Li Jinyu zipped up his pants and leaned against the sink, watching her wash her hands while tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Hungry?” he asked.
Just as Ye Meng was about to say she was starving, her phone suddenly vibrated with an incoming video call. “It’s Grandma,” she whispered.
“Answer it,” he said with a slight nod.
Ye Meng turned off the water and pressed the green button. The screen flickered, and two familiar, kind faces appeared smiling in the frame. For some reason—perhaps because of everything that had happened in Beijing recently—the sight of the two elderly women made her feel like crying. It was as if everything had returned to that quiet, peaceful little town where she and Li Jinyu had first met.
Ye Meng pointed the camera at herself. Xu Meilan, not seeing Li Jinyu leaning against the sink with his arms crossed, asked anxiously, “Darling, why are you crying? What happened?”
Li Jinyu instinctively glanced at Ye Meng.
Gou Juhua also looked worried and pressed, “What’s wrong? Is Badou bullying you?”
Ye Meng sniffled and briefly turned the camera toward Li Jinyu before wiping the tears from the corner of her eye. “No, no, I just miss you both.”
Xu Meilan sighed with relief, looking at the two of them and smiling warmly. “Come back for the Dragon Boat Festival. We’ll make zongzi for you, okay?”
To everyone’s surprise, this made Ye Meng cry even harder. Li Jinyu sighed, took the phone from her hand, pointed the camera at himself, and promised, “Alright, I’ll bring her back for the Dragon Boat Festival.”
Seeing Li Jinyu’s handsome face, Xu Meilan immediately felt refreshed and couldn’t help boasting to Gou Juhua, “Your grandson looks like a movie star, so handsome.”
Gou Juhua brazenly replied, “He looks like me, my grandson.”
Li Jinyu smiled. “You two shouldn’t be staying up late like young people.”
Xu Meilan said, “Your grandma said she couldn’t sleep because she was thinking about you. I figured you two would still be awake, so we decided to video call to check on you.” At this point, Xu Meilan realized they weren’t in their bedroom but appeared to be in a bathroom. She made a puzzled sound. “Why are you two in the bathroom in the middle of the night?”
Li Jinyu coughed, his expression momentarily unnatural as he rubbed his nose. Just as he was about to say they weren’t doing anything, Xu Meilan seemed to understand and quickly turned the camera toward Gou Juhua. “Why don’t you chat with your grandma for a bit?”
Gou Juhua used a basic phone for seniors—the kind where a mechanical female voice loudly announced each number when making calls. This was her first proper video call with her grandson through a smartphone camera, and she felt quite awkward. Her tone was stiff with embarrassment: “I have nothing to say. Just wanted to see you. Let’s hang up.”
Xu Meilan coaxed her softly, “Say something, it’s easy. Just look at the camera.”
Only when Li Jinyu softly called, “Grandma,” did Gou Juhua respond with a quick “Ah.” Seeing Xu Meilan’s encouraging look, she struggled for a moment before finally managing to ask, “Why aren’t you asleep yet?”
Li Jinyu leaned against the sink, seeming more like the elder of the two. “We’re about to sleep. Did you go back for your follow-up check-up like I asked?”
“I did. Everything’s fine.”
“Good. Don’t forget to take your medicine, and tell me if you feel unwell anywhere.”
“I know, you nag too much,” Gou Juhua grumbled. “Let’s hang up. Let me see Ye Meng.”
Ye Meng was now leaning on Li Jinyu’s shoulder, no longer crying but smiling as she moved closer to the camera. “Grandma, did you receive the clothes I sent you both the other day?”
Seeing how sweetly the couple leaned against each other, Gou Juhua couldn’t help showing the screen to Xu Meilan, quietly boasting, “Look at them, they’re as close as can be.” Then she said loudly to Ye Meng, “Yes, we got them! We’re wearing them. They’re very warm. Your grandma and I are both wearing them. You must be very busy in Beijing. Don’t worry about us too much.”
After hanging up, Gou Juhua and Xu Meilan lay in bed together, flat on their backs, chatting idly.
Gou Juhua heaved a heavy sigh, saying with some concern, “Ye Meng is so considerate. I’ve never seen such a thoughtful child. She sends us things every few days and always thinks of us. I feel she’s too exhausted being so meticulous about everything. It’s good your family doesn’t have other children, because if you did, I think she would be the one to suffer.”
Xu Meilan also sighed, “Yes, Meng Meng has been used to taking care of others since she was little. She won’t tell us if she’s been wronged. She’s afraid we’ll think poorly of Li Jinyu, so she doesn’t say anything, and I don’t ask. Even if the young couple argues, as long as they don’t reach the point of divorce, we shouldn’t judge.”
