Near the municipal library there was a KFC. Jiang Du rarely ate there, but she walked in with her money in hand to find a foreigner at the counter — pale-skinned and faintly ruddy, with a beard that bristled in all directions, gesturing at the service staff, trying to communicate something.
The server clearly didn’t understand English, and the foreigner clearly didn’t understand Chinese.
Jiang Du immediately recalled the summer trip she’d taken with Wang Jingjing, when they’d also encountered foreigners. Wang Jingjing’s mother had egged both of them on, pushing them forward to strike up a conversation in English.
It had not gone well at all. Even Wang Jingjing had retreated, and Jiang Du had absolutely no nerve to step forward and open her mouth.
At the counter, the foreigner was still gamely trying to communicate with the server. Jiang Du watched for a moment, then hesitated about whether she should just find somewhere else to eat. She really didn’t want the server to spot her — after all, she was wearing the Mei High School uniform, and the general assumption was that Mei High students were all academic overachievers. If she was called upon to help, she wouldn’t be able to open her mouth for that.
The server genuinely did glance toward her.
Jiang Du turned and fled — rushing out with both a guilty conscience and a sense of urgency — and walked straight into the glass door with a solid thud. A sharp pain bloomed, mingled with a touch of dizziness, the dizziness tangled with infinite mortification.
The girl immediately crouched down on the floor, clutching her head.
Strictly speaking, someone outside had pushed the door open at exactly the wrong moment, and she had walked right into it.
“Sorry about that.” A shadow seemed to fall over her. A dry, faint orchid fragrance drifted near.
Jiang Du’s head was buzzing, but she still recognized that familiar voice. Pain pricked tears to her eyes, and a lump was already rising on her head.
“I’m really sorry — that wasn’t intentional.” Wei Qingyue helped her up slowly, then bent to retrieve her bag from the floor and found them a seat.
He was actually somewhat taken aback. Mid-Autumn Festival, and this girl was here at KFC alone.
He asked the server for some ice, then handed it to Jiang Du. “Can you manage? Sit for a while. If you still feel unwell, I’ll take you to the hospital.”
Jiang Du held the ice pack against her head in silence. This was so humiliating. But she really hadn’t expected to run into Wei Qingyue here again. Mid-Autumn Festival — what a lovely holiday this was turning out to be.
When she quietly looked up, she found that Wei Qingyue had already gone to the counter to order. He spoke English with perfect ease, helping the foreigner who had needed assistance, resolving the situation without any fuss.
“Feeling better?” Wei Qingyue came back and began placing items in front of her one by one. “I didn’t know what you girls like to eat, so I just ordered a bit of everything. This one’s on me.”
Wei Qingyue spent money freely, without planning, and had never in his life understood the concept of thrift.
The boy leaned slightly toward her and, without any self-consciousness, brushed aside her hand where it covered the bump. He assessed it with a clinical eye: “Should be fine. Does it still hurt?”
This person… how could he be so casual? Jiang Du was too mortified to move, not daring to breathe.
“I have money.” She produced a roll of banknotes and tried to give them to Wei Qingyue, but he shook his head. “Consider it an apology from me. Go ahead and eat.”
The boy took his own tray to another seat, pulled out his laptop, and began working on it while eating. Jiang Du caught sight of the laptop’s logo — an apple. At that time, most high school students didn’t yet own a mobile phone. The occasional student with a pager would have it confiscated by the homeroom teacher.
Wei Qingyue sat with a relaxed, sprawling posture — one long leg bent and resting across the opposite knee, half his body leaning out to the side — thoroughly absorbed in whatever he was doing on his computer.
The boy was an unselfconscious eater too, his cheek gently rounded as he chewed. Jiang Du sat quietly, taking small, delicate bites of her burger, and every now and then she stole a glance toward him like a little thief before quickly pulling her gaze back.
Her head was still throbbing steadily, but Jiang Du forgot the pain. It was Mid-Autumn Festival 2006, and she and Wei Qingyue had appeared in the same space more than once today — the library, and now KFC. The boy’s naturally upright posture was now arranged at a casual angle; he cast his eyes downward, and his eyelashes lay across his face like a fan of dark shadows. It was something quite extraordinary, and Jiang Du felt small, bright flickers of happiness welling up from all directions inside her heart.
