The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 62
by Little PandaLiking
Tao Tianran kissed her for twelve seconds.
[Kiss me at midnight,
As if there were no tomorrow, as if we had countless tomorrows.]
The moment Tao Tianran leaned down to kiss her, Cheng Xiang’s tears streamed1 down.
For no reason, without explanation, utterly uncontrollable.
Tao Tianran’s lips were very cool, as cold as her fingers, yet far softer. Cheng Xiang tilted her neck back, her lips parting slightly without her realizing, feeling Tao Tianran’s cool, moist breath slip inside.
Outside the window, the clock struck exactly twelve. Tao Tianran raised both hands to gently cover Cheng Xiang’s ears. Beside them, the massive gears swung back and forth, their deep, heavy clanging echoing right next to her, yet it felt so distant, as if coming from a world long, long ago.
Instead, the sensation of her own heartbeat was much stronger. With every strike of the bell, her heart seemed to hum in resonance.
Cheng Xiang forgot to breathe. Yet Tao Tianran’s kiss was deeply restrained; she didn’t slip her tongue inside, but merely pressed and sipped at her lips, so gently, just as she’d said before—as if she were afraid of scaring her away.
The pendulum struck twelve times; Tao Tianran kissed her for twelve seconds.
Then, leaning her forehead against Cheng Xiang’s, she let her cool fingers slide down to cup Cheng Xiang’s cheeks. Her voice was incredibly low. “Xiao Xiang.”
Mm, Tao Tianran.
“Are you crying?”
As she spoke, her breath slipped into Cheng Xiang’s mouth, just as it had when they were kissing.
“W-wait a second,” Cheng Xiang said.
The fingers cupping her cheeks stilled.
“Wait, just wait,” Cheng Xiang said. “Let me… catch my breath.”
Tao Tianran let her go and took a small half-step back.
Cheng Xiang didn’t know if a light outside had gone out now that midnight had passed, but the darkness her eyes had temporarily adjusted to seemed to grow heavier.
Cheng Xiang wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination, but Tao Tianran seemed to have turned into a thin shadow, appearing a little lost.
She said, “Um, sorry.”
“Why are you saying sorry?” Tao Tianran asked.
“Today is clearly your birthday,” Cheng Xiang said.
Tao Tianran seemed to curve her lips ever so slightly. “It’s fine. My birthday has already passed.”
It was such a gentle sentence, yet it made Cheng Xiang sad.
Sigh, had she ruined everything? This was clearly an incredibly beautiful night.
But she just felt… the wild pounding of her heart was almost unbearable.
She couldn’t breathe, like she was struggling to lift her head out of the water, desperate to make sense of the intense tremor sweeping through her heart.
“If you’re tired, shall we leave?” Tao Tianran asked softly.
Actually, Cheng Xiang wanted to say something. But for one, her mind was a total mess. And second, her stomach was hurting so much…
Oh my god, could that cake we just ate really have gone bad?!
So she nodded. “Then, let’s go.”
Tao Tianran didn’t reach out to hold her hand again. She simply walked very slowly through the massive metal gears, as if guiding her way.
The two of them exited the clock tower, and Tao Tianran locked the door carefully. They walked to the roadside together. Tao Tianran opened the car door, while Cheng Xiang stood beside the car.
Tao Tianran curved her lips slightly again. “What, you won’t even ride in my car before you’ve figured things out?”
“No,” Cheng Xiang waved her hands repeatedly. “No, no, it’s not.”
She pulled open the passenger door herself and slid inside. Tao Tianran sat in the driver’s seat, reminding her in a low voice, “Seatbelt.”
“Oh, right.” Cheng Xiang buckled her seatbelt.
Tao Tianran started the car. For most of the ride, Cheng Xiang stared out the window, occasionally stealing a glance at Tao Tianran out of the corner of her eye.
Tao Tianran was used to driving with one hand. She kept one hand loosely on the steering wheel while her other hand rested casually at her side, as if waiting for something. She kept her eyes fixed forward on the sea of red taillights, her expression so detached that it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.
