She crouched on the ground, tears flowing uncontrollably, her hands gripping her knees as she tried to curl into herself.
“Cherry…” she heard Jiang Qiaoxi’s soft sigh.
A pair of hands reached out, long fingers with the scent of pen ink, cool to the touch, cupping her face. She was crying so hard she could barely breathe, her lips trembling as she felt his thumbs wiping away the tears from her eyes.
Suddenly, a shadow loomed over her.
She blinked her wet lashes, her tear-blurred vision clearing for a moment, and she froze.
Jiang Qiaoxi was right in front of her, so close. It was just a fleeting touch, but she saw his eyelashes up close and heard his deep breath.
Like a startled infant suddenly forgetting to cry.
She stared, still crouched and curled up, in the light streaming through the study room window. She could see tiny dust particles in the air, slowly revolving around her and Jiang Qiaoxi along invisible, intangible trajectories.
Lin Yingtao, wearing her nightgown, slipped her feet into slippers, her hand on the bedsheet for support. It was the middle of the night, and she realized she had dreamed of Jiang Qiaoxi again, something she seemed unable to control. She lowered her head, biting her lip once more, her cheeks burning.
She looked up at the small window before her. The evergreen leaves pressed against the glass in the moonlight, making the provincial city seem like the mountains of many years ago.
Lin Electrician was also awake, watching a movie called “Before Sunrise” on CCTV-6 with the sound muted. Lin Yingtao shuffled over in her slippers and sat down beside him.
“Why are you up?” Lin Electrician looked at his daughter.
Lin Yingtao tilted her head, leaning against her father and resting her cheek on his shoulder.
On the TV screen, a man and woman sat in a train compartment, talking.
“What’s this?” Lin Yingtao asked.
Dad said, “It’s a movie.”
Lin Yingtao asked, “Are they married?”
“I don’t think so,” Dad guessed, picking up the remote to turn the volume up two notches, just enough not to disturb his sleeping wife next door. “They just met on the train.”
The handsome man in a brown turtleneck said to the beautiful woman he had just met in the train compartment:
“Think about it like this… Ten, twenty years from now, you’re married. Only your marriage doesn’t have the same passion it used to. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all the men you’ve met in your life and what might have happened if you’d picked one of them instead – I’m one of those men. You need to know that.”
The woman laughed.
Lin Yingtao, sitting in front of the TV, couldn’t help but laugh along, even though she didn’t fully understand the movie dialogue.
“You can think of it as time travel,” the man told the woman. “You’re traveling from your future to find what you might have missed – you’re doing your future husband a big favor. You might realize I’m just as much of a jerk as he is, so there’s nothing to regret…”
“Dad, my English has improved a lot,” Lin Yingtao suddenly said.
Lin’s father nodded approvingly, “You’ve been working hard, haven’t you?”
Lin Yingtao turned to her father and said, “In the future, I’ll be able to chat with people in English on trains like this—”
The next morning, Fei Linge walked to school with Cen Xiaoman. He was a bit hesitant but still relayed what Jiang Qiaoxi had told him the day before.
“I used to like her when I was in Qunshan,” Jiang Qiaoxi had said, standing by the back door with his backpack. His voice was soft and calm, simply stating a fact to Fei Linge. “Some things happened, so she came to find me in middle school, but there are no misunderstandings between us now,” Jiang Qiaoxi added, “We’re just ordinary classmates now, so don’t talk about her anymore.”
Fei Linge seemed unable to understand Jiang Qiaoxi’s meaning even now. But for a math genius like Jiang Qiaoxi, who had only ever focused on solving problems and reading books since childhood, this was the longest string of words he had ever spoken to Fei Linge in all the time they’d known each other — who knew what strange things went on in a genius’s mind, it was never easy to understand.
“When did I ever talk about her?” Fei Linge said resentfully. “I didn’t say anything, it was all other people talking.”
Cen Xiaoman walked silently beside him, her head lowered.
“Did you tell Aunt Liang?” she suddenly asked.
“Yeah,” Fei Linge said, puzzled. “Aunt Liang just said ‘mm’ and didn’t react much. I feel like she might have known all along.”
Cen Xiaoman asked softly, “Known what?”
