The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 63
by Little PandaHeaven’s Will
“Xiangzi also thought you were perfect for it.”
[Maybe many years later1, when I thought the story had already been buried, one day I sat under the tree, the late autumn wind blew, and an apple fell. I picked it up and took a bite, tasting the flavor of the story.]
Cheng Xiang felt completely numb.
She didn’t even know how she had taken the bag of milk tea. Wearing slender high heels, Tao Tianran had simply walked past her with absolute poise.
Clutching the bag of milk tea, she trailed behind Tao Tianran. Could she not wear high heels when she was already so tall? It made anyone walking behind her look like a shivering little quail2.
When Tao Tianran reached the office area, the colleagues stood up with boundless enthusiasm. “You’re here!”
Tao Tianran nodded.
Fine, fine, fine. Cheng Xiang sneered silently from the back. Everyone in this room acted as if they were incredibly close to Tao Tianran, leaving her as the one who was least close to her.
“Have some milk tea! We ordered it before you arrived. We’re really troubling you today, thank you, thank you!”
“Hey, where’s Xiangzi?”
Just how short was she? Did standing behind Tao Tianran make her completely invisible?
Dejectedly, she spoke up, “Right here.”
Sporting greasy hair she hadn’t washed in three days and grease spots on her hoodie, she skirted around from behind Tao Tianran. Keeping her head down without looking at Tao Tianran even once, she handed the milk teas to her colleague.
Her colleague eagerly pulled all the drinks out, carefully inspected the labels on the paper cups, and thrust a cup of mochi milk tea toward Tao Tianran. “Here, here, you have this one. It’s the expensive one!”
“Thank you,” Tao Tianran said.
The others distributed the remaining drinks, then asked Cheng Xiang, “Xiangzi, which one do you want?”
Usually, Cheng Xiang would say, “You guys go ahead and choose. I’ll just take whatever’s left.”
But this time, she stepped forward, scanned the options, and claimed a cup of apple green milk tea.
With a chorus of pops, the colleagues punctured their plastic seals. Cheng Xiang walked to the outermost edge of the group and stopped, positioned right in front of Tao Tianran. She tore open her straw wrapper, carefully gripped one end of the straw with the paper sleeve, and pierced the seal.
Without turning around, she reached behind herself and passed the drink over. Amidst the chatter of her colleagues, she murmured in a low voice, “Drink this one.”
Tao Tianran looked up.
Cheng Xiang continued in a tiny whisper, “The one they gave you is a bit too sweet.”
After having meals together a few times, Cheng Xiang had noticed that Tao Tianran didn’t have much of a sweet tooth. Whenever they ordered soy milk with malatang, Tao Tianran would always leave half the bottle behind.
Standing behind Cheng Xiang, Tao Tianran saw that the hood of her hoodie was half-twisted and messy. Her fine, soft hair looked incredibly smooth. One of her hands was stuffed into the front pocket of her hoodie, while the other was raised to her side, offering a cup of milk tea.
An awkward, self-conscious posture.
An awkward, self-conscious girl.
Seeing that Tao Tianran didn’t take it right away, Cheng Xiang turned her head back, looking a bit anxious. Afraid of her colleagues catching her little gesture, she whispered in a tiny voice, “You won’t like that one. Really, trust me.”
Her hand inside her front pocket tugged gently at the fabric, over and over.
“Mm, I trust you,” Tao Tianran said.
Taking her milk tea, she handed her own cup over.
Cheng Xiang took it, looked at her, turned back around, and pierced her milk tea with a pop.
Belatedly, Tao Tianran thought that she should have inserted the straw for Cheng Xiang.
In this regard, she always seemed to be a bit clumsy and slow.
Cheng Xiang inserted the straw herself, gave it a couple of stirs, and took a sip. The flavor was indeed very sweet, but she actually quite liked it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she quietly peeked at Tao Tianran again. Why isn’t Tao Tianran stirring it before drinking? If she doesn’t stir it, how will she suck up the toppings at the bottom?
