The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 31
by Little PandaInflection Point
“Are you… Xiao Xiang?”
「Sometimes I feel like I am a tree.
A tree is very sorrowful.
It swallows up so much impassable time, turning it into rings of years within its belly.」
Cheng Xiang lay in her prefab container room, clutching the corner of her quilt, too distracted to even care about the hooting owls outside the window.
She was reviewing how those two had met.
Their only meeting should have been when Cheng Xiang and Yi Yu returned from their business trip to Thailand. Before Cheng Xiang could even go home, she had been directly swindled into that godforsaken variety show by Yi Yu.
She had stuffed the souvenir she bought for Qin Ziqiao into Yi Yu’s suitcase, and so she’d entrusted Yi Yu to deliver it.
That must be how those two met.
And then what?
Cheng Xiang rubbed her temples, feeling like her brain was overloading.
One was a Big Boss with staggering wealth and a mysterious background, someone who could treat all kinds of diamonds like knucklebones to play with.
The other was her childhood friend who raised capybaras at the Beicheng Zoo—someone deeply introverted, whose greatest interests were reading novels and planting scallions.
Just how had these two gotten tangled up together?
Cheng Xiang thought of that famous picture online.
In the front was a lifelike, meticulously detailed horse head, and following behind it was a toddler’s stick-figure body.
She felt that no matter how she tried to fill in the blanks, the plot she imagined resembled that overly simplistic horse body.
Unable to hold back, she scooted—scoot, scoot—over to the corner of the mattress that had a signal, and sent a message to Yi Yu: 【The soundproofing in these cargo containers is pretty bad.】
Yi Yu did not reply.
She didn’t even reply with a “thirty thousand.”
Hmph. Cheng Xiang tossed her phone aside and laced her hands behind her head.
Next door was completely quiet. She didn’t know if Yi Yu and Qin Ziqiao had taken the poor soundproofing into consideration and nothing was happening, or if they were just being exceptionally careful.
Mother of god…
This was Qin Ziqiao! Qin Ziqiao! Her best friend who kept a princess cut1 hairstyle, always wore a sour expression, habitually pursed her lips, and kept her hands in her pockets while walking silently beside her!
It wasn’t that girls hadn’t pursued Qin Ziqiao in school. Someone had secretly asked Cheng Xiang, “Is she one of those… a long-haired T2?”
“Her?” Cheng Xiang had burst into laughter, waving her hand. “No way, she definitely isn’t.”
Cheng Xiang absolutely could not imagine Qin Ziqiao being with a boy or being with a girl. Qin Ziqiao looked very cool, but she was actually introverted to death. She was a coward, just like Cheng Xiang, and moreover, Cheng Xiang felt that Qin Ziqiao hadn’t awakened romantically yet.
A Qin Ziqiao like that, with the silver-tongued Yi Yu?
Cheng Xiang curled up like a shrimp and hugged her head. I daren’t think about it. Daren’t think about it at all.
Outside the window, a crescent moon hung like a hook.
She had originally wanted to take advantage of Qin Ziqiao’s visit to ask about how Director Ma and Deputy Director Cheng were doing, but she realized she didn’t dare ask.
Perhaps she also wanted to ask about something else.
For example… Tao Tianran.
But she dared ask about that even less.
Early the next morning, as Qin Ziqiao and Yi Yu prepared to head down the mountain, she desperately peeked at whether Qin Ziqiao had dark circles under her eyes, only to be lightly kicked by Yi Yu.
She saw the two to their car, and Yi Yu rolled down the window to say goodbye.
Yi Yu looked at her parting lips and took the initiative to speak: “Actually…”
She was suddenly terrified that Yi Yu would tell her any news about Tao Tianran.
With a slap, she patted Yi Yu’s car door. “Hurry up and go, hurry up. If it rains soon, you won’t be able to leave.”
Yi Yu watched from the rearview mirror. Cheng Xiang stood in place for a long time, not silently turning back until their car was almost out of sight.
Yi Yu called Cheng Xiang after descending the mountain.
It took a long time for Cheng Xiang to answer: “Hello.”
