The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 2

The Pinky Ring

Tao Tianran is still wearing it.

[Why are my eyelashes wet?
I didn’t cry, though.]

            

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Cheng Xiang’s head was buzzing. It was the chaotic, buzzing din of a nightclub, spotlights sweeping everywhere, a DJ spinning records, a haze of high-grain static filling her eyes and ears.

She figured she must be dead, because she didn’t feel an ounce of pain.

The last coherent thought rattling around in her mind was: Sigh. I always said the name “Cheng Xiang” was bad luck. It sounds just like “Prime Minister.” What kind of parents give their daughter such an audacious name? Shouldn’t they have picked something humble, like Cuihua or Goudan¹? Don’t they know that a lowly name makes for an easy life?

            

But Director Ma had insisted. She’d said that since Cheng Xiang’s father was from Haicheng, she wanted to name her daughter after the little alleys of his hometown, to have something to remember it by.

Cheng Xiang lay there for a good while, but no angels or Ox-Heads and Horse-Faces² came to collect her.

Well, lying here forever wasn’t getting her anywhere. She slowly opened her eyes.

            

Whoa. Cheng Xiang’s mind raced. Whoa-hoa-hoa…

This just goes to show you should do good deeds while you’re alive! Think of all the stray cats she’d fed! All the old ladies she’d helped across the street! All the times she’d polished her dad’s shoes and accidentally found his secret stash of cash in the process.

See? She’d made it to heaven! Feeling rather pleased with herself, Cheng Xiang sat up in bed and surveyed the room. The walls were a vibrant clash of sangria-red and teal, hung with incomprehensible Western abstract splatter paintings. It was the kind of room where any random snapshot could become an internet celebrity’s viral post³.

            

An irregularly shaped coffee table stood to one side, on which sat several stones that looked soft enough to be kneaded. Beside them was a fruit bowl where uneaten raspberries and cherries lay scattered about, not the least bit wilted despite being left out all night. Judging by their size, the cherries were at least four-J grade⁴.

Cheng Xiang was a little dumbfounded. You can squeeze stones in heaven?

She got out of bed, feeling subtly taller. Her arches, sinking into the deep-pile carpet, were as white as jade. A medieval European-style lace nightgown rippled like water over the tops of her feet. Hah. The old Cheng Xiang would never have worn a nightgown like this. She wore old T-shirts, the kind with collars gone limp and soft from countless tumbles in the washing machine.

            

She reached out and poked one of the stones.

Nope, still hard. She glanced at the sculptor’s nameplate nearby—Spanish, probably. He must have used some kind of oxide to remove the tool marks after carving, making the stones appear malleable.

Wait a second…

            

Cheng Xiang looked at her hand.

Was this her own hand?

As a comic artist, she knew her own hands better than anyone. From holding a pencil for so long, a thick callus had formed on the side of her middle finger.

            

But these hands?

Cheng Xiang held them up, turning them over. She was certain. These were not her hands.

The circular bed she had just been lying on was draped with curtains in a West Asian style. She scanned the room again and spotted a mirror embedded within a sculpture of a melting clock.

            

She walked over to it and froze.

The person in the mirror had a voluminous cloud of curly hair, like some renowned actress from the Spanish-speaking world. The excessive thickness of it made her look like a desert rose. Was it even possible for an Asian person to have this much hair? And yet, the face framed by those curls was unmistakably East Asian, with cat-like, amber-flecked eyes that tilted up ever so slightly at the corners.

Her nose was cat-like, too—small, rounded, and upturned.

            

She blinked her long, thick lashes, and the morning sun, fragrant with the scent of purple-spotted bellflowers from the garden, shimmered in her eyes. It made her look bewitching, languid, and unapproachable.

Hiss… dayum. What a beauty.

But, uh, who was this beauty? Cheng Xiang turned her head to the left; the beauty turned her head to the left. Cheng Xiang tilted her head to the right; the beauty tilted her head to the right.

            

Cheng Xiang went through a few moves from the Eighth Set of Broadcast Callisthenics⁵, and the beauty in the mirror joined her to “get up in the morning and embrace the sun.”

Okay, calm down. Cheng Xiang rubbed her forehead. She was a comic artist, after all; it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. This new body was the one she was supposed to use for her reincarnation.

Was fate really being this good to her? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

            

The organza nightgown was tantalizingly sheer, revealing the exquisite form of the woman in the mirror. She looked like one of the medieval European ladies Cheng Xiang had sketched when she first started learning to draw—slender yet full, her soft skin as if coated in a fine layer of tallow.

And especially those breasts.

The thing Cheng Xiang had been most dissatisfied with in her previous life was her chest. Who wanted to hear nonsense like “Even the chests of outstanding girls are A-cups”?!

            

But the breasts of the woman in the mirror were as full as raindrops about to fall, soft yet shapely, as if ready to water the buds of desire.