Cheng Xiang was a little anxious.
A colleague called out to Tao Tianran, “Why don’t you do the motion capture first? Once we collect the data, you can leave. It won’t take up too much of your time.”
“Okay.” Tao Tianran walked over and asked, “How do we do this?”
“Oh, it’s simple. We don’t have any high-end equipment here. Just stand in front of the green screen, stick these little sensors on your body, and see that sword over there? Just swing it a few times according to our instructions. Our setup can only capture basic motion trajectories, so it’s really easy.”
“Alright.” Tao Tianran casually set her milk tea on the desk beside her and began taking off her suit jacket.
She was tall and slender, and even such a casual movement was executed smoothly and gracefully. Revealing the white shirt underneath, with its hem casually tucked into her suit trousers, she was almost too beautiful for words.
Cheng Xiang stood a short distance away. She stirred her milk tea again, took a sip, gulping it down, her eyes drifting toward Tao Tianran’s milk tea resting on the desk.
Would anyone notice that she and Tao Tianran had swapped milk teas?
A secret, subtle, slightly burning sensation in the depths of her heart.
As if hiding right under everyone’s noses, sharing a secret with Tao Tianran.
Tao Tianran walked over to the green screen, and a colleague stepped forward to help apply the tracking markers. The others gathered around the perimeter to watch, observing as Tao Tianran raised her arms, revealing a sliver of her slender waist beneath her shirt.
“Wow,” someone whispered. “Is she really not a model?”
The colleague who had helped stick the markers on Tao Tianran jogged back and whispered, “What do I do? I’m so nervous.”
“Nervous about what?”
“I don’t know, she’s just so beautiful. Even more so up close. Her skin is flawless. What foundation do you think she uses? She looks like she isn’t wearing any makeup at all.”
She doesn’t even wear makeup, and she still has no flaws, Cheng Xiang thought to herself.
Covering her chest with one hand, the colleague said, “I think… I’m going to turn gay.”
Seriously, what was wrong with these people? Cheng Xiang gave them a sideways glare. Shallow!
Feigning indifference, Cheng Xiang asked, “What’s going on, anyway? How did she still end up coming?”
Gosh, she was clearly the only person in this office who actually knew Tao Tianran.
She actually had no idea why Tao Tianran was coming today.
Who could she even complain to?
Her colleague explained, “Well, didn’t you say you weren’t close? We figured it was a lost cause. But when we left work, we actually saw her downstairs!”
“Uh…” Cheng Xiang thought to herself, Why did Tao Tianran come over to my company’s side?
Was she here to watch a play? Or…
“You didn’t actually have the extrovert energy to go up and talk to her, did you?” Cheng Xiang asked.
“Normally, no way. But look at our situation—the boss had us backed into a corner, so we just went for it. At first, her eyes were so cold and aloof, we were scared to death, okay?”
“And then?” Cheng Xiang thought to herself, Can you guys speed it up? Do you really need me to keep prompting you?
“We introduced ourselves and said we were your colleagues, then asked if we could trouble her with a small favor.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked if you were the one who wanted us to ask. We said yes, that Xiangzi also thought she was perfect for it, but Xiangzi said she wasn’t close to you and felt too embarrassed to trouble you.”
Hahahaha. Cheng Xiang couldn’t even cry, so she could only laugh.
“Even though she looks cold and elegant, she’s actually really nice! She just said okay, asked what time we’d come today, and then she really showed up.”
At that moment, Tao Tianran stood before the green screen and picked up the sword.
It was a slightly chuunibyou3 sword, resembling one used by a medieval knight. The blade was specially constructed so its movements could be captured by the tracking system.
The colleague instructed her, “Could you please swing it like this? To the left, to the right, then thrust forward, and finally twirl your wrist to rest the blade behind your back.”
Pfft, hahaha, it really was so chuunibyou.
“If possible, try not to move too quickly,” the colleague cautioned. “Our capture system is a bit laggy.”
