The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 85
by Little PandaGoodbye
“So we can, right?”
[Your emotions are like a lamp in the fog,
hazy and obscured, already burning before I could see clearly.]
After Cheng Xiang finished speaking, she walked forward.
Tao Tianran followed behind her, saying softly, “You think I can’t do it?”
Cheng Xiang walked with her head down, feeling the little bear pendant swaying against her canvas tote bag. This bear had followed her from high school through university and into her working life, and now that she’d resigned, it had moved from her double-strap backpack to the canvas tote.
Just like Tao Tianran.
Everything in the world was changing. Like the old hutong that seemed abandoned by time, where people thought everything was buried under dust and nothing ever changed — but that wasn’t true. The tree rings had grown a few more weathered circles, the low walls had risen to eye level. Or perhaps what had changed wasn’t this world, but me within this world.
The only constant was Tao Tianran. Tao Tianran was the sole constant in this ever-changing world, like a diamond, like an ice field — “a vast expanse of white, clean and pure1.”
Cheng Xiang suddenly stopped.
Tao Tianran always seemed to know exactly how to hit her. She was a sensitive person — delicate antennae magnifying the world to infinity. Joy under a magnifying glass; sorrow under a microscope.
If Tao Tianran had come running after her right now, grabbed her arm and said “I can do it,” Cheng Xiang would have felt like she was in some old-fashioned romance drama, and she’d have laughed herself silly. What was this? They’d been broken up for over a year, and suddenly she was standing in a hutong acting out some domineering CEO scene.
But Tao Tianran simply followed behind her, her footsteps light, her words light.
Cheng Xiang released a breath from her chest and turned to look at Tao Tianran.
This person, really — how had she not changed at all?
Over a year had passed. In Cheng Xiang’s dreams, countless lifetimes had slipped by, circling round and round who knows how many times. Yet Tao Tianran stood here now, exactly the same as the day she’d broken up with her — elegant features, as if nothing could stir her emotions.
Tracing further back, she looked the same as the last time they’d made love — cold white complexion, those dark eyes holding their depths well hidden.
Cheng Xiang called out to her: “Hey Tao Tianran.”
Tao Tianran stood before her, and the rims of her eyes suddenly turned red.
Cheng Xiang froze, then quickly ducked her head and rummaged frantically through her canvas tote for tissues. “Wait, what are you doing?”
This was nothing like what she’d imagined.
During the four hundred days since breaking up with Tao Tianran, she had fantasized many times about scenarios where Tao Tianran came looking for her.
For instance, she’d imagine herself having made it big, while Tao Tianran had fallen on hard times — but someone like Tao Tianran could never fall on hard times, and she’d laugh at herself for even thinking it. She’d stroll past Tao Tianran carrying a baguette-shaped little purse, looking impossibly chic, then pretend to recognize her only after passing, doubling back a few steps:
“Oh, Tao Tianran?”
“What are you doing here? Let me buy you a meal — that place you used to always treat me, the one that costs a fortune.”
But even in her fantasy, Cheng Xiang’s heart would soften. She’d lower her eyes to stare at Tao Tianran’s fingers resting on the table, wanting to pinch them and say “Tao Tianran, you’re still doing okay, right?”
But they’d broken up. She couldn’t pinch Tao Tianran’s fingers anymore.
So walking out of the restaurant, she’d trail behind Tao Tianran, raise her hand to pat the head of Tao Tianran’s shadow, and mouth the words: “Tao Tianran, you’d better be okay.”
She always wanted Tao Tianran to be okay.
Even in her dreams, when she turned into a gorgeous, talented beauty dead set on getting revenge on Tao Tianran, she’d still end up feeling sad.
Really, so many years had passed. From sophomore year of high school, when she was still a naive kid playing in the mud with Qin Ziqiao, and the suddenly transferred Tao Tianran had pried open her heart.
From then on, her laughter was because of Tao Tianran, her sadness because of Tao Tianran, her grief and her ecstasy all because of Tao Tianran. Part of her heart had grown together with Tao Tianran’s — when Tao Tianran hurt, it tugged at her nerves.
What a pushover, Cheng Xiang sometimes thought of herself.
But other times, she thought it was fine.
To have liked someone this recklessly, this all-out, this unreservedly.
She’d seen Tao Tianran cry several times in that long dream, but now Tao Tianran stood before her with reddening eyes, and Cheng Xiang’s heart still crumpled.
