Volume 11: The Days of Traversing Through the Mirror
Already Corrupted
If you break my wings, I will surely destroy your heaven1
Lou Jingmo had her own reasons for not accepting Shang Zhou’s request for help.
She had some understanding of Shang Zhou’s guild. It had a few very capable old players, but it was mostly filled with talented newcomers. The core of their organization was Shang Zhou, and everyone’s goal was to leave the game. The members of the guild were like they’d been brainwashed by him. They all trusted him unconditionally, believing that their Guild Leader would use the 12 cards they’d collected to get everyone out.
In their guild, Shang Zhou’s main task was to lead people through dungeons. He started by leading newcomers, who eventually became old-timers and then dispersed to lead other newcomers. In short, it was a cycle of one leading another, a collective act of charity.
However, their standards for selecting people were quite high. They wanted people whose sins weren’t too heavy and who had a talent for gaming.
All in all, Shang Zhou wasn’t just a simple Guild Leader; he was also carrying more than a hundred lives on his back. If she took his card, she’d have to inherit his guild and become responsible for its members. Lou Jingmo would never get involved in such a money-losing business.
As for taking the card and abandoning everyone else… she was even more disdainful of doing something so perfidious that it would be turning her back on faith and abandoning righteousness.2
After that, Shang Zhou never contacted them again. He must’ve made other arrangements. Five days passed after that phone call. At noon on the fifth day, Lou Jingmo received a message from him reporting that he was safe.
“He said he barely made it through this time and almost met his end in there,” Lou Jingmo relayed to Shen Maomao. “Every player in that dungeon was wiped out except for him. But he gained a blessing from a misfortune and got a card he didn’t have.”
“He just told you that directly? Isn’t he afraid you’ll go rob him?”
Lou Jingmo replied, “I’m very happy you have so much faith in me, but unfortunately, I can’t beat their one hundred-plus members.”
Shen Maomao said, “Eh? They’re all together?”
Lou Jingmo explained, “Why else would they build a guild? What if Shang Zhou took the cards and ran? Who would they go after? He only told me this to entice me into joining.”
Shen Maomao thought about it and had to agree. Knowing each other’s backgrounds in reality was much more reassuring than just being online friends in a game.
She asked again, “Why does he keep looking for you? Doesn’t their guild have anyone else who can lift the main beam?”3
“It seems they have a few decent people,” Lou Jingmo said. “But they’re just decent, that’s all. Shang Zhou can guarantee he has no selfish motives and will definitely lead everyone out in the end, but he can’t guarantee his few heart and belly4 will do the same.”
Everyone has desires. What’s more, every single one of them had committed mistakes for the sake of their own desires. How could Shang Zhou possibly entrust such a responsibility to them with a peaceful mind?
Shen Maomao sensed something was off. “Wait, what’s the relationship between you two? Why do you trust each other so much?”
Lou Jingmo gave her a teasing look. “What? Are you eating vinegar?”5
Shen Maomao said, “I advise you to confess and be treated with leniency, but resist and be treated with severity6. Otherwise, I won’t take you back to my mother’s family home for the New Year. I’ll let you spend it all alone.”
Lou Jingmo raised her hands in surrender. “We did know each other before.”
Shen Maomao’s vinegar jar had overturned, filling the air with a sour smell. “Yo… so you’re green plums and a bamboo horse,7 huh.”
Lou Jingmo said, “When he was a kid, he liked to bully girls, so I got some people and beat him until he was crawling all over the ground.”
Shen Maomao replied, “Yo… so it was a case of ‘not fighting, not knowing each other,’8 huh.”
Lou Jingmo couldn’t hold back a smile. “Can you please be a little more normal?”
Shen Maomao whined, “You’re scolding me for him…”
“Alright, that’s enough acting.”
Shen Maomao’s lips were pouted so much you could hang a soy sauce bottle on them. “Oh. So what’s the situation with you two?”
“We were just ordinary high school classmates. He went to a university up north, and I stayed in South City. We lost contact after that. But we still have a fair amount of trust in each other’s character.” Lou Jingmo pinched her cheek. “What are you eating vinegar for? I’ve never liked men.”
Shen Maomao deliberately twisted her words. “Oh! So you’re saying if he were a she, you’d like her?!”