Another colleague suggested, “Should we play the character’s voice lines? Otherwise, performing the movements like this might feel a little awkward.”
The character was named Rosamund. She was designed as an elegant elf knight—a medieval warrior of superb swordsmanship and swift movements, who maintained a cold, detached attitude toward everything around her.
She wasn’t a main character and hadn’t been very popular with players initially. However, a recently released skin had made her a minor hit, prompting the boss to demand a complete polish.
Her dialogue was simple—just a single line, fitting for an immortal elf:
“For you, thousands of years, thousands of times over.”
The inspiration came from 《The Kite Runner》, carrying a slightly artistic, literary touch.
When the colleague played the voice line, Tao Tianran kept her eyes lowered, her thoughts unreadable.
Yet as she began to move, with the solitary voice clip looping in the background, a colleague whispered, “Oh no, this is even more awkward now!”
But there was nothing awkward about the way Tao Tianran moved.
Her tall, elegant stature was an immense asset, and her slightly pale complexion lent her an ethereal, otherworldly beauty. When she made that thrust forward, the game audio looped back right on cue, uttering, “thousands of times over.”
Despite the intensely dramatic chuunibyou atmosphere, she looked over in Cheng Xiang’s direction and very slightly moved her lips.
Standing at the back of the crowd, Cheng Xiang felt that at that moment, Tao Tianran seemed to want to say something.
But Tao Tianran set the sword down and walked over from the green screen. A colleague was asking the tech desk, “Did we capture it?”
“Mm-hmm, okay, we captured it. Perfect.”
Tao Tianran’s wrist brushed past Cheng Xiang’s side as she picked up the cup of milk tea from earlier, saying nothing.
“Thank you so much,” the colleague said to her with a smile. “You’ve been a huge help.”
Tao Tianran shook her head. “It’s nothing. So, can I leave now?”
“Of course, of course! If you’re busy, feel free to head out. We won’t keep you any longer.”
Cheng Xiang hesitated for a moment, but she still followed Tao Tianran out.
“Thank you for today,” she said, following Tao Tianran toward the elevator.
“Your colleagues already thanked me.”
Uh, she really knew how to keep a conversation going.
The two of them stood in the hallway waiting for the elevator. Because the building was so densely packed, the wait was usually long. Cheng Xiang tried to fill the awkward silence. “The smell in this corridor is pretty bad, isn’t it? It always smells like cheap boxed lunches of shredded pork with green peppers.”
“Mm.”
Cheng Xiang: …
A true conversation killer.
So she stopped talking too, tapping her toe slightly against the floor while looking up at the jumping red numbers flashing on the display.
“Are you in a rush?” Tao Tianran suddenly asked.
“Hmm?”
“Eager for me to leave quickly?”
“N-no, not at all.”
Just then, the elevator doors opened with a ding. As Tao Tianran carried her bag inside—
“Hey, um,” Cheng Xiang blurted out at the absolute last second, realizing just how indecisive she truly was. “How about I treat you to dinner in a bit?”
“No.” Tao Tianran stepped into the elevator, turned around, and stood facing Cheng Xiang.
“Why? Do you have plans tonight?”
“Because,” Tao Tianran said, her slender finger pressing the door-close button. As the metal doors slowly closed, she added, “We’re not close.”
By the time Cheng Xiang finished her overtime and arrived at Qin Ziqiao’s place, she had her hands clasped behind her back, pacing around the room and sighing for three full laps.
Then she turned her head. “There’s something I’m really conflicted about lately.”
“That pig-butchering scam4?” Qin Ziqiao turned a page of her apocalyptic novel, saying without even looking up, “Don’t listen, don’t pay, don’t get scammed.”
“No.” Cheng Xiang rushed over to the sofa and sat cross-legged opposite Qin Ziqiao. “For example, say you have to make a major decision, one that might affect your entire life.”
“Got it.” Qin Ziqiao nodded. “Like when I had to decide whether to take over my mom’s job raising capybaras. Or like now, with you deciding whether to take over your mom’s job as the Neighborhood Committee Director.”