She fumbled the tissues out of her bag, looked up at Tao Tianran — who hadn’t let her tears fall. Her reddened eyes were restrained, unlike Cheng Xiang, who would have sniveled and gotten a blotchy red nose the moment she felt like crying.
Seriously — how did she look like a painting even when she was about to cry? Cheng Xiang gripped the tissue pack in her palm, pressing her fingers into it again and again.
Tao Tianran said softly, “In your dream, I did it, didn’t I?”
Cheng Xiang nodded. “Yeah, you did.”
“In your dream, what was I like?”
“In the dream, you were so good to me, really, really good. You cried for me, and you smiled a lot too.” Cheng Xiang’s lips curved up as she spoke. “Really, Tao Tianran, how was the you in my dream so wonderful? So wonderful it felt a bit unreal, but also so wonderful it felt too real.”
Tao Tianran smiled gently.
Her eyes were still red, but she smiled gently.
Her fingers lifted subtly, as if reaching to brush Cheng Xiang’s bangs, but she curled them back with restraint.
That quiet smile, that silent smile, that wordless smile pierced Cheng Xiang, stirring up an inexplicable sadness.
She and Tao Tianran stood in the narrow hutong, surrounded by everything familiar and mundane — utility poles plastered with flyers, streetlamps already extinguished in the early morning, and from the distant hutong entrance, a faint scent of frying sugar fried dough drifting over.
But in an instant, an inexplicable thought crossed Cheng Xiang’s mind:
Maybe that wasn’t a dream.
Maybe it was real.
Maybe Tao Tianran had used loop after loop to bring everything back to the starting point, so they could stand here together, in this perfectly ordinary scene.
Tao Tianran said softly, “So we can, right?”
We can reconcile.
We can be that good together.
Cheng Xiang raised her thick lashes. “Tao Tianran, do you love me?”
This was a question Cheng Xiang had never dared ask before. She was a total coward — never mind “love,” she hadn’t even dared ask whether Tao Tianran liked her. Whenever Qin Ziqiao brought it up, she’d deflect: “You’ve never been in a relationship, you wouldn’t understand. What couple asks about that kind of thing?”
“Couple?”
“Young couples.”
“What’s wrong with asking?”
“Ha.” Cheng Xiang rubbed the chip seasoning dust between her fingertips. “So tacky, so pretentious. Like some old-school coming-of-age indie film.”
The truth was, she was afraid to ask.
Now she stood here, asking a question that had been bottled up inside her for so, so many years. The word “love” felt like a tiny spark, like the core of a sun shrunk down countless times — the moment it left her mouth, it burned the back of her throat.
Tao Tianran gazed at Cheng Xiang, her lips parting slightly.
Her fingertips curled tightly.
“Very much.”
She wanted to say that.
But after everything they’d been through, “love” had become a heavy word resting on her heart. No matter how she spoke it aloud, no matter what intensifier she added — “very,” “especially,” “extremely” — it still felt too light.
So she only looked at Cheng Xiang, with a little warmth, with a little sadness.
Cheng Xiang quirked her lips, eyes just as red, and raised the back of her hand to rub the tip of her nose. “When you look at me like that, I’d almost think you love me a little.”
Tao Tianran smiled too.
She just called her name softly: “Xiao Xiang.”
“You know what, Tao Tianran? Why I couldn’t let go after we broke up — because it felt unfair.” Cheng Xiang went on: “Not because I cooked for you, not because I cleaned the house. But because I laughed so much for you, cried so much for you — and you? You were always so calm, never shed a single tear for me, like I was the only one who’d invested anything. Like a… fool.”
“I just couldn’t accept it. I kept thinking, Tao Tianran, someday I’m going to make you cry for me, just once.”
“Who would’ve thought it came true in a dream.” Cheng Xiang grinned wide. “In that dream, you cried for me quite a few times. It was so real that… how should I put it, Tao Tianran — you’ve already repaid me with your tears. You don’t need to feel like you owe me anything.”
Tao Tianran drew a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice was still soft: “Could you buy me a sugar fried dough?”
“Huh?” Cheng Xiang was dumbfounded. “Wait, you came all the way here this early in the morning and you haven’t eaten breakfast?”
“Mm.”
Cheng Xiang frowned, leading her toward the breakfast stall. “Why don’t you eat breakfast? Haven’t I told you a million times, skipping breakfast is bad for your stomach.”
At the hutong entrance, Cheng Xiang knew her way around: “One sugar fried dough!”
