The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 45

by Little Panda

What the Hell Are You Doing?

Cheng Xiang asked in disbelief.

[Perhaps one day we will meet again,
and smile as we exchange pleasantries, saying: The weather is so nice, the wind is gentle.
Saying: Life is truly ordinary, with no twists or sorrows. ¹]

Yi Yu took another loud bite of her apple.

She opened the security door wider, clearing the entryway. “What are you yelling about? Get in here first.”

“No,” Cheng Xiang said, keeping a firm grip on her suitcase. “I don’t want to see you on my day off. It feels like unpaid overtime.”

Yi Yu snorted. “I’m about to leave anyway.”

Qin Ziqiao appeared behind Yi Yu, wearing slippers. “Just come in.”

Cheng Xiang figured it wasn’t right to stand in the hallway with her suitcase, so she went inside.

She glanced at the Pikachu onesie pajamas Yi Yu was wearing—the very same ones she and Qin Ziqiao had bought together ages ago.

Seeing the sour look on her face, Yi Yu said, “Alright, I’m the shou², okay?”

Clatter.

The suitcase Cheng Xiang was holding toppled to the floor.

Yi Yu tossed the apple core into the trash, wiped her hands on a tissue, and said to Qin Ziqiao, “I’m heading out, then. Otherwise, look at that face—you could wrap dumplings with it.”

Qin Ziqiao nodded calmly. “Mm.”

Yi Yu went into the bedroom and changed. She emerged in a new Chinese-style dress, a massive Dzi bead resting on her chest. With her long, flowing hair that reached her waist like a dancer’s, she looked every bit the big shot.

But Qin Ziqiao’s apartment was small and the entryway was narrow. As she passed Cheng Xiang, she said, “Excuse me, please let me through.”

Cheng Xiang flattened herself against the wall like a poster.

Yi Yu gave a wave. “Ciao~”

The security door swung slowly shut. Like a robot, Cheng Xiang turned her head with a mechanical creak-creak to stare at Qin Ziqiao.

Qin Ziqiao’s expression was still placid. “Want an apple?” she asked.

“Who cares about apples!” Cheng Xiang hastily changed into slippers and scrambled over to Qin Ziqiao’s side in a few quick steps. “What the hell is going on with you two? I’ve been wanting to ask since Ghost Laugh Mountain!”

“It’s exactly what you see,” Qin Ziqiao said with a shrug.

“Then—then—then, how did you two get together?”

“That time you had her bring me the souvenir from Thailand.”

“Wh-wh-wh-why!”

Having worked with Yi Yu for a while, Cheng Xiang had some understanding of her.

She was a mystery. Not because she kept people at arm’s length—she was quite good at trading witty banter with a smile, which dissolved the distance her face created. Her real mystery lay in her deep-seated, pampered nature; in the way she used her passion for certain material things to mask her true indifference to the world.

Her unspeakable family background gave her a sense of jadedness toward even the finest things. Cheng Xiang had heard from others at the company that she had never been in any kind of relationship. There wasn’t even anyone who could get remotely close to her.

Then-then-then-then-then… Cheng Xiang’s eyes widened as she stared at Qin Ziqiao.

Qin Ziqiao pulled over a chair and sat down. “She came looking for me that day to drop off the gift and asked if I knew anywhere fun to go. A bar, or whatever, anywhere was fine.”

“What bars would I have been to? The only time I ever went was when Xiangzi dragged me there to hide in a corner and watch the long-legged young ladies smoke, and then we’d lament how unsophisticated we were.”

“I told her I didn’t know any. She said she was bored to death. I thought about it and said, ‘Then come with me.’”

Cheng Xiang’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “So where did you take her?”

“The zoo.”

“Huh?”

“I took her to feed the capybaras,” Qin Ziqiao said.

The pampered Big Boss Yi Yu, with her unspeakable family background and the unbridgeable distance she kept from everyone around her, had never suffered a single hardship or had a single close friend in her entire life.

That day at Beicheng Zoo, she stood under the scorching sun in a full rubber jumpsuit, one hand on her hip, the other leaning on a pitchfork. The tines of the fork were still stuck with the grass she had just forked over for the capybaras.

Beads of sweat rolled down Big Boss Yi Yu’s forehead. Her eyes were a little dazed by the sun. She thought to herself:

Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

After leaving the zoo, Qin Ziqiao treated Yi Yu to a bowl of old Beicheng zhajiangmian at the alley entrance. It was one of those places with no side dishes, where the only thing on the menu was zhajiangmian.