Cheng Xiang: …
“That’s not really the level I’m talking about,” Cheng Xiang said. “I just want to ask, what do you do when even you can’t figure out your own thoughts?”
“Just listen to your inner voice.” Qin Ziqiao flipped another page. “It should be pretty easy for you to hear your heart. You’re so flat, there’s nothing blocking the sound.”
She was mocking her!
Cheng Xiang hurled a throw pillow at her.
Catching the pillow with a laugh, Qin Ziqiao succinctly said three words: “Flip a coin.”
“Huh?” Cheng Xiang was stunned. “Is it really that casual?”
“How is it careless? When you can’t make up your mind, there are only two paths: listen to yourself, or listen to heaven’s will. Who else are you going to listen to? Your primary school homeroom teacher?”
Cheng Xiang’s round eyes rolled. “Do you have any coins?”
“No.”
“How can you not have any coins!”
“My place doesn’t even have any…” Qin Ziqiao paused. Having not used cash for so long, she blanked on the word for it and ended up saying, “the physical bodies of money.”
Cheng Xiang froze for a second, then stood up and tugged at her. “Let’s go. We’ll go downstairs to the store to buy a Coke and get some change in coins.”
“Too lazy.”
“Come on, let’s go.”
“What is so hard to decide, anyway?” Qin Ziqiao asked as she was dragged to her feet. “Are we ordering malatang or river snail rice noodles tonight?”
“No!”
The two of them headed downstairs together and slipped into a roadside convenience store.
Cheng Xiang bought a bottle of Coke and a doll-face ice cream5 for Qin Ziqiao. She scanned the payment code for eight yuan and asked the cashier to change her two one-yuan coins.
Standing with Qin Ziqiao outside the store, she asked, “Alright, I’m flipping it?”
“Mhm,” Qin Ziqiao mumbled, taking a bite of her ice cream.
Just then, an artistic-looking woman walked toward the convenience store while chatting on her phone. She wore a fitted, pitch-black knit sweater over loose, bohemian-style linen trousers. Her unstyled long hair cascaded down to her waist, giving her the air of a dancer.
However, a massive heaven’s eye stone6 hung from her neck, looking exceptionally conspicuous.
Qin Ziqiao glanced at her.
When buying this kind of jewelry, you really shouldn’t get something too big. Otherwise, people can tell at a glance that it’s fake, Qin Ziqiao thought.
Yi Yu grumbled into her phone as she stepped inside, “Don’t even get me started. I came all this way, only to be told that the barbecue stall operates like a guerrilla vendor—they aren’t setting up in this district today. Oh, by the way, do you have any connections at the zoo?”
“Buy it? Why would I buy it? Why on earth would I buy a zoo? I just wanted to ask, if you have any contacts there, could you get me in to feed the capybaras?”
Just as Cheng Xiang tilted her head back and tossed the fateful coin high into the air—
Qin Ziqiao stepped up behind Yi Yu and tapped her shoulder with an index finger.
Yi Yu turned around to find a young kid standing behind her. She had a hime-cut hairstyle, a sour look on her face, and a silver cuff clamped on her left cartilage. She looked incredibly cool, though she was currently gnawing on a doll-face ice cream.
The kid asked her, “You want to raise capybaras?”
“Yeah,” Yi Yu replied, completely bewildered. “What of it?”
The cold-faced hime-cut kid said, “Just look for me.”
Cheng Xiang looked up, watching the coin that decided her fate as it was thrown high into the air. Her gaze followed its descent, her peripheral vision catching the surrounding neon, the passing crowd, and the streetlights turning into halos of white light.
Then Cheng Xiang reached out her hand, and… she missed.
“Shoot,” Cheng Xiang muttered, quickly chasing after the coin.
Only to watch it roll right under the vending machine.
“Are you kidding me?” Cheng Xiang lamented, squatting down to peer inside.
