Jin Fengzi got into the passenger seat while Jin Chao placed Jiang Mu in the back before driving toward Feichi. Throughout the journey, he listened to Jin Fengzi recount the evening’s events at Wan Ji, his brows remaining tightly furrowed as he occasionally glanced at Jiang Mu through the rearview mirror.
She was curled up in the back seat, wrapped in Jin Chao’s oversized coat, eyes closed and motionless.
On the way, Jin Chao thought it fortunate she’d had some drinks—she’d be able to fall asleep right away when they got back, sparing her from worrying about Shandian. However, he seemed to have overestimated her alcohol tolerance.
Just as he carried her into the repair shop, Jiang Mu regained consciousness and kept patting his shoulder, her voice soft and hazy as she said, “Feel sick…”
Jin Chao had barely set her down in the break room when Jiang Mu stumbled into his room. By the time he entered, she had locked herself in the bathroom, violently ill.
He could hear chaos from the bathroom like a battlefield, and after the tumult, water continued running.
Jin Chao knocked on the door and asked, “Are you alright?”
Jiang Mu’s mind wasn’t clear before, but now her thoughts were gradually returning. She didn’t answer Jin Chao, wanting to bury her face in the sink. This was her first time drinking until she was sick, and it had to be in front of Jin Chao. With just a door between them, she felt mortified beyond belief, refusing to respond no matter how many times he called out.
Jin Chao asked again from outside, “Are you dizzy? Open the door so I can watch you—don’t fall.”
“…” Jiang Mu gripped the sink’s edge, biting her lip hard.
“Say something, or I’m coming in.”
“No.” Jiang Mu frantically pressed her body against the door.
Her voice mumbled, “Go away.”
Jin Chao’s shadow fell across the door: “Where should I go?”
“I don’t care.”
The three words were as soft as risen bread, making it hard to tell if the voice carried petulance, coquettishness, or a woman’s drunken state.
Jin Chao was taken aback. In his twenty-some years, only his younger sister in Suzhou during his youth had ever been unreasonable with him like this. In high school, occasionally some girls obsessed with pain literature would make themselves look pitiful and cry inexplicably in front of him, but in those situations, his cold face and impatience would usually stop their dramatics. He never expected that years later, the same person would still be unreasonable with him, even using the same lines—whenever she had no justification or couldn’t argue with him, she’d say “I don’t care,” and he’d be completely helpless against her.
He found it amusing that this tactic still worked on him after all these years.
Jiang Mu had her ear pressed to the door, hearing Jin Chao finally leave. She began cleaning the bathroom, wiping the sink until it sparkled, then happened to open the storage compartment beside it. When she saw her toothbrush cup and towel still neatly arranged inside, Jiang Mu sobered up considerably. Jin Chao hadn’t thrown away her things—despite being so cold to her recently, he still hadn’t disposed of her belongings. Complex emotions surged through her heart like waves.
She took out her toothbrush cup and towel, and after tidying herself and the bathroom, she froze the moment she opened the door. Jin Chao was leaning against the bedside cabinet, looking down at his phone. As she opened the door, he locked his phone and lifted his gaze to her.
When their eyes met, Jiang Mu wanted to spin around and return to the bathroom. She walked awkwardly into the room as Jin Chao observed her demeanor and slightly unsteady gait, asking, “What were you doing in there for so long? I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
Jiang Mu avoided his gaze and stammered, “Just… recovering.”
“Feeling better?”
Jiang Mu nodded. Jin Chao didn’t press the matter but straightened up and handed her a cotton pullover: “Change your clothes.”
He left immediately after speaking. Jiang Mu couldn’t wear this blood-stained sweater anymore. She changed into Jin Chao’s clothes and heard him ask from outside, “Changed yet?”
“Mm.”
Jin Chao came back in and handed her a glass of water: “Drink this.”
The room’s heating made Jiang Mu drowsy. She took the glass, cradling it in her hands. Jin Chao added, “Sit while you drink.”
Jiang Mu stepped back and sat on his bed. As soon as she sat down, Jin Chao came in front of her, crouching down to grasp her left ankle and pull up her pant leg. His touch startled her—she almost instinctively pulled her leg back, asking, “What are you doing?”
Jin Chao looked up at her: “Do my hands have thorns?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
Jin Chao remained kneeling on one knee before her, nearly at eye level even in this position. Jiang Mu couldn’t explain her extreme reaction—it was that same embarrassing feeling from before. Jin Chao’s fingers seemed electrified, making her nervous, heart racing, and uncomfortable in various ways.
Seeing her refuse to communicate, Jin Chao sighed softly and asked, “Does it hurt?”
Jiang Mu was somewhat surprised, not knowing how Jin Chao had discovered her leg injury. She just looked back at him and nodded pitifully.
She looked rather simple-minded when drunk, even her head movements were sluggish. Jin Chao could only coax her: “If it hurts, let me look at it.”
Perhaps due to fatigue from his late-night drive back, his voice carried a hint of hoarseness. She normally wouldn’t notice, but now, alone together in the deep of night, Jiang Mu blushed at his voice.
Jin Chao glanced up at her, again taking her ankle and rolling up her pant leg. After just a few turns, he saw the purple bruise where the iron gate had caught her leg, and his expression immediately changed.