Were they… real or fake? Surely heaven wouldn’t give her a stunning face, only to pair it with fake boobs?

She cupped them through her nightgown.

            

Her eyes immediately narrowed. Wow, that bounce… that texture…

She couldn’t resist sliding a hand inside her nightgown. It’s my own body now, so it’s fine, right? Wow, this feel… In her past life, she had thought Tao Tianran’s breasts were the most beautiful in the world, but she’d never once touched them. How could she dare overstep? Every time, she would just lie flat on the bed and tell Tao Tianran, “You do it, you do it.”

Some short top she was! Qin Ziqiao would never have guessed she was a lying-down zero⁶.

            

Just as Cheng Xiang’s hand slipped into her nightgown, eager to explore her new chest, the bedroom door flew open with a SLAM. A little girl, just over ten years old, came in. She stared, wide-eyed, at Cheng Xiang for a moment, then backed out and shut the door with a SLAM.

A loud voice rang out from beyond the door. “Mom! My sister’s groping herself!”

Hey! Cheng Xiang took two long strides, shot out the door, and dragged the little girl back in. “Who are you?”

            

The little girl’s eyes narrowed knowingly. “Don’t you start, Yu Yusheng. Are you really pretending to have amnesia just so you don’t have to buy me that My Little Pony?”

Calm down, calm down. Cheng Xiang put her comic artist’s brain to work again.

She said to the little girl, “Go get my ID card for me.”

            

“How would I know where your ID is?”

“Where do I usually keep it?” Cheng Xiang crossed her arms. “I’m testing you. I want to see how well you know me, to see if you’re worth me buying you a My Little Pony.”

The little girl snorted, dashed over to the sofa, grabbed a handbag, and tossed it at her.

            

Cheng Xiang’s hands went soft as she caught the bag. It was… it was a rare leather Hermès.

She opened the bag, her eyes catching the two thin packets of finger cots tucked away in a corner. She found a wallet and pulled out the ID card. It read: 【Yu Yusheng, Female, 26 years old】.

Oh, she got it. Comic artists get everything. This was a transmigration.

            

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So what if it was transmigration? Cheng Xiang suppressed the panic in her heart with a silent, manic laugh.

Wait, that name, Yu Yusheng… why did it sound so familiar?

Before she could figure it out, the little girl was already hurrying her. “Mom said to come downstairs right away. Your future Sister-in-law is about to arrive.”

            

“What’s your name?”

The little girl shot her a sidelong glance and snorted.

Cheng Xiang pulled out two red bills and handed them over.

            

“Yu Yuluo.”

“And my brother?” Two more red bills.

“Yu Yuce.” Yu Yuluo crossed her arms, mimicking her. “What are you playing at?”

            

“Nothing. You can go downstairs and wait for me.”

Yu Yuluo scampered down the stairs. Cheng Xiang lifted her nightgown and glanced in the mirror. Not only did she have breasts, she had an ass too. She pulled open the closet. In stark contrast to her own style of baggy T-shirts and capri jeans, this young lady wasn’t ostentatious. Most of her clothes were soft satin blouses paired with wide-legged trousers.

Cheng Xiang picked a set at random and put it on.

            

She looked in the mirror again. Ostentatious! It was ostentatious as hell! It turned out that only such prim and proper professional attire could truly set off how improper this body was! Full up front and curvy in the back, cinched at the waist, yet her cat-like face held an air of effortless, languid charm.

Like a siren luring sailors to leap into the sea—how could she be at fault? It was others who willingly threw their lives away for her.

If you were to ask Cheng Xiang how it felt to transmigrate…

            

Honestly, she was pretty excited.

Back when she drew comics, she could never for the life of her come up with a transmigration plot. And now, look at this—a firsthand experience.

She drifted downstairs distractedly. The European-style wooden staircase was also covered in a deep-pile carpet. Her footsteps sank into it as if into an old dream. And speaking of old dreams, for a split second, her thoughts drifted to Tao Tianran.

            

Does Tao Tianran even exist in this world?

The Yu Matriarch looked up. “Yusheng, what are you dawdling for? Hurry up.”

Whoa, she’s a bit fierce.

            

“Coming,” Cheng Xiang called out. She walked over to Yu Yuluo. “Do I have an English name?”

“Shianne.”

It was surprisingly similar to the English pronunciation of “Xiang.”

            

Cheng Xiang tapped her own nose. “Call me Shianne from now on.”

“So you come back from overseas and suddenly you’re all westernized, huh?” Yu Yuluo shot her a sidelong glance, but with the My Little Pony in mind, she played along. “Shianne.”

Cheng Xiang nodded.

            

The Yu Matriarch called to her again. “Go help bring out the dishes from the kitchen. Today is very important for your brother. How can you be so grown up and still have no sense?”

“Oh… okay.”

Cheng Xiang shuffled into the kitchen in her slippers.

