The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 89

Side Story 3

Tao Tianran smiled.

[We never look back, perhaps because we never walked out of the long alley¹ of memory. When we say youth is short, we mean memory is long.]

            

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Cheng Xiang eyed Tao Tianran sideways. “What?”

She hadn’t done anything to feel guilty about — she had every right to act tough, didn’t she?

She reached up to rub her eye. She’d been sneaking sideways glances at Tao Tianran for two days now, and it was making her eyeballs ache.

            

The few students in front of her had been quite rowdy, but the moment Tao Tianran walked over, they fell silent and even nudged Cheng Xiang forward.

Tao Tianran pointed at a tree. “They were calling you. You didn’t hear.”

“Huh?” Cheng Xiang glanced toward the tree and, sure enough, several girls were waving at her. “Oh.”

            

Cheng Xiang jogged over. “What’s up?”

“Little Teacher Cheng, the shuttlecock’s stuck in the tree.”

Cheng Xiang took one look and almost laughed from sheer frustration. Why was everyone making her laugh from frustration these past two days?

            

These kids were something else — playing badminton in this kind of wind. Of course it was going to get stuck in a tree.

And it was wedged perfectly, seamlessly caught in the gap between dead branches.

Cheng Xiang tried pushing the trunk. Not budging an inch.

            

She really wanted to imitate those old folks in Beicheng’s parks who exercised by slapping tree trunks — both hands shoving at the trunk, looking like they were striking an ox across a mountain², letting out a vigorous shout: “Hey!”

That would be so juvenile. If the shuttlecock still didn’t fall, it’d look like her internal energy wasn’t strong enough.

She said to the student, “Lend me your racket.”

            

The student handed it over.

She kept jumping, trying to poke at the shuttlecock with the tip of the racket: “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The students beside her were laughing like chickens clucking.

            

“What’s so funny?” Cheng Xiang waved the racket, laughing herself. Back in her sophomore year sports meet, she could’ve given Tao Tianran a run for her money in the high jump. Years of neglecting exercise had really taken their toll — her jumping form felt like a seal’s. “I was just a tiny bit short, okay?”

Tao Tianran walked over.

Oh, so Tao Tianran had spotted her bouncing around like an idiot here.

            

Cheng Xiang felt annoyed again and shoved the racket into Tao Tianran’s hands. “You think you can do better? Go ahead.”

Let her see what kind of moves the person who used to beat her at the high jump could pull off.

Then she remembered to warn her: “Don’t throw the racket trying to hit the shuttlecock — you can’t break the racket.”

            

“I won’t,” Tao Tianran said.

Then she held the racket and started jumping, again and again.

Hahaha. Cheng Xiang instantly felt balanced. So even beautiful women looked silly doing this. It was the action that was the problem, not her.

            

She was probably laughing too loudly — Tao Tianran glanced her way.

Heh. Cheng Xiang tucked her lips, toning down her smile. Her eyes curved in amusement, clear patches of sunlight falling on her dense lashes.

Cheng Xiang suddenly thought: So Tao Tianran could look a little silly sometimes.

            

Why had she always put Tao Tianran on a pedestal? Sometimes she’d even felt a little afraid of Tao Tianran.

But Tao Tianran was taller and had better balance. After just a few jumps, she hooked the shuttlecock down with the tip of the racket.

“Che.” Cheng Xiang bent at the waist, picked up the shuttlecock, and handed it back to the students. “Stop playing, okay? The wind’s too strong today. If you sweat, you’ll catch a cold.”

            

“Thank you, Teacher Cheng.” The students grinned and looked at Tao Tianran.

Cheng Xiang figured she should probably introduce her. “This is Teacher Tao.”

“Teacher Tao?” The little girls clearly had their eyes drifting toward Tao Tianran, but they didn’t speak to her directly — they only addressed Cheng Xiang. “Is that Teacher Cheng’s colleague?”

            

Cheng Xiang found it a bit funny. So she wasn’t the only one who got nervous around Tao Tianran.

She said deliberately, “Ask her yourselves.”

The girls pushed and shoved each other, giggling in a cluster, but not one of them opened her mouth.

            

Tao Tianran said herself, “Not a colleague. I’m her classmate.”

“Classmate? From when?”

“High school.”

            

“High school? Wow, that’s so old.”

Cheng Xiang burst out laughing beside them.

