“No.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“…”
“Can you tell stories?” Lin Zhexia said again. “Maybe I’ll fall asleep faster if I listen to a story.”
Chi Yao asked: “How old are you?”
Lin Zhexia: “Three years old this year.”
The bedtime story was just a casual request.
After all, Chi Yao as a person didn’t match the words “bedtime story” at all.
He was more suited for dark fairy tales.
But today’s Chi Yao was being unusually accommodating, so accommodating that she couldn’t help making some excessive requests.
In the darkness, the living room was quiet for a moment. Then came a slight rustle, followed by a faint light from the lower side of the sofa as Chi Yao unlocked his phone.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Anything is fine, preferably something suitable for girls.”
After a while, Chi Yao began speaking without emotion: “A long time ago, there was a group of wild boars.”
Lin Zhexia, huddled in her blanket, felt a bit suffocated: “Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about girls?!”
After another moment.
Chi Yao scrolled through his phone for a while, finding a story: “In the forest, there was a group of little rabbits… Tsk, rabbits should be okay, right?”
This was acceptable.
A story about rabbits shouldn’t have any bizarre twists.
Lin Zhexia fell silent, letting him continue.
When Chi Yao told the story, he still lacked emotion. His tone even subtly conveyed an attitude of “what a stupid story.” But because his voice was much softer, coupled with the nighttime ambiance, Lin Zhexia found the voice in her ears somewhat gentle.
“The little rabbits went out to pick carrots. Little rabbit Tutu,” midway, he paused to criticize, “What kind of name is this?”
Lin Zhexia: “Don’t improvise. It ruins the story’s atmosphere.”
Chi Yao: “It’s already a rabbit. Is it necessary to name it ‘Tutu’?”
Lin Zhexia: “…Don’t worry about it.”
Chi Yao: “I’m the storyteller, and I find it awkward.”
Lin Zhexia huddled in her blanket, too lazy to argue with him, casually saying: “Then give it a different name.”
Chi Yao’s voice paused for a moment, then continued in his neither cold nor warm tone: “Little rabbit Xiaxia took her basket and beloved lotus leaf umbrella and went out.”
“…”
“Even if you want to change the name,” Lin Zhexia felt a deep sense of embarrassment, “don’t, use, my, name!”
This boring carrot-picking story was quite long.
In the middle, the little rabbit encountered a black bear and then a cunning fox. The lotus leaf umbrella was tricked away by the fox, and finally, the weather changed, and it started to rain.
By the time Lin Zhexia heard the latter half of the story, she was already feeling drowsy. Before the ending, she asked with her eyes closed, sleepily: “…What’s the ending?”
Chi Yao scrolled to the next page.
During these few seconds of pause, he heard Lin Zhexia’s soft breathing.
She had fallen asleep before hearing the ending.
Chi Yao’s eyes, partially hidden behind his messy hair, were illuminated by the screen. He propped himself up, half-sitting, to look at the person on the sofa.
The girl’s hair was very messy, sprawled out. She slept on her side, one hand pressed against the side of her face, the other hanging off the edge of the sofa, her slender wrist almost touching his hair.
Chi Yao looked at her for a while.
The Lin Zhexia before him gradually overlapped with the Lin Zhexia who had huddled on his sofa many years ago.
But besides that rainy night from childhood, he also recalled another scene.
It was a few years ago, the night before starting middle school.
Lin He’s original intention in suggesting Lin Zhexia attend an all-girls school was entirely because she was too wild in the neighborhood.
“You’re a girl,” Lin He said in exasperation. “Chasing after He Yang and beating him all day, is that appropriate?”
Lin Zhexia, at that time, stubbornly protested: “He was asking for it.”
Lin He: “You dare talk back—”
Lin He would grab a broom, intending to hit her, but Lin Zhexia could always run away. Thus, a mother-daughter confrontation scene often played out in the neighborhood.
Lin Zhexia: “He bullied Chi Yao first.”
Lin He: “Then you could have reasoned with him. Why did you have to use your hands?”
Lin Zhexia, thinking herself cool, said: “In a man’s world, problems are solved with fists.”
Lin He laughed in anger, chasing and shouting: “…Come here, don’t run. Now I’m going to solve our problem with fists, too. Stop right there!”
At first, Lin Zhexia didn’t think there was anything wrong with attending an all-girls school. School was school, after all. But as the start date approached, she realized everyone else in the neighborhood would be attending the same school, meaning they could go to school together, return home together, and even go to the small shop together to buy snacks.
Only she would be alone, solitary, in a different school.
The night before enrollment, she finally couldn’t hold back anymore and cried in front of him for a long time: “I don’t want to go to school alone. I want to be with you all. I won’t hit He Yang anymore. I’ll reason with him. Isn’t reasoning good enough?”
As she cried, she even hiccupped.
That night, Lin Zhexia said many things, one of which was: “…Chi Yao, couldn’t you become a girl and go to school with me?”
That was one of the rare times she showed vulnerability in front of him.
Just like her fear of thunder, she was very timid, very afraid of separation between people, always lacking a sense of security.
The scene in his memory shifted again.
It shifted to middle school. After filling out his high school entrance exam preferences, the teacher called him to the office. The forty-something-year-old grade director spoke cautiously, tentatively saying: “Between No. 1 High and No. 2 High, did you make a writing error?”
“No error,” he heard his past self say. “I chose No. 2 High.”
…
Chi Yao looked back at his phone.
He found that the carrot-picking rabbit story had only a brief one-line conclusion: When the rain stopped, they finally picked the carrots and happily returned home.
“Finally, the rain cleared up,” Chi Yao said very softly, “and the little rabbit saw a rainbow. Good night, scaredy-cat.”