By the time the car pulled up to the entrance of Cheng Xiang’s alleyway, it was almost one in the morning. The surroundings were eerily quiet, save for the faint sound of a dog barking in the far distance. A tall streetlight leaned over, casting down a pool of warm, golden light.
Cheng Xiang stepped out of the car. Tao Tianran opened her door as well, getting out with her.
Cheng Xiang quickly said, “You don’t need to get out.”
Tao Tianran simply replied, “Okay.”
She didn’t walk around to Cheng Xiang’s side of the car, but merely stood on the other side with one hand resting on the door.
Cheng Xiang waved. “Then I’m off. Go on home, it’s really late. Drive safely on your way back.”
With that, carrying her canvas bag on her back, she ran off in a flash.
Tao Tianran stood where she was, gazing at Cheng Xiang’s retreating figure. After a long while, she opened the door, got back into the car, and drove away.
It was only when she hit her first red light and tapped her brakes to stop by the crosswalk that she let out a long, low sigh, releasing the breath she had been holding in her chest.
Cheng Xiang pushed open the door of the Siheyuan2 with quiet steps, hunching over as she crossed the courtyard, and slipped back into her bedroom.
She hadn’t showered yet. How was she going to take a shower without Director Ma catching her? Sigh, she’d worry about that later.
She tossed her canvas bag aside and sprawled out on her bed like a starfish, staring at the trunk of the phoenix tree outside. Her feet swayed gently, one after the other.
Even now, she hadn’t figured out why she’d suddenly started crying back there for no reason at all.
But when she rolled over onto her side, tears slid down the bridge of her nose once more, as if they were the leftover tears she hadn’t had time to shed earlier. Her fine, soft hair draped over her face. Peering through the strands, she watched as her tears dripped onto her pale pink bedsheets, forming a tiny, dark spot.
「I like Tao Tianran so much.」
「I like her so, so much.」
She liked her to the point that when Tao Tianran kissed her, her heart had clenched tight. She liked her so much that even now, just remembering that kiss made her curl up on the bed like a shrimp to press down on her heart.
It turned out that the first instinct of liking someone is fear3.
She suddenly remembered the night they went to watch the play together, sitting on a roadside bench and eating the sandwiches Cheng Xiang had made. Overhead, the canopy of the phoenix tree sprawled out like a giant umbrella.
Tao Tianran had suddenly asked her, “Do you think trees look sad?”
Back then, Cheng Xiang found it baffling. “Why would a tree be sad?”
Now, Cheng Xiang sat up on the bed, crossing her legs, and rubbed the tip of her nose, which had gone red from crying.
She suddenly felt that if she fell for Tao Tianran, she would understand.
She would understand why a tree was sad. She would understand why those girls watching the play with them that night had silently wept toward the stage.
Cheng Xiang pulled her knees up to her chest, propped her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her hands.
She didn’t want to understand. For some reason, Cheng Xiang’s first reaction was to retreat. She didn’t want to understand the sorrow of a tree, or the stories and love songs that made people cry.
She just wanted to be a carefree, happy fool.
She didn’t know if she would have the same thoughts if she fell for someone else. But there were no “what ifs” because she had never liked anyone else. All she knew was that when facing Tao Tianran, she liked her so much that before any happiness could even begin, her heart already seemed to ache.
On Monday morning, Tao Tianran walked into her office carrying her Bolide4.
Glancing over, she saw Yi Yu sitting in the visitor’s chair across from her desk, head tilted back, spinning around in sheer boredom. The moment Yi Yu saw her, she sat up with a start, letting out a drawn-out, sing-song greeting: “Yo~”
Tao Tianran set down her bag expressionlessly and sat across from her.
Yi Yu leaned in to inspect her. “Did you go stealing chickens over the weekend? Why are your dark circles so bad?”
“Where do I have dark circles?” Tao Tianran asked.
Yi Yu arched an eyebrow. “With my naked-eye 1.5 vision that can grade gemstone levels, is there anything I can’t spot?”