Big Boss Yi Yu, who was usually listless even when eating truffles, downed two bowls in a row that day.

Finally, she pulled out a tissue, wiped her mouth, and let out a satisfied sigh. Patting her stomach, she looked at the bright-eyed, handsome girl sitting across from her.

Qin Ziqiao had monolids and a rather cool look. Back at Attached Seventh High, some girls had secretly asked Cheng Xiang about her. Cheng Xiang would always just wave her hand and laugh, saying she hadn’t had her awakening yet.

The first twenty-six years of Qin Ziqiao’s life had been immersed in post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels, growing green onions, and raising capybaras.

Her skin wasn’t fair; it was a substantial, sweet, golden-brown tanned by the zoo’s sun, which made her eyelashes seem tinged with pale gold. Yi Yu gazed at her and blinked. “I want to ask you a question.”

“I can’t treat you to another bowl.” Qin Ziqiao finished the last bite of her noodles. “This zhajiangmian is a little expensive.”

“That’s not it,” Yi Yu said. “I wanted to ask, do you have a girlfriend?”

“And then you two started dating?” Cheng Xiang let out a howl.

“Why are you so worked up?” Qin Ziqiao glanced at her. “Are we that close?”

Of course we are! Cheng Xiang roared internally. We couldn’t be closer, sis! I’ve seen you in split-crotch pants! I never would have imagined this!

But then Qin Ziqiao said, “We’re not dating.”

“Then?”

“It’s just a purely physical relationship.”

Calling a physical relationship “pure”—Qin Ziqiao’s command of the language was really something else.

Cheng Xiang sat in a daze, remembering the time in high school when she was chasing Tao Tianran. Qin Ziqiao would always walk slowly with her by the little bamboo grove, listening to her talk about trivial things.

“Can you believe Tao Tianran actually had fried dough sticks for breakfast today? I thought she only ate bread.”

“Tao Tianran sneezed in Chinese class.”

“Tao Tianran started her eight-hundred-meter run with her left foot in PE today, hahaha, isn’t that cute?”

Qin Ziqiao was baffled. “What’s wrong with starting with her left foot?”

“Don’t most people start with their right?”

“No, they start with their left,” Qin Ziqiao said, frowning.

“Really?” Cheng Xiang hissed, starting to doubt herself.

The two of them stood by a crack in the flagstones, getting into a starting stance.

“Hey…”

It was just like when you stare at a word for too long and suddenly forget how to read it. After trying for a long time, they found they couldn’t even remember how to get into a starting position.

Qin Ziqiao raised an eyebrow. “I really don’t get it.”

“No, but really, is it the left foot or the right foot first?” Cheng Xiang asked, her fists clenched, still hung up on it.

Qin Ziqiao let out a breath. “Liking someone is such a hassle, isn’t it? What does it matter what she ate for breakfast, whether she sneezed, or which foot she starts a race with? Why would you want to like someone?”

Cheng Xiang’s lips pressed together, then relaxed, the corners turning up. “Oh my god, Qiaoqiao!”

Qin Ziqiao shoved her. “Don’t call me that, it’s gross.”

Cheng Xiang’s lips were still curved. “You’ve stumped me. I don’t know why either.”

“But sometimes, you just find yourself liking someone, for no reason at all.”

Many years later, she sat in her old friend’s tiny apartment and asked, in the tone of her own mother, Director Ma, “So do you like Big Boss Yi?”

Qin Ziqiao shrugged, looking unconcerned.

Cheng Xiang suspected she still preferred capybaras.

Cheng Xiang leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling, finally releasing the breath she’d been holding in surprise. “I’m so envious. I’m so envious of your purely physical relationship.”

Qin Ziqiao: …?

After eating all of Qin Ziqiao’s potato chips, Cheng Xiang finally left and returned to the Yu residence.

The next day, she packed a few things and moved out of the Yu family villa.

Only Yu Yuluo was there to see her off. She hugged her around the waist but didn’t say a word.

Cheng Xiang patted her head and smiled. “Don’t want me to go?”

“No.” Yu Yuluo buried her face in her sister’s side, her voice muffled. “I think you should have left a long time ago. When I grow up, I’m going to leave too.”

She looked up. “But you have to come back and see me.”

“Okay.”

“Actually, don’t come back to see me. We’ll meet up somewhere else.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll take me to the movies, and you have to treat me to McDonald’s.”

“Okay.”

“The reason we’re not eating KFC is that KFC comes with Pepsi, and Pepsi isn’t as good as Coca-Cola.”