She stared for a long time, but it was pitch-black. Just as Cheng Xiang was about to call out to Qin Ziqiao, she turned her head and saw her friend standing in front of a strange woman. The woman was fashionably dressed, exceptionally beautiful, and had a striking artistic aura.
What was going on? Don’t… don’t tell me it really was a pig-butchering scam.
Cheng Xiang called out, “Ziqiao.”
Both the woman and Qin Ziqiao looked over.
“What’s up?” Qin Ziqiao asked.
“My coin rolled under there.” Cheng Xiang pointed to the vending machine.
“Why don’t you just flip another one?” Qin Ziqiao walked toward Cheng Xiang, turning her head after a few steps to say to Yi Yu, “Oh, by the way, WeChat?”
“Sure,” Yi Yu nodded.
Coming to Cheng Xiang’s side, Qin Ziqiao said, “Don’t you have another coin?”
“But that wouldn’t be the first one anymore. What if the prediction doesn’t count? Who knows if the first one was heads or tails?” Cheng Xiang looked up at her, absentmindedly giving the vending machine a light pat.
Suddenly, with a heavy clunk, a can of Fanta rolled down into the retrieval slot.
Cheng Xiang and Qin Ziqiao looked at each other, utterly bewildered.
“This…” Cheng Xiang asked Qin Ziqiao, “what sort of heaven’s will does this represent?”
Qin Ziqiao was also a bit dazed. “Take a look, what flavor is it?”
“Watermelon.” Cheng Xiang poked her head to peer into the machine. “What does watermelon flavor mean?”
Pfft, hahaha, standing far away, Yi Yu found them quite amusing to watch.
She finally remembered why this sour-faced hime-cut kid looked so familiar. They had been to her bar before, the two girls together.
On Monday at the office, Yi Yu gossiped with Tao Tianran: “Guess who I ran into on Saturday night?”
Tao Tianran was sketching a design draft. “I’m not interested in whoever you met.”
“Those two girls who went to my bar together. The ones who wear hoodies and no makeup, looking like high school students. Remember?”
Tao Tianran’s fountain pen paused.
She waited quietly for two seconds. When Yi Yu didn’t go on, Tao Tianran looked up. “Why did you stop?”
“Oh, you’re not interested,” Yi Yu said. “I suddenly remembered the last person who disturbed you while you were sketching hand drafts—you didn’t let her step foot into your office for an entire month.”
“Who was the last person who disturbed me?”
“Me! Big Sister, did you seriously forget? You shoved me out with a cold face and didn’t let me enter your office for a whole month!”
Tao Tianran put down her fountain pen and screwed the cap back on.
Yi Yu asked, “Not drawing anymore?”
“Mm,” Tao Tianran said flatly. “No inspiration right now.”
“Oh.” Yi Yu nodded. “Then I’ll go ahead and tell you?”
Tao Tianran crossed her arms, looking at her.
“So last night, I went to the old city district to find a barbecue stall. Who knew they were a mobile operation? I went all the way there only to find nothing, and I was so frustrated. Do you have any idea how good their grilled chicken wings are? Not just the mid-joint, but the entire wing—”
“Get to the point.”
“Anyway, while I was buying water at a convenience store, I ran right into those two girls. You know the one with the soft, fine hair who looks like a little animal? Guess what she was doing? Flipping a coin, apparently to make some massive life decision. But guess what? The coin rolled right under a vending machine! Hahaha, what are the odds!”
Tao Tianran made no comment, simply picking her fountain pen back up.
Yi Yu: “?”
“I’m going to sketch my design drafts now,” Tao Tianran said.
“Hey!” Yi Yu placed her hands on her hips. “How can you turn your back on me the second you’re done listening to the gossip?”
After two consecutive days of weekend overtime, the character Rosamund—modeled after Tao Tianran—was finally approved.
Cheng Xiang didn’t work overtime on Monday; she went downstairs with her colleagues.
“Cheng Xiang?”
Cheng Xiang turned around to look.
“It really is you,” Luo Yan said with a smile.
