The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 7

Bar

“Teacher Tao, have you ever liked someone?”

[In the Late Precambrian period, the Earth endured a heavy snowfall that lasted 300 million years, entering its first major ice age. Later, when Cheng Xiang was asked what it felt like to like someone completely out of reach, she would only smile and say little. She merely said: “It was like a snowfall that lasted 300 million years.”]

            

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“Cough, cough, cough…” Cheng Xiang hid at the base of the red brick wall, nearly choking to death.

“Why do beautiful women love smoking these?” She stared at the slim women’s cigarette in her hand in disbelief.

Coughing even harder beside her was her best friend, Qin Ziqiao. “Search me.”

            

Back then, Cheng Xiang and Tao Tianran hadn’t broken up yet. She would pour out her profound distress to her best friend: I feel like she’s so cold to me. What should I do?

Qin Ziqiao had asked, “Cold in what way?”

Cheng Xiang just slapped a hand against her best friend’s shoulder.

            

The term ‘anti-charisma¹‘ hadn’t become popular back then, but Cheng Xiang felt that applied to herself pretty well.

She had suggested to Qin Ziqiao, “How about we go check out Hide?”

Hide had only recently opened, but it had already skyrocketed to become Beicheng’s hottest bar. Cheng Xiang had changed into a small leather skirt and an oversized faux-leather jacket bought off Taobao²—which, to her at the time, was considered a massive expense. Yet, standing in line outside the bar, contrasted against the tall, glamorous beauties, she still looked like a plain matchstick girl.

            

To look cool, she hadn’t even worn a sweater. In the dead of Beicheng’s winter, several degrees below zero, she and Qin Ziqiao shivered uncontrollably as they lined up at the entrance.

A stereotypically bald bouncer pulled the red velvet rope across. “Sorry, we’re at capacity.”

“What?” Cheng Xiang cried out.

            

A girl behind her, sporting nine-head³ supermodel proportions, tapped Cheng Xiang’s shoulder. “Excuse me.”

The bald bouncer pulled back the red velvet rope and let the girl inside.

Cheng Xiang: …

            

Behind her, Qin Ziqiao muttered, “He just thinks we’re not trendy enough.”

And so, standing on the wind-chilled streets of Beicheng, Cheng Xiang pulled down one side of her leather jacket to expose half of a fair, tender shoulder, and threw a wink at the bald bouncer.

The bald bouncer’s nostrils flared toward the sky, ignoring her entirely.

            

Qin Ziqiao dragged Cheng Xiang away, sneaking over to the base of the red brick wall. The two of them acted shiftily, hiding by the wall and peeking at the girls who were allowed into the bar.

After observing for a while, they reached a conclusion: those girls all possessed a certain effortless relaxation, which probably stemmed from the slender white women’s cigarettes held between their fingers.

Gritting her teeth, Cheng Xiang went to a roadside convenience store, bought a pack, and hid by the wall with Qin Ziqiao to try smoking.

            

With an expression of deep, bitter suffering, she uttered a phrase that would only become popular years later: “Why on earth do people force themselves to eat bitterness for no reason⁴?”

Qin Ziqiao pointed at those leggy beauties. “Look at them.”

“Hm?”

            

“Are any of them prettier than Tao Tianran?”

“No,” Cheng Xiang said without even looking.

Heartbroken, Qin Ziqiao slapped a hand against her shoulder. “You’re done for. You’ve been poisoned by Tao Tianran.”

            

Cheng Xiang just chuckled.

In truth, she later realized Qin Ziqiao was wrong.

Tao Tianran wasn’t a poison; she was a killing frost.

            

Now, as the transmigrated Yu Yusheng, Cheng Xiang stood at the entrance of Hide and called Qin Ziqiao. “What are you doing?”

Qin Ziqiao held the phone a little further away, and only pressed it back to her ear after clearly seeing it was Yu Yusheng’s number. “Reading a novel and eating potato chips.”

“What flavor?”

            

“…Huh?”

“Never mind.” Cheng Xiang smacked her lips. “Come hang out at Hide. Want to?”

“Why are you looking for me?”

            

“Because…” Cheng Xiang kept one hand tucked into the pocket of her dress trousers, using the tip of her high heel to toy with a small pebble on the side of the road. “Cheng Xiang said that in the past, you guys wanted to come.”

All those years of absurdly frittered-away youth, Cheng Xiang had walked through them alongside Qin Ziqiao.

They had eaten instant noodles while watching apocalyptic survival guides, or hidden shiftily by walls to gawk at beautiful women at bars.

            

Qin Ziqiao had once said to Cheng Xiang, “You have it good.”