She couldn’t say why, but just the tone of her single “hello” made Yi Yu’s heart clench.
“Nothing really,” Yi Yu said in a feigned, relaxed tone. “I’m just reminding you, the rainy season in the mountains is coming. Stay safe.”
Cheng Xiang smiled. “I know.”
The rainy season had indeed arrived.
Beicheng was not a city of much rain; at times, the entire city seemed coated in a layer of gray dust. Even the vermilion walls and glazed tiles weren’t bright colors, but truly looked as if they had weathered a thousand years of baptism—giving off a misty feeling, as if plucked from the memory of an old man sitting by the palace gates.
Beicheng was a city too well-suited for memories.
Cheng Xiang didn’t know if this was why she couldn’t forget Tao Tianran.
She hid in the mountains, hid in the rain. Torrential rain poured down with a crash, and even the owls no longer sang, as if trying to wash away the dust, wash away the memories.
A portion of the workers stationed at the factory evacuated, leaving only those necessary to keep operations running.
Cheng Xiang didn’t evacuate.
It wasn’t that she was hardworking or enduring; it was just that she was… a little afraid.
Having hidden in the mountains for so long, she didn’t quite know how to go down and face the entire world.
Because in that world, there was Tao Tianran.
Yi Yu was frantic to the point of dying: “Have you reached her yet? Is there any signal at all?”
“No, Big Boss…”
On the day the mountain storm was brewing, Cheng Xiang remained completely oblivious up there.
The weather was bad, so the factory had suspended operations. She stayed in her dorm and made herself a bowl of instant noodles. That Qin Ziqiao really didn’t listen to advice—she’d told her she only wanted luosifen, yet Qin Ziqiao had still brought her so many instant noodles, and mild mushroom chicken flavor at that.
So afraid she would get internal heat.
Cheng Xiang suddenly thought of how she and Qin Ziqiao used to hide in her bedroom with the phoenix tree, with Qin Ziqiao speaking ill of her own mother, and Cheng Xiang speaking ill of Tao Tianran.
She had always spoken with a tone that seemed complaining but was actually proud: “You don’t know about Tao Tianran, she…”
From then on, she would never speak of anyone in that tone of voice again.
Back then, Director Ma would already be asleep. The two of them would chat until midnight, feel hungry, throw on some clothes, and sneak out. They’d stand at the alley entrance to order two skewers of grilled chicken wings, then go to the corner store to buy a bowl of instant noodles to share.
The corner store at the mouth of their hutong always had the mushroom chicken flavor on sale.
Sigh, memories truly hurt.
What hurt even more was that Tao Tianran was embedded in every single memory.
She had hauled her computer up the mountain, but the voltage here wasn’t even stable, and her drawing tablet wasn’t working very well. And so, in a rare move, she drew her drafts by hand. She wasn’t as skilled as Tao Tianran, who could execute line art with a fountain pen in one smooth breath.
She used a pencil, constantly erasing and revising, the heel of her right hand rubbing back and forth across the drafting paper.
She didn’t know how much time had passed. When she lifted her hand, she saw that the heel of her right palm was smeared with a patch of silvery-gray pencil lead.
Like the ashes of burnt-up time.
Because everyone had been too busy for a meeting, the theme for this quarter’s design had not been discussed together; instead, they had submitted their ideas individually. The theme Cheng Xiang proposed was “Phoenix Tree.”
Yi Yu found it interesting and approved it with a wave of her hand.
Right now, as Cheng Xiang drew her manuscript, she thought to herself, Ordinary people would never imagine that a tree is actually a very sorrowful existence.
Because it is so vibrantly green, luminous, and bursting with life.
But that is only because it swallows impassable time into its belly, forming ring after ring of years.
It is the entity most adept at recording time, like the letter of a brokenhearted person. The most heart-wrenching was Gui Youguang of the Ming Dynasty, who wrote of the loquat tree in his courtyard: 「My wife planted it with her own hands the year she died, and now it rises tall like a canopy.」3
Cheng Xiang did not have a loquat tree.
She only had a phoenix tree in the center of her bedroom.
She wondered how much more it had grown in the long passage of time since she parted with Tao Tianran.