“Hey, Xiangzi! Not taking chopsticks today?”
“Just buying one, no need for chopsticks.” Cheng Xiang laughed. “Just put it in a plastic bag for me.”
Taking the pastry, she thought: Tao Tianran is so annoying, she’s only getting the less crispy one that’s been sitting in a plastic bag.
But when Cheng Xiang handed the sugar fried dough to Tao Tianran, she still peeled back the plastic bag so it wouldn’t lose its crispiness, thrusting it at her with a sour face: “Hurry up and eat. I can’t stand around here all day, I’ve got things to do.”
“Mm.” Tao Tianran took it and bent her head to bite into it.
Cheng Xiang’s brows creased again. “Hey, hot, hot, hot! Blow on it first! Ugh, never mind, take your time. I’m not in that much of a hurry.”
Tao Tianran said, “I’d also like a cup of soy milk.”
“What?” Cheng Xiang was almost too exasperated to even be mad.
What was this woman’s deal? They’d been broken up for four hundred days and she suddenly shows up at her doorstep, making her buy breakfast, and won’t even pull out her phone to scan and pay!
“Fine, fine, fine.” Cheng Xiang pulled out her phone again to scan and pay for a cup of soy milk, handing it to Tao Tianran with a sidelong glare. What else could she pull? She refused to believe that with Tao Tianran’s appetite, she could possibly eat a tea egg on top of all that!
Tao Tianran ate so delicately.
A sip of soy milk, a bite of pastry — slow and methodical.
Cheng Xiang tapped her toe irregularly on the ground, hoisted her canvas tote strap, and tilted her head back to watch flocks of pigeons fitted with pigeon whistles2 pass across the hazy sky.
A strange feeling.
After having such a long dream, standing at the entrance of her hutong with Tao Tianran, watching her drink soy milk and eat sugar fried dough.
Cheng Xiang couldn’t name what she was feeling.
A little wistful. A little sad. Why did people always have to go round and round in a big circle before realizing that what they thought was the end was actually a beginning whose meaning they hadn’t yet understood.
Ugh, getting poetic, Xiangzi.
Cheng Xiang sniffled and said to Tao Tianran, “You don’t eat much — let me have a bite of the sugar fried dough.”
She was feeling sentimental — she needed something sweet.
Tao Tianran: “No.”
“What?” Cheng Xiang’s eyes went wide.
Tao Tianran repeated, crisp and clear: “No.”
“Fine, fine, fine.” Cheng Xiang crossed her arms and sneered inwardly: Eat it, eat it all. Let’s see if you can actually finish the whole thing.
And Tao Tianran actually did — ate every last bit.
Cheng Xiang: …
Tao Tianran was so refined — she even opened her Bolide bag and fished out chewing gum. Cheng Xiang watched from the corner of her eye. How was it that they’d both gone through the same breakup, yet the other woman’s life was still so polished?
Then Tao Tianran leaned in close to Cheng Xiang’s ear, her breath carrying the scent of white peach: “Be a little nicer to me.”
The warm breath tickled so much Cheng Xiang wanted to reach up and scratch her ear. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to pay it back.” Tao Tianran stood straight, looking at her with quiet restraint. “Because I want to always owe you something.”
Snow fell rustling from the sky, blanketing the hutong’s ground, gray roof tiles, and the wild grass creeping around the utility poles.
Cheng Xiang raised her hand, then realized she was always rubbing the tip of her nose, and lowered it again.
She didn’t want to cry. Really. She’d cried far too much for Tao Tianran already.
She just felt a little sad, a little wistful.
She used to wonder when she’d finally be able to let go of Tao Tianran. A hundred days, two hundred days, until four hundred days — the date on her phone memo ticking forward one day at a time. She’d been counting the days.
But now Tao Tianran stood here, her words as restrained as ever, yet stubborn.
A sugar fried dough or anything else — as long as there was still something owed between them, still tangled and bound together, as if a single thread of fate hadn’t yet snapped.
Cheng Xiang sniffled and said suddenly, “Tao Tianran, can I see your palm lines?”
Tao Tianran opened her palm to her.
This truly was an artist’s hand.
Cheng Xiang had always thought Tao Tianran had beautiful hands. Fair, fine, with slender fingers and a faint blue ink stain along the side of her middle finger that, for some reason, made her think of a tiny moon.
Tao Tianran asked softly, “What do you see?”
Cheng Xiang shook her head.