“I used to want to keep her by my side, not letting her go to Beijing. I forced her to make a vow not to find someone from out of town—partly to keep a root in the Ye family, and partly because I knew her temperament and feared she might suffer outside and end up like her mother. The doctor said depression has a certain probability of being hereditary, so our whole family pampered her, unable to bear seeing her suffer even a little.”
Gou Juhua glanced at her and suddenly asked, “If before they got their marriage certificate, you had known Li Jinyu had depression, would you still have allowed them to marry?”
Xu Meilan smiled bitterly, “Honestly? No. But as the child’s aunt said, this generation of kids already has it tough. The outside world isn’t like when we were young when brute force was enough. They have to bear so much. As adults, we should try not to add to their troubles.” Finishing her thought, she slowly closed her eyes. “Let’s sleep, Juhua. Tomorrow we’ll go pick some bamboo leaves.”
After hanging up the call, Ye Meng couldn’t sleep either. Li Jinyu accompanied her sitting in the courtyard for a while, looking at the pomegranate tree, the moon high above, and the vines hanging over the wall. In this soft light, they occasionally exchanged glances. They had lingered inside earlier, touching and kissing enough that now their gazes held no lust, like two monks with purified senses.
Ye Meng looked at the high, egg-yolk-yellow moon and suddenly asked, “Have you seen that girl from your French class again?”
Li Jinyu leaned back in his chair, now changed into casual home clothes—loose sweatpants without the drawstring tied. He glanced at Ye Meng, then looked away and said, “I saw her yesterday. She’s at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs now. I accompanied my grandfather to visit an old colleague there and ran into her.”
“Okay, stop. I don’t want to hear anymore,” Ye Meng abruptly raised her hand to cut him off.
Li Jinyu couldn’t help laughing. In the moonlight flowing like water, the man’s voice seemed particularly cool, though his words carried a hint of teasing: “I’ve discovered that you’re quite repressed, sis.”
Ye Meng glanced at him sideways and retorted, “Not as repressed as you, calling me ‘sis’ all the time.”
“You don’t like hearing it?”
Ye Meng said nothing, just glared at him.
Li Jinyu held a cigarette in one hand and played with the cigarette pack in the other, tapping it occasionally on the small round tea table between them. “Don’t overthink it. I never liked her, I just admired her back then. I even helped Tai Mingxiao pass her love letters.”
“Did Tai Mingxiao win her over?” Ye Meng asked curiously.
Li Jinyu brought the cigarette to his lips and took a drag, shaking his head. “No, she had high standards and wouldn’t consider ordinary guys. She thought Tai Mingxiao was too short.”
“Didn’t you ever think about pursuing her, even a little?”
“No. Even if I liked someone,” Li Jinyu extinguished his cigarette and tossed it into the empty pack, his cold eyelids lowered as he slowly crushed it, “I would still be passive. If you hadn’t pursued me first, we probably would never have crossed paths in this lifetime.”
Ye Meng’s heart trembled. “But that night you said you had wet dreams about me the first time you saw me!”
The moonlight cast a misty glow over the courtyard. The pomegranate tree had gradually bloomed with fiery red flowers, like small red lanterns hanging from the branches, layer upon layer, like a brilliant display of fireworks.
His phone sat on the small round table between them, playing music very softly, almost inaudible except to the two of them—the song was “For Him.”
Li Jinyu’s voice was a standard bass, and when mixed with the song, it somehow fit perfectly.
He had his legs spread, leaning lazily in the chair, slightly raising his foot, looking every bit the Playboy. His deep voice mingled with the song, and added a certain flavor: “So, all men are bastards. Getting off in dreams is one thing, but for me to actively bring you into my life was impossible. I had too many things to consider at the time.”
Ye Meng discovered that this man was attractive to her at all times: “Baby, you’re just too repressed.”
“No,” Li Jinyu probably felt the music was too emotional, so he casually turned it off, still leaning back as he spoke, “What do you think was going through my mind? I was attracted to you then. I wasn’t repressing it, just letting it develop naturally. Maybe one day when I couldn’t control myself anymore, I might have asked you out for dinner or a movie, and perhaps irresponsibly taken you to bed. That’s what I thought then. I never expected you would actively pursue me. I thought you would disdain that.”
For some reason, his words made Ye Meng’s heart pound, like she was holding a little rabbit in her arms that she couldn’t quite control. She felt both elated and dismayed—she had made her move too early; otherwise, she could have waited for him to take the initiative.
“I suddenly feel like the approach you described wouldn’t be bad either. Can we have a do-over? Once this is all over, let’s go back and pretend we don’t know each other, and start again the way you described.”
Li Jinyu looked at her for a long time, his clear eyes seeming to cradle a touch of moonlight. He lowered his head and smiled, then casually tossed the cigarette pack into the trash bin. He picked up his phone, swiped it a couple of times, and stood up, ready to end their late-night chat. “We’ll see, depends on my mood.”