Cheng Xiang buried her head in the drafting paper. A dim desk lamp burned in front of her. She didn’t notice the wind and rain outside growing stronger, mercilessly howling and slapping against the doors and windows.
Until a loud bang rang out.
Cheng Xiang jumped, her pencil stalling, the tip nearly breaking as it slashed a sharp line across the page. She stood up, only then realizing that a flimsy door from the adjacent cargo container had been torn off and smashed against her own door.
Leaving a severe dent.
The workers were guarding the machinery, and their dormitories were on the other side of the mountain; no one would come this way. She was the only person in this entire dorm area. She pulled out her phone and glanced at it—no signal.
She paced through the corners of the room where there was usually a signal.
Still no signal. Not a single bar.
Sigh, why did Eldest Miss Yu have to use a fruit machine4? If this were a domestic phone, she might still be able to make a satellite call.
She sat back at the desk and began searching her brain for life skills: Can you dial emergency numbers when there’s no signal?
It seemed you could.
Because Director Ma, in her capacity as Neighborhood Committee Director, seemed to have promoted this little piece of trivia before.
Once Cheng Xiang figured this out, her heart settled a bit, and she set her phone aside.
Sitting idly would only make her more nervous, so she simply continued drawing her drafts.
But not two minutes later, that dim little desk lamp crackled, flashed, and suddenly went out.
The small room plunged into dark silence, leaving only the tree shadows swaying against the walls from outside, looking like ghostly apparitions. The owls had long since hidden away, but the howling of the wind and rain was even shriller than their cries.
Like someone wailing.
Cheng Xiang had no choice but to drop her pencil. She crossed one leg over the other, sitting on the edge of the bed with her phone clutched tightly in her hand.
Knowing a storm was coming, she had charged her phone fully beforehand, but now she didn’t dare waste the battery casually. She just sat there in the pitch black.
People really were melodramatic.
In the past, the feeling of a breakup was like being abandoned by the whole world.
Now that she was truly abandoned by the whole world, it felt just like a breakup again.
Cheng Xiang silently twitched her lips.
She didn’t dare check the time, so she didn’t know how long had passed.
She didn’t dare sleep. She felt herself gradually growing sleepy, but her nerves were taut. She just sat there; sometimes she felt awake, and sometimes she felt she couldn’t hold on and had drifted off.
She didn’t know if she was dreaming or trapped in chaotic memories.
In her dreams were Director Ma, Deputy Director Cheng, Qin Ziqiao, flocks of pigeons flying over the hutong rooftops, and Tao Tianran.
Suddenly, there was another bang from outside.
Cheng Xiang startled awake, realizing she really had fallen asleep just now.
Unsure of what had smashed against her door this time, she sat motionless, silently weighing the idea of calling the police.
Director Ma muttered every day, “The People’s Police serve the people.” Of course, she didn’t want to trouble the People’s Police, but she also didn’t want to leave her little life here.
Dying twice in a row! That was too miserable.
Just then, two more bangs sounded from outside.
Cheng Xiang realized—it wasn’t something smashing against her door; someone was knocking.
Someone was knocking?!
Mother of god. Cheng Xiang felt like her skull was about to flip open.
In this desolate wilderness during a raging storm, why would someone be knocking? Furthermore, this mountain was called something like “Ghost Laugh Mountain”!
She shakily shuffled to the door: “Who is it?”
Don’t panic, don’t panic, Cheng Xiang. Bring out all the knowledge you got from reading those tomb-raiding novels.
A black donkey hoof5? She definitely didn’t have one here. Glutinous rice? She didn’t have that either. At best, she only had the half a shaomai she had packed from the cafeteria at noon and hadn’t finished.
Would cooked glutinous rice work? She didn’t know either!
She just gripped that half a shaomai tightly. Her question was perhaps drowned out by the wind and rain; whatever was outside the door didn’t hear it.
In short, no one answered her.
She opened the door a tiny crack, but failed to secure the lock, and a sudden gust of wind blew the door wide open.
The person outside swiftly slipped in, grabbing the door lock before she could, and pushed back with all her might. Cheng Xiang’s first reaction was to push the door together with that thing. If this door couldn’t be locked, they would both leave their lives here tonight.