Tao Tianran raised a long index finger, pointing it at Yi Yu. “How many is this?”
“One.”
“This is a two.”
“Ha! Not bad, Teacher Tao. You’ve been in Beicheng for a few years and already learned how to insult people indirectly, huh?”
Tao Tianran called her assistant in.
The moment the assistant saw the Big Boss was also there, she immediately stood at attention. “Big Boss, Teacher Tao.”
Tao Tianran picked up her fountain pen, not even looking up as she spoke. “The Big Boss’s workload is under-saturated. Assign some tasks to her.”
The assistant was completely dumbfounded. Her? Assign work to the Big Boss?
Yi Yu leaned back in her swivel chair, her high heels resting on the carpet as she spun halfway around. She tilted her chin up at the assistant. “Why don’t you actually assign me some work?”
“Hahaha,” the assistant said, “hahahaha.”
Sketching away with her pen, Tao Tianran continued without raising her head, “If you’re truly that idle, you can go to the zoo.”
“Why would I go to the zoo?”
“To feed the capybaras.”
“Ah, hahaha!” Yi Yu pointed at Tao Tianran and told the assistant, “Look at your Teacher Tao. That’s the second joke she’s cracked this morning. Don’t you think she must be in a relationship and in a great mood?”
Tao Tianran lifted her head and stared at Yi Yu.
Yi Yu had her back to Tao Tianran and didn’t notice the gaze, though she felt a sudden chill on the back of her neck, assuming the hair-growth serum she had applied last night was finally kicking in. The assistant, however, standing by the door, caught Tao Tianran’s icy glare.
Terrified, she stammered, “N-no way. Someone like Teacher Tao… who could even date her? No, wait, I mean… someone like Teacher Tao, who would even want to date her…”
The more the assistant spoke, the more tangled her tongue got, until she was on the verge of tears.
Tao Tianran closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and spat out two words: “Get out.”
After Yi Yu and the assistant left, Tao Tianran raised her hand to rub the space under her eyes.
Over the weekend, she had stayed home alone. She didn’t drink, because she had drunk far too much in the past, which had left her in a constant, muddled daze. But without alcohol, she couldn’t sleep.
Only now, sitting in her noisy, bustling office, did she dare to recall Friday night slightly, her lips pressing together in a subtle line.
Why did Cheng Xiang react so strongly?
Tao Tianran only now realized that, subconsciously, she’d still been arrogant. She’d wanted to take things slow with Cheng Xiang—firstly because she was afraid of scaring her by moving too fast, and secondly because she herself was perhaps enjoying this slow progression.
She could see Cheng Xiang go from curiosity, to drawing closer, to her round eyes suddenly lighting up the moment she saw her.
Admittedly, Cheng Xiang had hesitated in this process.
But to a Cheng Xiang with no memories, she was just a stranger she’d recently met. Tao Tianran thought this was completely normal.
She’d felt that Cheng Xiang was falling for her.
But now, she wasn’t so sure. Would Cheng Xiang still be willing to be with her?
「Liking」 was the most delicate thing in the world. No medical common sense could explain why, when meeting another person, millions of butterflies would flutter in one’s stomach.
Could a person truly fall for the exact same person over and over again? Within the incredibly complex pathways of neural transmission, if even one tiny, delicate link failed to connect, would it fail to lead to the same outcome?
Before, she’d felt like a candidate taking an open-book exam.
Only halfway through did she realize that the answer she’d held so confidently might have been entirely wrong from the start.
After the creative meeting in the afternoon, Yi Yu slung an arm around Yu Yusheng’s shoulder. “Now that you’ve finally returned to work, let’s go out for team building tonight!”
Yu Yusheng lazily pulled her curls out from under Yi Yu’s arm. “Sure. Where to?”
Yi Yu thought for a moment. “How about karaoke?”
“Is Teacher Tao going?”
Yi Yu linked arms with Yu Yusheng. “Teacher Tao is definitely going. Your Teacher Tao has been acting a bit off lately. Maybe she needs to hear some love songs, you know?”
