In certain social circles, there’s often one person who takes on the role of the crybaby – the one everyone comforts and pampers. In Wei Zhi’s circle, that person was Wei Zhi herself. In Shan Chong’s circle, before Wei Zhi’s appearance, that role belonged to Shan Shan.
Shan Shan was an odd character. From childhood, she was the type to burst into tears at the mere sight of a passing dog. Throughout her life, the list of things that made her cry included but wasn’t limited to, flying cockroaches, cicadas, the neighbor’s Alaskan Malamute, and a seemingly homeless pregnant cat in their residential complex.
The Shan family matriarch would often say with a smile, “It’s not about spoiling. We raised Shan Chong and Shan Shan the same way – same formula, same rice. Yet the siblings turned out to be opposites.”
Shan Shan grew up as a little princess, perpetually bathed in tears. Even with a runny nose, she knew how to use her tears to coax the last piece of candy from her brother’s hand.
As a child, Shan Chong once suspected his sister might have been switched at birth. As for their resemblance, he rationalized it with what he learned in middle school biology – due to shared traits, even a dog would come to resemble its owner after a few years.
This doubt persisted until the siblings, just learning basic arithmetic, embarked on their ice and snow careers – one on ice skates, the other on a snowboard.
Shan Chong remembers it was a frigid winter day with heavy snowfall. Having just joined the provincial team, he was returning home late from training. Exhausted and cold, he finally made it home through the blizzard, only to find an empty house instead of his parents cooking in the kitchen or his sister doing homework at the coffee table after her training.
The stove was still warm, with half-cooked stew and raw potatoes in the pot.
From the neighbors, Shan Chong learned of his sister’s training accident. His family had rushed to the hospital, only managing to leave a message with the neighbors for him.
At the hospital, from the end of the corridor, Shan Chong saw the doctor shaking his head at his parents outside the emergency operating room, mentioning something about “focusing on saving her life.”
Shan Chong wasn’t clear on the exact events of that day. He only remembers the operating room light staying on for a long time. The surgery, initially expected to take five or six hours, lasted nearly ten. When Shan Shan was finally wheeled out, a nurse called out loudly, “Is Shan Shan’s family here?”
The nurse’s voice, full of energy, startled Shan Chong awake from his half-sleep outside the operating room.
Shan Shan reappeared. His sister, who had been lively and energetic that morning, now lay on the hospital bed, pale as paper. Below her waist, the white bedsheet collapsed ominously where her legs should have been – her left leg below the knee and her right leg from the thigh down were gone.
Shan Shan had already woken from anesthesia. Looking at her parents and brother gathered around her, she didn’t shed a tear. When Shan Chong reached out to stroke her cheek, she nuzzled against his hand.
“It’s okay, brother. I’m not in pain anymore,” she said.
That day, Shan Chong’s doubts of the past decade were shattered. Shan Shan was indeed his sister, flesh, and blood, not switched at birth. Because she was strong. Perhaps stronger than anyone else in the Shan family, facing the loss of her legs, her beloved figure skating career, and her life as she knew it without shedding a single tear.
Later, she would still shriek at cockroaches and whimper for candy or chocolate, but she never complained about life or fate.
At first, everyone carefully avoided mentioning figure skating or school around her. One day, when they forgot to change the channel, figure skating news came on TV. The young girl in the wheelchair smiled and said, “Let’s just watch it.”
There was no extraordinary strength of heart, no inspirational story worth telling. It was a natural epiphany, a sudden realization that life held more important things than wallowing in self-pity.
Shan Shan simply understood this truth a few years earlier than most people.
Sometimes, Shan Chong and the others almost forgot that Shan Shan was still that crybaby. She just rarely cried for herself anymore. She learned to cry in private when she needed to.
No one knew that when Shan Chong fell from the big air jump, she stoically comforted their sobbing mother outside the operating room all day, then went home, washed her face, and cried silently in the corner of her bed until sunrise.
When Shan Chong announced his retirement, she ate, drank, and slept as usual, even advising her brother to stay positive because nothing was more important than being alive and healthy. Then, back in her room, she felt like she was reliving the moment years ago when she learned she could never return to the ice. She shed all the tears she hadn’t been able to cry that year.
She cried when Shan Chong returned to the big air jump and posted the video on social media.
She cried after calling Shan Chong to tell him their mother still didn’t approve, hanging up the phone and weeping again.
Today, seeing her brother unable to control his desire to return to the sport, watching him silently endure criticism from reporters and uninformed people while trying to protect his family, she cried again. Guilt, self-blame, and self-loathing overwhelmed her.