Back when she and Qin Ziqiao used to run wild through the alleys, climbing walls, she’d really thought seventeen was an age that would never arrive. Later, when she met Tao Tianran at seventeen — in the corridors outside classrooms, on the red synthetic track, beneath the clock tower whose bell would scatter flocks of pigeons — she’d thought twenty-seven was an age that would never arrive.

            

She couldn’t have imagined back then what she and Tao Tianran would look like ten years later.

In fact, here they stood at twenty-seven, under a vast sky and wide clouds, the winter sun warm and clear. She had her hands stuffed in her down jacket pockets, smiling openly, the corners of her eyes creasing slightly, the tip of her nose reddened by the strong wind.

Tao Tianran glanced at her.

            

Cheng Xiang lifted the back of her hand to rub her nose, her thick lashes dropping.

She felt like laughing, and also like crying. A swirl of emotion, and a touch of regret.

The bell rang, and for a moment, Cheng Xiang had a flash of disorientation, as if she needed to rush frantically into the classroom, not forgetting to remind Tao Tianran beside her: “hey Tao Tianran³, hurry up, class is starting!”

            

She ran past Tao Tianran with a smile, gaze dropping to catch a glimpse of Tao Tianran’s pale, slender hand hanging at her side.

She pressed her lips together.

She wanted so badly to reach for it. But she didn’t have the courage.

            

The dinglingling bell kept ringing, and only then did it hit her that ten years had already passed. She had at one point become an adult she didn’t much like, and was now working hard to become an adult she could like. For that, she’d walked many roads, taken many detours, and at one point left Tao Tianran and the crosswalk buried under that winter’s first snow behind her.

Cheng Xiang slipped her hands back into her down jacket pockets, her toe lightly scuffing the ground.

She suddenly felt as if that motion were sweeping snow off the crosswalk, as if something she’d thought would stay buried forever was coming to light.

            

Should people look back?

Cheng Xiang looked up and found Tao Tianran watching her.

“What?”

            

“You don’t have a class next period?”

Cheng Xiang gasped and slapped her own forehead. Right — she wasn’t a student anymore, but she was a teacher! When the bell rang, she still needed to sprint!

She bolted for the classroom, arm jutting forward like a blade, turning back for one glance at Tao Tianran, still standing where she was.

            

Tao Tianran was looking up at the tree that had just caught the shuttlecock.

Hmph. This woman, playing the artsy type again.

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Cheng Xiang noticed that Tao Tianran had been keeping herself quite busy here, amassing a large collection of photos at different angles and color palettes, organizing them one by one into her computer as future design reference material.

            

Cheng Xiang didn’t bother her. She went about her routine — teaching, helping at the canteen, eating, checking dorms.

After the dorm check, she detoured to the top floor of the school building, hands in her down jacket pockets, sniffling as she gazed out at the ink-dark sky.

She’d teased Tao Tianran for playing the artsy type during the day — now it was her turn. Heh.

            

She liked it up here. In the dead of night, with no one around.

The starry sky over the plateau was different from a city’s night sky. City nights were too busy — stars were like private thoughts, drowned out by garish neon.

Just as she was watching, a beam of flashlight cut across her.

            

Cheng Xiang squinted — who was the clueless one with a flashlight?

As she turned her head away from the light, she glanced down at the floor below. Even though the figure was wreathed in a halo of light and nothing was clear, her intuition recognized who it was before her eyes did.

“Tao Tianran.”

            

The flashlight beam lifted a little higher.

Hey! Cheng Xiang threw a hand over her eyes, light leaking through her fingers. “That was on purpose, wasn’t it?”

Tao Tianran switched off the flashlight and stood quietly below.

            

Cheng Xiang pressed her lips together.

She wanted to ask Tao Tianran to come up. She also didn’t want to ask Tao Tianran to come up.

While she was still deliberating, she looked again — the figure below was gone.

            

Where was Tao Tianran?

Cheng Xiang figured Tao Tianran must be coming up the stairs, so she listened for movement behind her. Light footsteps sounded, reached the stairwell landing, and stopped. Silence, long and drawn out.

Cheng Xiang thought: Tao Tianran wouldn’t try to hide there and jump out to scare her, would she? Hard to say — hard to say indeed. This Tao Tianran was the type to shine a flashlight in her eyes.

            

Cheng Xiang stayed on guard, thinking that if Tao Tianran suddenly made a sound, she’d leap out and be even louder: “Hey!”

Who was afraid of who, right? This was kids’ alley stuff, old news.