Tao Tianran shot Yi Yu a sidelong glance but surprisingly didn’t argue.
No one could say Kunpu’s team-building events lacked standards. In fact, they had a very clear standard.
The sole standard was whenever the Big Boss, Yi Yu, felt bored.
Inside the KTV private room, some people were singing while others played dice. Yi Yu had her sleeves rolled up and was playing drinking games with someone, chanting, “Zero, oh, a zero egg, eggs are round and round! One, oh, a single dragon, a lone dragon flies to the sky!”
A glass of alcohol sat in front of Tao Tianran, but she didn’t touch it. Someone was facing the screen, singing a love song:
“If you are a gust of wind in spring,5
Then I must be the most distant kite.
If you are merely a gate,
Locked tight in some alleyway,
I am the vine outside…
Yet you chose to be an ordinary person,
And so I fell in love with you as you are,
Willingly trapping my soul within this flesh,
Only seeking to be worthy of you…”
Tao Tianran’s ears rang. She pushed open the door and stepped out of the private room. Still finding the air suffocatingly stuffy, she walked all the way out of the KTV venue.
A golden trumpet tree was in full, glorious bloom. A figure stood beneath it, the crimson cherry of a cigarette flickering between her fingers.
It was Yu Yusheng.
Sensing footsteps behind her, she glanced back and lazily raised a hand to Tao Tianran with a faint smile. “Hi, Teacher Tao.”
Tao Tianran walked over.
“Teacher Tao is actually taking the initiative to speak to me?” Yu Yusheng raised her eyebrows and gestured with the cigarette in her hand. “Do you mind?”
Tao Tianran shook her head. “You don’t like singing?”
“Hmm?”
“I noticed you slipping out to smoke alone.”
“Those love songs are just so melodramatic. It’s boring to listen to them.” Yu Yusheng always smiled with a languid, charming air. Her thick, heavy curls were something she habitually ran her fingers through, her movements slow and lazy.
“Is that so?” Tao Tianran said.
Yu Yusheng suddenly lowered her head with a laugh, the ash from her cigarette rustling down between her fingers. “I really wish I could say that.”
She wished she could casually dismiss love songs as melodramatic. She wished she didn’t understand them.
Tao Tianran thought of the past connection between Yu Yusheng and Qiao Zhiji.
If they followed the previous timeline, and if the two of them didn’t make any early progress, then by December of this year, Yu Yusheng might give up on her own life.
No one knew why.
Tao Tianran paused, then asked, “So, who’s the person who made you understand those love songs?”
Yu Yusheng tapped her cigarette ash, casting a slightly surprised glance at Tao Tianran. “I didn’t think Teacher Tao would be interested in this kind of question.”
“Why is that?”
Yu Yusheng’s lips curved. “Speaking of which, did you know some people in the office are shipping us as a CP6?”
“They’re talking nonsense,” Tao Tianran said.
“I know it’s impossible. Rest assured, Teacher Tao, you’re not my type.”
“Is it that I’m not your type, or that I’m not the person you like?” Tao Tianran asked.
Yu Yusheng glanced at Tao Tianran again, her lips still turned upward. “Do you know, I actually made a bet with a colleague once, claiming that someone like Teacher Tao could never understand feelings in this lifetime.”
“The wager wasn’t small, either—one hundred Egyptian pounds. It doesn’t sound like much, right? But I brought that banknote back from Egypt myself. It went inside the Pyramid of Khafre with me.”
She laughed and crushed out her cigarette, waving her hand at Tao Tianran again. “I should head back inside. Once you’ve had some fresh air, you should follow me in, Teacher Tao, or the Big Boss is going to throw a fit.”
“Yu Yusheng.”
“Hmm?”
“Why’d you take such a long leave of absence before? The Big Boss mentioned your health wasn’t great.”
Yu Yusheng paused. The wrist that had been holding her cigarette rotated slightly in an unconscious gesture. “It’s nothing major. Work is just exhausting, so I used it as an excuse to get some rest.”
