Before coming to Hong Kong, Lin Yingtao had planned to confront Jiang Qiaoxi with some questions face-to-face.
For the past three years, or perhaps throughout her entire life, the same doubts had lingered in her heart.
From when she was ten: “Why didn’t you write to me after you went to the provincial capital?”
When she was twenty: “Why did you leave that day without saying goodbye, taking your luggage, and not giving me any news?”
Now in her third year studying Education, Lin Yingtao increasingly understood the importance of family as she learned more case studies. She often thought back to the people she knew growing up: Du Shang, Yu Qiao, Cai Fangyuan, Qin Yeyun, Geng Xiaoqing, Xin Tingting… Of course, she also thought of Jiang Qiaoxi, remembering what he had experienced and endured. Jiang Qiaoxi could use his mathematical talent and daily efforts to resist fate, but he couldn’t resist the “instincts” and “personality” formed in his family since childhood. To a large extent, this was the true “fate” that we cannot resist.
Lin Yingtao wanted to ask him: Jiang Qiaoxi, what exactly happened in your family? Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you always want to go to America, to the University of California, Berkeley? Wouldn’t there be many scholarships? You could have gone even without your cousin’s support. Why didn’t you go?
Why did you stay in Hong Kong? Why didn’t you contact anyone? How did you start working as a tutor? It’s so risky. You need money, why didn’t you tell us? I could have worked in Beijing. My parents could have lent you money. What kind of life are you living?
Before you left, you said not to forget you. What did that mean? Did you want me to wait for you? Or was it enough for Lin Yingtao to simply not forget Jiang Qiaoxi? What did you want?
These questions, filled with anger, confusion, and hurt, had been bottled up in Lin Yingtao’s heart for far too long. She had intended to ask Jiang Qiaoxi all of these questions when she saw him, to clear everything up.
But with a fever, being held by him, she couldn’t bring herself to ask. Sleeping in his bed, seeing him spend the night on the floor, she didn’t know how to ask. Watching him take care of her as she ate, looking into his eyes, she didn’t know what to say. Sitting in the hospital, seeing him rushing back and forth, clearly not talkative by nature, yet repeatedly asking the doctor about such minor issues as fever and cold…
They took a bus together back to the cheap apartment he rented, with a subway transfer in between. Lin Yingtao stood beside him, wrapped in his coat. Jiang Qiaoxi initially held onto the handrail, looking down at the instructions on the medicine box. Later, he reached out and pulled Lin Yingtao close, as if trying to shield her from the cold air.
When they returned to the apartment, they found the elevator was still under repair. Lin Yingtao climbed the stairs hand in hand with Jiang Qiaoxi. She was exhausted by the seventh floor, having walked too much since getting off the plane yesterday, and the fever had sapped all her strength. Jiang Qiaoxi had her stand on the seventh-floor landing, turned around, and said, “Come on.”
Lin Yingtao wrapped her arms around Jiang Qiaoxi’s shoulders as he gripped her knees, carrying her piggyback up the stairs. The cherry necklace inside Lin Yingtao’s collar fell out, brushing against Jiang Qiaoxi’s neck, as if sensing the person who had put it on her.
“Jiang Qiaoxi,” Lin Yingtao said, resting on his back. Her heart was full, though she didn’t know with what.
“What is it?” Jiang Qiaoxi asked, slightly out of breath. He was tired too, but he carried her up without a word of complaint.
Lin Yingtao pressed her cheek against the back of his neck, closed her eyes, and said nothing more.
It’s only the second day, Lin Yingtao thought. She had the entire National Day holiday to ask Jiang Qiaoxi these questions bit by bit. She had found him, and that was more important than anything else.
Plus, I still have the hundred thousand yuan my cousin gave me, Lin Yingtao thought.
The rented room was extremely bare, without even a chair. Lin Yingtao could easily imagine Jiang Qiaoxi coming home late every night, quickly washing up, and collapsing into bed. She sat down on the edge of the bed, her back to the dark blue curtains that blocked out the light. She watched as Jiang Qiaoxi put down the medicine bag, then bent down to open his backpack and take out two apples. Jiang Qiaoxi went out to wash them.
Soon, he returned. Lin Yingtao took one of the apples from his hand and began eating it.