Fei Linge said, “That… Jiang Qiaoxi used to like that girl?” Fei Linge still couldn’t quite believe it. “I’m sure I heard right, Jiang Qiaoxi told me himself…”
Cen Xiaoman’s eyelashes lowered.
With the winter camp approaching, Aunt Liang probably couldn’t be too strict with Jiang Qiaoxi at this crucial time.
“No wonder,” Fei Linge muttered to himself. “I always thought it was that girl who came to our middle school to find Jiang Qiaoxi, and it had nothing to do with him. Why did Aunt Liang react so strongly back then, not letting Jiang Qiaoxi go out or do anything… Could it have been like that?”
Lin Yingtao sat on the morning school bus, quietly listening to music with her earphones in, gazing out the window, lost in thought. Du Shang was initially rushing to finish his homework next to her, using his backpack as a cushion. When he finally finished, he casually took out Lin Yingtao’s right earphone and stuck it directly into his ear.
Lin Yingtao belatedly turned her head and hurriedly switched the song on her MP3 player.
She switched to the song “03_Tian Hei Hei” (Sky Dark Dark).
Du Shang frowned, looking at her puzzled: “Who was singing just now?”
Lin Yingtao took back her earphones: “You don’t know them anyway. Give me back my earphones.”
Du Shang felt something was off and insisted on taking Lin Yingtao’s MP3 player: “No, let me listen to that song again—”
“I won’t let you listen…” Lin Yingtao said, “Your dad bought you a new MP3 player, you should listen to your own from now on.”
Du Shang’s face immediately soured: “I… I don’t want anything from him!”
Lin Yingtao was also unwilling: “Du Shang, boys and girls are different. You can’t keep sharing my MP3 player with me anymore!”
The bus fell silent for a moment, then suddenly Cai Fangyuan and Yu Qiao turned around from the front seats. Cai Fangyuan, biting into an egg pancake, snickered to Yu Qiao: “Even Lin Yingtao knows about the differences between boys and girls now…”
That morning, Jiang Qiaoxi left the Little White Building, hearing the morning reading voices coming from each classroom. He went upstairs with his math problems, clutching a fountain pen, and turning it over in his hand.
What he missed, however, was the recent wet, melting cotton candy-like sensation.
His cousin sent a text asking if Jiang Qiaoxi had received the postcard he sent from Macau.
The tourist postcard of the A-Ma Temple was tucked inside Jiang Qiaoxi’s math lecture notes.
“Qiaoxi, your national finals are coming up soon,” his cousin asked in the text, “Have you talked to your parents about it?”
“Not yet,” Jiang Qiaoxi replied.
His cousin asked, “You still don’t plan to let them know?”
Jiang Qiaoxi said, “I’ll tell them after the exam.”
His cousin asked, “What about that little Lin girl? Have you made up with her?”
Jiang Qiaoxi said, “She’s not angry anymore.”
His cousin asked, “Does she still like you?”
Jiang Qiaoxi said, “I didn’t ask.”
His cousin asked, “Why didn’t you ask?”
Jiang Qiaoxi said, “What difference would it make if I did?”
His cousin said, “You’re so young, why are you always so pessimistic?”
His cousin continued, “Qiaoxi, you haven’t been to Hong Kong in many years. Your parents don’t let you travel, is there anywhere you’d like to go? Domestic or abroad, I’ll sponsor your trip after your exam.”
Jiang Qiaoxi said, “Okay.”
His cousin said, “You’re almost at the finish line, keep going.”
During the break, Lin Yingtao turned around to chat with Yu Qiao. The sports newspaper Yu Qiao was reading today had a front-page photo of the Houston Rockets’ scoring king, 26-year-old super center Yao Ming from Shanghai, China.
Cai Fangyuan and a group of boys gathered around, betting with Yu Qiao. Lin Yingtao played with Cai Fangyuan’s game console, listening for a while before understanding that Shandong Luneng had won the Chinese Super League championship in August, and in a few days, it would be the FA Cup final. The boys were betting on whether Luneng could win another “double crown.”
Yu Qiao bet that Luneng wouldn’t win this year: “That’s my bet, what’s the big deal!”
Cai Fangyuan and the others reminisced— when they were in elementary school in 1999, it was the most unlucky year in Yu Qiao’s life: “He only made two bets in total, and he lost both!”