Her lips curved up again. “By the way, everyone in the company goes by their English names. Why do you always call me by my full Chinese name so formally, Teacher Tao?”
“Because I’m not used to calling you Shianne.”
Yu Yusheng knit her brows slightly, clearly not understanding her meaning, but she didn’t press the matter. She simply waved and walked back into the KTV.
Tao Tianran stood alone under the tree for a moment longer before heading back inside.
Yu Yusheng was currently drinking with some colleagues. It was unclear what rules they had set, but every shake of the dice cup meant another shot. Her laughter was so bright, spontaneous, and full of joy.
People’s appearances are truly misleading, Tao Tianran thought. They don’t just deceive others; they deceive ourselves too.
Just like the last time Cheng Xiang’d broken up with her, and she’d dragged her suitcase out of that tiny rented apartment—had she been trying to convince herself that it was merely another chapter of her life? Just like her grandmother’s house with the ditch outside the door, or her first home on the slopes of Gangdao.
Once something passed, it was left behind and forgotten. She didn’t know if she’d abandoned those places, or if those places had abandoned her.
She’d once believed she was detached, caring little for anything, but looking at it now…
Tao Tianran let out a breath as a burst of hearty laughter erupted from Yu Yusheng’s table. Tao Tianran glanced over; it seemed the colleague playing dice against Yu Yusheng had finally won a crushing victory. Yu Yusheng was leaning against her colleague’s shoulder, laughing lazily.
Then, she pulled her handbag toward her and slid out a banknote hidden in the inner pocket.
Under the dim lights of the private room, the note was clearly recognizable as one hundred Egyptian pounds.
Yu Yusheng handed it over with a smile. The colleague gasped. “Haven’t you always kept this tucked away in your bag? You said it was your lucky charm or something!”
“It’s yours. Who told me to lose?” From across the room, Yu Yusheng shot Tao Tianran a sly, knowing wink.
Tao Tianran withdrew her gaze.
It seemed the colleague had long forgotten about the bet with Yu Yusheng, but Yu Yusheng had seized the opportunity of a simple dice game to “lose” the Egyptian pounds to her.
She’s admitting it, Tao Tianran thought.
Only when someone harbored a person they liked deep in their heart would they understand that the arrow of liking never pointed to a specific “type”—it pointed only to a single, unique individual.
“What on earth are you singing? Let me do it. I’ll sing it again.” Some colleagues made a racket as they rushed over to snatch the microphone, hitting replay on the love song that had just finished.
Tao Tianran’s gaze turned toward the screen.
“Yet you are already the most ordinary person,
Looking so beautiful, but your heart is so foolish,
Our hands have touched, our shoulders have brushed,
Yet our souls cannot recognize each other…”
If they couldn’t recognize each other…
If Xiao Xiang didn’t like her all over again…
Xiao Xiang wouldn’t have to understand the sorrow of a tree, nor would she cry so inexplicably when she kissed her.
Would that… be better?
After countless loops, was the best outcome for them to live their own separate, peaceful lives?
For the first time, Tao Tianran thought of such a possibility. She let out a soft sigh, grabbed her phone, and walked out of the private room once more.
Nearby, a young woman was holding her phone, her voice pressed low. “I’m so sorry, senior. What I said earlier about wanting to kiss you… I just lost a game of Truth or Dare. I was only joking!”
The Tao Tianran of the past didn’t understand love songs.
Nor did she understand that every joke harbors a grain of truth.7
She leaned against the glass paneling of the wall, slowly releasing a breath. She hadn’t really drunk much tonight, yet she felt thoroughly steeped in the warm, heavy fumes of alcohol drifting from the room.
She gripped her phone for a long time, until its casing was warm with the temperature of her fingers. She raised her hand and dialed Cheng Xiang’s number.
Over at Qin Ziqiao’s place, Cheng Xiang bolted straight up from her seat.
Qin Ziqiao was startled. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” Cheng Xiang mumbled, hurrying toward the bathroom. “My stomach hurts.”
Slipping into the bathroom, she locked the door and paced around in three circles, clutching her phone.
