The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 35
by Little PandaOnline Search
【What to do if my girlfriend is frigid】.
「If we ever get separated, let’s promise to meet in our dreams.
Good dreams or nightmares, it doesn’t matter.
We’ll meet under that apple tree. It’s a deal.」
The water didn’t end up getting shut off that day.
Tao Tianran and Cheng Xiang tangled up in bed for a long time before getting up. After cleaning Cheng Xiang up, Tao Tianran went to take a shower herself.
She stood under the spray, combing her long, straight black hair back with her fingers. She propped her left foot on the non-slip stone tile and lightly rested her right foot on the toes of her left.
She was reflecting on why she had been like that just now.
Cheng Xiang had cried.
Tao Tianran had never been infatuated with anything in her life. For her, everything was fleeting, like chapters abruptly torn from a book. Whether she cared or not, nothing ever truly remained.
But.
When she came out of the shower in her pajamas, Cheng Xiang was already fast asleep on her side, completely exhausted. Curled up under the covers, she looked like a small, rolling hill. Her nose was crinkled, and she seemed peaceful, utterly serene.
Tao Tianran lay down beside her, closed her eyes, and rested a hand on Cheng Xiang’s soft little stomach, feeling the rhythm of her breathing.
Cheng Xiang’s stomach was always soft and yielding, like the snail in the ditch outside her grandmother’s house when she was a child. It was always slippery and soft to the touch.
That was Tao Tianran and Cheng Xiang’s first time.
In the days that followed, Cheng Xiang never brought up doing it again. Tao Tianran immersed herself in her design work, busying herself with all manner of cold, hard stones, and it seemed the impulse no longer surfaced so frequently.
Until one day, she came home from working overtime to find Cheng Xiang asleep, slumped over her drawing tablet.
She walked over. Cheng Xiang’s computer was still on, and Tao Tianran saw the search bar: 【What to do if my girlfriend is frigid】.
Tao Tianran pressed her lips together, then reached out and placed a hand on the back of Cheng Xiang’s neck. “Xiao Xiang.”
Cheng Xiang was sleeping so soundly she didn’t react.
Tao Tianran decided to simply pick her up. Cheng Xiang was like a pliant little cat, subconsciously wrapping her arms around her neck.
The moment she was placed on the bed, Cheng Xiang’s eyes flew open. “Tao Tianran!”
Her reaction startled Tao Tianran. “What’s wrong?”
A look of horror crossed Cheng Xiang’s face as she covered her mouth. “Did I… did I drool?”
“No.”
Tao Tianran went to shower first. When she returned to the bedroom, Cheng Xiang was huddled under the covers, her eyes wide and round, her hands clutching the edge of the blanket.
She called out in a tiny voice, “Tao Tianran.”
Tao Tianran lay down beside her.
Cheng Xiang scrambled out from under the covers and draped herself over Tao Tianran, leaning down to look at her. “Hehehe.”
“What is it?”
“I actually bought Sailor Moon pajamas.”
“What?” Tao Tianran’s brow furrowed slightly, not understanding what she meant.
“Oh, come on. You know, those kind of pajamas.”
Tao Tianran did not know. Why would those kind of pajamas be Sailor Moon ones?
But Cheng Xiang’s soft palm was cupping the back of her neck, and strands of her soft hair brushed against her face.
Cheng Xiang’s soft voice squeezed out in a breathy whisper, “Do you want to?”
Tao Tianran paused.
Then, under the covers, she began to gently caress Cheng Xiang.
Cheng Xiang closed her eyes. Then her lower lip pressed into a tight line. Then her chin tucked down, trying to stifle the fragmented sounds escaping her throat.
She said to her, “Don’t… don’t play around, Tao Tianran.”
Tao Tianran wasn’t playing.
She truly loved that sensation and was in no hurry to press further. It reminded her of that snail on a rainy summer day in her childhood.
“Seriously, stop playing, Tao Tianran.” Cheng Xiang’s eyes opened, her cheeks an abnormal shade of red. She grabbed Tao Tianran’s slender wrist under the covers.
But it wasn’t a rejection. It was an entreaty.
Tao Tianran closed her eyes.
She really did think of that summer rain from her childhood. The smell of the rain, the smell of the earth, the damp, slick, soft touch of the snail.
She really couldn’t stop. She suppressed her emotions, her expression turning cool as she asked Cheng Xiang, “Can you turn over?”
She leaned over Cheng Xiang’s slender back. “Let’s go again.”
Afterward, Cheng Xiang fell into a deep sleep. Tao Tianran got up. Outside the window, snow was falling softly over Beicheng. She threw on a housecoat and sat down at Cheng Xiang’s still-open computer. In the same search box where Cheng Xiang had just typed the word ‘frigid,’ she entered something new: 【xing yin】.