Cheng Xiang laughed. “Okay.”

Yu Yuluo tightened her arms around her waist and whispered, “Jiejie.”

She looked up at Cheng Xiang and bit her lip. “You have to be a little happier.”

Cheng Xiang patted her head.

She really did feel that she had to live a little happier, for Yu Yusheng’s sake.

After thinking about it for a long time, she still tucked Yu Yusheng’s old high school uniform and that little palm-sized diary into her suitcase. She brought them to her new rented apartment and carefully stored them in the very back of her closet.

At least this way, the sentences Yu Yusheng had written with her own hand—sentences identical to the ones Cheng Xiang had poured out to her tree hole—would be properly cherished, instead of being forever steeped in repression.

Qiao Zhiji, surprisingly, did not contact Cheng Xiang again.

The next time she had to see her was to view the jewelry she had ordered at the studio.

Tao Tianran had arranged to meet Cheng Xiang there first to wait for Qiao Zhiji.

Once the Spring Festival was over, a sense of spring, of orioles taking flight and grass growing long, had abruptly arrived. The studio was a two-story building in an industrial cement style. Tao Tianran wore a long trench coat the color of deep cattail ash over a pair of trousers and loafers, revealing ankles that had been hidden away all winter, now pale and white.

The still-withered reeds outside the small building brushed lightly against her calves.

Because she was working in the studio today, she wore her pair of gold-rimmed glasses, which hid the tiny old scar under her eye that looked like a falling tear. She squinted slightly in the early spring sunlight.

Cheng Xiang walked over. “Hi.”

She dipped her chin, a gesture of greeting.

“The weather’s so nice today,” Cheng Xiang said.

She nodded. “It is.”

“The wind feels like spring, too. It’s so gentle,” Cheng Xiang added.

Tao Tianran nodded again. “It is.”

Her last word had barely faded when a wave of sorrow washed over Cheng Xiang.

She had thought about it before.

She had thought that after she and Tao Tianran broke up, maybe, many, many years later, they might meet again at the end of a street. She would be able to stand before Tao Tianran and say with a smile that the weather was nice, and the wind was gentle.

Maybe by then they would be much older. Tao Tianran might casually ask about her past, and she would curve her lips into a smile and say that her life was very ordinary, with no worries and no troubles.

Just like now.

She and Tao Tianran were standing together among the early spring reeds, talking about the fine weather, talking about the gentle spring breeze.

As if their lives were ordinary, with no worries and no troubles.

Cheng Xiang almost frantically lowered her head, no longer able to look at Tao Tianran’s face, and stared instead at the pale ankles visible below her trouser cuffs.

If that were really the case…

Why did Tao Tianran look so calm, yet was so thin that her trench coat seemed to hang empty around her?

As if the coat wasn’t meant to block the wind, but to catch a gust of it, just before she drifted away with it.

Qiao Zhiji approached from a distance.

Great. Cheng Xiang’s head started to ache again, her temples throbbing as if they’d been stuffed with two packs of popping candy.

Here we go again with this complicated situation.

She was actually quite afraid that Qiao Zhiji would ask her, right in front of Tao Tianran, “Who are you?”

But Qiao Zhiji didn’t. The three of them exchanged greetings and quietly entered the studio.

Tao Tianran took off her trench coat and casually draped it over the back of a chair. She was wearing a linen-cotton shirt today, not as crisp as her usual office attire. She looked more like a bohemian artist. Unfastening her cuffs, she rolled up her sleeves as she walked toward the cutting machine.

Cheng Xiang watched her move.

Once, she had even wanted to become a button on Tao Tianran’s cuff, to be close to her pulse, to trace the source of her heartbeat.

Tao Tianran inspected the shape of the gemstone, then put on her safety goggles and did some fine polishing. She called Qiao Zhiji, who was waiting nearby, to come and have a look.

It was a VVS1-grade Fancy Dark Green diamond, the color of a deep phoenix tree branch. Its clarity and brilliance were enough to make anyone scream, whether they knew anything about jewelry or not.

But Qiao Zhiji merely glanced at it with a placid air, as if she were truly just looking at a phoenix tree leaf.

Fine, fine, Cheng Xiang thought. You’re all real big shots. I’m the only poor one here.

The design had come from Cheng Xiang’s hand, but when it came to cutting and setting, Tao Tianran was clearly more experienced. She would take the lead on the production side, which would also put Yi Yu at ease.

Tao Tianran asked Qiao Zhiji if she had any feedback.