Before the call automatically hung up, she pressed answer. Gently biting her lower lip, she pressed the phone to her ear, but for some reason, she didn’t say “hello.”
On the other end, Tao Tianran remained silent as well. The line was completely quiet.
The silence stretched on so long that Cheng Xiang began to wonder if Tao Tianran had pocket-dialed her by mistake. She gave a tentative, soft, “Hello?”
“Mm,” Tao Tianran replied.
Only then did Cheng Xiang realize the line wasn’t entirely silent; there was the sound of Tao Tianran’s soft breathing.
Listening more closely, there was a faint, distant sound of music, sounding like she was at a KTV.
“Have you been drinking?” Cheng Xiang asked in a low voice.
“No,” Tao Tianran said over the line.
After those brief words, silence fell over them once more. Cheng Xiang stood in her old friend’s tiny bathroom, beneath a cylindrical electric water heater and a towel rack holding a blue-striped washcloth with little yellow dots, listening to Tao Tianran’s quiet breathing on the other end of the line.
The faint music was unrecognizable, fading into a mere backdrop for Tao Tianran’s steady breath.
After an unknown stretch of time, Tao Tianran spoke softly. “Then… I’m hanging up?”
Cheng Xiang scratched at the wall tile with her fingernail. “Okay.”
The call softly disconnected.
Since Cheng Xiang’d asked for some time to process things, Tao Tianran hadn’t rushed her at all, nor had she asked any questions when she called.
It was as if Tao Tianran, too, was afraid.
By the time they walked out of the KTV, Yi Yu was already a bit tipsy. She slung her left arm around Yu Yusheng and draped her right arm over Tao Tianran’s shoulder, shouting up at the stars, “Do you see that? My company is full of gorgeous beauties!”
Tao Tianran expressionlessly peeled her paw off her shoulder.
“Waaah, so cold.” Yi Yu deliberately leaned closer to Yu Yusheng. “And here I thought she was in a relationship. How could someone like her ever fall in love anyway?”
Yu Yusheng smiled and shot Tao Tianran a look.
The third day, the fourth day… all the way until the following Friday, Tao Tianran didn’t reach out to Cheng Xiang again.
Friday was supposed to be a good day—provided your boss didn’t call an emergency meeting to tear everyone to shreds.
Filing out of the conference room, the colleagues grumbled to one another. “What do they mean the cool and elegant vibe8 isn’t strong enough?”
“Before, they wanted every character to have massive curves, making them as exaggerated as possible and claiming character design didn’t matter. Now they want us to scrap everything and start over? What do they even mean by that?”
“We have to redo all the 3D modeling too. This is incredibly annoying.”
“And we have to re-simulate the motion capture data. Save me! Who can help me? How am I supposed to know how a cool, elegant goddess draws a sword?!”
As the colleagues chattered over one another, their gazes slowly converged on Cheng Xiang.
“Why is everyone looking at me? You don’t expect me to do the motion simulation, do you?” Cheng Xiang pointed at the tip of her nose. “Me? A cool, elegant goddess? Hahahahaha!”
A colleague stepped forward and slung an arm around Cheng Xiang’s shoulder. “Xiangzi, be honest. Has your sister here ever left you out when ordering milk tea?”
“Well, you only did that to hit the delivery threshold…”
“Stop! The point is I included you, right? Since we’re such good friends, your sister has a bold request.”
“S-since it’s a bold request, maybe you shouldn’t say it…”
“Hey! You’re not playing along! What I mean is, didn’t we run into that incredibly gorgeous friend of yours downstairs when we left work together last time?”
Well, Cheng Xiang knew exactly where this was going.
“No, no, no way,” Cheng Xiang waved her hands in a flurry. “She’s an elite professional. She has absolutely no time; she’s incredibly busy.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a jewelry designer.”
“Oh, a designer too! That practically makes her one of us. It’d be completely understandable for her to help us out, right? We beasts of burden9 have it rough. Tomorrow is Saturday, so she should be free, right? We’ll buy her milk tea!”