If only she had been more careful during training that day years ago.
If only she hadn’t gone to training that day.
If the skateblade hadn’t sliced through her leg.
If her wound hadn’t become infected…
If it hadn’t been her.
Buried in her blanket, Shan Shan’s tears soaked her pillow. She cried until she was dizzy.
It was as if the person standing under the spotlight a thousand miles away, being questioned and criticized by reporters, unable to speak of their suffering, wasn’t Shan Chong, but her, Shan Shan.
She wished it were so. She would prefer it that way.
Her tears flowed uncontrollably, like a broken dam. She didn’t care if she cried herself half-blind one day. It didn’t matter anyway.
After all, what else could she do? She could do nothing.
She didn’t even dare to send a message saying, “Brother, if you’ve decided to return to snowboarding big air, even though I seem to oppose it, I think it’s wonderful.”
The room temperature remained unchanged. On a cold night, Shan Shan’s head, soaked in tears, gradually became dizzy… until something hit her window with a “thud.”
At first, the girl with her face buried in the pillow thought her ears were playing tricks on her.
She silently lifted her face from the pillow, rubbed her red eyes, and turned to look at her room’s window. Soon after, another snowball hit the window with a “thud.”
This one was quite forceful, cracking the window.
Shan Shan: “…”
She wiped away her tears, grabbed a tissue to wipe her not-so-elegant runny nose, and moved herself to her wheelchair. She wheeled closer to the window.
Shan Shan’s room window had been modified so she could easily see outside and below her wheelchair.
Shenyang hadn’t seen much heavy snow in recent years, but it had snowed heavily a few days ago. In the freezing outdoors, she saw the neighbor’s fifth-grade kid standing below, hands on his hips, looking up at her.
Shan Shan opened the window and asked, “What are you doing?”
Her voice was still hoarse from crying.
The neighbor’s kid, hands in his pockets like a tough guy, stared at the young woman poking her head out from the second floor and said matter-of-factly, “Nothing. Brother told me to check on you, to see if you were crying.”
The wind carrying the scent of ice and snow blew into Shan Shan’s face, quickly drying her tear-stained cheeks and making them sting with salt. She covered her face with her hand and asked, “Which brother?”
The kid replied, “Who else?”
Shan Shan: “Shan Chong?”
The kid: “Though Chong-ge isn’t very approachable, he wouldn’t threaten a primary school student like a bandit, saying if I don’t help him, he’ll tell on me for using my allowance on games when he comes back for New Year’s.”
Shan Shan: “…”
Shan Shan: “Your Duo-ge?”
The kid rolled his eyes in the dark, though no one could see, and said dryly, “He said if you weren’t crying, to tell you not to be so weird for no reason. If you were crying, to tell you, ‘It’s no big deal, why cry over it?'”
Shan Shan: “…”
Shan Shan: “Oh.”
The kid was quiet for three seconds.
Then he shouted, “Are you two dating?”
Shan Shan: “Huh?”
The kid: “…That’s my question.”
Shan Shan grabbed a roll of toilet paper from near the window and threw it down, hitting the kid square in the face. As he yelped “Ouch!” and the roll bounced to the ground, she slammed the window shut.
The room suddenly fell silent.
Shan Shan stopped crying.
She rubbed her cold face and was about to wheel herself to the bathroom to wash up when her phone, which she had tossed on the bed earlier, rang again.
She glanced at it.
Oh.
Not the “bandit.”
Her actual brother.
Taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone and said gruffly, “What?”
The other end was silent for three seconds.
Probably considering whether to directly ask if she had been crying or to question her dissatisfaction with her brother calling.
…
The next day in Chongli was overcast.
Dark clouds hung low in the sky.
Last night, fearing the heater would dry the air too much and cause nosebleeds, Wei Zhi had left the window slightly open. Early in the morning, when she opened her eyes and poked her face out of the blanket, a gust of cold wind from outside froze her brain for three seconds…
Looking outside, she figured it would likely rain today.
She turned over in bed, feeling colder despite the ample heating. After some consideration, she turned again, silently gazing at the adjacent bed.
The man on the other bed was sleeping soundly.
Wei Zhi decisively threw off her covers, sat up, and without getting off her bed, leaped to the other one.
The mattress bounced.
The man on the other bed hazily opened his eyes, sensing the movement. Before he could fully grasp what was happening, one side of his blanket was lifted.
Along with the cold air, a person slipped in.
A young woman in a spaghetti strap nightgown, her skin whiter than full-fat milk, snuggled into his blanket. Her arms, chilled from the outside air, wrapped around his waist.
She made a soft “mmm” sound.