Lou Jingmo wrapped her arms around her. “I see you’re deliberately looking for a fight.”
Shen Maomao giggled with a “heihei” and started playfully wrestling with her.
The day before the Little New Year9, Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo finished pasting the Spring Festival couplets10 and the ‘Fu’ character.11 Then, she brought Lou Jingmo home. Her dad and mom gave Lou Jingmo a welcome of one hundred and twenty thousand points and even wanted to take her out to buy new clothes for the New Year.
Shen Maomao also clamored to buy some but was shot down by her mom, who said, “You still have a pile in your closet.” She got so angry that she refused to go shopping with them, choosing to stay home and play on the computer instead.
That afternoon, when the mother and child pair12 returned from shopping, she immediately went to greet them. But the moment she saw Lou Jingmo’s new clothes, she laughed so hard she squatted on the ground, slapping her leg and nearly losing her breath.
Lou Jingmo’s pink hair was loosely tied in a small tuft at the back of her head, with some curly stray hairs framing her face, giving her an intellectual look. But as one’s gaze traveled down, they would see an extra-large, extra-wide, bright red down jacket. The collar was trimmed with a circle of rainbow-colored fur—exactly the kind of aesthetic her mother would have.
It was proof that some clothes look bad not because of one’s figure. Even someone with a great figure like Lou Jingmo looked like a plastic red bucket in that jacket. If Shen Maomao were to wear it… that picture was too beautiful, she didn’t dare imagine it.13
Mother Shen kicked her. “What are you laughing at? Isn’t this color festive? Doesn’t it complement Xiao Lou’s hair color perfectly? I think you’re just envious and jealous.”
“Gegegege…”14 Shen Maomao laughed until she crowed. “I’m so envious I could die, hahahahahahaha-ga…15“
Mother Shen glared at her. “Stop laughing. Find a basin and put the fish in it. Today is the Little New Year. I’ll have your dad show off a couple of his skills for you two. Xiao Lou is in for a treat. Your Uncle’s cooking is absolutely one of a kind.”
Lou Jingmo took off the down jacket and hung it up, trying her best not to seem too eager. “Uncle can cook too?”
Mother Shen said proudly, “Back then, I was so greedy that he tricked me away with just two dishes!” She glanced at Shen Maomao on the floor and added, “Maomao gets that from me. She’s incredibly greedy. The moment she sees delicious food, she can’t walk. And as soon as she’s on vacation, she secretly orders takeout.”
Lou Jingmo smiled shyly. “Then I’ll have to learn a thing or two from Uncle, to prevent Maomao from being tricked away by someone with food again.”
Shen Maomao was speechless. “Am I a little kid? Am I that easy to trick?”
Mother Shen said, “With that IQ of yours, I’m too embarrassed to even mention it. You’re on the same level as the kids in the kindergarten downstairs.”
Shen Maomao rolled her eyes, picked up the fish, and went to the kitchen. Eyes don’t see, heart doesn’t get vexed.16
When she came out of the kitchen, she found the two of them sitting on the sofa, looking at a photo album. She immediately had a bad feeling.
“Look, this is Maomao when she was three. She was terrified of having her picture taken back then. She’d cry every time. For this one, she cried so much I got annoyed and scolded her. Then she didn’t dare to cry anymore. Look at this little face, all wrinkled up like a steamed bun,” Mother Shen said, pointing at the photo.
Shen Maomao shouted, “! What are you guys doing!!!”
Lou Jingmo looked up with a smile. “Auntie said she wanted to show me some photos.”
“What’s so good about looking at photos? Let’s go out and buy milk tea!!”
Mother Shen said, “You child, how can you be so clueless? She’s enjoying herself. If you want milk tea that badly, go buy it yourself. Don’t forget to get a cup for Xiao Lou. You don’t need to worry about us. Hurry up and go.”
Shen Maomao thought, …It’s over. My black history17, my entire image is ruined.
She didn’t dare to leave. Instead, she hugged a throw pillow and sat beside them, her eyes like two searchlights, constantly on guard against her mom letting slip something that shouldn’t be said.
