On their way back, Jiang Mu wanted to explain something, feeling that without an explanation, Pan Kai’s worldview might be completely shattered.
However, to her utter surprise, Pan Kai looked at her with admiring eyes and said, “So this means you’re Brother Seven’s woman now?”
Jiang Mu couldn’t understand why, coming from Pan Kai, it sounded like she was some gang boss’s woman. More importantly, what exactly was he admiring?
Before Jiang Mu could speak, Pan Kai kept promising that he would take this secret to his grave, swearing that even heaven’s thunder couldn’t make him tell. Before leaving, he asked for a divine blessing for her, then hurried away. After that day, Jiang Mu rarely saw Pan Kai again, unsure just how much of a shock their relationship had been to his young mind.
The following days were a race against time for Jin Chao. Jiang Mu had asked him when exactly the race would be, but he never gave her a specific date.
The garage was in semi-retirement, with only Xiao Yang staying to occasionally serve familiar customers, no longer taking on complicated jobs.
When Jin Chao told her he’d pick her up on the 15th, it wasn’t until Jiang Mu got home that she realized the 15th was her birthday – or rather, their birthday. She felt she should prepare a birthday gift for Jin Chao, so she took advantage of her free time to go shopping.
But when the 15th arrived, Jiang Mu felt nervous for reasons she couldn’t explain. She woke up excited, pinning on a never-worn hair clip that sparkled with small diamonds, and specially chose a pure white dress. This had been her habit since childhood, though she’d graduated from puffy skirts to fitted dresses. Then she waited quietly for Jin Chao.
Sitting at her desk looking in the mirror, Jiang Mu saw the lace trim at her collar and suddenly felt like a bride waiting in sacred white for her destined one. The feeling was quite peculiar.
At four o’clock, Jin Chao asked her to come downstairs. Carrying an enormous gift box, she found a taxi waiting. Jin Chao had already told the driver their destination, and though the GPS showed it wasn’t too far, the location was quite remote.
After getting out, Jiang Mu stood by the roadside. There were few cars and no buildings around, only endless farmland in the distance. The sunset was slowly descending, painting the horizon in gradual shades of orange. Jiang Mu faced the sunset, her white figure wrapped in misty light.
From the end of the road came the roar of an engine. Two seconds later, a black car cut through the sunset like a streamlined blade, stopping in front of Jiang Mu before she could even get a clear look.
She stared at the car before her, completely unrecognizable from its original form. Though still understated black, the entire structure had been redesigned with carbon fiber and aluminum alloy materials. The front and rear bumpers and side skirts had been transformed, with large body kits and a spoiler added, creating a wild and fierce appearance. The car seemed completely reborn.
The stunning, imposing design left Jiang Mu stunned. Jin Chao opened the car door, standing there in dark rally gear, his tall figure backlit by the magnificent sunset as he smiled at her: “May I have the honor of inviting you to be its first passenger? My navigator.”
Joy spread across Jiang Mu’s face as she handed Jin Chao the gift box bigger than her upper body. Looking at the large package, he asked, “What’s this?”
Jiang Mu replied mysteriously, “I’ll tell you later.”
Inside the car, the high-tech interior and roll cage left Jiang Mu bewildered. Jin Chao helped her with the six-point safety harness. Everything before her suggested this was no ordinary car, but a true racing machine.
After completing a series of preparations, Jin Chao turned to her and asked, “Do you know the destiny of a GTR?”
Jiang Mu’s heart raced as Jin Chao fixed his gaze on her: “On the track, my destiny is to conquer it. Ready?”
Jiang Mu swallowed nervously and nodded. Jin Chao’s smile faded as he turned away, his eyes bright as stars and fierce as fire. The headlights blazed on, and in a flash, the car’s 2.5-second acceleration to 100 kilometers per hour created an intense g-force. Jiang Mu felt her soul evaporate as the sunset became a blur. She heard the primal roar of the engine as the road ahead lit up brilliantly. Jin Chao’s eyes sparked with fearless determination as he drove them toward distant horizons.
Sitting beside him, her adrenaline surging, that feeling of racing alongside death was permanently etched into Jiang Mu’s marrow. This would become her wildest youth memory, on her 19th birthday.
…
As the sun gradually sank into the earth, Jiang Mu wasn’t sure where Jin Chao had driven them. She asked, “Have we left Tonggang already?”
Jin Chao replied carelessly, “Maybe. We’ll go wherever the road takes us.”
