The summer that year was exceptionally hot.

In the evening, adults and children brought their small stools to sit under the green trees early, gently waving their palm-leaf fans, telling mysterious tales of gods and spirits while watching the sky full of stars, and somehow the days seemed to slip by lightly.

Many people no longer dared to eat at restaurants or outdoor food stalls. That year, “SARS” had been raging from the beginning of the year through midsummer. The Evening News always reported how many more people around the world had died, and many people seemed to inexplicably discover that death wasn’t just the patent of poor nations.

After Yan Xi quit his radio station job, he had much more free time and often accompanied Ah Heng.

When she bought groceries, he followed behind, picking and choosing. The old butcher selling pork ribs was displeased, heavily chopping ribs on his cutting board with his gleaming knife while Yan Xi made faces behind Ah Heng by pulling at his eyelids.

Ah Heng said: “Didn’t you say you hated how dirty the market was?”

Yan Xi counted the change the old man had just given him coin by coin, not looking up: “It’s much more interesting than being at the radio station.”

Ah Heng smiled, speaking gently: “It’s fine not to go, it was too tiring anyway. You should focus on your studies from now on, and find a proper job after graduation. I’ll come back then too.”

She roughly calculated the time – she was studying medicine, and even if she applied for early graduation, it would still take four years. Yan Xi was studying law, and if he didn’t pursue a master’s degree, he could take the bar exam and start working in two years.

Between them, there would probably still be a two-year gap.

Yan Xi didn’t respond, taking the grocery basket from her hands and demanding petulantly: “Today I want braised ribs, grilled ribs, fried ribs, boiled ribs, and stewed ribs.”

Ah Heng humphed: “I’m serious, Yan Xi, why don’t you just marry ribs and live with them forever.”

Then she thought, Yan Xi, if you say you’d rather marry Ah Heng who makes the ribs, I’ll forgive you.

But that person seriously said: “Ah Heng, you can buy ribs with money for a lifetime, but a wife, ah, you can’t buy with money.”

Ah Heng’s face turned green, thinking, who else are you planning to buy with money? But on the surface, she gave a half-smile: “When I was in Wu Shui, many families with older brothers would give money and carry away other families’ daughters in the dark of night. If you have enough money, and if a family had many daughters around sixteen or seventeen, you could even pick the prettiest one.”

Yan Xi snickered: “So is it because no one would marry you that you had the chance to come to B City?”

Ah Heng ground her teeth: “There were plenty who wanted to marry me. But just after they gave money to my father, Zai Zai chased them away with medicine pots. If it were you, Zai Zai would use the family medicine vat to hit you.”

Yan Xi stroked his chin: “Hey, that cheap brother of yours, does he have a sister complex?”

Ah Heng: “Get lost, you’re the one with a sister complex, your whole family has a sister complex! Our Zai Zai is just fine, he’s been gentle, sensible, and obedient since he was little. Yes, obedient, let me tell you, our Zai Zai is much more obedient than you!”

Yan Xi glanced at her: “You think you raised an angel, let me tell you, those who look pure usually have hearts blacker than coal slag. When you get played, you won’t even know how you fell into the trap.”

Ah Heng looked skyward: “You’re jealous of him.”

Yan Xi looked at himself in the shop window outside the market: “Is he as good-looking as me?”

Ah Heng thought, that’s the child I raised, and nodded firmly: “Much better looking than you.”

Yan Xi: “Tch, you love him!”

Ah Heng smiled sweetly: “Yes I do, what about it?”

Yan Xi sneered: “You love so many things. The other day at the zoo, what did you say when you were enticing Black Black the gorilla to beat his chest for you?”

Ah Heng: “I love you the most, Black Black. Ahem, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love our Zai Zai.”

Yan Xi smiled: “Your love seems like a handful of candy that can be divided up.”

Ah Heng said: “Why don’t I understand what you’re saying lately?”