She wasn’t skilled enough. She couldn’t tell whether the clear lines on Tao Tianran’s palm had any connection to the creases in her own — whether there was some link that meant someone was always owing, so the thread between them could never be cut.
Cheng Xiang only said, “I really have to go. I’ve got things to take care of.”
“Xiao Xiang.”
“Let’s do tomorrow, Tao Tianran.” Cheng Xiang adjusted the canvas tote on her shoulder. “You show up at my doorstep like this out of nowhere, and then suddenly…”
She looked at Tao Tianran’s still-reddened eyes.
Then shook her head. “I… I can’t say anything else right now. If you want to talk, I’ll talk with you tomorrow, okay?”
“Come to your place?”
“If you have time.”
“I have time.” Tao Tianran repeated softly, “I have time.”
Cheng Xiang pressed her lips together and smiled again. “Then I really have to go.”
Tao Tianran stepped to the side, clearing a path for her.
“Don’t cry, Tao Tianran.” She whispered as she brushed past her. “I lied. No matter what, I never want to see you cry.”
Tao Tianran watched Cheng Xiang’s retreating back as snow rustled down from the sky.
Tao Tianran drove back to her company.
Yi Yu peeked out from her office. “Hey, Teacher Tao!”
“Hold on.” Tao Tianran said, “I have something to attend to right now.”
She walked to her private office, locked the door, and lowered all the blinds.
Yi Yu turned to the assistant next to her. “Why do I feel like her mood is off?”
The assistant nodded. “I think so too.”
“Wow, with an icy face like Teacher Tao’s, someone could actually tell her mood was off.” Yi Yu asked the assistant, “Has she changed, or have we changed?”
Tao Tianran sat at her desk, face buried deep in both hands.
She was back.
Or rather, they were both back.
When Cheng Xiang had been alive and they were together, her heart had always been uneasy, always feeling like it was flowers in a mirror, moon on the water3 — an empty dream. But now, she had returned to her destined life path, and so had Cheng Xiang.
Cheng Xiang said she’d had a very, very long dream.
How could she not feel the same way?
She’d thought that seeing Xiao Xiang again — her Xiao Xiang — she wouldn’t be able to resist pulling Cheng Xiang into her arms.
To speak of love, of so much love.
But it wasn’t like that at all. She and Cheng Xiang just stood in the hutong, both smiling with red-rimmed eyes.
After a while, the assistant knocked from outside.
Tao Tianran took a deep breath to steady herself. “Come in.”
“Teacher Tao,” the assistant peeked in. “Shianne’s here. Shall we start the meeting?”
“Yes.”
Yu Yusheng had planned to go to Europe for further studies, but for some unknown reason had canceled.
Yi Yu thought that was fine too. She draped one arm around Yu Yusheng and the other over Tao Tianran’s shoulder. “My right and left hands both keeping me company — not bad, huh.”
Tao Tianran plucked that claw off her shoulder.
Yu Yusheng was always so gracious, just as her smile was always alluring.
She had prepared farewell gifts for every colleague, and since she’d decided not to leave after all, she went ahead and handed them out one by one. When she got to Tao Tianran: “Teacher Tao, open and see.”
Tao Tianran lifted the lid of the small paper box.
Inside was a tin-cast snail paperweight, with rustic, simple lines.
Yu Yusheng smiled. “I noticed you often use snails as a design element. Hope you like it.”
“Thank you.” Tao Tianran closed the box and glanced at her smiling face.
The morning meeting proceeded normally. Yu Yusheng spoke quite a bit.
Lunchtime.
Tao Tianran stepped out of her private office — the open area was mostly empty.
Tao Tianran headed for the rooftop.
She pushed open the door, and wind swept across the rooftop, sending long hair flying. A figure leaned against the railing, a cigarette between her fingers that she never brought to her lips — just wisps of blue-gray smoke swirling into abstract shapes in the wind.
As if trying to swallow that silhouette whole.
Tao Tianran stood still for a while, watching Yu Yusheng’s back, before walking over.
“Hi, Teacher Tao.” Yu Yusheng had already arched an alluring smile. “What brings you to the rooftop? I remember you don’t smoke.”
Tao Tianran followed her gaze and glanced down at the street below.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing, really.” Yu Yusheng lifted the cigarette between her fingers. “Mind if I smoke?”
Tao Tianran shook her head.
Yu Yusheng continued, “Just watching how people rush through this world, but it’s all like ants scurrying.”
“Why did you suddenly cancel your study trip?”