Ye Meng hooked her arms around his neck and clung to him. “No, I feel cheated.”
Li Jinyu wrapped his arm around her waist, giving it a hard pinch before lowering his head to kiss her. “I feel cheated too. If I had met you a few years earlier, things definitely wouldn’t be like this.”
Ye Meng was forced to tilt her head back, enduring his intense kiss, her eyes shining as she responded between kisses: “Really? Would you have pursued me?”
He kissed her neck: “Not necessarily, but I know you would have pursued me, and once you did, I wouldn’t have held out for long.”
The breeze in the courtyard blew gently, and the vines on the wall swayed slowly. In the haze, Ye Meng seemed to hear the familiar sound of Buddhist chanting from the Ningsu courtyard, a Sanskrit melody in her ears, coming from nowhere and going nowhere.
In her dreamlike state, she gazed at the hazy yellow moon, like the compassionate light of Buddha, generously pouring over the earth.
Yes, the poor pray for this life, and the rich pray for the next.
Ye Meng, with her head, tilted back, felt her whole body burning from his kisses, as if a fire was burning in her blood, troubled by the seven emotions and six desires. Looking at the handsome, silent man before her, she thought somewhat hazily and aimlessly—Comrade Buddha, my six senses aren’t very pure right now, but I still wish to be with Li Jinyu for life after life.
They still couldn’t make it back for the Dragon Boat Festival. Xu Meilan and Gou Juhua hurriedly prepared many zongzi, but ultimately couldn’t wait for them to return and taste them. To avoid worrying them, they smiled on the phone and said, “It’s okay, we’ll have Yang Tianwei bring you a few. He’s coming back for the Dragon Boat Festival. As for the rest, we’ll donate them to the township welfare home. The children love them.”
Yang Tianwei gave all those zongzi to Li Jinyu, who kept them without calling Ye Meng to come get them. When Zhou Yu was organizing the refrigerator, he noticed the bag of zongzi. “Hasn’t sis come to get them yet? They’re almost spoiled. Let me put them in the freezer.”
Li Jinyu made a sound of agreement, then thought for a moment and said, “Forget it, you eat them. Sis won’t be coming over recently.”
Zhou Yu made a surprised sound. “Why? Did you two fight again? That’s impossible. The other morning when sis was leaving, you two were being lovey-dovey at the door for ages, kissing back and forth. You even pretended your hand got caught in the door, and sis was so worried she almost called 120.”
Li Jinyu remarked, “You seem very interested in our relationship?”
Zhou Yu quickly covered his mouth. “No, it’s just that when you two fight, you’re in a bad mood. When you’re in a bad mood, I suffer. When sis makes you happy, you’re happy, and then I’m happy too. To be honest, I’m just looking out for myself. But I thought your mood has been quite good lately?”
Li Jinyu found his reasoning interesting and nodded, gesturing for him to continue.
“If sis is in a bad mood, you’re in a bad mood, and I suffer again. If either of you is in a bad mood, you’re definitely in a bad mood, so I just pray that sis stays happy. So why isn’t sis coming over recently?” Zhou Yu returned to his main point.
Li Jinyu ignored that question and instead asked something completely unrelated: “Do you want to go see a movie tonight, Zhou Yu?”
Zhou Yu was surprised by the offer. “Just us two, or with sis as well?”
Li Jinyu lazily crossed his arms and leaned against the refrigerator door. “Just the two of us. Without sis.”
Zhou Yu vaguely sensed a plot and turned to go back to his room. “N-no… I don’t think so.”
Li Jinyu was wearing casual home clothes, his loose pant legs revealing slender ankles. He put one foot on the bar counter opposite to block Zhou Yu’s path. “Come on, you can choose whatever movie you want.”
Zhou Yu somehow felt like Li Jinyu might swing both ways. He gave him a strange look and stammered, “Y-you should ask sis instead.”
“I don’t want to ask sis, I want to ask you,” Li Jinyu said.
Zhou Yu was distraught. “If you don’t want to ask is, you shouldn’t ask me either. Ask a woman! Why ask me? I’m a man! If you want to cheat, I won’t stop you. I promise I won’t tell sis.”
Outside the courtyard wall, under the low wall covered with hanging vines, two men wearing baseball caps were pressed against it. They were dressed in black jackets, looking somewhat like gangsters from a movie, with earphone wires hanging by their ears.
One of them spoke earnestly into the microphone: “He’s been with this guy all week. The guy is very pretty, looks effeminate like a woman, and speaks in a high-pitched voice. He does all the laundry in the yard. Their relationship is unusual.”
Li Lingbai responded, “Good, bring him in first.”