The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 9
by Little PandaAffogato
“I really want to see you cry.”
[I truly did think of escaping you,
of avoiding you like one avoids a disaster.
But still, I couldn’t resign myself to it.]
Cheng Xiang had thought of avoiding Tao Tianran.
She really had. In her past life, her very last thought as she lay dying on the zebra crossing was that if she were reborn with beauty and talent in her next life, she must never get to know Tao Tianran again. She must never turn around and ask to borrow an eraser when Tao Tianran transferred into their class in their second year of high school.
Yeah, not a pencil either.
But when she leapt onto the dance floor and Tao Tianran brushed past her…
When Tao Tianran tilted her face up in the conference room and cast her that appreciative glance…
When the meeting ended and Tao Tianran took the initiative to walk up to her cubicle, asking if she wanted to go get coffee together…
Cheng Xiang lowered her head and smiled.
Tapping her fingertips lightly against the side of her mug, her eyelashes fluttered as she looked up at Tao Tianran with a smile. “Sure, if Teacher Tao is treating.”
The two of them walked out of the office together. Cheng Xiang didn’t even need to turn her head to know the eyeballs of the entire office were glued to their backs.
Stepping into the elevator, Tao Tianran, who was more accustomed to taking the front position, pressed the button for the first floor. She held her phone in her right hand, replying to messages one-handed, while her left hand, having just pressed the button, casually slipped into her dress pants pocket.
The movement was casual and untamed. Her long, straight black hair was tucked behind her ear.
Cheng Xiang stood slightly behind her, catching sight of the white, porcelain-like left ear exposed beneath the strands of hair. Her figure was so tall and slender; even just standing there, she exuded a sense of solitary isolation.
Cheng Xiang said nothing, watching the jumping red numbers on the display.
When the numbers stopped at the eighth floor, Tao Tianran walked out, eyes still glued to her phone. Cheng Xiang grabbed her wrist from behind.
She paused.
By the time Tao Tianran abruptly pulled her hand back, Cheng Xiang had already let go. She looked back with a slight frown, and Cheng Xiang raised an eyebrow. “Teacher Tao, we aren’t there yet.”
Tao Tianran gave a soft “mm” and turned back around.
Cheng Xiang hid the hand that had grasped her behind her back, rubbing her fingertips together, savoring the sensation.
You’ve really grown a spine, Cheng Xiang!
In the past, when would she have ever dared to hold Tao Tianran’s hand so casually? The more she valued her, the more cowardly she became.
When they crossed the street side-by-side.
When Tao Tianran drove one-handed, her other arm hanging naturally.
When they sat in a dark movie theater.
Cheng Xiang’s gaze would only touch her lightly, landing on Tao Tianran’s fingertips like a butterfly. At the slightest disturbance of sunlight, her gaze would fly away.
When the elevator doors opened with a “ding,” it always made people feel like food steamed in a microwave, disciplined by this society.
Cheng Xiang brushed past Tao Tianran, stepping out of the elevator first.
As if that moment of suddenly grasping Tao Tianran’s wrist just now had been a purely unintentional gesture.
The two walked into the cafe. Cheng Xiang realized that a genius like Tao Tianran truly had little patience for the world. For example, standing at the bar, she would tap the corner of her phone lightly against the counter, skimming the menu with a cursory glance.
The “What do you want to drink?” that slipped from her lips sounded like she was just going through the motions.
As if defaulting to the assumption that everyone drank iced Americanos.
“Affogato.”
When Tao Tianran looked over, Cheng Xiang was leaning back against the bar, one arm propped behind her overly slender and soft waist. Her entire person seemed as pliant as if she had no bones, her smile graceful and captivating.
The snow that had fallen for so long had finally stopped. The sunlight, reflecting a rich gold, pierced through and shattered inside her amber pupils.
It gave one the illusion that they could never quite see through to what she was looking at.
The word “Affogato,” murmured with a light flick of her tongue, caused Tao Tianran’s motion of handing over her phone to pay to freeze for a second.
She turned her head and asked faintly, “Can’t you drink something else?”
“No.” Cheng Xiang tilted her chin lightly, turning her head. “What’s wrong with an Affogato?”
Two seconds of blank silence.
“Nothing.” Tao Tianran pulled up her payment QR code and handed it to the barista. “One iced Americano, and an Affogato.”