“That…” Yu Yusheng tipped her lips. “A whim, really. Felt like I could go, or not go — seemed like it wouldn’t make a difference either way.”
She flicked her curled hair with casual indifference. “My mother kept nagging. Not going is fine too.”
Tao Tianran said suddenly, “Don’t stop your medication.”
Yu Yusheng’s hand went slack. She looked at Tao Tianran through hair whipped wild by the wind.
“Was that too forward?”
“Not forward.” Yu Yusheng shook her head. “Just surprised. How did you notice, Teacher Tao?”
“I don’t know.” Tao Tianran said. “Maybe you need to step back a little to see it.”
When they were in the thick of it, everyone was fooled by Yu Yusheng’s facade — herself, Qiao Zhiji, even Yu Yusheng herself.
“Mm…” Yu Yusheng withdrew her gaze toward the street below. “Actually, my mother was the one who suggested I stop taking them. She says the medication makes me groggy all the time, always half-asleep. She doesn’t want friends knowing she has a daughter like that. I’m staying home, they’re all there, she thinks nothing will happen if I stop.”
“Why are you willing to tell me all this?”
“I don’t know.” Yu Yusheng gave a small laugh. “Maybe because you look like you couldn’t care less about this world? You wouldn’t judge me.”
“Do you know why I often use snails as a design element?”
“Why?”
“Because when I was little and living at my grandmother’s house, there was a deep ditch outside. I used to crouch there, watching snails crawl during the humid rainy season.”
“Don’t tell me you kept snails as pets, Teacher Tao?” Yu Yusheng laughed. “That’s a little unusual.”
“No. One day my grandmother came out carrying a basin of hot water and poured it all into the ditch. The snails were scalded to death.”
Yu Yusheng’s smile froze on her lips.
“It seems like a very small thing.” Tao Tianran’s tone was calm. “But I don’t know why I’ve remembered it all these years. Afterward, in many moments when I felt my emotions had gone too numb, I’d think of that scalded snail.”
Yu Yusheng’s lips moved, but she said nothing.
“Don’t stop your medication rashly. Follow the doctor’s orders.” Through the wind-whipped strands of her hair, Tao Tianran looked at Yu Yusheng. “Some wounds are deeper than we ourselves realize.”
Tao Tianran turned and headed back down.
“Teacher Tao.”
Tao Tianran looked back.
“And why are you willing to tell me all this? We barely know each other, right.”
Tao Tianran lightly pressed her lips together.
Then tucked her long hair behind her ear. “Because I hope everyone lives well.”
When Tao Tianran was leaving work, she heard Yi Yu sighing dramatically: “I’m so bored.”
Tao Tianran glanced at her.
“Teacher Tao.” Yi Yu suddenly sat bolt upright. “Got any good suggestions?”
“I suggest you hurry up and get off work.” Tao Tianran’s expression didn’t change. “Don’t stay in the office playing jacks with the diamonds from the safe.”
“Hey, Teacher Tao — you can do erhua4? How do you know erhua?”
Tao Tianran didn’t bring up Qin Ziqiao to Yi Yu again.
Since everything had returned to its destined course, she shouldn’t use her own effort to change anything.
Or rather, she didn’t need to use her own effort to change anything. What was meant to happen would always happen again.
Tao Tianran went home.
She couldn’t sleep, but didn’t want to drink.
The next morning before work, she went to Hundred Flowers Alley again.
Her heart grew inexplicably tense. She kept doubting that everything might be an illusion — that when she knocked, the stranger in the black-framed glasses from yesterday would answer again, telling her Cheng Xiang didn’t live here.
Maybe Cheng Xiang didn’t exist anywhere in this world.
Tao Tianran steadied herself, then curled her knuckles and knocked.
When the old wooden door creaked slowly open, Tao Tianran’s heart leapt into her throat.
Footnotes
- A famous closing line from the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, describing the desolate emptiness left after all worldly attachments are stripped away.
- Small bamboo or reed whistles attached to pigeons in Beijing; as the birds fly, the wind passing through produces a resonant, musical sound — a centuries-old tradition unique to the city.
- A Chinese idiom meaning a beautiful but fragile illusion — flowers reflected in a mirror, the moon reflected on the water; something lovely but untouchable.
- Erhua is a linguistic feature of the Beijing dialect in which a rhotacized 'r' sound is added to the end of words or syllables, giving Beijing speech its distinctive rolling quality.
0 Comments