After a few pages, Mother Shen pointed at the album again. “This was taken when she was six. By then, she cared about being beautiful. The makeup artist used lipstick to put a dot on her forehead, and she refused to let it be washed off. I wiped it off later, and she threw a tantrum, not speaking to me for days.”
Shen Maomao was so ashamed she felt she had no place to hide. “Can we please not talk about these stale sesame seeds and rotten grain18 matters?”
Lou Jingmo glanced at her with smiling eyes. “Very cute.”
Shen Maomao silently blushed.
Their family went to a photo studio for pictures every year. As Lou Jingmo looked through them, she couldn’t help but feel the illusion that she had grown up alongside Shen Maomao, and her heart melted into a complete mess.
As they turned the pages, time progressed to when Shen Maomao was fifteen. Mother Shen wanted to keep going, but Shen Maomao interrupted her. “Let’s stop looking at the album. Dad’s about to come back. Shouldn’t we go prepare the vegetables?”
Mother Shen glanced at her, as if seeing right through her little scheme. “Aren’t you here? Hurry up and wash the vegetables. Don’t delay us from looking at the album.”
Shen Maomao retorted, “Lou Jingmo is your biological child, right?”
Mother Shen sighed. “I wish. But your old Shen family doesn’t have those genes.”
As she spoke, she ignored Shen Maomao’s protests and firmly turned the page. And so, a non-mainstream19 girl appeared before them.
It was a big-head sticker20 photo, the kind that was very popular over a decade ago. In the picture, Shen Maomao had dyed her hair a light yellow. It was permed like corn silk and tied into a fluffy bun on top of her head. Heavy bangs covered half of her eyes, and her sideburns were wide enough to race a horse on. There was even a row of small rhinestones stuck under her eyes. The photo also had text. Next to her portrait were three pink Martian language21 characters. If you looked closely, you could recognize them as “Forget Love.” She was simply the fighter jet22 of non-mainstream.
The corners of Lou Jingmo’s mouth rose crazily, but she was polite enough not to laugh out loud.
Tears were about to stream down Shen Maomao’s face. “I told you not to look…”
Since her image was already ruined, she decided to just give up on herself23. “Fine, look all you want. I’m leaving. I’m going to wash vegetables. See you never.”
The moment she entered the kitchen, two arrogant bursts of laughter erupted from the living room. She was so angry she slammed the door shut, refusing to communicate with them any further.
Mother Shen said, “She did that hair behind my back. The moment she came home, I gave her a beating, and then I took her to the salon to dye it back.”
Lou Jingmo said, “It’s actually quite cute… pu…24“
Mother Shen sold out her daughter without a merciful heart or a soft hand25. “She also kept a diary back then. She thought she hid it well, but I knew all about it. I didn’t read what was inside, though. You can go look for it in her room. You might even reap some happiness.”
Lou Jingmo shook her head. “Forget it. Let’s not make her angry. I’m afraid she’ll ignore me.”
Mother Shen just smiled and said no more.
A short while later, Father Shen came home. The first thing he saw was Lou Jingmo sitting on the sofa with Mother Shen, so he greeted her. “Xiao Lou is here?”
“Hello, Uncle.” She was about to stand up to get his slippers, but Mother Shen pressed her back down. “Don’t mind him. Let’s keep looking at photos. Look at this one, this is Maomao…”
Lou Jingmo smiled apologetically at Father Shen.
Father Shen waved his hand, telling her to keep Mother Shen company. He hung his coat on the rack, went to the bathroom to wash his hands, and then dutifully slipped into the kitchen.
Shen Maomao, who was washing vegetables, looked at her father with tears in her eyes. “Dad… please control your wife… I have no image left to speak of in my wife’s eyes.”
Her dad patted her shoulder comfortingly. “Daughter, you’ll get used to it. Married couples… uh… romantic partners should be honest and open with each other.”
Shen Maomao was speechless. You say it in such a high-sounding and dignified way, but aren’t you just afraid of your wife and don’t dare to stand up for me? Heh, men.
The father and daughter worked silently in the kitchen. Before long, the door was pushed open, and a pink head poked in. “Can I help?”
Afraid her mom would pull out more photo albums to tarnish her image, Shen Maomao quickly waved at Lou Jingmo. “Come in, come in!”