“What’s good about it?”

“At least you like Tao Tianran. As for me.” Qin Ziqiao tapped her own nose. “I don’t even know who I like. Sigh, my heart has never fluttered for anyone.”

            

“Is it really good that I’m like this?” Cheng Xiang had only smiled at the time.

Post-rebirth, Cheng Xiang stood in the wind outside the bar, gazing at the flickering traffic lights across the zebra crossing.

A short while later, Qin Ziqiao actually showed up.

            

She shot Cheng Xiang a suspicious look.

“Hi.” Cheng Xiang raised a hand in greeting. “My other friends went in first. I waited here for you.”

“When did you get so close to Xiao Xiang?”

            

“Just… had an opportunity, I guess.” Cheng Xiang’s lips curled into a smile.

As they entered the bar, Qin Ziqiao followed behind Cheng Xiang.

The bald bouncers all looked identical, as if sketched by AI. They glanced at Cheng Xiang and let her pass before she even needed to say a word.

            

Hearing Qin Ziqiao following her inside, Cheng Xiang let out a breath of relief.

When Cheng Xiang looked back, Qin Ziqiao quirked her lips. “It’s nothing. I was just suddenly thinking, it’d be nice if Xiao Xiang were here. Back then… we couldn’t get in.”

“Did she really want to come inside?” Cheng Xiang guided Qin Ziqiao deeper into the venue.

            

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to become charming.” Qin Ziqiao paused. “She had someone she liked—someone she liked a lot.”

            

Walking ahead of Qin Ziqiao, Cheng Xiang pressed her right thumb against the small patch of skin on the inside of her middle finger.

When she was Cheng Xiang, she’d had a callus there from drawing. Whenever she was deep in thought, she would unconsciously press that spot and rub it slowly.

So her affection for Tao Tianran…

            

Was something her best friend would recall with a desolate tone, saying liked a lot twice in a row.

The pause between the first liked a lot and the second liked a lot felt just like the tangles of inner conflict Cheng Xiang used to feel when facing Tao Tianran. Maybe I shouldn’t like her anymore, since she’s always so cold to me anyway. Maybe I shouldn’t like her anymore, since she was absent for my birthday anyway. Maybe I shouldn’t like her anymore, since she’s never introduced me to anyone else anyway.

Yet still, after the pause of a single comma, she had continued to like her.

            

Like a moth darting into the flame, never shrinking back.

Cheng Xiang asked Qin Ziqiao, “What else do you remember about Cheng Xiang?”

“Also, she liked manga. And for a period of time she liked the drum kit, and she wanted to learn baking too…” Qin Ziqiao recalled. “But none of those lasted long. She was actually someone who always looked ahead and worried behind⁵; she’d agonize for months just over where to travel.”

            

“Aside from manga, the only other thing,” Qin Ziqiao dragged out her syllables, “was her liking Tao Tianran.”

So now, whenever Cheng Xiang was mentioned, Tao Tianran came to mind.

Cheng Xiang tapped Qin Ziqiao’s shoulder.

            

“What?”

“Look over there.” Cheng Xiang pointed a slender finger.

Qin Ziqiao followed the direction of her hand.

            

There was a reason Hide had remained so popular for years—the boss loved playing with thematic installation art. For example, to mark the recent first snow, the interior had been temporarily transformed to depict the Earth’s various ice ages. From the Late Precambrian to the Quaternary, billions of years of time seemed to stretch out within the space.

Old-fashioned telephone booths stood scattered throughout, but they didn’t house telephones; instead, they held listening stations similar to those in record stores.

Cheng Xiang walked over, her soft waist leaning against a telephone booth. When speaking to people, she had a habit of tilting her head slightly, her fingers twirling the curled ends of her hair, the corners of her eyes narrowed just a fraction.

            

She looked as though she was a third of the way drunk, exuding a careless, romantic apathy toward the world.

Tapping a pale fingertip against the booth, she lifted her chin, gesturing for Qin Ziqiao. “Try it.”

Qin Ziqiao walked over, hesitated for half a second, then took down the headphones and put them on.

            

Leaning her head to the side, Cheng Xiang asked, “What do you hear?”

“I don’t hear… anything at all.” Qin Ziqiao pulled the headphones half-off, letting them hang over one ear, looking confused.

Cheng Xiang leaned in and slipped the headphones away from Qin Ziqiao. A wave of fragrance stirred from her soft silk shirt.

            

Qin Ziqiao noticed that her scent wasn’t seductive. It was a woody tone, mixed with a tiny hint of tobacco. Paired with those inherently alluring, cat-like eyes, it created a seamless sense of indolence.