Qiao Zhiji nodded, expressing her satisfaction.

But then she suddenly asked, “Teacher Tao, are you able to guide a work like this because you’re also carrying someone in your heart?”

Jewelry setting—many people thought it was a technical skill, but few knew it was also an art. Gemstones forged in the depths of the earth’s crust over hundreds of millions of years had their own breath. With every inhalation and exhalation, the angle of a facet, down to the millimeter, could express a completely different emotion.

Tao Tianran put down the polisher and looked toward where Qiao Zhiji and Cheng Xiang were standing.

Oh, god. Cheng Xiang’s shoulders tensed. President Qiao really dared to ask anything!

But she found she was also anticipating Tao Tianran’s answer.

Then Tao Tianran’s gaze fell on her face, trembled, and dropped like a falling leaf to her shoulder, before fluttering down to her feet.

“During work hours,” Tao Tianran said, “I don’t discuss private matters.”

Qiao Zhiji smiled faintly. “Will we ever have time to discuss private matters?”

Tao Tianran paused. “No.”

Tao Tianran was busy and had to leave first, so Cheng Xiang was tasked with escorting Qiao Zhiji back to her car.

Cheng Xiang walked unhurriedly, following behind Qiao Zhiji like a quail. The early spring sun was serene, and Qiao Zhiji didn’t speak either.

Maybe that time Qiao Zhiji asked ‘Who are you?’ was just a test, Cheng Xiang thought. Who would ever suspect that someone right next to them wasn’t who they claimed to be? That’s the stuff of supernatural thrillers.

She relaxed a little and put on her best professional face, pulling open the car door for Qiao Zhiji. “Take care, President Qiao.”

Qiao Zhiji got into the driver’s seat. Cheng Xiang closed the door for her, put on a standard, toothy smile, and even waved.

Qiao Zhiji rolled down the window and glanced at her. “As for who you are, you’ll find a way to tell me, right?”

Her tone was utterly certain.

Cheng Xiang froze. Qiao Zhiji had already driven away.

When Cheng Xiang got home, she sat cross-legged on the sofa as if meditating.

She replayed all the events of the past several months in her mind.

Then she stood up and walked to the mirror on the wall.

The mirror in Yu Yusheng’s bedroom had been embedded in something that looked like a melting clock. Cheng Xiang had later looked it up and found it was by a top Spanish artist. When she saw the price, she nearly had a heart attack.

After moving out of the Yu residence, she’d noticed her new rental apartment was missing a mirror and had casually bought one from Muji.

She looked at the person in the mirror. An overly thick mane of fluffy, curly hair made her look like a desert rose. Framed by the curls was a face with cat-like, amber, alluring eyes, the corners tilted slightly upward. Her nose, too, was like a cat’s—small and rounded, upturned, with a tiny, light brown mole.

When she narrowed her thickly lashed eyes, she looked bewitching, languid, and unapproachable.

Cheng Xiang tried to speak to the person in the mirror. “I’m not Yu Yusheng.”

Her heart gave a sudden lurch, as if it were about to break free from her chest and leap out. Cheng Xiang pressed a hand to her heart. Her vision started to go dark. The image in the mirror wavered, like the unstable television signals from her childhood, the people on screen distorting and shaking.

Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, and a wave of nausea washed over her. “I’m C—”

She hadn’t even managed to get out the “Cheng” sound, just a hiss between her teeth, when she pitched forward and collapsed onto the floor.

When Cheng Xiang woke up, she was a little disoriented. Outside the window, dusk was falling.

Her phone lay beside her, its screen shattered. Lying on the floor, she thought: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

Oh, right.

She pushed herself up from the floor with her hands, hissing in pain. She realized she’d bruised her knee when she fell. Ugh, she shouldn’t have been so cheap. She should have put a rug in the room.

Back when she had just transmigrated and tried to find Director Ma and Deputy Director Cheng, she had known she couldn’t talk about it. So much time had passed, but it seemed nothing had changed.

What about writing, then?

Cheng Xiang actually wanted to laugh. She had never encountered such a stupid system. If she couldn’t say it, she could just write it, right? What was the point of the restriction?

But she was still determined to try, just in case.

The moment the pen tip touched the paper, it happened again. Heart pounding, vision blackening, palpitations, nausea.

Alright, alright. Cheng Xiang tossed the pen aside and went back to the mirror.

What about hinting? Since Qiao Zhiji already suspected her, maybe she could give her some clues.

