The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 46

Bedroom

Tao Tianran: “Want to do bad things?”

[If I could do it all over again, I would still break up with you.
But on the day we broke up, I would want to properly say “goodbye.”]

            

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Tao Tianran never expected to cry.

She had been swamped with work since returning to the country. It wasn’t until yesterday, when she met Qiao Zhiji at the studio, that a colleague asked her, “Teacher Tao, you haven’t had a proper rest since you went back to Gangdao for the new year, have you?”

Tao Tianran said, “I didn’t go back to Gangdao.”

            

“What?” The colleague’s expression was one of clear surprise. “You didn’t spend the new year with your parents?”

Tao Tianran’s family ties were thin; she never considered it a regret not to spend the new year with them. For her, it was more like a liberation.

But her colleague’s tone suddenly made her think of Cheng Xiang.

            

She thought of an ordinary day many years ago. It was a Saturday, and Cheng Xiang was leaning softly against her stomach, recounting a childhood memory of buying sugar oil cakes¹ with a single chopstick.

Then Cheng Xiang had said in a very serious tone, “Tao Tianran, I’m telling you, a single chopstick is actually pretty long. If you squish them together, you can string on six sugar oil cakes.”

“Two for my mom, two for my dad, one for you, and one for me.”

            

Tao Tianran had actually seen Cheng Xiang’s parents very few times.

But from Cheng Xiang’s tone, for some inexplicable reason, she had realized for the first time that perhaps a home could be a very warm place.

The home that had raised a Xiao Xiang like this could be a very warm place.

            

And so, on another ordinary Saturday morning in her life, inexplicably, she found herself at the mouth of the alley where Cheng Xiang’s parents lived.

She didn’t dare go in to visit.

She just wanted to stand there, to peer into the alley and see what the little stall that sold sugar oil cakes, the one Cheng Xiang had talked about, actually looked like.

            

She had never once paid it any mind before.

But the people of old Beicheng had a certain laziness in their bones. So long after the Spring Festival, the sugar oil cake stall hadn’t even opened for business. It was covered with a plastic sheet, a sign hanging on it wishing everyone a prosperous new year.

Tao Tianran prepared to leave.

            

But then, she ran into Cheng Xiang, who was standing right there holding a bag of sugar oil cakes.

Tao Tianran had never thought she would cry.

After all, when Director Ma had called to inform her of Cheng Xiang’s death, she hadn’t cried.

            

When she stood in the distance outside the funeral home, watching Cheng Xiang’s funeral, she hadn’t cried.

Even when she’d asked that question—”Are you Xiao Xiang?”—and hadn’t received the answer she wanted, she still hadn’t cried.

She drank a lot of alcohol and felt a searing pain in her stomach, but she never cried.

            

So this is what it feels like to cry, Tao Tianran thought.

A person’s tear ducts are only ever struck by truly ordinary things, so ordinary they feel as if they’ve been freshly plucked from your memories.

So ordinary that you once believed such moments were just the unremarkable, everyday backdrop of your life.

            

The ancient poetry of China was a vast and boundless ocean, yet the most heart-wrenching line within it was, in the end, just a simple phrase—

「At the time, it was only thought to be ordinary².」

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Cheng Xiang had never thought Tao Tianran would cry.

            

To be sure, when she was Cheng Xiang, lying on that snowy crosswalk, she had thought: What a pity. I never even got to see Tao Tianran cry for me.

And when she was Yu Yusheng, sitting in that coffee shop, she had said, “Teacher Tao, for someone like you, I’d really love to see you cry.”

But when Tao Tianran’s tears actually fell onto the back of her hand, what she felt was disbelief, dread, and even a kind of anger.

            

She asked Tao Tianran, “What are you crying for?”

Why didn’t you cry when we broke up?

Why didn’t you cry when I died?

            

Why didn’t you cry at my funeral?

Why now, three years after my death, when even the compressed biscuits I bought you have expired, are you suddenly crying for no reason at all?

What the hell is this, Tao Tianran?

            

Tao Tianran said in a low voice, “Let go.”