Qin Ziqiao couldn’t help but ask, “Do you smoke?”

“Hm?” Her tone when speaking to others was also lazy, heavy with a nasal lilt. “Maybe.”

            

Inside Yu Yusheng’s handbag, she really had spotted a pack of cigarettes.

She slipped the headphones over her ears, listening quietly.

Watching her from the side, a very strange feeling welled up in Qin Ziqiao’s heart.

            

By all appearances, this Eldest Miss was a social butterfly. Yet, as she braced one hand against the telephone booth and listened through the headphones amidst the deafening electronic music of the bar, she was excessively tranquil.

Just like the old Cheng Xiang—who loved to laugh, loved to cause a ruckus, and loved to talk, flashing two rows of small white teeth like seashells. Yet there were also those moments at sunset when she would inexplicably quiet down, standing at the edge of the sky with her thin arms and legs.

Unwilling to let this bizarre feeling linger, Qin Ziqiao spoke up, “What do you hear?”

            

“Shh.” Cheng Xiang raised an index finger, pressing it against lips painted with true-red lipstick. “The Earth is freezing.”

Qin Ziqiao’s heart gave a violent jolt.

Strange as it was, that was exactly when Cheng Xiang caught sight of Tao Tianran.

            

Tao Tianran was actually in this bar too. She had previously been hidden among the crowd, but as the dance tracks shifted and more people took to the floor, she was revealed, sitting by the edge of the bar with that cold, clear face of hers.

Sitting opposite her were two Europeans. It seemed clients had arranged to meet her here.

Keeping the headphones pressed to her ears, Cheng Xiang gazed in Tao Tianran’s direction, but her words were directed at Qin Ziqiao: “You said your heart has never fluttered for anyone, right? Actually, you’re very lucky.”

            

“The feeling of liking someone…” Cheng Xiang’s lips quirked up. “Actually isn’t like being poisoned. It’s like the Earth entering an ice age.”

She took off the headphones. Right before slipping them back over Qin Ziqiao’s ears, she said, “Listen closely. When the ice age descends, there is a fine, shattering click-clack sound.”

She was still looking at Tao Tianran as she said this.

            

Tao Tianran really was something else. Sweeping a gaze across the bar, only she and Cheng Xiang were wearing dress shirts. But Cheng Xiang’s shirt was soft and form-fitting, subtly exuding a certain sensual charm—the original Yu Yusheng’s charm. Compared to Cheng Xiang’s “release,” Tao Tianran was the absolute definition of “restraint.”

Her crisp, tailored white shirt was worn even more impeccably and conservatively than back in college. The buttons were dutifully fastened all the way to the very top, exposing only the swan-like elegance of her long neck and the faint blue pulse of her slender neck lines.

Sitting amid a man-made field of ice, she embodied a natural, absolute coldness. Even toward the so-called “financial backers” she supposedly needed to please, she offered only an aloof politeness.

            

When you looked at her, your eyelashes would be cut by the frost.

The click-clack shattering sound in the headphones was the sound of the Earth freezing, and it was the sound of your own bones freezing along with it.

So you could only watch her helplessly, your heart still beating vibrantly, while your limbs and bones were entirely paralyzed.

            

This was different from “poison.” With poison, you could choose whether to drink it or not. But when the Earth’s ice age arrived, no living creature could escape. You stood exactly where you were, watching her sweep across your life.

Until you finally realized that the click-clack sound in the headphones was actually your own heartbeat. And she remained completely oblivious—just a snowfall, descending naturally from the sky, landing upon your head.

Cheng Xiang suddenly let out a loud: “Ha!”

            

Startled, Qin Ziqiao pulled off the headphones. “What are you doing?”

One second ago this Eldest Miss was staring off into space playing the brooding artist, and the next second she was laughing with such booming vitality. Was she schizophrenic?

Cheng Xiang took the headphones from her, slapped them back onto the booth, and grabbed her wrist. “Go, go, go. Let’s go dance.”

            

“Where are your other friends?”

“Drinking.”

“You’re not going to find them?”

            

“I won’t lie to you.” Cheng Xiang looked at Qin Ziqiao with deep seriousness. “Actually, I have a phobia of beautiful women.”

“…Aren’t you a beautiful woman yourself?”

Cheng Xiang let out another ha. Right, right, Yu Yusheng’s physical shell is certainly beautiful, so much so that every night when she showered she felt like she was taking advantage of someone. There was a massive full-length mirror right in the bathroom, and she was always too embarrassed to look into it.

            

Cheng Xiang leaped onto the dance floor and said to Qin Ziqiao, “I’ll buy you another bag.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll even treat you to a trip to Korea to get those… big pig trotter⁶ injections.”