Tao Tianran thought there was something very strange about herself.
Once she started, she became completely absorbed. She would think of Cheng Xiang’s tears and force herself not to dwell on it during the day, as if she could do without it. But if Cheng Xiang initiated, she couldn’t help but respond, and it was always she who couldn’t stop. She would even deliberately put on a cold expression to keep herself calm, but she knew she was holding her breath, minutely observing Cheng Xiang’s every subtle reaction, just as she had spent the better part of a day observing that snail as a child.
She couldn’t figure herself out. Was she frigid, or did she have a sex addiction?
Or perhaps the two could exist at the same time.
She felt as if there might be some strange switch inside her body that sent her to one of two extremes, a switch she herself didn’t even know how to flip.
That time, as Tao Tianran and Yi Yu walked under the moonlight, Yi Yu had asked her with a wicked glint in her downcast eyes, “You definitely don’t have that kind of desire, right?”
Tao Tianran hadn’t known how to answer.
Until another summer arrived, and she and Yu Yusheng were sent by Yi Yu to that ridiculous variety show.
The night of the power outage.
Yu Yusheng had come to her room to borrow a white shirt. Tao Tianran had already showered and was leaning against the headboard in silk satin pajamas, a glass of red wine dangling from her fingers.
She raised a hand to touch her cheek and found it a little hot. Perhaps she was already tipsy.
Yu Yusheng’s fingertip tapped the white shirt draped over the back of a chair. “Is it this one?”
She remembered how everyone had gathered for hotpot that night, the boisterous sounds seeming very distant. Yu Yusheng must have just showered; she was wearing a camisole, and water droplets, not yet fully dried, trickled down the lovely curve of her chest into the dark, tantalizing valley between her breasts.
But that wasn’t important.
That’s not important at all, Tao Tianran thought.
It was just that the power outage had blurred the sharp contours of Yu Yusheng’s heavy features, making her expression stand out. The way she blinked was like Cheng Xiang. The way she occasionally pursed her lips was also like Cheng Xiang.
Tao Tianran gently placed her other hand on her own lower abdomen, recalling the previous night.
Last night, she had been thinking of Cheng Xiang, and felt something burning inside her. Perhaps that thing was called desire. She had pressed her head against the wall, her brow deeply furrowed, imagining Cheng Xiang, letting ambiguous gasps escape from the very pit of her stomach.
Was this the burning stomach feeling Cheng Xiang used to talk about?
Tao Tianran didn’t know. She was just a drunk.
She looked at the person before her. Her rational mind knew it was Yu Yusheng, but her instincts saw Cheng Xiang.
After she returned home from filming the show, Tao Tianran received a phone call.
“Hello, Miss Tao.”
“Speaking.”
“This is a follow-up call regarding the psychological consultation you scheduled with us. May I ask how you’ve been doing recently?”
Tao Tianran’s fingers traced the texture of the leather sofa. She hesitated for a moment.
Perhaps she really should go and have a proper psychological consultation.
She shouldn’t keep seeing Yu Yusheng as Cheng Xiang.
She paused for a long time before finally speaking a single, clear word into the phone: “No.” Then she hung up without another thought.
Leaning her head back against the sofa, a wine glass swaying precariously in her hand, she stared up at the blank ceiling.
If she stopped seeing Yu Yusheng as Cheng Xiang, how was she supposed to go on living?
Let her be sick beyond cure, then.
After the variety show ended, Tao Tianran and Yu Yusheng took a business trip to Gangdao.
As the plane took off, she glanced at Yu Yusheng beside her—the way she gripped the armrests was just like a quail about to be launched.
Yu Yusheng shot a look back at her. “What? Is a person not allowed to have a fear of flying?”
Tao Tianran shook her head.
Walking the streets of Gangdao, Yu Yusheng asked her, “Teacher Tao, besides the places you recommended last time, is there anywhere else in Gangdao worth visiting?”
“Just some shopping areas.” Tao Tianran didn’t think there was much else to see.
Yu Yusheng nodded. “Then tell me the locations, Teacher Tao, and I’ll look them up on a map.” The corners of her lips curved into a charming smile. “Otherwise, I’m genuinely afraid I might get lost.”
Just as they finished speaking, a familiar voice called out to her. “Number Eight.”
Tao Tianran’s gaze shifted coolly in that direction.
Counting from her grandfather’s generation, the Tao family had many descendants. After Tao Tianran had been officially acknowledged by the family, she was ranked eighth. The well-to-do woman before them, adorned with emeralds, was her third aunt on her father’s side.