Cheng Xiang was gripping her thin wrist tightly.

Tao Tianran wrenched her arm away, and Cheng Xiang’s fingers were left clutching at empty air. The hem of Tao Tianran’s windbreaker fluttered as she walked away in a hurry, quickly disappearing around the corner of the alley.

            

Cheng Xiang stood where she was, head bowed. After a long moment, she raised her right hand and began to wipe the web of her thumb, rubbing it over and over with force.

That was where Tao Tianran’s tears had landed.

So for such a cold person, tears were still hot.

            

An auntie rode past her on a bicycle. “Girl, what are you spacing out for? Why are you carrying your sugar oil cakes in a bag like that? If you let them get any more steamed up, they won’t be good anymore.”

Cheng Xiang looked up, the words “Auntie Liu” catching in her throat.

Oh, she couldn’t say that.

            

She was no longer Cheng Xiang, so how would she know the neighborhood auntie who had lived in this alley her whole life?

So she just raised her eyes and smiled. “Thank you.”

She carried the sugar oil cakes toward her family’s siheyuan³.

            

But when she reached the entrance, she didn’t dare knock. She just stood there, stock-still, the spring sunlight scalding the back of her neck, making the muscles there tighten.

Just then, Director Ma came out, turning back to complain to Deputy Director Cheng, “It’s not open, it’s not open! I told you that sugar oil cake stall isn’t open yet, why did you have to make me go look…”

As she was speaking, she ran right into Cheng Xiang standing outside the door.

            

Cheng Xiang forced her lips into a smile. “Um, I happened to be in the area for some business. I heard Cheng Xiang mention before that you two like these, so I bought some to bring over.”

Director Ma accepted the bag from her.

As Cheng Xiang turned to leave, Director Ma called out to her. “Hey, girl.”

            

Cheng Xiang looked back.

“Xiao Xiang, she…” Director Ma raised a hand and touched the tip of her nose. It was only then that Cheng Xiang realized that all her own little tics were actually learned from Director Ma. Director Ma asked, “What else did she tell you about us?”

Cheng Xiang smiled.

            

She stood in a slanted beam of sunlight that spilled over the gray-tiled roof of the siheyuan. “She said Deputy Director Cheng mops the floor at home every day and complains about your hair falling out everywhere, and you just say smugly that even though you shed so much, your hair is still thick.”

“She said every time you catch a cold, Deputy Director Cheng will go against the doctor’s orders and secretly buy you an ice cream, saying it’ll help lower your temperature, and that he’s been eating it that way since he was a kid.”

“She said that after all these years, every time you two go out for a stroll in the alley, you still hold hands.”

            

Director Ma shook her head. “We don’t anymore.”

Cheng Xiang looked at her.

“Our daughter, she died without ever finding someone to be with for life. We can’t hold hands anymore. If she saw, how hurt would she be?” As Director Ma spoke, she lifted the bag of sugar oil cakes. “Girl, have you had breakfast? If not, I’ve made soy milk. Why don’t you have some with us?”

            

By the time Cheng Xiang came to her senses, she found herself nodding vigorously, as if she hadn’t eaten in eight lifetimes.

Director Ma set up a small round table in the courtyard and arranged the sugar oil cakes Cheng Xiang had brought on a large porcelain plate. The homemade soy milk was in a big enamelware bowl, pale yellow with a retro-style ink wash print on it. Anyone who wanted some could ladle it into a small porcelain bowl for themselves, adding as much sugar as they pleased.

Director Ma had high blood sugar, so she didn’t add any.

            

The courtyard floor was paved with small square bricks, now badly worn. Around them grew locust trees, jujube trees, and peeking out from behind was the phoenix tree from Cheng Xiang’s bedroom. The smell wasn’t actually that pleasant, because the neighbor’s pigeons treated every surface as their personal toilet.

Warmth radiated out from the house, and the three of them sat under the eaves, basking in the early spring sunlight.

Cheng Xiang had never imagined she would have another chance like this.

            

To sit with her parents and eat a simple breakfast.