With a clack, the lock finally engaged.
Panting heavily, Cheng Xiang looked at the person before her.
It was truly a comical scene.
She was still gripping that half a shaomai tightly. And the white shirt of the person before her was thoroughly soaked by the torrential rain, clinging wretchedly to her body.
Even more wretched was the person’s black hair, gathered into several strands plastered against her face. It made her cold, pale complexion look even more pallid; her lips were nearly bloodless, thin, and trembling incessantly.
Lingering rainwater trailed down her face, slipping into her slightly parted lips.
Cheng Xiang’s chest heaved violently as she stared at her.
She realized that all those messy ghost stories she’d concocted in her head had actually just been to cover up the instinctual thought popping into her mind—Tao Tianran has come.
She had been terrified that upon opening the door, the person arriving wouldn’t be Tao Tianran.
She breathed heavily through slightly parted lips, feeling as though the lingering rainwater on Tao Tianran’s face had also seeped through the seams of her own lips.
In that moment, Cheng Xiang felt like a child who had fallen to the ground, only to finally encounter someone looking for her.
But a child who has fallen down while completely alone will not cry. And so, after breaking up with Tao Tianran, Cheng Xiang had never cried once.
Right now, an uncontrollable heat surged into her eyes because Tao Tianran had come looking for her.
She lit up her phone screen and glanced at it. The time on her notepad was fixed at 【845 days】.
On the 845th day since breaking up with TTR, Tao Tianran had come looking for her.
But when Tao Tianran came looking for her, she was no longer herself.
Her eyes brimmed with irrepressible heat, yet the corners of her lips curled up mockingly.
She looked at Tao Tianran, who was so wretched, standing before her and asking, “Are you alright?”
She stared blankly at Tao Tianran’s pale, disheveled face, the curve of her lips deepening.
“Tao Tianran.” She directly called out her name. “Why are you here?”
Tao Tianran didn’t answer her. Her brows knitted slightly, bringing the two small moles at the corners of her eyes and brows with them.
It made Tao Tianran’s expression look truly concerned.
Cheng Xiang smiled silently, listening as Tao Tianran asked in a nearly stern tone, “Are you alright or not?”
Cheng Xiang pressed the pad of her thumb against her phone screen, rubbing it back and forth.
Her eyes remained fixed on Tao Tianran.
When she spoke, her voice still held that deep, charming tone, teasing, “Is Teacher Tao concerned about me?”
Tao Tianran, so you aren’t incapable of loving someone.
You’re just incapable of loving me.
In such violently stormy weather you came for someone else, while I lay in the swirling snow of a crosswalk, waiting for you in vain.
Bearing that smile, Cheng Xiang turned and walked deeper into the room. The space was enveloped in a heavy blackness where nothing could be seen clearly, and she accidentally kicked the foot of the bed.
It was then that Tao Tianran tightly grabbed her wrist.
Her heart gave a thudding jump along with her suddenly constricted pulse.
Tao Tianran’s fingers were so cold—so cold it felt as if Tao Tianran had also stood through a heavy snowstorm like the one Cheng Xiang had faced. Tao Tianran’s voice held the same slight tremble as her eyelashes. In the darkness, from behind her, she asked:
“Why won’t you answer my question?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Cheng Xiang laughed softly.
“Then I… will also answer your question. I will tell you why I came.” Tao Tianran held a long breath, releasing it from her chest, and then paused. “Are you… Xiao Xiang?”
Cheng Xiang’s ears buzzed.
The sky looked like the face of a girl who had just cried.
Tao Tianran stood under a hazy sky, this phrase popping into her mind for no reason.
She had come to visit a niche pottery artist. The artist was aloof, with a studio set in an old hutong, spending her days in the company of strolling grandpas, grandmas, and the large geese kept in the alleyways.
The assistant smiled. “Teacher Tao hasn’t been to a place like this before, right?”
Tao Tianran wore a light cashmere coat. Her figure was so slender that wearing such a long coat made her look even more like a solitary shadow, traced onto the moon of bygone days.