His speed gradually decreased, and Jiang Mu relaxed into a smile. Yes, wherever the road takes us. When they were together, did it matter where they went?
Jin Chao lowered the window, and Jiang Mu stretched out her arm. The breeze caressed her skin with its coolness. Since they had no destination, Jin Chao simply drove wherever Jiang Mu pointed.
She followed her instincts, directing him down whichever road caught her eye. The car traveled along unfamiliar paths and field ridges, creating a sense of adventure where every scene became a unique picture.
Later, under Jiang Mu’s unreliable navigation, they successfully entered a small road with no streetlights or intersections, lined with trees on both sides. Even in midsummer, there was an eerie feeling from the whistling cold wind.
Jiang Mu closed the window, feeling scared. Jin Chao smiled, steering with one hand while holding hers with the other.
After about ten minutes, they saw lights by the roadside – a farmhouse restaurant at the village entrance. Jin Chao asked, “Hungry?”
Jiang Mu nodded, and he drove into the restaurant’s courtyard.
Being summer vacation, the restaurant had several tables of guests, all in the first-floor hall. The owner, a woman in her forties, warmly welcomed them, saying, “There’s a table in the back courtyard if you don’t mind. It’s quieter there.”
Jin Chao looked at Jiang Mu, who nodded, so he drove directly to the back courtyard.
With all the guests in the front hall, the back was indeed quiet. There was a wooden table, and the owner’s son brought them a light bulb. The night was cool, with two dogs wandering about and cicadas chirping in the distance. The air was fresh and clean.
Jiang Mu rested her chin on her hands at the table while Jin Chao went inside to order.
From the first dish to the last, Jiang Mu kept giving thumbs up – quite an achievement given how picky she usually was with food.
This chance discovery along their route particularly excited Jiang Mu. She told Jin Chao, “Aren’t I clever for choosing this road? If we hadn’t come this way or had turned back, how would we have found this place? I’m so smart!”
Jin Chao laughed along, “Have you caught some bad habits from San Lai?”
Jiang Mu thought about San Lai’s chat style that never missed a chance for self-praise, and laughed too.
When they were almost finished eating, Jin Chao held some corn kernels, throwing them to the chickens in the distance. Jiang Mu asked for some and got up to feed the chickens herself. A city girl could find such simple pleasure entertaining for quite a while. When she turned around after running out of corn, the dishes had been cleared from the wooden table, and replaced by a cake with lit candles. Jin Chao sat there in the candlelight, watching her with deep eyes.
In this chance-encountered farmhouse, beside a remote village, in a place where not even a convenience store could be found, the cake before her seemed like something Jin Chao had conjured by magic. Jiang Mu covered her face, her eyes unable to hide her delight as she asked, “Where did this come from?”
Several mischievous children pressed against the wall, grinning at Jiang Mu until the owner pulled them away, scolding, “Don’t disturb the guests.”
Jin Chao reminded her, “The candles are burning out. Make a wish.”
Jiang Mu quickly returned to her seat. She always took birthday wishes very seriously, telling Jin Chao before closing her eyes, “You make one too.”
After she finished her mumbled wishes and opened her eyes, candlelight danced across Jin Chao’s features. He hadn’t made a wish, just kept watching her with a faint smile, his eyes holding a captivating tenderness. When the candles went out, the light in his eyes ignited a flame in Jiang Mu’s heart.
He reached out to remove the candles from the cake. Jiang Mu watched him thoughtfully. She and Jin Chao shared the same birthday, and from her earliest memories until he left, they had always celebrated together.
As a child, she hadn’t thought it special, just looking forward to having cake each birthday. But now, watching him, she suddenly realized that when their family’s finances were tight, her parents would only buy one cake a year, on her birthday. So Jin Chao could only celebrate with her, while his actual birthday went unremembered, without even a simple greeting.
Jin Chao cut her portion with chocolate, just like how she always got the pieces with the most fruit or decorations when they were young. Jiang Mu looked down at the cake before her, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion.
She held her small fork and looked up at him, asking, “Aren’t you going to eat?”
Jin Chao didn’t care much for sweets, taking only a symbolic bite.
Jiang Mu kept watching him, her gaze flickering as she asked, “When is your real birthday?”
Jin Chao’s hand paused mid-fork, then continued stirring the cream before him. In his memory, no one had ever asked him this question. He had no recollection of whether he’d celebrated birthdays before age two. After Mu Mu was born, he always celebrated with her. As a child, he had no concept of birth dates and thought his birthday was the same as Jiang Mu’s, until he transferred to Tonggang school had to fill out forms with his birth date, and got his ID card.