            

As she reached for the clay pot of soup on the counter, the heat of the ceramic scalded her fingertips and she flinched back. With a soft flutter of her eyelashes, she realized it was only when people called her “Yusheng” that this absurd transmigration felt real.

So, what about Cheng Xiang?

What about the ever-hesitant, overthinking Cheng Xiang?

            

The ever-hesitant, overthinking Cheng Xiang who had, against all odds, loved Tao Tianran so stubbornly for so many years?

Cheng Xiang’s lips curled into a slightly mocking smile. Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. It’s not that I haven’t thought of you. It’s just that when I look back on my twenty-something years of life, the only ‘great deed’ worth mentioning seems to be everything to do with Tao Tianran.

Auntie Su hurried over. “Did you burn yourself? Let me get that.”

            

Cheng Xiang smiled. “It’s fine, I can take it out.”

She found a cloth to wrap around the handles of the clay pot and carried it out. As she did, she saw a slender back at the dining table. The person was handing a suit jacket to Yu Yuce to hang up.

One meter seventy-two, slender and tall.

            

Beneath the crisp shirt, the wings of her shoulder blades looked ready to take flight.

“Shianne,” Yu Yuluo called out to Cheng Xiang, who was holding the soup. “Hurry, hurry!”

Cheng Xiang stared intently at that back.

            

When the syllable “Shian”—so incredibly similar to “Xiang”—was called out, the back of the person handing over the jacket seemed to freeze for an instant.

Then, she slowly turned around.

It was Tao Tianran.

            

How could one even begin to describe Tao Tianran?

There’s an old saying, “Heaven and Earth are not benevolent; they treat all of creation as straw dogs.”⁷ But that’s not quite right. The universe has its biases, its favorites. When it was shaping people, it stuffed Yu Yusheng into a body like a classical European sculpture, but Tao Tianran… she was the Chinese poem it was willing to spend half a day composing, after taking only half a second to mold a clay figure.

It was like the line from the old Yuan-dynasty opera:

            

「Don’t you know⁸ my life’s love is what is natural?」

Aside from times when professional etiquette required it, she rarely wore makeup. Her skin was a cool-toned, pale white. Despite being such a renowned jewelry designer herself, she used accessories sparingly, wearing only a plain silver band on her right pinky finger.

Her fingers were long and slim, her eyebrows long and slim, her eyes long and slim. When she looked at people, she would lift her chin slightly, yet you knew that such arrogance was a kind of dashing flair in her very bones. She didn’t smile often, her thin lips held in a subtle, tight curve. Two small, ink-black moles: one at the end of an eyebrow, one at the corner of an eye.

            

They were like commas in a line of classical prose⁹, pulling a person’s gaze to a stop right there, to carefully admire the stark, chilly beauty between her regulated rhythms.

With her long, straight black hair draped over her shoulders, she stood there in a shirt and trousers, her gaze landing coolly on Cheng Xiang.

There was none of the reaction Cheng Xiang had imagined she’d have upon hearing the sound “Shian.”

            

Cheng Xiang looked down, a smirk playing on her lips. The fragrant steam from the pot of cordyceps chicken soup¹⁰ in her hands rose to mist her eyelashes. She remembered, just before she died, how the first snow of winter had fallen, clinging to her lashes with the same damp feeling.

She had to force her eyelids open, force a smile at Tao Tianran. “Should I be calling you… Sister-in-law?”

“Ahem.” Her father, Yu Song, cleared his throat lightly.

            

Yu Yuce, however, was composed. “That’s a bit premature. I’m merely pursuing Tianran.”

Well, well. He’s already calling her ‘Tianran.’

Cheng Xiang took a shallow breath, rolling her tongue inside her mouth until it pressed against her palate.

             Tianqi. Tianfu. Tianbing tianjiang.¹¹

Ziran. Guoran. Youran zide.

How much effort had she once spent trying to forget those two characters?

Now, she looked at Tao Tianran, a languid, charming smile spilling from her cat-like eyes. Her pointy, cat-like nose crinkled into an attractive arch. “Well then, alright, Tianran-jiejie…”

            

Tianran, Tianran. Her tongue traced another circle inside her mouth, then clicked softly behind her teeth. The timid voice of the Cheng Xiang who had so carefully called out “Tianran, hey, Tao Tianran”—that should be forgotten now, shouldn’t it?

And yet… her eyes darted to the simple silver band on Tao Tianran’s right pinky finger.

That pinky ring. Tao Tianran was still wearing it.

            

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The author has something to say:

You see, this story is actually pretty happy~ Really, trust me

Manual thanks to the little angels 【Yao Ji】 and 【Shen Lai Yi Bi】 for the deep water¹²!

            

To the classmates who made it to class on time today, another 100 random red envelopes¹³~

By the way, the summary for the next previewed novel has been adjusted, so could I trouble everyone to move your fingers and click to pre-save it? Love you all!

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