She stood tall, reaching out a hand to pull the car door, and gazed at the flock of pigeons flying overhead, their pale gray wings seemingly swallowed by the sky. “I have.”
In fact, not only had she been here, she was very familiar with it.
Because her ex-girlfriend used to live here.
The assistant stomped her feet in the cold beside her. “It’s freezing today. It looks like it’s going to snow. Let’s get in the car quickly, Teacher Tao.”
The assistant was a Southerner, clumsily imitating the Beicheng erhua sound6. But Tao Tianran did not laugh; she was truly someone unaccustomed to smiling.
Tao Tianran was also a Southerner.
It almost never snowed in Gangdao. The last time she had watched swirling snow fall from the sky like this, she had been standing in her ex-girlfriend’s bedroom in the hutong, looking out the window.
Her ex-girlfriend stood grinning beside her, reaching out to wrap her arms around Tao Tianran’s slender waist, uttering a soft “Ah.”
She tilted her head. “What is it?”
“There’s static electricity, Tao Tianran.” The girl shook her oversized sweater sleeves. “With a snap—didn’t you hear it?”
“I heard it.” Tao Tianran nodded.
As a Southerner, her biggest impression upon arriving in Beicheng wasn’t the cold, but the constant static electricity.
Because her ex-girlfriend was truly a very slender hutong girl, yet she loved wearing those oversized, chunky knit sweaters—horizontal stripes in bright flamingo colors.
She would touch Tao Tianran’s cheek—snap.
She would play with Tao Tianran’s hair—snap.
She would embrace Tao Tianran’s slender waist—snap.
After the two of them broke up, no one around Tao Tianran ever wore those somewhat low-quality chunky sweaters again, so she hadn’t encountered static electricity for a long time.
Just now, as she reached out to open the car door, a snap of static had gone off. Probably because it still hadn’t snowed this winter and was simply too dry.
She subconsciously retracted her hand. The assistant asked, “What is it, Teacher Tao?”
“Nothing.” She pulled the car door open again, got in, and started her Bentley, driving out of the hutong.
“Teacher Tao, look at these old Beicheng hutongs,” the assistant said, peering out the fogged-up window. “They’ve really got flavor—wei’r!”
Tao Tianran really couldn’t stand her terrible erhua sound.
She curled the tip of her tongue. “Wei’r.“
“What?” The assistant didn’t hear clearly.
“A girl who grew up in the Beicheng hutongs would pronounce the erhua sound like this.” Tao Tianran repeated, “Wei’r.“
The assistant was shocked. “Aren’t you from Gangdao, Teacher Tao? You know a girl who grew up in the Beicheng hutongs?”
At that moment, the car happened to drive past a vegetable market. Tao Tianran casually glanced at the dashboard clock; it was 4:00 PM.
It was almost time for dinner.
She remembered there was a very delicious liangpi stall in this market. In the dry, radiator-heated heat of winter, it was very refreshing on the palate.
Tao Tianran’s slender fingertips tapped lightly on the steering wheel. “There is such a person.”
“You really do know someone, Teacher Tao! Who is it?” the assistant asked, her mouth moving faster than her brain.
Tao Tianran pressed the tip of her tongue lightly behind her teeth, looking at the crosswalk ahead.
“Xiao Xiang.”
This was the first time she had spoken that name since they broke up.
The incredibly familiar yet slightly foreign syllables fell between her teeth, to be chewed over.
But the assistant didn’t understand. She thought Tao Tianran hadn’t answered her question, and was instead telling her to look at the narrow xiaoxiang—the small alleys—alongside the road. “It’s true! They’ve got flavor too.”
Tao Tianran remembered it very clearly.
It was on that very day that the first heavy snow of the winter fell with a soft rustle.
The sunlight stung the eyes so brightly they couldn’t be kept open.
Tao Tianran stood under a locust tree, eyes narrowed slightly, gazing at the funeral home not far away, an almost absurd feeling welling up inside her.
She had received the call yesterday.
She had been in a meeting at the company. The newly acquired client was a fanatic for Hollywood, sending over a Mogok pigeon blood ruby with the request that it encapsulate the Golden Age of Hollywood.