When she was lying on that crosswalk in the blizzard, apart from Tao Tianran, the other thing on her mind was these very sugar oil cakes that her parents loved. Because she was cold, so very cold, and when a person is cold, their stomach feels empty, and they can’t help but think of things that are solid, and warm, and can fill both their heart and their stomach.

After breakfast, as was custom, Deputy Director Cheng cleared the table.

            

Director Ma asked Cheng Xiang, “Are you busy?”

Cheng Xiang quickly shook her head. “Not at all.”

In the past, she had always been busy in front of her parents. Busy going to the movies with her best friend, or meeting someone to check out a new mall, or even just lying in her bedroom with her legs dangling, scrolling through her phone. If her parents knocked and asked, “Are you busy?” she would drawl, “I’m bus-y, don’t bother me—”

            

It seemed only at a time like this would she rush to say, “Not busy, not busy at all.”

I can stay with you for a very, very long time.

I want to stay with you for a very, very long time.

            

Director Ma said, “Well, if you’re not busy, why don’t you help me peel some garlic before you go.”

They moved two small stools into the courtyard, a wicker tray filled with single-clove garlic in front of them. Director Ma asked Cheng Xiang, “Do you know how?”

“I do.”

            

Director Ma was a person who, one, absolutely hated folding clothes, and two, absolutely hated peeling garlic.

Ever since Cheng Xiang was a child, her mother would give her fifty cents, later raised to one yuan, to get her to help fold clothes or peel garlic.

Which was why Cheng Xiang was an expert at folding clothes. And an expert at peeling garlic.

            

When she and Tao Tianran had rented an apartment together, she would always fold Tao Tianran’s clothes into neat little squares.

Now, the two of them sat in the small courtyard. The neighbor’s pigeons cooed and strutted around their feet. Director Ma reached into a bamboo basket, grabbed a handful of dried corn kernels, and scattered them on the ground. The birds hurried over on their thin legs to peck at the food.

Cheng Xiang could feel the change in Director Ma’s attitude toward her.

            

From extreme aversion at the beginning, because seeing her would remind her of Cheng Xiang.

To now, wanting her to stay a little longer, yet sighing when they were together, also because seeing her would remind her of Cheng Xiang.

Cheng Xiang mulled it over in her heart: Does this mean Director Ma and Deputy Director Cheng are starting to move on a little?

            

Director Ma glanced at her. “I know why you’re always coming here.”

“Hm?”

“You, and Xiao Xiang’s best friend, Ziqiao, too. You always want to persuade us to move on.”

            

“So you…”

Director Ma smiled and shook her head, tossing a peeled garlic clove into a bag. “It’s not possible.”

Cheng Xiang lowered her head, her thumbnail digging into the pad of her finger.

            

“We never even got to say a proper goodbye to her. In this lifetime, we can never move on.”

After bidding farewell to Deputy Director Cheng and returning home, Cheng Xiang found herself pacing back and forth in the room.

Pacing with her arms crossed.

            

Pacing while biting her fingernails.

Pacing with her arms hanging limply, like a zombie from Plants vs. Zombies.

She was thinking that when she first woke up in Yu Yusheng’s body, she had desperately wanted to reveal that she was Cheng Xiang, simply because she was afraid of her loved ones’ grief.

            

Because her accident had been so sudden, she and her family and friends never had the chance to say a proper “goodbye.”

And now, why was Tao Tianran crying?

Because it finally sank in? Because she felt regret, too?

            

Or even… guilt?

Cheng Xiang didn’t know if Tao Tianran would feel guilty. Guilty for not having loved her enough.

Please don’t, Cheng Xiang thought. What is there to feel guilty about?

            

Some people love deeply, some don’t love enough. The reason love makes people toss and turn at night is precisely because it was never a two-way street.

Sigh. Thinking of it this way, she now felt a little sad for Qiao Zhiji and Yu Yusheng.

It was the same for Qiao Zhiji; she never got the chance to say “goodbye” to Yu Yusheng.

            

The next time she saw Qiao Zhiji was when it was time to check on the progress of the jewelry piece again.