But Tao Tianran stayed silent for a long time.

            

The dark loosens your nerves. Cheng Xiang’s tensed shoulders unconsciously relaxed. The urge to play a prank faded, and she looked up at the quiet stars in the ink-dark sky.

She realized then that the stars weren’t quiet. They were the restlessness you’d left behind in the past, flickering with the night.

A soft tapping sound drifted over: du-du, du-du.

            

The long corridor, swallowed in darkness, resembled a long, narrow alley.

Cheng Xiang realized that was Tao Tianran leaning against the wall at the stairwell corner, fingertips tapping gently, rhythmically, as if without conscious thought. Cheng Xiang had a sudden, inexplicable image: Tao Tianran holding an old key, tapping it against the wall of a narrow alley.

And then discovering that the narrow alley had no doors, no windows. That old key — the one she’d thought would always grant entry — had lost its purpose.

            

Cheng Xiang let out a soft breath.

This time, she had walked away without looking back.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered it — maybe this was how things would be between her and Tao Tianran from now on. In a world like this, would someone really keep searching for another person? And if they couldn’t find them, would they just keep searching, and searching, and searching?

            

She called out softly, “Tao Tianran.”

“Mm.”

Cheng Xiang lowered her lashes. “Hey, Tao Tianran.”

            

“I’m here.”

“Why did you come find me?”

“Because, Xiao Xiang is long⁴.”

            

Cheng Xiang’s throat suddenly tightened.

Should people look back?

That was a question that had flashed through her mind today. The Tao Tianran of the past never looked back. When she’d dragged her suitcase out of the rented apartment, the bang of the door closing had been like a gunshot, piercing straight through the heart. Cheng Xiang had thought at the time: How could someone be so ruthless?

            

She hadn’t expected Tao Tianran to look back.

But now, Tao Tianran’s words aligned perfectly with her own thoughts just moments ago. The corridor outside the classroom, hidden in darkness, was like a long, narrow alley. Perhaps people like Tao Tianran weren’t looking back — perhaps it was that Tao Tianran had never walked out of this long alley.

“Really.” Cheng Xiang pressed her toe against the base of the wall. “What’s with all the artsy stuff? You were doing it during the day too, standing there staring at some tree.”

            

Tao Tianran said nothing.

Cheng Xiang laughed instead. “Fine, I look at that tree too. Straight as an arrow, really tall!”

Pfft. The ancients would describe a tree as a tree of sorrowful green⁵. What a poverty of vocabulary she had.

            

But she thought the saddest thing wasn’t the tree’s color — it was the tree’s interior, as if it had swallowed too many things it couldn’t let go of, turning them into ring after ring of growth rings, so that time could finally be counted.

“You remember there was a tree in my bedroom, right? That’s why I like looking at trees. I look at that tree and think I should put on a white skirt in summer, sit barefoot up in it, and sing. I don’t sing off-key, you know. Even though Qiaozi’s always teasing me about it — and I wouldn’t sing that Borrow Another Five Hundred Years from Heaven⁶ nonsense — I’d sing a proper—”

Tao Tianran stepped out from the stairwell corner.

            

Cheng Xiang’s tongue suddenly tied itself in a knot. “Ha, I’m just rambling. Look at those branches — if someone my size actually sat on them, they’d come crashing down with a thud—”

“I can picture it,” Tao Tianran said suddenly.

“Huh?”

            

“You, sitting in a tree, singing.”

“Ha.” Cheng Xiang was amused. “You think I’m that artsy? What kind of song do you think I’d sing, then?”

“Better not.”

            

“What?”

“The tree is too far away. It’s better if you stand in front of me.” Tao Tianran said, “Then I can reach you with one hand.”

“Can you reach me, Tao Tianran? Because back then, you were in front of me every single day, and I always felt like I could never reach you.”

            

She had no idea what she’d eaten for dinner, but Cheng Xiang suddenly hiccuped.

She quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. Then her diaphragm spasmed again. And again, and again — she couldn’t stop hiccuping.

How was this so ridiculous! Cheng Xiang was actually quite sad inside. She’d thought that talking about these old memories with Tao Tianran would make her cry. But she wasn’t crying — she was just hiccuping, nonstop, barely able to catch her breath.

            

Ah, this was real life. Nothing like a drama, right?

Cheng Xiang looked at Tao Tianran with wide, small-animal eyes. Tao Tianran took her hand — with great restraint, holding only the very tips of her fingers — and gently pressed and kneaded at her fingertips.