Yan Xi pushed the store’s revolving door: “Who asked you to understand.”

Ah Heng: “Hey, what are you going in here for, we should go home.”

Yan Xi: “The furniture at home is a bit old, it’s time to replace it.”

This was Ah Heng’s first time shopping with him, and everything felt somewhat novel. When they were together, most of their time was spent at home, in one room, breathing the same air.

Come to think of it, they weren’t together every moment, but their hearts were at peace. If the two of them could eventually be together, this lifetime would continue at this pace, like flowing water, as the daylight gradually shortened.

Ah Heng looked at the furniture, there was a rosewood set carved with bamboo, trees, snow, and plum blossoms, intricately detailed. She stopped to examine it, liking it very much.

Yan Xi came over: “What, you like this set?”

Ah Heng saw the price tag, drew in a sharp breath, and shook her head.

Yan Xi smiled: “I’ll give it to you when you get married.”

Ah Heng sweated, thinking that was quite presumptuous – if she married him she’d still be indebted to him, but she nodded, pretending to be serious: “Alright alright, you must give it, otherwise you won’t get an invitation.”

Yan Xi touched the fine grain of the furniture, with its heart-penetrating wood fragrance: “It’s a promise then.”

Ah Heng looked at the European-style furniture in the distance, her gaze drawn to it, casually agreeing: “Mm.”

McDonald’s was giving out coupons everywhere, and Yan Xi said: “Wait here, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.”

Although he wore a baseball cap, he was still recognized by a group of high school girls on the way back, who surrounded him. Helplessly, he signed autographs until his hand was sore.

Ah Heng came looking and watched him smile from outside the crowd.

Yan Xi took off his cap and waved his hand at her.

A group of young girls asked: “Brother Yan Xi, who is that?”

Yan Xi lowered his head with a faint smile: “Her? She’s the person brother least wanted to meet.”

The girls covered their mouths: “Oh, an enemy.”

Yan Xi touched the left side of his chest, feeling some pain: “No, the closest, dearest person.”

One of Yan Xi and Chu Yun’s most loyal followers, shortened to “Yan-Yun faction,” a young girl was very disappointed: “Brother, if she’s your dearest person, what about Sister Chu Yun?”

Yan Xi laughed: “Chu Yun and I will be responsible for our happiness, you just need to be responsible for growing up slowly.”

He turned and walked toward her.

Uh, the ice cream had melted a bit. He lowered his head to bite the cone like a child, while Ah Heng smiled, looking at him with curiosity, as if at someone she’d never seen before.

He kept biting: “What’s wrong?”

Ah Heng: “I didn’t know someone as childish, boring, crazy, and domineering as you had so many people who liked you in real life. I always thought DJ Yan was popular just because you had a nice voice.”

Yan Xi raised his big eyes and rolled them: “Thanks. Your words are getting more and more poisonous, really don’t know…”

Ah Heng coughed: “You taught me.”

Yan Xi shut up, pulled his cap down low, and walked forward slowly with his thin back.

She looked at his back, feeling fulfilled inside, unconsciously happy, her mouth curving into a large, gentle arc.

Then, with an uneasy, skipping impulse in her heart, she ran forward quickly and hugged him from behind. A gentle, proper embrace, her fingers gripping the fibers of his jacket, tight, yet carrying a barely perceptible possessiveness.

Yan Xi was surprised, turning his head: “What’s wrong?”

Ah Heng didn’t speak, after a long while she finally said softly, smiling: “Yan Xi, I’m just simply completing a hug.”

Because of you, the hug has meaning.

When Ah Heng went to the school forum, there were always people feeling emotional about death. Everyone chatted idly, bringing up that millennium rumor: in 2000, the Earth would be destroyed.

Ah Heng turned around, Yan Xi had just finished bathing and was sitting nearby drying his hair.

She frowned: “Yan Xi, what were we doing on the last day of 1999?”