Tao Tianran was away on a business trip and didn’t appear. Cheng Xiang was the one to take Qiao Zhiji to the studio.

Cheng Xiang asked, “President Qiao, please take a look. Are there any modifications you’d like?”

            

Qiao Zhiji shook her head. “No.”

The brooch, with its design theme of “Phoenix Tree,” was gradually taking shape.

The two walked out of the studio. Qiao Zhiji still had her big-shot air about her—long, straight black hair, a long coat paired with wide-leg trousers. She seemed aloof and didn’t exchange another word with Cheng Xiang.

            

She unlocked her Land Rover, about to get in the car.

But from behind her, Cheng Xiang spoke up. “Want to grab a coffee?”

Qiao Zhiji turned back to look at her.

            

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Cheng Xiang had often seen posts on Little X Book about internet-famous field cafes, where a cup cost forty or fifty yuan, which was horrifying to her.

Kunpu’s studio was located in the suburbs. Now, she was in Qiao Zhiji’s car as they drove onward, traversing a narrow ridge between fields, and stopping in front of a small tin hut with a white roof.

They got out of the car and took their seats. The plain wooden barstools hadn’t even been varnished, and the edges dug into her. In front of them was a long, narrow, white-painted bar, its corners rusted through by the rain, revealing coppery-yellow scars.

            

Cheng Xiang scanned the QR code on the table and glanced at the menu.

What on earth did coffees named 【Midsummer Melancholy】 and 【Pineapple Happiness】 even taste like?

Cheng Xiang asked Qiao Zhiji, “Do you want melancholy or happiness?”

            

Haha, what an artistic question.

Qiao Zhiji said, “Either is fine.”

Cheng Xiang thought for a moment and decided to get her the melancholy one. Big shots were all melancholic.

            

As for herself, she’d go with that 【Pineapple Happiness】. At least she could guess what it tasted like—pineapple, duh.

Sixty yuan a cup. Fine, fine. At least they were sitting in this scenic spot, with the cold early spring wind blowing, gazing out at a vast expanse of withered yellow rice paddies. This one hundred and twenty yuan was probably payment for the artistic atmosphere.

When the two cups of coffee were brought over, the one with a rim coated in sea salt was pushed in front of Cheng Xiang.

            

Cheng Xiang took a sip and was a bit baffled.

Huh, this doesn’t taste like pineapple at all.

She watched as Qiao Zhiji next to her also took a sip of coffee. A big shot was a big shot; she had an unshakable composure. Cheng Xiang really couldn’t guess if Qiao Zhiji’s cup of coffee contained the taste of midsummer.

            

Cheng Xiang set down her cup and licked her lips. “Um.”

Qiao Zhiji looked at her.

Cheng Xiang asked, “You, why did you suspect?”

            

She wanted to ask Qiao Zhiji why she suspected she wasn’t Yu Yusheng, but she didn’t know how much she could say before triggering the system, so she phrased it as obscurely as possible, as if they were exchanging a secret code.

“I didn’t suspect,” Qiao Zhiji said coolly. “I was certain.”

“Hahaha,” Cheng Xiang said. “That doesn’t exactly align with the principles of materialism, does it?”

            

Qiao Zhiji glanced at her. “Are you here to discuss the principles of materialism with me?”

“Well…” Cheng Xiang chose her words carefully. “Between you and me, we have a lot of history, don’t we?”

After reading Yu Yusheng’s diary, Cheng Xiang was truly curious about the story between these two.

            

“Not a lot of history,” Qiao Zhiji said. “What do you remember?”

Qiao Zhiji was a smart woman. She didn’t say, “What do you know?” but “What do you remember?”

“I remember you were my tutor.”

            

“Mm.”

“So, did we study in my room?” The thought was a little thrilling. The bewitching Yu Yusheng was only eighteen that year, young and innocent in her school uniform and white socks. Qiao Zhiji was only a sophomore in college, surely not as much of a big shot as she was now. Her features were actually quite soft, though her aura was chilly.