It was in precisely that one instant that Jiang Du suddenly felt the stirring of a wish — to forge some kind of connection with him.
Before, she hadn’t agreed to Wang Jingjing’s plan. She hadn’t been able to explain what was wrong with it, but she had felt it wasn’t right. She couldn’t deceive Wei Qingyue. She didn’t want to deceive anyone, least of all Wei Qingyue. Was Wei Qingyue worth only ten books? No — he was beyond price.
Even so, she believed that even if she wrote many letters, the outcome would ultimately be no different from a stone dropped into deep water — soundless. Jiang Du even suspected that Wei Qingyue had probably already received a whole bag full of love letters.
In the middle of these drifting thoughts, the pair of eyes behind the laptop screen lifted without intention and met Jiang Du’s watching gaze. The lightest of contacts — then the boy looked back down. It was just a passing interlude in the flow of his thinking.
But Jiang Du startled. And quickly, a deep ache of loss welled up inside her.
Wei Qingyue was the most singular first-place student in the school — the reputation was deserved. He always moved through his own world in an ordered, unhurried way, as though no one could disturb him.
She truly had no idea what Wei Qingyue would become when he grew up.
The thought came to Jiang Du from nowhere, and tomato sauce got onto her wrist.
But why wasn’t he home having dinner on Mid-Autumn? She couldn’t make sense of it.
Outside the window, the plane trees shimmered in alternating shades of green and gold. Higher up, the branches and leaves divided the sky into many small patches of delicate blue. Another summer had passed, Jiang Du thought quietly, eating her food in slow, small bites.
“Hey, can you watch my things? I need to use the restroom.” Wei Qingyue had appeared at her side without her noticing. Jiang Du turned sharply, pulling her gaze back from the window.
“Of course,” she said quickly.
Wei Qingyue asked offhandedly, “By the way — what’s your name?”
He was finally asking for her name. Jiang Du didn’t speak. Instead, she reached into her bag for paper and a pen, and with the gravity of someone performing an important ritual, she wrote down two characters, then said softly: “This is what I’m called.”
“Jiang Du?” Wei Qingyue read it aloud, raising an eyebrow as he looked at her.
It was as though those two characters had suddenly been invested with a strange kind of magic. Spoken from his lips, they felt like some kind of grace bestowed. Fine beads of perspiration gathered at the tip of Jiang Du’s nose. He finally knew her name.
On the table, the boy’s belongings lay scattered without any particular order — a pen resting quietly, a laptop glowing on its own, a bag deposited carelessly on the floor.
Jiang Du stared at these things with unblinking, unashamed fixation. Each glance felt weighted with something precious.
When Wei Qingyue came out of the restroom, what he saw was the girl sitting bolt upright — spine straight, like a sentry standing watch.
He couldn’t help smiling, and thanked Jiang Du before settling back into his seat and attending to whatever he had been doing before.
Time continued its quiet passage, second by second. Jiang Du noticed that Wei Qingyue showed no sign of wanting to leave. He rarely lifted his head, though every now and then he would close his eyes and press his fingers against his temples.
Before long, Jiang Du fell asleep with her head resting on the table. The library wouldn’t open until two-thirty in the afternoon, and she needed a short rest at KFC.
In her bag, she kept a small alarm clock.
So when it went off, Jiang Du — believing for a moment that she was at home — murmured “Grandma” in her half-waking state, then opened her eyes and spent several seconds piecing together where she was. Only then did the girl lift her face, marked all over one side with the red imprint of her arm.
Still only half-awake, her very first impulse was to look toward Wei Qingyue’s seat. The boy was packing up his things, and as though sensing her gaze, he glanced up and met the girl’s drowsy, dazed expression. He smiled.
That single smile threw Jiang Du into a small panic. She reflexively returned a stiff, lopsided smile of her own.
As it turned out, both of them had had the same plan — they left one after the other and headed back toward the library.