The two sat at a round table by the window.
Tao Tianran’s movements had always possessed a dashing untamed quality, yet carried a woman’s softness. For instance, the way she rested one leg over the other knee and turned to look out the window—if her expression weren’t so cold, she would look exactly like a beautiful eucalyptus tree.
“Please enjoy.” The server presented their drinks and left with the empty tray.
Tao Tianran’s gaze, which had seemed to land on a stray cat wandering by the road, now slowly withdrew, landing on the scoop of ice cream in the Affogato.
Cheng Xiang held up the slender stem of the glass. “Would Teacher Tao like to try a taste?”
She curved her cat-like eyes. Her expression was almost slightly sly as she asked Tao Tianran if she wanted a taste, even though the sole small silver spoon had already been slipped between her own red lips.
Tao Tianran averted her gaze and said indifferently, “No.”
Cheng Xiang used the tip of her tongue to slowly melt the ice cream in her mouth, her lowered eyelashes watching Tao Tianran’s hands beneath the table. Resting on her knee, her left hand was unconsciously spinning the pinky ring on her right hand.
Cheng Xiang asked, “What’s wrong with an Affogato?”
“Hmm?” The pinky finger of Tao Tianran’s right hand curled slightly. “Nothing.”
When she said “nothing,” her gaze grew two or three degrees colder. The hand that had been twisting the pinky ring moved away. “I just don’t understand why anyone likes an Affogato.”
Cheng Xiang laughed softly, sticking out the tip of her tongue to lick away a bit of ice cream staining her lips.
The first time she ordered an Affogato, she had been with Tao Tianran.
It was probably their sophomore year of college, right around the time chain coffee brands were aggressively entering Beicheng. Tao Tianran was already interning at a jewelry design company and was always busy. When ordering, she was just like now—pinching her phone and replying to messages.
Her “What do you want to drink?” had been asked absentmindedly.
Cheng Xiang scanned the menu carefully. “Affogato.”
Tao Tianran lifted her eyes from the phone screen and cast her a sideways glance.
She smiled, revealing two rows of little white teeth like seashells. “Tao Tianran, what is an Affogato? I just think the name sounds so pretty.”
When the cup of Affogato was served, Cheng Xiang was pleasantly surprised.
A scoop of vanilla ice cream piled on top of a shot of espresso—so this was what an Affogato was.
That day, Tao Tianran leaned back in the soft chair by the window, constantly replying to messages. Cheng Xiang didn’t fuss or make noise. When Tao Tianran finally looked up, about two hours had passed, and her iced Americano had turned as sour as dishwater.
Tao Tianran picked it up, took a sip, and frowned. When she set it down and looked across the table, Cheng Xiang had eaten more than half of the ice cream scoop, leaving a ring of melted cream in the espresso.
Wearing earphones, Cheng Xiang gripped the edge of the soft chair, swinging her lower legs back and forth.
The setting sun shone through the window. Tao Tianran curled her knuckle and tapped the table. “What are you doing?”
“Hmm?” When Cheng Xiang took off her earphones, she was still grinning foolishly.
Tao Tianran tapped her own earlobe. “What are you listening to?”
“Oh, Guo Degang1.” Cheng Xiang giggled sillily.
Tao Tianran rubbed her aching nape. “Why are you so happy?”
She had been so busy that she’d neglected her all afternoon. What was there to be so happy about?
“I don’t know, Tao Tianran.” Cheng Xiang continued to swing her legs. Perhaps because her father was from Haicheng, she wasn’t short, but her slender, long limbs gave her a fragile, solitary air. When she smiled, small wrinkles bunched up around her nose. “Just staying here with you like this, I really am very happy.”
Tao Tianran realized that Cheng Xiang was just like a cup of Affogato.
She was very good at finding sweetness for herself within the bitter coffee.
She would listen to Guo Degang while waiting for her to work. She would crouch in the bushes downstairs at her company with stray cats to count flowers. She would say, “Let’s play roleplay” while hospitalized with gastroenteritis.
“Did you think I was going to play a nurse?” She wrinkled her nose and laughed. “Bet you didn’t see this coming, Tao Tianran! I’m going to play a mechanic who snuck into the hospital to repair the water pipes!”
Tao Tianran said mildly, “Mechanics don’t repair water pipes.”
“Oh, really?” Cheng Xiang stared blankly for a second.