Two people like that, hiding in a room away from prying eyes… hiss, hah.

            

Qiao Zhiji wouldn’t have told Yu Yusheng she’d get a spanking if she couldn’t memorize a formula, would she?

Cheng Xiang felt that she had, after all, inherited her mother’s Neighborhood Committee auntie spirit. Right now, she didn’t want to drink any 【Pineapple Happiness】. She wanted to brew a cup of tea, grab a handful of melon seeds and peanuts, cross her legs, and strike the standard pose of an alley-mouth gossiper.

Qiao Zhiji shook her head. “Not in your room. In your family’s dining room.”

            

“Why?”

“Because the table there is huge. When you studied, you liked to spread all sorts of miscellaneous things out—textbooks, notebooks, scratch paper, pencils, gel pens, a compass, earphone cords, chewing gum, mints…” As she spoke, Qiao Zhiji’s brow furrowed slightly. “How did you have so many things?”

That was a lot like her, Cheng Xiang.

            

Tao Tianran used to ask her all the time, “How do you have so many things?”

Qiao Zhiji continued, “Your dining room has a glass ceiling, so you could see that giant phoenix tree. In the spring, its leaves would fall on the glass roof, and by autumn, they’d turn yellow. You said we were like two people sunk at the bottom of the water, looking up to see the sunlight and fallen leaves on the surface.”

“And then?”

            

“And then,” Qiao Zhiji’s fingertip tapped lightly against the side of her coffee cup, “I found your diary.”

“And then?”

Qiao Zhiji’s gaze was very calm, but her lips trembled slightly as she said, “I kissed you.”

            

A faint numbness spread through Cheng Xiang’s heart.

She didn’t even know if it was Yu Yusheng’s soul acting up, or if it was entirely her own feeling.

She, too, had once hidden with Tao Tianran in her bedroom. She was leaning against the trunk of the phoenix tree, flipping through a post-apocalyptic novel that Qin Ziqiao had lent her. Tao Tianran sat beside her, tapping out a message on her phone.

            

The dense canopy of the phoenix tree swayed in the early spring breeze, making a rustling sound, like a sudden downpour on the gray-tiled roof.

She had nudged Tao Tianran with the toe of her pilled white sock. “Hey.”

“What is it?” Tao Tianran’s fingers paused for a moment, then resumed their typing, quickly finishing the line of text in the input box and hitting send.

            

Cheng Xiang pointed upward. “Listen. It’s like we’re two people hiding under the surface of the water.”

Tao Tianran put her phone back in her pocket. That day, she was wearing a pair of trouser-style five-point shorts that exposed her fair knees. Even on a day off, she wore a button-up shirt, though it was made of a softer linen material, not so stiff. One side of the collar had flopped down, revealing a small part of her collarbone.

She raised a hand and turned on the small Glory to Blood Donation radio Cheng Xiang kept on her bedside table.

            

The radio was a prize Director Ma had brought back from a neighborhood committee event. The front was printed with “Glory to Blood Donation,” and the back had the Red Cross logo.

Tao Tianran had randomly twisted the dial to some channel. A song was playing softly, the sound quality poor, with a faint static buzz.

“A quiet alley mouth, bicycles and people cross paths /
A quiet alley mouth, moving /
A quiet alley mouth, I’m not ready to go home yet…”

            

It must have been a song from some years back. The female folk singer had a slightly hoarse voice, which sounded a little sorrowful.

Tao Tianran’s gaze fell on Cheng Xiang’s lips.

Everything about Cheng Xiang was delicate—her features, her eyes—everything except for her lips, which had a certain fullness.

            

The evening light streamed in, forming a tiny point of light on the right side of her lower lip.

Tao Tianran gazed at that tiny point of light. “We’re like two people hiding under the surface of the water, so? Want to do bad things?”

Cheng Xiang stared at her, her throat bobbing. She clutched the spine of the novel in her hand.

            

Tao Tianran glanced at her and moved an inch closer.