They crossed the traffic lights one after the other; they turned the street corner one after the other. Jiang Du could see Wei Qingyue’s back clearly all the way. Sometimes several people came between them, and in the shifting of bodies, the boy’s figure would briefly vanish before sliding back into view — the feeling was like watching a silent film.
The boy soon noticed she was walking in the same direction as him. He was evidently surprised, and asked: “You’re not going home?”
She hadn’t expected him to ask first. The wind came through, tossing Jiang Du’s hair into a loose tangle. She had been about to say “I haven’t finished my homework,” but as the words reached her lips, they transformed inexplicably into a question in return: “What about you?”
The moment she heard herself, Jiang Du hurried to correct course: “Ah, never mind — I mean, I have my study materials to finish. I think the library environment is quite nice.”
Wei Qingyue nodded, without answering her “what about you,” and waited quietly for the library to open, adjusting the strap of his bag.
The boy’s hair caught the autumn light and shone with a luster that was difficult to look away from.
Jiang Du allowed herself only a single quick glance. The moment had a faint awkwardness to it, but overhead the sky was very blue, and the wind was strong, and the world was no different from how it had always been — yet somehow also entirely different. Jiang Du felt she simply didn’t know how to love this world well enough.
To be alive, to be human, to exist like this — how wonderful, truly. The young woman’s lips finally curved into a faint and gentle smile.
She had actually wanted to apologize again for having gotten sick on him that time, but some things, no matter how long you hold them ready on the tip of your tongue, can still lose their moment.
“Wei Qingyue.” Jiang Du called his name at the precise instant he was stepping through the door — as though those few syllables alone could compose a mysterious and extraordinary world.
The boy heard her. He turned around, let the people behind him pass first, stepped to one side, and looked at her with a questioning expression. “What is it?”
Jiang Du pressed down the leaping nervousness inside her, doing her utmost to appear composed: “Last time, getting sick on you — I’m truly sorry about that.”
Wei Qingyue hadn’t given the incident any thought whatsoever, but then something came back to him, and he laughed — he couldn’t resist teasing her: “You must have poured an entire box of laundry powder in, didn’t you?”
Jiang Du looked at him, confused. “What?”
“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let you wash it. I had to rinse it about ten more times myself.” Wei Qingyue said.
Jiang Du finally understood what he was referring to, and her face filled with sheepish remorse. She fidgeted slightly with the hem of her clothes: “I’m not very strong when it comes to washing things by hand. By the time I was done, I really had no strength left. I’m so sorry.”
Wei Qingyue laughed and shook his head. “Go on inside.”
“Are you upset with me for it?” Jiang Du asked softly.
Wei Qingyue looked at her with an expression that said he couldn’t quite follow her logic. “It’s nothing.”
“But you seemed quite angry at the time.”
“I was in a bad mood.” Wei Qingyue said lightly.
Jiang Du paused.
As for the reason his mood had been bad, Wei Qingyue clearly had no interest in elaborating. The two of them went inside the library.
The afternoon passed quickly. Jiang Du finished her practice paper, smoothed her skirt, and slipped over to the bookshelves to look at magazines. Through the gaps, she could just make out Wei Qingyue’s silhouette where he sat studying. Simply glancing up for a look every now and then was enough to make her quietly happy.
It wasn’t until closing time, when people began to leave one after another, that she and Wei Qingyue both stayed until the very last moment. She didn’t know why he stayed so late, but she knew why she did — she couldn’t bring herself to leave. These moments were rare and precious, and she had no way of knowing when the next one would come.
She had already sent a message to her maternal aunt’s family from her worn little pager, saying she’d be coming over later than planned.
She had just pushed the magazine back onto the shelf when Wei Qingyue came over to return his journals too. He asked naturally: “Still not heading home?”
Jiang Du gave a vague, equivocating answer, then ventured: “Are you heading home?”
Wei Qingyue gave a short laugh. “No — I’m going to the internet café.”
Jiang Du’s eyes widened, just as expected. The scene she had witnessed over the summer flashed back to her. The two looked at each other, and Wei Qingyue wore the expression of someone with complete telepathy — as if he knew exactly what was going through her mind.
But the next second, the girl lowered her eyes, and told him softly: “Actually, I’m not really going home either.”