            

“…Big, big pig trotters?” It took Qin Ziqiao two seconds to process. “You mean collagen beauty injections, don’t you.”

“Something like that.” Cheng Xiang waved a hand dismissively. “What else do you want? I’m paying.”

“Why?”

            

“I want you to act recklessly for once, don’t worry about the money.” Cheng Xiang tapped her own nose, laughing ha ha ha. “Don’t I look like a soft-hearted god⁷ to you?”

“You look like a soft-hearted lunatic to me.”

“Anyway.” Cheng Xiang pointed in the direction Tao Tianran was sitting. “Later, when I’m dancing, keep an eye out and see if she looks at me.”

            

“Tao, Tao Tianran?!” Qin Ziqiao was dumbfounded. Why is Tao Tianran here?

Cheng Xiang had already found her footing on the dance floor. She tossed her head back, shaking out her thick, chestnut curls. As the electronic dance music surged, she didn’t make any overly exaggerated moves. She merely shimmied her shoulders slightly with a seductive smile, and when the beat hit its peak, she arched backward, dipping a waist as supple as if it had no bones.

She had realized it early on: since transmigrating into Yu Yusheng’s body, her every frown and every smile occasionally carried the original owner’s natural allure.

            

As she rose from the dip, her eyelashes fluttered, and with an enchanting smile, she slowly brought Tao Tianran’s reflection into her line of sight.

She had already thought this through.

A year ago, lying bleeding out on the zebra crossing, staring up at a sky that looked like a crying girl’s face, she had already thought this through.

            

If she could live her life all over again, she wanted to have the looks and the money, the chest and the curves. She wanted to live a brilliantly colorful life; she wanted to live recklessly and without restraint.

She knew that while she danced, everyone around was watching her. Their gazes burned against her skin like spotlights. That included Tao Tianran—who was currently sipping her drink—even though that gaze held zero temperature, being merely the intuition of a jewelry designer appreciating beauty.

That’s enough, isn’t it? Cheng Xiang thought as she danced. If I can have such a reckless, unrestrained life, I shouldn’t fix all my attention on Tao Tianran anymore.

            

When the song ended, while Cheng Xiang was still catching her breath, someone came over to ask for her WeChat⁸. It was a honey-skinned Eurasian with faintly purple eyes, standing intimately close to Cheng Xiang’s sultry figure, exuding a decadent ambiguity.

Over at the bar, Tao Tianran had finished her conversation with her clients. Retrieving the blazer she’d draped over the back of her chair, she folded it over her arm and headed for the exit, brushing past Cheng Xiang on her way out.

“Do you live alone?” The inherently uninhibited Eurasian was just asking Cheng Xiang, tone equally decadent.

            

Cheng Xiang had been wearing a faint smile, flipping her phone to pull up her WeChat QR code. As Tao Tianran brushed past her, she brought a waft of cold fragrance. Tao Tianran never used perfume; it was merely the scent seeping from the very texture of her skin.

Smack.

It was a sound as light as a butterfly beating its wings. No one else noticed. Only Tao Tianran, carrying her Hermès Bolide, lifted her thin eyelids to look at the wrist that Cheng Xiang had just grabbed hold of.

            

“I didn’t expect Teacher Tao to come to a place like this.” Cheng Xiang spoke with a careless, lazy nasal drawl. “Looking to unwind after work? Are there any types you like here?”

Tao Tianran shot her a glance and said nothing.

Amidst the clamor of the music, Cheng Xiang leaned in close to Tao Tianran. Tao Tianran furrowed her brows slightly. For someone as fiercely distant as her, the last person to get this close had been Cheng Xiang.

            

There was no woody perfume on Cheng Xiang’s body right now, only the clean scent of laundry detergent baked in the sun, dried in the small courtyard of Cheng Xiang’s old home, tinged with the fragrance of parasol trees.

Tao Tianran took a step back. “If you have something to say, just say it. I can hear you clearly.”

“Hm.” Cheng Xiang narrowed her smiling eyes, sizing Tao Tianran up. “It’s just that it’s my first time seeing Teacher Tao appear in a place like this. It’s quite the contrast. So I got a little curious. Someone like Teacher Tao… have you ever liked anyone?”

            

Cheng Xiang lowered her eyelashes, looking down at the pinky finger on Tao Tianran’s right hand—the hand holding the Bolide bag. That pinky ring reflected the spotlights.

Tao Tianran’s lips were so thin that even a slight parting was distinctly visible. She paused for half a second. Then, amidst the ear-drum-shaking blast of the music, using a voice so low it was almost inaudible, she said:

“No.”

            

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