Cheng Xiang wanted to cry again.

            

The last time this had happened was in high school.

The last person to hiccup like this had been Qin Ziqiao.

The scene had been hilarious beyond words — after all, Qin Ziqiao was a princess-cut⁷, scowling little brat, and here she was hiccuping so hard her shoulders heaved. Cheng Xiang cracked up while pinching her fingertips. Qin Ziqiao let out a howl and glared at her, the look saying: Laugh one more time and I’m cutting you off.

            

But Cheng Xiang genuinely couldn’t help it — pinching Qiaozi’s fingertips while laughing: “Stop whining. This method was taught to me by Director Ma. She said if someone gets the hiccups like this, you squeeze their fingertips hard — something about acupressure points or interrupting nerve signals, I forget the details.”

Cheng Xiang couldn’t remember how long she’d pinched before Qin Ziqiao finally stopped hiccuping.

Cheng Xiang’s eyes curved into a smile. “Thank me?”

            

Qin Ziqiao: “I hate you!”

Qin Ziqiao was hilarious — it became the biggest news of that ten-minute recess. When the bell rang, Cheng Xiang hummed a little tune as she walked back to her desk.

The whole class had gone to watch, so how was Tao Tianran still sitting there, completely unfazed, eyes lowered at her textbook?

            

Cheng Xiang curled her knuckles and rapped on Tao Tianran’s desk.

Tao Tianran looked up.

Cheng Xiang’s eyes were curved with a smile. “You saw it, didn’t you, Tao Tianran?”

            

Tao Tianran gave her a sideways glance.

The most serious math teacher walked into the classroom. Cheng Xiang turned back around, waving a hand, her back to Tao Tianran as she said: “You definitely saw. If I ever need you someday, you’d better come rescue me.”

That had been a joke.

            

But ten years later, Tao Tianran stood here beside her, squeezing her fingertips hard.

Cheng Xiang’s tears were about to spill. It hurt so much!

But it was hard to say from how many situations Tao Tianran had rescued her, time after time. From the confusion about the future. From the drudgery of accomplishing nothing. From the crisis of becoming an adult she didn’t like.

            

Tao Tianran was just there — constant, shining. Sometimes Cheng Xiang thought she hated Tao Tianran, because Tao Tianran’s existence reminded her of her own inadequacy. So she’d used her own sorrow to turn Tao Tianran into the “bad guy” in everyone’s eyes.

But more often, Cheng Xiang loved Tao Tianran so, so much. Because Tao Tianran was just there, reminding her that life always held hope, that talent shone brightly, reminding her to leap with everything she had the way she had at the sophomore high jump — no matter whether the bar behind her wobbled and fell.

“Tao Tianran.” Cheng Xiang spoke in the gaps between hiccups. “Do you know why I always snap at you? Because I feel wronged. I feel so, so wronged.”

            

Tao Tianran kept her head down, pressing and squeezing her fingertips, one squeeze at a time. “I know.”

“You don’t know!” Cheng Xiang’s temper flared again. She was still hiccuping, barely able to breathe. “You don’t know anything. I don’t just feel wronged for myself — I feel wronged for you, too.”

Tao Tianran’s fingers paused on her fingertips.

            

Cheng Xiang had once had a very long dream.

In the dream, she had been someone else, visiting Tao Tianran’s hometown. She had run into Tao Tianran’s family. She had found Tao Tianran’s house on a sloping street.

“I feel so wronged, Tao Tianran. Why are you the kind of person you are? And it’s not even your own fault.”

            

Cheng Xiang was genuinely about to cry as she said this — if she hadn’t been hiccuping. She couldn’t cry. She just stared at Tao Tianran.

Tao Tianran kept her head down, continuing to squeeze her fingertips, lips pressed slightly together.

Cheng Xiang thought: maybe that hadn’t been a dream. How could she dream about things she didn’t know in real life? Maybe during the time they’d been together, she’d already learned these things.

            

Maybe Tao Tianran had mentioned them in passing. Maybe Cheng Xiang had inadvertently seen them in messages Tao Tianran’s family had sent her.

But Tao Tianran had seemed so unbothered by it all.

And so Cheng Xiang hadn’t paid it much mind either.

            

Now, hiccuping and gasping for air, she said: “I want to save you too, Tao Tianran!”

Tao Tianran kept her head down, dark hair falling along her face. “Mm.”