Jiang Qiaoxi placed the other apple on the folding table. He took out Lin Yingtao’s medical card and other documents like her Hong Kong and Macau travel permit from his pocket.
“What time did you arrive in Hong Kong yesterday?” Jiang Qiaoxi asked her.
Lin Yingtao swallowed a bite of apple and said, “Ten in the morning.”
Jiang Qiaoxi sorted Lin Yingtao’s documents and put them all in the medicine bag, as if afraid she might carelessly lose them.
He took the water cup and went out, returning with hot water. He picked up the disposable paper cup for Lin Yingtao, bent down to pour water into it, and let her hold it herself.
“So how did you get here?” he asked, standing up straight.
Lin Yingtao said, “I went to HKU first, thinking I might find you there, but HKU was on holiday. I walked around in circles, asking many people on the street, but no one knew you…”
Jiang Qiaoxi remained silent, standing in the small room, looking down at Lin Yingtao’s innocent face.
“Then Cai Fangyuan called me and said someone in his studio knew a senior student at HKU who was in a rental group chat and knew about you,” Lin Yingtao said, smiling at Jiang Qiaoxi. “By the way, did you know Cai Fangyuan opened his studio in Shanghai? An online studio, it’s making a lot of money.”
Jiang Qiaoxi listened, the corners of his eyes drooping slightly as he nodded and smiled.
Lin Yingtao continued recounting, “Then, he gave me a few addresses, and I went to the first apartment in Sham Shui Po. At first, that old man just watched horse racing and wouldn’t talk to me—”
She chattered on, saying a lot. When she got to the part about calling the landlord, she ate her apple and imitated the landlord’s strange tone, making Jiang Qiaoxi’s shoulders shake with laughter.
“This apple tastes so good,” Lin Yingtao said to Jiang Qiaoxi, biting into it.
Jiang Qiaoxi bent down and put the other washed apple into the medicine bag as well.
Lin Yingtao finished eating, leaving only the core. Jiang Qiaoxi sat down beside her, took out the four bottles of medicine from the hospital, opened them, and gave them to her to take.
Lin Yingtao went to throw away the apple core and came back to sit close to Jiang Qiaoxi. She took off her white sports jacket because Jiang Qiaoxi, fearing she might catch a cold, hadn’t turned the air conditioning up high. She was a bit hot, so she tied up her hair.
Jiang Qiaoxi opened each bottle of medicine, quietly instructing her on how to take them. It was now four in the afternoon; she had taken one dose, and six hours, before bed, she should take another. “Don’t forget,” he said, looking down at her.
Lin Yingtao listened, meeting Jiang Qiaoxi’s eyes. Somehow, she suddenly had a bad feeling.
Jiang Qiaoxi watched as Lin Yingtao tilted her head back to drink water and swallow the medicine. Her slender neck was right before his eyes, her skin so fair and delicate that only when light from the curtain gap fell on it could one faintly see the finest down and a few stray hairs at the nape of her neck. Lin Yingtao pressed her moist lips together and looked up at Jiang Qiaoxi. They were so close, neither speaking. Jiang Qiaoxi saw Lin Yingtao’s ears suddenly turn red behind.
Jiang Qiaoxi abruptly stood up. He put the bottles of medicine, along with the bag containing her documents and the apple, into Lin Yingtao’s suitcase spread out on the floor. He said, “Yingtao, which hotel did you book?”
“Huh?” Lin Yingtao, still sitting on the bed, was taken aback.
Jiang Qiaoxi looked at her calmly.
“I’ll take you there,” he said, continuing on his own, “What would you like for dinner? I’ll have dinner with you.”
Lin Yingtao held the empty paper cup in her hand and said, “I forgot to book a hotel.”
Jiang Qiaoxi looked down at her.
Lin Yingtao lowered her head and crumpled the paper cup, whether out of guilt or something else.
Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly put his hands in his pockets, which were already empty.
“It’s Golden Week now, there are a lot of tourists, so hotels might be hard to book,” Jiang Qiaoxi said, reaching for the door handle. “I’ll go ask around.”
He left as soon as he finished speaking.
Lin Yingtao was left sitting on the bed, holding the paper cup.
A short while later, Jiang Qiaoxi returned and said, “Yingtao, put on your jacket. I’ll go with you to the hotel.” He then asked, “When is your return flight?”