But having celebrated on this day for so long, he always considered it his birthday. The actual date of his birth had become just a string of numbers on documents, nothing more.
Jin Chao replied lightly, “It doesn’t matter.”
But Jiang Mu said seriously, “How can it not matter? That’s the day you came into this world.”
He responded casually, “I haven’t cared about it all these years. I only remember the day you came into this world.”
Jiang Mu lowered her gaze, her chest tight with emotion. She didn’t know why, but she felt sad. She had happily celebrated birthdays with Jin Chao every year, but it was never really his birthday. The sympathy she felt for him was almost suffocating.
Jin Chao noticed her silently eating cake for a while without speaking. He leaned in to look at her, seeing her reddened eyes, and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Jiang Mu lowered her head even more. Seeing her evasive behavior, Jin Chao half-joked, “Don’t tell me you’re crying?”
When she remained silent, Jin Chao’s expression grew serious. He stood up and pulled her from her seat, bending down in surprise: “Why are you crying over this?”
Jiang Mu looked up with tear-filled eyes and choked out, “I feel like I’ve wronged you.”
Jin Chao’s expression softened as he pulled her head against his chest, gently comforting her: “Silly girl.”
Jin Chao was someone who rarely showed tears. No matter how big the issue, his eyes would hardly redden. He’d been that way since childhood, maintaining a stubborn expression even when beaten, never learning to show weakness.
So he could never understand Jiang Mu’s strange triggers for tears. She would cry watching cartoons when a piglet couldn’t find its mother, or when a little girl dropped her lollipop. Seeing her cry over such inexplicable scenes always amused Jin Chao, and he never missed a chance to tease her.
Back then, he probably never imagined that this girl’s tears would one day make his heart clench. He dabbed some cream on her lips with his finger: “Now you look even sillier. Come on, cry harder, let me see.”
Jiang Mu immediately stopped crying and blurted out, “If you do that again, I won’t play with you anymore.”
Jin Chao’s smile spread as he bent down to kiss the cream from her lips, his voice seductive: “You want to play with me? What shall we play?”
His hands gripped her waist with varying pressure. In the dim light, the atmosphere was perfect, with stars and moonlight above them. Jiang Mu felt Jin Chao had scattered an irresistible flutter through her body. Her legs weakened as she surrendered: “No more playing.”
She was no match for Jin Chao in this dangerous game.
Later, they shared the cake with the owner’s young son and visiting nephew. When they went to the front hall, Jiang Mu spotted a guzheng covered with cloth in the corner. She lifted a corner of the cover to look, and the owner asked with a smile, “Do you know how to play the guzheng?”
Jiang Mu turned and replied, “A little bit.”
The owner explained that they had bought the guzheng cheaply from a village teacher last year, keeping it as decoration. Children who visited liked to play with it, but they’d never met a guest who could play.
Jiang Mu looked back at Jin Chao, who stood in the courtyard outside the hall lighting a cigarette. She turned back and quietly asked the owner, “May I play it?”
The owner smiled, “Of course!”
So Jiang Mu removed the cover and found a set of finger picks in the head of the instrument. She realigned all the bridges and skillfully tuned the strings. Jin Chao turned around at the sound.
Jiang Mu sat before the vintage guzheng, her white dress tinged warm by the light. When she dropped her wrist, melodious notes flowed from her fingertips. Jin Chao watched her, his cigarette slowly burning, as her silhouette overlapped with his memories. She was only six when she started learning guzheng. In winter, her fingers would peel from the tape adhesive, and she would cry while playing, unable to complete even a simple children’s song.
She wasn’t particularly gifted in music, taking a long time just to learn numbered musical notation. The flowing melody she now played represented years of effort.
Diners from inside gathered around, some taking photos with their phones, others stopping to watch. She played the guzheng version of “Blowing Dreams to the Western Isle.”
“The south wind knows my heart, blowing dreams to the western isle. Coming in youth’s bloom, leaving with white hair, unable to forget you, never ceasing to seek you.”
The delicate notes carried intense emotion, drawing listeners into its poetic realm. Her once-clumsy childhood figure had grown into someone who could captivate an audience. As her fingers danced, her eyes glancing about, every movement was stunning.
When the piece ended, the lingering notes were met with applause. Jiang Mu turned back in surprise, not realizing how many people had gathered behind her. She looked for Jin Chao, finding him standing outside the crowd, watching her with burning intensity.