The projector screen in the conference room was pulled down, playing a lively, bustling musical.
Tao Tianran’s phone rang. She glanced at the unfamiliar number on the screen and answered. “Hello.”
The other end was very quiet. Compared to the lively musical around her, the other side was so quiet it felt like another world, permeated with a heavy chill.
Had it been the past, Tao Tianran would have already hung up by now.
But this time, for some inexplicable reason, she softly repeated, “Hello.”
The line disconnected.
Then it rang again—another unfamiliar number calling.
“Tianran.” This time, someone spoke. It was a familiar yet estranged voice.
Tao Tianran stood up, drawing the eyes of everyone in the conference room.
She raised a hand. Her original intent was to signal everyone to continue the discussion and ignore her, but for some reason, she merely pressed her hand down at the empty air, then turned and left the room.
Over the phone, Director Ma said, “Xiao Xiang passed away. The funeral is tomorrow. Tianran, you’ll come to see her off for her final journey, won’t you?”
When making these calls, Director Ma hadn’t wanted to use her own phone, instead borrowing someone else’s.
Tao Tianran stood in the corridor outside the conference room. A colleague walked past holding a laptop, softly greeting her, “Teacher Tao.”
She even nodded slightly, before asking into the phone, “When did it happen?”
“Just yesterday,” Director Ma was crying.
“What happened?” Tao Tianran asked.
“She went to the market to buy liangpi for her dad. Didn’t it suddenly start snowing?” Director Ma wiped her tears.
“What time?” Tao Tianran asked again.
“What?”
“What time did it happen?”
“When it suddenly started snowing. In the afternoon, at five-forty.”
For some unknown reason, Tao Tianran suddenly reached out and touched the glass wall of the conference room. The company’s heating was too strong, inevitably generating static electricity with a snap.
“Tianran, you’ll come, won’t you?” Director Ma cried over the phone. “You know Xiao Xiang, she would definitely want you there the most. Even if she didn’t say it, as her mother, how could I not know?”
Tao Tianran suddenly hung up the phone.
Returning to the conference room, the lively musical on the screen continued, as did her colleagues’ discussions. Amidst the clamor, she pulled out her chair and sat down. The seat still held her residual warmth, yet she was shivering.
A colleague asked, “Teacher Tao, is something wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” Tao Tianran shook her head. “Let’s continue the discussion.”
She had been working overtime constantly lately. When Tao Tianran returned home, because it had been so late these days, she would always just open a carton of milk and pour it over cereal for dinner. Today, however, she opened a delivery app and ordered herself a portion of liangpi.
When the liangpi was delivered, it still held the chill of having just been taken from the refrigerator.
She snapped apart the disposable chopsticks and ate in large mouthfuls, as if she hadn’t eaten a meal in many days. A drop of chili oil splashed onto her overly pristine white shirt. She pulled out a tissue and wiped at it, but it wouldn’t come off.
When she reached the bottom of the bowl of liangpi, she rushed into the bathroom and threw up.
Early the next morning, she stood far away beneath the locust tree outside the funeral home, the post-snow sunlight astonishingly fierce.
It reminded one of the sky during that first snowfall.
Like the face of a girl who had just cried.
Xiao Xiang passed away? Tao Tianran thought absurdly. How could Director Ma say such a thing?
Tao Tianran did not go in. She turned around and left.
Footnotes
- A 'hime cut' or princess cut, featuring straight, blunt bangs with face-framing sidelocks.
- In Chinese GL (Girls' Love) slang, 'T' stands for Tomboy, referring to the butch or masculine/dominant partner. A 'long-haired T' is one who keeps their hair long rather than having a short cut.
- A poignant quote from 'An Essay on the Xiangyao Studio' by Ming dynasty essayist Gui Youguang, mourning his late wife.
- Internet slang for an Apple iPhone, named for its fruit logo.
- A fictional artifact popularized by Chinese tomb-raiding novels like Ghost Blows Out the Light, used to ward off or neutralize zombies/corpses.
- A linguistic feature of the Beicheng (Beijing) dialect where an 'r' sound is added to the end of syllables.
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