A few pleasantries and it would have been over.
But then, the woman turned to Yu Yusheng beside her and asked, “You’re Miss Cheng?”
Cheng Xiang never knew that Tao Tianran had mentioned her to her family.
Compared to Gangdao’s famous “Four Great Families,” the Tao family was very low-key and not well-known on the mainland. In reality, the Tao family’s business interests were spread across the mainland, Gangdao, and beyond, spanning real estate, shipping, investment, and construction.
When Tao Tianran moved to Beicheng with her parents in her second year of high school, it was because Old Master Tao had assigned a branch company to her father to manage.
Tao Tianran’s mother had been deeply displeased, pouting as she packed their luggage. “You think this is a promotion? It’s exile.”
The Beicheng branch, responsible for real estate development, was a thorny mess of entangled interests. After Tao Tianran’s father insisted on divorcing his first wife to marry her mother, he had been consistently marginalized within the family.
Old Master Tao, however, was very fond of Tao Tianran.
Because she was calm and steady. From a young age, she could sit with the old man in his study and play Go for the better part of a day.
Tao Tianran was supposed to have gone to Europe for university to study economics, but she had stayed in Beicheng and studied jewelry design instead. When she graduated, Old Master Tao had asked her with concern, “What are your plans for the future?”
That day, there were guests at the Banshan mansion. Her third aunt’s friends were gathered for afternoon tea, and someone laughed, “A house this big, aren’t you afraid of getting lost?”
A ripple of laughter followed.
Sitting in the living room so vast it seemed to echo, Tao Tianran suddenly recalled a memory.
A very, very small memory.
The only trip Tao Tianran and Cheng Xiang ever took together was to Kuncheng. At the time, Kuncheng had gone viral online, hailed as a place with wind1.
During both takeoff and landing, Tao Tianran had the privilege of witnessing the little quail in its launch posture—Cheng Xiang’s hands were clamped tightly around the armrests, her entire body rigid.
Her voice trembled as she said to Tao Tianran, “It really is ‘a place with wind,’ huh? Look how this plane is being blown around. Our little lives aren’t going to end here, are they?”
“Two lives,” Tao Tianran said.
“Huh?” Cheng Xiang didn’t understand, her mouth half-open in an O-shape, her hands still glued to the armrests.
“We each have one little life. That adds up to two.”
“Haha, hahaha.” Cheng Xiang bit her pale lower lip. “Tao Tianran, you can even make jokes now! You’re not trying to comfort me, are you?”
The plane, of course, did not crash, and Cheng Xiang deactivated her quail mode upon landing.
They had booked a room at a homestay. Tao Tianran pulled a large suitcase while Cheng Xiang pushed a small, orange one up the ramp, wrinkling her nose as she told Tao Tianran, “I’m telling you, this place was so hard to book! A TV show filmed here before, you know? And 450 a night isn’t expensive, I spent ages waiting for a discount.”
The moment she pushed open the door to the room, Cheng Xiang gasped, “Whoa—”
A double bed faced a huge window. Outside, the rice paddies were a lush green for the season. A gnarled old tree filled half the view, its branches laden with a type of small, unimproved green apple.
Cheng Xiang dropped her suitcase. “Tao Tianran, look! There’s even a handwritten card! And welcome fruit! These little apples must be from that tree outside, right? Hey, why is this one bruised? Oh, this one is too…”
“It’s okay,” her voice was still joyful. “I’ll ask the owner to pick some more later. I’ll go with him!”
“What do you think of this place, Tao Tianran?”
At that moment, Tao Tianran was in the bathroom, washing her hands.
Perhaps it was Cheng Xiang’s overly exuberant tone that made her overlook the obvious yellow stain on the hand towel. “I think… it’s nice.”
After a quick tidy-up, Cheng Xiang did indeed go find the owner to pick apples.
She returned with a small bowl of them, her eyebrows raised in excitement as she told Tao Tianran, “There’s a scruffy little dog napping under the tree, too. It’s the owner’s.”
She rushed back into the bathroom to wash the apples. “You have to try one, Tao Tianran.”
She picked one up and took a big bite herself. “Ugh, on second thought, maybe you shouldn’t, Tao Tianran. It’s… it’s a little astringent.” She reached out to take the apple from Tao Tianran’s hand.
Tao Tianran moved it away.
She took a bite.
It was, indeed, very astringent. One’s palate became so spoiled by improved, sweet fruits. This was a flavor she had never tried before—a raw, green taste that seemed to make every taste bud on her tongue feel fuzzy.
Tao Tianran lifted her gaze.