“Who did this?”
Though Jiang Mu was somewhat confused, she still remembered her grudge, telling him, “That… crew cut guy.”
Jin Chao’s lips went cold and he didn’t say another word. He always seemed somewhat frightening when like this. Jiang Mu bent down and whispered to him as if sharing a secret: “I’m really hungry.”
Jin Chao looked up at her: “Haven’t eaten?”
Jiang Mu shook her head. He stood up smoothly and left, returning with Oden and medicine. He handed her the food saying, “This was all they had—better than instant noodles.”
So Jiang Mu ate the oden while Jin Chao applied medicine. As she ate, she suddenly became melancholic. Perhaps because she finally had food in her stomach, Jiang Mu thought again of Jin Chao’s past. She suddenly held out her meat skewer to his mouth. Jin Chao froze—he wasn’t used to such intimacy from others. In all these years, it seemed no one had treated him this way. He lowered his gaze and said, “You eat.”
Jiang Mu seemed to challenge him, commanding in a coquettish tone, “No, if I have a bite, you must have a bite too.”
She made the three-yuan chicken balls seem like food shared between battle-worn comrades. Jin Chao could tell she was still drunk and had no choice but to take a bite. Jiang Mu immediately brought her face close to his and asked, “Is it good?”
After rushing around all night without rest, how could he taste anything? But looking at her rosy lips, watery eyes, and slightly tipsy appearance, he could only agree: “Not bad.”
He immediately realized he shouldn’t have commented, because afterward, Jiang Mu offered him a bite after each of her own, watching him constantly with those glistening eyes, as if he hadn’t eaten for three years. Though he’d bought it for her, she kept trying to feed him.
When he returned from throwing away the bamboo skewers, Jiang Mu had already fallen asleep on the bed. He took off her shoes and, worried she might fall, pushed her further onto the bed and covered her with the blanket.
Jiang Mu mumbled something unclear in her daze. Jin Chao couldn’t hear clearly and leaned down to ask, “What?”
The predawn night was silent. Jiang Mu carried a faint mixture of alcohol and young woman’s fragrance, like the scent of cream. His throat moved slightly as he was about to straighten up, when he heard her slightly sweet voice ask by his ear, “You said to wait until I grew up—does that still count?”
…
“Brother, you be the daddy, I’ll be the mommy, and my bunny can be our baby.”
“Don’t want to play that, it’s childish.”
“But brother, play with me for a bit. I played chess with you, or I won’t play with you next time either, hmph.”
“So now you’re threatening me, you little pest. Fine, what do I need to do?”
“Take this bag and go outside the room to work, I need to cook while holding our baby.”
“…”
Knock knock knock. “Open up.”
“No, do it again. You have to say, ‘Darling, I’m home.'”
“Where did you learn all this nonsense?”
“All the little boys in kindergarten know-how. Why don’t you? Chao Chao, none of the little girls in our kindergarten will choose you as their husband like this.”
“Heh, don’t call me Chao Chao, show some respect.”
“Chao Chao, Chao Chao, Chao Chao. It’s okay, if no one chooses you as their husband, I can choose you. You’ll go to work and buy lots and lots of yummy things for me.”
“Dream on.”
“I want chocolate ice cream, cotton candy, bear cookies, and french fries, lots and lots…”
“—You’ll never find a husband.”
“But you can be my husband, okay? Please? Please? Please? Otherwise, no one will buy yummy things for Mumu.”
“Jiang Mumu, you’re annoying. Wait until you grow up.”
…
Almost every game of House would circle back to the same topic, with Jiang Mu pestering Jin Chao to marry her, until Jin Chao got annoyed and always used “wait until you grow up” as the final word to end this endless topic.
Jiang Mu was too young then to understand anything about family relationships or moral ethics, so even when she grew up and recalled pestering Jin Chao to play house, she only thought her childhood ideas were absurd and didn’t take them to heart.
It wasn’t until she came to Tonggang, especially recently, that she frequently recalled past events. She wondered if Jin Chao, five years older than her, knowing they had no blood relation, had ever truly meant it when he told her to wait until she grew up.
…
Jin Fengzi didn’t leave that night either, crashing at San Lai’s place next door. Before heading to work at Wan Ji in the morning, remembering what he’d told Jiang Mu the night before, he mentioned it to San Lai.
San Lai immediately smacked him, cursing, “Are you sick in the head? Why would you tell a young girl all that nonsense? You are a proper madman.”
Jin Fengzi mumbled, “I was drunk, okay? Help me give You Jiu a heads up.”
Nobody wants to expose their most shameful side to someone who knows nothing about it. San Lai hadn’t realized Jin Chao didn’t want Jiang Mu to know about his past troubles, but Jin Fengzi had inadvertently revealed it.
So after Jin Chao finished a phone call at the shop entrance that morning, San Lai came out, deliberately coughing a few times before relaying what Jin Fengzi had told him.
Jin Chao just listened silently, finishing an entire cigarette. His expression hadn’t changed—if anything, the shadow between his brows had only deepened.
San Lai looked at him a few times, tentatively asking, “So did Jiang Mu say anything to you when you got back last night?”
Jin Chao suddenly gave him a strange, inexplicable look, then wordlessly entered the repair shop, leaving San Lai puzzled.