

“Never had the chance before?”

            

Tao Tianran paused. “Not exactly that either.”

After passing through the gates, Cheng Xiang led Tao Tianran forward, navigating with practiced ease.

Tao Tianran glanced sideways. “Do you like animals?”

            

“Huh?” Cheng Xiang didn’t know why she asked that. “It’s fine.”

“You seem really familiar with this place.”

Cheng Xiang froze. “Oh…” She rubbed her fingers against her coat, wanting to wrinkle her nose, but held back. “I have a good sense of direction, haha, look at that ostrich.”

            

When she smiled, it always looked languid—three parts lazy, three parts flirtatious.

At this moment, Qin Ziqiao was watching Cheng Xiang from the surveillance room.

A colleague asked, “What? You know her?”

            

“Yeah, you could say I know her.”

“Heh.” Another colleague squeezed over to look at the monitor. “Two beauties! Pant pant So matching, so matching.”

“Matching what?”

            

The colleague startled at her shout. “It’s just—people ship random couples these days… why are you suddenly yelling?”

Qin Ziqiao signed her name on the registration form in the surveillance room and dropped the pen. “I’m leaving. Going back to feed the capybaras.”

It wasn’t a big deal. She just remembered something from the past.

            

When Cheng Xiang had pushed those two zoo tickets—damp with palm sweat—toward Tao Tianran, Tao Tianran had refused her.

Cheng Xiang had laughed it off with Qin Ziqiao, saying, “I knew it wouldn’t matter.”

Until that weekend at dinner, Qin Ziqiao’s mom brought it up: “That classmate of yours, Xiangzi.”

            

“Yeah, Xiao Xiang.” Qin Ziqiao picked up a pork rib. “What about her?”

“Does she really like animals?”

“She’s fine with them… why?”

            

“She came to the zoo every single day during National Day⁴ week. I saw her on the monitors every day in that heat.”

Qin Ziqiao froze.

Qin’s mom kept talking: “She was memorizing every single word on those information plaques—such long passages. Doesn’t she get tired of studying every day? And memorizing them, too—how much does she really like animals?”

            

Qin Ziqiao’s lips moved slightly.

It wasn’t that she loved animals that much.

It was just that suddenly, there was someone she liked that much.

            

---