Having been cold outside the blanket, she now shivered with happiness as she burrowed into the man’s warm embrace, burying her face in his chest.
Just as she moved, he firmly held her still. The man, not fully awake, barely opened his eyes to look at her and said, “Can’t you leave me alone?”
He didn’t mean to complain.
It’s just that, as the ancients said, “The first attempt is vigorous, the second weakens, and the third exhausts.”
Early in the morning is typically a time of easy arousal, and holding such a soft bundle in his arms while unable to do anything…
They had done something last night, but it was interrupted halfway.
The young woman’s sympathy seemed to last only a moment. After he finished his call with Shan Shan, receiving an unenthusiastic response from his sister, he hung up to find his girlfriend had also become less enthusiastic.
Shan Chong felt that humans indeed shouldn’t trust in science or superstition. How could fortune-telling be taken seriously? He should be lighting incense in gratitude just for being able to leave his position as a “magician” before turning thirty.
Shan Chong closed his eyes, his mind full of grumbles.
At this moment, A Zhai’s large hand slid down his waist.
When she touched something, the man hissed and suddenly opened his eyes to see the person lying in his arms with a look of scientific curiosity: “They say men are more ‘spirited’ in the morning, it’s true, huh?”
Her fingertips explored his “spirited” area as if playing the piano.
Three seconds later, he grabbed her hand and pulled it out of the blanket, his face dark. Her wrist was so thin that one of his large hands could hold both of hers. He closed his grip, restraining her movements as she struggled like a fish on a cutting board.
“Move one more time and I won’t hold back. We’ll go all the way today, get the certificate this afternoon, and get the birth permit at the hospital tomorrow,” Shan Chong said. “Life and death are destined, wealth and honor are heaven’s will.”
Wei Zhi stopped moving.
Her head slid off the pillow, and she looked at him with her round, dark eyes. “For the past twenty-some years, it’s all been theoretical knowledge leading readers forward. Now that I finally have a boyfriend, can’t I do some research?”
Shan Chong thought for a moment and asked, “Are all you women so capricious about this?”
Wei Zhi: “Yes.”
Shan Chong didn’t believe her one bit. Who doesn’t have a spirit of scientific inquiry? He pinned the young woman down, ignoring her struggles as his hand slipped under the blanket.
After a while, as she was biting his arm with teary eyes, the man withdrew his hand. With a look of disdain, he sat up and patted her face with his damp fingertips before getting up to shower first.
Wei Zhi was left with a red face, red nose, and red lips, curled up like a caterpillar in the blanket full of the man’s scent, frowning deeply as she pondered how to turn the tables.
When Shan Chong finished his shower, he peeled the young woman out of the blanket, carried her to the bathroom, and even turned on the hot water for her.
When Wei Zhi came out of the bathroom after washing her face, the man was leaning against the window, lazily peeling an orange. He said, “It’s raining.”
Typically, when there’s freezing rain at the ski equipment hall at the foot of the mountain, it’s likely snowing at the top.
Skiers have a special fondness; they generally believe that when it’s overcast and snowing lightly, taking a ski run down the mountain is probably the happiest moment of the entire winter…
“The team is waiting for me on the mountain. Want to go?”
Shan Chong looked down and put a slice of orange in the young woman’s mouth.
She stood on tiptoe to bite the orange.
Usually, she might have just bitten the pointed end of the orange slice to take the food.
But this time, her teeth grazed his fingertip. She bit lightly and then, as if realizing she had bitten the wrong thing, released her bite. Her soft tongue gently swept over where she had just bitten as if to soothe it.
She took the orange slice.
Her eyes narrowed as she smiled at him.
“What are you doing?” he asked expressionlessly.
Wei Zhi looked down.
“What are you looking at?” he continued, still expressionless.
Wei Zhi thought for a moment and asked if he wanted to continue what they hadn’t finished last night. After all the interruptions from Dai Duo and Shan Shan’s calls, they hadn’t concluded. Isn’t that bad for one’s health?
Well.
Indeed.
It’s not good for one’s health.
Shan Chong didn’t immediately answer her. He put down the orange, grabbed his phone, opened the group chat with his disciples, and told them not to wait for him, he wouldn’t be skiing today.
This “from now on, the king won’t attend early court” atmosphere was met with a sea of question marks in the group chat.
His private messages were also flooded.
[CK, Backstab: ???? Such good weather, why aren’t you skiing?]
[Chong: Mm.]
[CK, Backstab: Huh?]
[Chong: Broke my leg.]
[CK, Backstab: ?]
[CK, Backstab: Which leg?]
[Chong: The middle one.]