The moment their eyes met, she clearly saw a flash of amusement in Lou Jingmo’s gaze. It made her so angry that her smile gradually vanished as tears gushed out.
It’s over. I really have no image left to speak of.
Father Shen said, “No need, no need. Having Maomao help me is enough. Xiao Lou, go eat an orange, or accompany your Auntie and watch some TV.”
Shen Maomao stood on her tiptoes and put an arm around Lou Jingmo’s shoulder. “Dad, why don’t you teach Lou-jie a couple of dishes so she can make them for me when we get back?”
Father Shen had no intention of keeping his skills to himself. He was delighted. “That would be great! Come, come, Shen Maomao, make some space for her. You have no foresight. Xiao Lou, it’s not that your Uncle is blowing a cow26, but back then, your Auntie was moved by my cooking. That’s why she ended up with a poor boy like me.”
Lou Jingmo chimed in, “Auntie told me, too. Uncle, you two are really in love and very happy.”
Father Shen’s face was filled with a red glow27, and he was immensely proud28, “Of course! Come, look at this dish. First, you heat the oil. Once it’s seventy percent hot, you add Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon bark… Can you eat chili peppers? If not, I’ll add a little less…”
The two of them started exchanging cooking tips, making Shen Maomao, who couldn’t get a word in, seem exceptionally superfluous.
She had been worried that Lou Jingmo would feel awkward around her father, but now she suspected that she was the door-entering son-in-law29 and the two in front of the wok were the real father and daughter.
Did Lou Jingmo put a hex on her parents? How is she so awesome?30
After the vegetables were washed, there was no place for her to use her martial skills31 in the kitchen. Shen Maomao had no choice but to leave silently. As she left, the two inside didn’t even spare her a glance.
Mother Shen, seeing her come out from the sofa, quickly waved her over and whispered, “Come here, I want to ask you something.”
Shen Maomao walked over. “What’s it?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask since the last time you came back. Why are your and her hairs dyed so strangely?”
“Doesn’t it look good?”
Mother Shen hesitated for a second. “Xiao Lou’s dye job looks quite good.”
Shen Maomao was incredulous. “??? Your daughter doesn’t look good??”
“What is that thing of yours? It’s neither fish nor fowl.” As she spoke, she opened the album again, flipping straight to the black history photo that Shen Maomao couldn’t bear to look at. “Look, isn’t yours just like this?”
Shen Maomao was so angry she laughed. “You have such a double standard, don’t you? What, Lou Jingmo has a pretty face so any color she dyes looks good, but I’m just non-mainstream? Besides, are these two styles even the same? I’m clearly a sweetheart beautiful girl right now, okay?!”
“Ou—”32 Mother Shen made a retching gesture. “I’m not going to bother with you anymore. Dye your hair whatever color you want. Just don’t disgust me here.”
Shen Maomao was speechless. Although I won, why don’t I feel happy at all?
After dinner, Shen Maomao washed the dishes and then went back to her room to find Lou Jingmo.
On her bed, Lou Jingmo was holding a pink-covered combination notebook,33 looking at her with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile.
Shen Maomao’s hair stood on end. “Wocao!34 You managed to find even this?” She moved to snatch it.
Lou Jingmo raised her hand high to avoid her. “Auntie gave it to me.”
Shen Maomao was speechless. My mom really spares no effort in pitting35 me.
Lou Jingmo asked, “What? I can’t look? Are there secrets?”
Shen Maomao hesitated. “It’s not that you can’t… but you can’t laugh after you read it.”
“We’ve received professional training,” Lou Jingmo said. “We generally don’t laugh. Unless we can’t help it.”
Shen Maomao locked the door tight and glared at her before reluctantly unlocking the diary. “The password is my mom’s birthday. I wrote this hoping that one day she’d discover it and feel guilty towards me, but as it turns out…”
As it turned out, Lou Jingmo already knew—Mother Shen had never read it at all.
The first entry was from ’06, the handwriting still very childish: [Today, Mom ma me because I didn’t get a hundred on my math test. I’m so nan guo, she doesn’t love me at all 555.36 Her daughter is already dead. From now on, I will become a learning ji qi with no gan qing, and let her know the zi wei of hou hui!37]
Lou Jingmo was silent for two seconds. She looked at the diary, then at Shen Maomao, and offered a pertinent evaluation. “You wrote the character for ‘know’ wrong.”