Tao Tianran hadn’t actually gone to Cheng Xiang’s funeral.
She had merely stood far away outside the funeral parlor. The sunlight after the first snow warmed a person belatedly. She stood under a banyan tree carrying her bag, remembering the shallow wrinkles around Cheng Xiang’s nose when she smiled.
“Tap, tap.”
When Tao Tianran looked up, she found that Cheng Xiang had just finished knocking on the table and was looking at her with a smile.
“Teacher Tao seems,” Cheng Xiang’s tone of voice also resembled a cat’s, the sound pressed down toward the bottom of her throat, squeezing out a hint of lazy drawl, “to have a slight habit of zoning out.”
“Sorry,” Tao Tianran said.
Cheng Xiang shrugged. “The weather is so nice today; sitting together with Teacher Tao for a cup of coffee isn’t bad either.”
She spoke with a smile in her voice, her cat-like eyes curving, but there was no mirth at the bottom of her pale amber pupils.
Unlike a certain girl with slender limbs from the past, who, when she looked at her and smiled, the laughter would infect even her eyelashes.
Tao Tianran took a sip of her iced Americano. “I just wanted to talk with you about your design. We didn’t get a chance to expand on it in the meeting just now.”
“Mm. What does Teacher Tao want to ask?”
Cheng Xiang found that people held misconceptions about artists.
A jewelry designer like Tao Tianran didn’t just possess a natural intuition for beauty; she also had extremely strong logical thinking skills. Her questions for Cheng Xiang were incisive, penetrating right to the core. With just two or three questions, she smoothed out the subsequent steps that Cheng Xiang herself hadn’t completely figured out yet.
“I haven’t had a chance to ask yet, what was the concept for Teacher Tao’s first draft?”
Earlier, the big boss had temporarily pulled two designers away to help out, so the meeting hadn’t finished.
Tao Tianran glanced at her.
“Marine snow2,” Tao Tianran said.
Cheng Xiang’s heart slammed against the wall of her chest.
Biting down on the ice cream spoon, the base of her tongue swelled. She still remembered the tone she had used in her past life when telling Tao Tianran, “Let’s go see marine snow together.”
“Why marine snow?” On the surface, however, she was able to prop up her chin and look at Tao Tianran with a beaming smile.
“Because you brought it up at the last meeting.” Tao Tianran’s tone was completely flat. “Why didn’t you use marine snow this time?”
Cheng Xiang tugged her lips into a smile.
“Because, of course… it would make my heart ache.”
Tao Tianran stared steadily at Cheng Xiang.
“Dying before fulfilling a wish and turning into a flurry of falling snow,” Cheng Xiang smiled, “only someone with Teacher Tao’s cold and solitary personality could execute such a thing without the slightest ripple of emotion, right?”
Tao Tianran lowered her chin slightly, not taking offense at the remark.
She gripped her phone and stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Teacher Tao can head back to the company first.” Cheng Xiang blinked. “I’m going to slack off a little longer. If the big boss asks, Teacher Tao can cover for me.”
Tao Tianran didn’t say anything and started walking out.
“Teacher Tao.”
Tao Tianran looked back.
Cheng Xiang propped up her chin, leaning against the soft chair by the window with a smile playing on her lips. “Actually, I’m really curious. Can someone who has never even experienced the feeling of liking someone truly make a good design with ‘regret’ as the theme?”
Tao Tianran glanced down at a message on her phone, pulled herself back from it, and met her gaze. Her eyes were very faint. “We’ll see.”
There wasn’t even arrogance in it. But that bearing, so stingy it refused to even offer an emotion, was an arrogance all its own.
“Teacher Tao.” The corners of Cheng Xiang’s lips lifted two more degrees, bunching up a shallow pear-dimple. On a face that was excessively languid and charming, it looked like a kind of out-of-bounds innocence.
Yet, smiling as she looked at Tao Tianran, she said: “Someone like you, I really want to see you cry.”
Footnotes
- Guo Degang is a highly famous modern Chinese comedian and xiangsheng (traditional crosstalk) performer, known for his witty, working-class humor.
- Marine snow is a biological phenomenon in the deep ocean, consisting of a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the water column. In online aesthetics and literature, it is often associated with themes of lonely, quiet, and beautiful death or the remnants of life sinking into the abyss.
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