Cheng Xiang smiled. Saying goodbye to her colleagues, she walked over to Luo Yan. “What are you doing here?”
That was just how adulthood worked.
Ever since she had made things clear with Luo Yan, the two of them hadn’t really contacted each other, silently lying in each other’s WeChat contact lists.
“Isn’t there a small theater nearby?” Luo Yan asked. “A friend gave me some tickets, and I’m headed there to meet up with her.”
“Oh, yeah, there is. It’s a bit hard to find, isn’t it? Hold on, let me draw a map for you.”
Cheng Xiang rummaged through her bag. But with her corporate slave7 mindset of going to work as if attending a funeral completely laid bare, a notepad was the last thing she would carry.
Pfft. Cheng Xiang laughed to herself, pulling out a pack of tissues. As she drew one out, she said to Luo Yan, “Um, I might only be able to draw it on a tissue for you, please don’t mind.”
Luo Yan shook her head. “Not at all.”
Over by the roadside parking stalls, Tao Tianran stood at a distance, watching.
She, too, had once been unable to find this little theater named 「Wutong」. Back then, Cheng Xiang had slacked off during work to sketch a “map” on a paper tissue for her.
Cheng Xiang had taken a photo of it and sent it to her. That image remained saved in her phone album to this very day.
With her hands shoved deep inside her long windbreaker pockets, she stood tall. The cheap neon lights around her spilled unevenly, falling on her in thick and dark patches, making her mood seem obscure and unclear.
It turned out that her treasured memory was not a unique gesture Cheng Xiang reserved only for her.
Tao Tianran took half a step forward, then stopped. She instinctively wanted to step forward, only to find that what followed was a sense of being completely at a loss.
Even now, did Cheng Xiang still hold a heart that was “unique” for her?
Watching Cheng Xiang rest the tissue in her palm and struggle to sketch with a rollerball pen, Luo Yan suggested, “I have a notebook here. Why don’t you use it as a backing?”
“Oh, no, no, it’s fine,” Cheng Xiang said in a rush. “I’ll be done in a second. Pfft, it’s a bit ugly, can you understand it?”
Cheng Xiang handed over the flimsy tissue.
Luo Yan took it and smiled.
Cheng Xiang felt a little embarrassed. It really was a bit unpresentable.
Luo Yan looked at it carefully. “Mm, I can make sense of it.”
Suddenly, Cheng Xiang thought of Tao Tianran.
If even Luo Yan could make sense of it, why would Tao Tianran fail to understand?
“Do you want to come along?” Luo Yan asked.
“Hmm?”
“The play tonight. There should still be some tickets left at the door.”
“Oh, I won’t go. I’ve been working a lot of overtime lately, I just want to go home and rest, hehe.”
After Luo Yan left, Cheng Xiang habitually cast a glance toward the roadside.
And she saw her—Tao Tianran standing by the Bentley.
Cheng Xiang: …
Footnotes
- This poetic epigraph reflects on the sweet, lingering essence of past memories and timelines that eventually resurface unexpectedly like a fallen autumn fruit.
- ānchún: A common Chinese metaphor comparing a cowering, anxious, or tense person to a huddled quail, representing physical or emotional vulnerability.
- chuunibyou: Originally a Japanese term widely used in Chinese web novel communities to refer to grandiose, childishly dramatic, or edgy delusions of power typical of middle schoolers.
- shāzhūpán: Literally 'pig-butchering plate', a type of online romance financial scam in China where victims are groomed by scammers before being lured into fraudulent investments.
- wáwatóu: A classic Chinese ice cream bar shaped like a cartoon doll face with chocolate hat and vanilla face, highly nostalgic for those born in the 1980s and 90s.
- tiānyǎnshí: Also known as heaven's eye stone, this is a type of natural agate featuring circular banding that resembles an eye, often worn in Tibet as a protective amulet.
- niuma: Literally 'beasts of burden', a modern Chinese internet and corporate slang term for heavily exploited, exhausted, or overworked employees.
0 Comments