“Mm, what!” Cheng Xiang flared again. Ever since they’d reunited, she’d been so quick to lose her temper with Tao Tianran. How was it that she was the one still hiccuping nonstop, and she was still the one doing all the talking, while Tao Tianran was still the one saying so little!

            

Tao Tianran fell silent for a moment, then suddenly looked up and gave Cheng Xiang a faint smile.

Cheng Xiang froze.

“You saved me⁸,” Tao Tianran said.

            

Otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.

From the summers in Guang Province where it always rained, beside ditches so damp and clingy they seemed perpetually wreathed in fog.

From the house on Gangdao’s sloping street, which always seemed so desolate once the aroma of egg tarts had drifted away.

            

From fragments of memory, each one like a facet of a diamond, splitting a life into shapes that could never be pieced back together.

Until I stand here now.

The stars overhead are bright. The sky is the same ink-blue I always use. You stand before me, not crying — but vivid and alive, the tip of your nose flushed red.

            

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Oh, come on! Cheng Xiang was dissatisfied again.

What was Tao Tianran smiling at all of a sudden! When she smiled, she was like some kind of enchantress — whether she’d bewitched anyone else’s soul, Cheng Xiang didn’t know, but her own composure was definitely rattled.

She yanked her fingertips out of Tao Tianran’s hand.

            

Tao Tianran had been pinching her fingers forever and she’d still been hiccuping, but the moment she got flustered and pulled her hand away — hey, they stopped.

Cheng Xiang’s dissatisfaction spread to Director Ma.

She glanced at Tao Tianran, and as she headed downstairs, she pulled out her phone and called Director Ma. Tonight the signal was cooperating — the call actually went through. Director Ma’s booming voice came through: “Hello!”

            

“No, Mom, what is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“When I was little, you taught me that if I couldn’t stop hiccuping, I should squeeze my fingertips hard. It didn’t work at all!”

            

“Did I teach you that?”

“Yes! You explained it so convincingly at the time.”

Director Ma thought for a moment. “Is it possible I just wanted to pinch you?”

            

“Hey!”

“Times were tough back then,” Director Ma began reminiscing. “Mom had to seem really noble and grand, you know? If I wanted to pinch you, I had to find a reason, right?”

“Mom, that’s not right…”

            

When Cheng Xiang got on the phone with Director Ma, it wasn’t chatterbox plus chatterbox — it was chatterbox times chatterbox, an exponential compounding effect.

As she talked, she glanced back and remembered Tao Tianran was still following behind her.

She looked back and mouthed to Tao Tianran: “Stop eavesdropping.”

            

The stars overhead were bright. They’d come down from the school building and were walking on the red synthetic track, deserted in the deep of night.

Cheng Xiang kept walking toward the dorm. After a couple of steps, she noticed Tao Tianran wasn’t keeping up and turned around.

Tao Tianran stood in place, wearing Cheng Xiang’s white down jacket, starlight cascading over her, softening her features.

            

She looked as if they’d never been apart these past few years.

Or as if they’d just graduated from high school.

This was them at seventeen — every regret still had time to be mended, every future still waiting to unfold.

            

The track that had seemed endless was actually this small. But the alley that had seemed like one step would carry you out of it was, it turned out, as long as time itself.

Tao Tianran stood at a distance, watching Cheng Xiang on the phone, turning back to mouth at her: “Why aren’t you walking? What are you standing there for?”

Tao Tianran said, “Xiao Xiang, I want to go home with you for New Year.”

            

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“Cough cough cough cough.” Cheng Xiang was so startled she choked on her own saliva.

Director Ma’s booming voice continued on the other end: “Who are you with? I heard someone talking.”

“Nobody.” Cheng Xiang hurriedly said into the phone: “You’re hearing things. Who would I be with this late? It’s wide open out here, there must be an echo hahahaha.”

            

She said “bye” and hung up immediately.

She pointed at Tao Tianran from afar: “You want to go home with me for New Year? Who are you to me, that you’d go home with me for New Year?”

Tao Tianran walked toward her.

            

Cheng Xiang quietly pulled her hand back. Tao Tianran did have a strong presence — pointing at her like that was genuinely nerve-wracking.

But Tao Tianran stood before her and said in a very soft voice:

“But I… have nowhere to go for New Year.”

            

Then she leaned in just a little closer, not touching Cheng Xiang, just her cool, clear breath brushing against Cheng Xiang as she said: “Okay?⁹“

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