Lin Yingtao seemed to be listening to them talk, but her gaze unconsciously drifted through the crowd toward the back rows.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat in the last row, leaning against his chair, head down, texting. He suddenly looked up and met Lin Yingtao’s gaze.
From that distance, he looked at her and smiled.
Lin Yingtao unconsciously pursed her lips, then quickly turned back, putting down the game console and returning to her studies.
After ten o’clock at night, Jiang Qiaoxi sent Lin Yingtao a text message saying he was at home and couldn’t call: “What are you doing?”
Lin Yingtao hesitated for a moment before replying: “I’m sorting through old photos from the Qunshan construction site.”
Jiang Qiaoxi said: “I kept a few, want to see them?”
Lin Yingtao closed her parents’ photo album, lay down on the bed, kicked off her slippers, and focused intently on her phone screen.
Soon, Jiang Qiaoxi sent a series of twelve photo messages.
Most were landscape shots from many years ago, showing the Qunshan construction site before demolition, from 2001 before Jiang Qiaoxi moved away. In one photo, Lin Yingtao saw a little girl: she looked about ten years old, wearing a floral dress, laughing carefree at the camera, her eyes crinkled into slits.
She stood among her little friends, her hair in two ponytails with a red hairpin, a red string around her neck holding a small cherry amber — a perfect, unblemished childhood.
Lin Yingtao’s typing slowed.
“I was as tall as Cai Fangyuan and Du Shang back then.”
Jiang Qiaoxi said: “You’ve grown taller now.”
Lin Yingtao said: “You boys have grown even taller. I used to think Yu Qiao was so tall he wouldn’t grow anymore and would end up shorter than me.”
Lin Yingtao thought Jiang Qiaoxi would reply quickly, just as she eagerly anticipated his messages.
But she waited for one minute, three minutes… fifteen minutes passed, and there was no response.
The smile that had just appeared on her face gradually faded.
A new message from Jiang Qiaoxi:
[Someone came in just now. Are you asleep, Cherry?]
“Was it your parents?”
“You’re still awake?”
“Jiang Qiaoxi, I remember you used to say you wanted to go to America.”
“Mm.”
“Do you still want to go?”
“It’s not about wanting or not wanting.”
“You used to talk like that when you were little.”
“How so?”
“I used to ask you if Hong Kong was fun. You said it’s not about whether it’s fun or not.”
Jiang Qiaoxi paused for a moment, then replied: “I can’t remember clearly.”
Lin Yingtao said: “I remember clearly.”
Jiang Qiaoxi said: “Then I’m very lucky.”
Early the next morning, Lin Yingtao sat on the bus to school with Cai Fangyuan next to her, yawning while playing a simple game of Snake on his phone.
Yu Qiao got on the bus and saw him: “Isn’t it your duty day today? Why aren’t you going early?”
Cai Fangyuan said: “Oh, that Jiang Qiaoxi is doing it for me.”
Lin Yingtao, sitting nearby, suddenly turned to look at him.
“What’s the matter, is that not okay?” Cai Fangyuan glanced at her.
Lin Yingtao said: “Why don’t you do your duty?”
“I told him I couldn’t get up early, so he’s helping me this time, and I’ll replace him next time,” Cai Fangyuan said righteously.
Lin Yingtao turned her head and continued drinking her milk.
“Are you unhappy?” Cai Fangyuan asked.
Lin Yingtao released the straw: “You used to always say that Jiang Qiaoxi changed when he went to the provincial city, that he didn’t recognize you anymore. He doesn’t recognize you but still does your duty for you!”
Hearing her tone, Cai Fangyuan chuckled.
“This person,” Cai Fangyuan put down his phone and thought for a moment, then said with feeling, “I don’t think he changes every time he comes to the provincial city.”
Lin Yingtao turned to look at him again.
“He is…” Cai Fangyuan paused halfway through his sentence, meeting Lin Yingtao’s big eyes staring at him. He hesitated, “Ah, I’m not telling you!”
※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※
People said it was too subtle, so I added two sentences.
——————–
Our Generation – Chapter Notes:
“Before Sunrise”: A romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. It was released in the United States on January 27, 1995. The two dialogues in the text are quotes from the movie.
On the evening of August 27, 2006, at 19:35, Shandong Luneng defeated Beijing Guoan 1-0 at home, winning the Chinese Super League championship that season a record 6 rounds in advance.