Her breath snagged without warning, and Yunque’s thoughts scattered all at once.
She had never once imagined there would come a day when Lu Rangchen would leave her a comment.
And yet right now, she found she couldn’t feel happy at all.
The jumbled, complicated emotions inside her dissolved like mud after rain, and it took a long while before Yunque managed to hold back the urge to reply to him.
She knew she shouldn’t let herself have any more fantasies about this person.
Knowing that and acting on it, though, were two entirely different things.
In the end, Yunque couldn’t bring herself to delete the Moments post. Instead she changed its visibility settings so that only Lu Rangchen could see it.
The entire rest of the evening, she was distracted. Even a set of practice questions she would normally breeze through came out halting and full of mistakes.
And even the next day, the ache and the sense of loss hadn’t gone away. Xu Linda worried she was coming down with something.
For a brief moment, Yunque thought about telling her everything.
But the moment she remembered that Lu Rangchen already had someone he cared about, she didn’t want to say anything at all, or do anything at all.
She drifted through the second day of the National Day holiday in that dazed haze. On the third day, at noon, Yunque finally returned to Yanliuxiang.
She was just past the mealtime. Deng Jiali saw her come in and was awkward about it. “You could have said you were coming back. I’ve already washed all the dishes.”
Ever since the argument between Deng Jiali and Zhu Ping’an, the two had been treating each other with a careful politeness.
Not wanting to create trouble, Yunque shook her head and said she wasn’t hungry, then went back to her room.
Feeling vaguely guilty about it, Deng Jiali knocked on the door not long after. “Then just tell me what you’d like for dinner, and I’ll make it.”
That evening, Yunque’s aunt Zhu Ping would be coming with her cousin who’d just started university, to visit the old woman. Deng Jiali had been to the early market that morning to buy ingredients, and since Zhu Ping’an’s train wasn’t due back until evening anyway, dinner had naturally been set for later that night.
Yunque thought about it and said, “Sweet and sour pork, please.”
Deng Jiali smiled and said all right.
She was about to leave when she paused in the doorway, clearly wanting to say something but holding back. “Actually, Yunque — did your father tell you? Jiaqiang is coming for dinner tonight—”
Yunque’s hand stilled on the book she’d been reaching for.
Deng Jiali quickly added, “Don’t worry. As soon as the meal is done, I’ll have him leave.”
Yunque: “…”
Seeing how carefully she was treading, Yunque paused, then quietly said, all right.
For the rest of the afternoon, except for a bathroom trip, Yunque barely left her room.
Outside the door, the old woman cooed and fussed over her precious grandson. The child laughed with delight when he was happy, and wailed without stopping when he wasn’t. From the kitchen came the steady, relentless thudding of a chopping knife — like a perpetual machine that would never wind down, going on and on without end.
Yunque moved from enduring it quietly, to growing sullen, to putting in her earphones. She lay on the bed reciting text from her textbooks, and then — without realizing it — drifted off to sleep.
When she woke, the sky had gone dark.
There was a knock at the door. She emerged from beneath the blanket, rubbing her eyes.
Zhu Ping’an was back.
The house was lively now. He stood in the doorway, and behind him came the noise and voices of Aunt Zhu Ping arriving with her cousin.
Zhu Ping’an looked genuinely happy, and asked Yunque to come out and chat with her aunt and cousin — since she was there, she could ask him anything she didn’t understand about her studies.
Yunque didn’t respond. She sat up without expression, turned her head — and found Lin Lang standing in the doorway giving her a grin. “What time is it? Still sleeping?”
It had been almost a year since they’d last seen each other. Lin Lang had grown taller and leaner, but his bookish, gentle appearance was the same as ever — always the universally beloved model student. Ever since he’d gotten into Tsinghua-Peking University this year, he had become the household’s standard of excellence, the family’s proudest talking point.
Compared to him, Yunque — middling grades, unpredictable performance, no gift for ingratiating herself — was the headache no one knew what to do with.
Perhaps that was part of the reason.
Yunque had never felt close to Lin Lang, even though Lin Lang always made a point of keeping tabs on her, this cousin of his.
She twisted her hair back into a bun and said, in a flat, unenthusiastic tone, “When did you get back?”
She meant from Beijing to Nancheng.
Lin Lang leaned against her secondhand study desk. “Got in last night. Went to my grandmother’s place during the day.”
As he spoke, he knocked on the battered old desk. “Still using this old desk of mine? How old is this thing now.”
Yunque gave it a sidelong glance. “You’d have to ask my dad why he can’t bring himself to get me a new one.”
The subject seemed to have touched something sensitive. Lin Lang cleared his throat awkwardly.
Just then, the adults outside called the two of them to come for dinner.
Lin Lang turned and left.
With him gone, Yunque could breathe more freely. She dawdled for a while, then slowly made her way out to face everyone.
The old round table was covered in nearly ten dishes.
Zhu Ping and Lin Lang sat in the seats of honor; to the left and right of them were Zhu Ping’an and the old woman.
It seemed Deng Jiali had also been mindful of the seating, positioning herself between Yunque and Deng Jiaqiang as a buffer.
It was only now that Yunque noticed Ye Tian hadn’t come back.