A naturally cool fragrance emanated from her skin. Usually, by this point, Cheng Xiang would have been so nervous she’d have squeezed her eyes shut. But not today. She raised her hand and caressed Tao Tianran’s thin lips, calling her name in a tiny, soft voice, “Tao Tianran.”

Tao Tianran said, “Close your eyes.”

            

Cheng Xiang shook her head. “I don’t want to.”

Tao Tianran closed her eyes, leaned in slightly, and kissed her.

Cheng Xiang’s hand went slack, and the small novel in her fingers fell onto the bed, rustling as it flipped open to some unknown page. But Cheng Xiang kept her eyes wide open, gazing at Tao Tianran’s fine, sparse eyelashes and the two small moles near the corner of her eye that trembled gently.

            

The radio continued to sing through the static:

“The words between two people omit promises /
The happiness in solitude can’t be used to resolve despair…”

Cheng Xiang curled up against the phoenix tree, trying her best to keep her eyes open as she received Tao Tianran’s kiss.

            

What was she to do? She even felt that if she so much as blinked, tears would fall onto Tao Tianran’s high-bridged nose.

As Tao Tianran leaned in, the phone in her pocket slid halfway out.

Cheng Xiang’s voice was hoarse as she called out, “Tao Tianran, your phone is about to fall.”

            

“Mm,” Tao Tianran replied, continuing to kiss her with her eyes closed. “Doesn’t matter.”

Tao Tianran’s tongue was tracing hers. Cheng Xiang looked down and watched as Tao Tianran’s phone slid out a little more, and then a little more, before finally hitting the floor with a smash, shattering its glass screen protector.

Cheng Xiang finally closed her eyes.

            

Tao Tianran’s movements paused. “Are you crying?”

“No.” She reached up and hooked her arms around Tao Tianran’s neck, not letting her lips leave hers. “No, Tao Tianran. Let’s continue.”

Two young women, kissing quietly as if hidden beneath a water’s surface covered in fallen phoenix leaves.

            

How could I put it into words? Cheng Xiang thought. I don’t even want to do bad things with you. It’s just that we’re hiding here, in this small, unknown corner of this vast world, with only you, and only me. That fact alone makes me desperately want to kiss you.

Why does liking you make me so happy, and yet so sad? So incredibly happy, and at the same time, so incredibly sad.

Cheng Xiang thought that perhaps the reason she had transmigrated into Yu Yusheng’s body was precisely because there were so many moments like this where she could empathize with her.

            

She asked Qiao Zhiji, “You kissed me first, not the other way around?”

“Mm.”

“Why?”

            

Qiao Zhiji lifted her gaze. “Because I would be the one to actively break the taboo⁴.”

I wasn’t seduced by you, nor was I moved by you. I actively chose to fall into this mortal world with you.

The numbness in Cheng Xiang’s heart became a sharp, clear pain. “And then?”

            

“Your parents made some trouble. I was forced to drop out of school.”

“Then…”

“The final result was that you compromised with your parents and continued to live under their watch, while they sent me abroad and forbid me from contacting you ever again.”

            

“And you accepted that?”

“No.” Qiao Zhiji looked at her. “I refused, and then I got into a university abroad on my own. Because it was so sudden, I wasn’t well-prepared. I got a full scholarship, but I had no money for living expenses. I’ve worked in a coffee shop, waited tables in a noodle restaurant, and given massages at a traditional Chinese medicine clinic. Do you know how to give hour-long massages, take a five-minute break, and then do another one without getting tendonitis?”

Qiao Zhiji paused. “You don’t need to know. You just need to know that between us, even with all that, I never thought of letting go.”

            

Cheng Xiang’s lips parted, but no words came out.

Finally, she said, “Say my name.”

Qiao Zhiji looked her in the eyes. “Yu Yusheng.”

            

The leaves of the phoenix trees by the rice paddies around them began to rustle softly.

Cheng Xiang said in a very quiet voice, “Say it again.”

“Yu Yusheng.” Qiao Zhiji closed her eyes for a moment, her hand tightening around her coffee cup. “You just need to know that between us, even with all that, I didn’t let go.”

            

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