Cheng Xiang was sitting in a circular-backed chair by the window, wearing a little white dress that revealed her slender legs. She was swinging her left leg back and forth, holding a half-eaten green apple, and staring at Tao Tianran in a daze. The famously clear light of Yun Province streamed in, and the sheer, moon-white curtains billowed gently in the breeze, casting a small shadow from her feathery eyelashes onto her cheeks.
However, Cheng Xiang’s energy only lasted for so long.
Before the trip, she had been like a primary school student about to go on a field trip, too excited to sleep for three nights straight.
After a meal of steam pot chicken, she fell asleep that afternoon on the homestay’s large double bed.
When she woke, the sky was already dimming into dusk.
She sat in a daze on the bed for half a minute, feeling a presence around her like mist on a riverbank, swirling in tiny particles.
“Tao Tianran.”
The room was quiet, with no reply.
She got off the bed, slipped on the homestay’s flimsy paper disposable slippers, and searched the room.
Tao Tianran was gone.
She picked up her phone to call her.
It was off.
When Tao Tianran walked back up the narrow ramp to the homestay, she saw a thin silhouette standing under the massive green apple tree.
Dusk was deepening into night, and the surroundings were a rich grey. Cheng Xiang stood there with her hands behind her back, a shirt thrown over her little dress as a jacket. The moment she saw Tao Tianran, she ran toward her.
Before Tao Tianran could react, Cheng Xiang wrapped her slender arms around her.
Her palm patted her back gently. “It’s okay, it’s okay now.”
Tao Tianran froze.
She didn’t know how long Cheng Xiang had been standing outside. The temperature in Kuncheng dropped sharply at night, and her hand was a little cool. After patting Tao Tianran’s back for a while, a warmth began to seep from her palm.
She tilted her head up and asked, “Did you get lost?”
Tao Tianran took her hand. “What?”
“You were gone for so long, and your phone was off,” Cheng Xiang said. “If you hadn’t come back soon, I was going to call the police.”
Tao Tianran hadn’t been lost.
She had just gone for a walk while Cheng Xiang was asleep. Her phone was off because the battery had died, and the note she had left for Cheng Xiang had somehow fluttered to the floor, where Cheng Xiang hadn’t seen it.
As Tao Tianran had strolled, she had thought about Cheng Xiang’s sheer elation.
Is the world really that wonderful? Is it really that worthy of excitement and curiosity?
It was just a window overlooking a rice paddy. Just an ancient apple tree. Just some small, sour green apples.
Tao Tianran had long been aware that her own emotions were muted. But at this moment, as she and Cheng Xiang stood under the apple tree that gave off a tart fragrance, a gentle evening breeze blowing, Cheng Xiang’s warm palm patting her back and murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay now”—
Tao Tianran thought to herself: Was I lost?
Perhaps she really had been lost.
From her grandmother’s bungalow with the ditch out front, to the hidden mansion on the hillside, to the extravagant villa in Banshan.
Her identity was always changing, her circumstances always in flux. Maybe she truly had gotten lost somewhere in all that moving around.
That night, they went to eat Dai-style hand-pulled rice. Cheng Xiang put on gloves, mixed the yellow rice and purple rice with the spicy chicken and dried beef, then rolled it into a ball and handed it to Tao Tianran. “You have to eat it in one bite.”
“If it’s spicy, drink this tamarind juice.”
She tried a bite herself, her brow furrowing slightly as she rubbed the small bump between her eyebrows.
Tao Tianran asked, “Do you think it’s good?”
Cheng Xiang glanced around furtively to make sure the owner wasn’t nearby, then whispered, “To be honest, it’s not very good. I saw a lot of people on Little X Book2 say the taste is, well, just average.”
Tao Tianran: “Then why did you pick this place?”
Cheng Xiang pointed to the blue peacock head on the massive round platter. “Because I thought this looked cool. It has that Yun Province vibe, you know what I mean?”
That night, Cheng Xiang got diarrhea.
She collapsed on the bed, clutching her stomach, her voice as faint as a wisp of smoke. “Tao Tianran, maybe you should go get another room next door.”
“Why?”
“Because I have diarrhea.” Cheng Xiang clung to her last thread of life. “How can I let you see me with diarrhea?”
As she spoke, Cheng Xiang couldn’t hold back a certain emission of gas.
Instantly, a deathly silence fell over the room.
Tao Tianran said softly, “I didn’t hear anything.”
Cheng Xiang burrowed under the pillow, pulling the covers over her head, and said in a tone of utter despair, “What did I do wrong in my past life?”
In the end, Tao Tianran did not get another room.