Shen Maomao rolled her eyes. “I didn’t ask you to come here and correct my mistakes.”
Lou Jingmo was gradually losing control of her expression. “Let me ask you something.”
Shen Maomao covered her face. “Don’t ask. We loved.”
Lou Jingmo immediately burst into a loud laugh, laughing until she was silly.
Shen Maomao said, “Cao38, you dog cunt.”39
“Hahahahahahaha!!” Lou Jingmo couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed like this. But the thought of Shen Maomao’s incredibly embarrassed expression was both cute and hilarious.
Shen Maomao got angry. “Are you going to keep reading or not?! If you laugh again, I won’t let you!”
Lou Jingmo coughed twice to compose herself. “Keke40, I’m fine now. Let’s continue.”
She turned to the second entry: [Today Mom took me to the You Le Yuan, said she wanted to dao qian to me, said that yesterday she shouldn’t have been so fierce to me, but it was already too late. I’m no longer her daughter. Why did she have to say it so wan? My heart is so tong, unless she buys me a bang bang tang tomorrow, I won’t yuan liang her!41]
Next to it was a drawing of a broken heart.
Lou Jingmo smiled and praised her, “Your Pinyin studies aren’t bad.”
Shen Maomao buried her head in the quilt.
Lou Jingmo flipped a few more pages. The contents were roughly the same—just a child’s complaints. There was a long gap in the middle, probably because she couldn’t keep it up. The next entry was from ’13: [She doesn’t understand me at all! The moment my hair was forcibly straightened, it felt like something else shattered along with it… Ah… that was my dream and my heart. My world seems to have only a patch of fog left. In the fog, there is a small me, unable to find the way home. Can I even say I have a home? Is this place really my home? When a fish cries, the water knows. When I cry, who knows?]
Lou Jingmo said, “Pu-hahahahahahaha… You’re quite good at rhyming, you know…”
This diary entry was even better when viewed in conjunction with that photo.
Shen Maomao wished she could dig a three-bedroom apartment out of the floor with her toes and lock Lou Jingmo inside, just to escape her wild laughter. “Shut your mouth!”
Lou Jingmo turned another page, and this one was even more epic. It was covered in Martian language. She tried to decipher it for a long time and could only make out two sentences. One was “If you break my wings, I will surely destroy your entire heaven,” and the other was “Already corrupted (heartbreak).”
Suppressing her laughter, she turned another page and saw: [Adults only know how to lie. They will never understand my feelings. When the sharp little knife cut my skin, I cried, but not because of the pain, but because my heart was already dead. If one day, she sees these wounds, will she feel even a little bit of guilt in her heart? Maybe death is a kind of release, but I am a coward. I don’t even dare to commit suicide. What meaning is there to a life like this? How much longer can I hold on?]
Lou Jingmo frowned. “You self-harmed back then? Did you see a psychologist? Do you still have these kinds of thoughts?”
Shen Maomao was mortified. “No… I just wrote it like that. Back then, for some reason, self-harm was really popular in my class. I followed the trend and scratched my arm with a small knife, but I was too timid to use any force. The skin didn’t even break. I just wrote it to deliberately anger my mom. Ai… thinking about it now, it’s a good thing I didn’t really do it. My mom would’ve been so sad if she’d seen it.”
Only then did Lou Jingmo feel relieved. She read two more pages of non-mainstream remarks, then closed the diary and said seriously, “Actually, I’m very disappointed that I couldn’t be a part of your past, that I couldn’t see you when you were so lively. I’m very grateful for these photos and this diary because they let me see a complete you and know what kind of person you were. So you don’t need to be embarrassed. Everyone was young once. We all went through things like this.”
Shen Maomao asked with longing, “Were you also non-mainstream?”
“No. Pu.”
Shen Maomao looked at her coldly and said faintly, “After saying all that, if you hadn’t laughed, I would’ve really believed you.”
“Hahahahahahahahahahaha, how can you be so cute, hahahahahahahaha!”
Shen Maomao thought, …So angry, but I still have to maintain a smile.
Stop laughing! If you keep laughing, the child will become stupid!
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