Lin Yingtao stood up, watching as Jiang Qiaoxi had already bent down to close her suitcase.
Jiang Qiaoxi seemed worried that if Lin Yingtao stayed for even one more second, something uncontrollable might happen.
Lin Yingtao asked, “What are you doing?”
Jiang Qiaoxi zipped up her suitcase and stood it upright. He said, “I don’t know how many days to book the hotel for.”
Seeing him move so quickly, Lin Yingtao said, “I have my own money. I can book it myself.”
Jiang Qiaoxi lowered his head and said, “It’s okay, there are many unofficial hotels here. Let me book for you.”
Lin Yingtao looked at him.
Jiang Qiaoxi didn’t avoid her gaze: “If you want to go anywhere or eat anything in Hong Kong these few days, you can call me.”
Lin Yingtao’s eyes reddened: “I don’t want to go anywhere…”
Jiang Qiaoxi heard Lin Yingtao say, “I came to Hong Kong just to find you, Jiang Qiaoxi… I’m not going anywhere else.”
The colorfully stickered suitcase stood in this shabby, run-down rented room, just as Lin Yingtao had suddenly burst into Jiang Qiaoxi’s current life.
“And… what do you mean I can call you these few days,” Lin Yingtao looked up at him, her voice suddenly choked with tears, “Does that mean I can’t call you after I go back…”
It was past two in the morning, and Jiang Qiaoxi was still sitting in the hospital room, lost in thought.
He wanted to read, but couldn’t focus on a single word. Since dropping Lin Yingtao off at the hotel, he had been at the hospital, keeping vigil until now.
I wonder if Yingtao is asleep, he thought.
Jiang Qiaoxi reached out to hold his cousin’s soft, cool hand, then looked up at the vital signs on the monitor in front of the bed.
His cousin’s wife arrived. She had put the two elderly people to bed at home, looked after the children, and rushed over before her husband’s next turn for percussion and postural drainage. The hired caregiver had taken a day off, leaving the bedside understaffed. She brought Jiang Qiaoxi’s freshly ironed suit and shirt. With a rare smile on her face, she said, “You look quite spirited today. Did you go out with little Lin?”
Jiang Qiaoxi smiled too.
“Little Lin,” this was probably the only “happy event” in their family recently.
Even before his cousin fell asleep, he had been looking at Jiang Qiaoxi with an excited and gratified gaze, as if happy for his younger cousin.
Jiang Qiaoxi took the suit to the bathroom in the ward to change and try it on. This was the suit his cousin had a tailor made for him when he was studying for TOEFL in Hong Kong, originally intended for when he would go to study in the United States. He came out, and his cousin’s wife, who had been wiping his cousin’s face, came over to look at him from all angles.
“It still fits quite well after the alterations,” she said, smiling up at Jiang Qiaoxi. “How handsome… If you grow any taller, it really won’t be alterable anymore!”
Jiang Qiaoxi boarded the night bus to return to his rented apartment. He held the suit in his arms. In a few months, he would wear this outfit to knock on the doors of foreign investment banks for an internship.
And then, then…
Jiang Qiaoxi dared not think about what else his future might hold.
As he approached the building of his rented apartment, he saw a suitcase covered in stickers standing there in the distance.
A girl, wearing Jiang Qiaoxi’s white sports jacket over a short skirt, was crouching by the roadside, gazing at the headlights of taxis across the street, lost in thought.
Suddenly, Lin Yingtao turned her head.
She saw Jiang Qiaoxi returning from the hospital late at night. The wind blew her hair behind her ears as she stood up.
“Yingtao?” Jiang Qiaoxi asked in surprise.
The hotel he had booked for Lin Yingtao was near Victoria Harbour, not close to here. It would take an hour by bus.
A taxi was waiting across the street. Lin Yingtao pulled her suitcase and shouldered her backpack, walking up to Jiang Qiaoxi.
“Jiang Qiaoxi, I changed my flight,” she said, choking up.
Jiang Qiaoxi looked down at her.
Lin Yingtao gazed up at him, her eyes still glistening with tears from crying earlier that afternoon.
“I have… I have some things I want to tell you,” Lin Yingtao said, mustering her courage. “I’m afraid that if you go to school or work early tomorrow morning, I won’t be able to find you… After I’ve said what I need to say, if… then I’ll leave.”