She tried speaking to the mirror. “You know, there used to be a chatterbox in Class 3-2 at Attached Seventh High…”

Thud. Cheng Xiang collapsed onto the floor again.

When she came to, she gritted her teeth and tried again.

“In Beicheng, there’s an alley called Hundred Flowers Alley, and inside there’s a siheyuan…”

“President Qiao, did you know that some siheyuans have historically leftover illegal structures? I’m not asking you to report them, you’d never guess, but some bedrooms even have a phoenix—”

“Hahaha, did you know some people turn into launching quails when they get on an airplane…”

Thud.

No matter how obscure her phrasing, Cheng Xiang collapsed onto the floor again and again.

The last time she woke up, she slowly turned her head and saw that the sky outside was already bright.

She struggled to sit up from the floor and found her left knee was swollen to the size of a steamed bun. Cheng Xiang sucked in a sharp breath. Why did she always land on her left knee when she fainted? Couldn’t it spare the right knee a few times?

She waited a moment before standing up and dragging her battered knee out to get breakfast.

She was a girl who had grown up in the alleys. To be honest, she had barely even been out of the country before. Now she was jetting all over the place with elite women like Tao Tianran and Qiao Zhiji, even going to Seychelles. It felt unreal, ungrounded.

So this time, she had rented an apartment back in a familiar hutong. It was well-renovated, not damp or infested with termites. But as soon as she stepped outside, it was the world Cheng Xiang knew—vendors selling bottled yogurt and fried sugar oil cakes.

Cheng Xiang dragged her knee over to buy a cake. “I’ll have one. No.”

Her voice was filled with tragic gravitas. “Better make it two. And a cup of soy milk.”

After a whole night of falling, she deserved it!

The woman selling the cakes saw her hugely swollen left knee and grinned. “Hey, girl, you’ve already got a steamed bun of your own, why are you buying my cakes?”

She then asked, “How’d you do that?”

Cheng Xiang certainly couldn’t tell the truth, so she mumbled, “I have low blood sugar, I keep falling over on the floor.”

“Are you a bit dense, girl?” The woman shot her a look. “You say you get dizzy, so why do you keep walking around on the floor? Wouldn’t it be better to lie on the bed?”

Cheng Xiang froze.

Oh, god. Goosebumps erupted all over her skin. Did transmigration lower your IQ? She was seriously starting to doubt herself.

If she knew she was going to faint over and over, why couldn’t she have just tried it while lying on the bed?! Or even sitting on the sofa!

Cheng Xiang sighed and said to the woman, “Actually, give me three. No, wait, give me six.”

“Whoa, can you eat all that?”

Cheng Xiang rubbed her nose. “Your cakes smell so good. It makes me miss my mom.”

There used to be a small stall selling sugar oil cakes just outside her family’s hutong, too.

When Cheng Xiang was little, Director Ma and Deputy Director Cheng would laze in bed and always send her to the alley entrance to buy breakfast.

“Do you know how we old Beicheng people buy breakfast?” Cheng Xiang had once asked Tao Tianran smugly.

By then, they were already living together. On the rare weekend morning when they weren’t busy, she would pull Tao Tianran into lazing in bed with her, resting her head on Tao Tianran’s stomach and kicking up one leg.

“Mm?”

“What do you mean, ‘mm?’ You have to play along. You have to ask me: ‘How so?’”

“How so?”

Cheng Xiang pouted. Tao Tianran, this Gangdao native, really couldn’t grasp the essence of the Beicheng accent.

But she didn’t mind. She turned her head slightly, beaming at Tao Tianran, and held up a single index finger.

“?” Tao Tianran asked. “You want to do it?”

“What are you talking about!” Cheng Xiang gave Tao Tianran’s forearm a light slap. “This is a chopstick! A chopstick! We old Beicheng people never use plastic bags for sugar oil cakes. The steam gets trapped and they lose their crispiness and don’t taste as good.”

“But how do you carry so many piping hot cakes?” she asked, her nose in the air. “We use a chopstick. One chopstick can string five sugar oil cakes.”

She counted on her fingers. “Two for Director Ma, two for Deputy Director Cheng, and one for me.”

Tao Tianran’s eyelids drooped, her lashes pointing down. “Mm.”

Cheng Xiang snuck a glance at Tao Tianran from below.

Sigh. If Tao Tianran wouldn’t ask, she would just have to tell her. Who else was going to spoil her?

So she gave Tao Tianran’s arm a little shake. “Tao Tianran, let me tell you, a chopstick is actually pretty long.”

