When Qingye came out of the bathroom, she instinctively looked up at the moon and paused. The moon seemed bigger and brighter from this spot. It was the same moon she had gazed at from her bedroom window just yesterday, yet today she found herself thousands of miles away in a mountain valley. Such a dramatic change in her life within a single day still felt unreal to her.
Xing Wu also raised his head to look at the bright moon. He didn’t hurry her along. They stood there, one in the courtyard and one leaning against the doorframe, both staring in the same direction, lost in their thoughts.
After finishing his cigarette and stamping it out on the ground, Xing Wu asked, “Hungry?”
Qingye lowered her head and touched her stomach, wondering if Xing Wu had heard it growling earlier. How did he know?
She watched as Xing Wu stepped out and walked toward the kitchen, saying, “I’m hungry. If you want to eat, wait inside. There are too many mosquitoes out here.”
Qingye glanced back at him, but he had already entered the kitchen and was busy with something.
Not daring to walk into the empty barbershop, Qingye sat on the washing chair and scrolled through her phone. Her social media feed was mostly filled with posts from her former international school classmates. As she casually browsed, she noticed He Leling, who rarely posted, had shared a picture of a folded paper heart with the caption: “Hope to have a future with you.”
He Leling had been one of Qingye’s closest friends in class. They both ranked near the top academically, though He Leling had never surpassed Qingye since middle school, but she always maintained good grades. Since Qingye’s mother passed away several months ago and her family faced successive troubles, she hadn’t gone shopping, studied, or gossiped with He Leling in a long time. To think that in just these few short months, He Leling had found love? Qingye didn’t even know who the person was.
After liking the post, Qingye put down her phone. Xing Wu brought in two bowls of noodles and set them on the mahjong table, telling her, “Come over.”
Qingye had already caught the fragrant smell of sesame oil. She swallowed and walked over, sitting down to find an appetizing bowl of noodles topped with vibrant green vegetables, ham, and a fried egg.
Qingye didn’t pick up her chopsticks right away. Her nose suddenly stung with emotion – before her mother’s condition had worsened, she used to make her these same sesame oil noodles with vegetables. It felt like such a distant memory now.
Xing Wu sat with one foot propped on his chair and glanced at her. “Eat. It’s not poisoned.”
Qingye picked up her chopsticks and took a bite of noodles, then picked up some vegetables. Her appetite suddenly opened up. Just considering these noodles, they were infinitely better than Li Lanfang’s cooking. The vegetables were perfectly cooked, and the noodles were just the right texture.
Qingye was truly starving and ate big mouthfuls. If her mother were alive to see her eating like this, she would surely scold her for her poor table manners. Qingye would never eat so ungracefully in front of strangers, but perhaps because of her earlier argument with Xing Wu, she couldn’t be bothered to maintain appearances in front of him.
Xing Wu raised his eyelids slightly to observe her. Qingye felt his gaze and said, “Do you talk to everyone like you’ve eaten gunpowder?”
Xing Wu smirked: “With that contemptuous look in your eyes, you expect me to grovel and smile at you?”
“I don’t look at everything with contempt!”
Xing Wu finished eating and pushed his bowl away, suddenly leaning in closer to stare at her with a hint of roguishness: “Your eyes are full of disdain.”
He leaned back in his chair and kicked the nearby chair. “Tell me, who do you look down on? This poor place? Or my home? If I’m not mistaken, when you met us on the road this afternoon, you probably cursed us as ‘country bumpkins’ in your mind, right?”
Qingye looked up in surprise: “No.”
Then she added: “I called you an idiot.”
In all his years of hanging around Xuandian, Xing Wu had never been called an idiot to his face, let alone by a girl. He couldn’t help but laugh in anger.
He narrowed his eyes at Qingye, and with just one look, she sensed danger. To be honest, the reason she had noticed Xing Wu among the group that afternoon was precisely because of this sharp, piercing quality about him that was hard to ignore.