She went to the front desk to get medicine for Cheng Xiang. The receptionist said knowingly, “Was it the Dai-style hand-pulled rice? A lot of people get an upset stomach from that place.”
After her shower, Tao Tianran lifted the covers and lay down beside Cheng Xiang.
Cheng Xiang was under the covers, playing dead. Her mind was on the two-meter-wide bed, feeling quite regretful.
Back then, she and Tao Tianran hadn’t been together for long, not yet at the stage of renting a place together near graduation. They hadn’t even kissed yet. But she’d already had ulterior motives, taking the giant leap of booking a single king-sized bed for their trip.
She never expected such a dismal end.
Sigh. Cheng Xiang kept her eyes closed, but she felt too resentful to give up. She cracked one eyelid open to peek at Tao Tianran.
How can she sleep so neatly? Cheng Xiang had never seen anyone sleep flat on their back like that. She was a thin silhouette; if not for the weight of the blanket, it felt like she could be blown away by the wind at any moment.
Float into the night. Float to the moon.
“Xiao Xiang,” Tao Tianran suddenly said.
“Huh?” Cheng Xiang jumped.
“Can’t sleep?”
Cheng Xiang didn’t dare make any sudden moves. Under the covers, she just stretched her foot out until she found Tao Tianran’s ankle and rubbed it gently. “Tao Tianran.”
“Mm?” Tao Tianran’s eyes remained closed.
Cheng Xiang propped herself on one hand, lying on her side, and gazed at Tao Tianran in the apple-scented moonlight streaming through the window.
“I’m scared to sleep.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid you’ll get lost again. What if your phone dies in my dream too, and we get separated?”
Tao Tianran, eyes still closed, said softly, “Then we’ll meet under the apple tree.”
Cheng Xiang smiled, her foot hooking around her ankle. “You mean the apple tree outside our room? If we get separated in a dream, we’ll meet under this tree?”
“Mm,” Tao Tianran replied. “So you can sleep.”
“It’s a deal?”
“It’s a deal.”
Cheng Xiang let out a small sigh of relief and finally closed her eyes.
A long time later, when a university-graduated Tao Tianran sat in the Banshan mansion in Gangdao and heard her third aunt’s friend use the word “lost,” she suddenly remembered this episode.
Cheng Xiang had actually never discussed her post-graduation plans with her.
She had only asked once, “Will you go back to Gangdao after you graduate?”
Tao Tianran had said, “No.”
And now, sitting before her grandfather, Tao Tianran said the same thing. “I don’t plan on coming back.”
Her grandfather raised an eyebrow.
Tao Tianran’s mother, sitting to one side, shot her desperate looks as her grandfather asked, “Why?”
Tao Tianran replied, “My girlfriend is in Beicheng.”
Tao Tianran’s mother closed her eyes.
It was over. It was all over.
No matter how progressive society had become, for an old-fashioned family like theirs, a daughter having a girlfriend was something that could never be discussed openly.
Her grandfather was silent for a long time, then smiled. “Who is she?”
Tao Tianran said, “Her surname is Cheng. She’s a manga artist.”
When she walked out of that mansion, the autumn wind was mild, and the lights of Banshan twinkled like scattered stars.
After coming out, she could no longer return to the mainstream of the Tao family. It felt as though, walking out of here, there was no turning back.
But what did it matter?
Someone was waiting for her to come home.
After returning to Beicheng with Cheng Xiang from their business trip to Gangdao, Tao Tianran went to a market.
She was too tall, tall and thin, dressed in a khaki trench coat that reached her ankles. Above the sharp collar of her shirt, the faint blue veins tracing the elegant line of her neck were visible. The aunties and uncles all glanced her way. One auntie, with a thick Beicheng accent, asked, “Are they filming a TV show? Look at the vibe she’s giving off. How come I don’t see any cameras?”
Tao Tianran walked through the entire market.
She went from one fruit stall to the next, asking, “Do you have a type of apple? It’s very small, green, and very tart when you bite into it.”
“Nope. How about you buy these, miss? Red Fuji. Crisp and sweet, and super juicy.”
Tao Tianran shook her head.
When she walked out of the market, it was dusk again, and the streetlights were beginning to glow like scattered stars.
She was lost once more, and she had lost the person she wanted to see.
There was no apple tree here. And she had failed, in the end, to buy those small, green, unripe apples.
Footnotes
- A direct reference to the popular 2023 Chinese drama 'Meet Yourself' (去有风的地方), which is set in Yunnan (the real-world counterpart to the story's Yun Province) and sparked a major tourism boom.
- A common way to self-censor the name of the popular Chinese social media and e-commerce platform Xiǎohóngshū (小红书), literally 'Little Red Book.'
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