Tao Tianran: “?”

“What I mean is, if you squeeze them a little, you can fit six sugar oil cakes on one chopstick.”

She squeezed Tao Tianran’s slender fingers. “I can eat two sugar oil cakes now, but I can eat a little less. That way, my mom gets two, my dad gets two, you get one, and I get one.”

Tao Tianran fell silent.

Cheng Xiang secretly watched her expression. “If you don’t think that’s enough, you can have one and a half. Half is enough for me. I’m getting a tummy lately.”

“It’s enough,” Tao Tianran said softly after a moment. “One for you, one for me.”

Cheng Xiang’s spirits lifted.

She gripped Tao Tianran’s fingers. “Then it’s a deal. Someday when we stay at my parents’ house for a night, I’ll get up early and buy you sugar oil cakes. They’re so delicious, really. They’re super, super delicious.”

Cheng Xiang felt her vocabulary was utterly impoverished.

She wasn’t a poet; she couldn’t put into words how much she liked Tao Tianran. All her affection for Tao Tianran was hidden in the heavy stress she put on “super, super.”

Her world was very small. It didn’t have many wonderful things.

But she would hastily gather up all the good things in her world and present them to Tao Tianran.

Sigh. Cheng Xiang sniffled. Just thinking about it made her sad again.

They broke up before they ever spent a night together at her parents’ house. Even though Cheng Xiang had told Tao Tianran, “My parents actually quite like you.”

“Why?”

Tao Tianran didn’t understand what there was for parents to like about someone like her, with her cold face and detached personality.

“It’s true,” Cheng Xiang had said. “My mom said that at least someone like you wouldn’t try to fool people.”

Now, Cheng Xiang stood at the hutong entrance, taking the six sugar oil cakes from the woman.

She was no longer the little girl in a tank top and shorts, running to buy breakfast with a single chopstick held high. She wore someone else’s face, dressed in a respectable shirt, and stood here.

The chopstick she had promised Tao Tianran was gone from her hand. The sugar oil cakes the woman handed her could only be put in a thin, white plastic bag, the inside already fogged with steam.

If I carry them all the way like this, Cheng Xiang thought sadly, will they still be crispy?

She got on the bus heading toward her family’s siheyuan. Early spring sunlight streamed through the window, dappling her in light and shadow.

After getting off the bus and walking into her family’s hutong, she saw, to her surprise, a tall, slender figure.

It was Tao Tianran.

At this time of year, Tao Tianran always wore gray coats—dove gray, swallow-feather gray, pine-soot gray. Standing in the spring sunlight, she looked like an out-of-place visitor.

Just as Cheng Xiang approached, she happened to turn her head, her gaze landing on the sugar oil cakes in Cheng Xiang’s hand.

The sunlight slowed to a movie’s slow motion, sliced into pieces by the clear spring light, weaving through Tao Tianran’s long lashes. She stood with a restrained posture, her hands in her trench coat pockets, her gaze placid.

But suddenly, in an instant, her eyes turned red.

Then she lowered her head and began to walk quickly forward.

Cheng Xiang stood frozen in place.

The hutong entrance was narrow. To get through, Tao Tianran had to pass by Cheng Xiang. The hem of her trench coat brushed hastily against Cheng Xiang’s trousers. The movement stirred a breeze carrying the scent of sugar oil cakes. Cheng Xiang remained standing there, stunned.

It wasn’t until Tao Tianran had passed her that Cheng Xiang suddenly seemed to snap out of it. She raised her hand and seized Tao Tianran’s wrist.

If she were Yu Yusheng now, she shouldn’t be making such a move.

But the action was pure instinct. Tao Tianran, likely not expecting it, whipped her head around. Cheng Xiang felt a teardrop slide from Tao Tianran’s jaw and land right on the web of her thumb.

It was so hot it stung.

“What the hell are you doing, Tao Tianran?” she heard herself ask, her voice filled with disbelief. “Why… are you crying?”

The author has something to say:

Note: “The weather is so nice, the wind is gentle, and I can still manage a tired smile in the slanting sun, saying: Life is utterly ordinary, with no twists or sorrows” — from Xi Murong’s “Imprint.”

Footnotes

From the poem 'Imprint' (《印记》) by Taiwanese poet Xi Murong. The author's note at the end provides the full original line.
In Chinese BL/GL (Boys' Love/Girls' Love) fandom terminology, the 'shou' (受) refers to the receptive partner, equivalent to a 'bottom.'

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The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 45

Footnotes

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