But Xing Wu didn’t argue with Qingye. He took out his phone and said flatly: “No matter how privileged your life was before since you’ve come to stay with us, put away your pride. Here, no one will coddle you.”
Qingye remained silent. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the principle of adapting to local customs, but that mental barrier was difficult to overcome, along with eighteen years of ingrained habits that couldn’t be changed overnight. She didn’t know what tomorrow would bring when the sun rose, so she decided to just take it one day at a time.
Xing Wu had finished eating long ago and was sitting with his leg propped up against the chair back, playing with his phone. Qingye wasn’t sure if he was waiting for her, but when she finished, he stood up too.
They went upstairs one after the other. Xing Wu didn’t go to his room but flopped onto the sofa as usual, while Qingye went to her room to sleep.
The next morning when she woke up, Qingye blinked, feeling her vision was blurry. She had just raised her hand to rub her eyes when they suddenly began to hurt terribly.
She quietly left her room. Li Lanfang’s door was still closed, and Xing Wu was still lying on the sofa with one leg hanging off. She took out her electric toothbrush and disposable face towel and made her way to the sink. After washing her face, her eyes hurt even more from the water contact. She didn’t know what was wrong with them, and everything looked fuzzy.
She put down her things and felt her way to the staircase, intending to go downstairs to check her eyes in the mirror.
The quiet morning was suddenly broken by a loud “thud” that jolted Xing Wu upright on the sofa.
He immediately ran to the staircase to find Qingye had tumbled down the stairs and landed heavily on the ground. Xing Wu took the stairs three at a time, frowning: “What happened?”
Just as he was about to help her up, Qingye’s face contorted as she cried out: “It hurts!”
Xing Wu noticed her right leg was scraped and her eyes were frighteningly red, like she was possessed by a ghost. The sight jolted him fully awake this early morning, and he cursed: “Fuck.”
He picked her up on his back and rushed toward the clinic at the street corner. Just as they left the barbershop, Li Lanfang called from the second floor: “Wuzi, what was that noise?”
Without looking up, Xing Wu replied: “Your niece almost died.”
Though Qingye was in terrible pain, she still managed to pinch his neck in anger: “I’m not dead, don’t talk nonsense. Tell me what’s wrong with my eyes? I can’t see clearly. I’m not going blind, am I?”
Xing Wu snapped back in exasperation: “Shut up! My home isn’t so toxic that you’d go blind after just one day.”
The clinic doctor had just started work early in the morning, with the rolling door only halfway up. Xing Wu put Qingye down and banged on the door with his fist: “Doctor Zhuang, emergency!”
The commotion was significant, and there was quick movement inside. An old man came to pull up the rolling door: “What emergency? Who’s dying?”
“…”
After the door was fully raised, Xing Wu pointed to Qingye beside him: “Her.”
The old man seemed very familiar with him and gave Xing Wu a sideways glance: “Always exaggerating. Bring her in.”
Qingye’s right leg hurt too much to move. Xing Wu pulled her up, and she grabbed his arms, using them like crutches as she hopped into the clinic on one leg. Xing Wu looked down at her soft, fair hands and turned away, concealing his expression.
After helping Qingye to a chair, Xing Wu told Doctor Zhuang: “She fell down the stairs.”
Doctor Zhuang had Qingye move various parts to confirm there were no fractures, then treated her leg wound and prescribed medicine. Noticing something wrong with her eyes, he examined those as well, diagnosing acute conjunctivitis. He prescribed medication, telling her not to rub her eyes, to get adequate rest and sleep to boost her immunity, and gave her some eye drops.
On the way back, since Xing Wu knew there were no fractures, he didn’t carry her anymore. Qingye held onto his arm as she hopped toward the barbershop, sweating in the heat and growing skeptical: “The doctors here treat everything without specializing? Is that reliable?”
Xing Wu had his hands in his jeans pockets and smirked: “What’s not reliable about it? They even treat heart disease.”
“Really?”
Just as she asked, Xing Wu’s phone rang. After answering, he said: “Got it, coming right over.”