“She’s not free.”
“Then when is she free?”
“Never,” Cheng Xiang said, walking back to her workstation.
“Come on, Xiangzi, aren’t you being a bit of a bad friend here?”
“I’m not close with her. Seriously, not at all.” Cheng Xiang smiled, though it looked more like a grimace. “There’s absolutely no way I could ask her for a favor like that.”
“Oh, I see.” The disappointment on her colleagues’ faces was painfully clear.
Some of them left first, but Cheng Xiang and the remaining crew pulled an all-nighter, only leaving at two in the morning, after agreeing to meet back at the office by two in the afternoon to continue working.
When Cheng Xiang finally made it home, her scalp was itching like crazy from not washing her hair for two days. But she was too exhausted to care. She took a hasty, slapdash shower, collapsed onto her pillow, and fell into a deep, heavy sleep.
She slept all the way until one in the afternoon. Jumping up when she saw the time, she threw on some random clothes and sprinted to the office.
By some miracle, she wasn’t late.
Her colleagues had already arrived, slumped at their respective workstations with massive dark circles under their eyes. Each bore a glazed expression that practically screamed: “Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?”
Until someone rang the office doorbell.
“Xiangzi, that should be our milk tea delivery.”
“On it, I’ll go grab it.”
Cheng Xiang was somewhat of a people-pleaser by nature, so tasks like picking up deliveries, mail, or printing documents naturally fell to her, and she didn’t mind.
Rubbing her bleary eyes, she shuffled toward the entrance. As she pressed the button to release the sliding glass doors, she was pulling at her hoodie to inspect it. She’d eaten the zhajiangmian10 Director Ma had made far too quickly earlier, leaving a small grease stain right on her chest.
Staring down at the grease spot, she reached her hand out toward the doorway. “Thank you! I’ll be sure to give you a five-star review!”
There was complete silence outside the door.
Just as Cheng Xiang began to find it odd, an incredibly crisp, cool voice drifted in from the threshold. “Hi.”
Cheng Xiang looked up.
Haha. Hahahahaha. What a wonderful world.
Standing right outside the door was Tao Tianran.
Having not washed her hair for three days, sporting puffy, half-asleep eyes and a prominent grease stain on her hoodie, Cheng Xiang stood face-to-face with a pristine Tao Tianran—who was clad in a crisp white blouse and tailored trousers, her silky, sleek black hair cascading over her shoulders, radiating a clean, cool, and clear fragrance.
Tao Tianran raised the bag of milk tea in her hand and said, “Are you going to give me that five-star review?”
Footnotes
- Sùsù (or pūsùsù) describes the soft, silent rustling of falling snow, ashes, or leaves, as well as the trembling of eyelashes or streaming of tears under emotional strain.
- A sìhéyuàn is a traditional Chinese architectural style featuring a courtyard surrounded by four buildings, historically common in cities like Beijing.
- This recurring emotional theme describes the sudden vulnerability and heart-tightening fear that accompanies realizing one has begun to love someone deeply.
- The Hermès Bolide is an iconic, minimalist luxury handbag known for its elegant dome shape and practical zipper design, carried casually by Tao Tianran.
- The song lyrics represent a poignant reflection on unrequited or fated love, where one partner willingly accepts hardship and emotional entrapment to remain connected to the other.
- CP stands for 'character pairing,' which is a popular Chinese internet slang term referring to a romantic couple, whether real or fictional.
- This central theme suggests that lighthearted jokes, playful confessions, or trivial bets often conceal deep, genuine emotions that the speaker is too vulnerable to express directly.
- The aesthetic of qīnglěng gǎn refers to a cold, detached, elegant, and ethereal beauty, which is highly prized in modern Chinese character designs.
- Niúmǎ (literally 'beasts of burden') is a self-deprecating Chinese internet slang term used by overworked, exploited corporate employees to describe themselves.
- Zhàjiàngmiàn is a classic Northern Chinese noodle dish topped with a rich, savory sauce made of fermented sweet bean paste and stir-fried minced pork.
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