Yan Xi’s fingers stiffened, then continued drying his hair, he said: “You forgot, at that time… we weren’t together.”

At that time, he was in Vienna, she was in China.

Two countries.

Ah Heng tried somewhat painfully to avoid that period when he was sick, feeling slightly melancholic: “If the Earth had been destroyed then, we wouldn’t have seen each other one last time.”

Yan Xi half-joked: “Hey, were we even that close then, that we had to die together?”

Ah Heng wanted to argue, how were we not close? I made ribs for you every day, bought you milk, and when others bullied me you got very, very angry, and then you said I was your family.

But, ultimately she didn’t say it. Because, how could she have known then that he harbored such grand illusions about her existence – making up for Wen Si’er’s debt; and he didn’t know that she had hidden such a man in her heart.

Not knowing each other, how could that be called close?

Shaking her head to forget the past, she smiled wryly, thankful that the world hadn’t ended in 2000.

So we still had the chance to become close.

He often stared blankly at drawing paper until she called him for dinner.

When he learned to draw as a child, the teacher once asked him to sketch the shape of happiness, he looked at Lu Liu and took out his pencil. But that person was too busy to pay attention to this problem child, and so the drawing was shelved.

He smiled helplessly, put the brush aside, washed his hands, and went to eat.

The dishes were still what he liked, but this person was becoming more and more terrifying, firmly gripping his stomach.

Outside the window, the golden rain tree was in full bloom in the garden, a sight full of bright colors.

He bit his chopsticks and looked for a long time, then buried his head to gnaw on ribs. He said: “What will I do when I’m old and can’t bite ribs anymore?”

Ah Heng smiled: “Maybe you’ll come to like other foods instead.”

The rich meat fragrance hadn’t yet dispersed, he also smiled, scooping up some gleaming soft white rice grains, that was true. Although he had always liked eating meat, his love for ribs came from eating them when he was extremely hungry. When he was eight years old, he went up the mountain for two days to pick wild fruit for his sick grandfather but ended up being severely beaten by his grandfather and locked in the first-floor study. He hadn’t eaten all day and felt very wronged. In the end, it was Lu Liu who secretly brought him food, standing on tiptoe to pass it through the window.

He remembered that in the lunchbox whose steam could bury his tears, there were ribs.

Lu Liu leaned on the windowsill, his jade-like little face very serious and gentle, sighing: “Yan Xi, you’re too young.”

So young that he always took exposing weakness as a matter of course.

Lu Liu was the same age as him, yet at eight years old, said such things.

He often thought, what was the rush to grow up? He hadn’t had enough of amusement parks, hadn’t watched enough Saint Seiya, hadn’t played enough with Transformers, he heard adults would be laughed at for doing these things. But suddenly, when growing up came, it seemed to happen clearly in a single day.

In the instant the bar exploded, flames burned the sky, covered in dirt, he even wanted to seek a chance to still grow up.

He was hospitalized and said: “Lu Liu, I won’t hate you. I want to stand in front of you, even if I live just one day longer than you, I want you to see me live with your own eyes.”

Lu Liu’s face was still gentle, like a carved jade Bodhisattva: “That’s good.”

He said: “No matter what others say, you must remember clearly. Abandoning you was the most correct choice I’ve made in this life. The Yan Xi I wanted was never that child who only knew how to be unreasonable, cry, and want his mother.”

He got up and walked out of the hospital room, leaving him a sliver of light to peer through.

Without a deep understanding of worldly affairs, he took the stage to perform, putting on the most disdainful childish act, showing fear and anxiety to the Lu family elder: “Grandfather, is there any way I can never see Yan Xi again?”

This move was so dangerous, establishing the identity of the enemy and hatred between them.

Yan Xi thought, that perhaps even when he died, Lu Liu wouldn’t shed a single tear.

He raised his eyes from his memories to look at Ah Heng, smiling gently: “Silly, there’s rice in your mouth.”

At night they watched TV together, Ah Heng sitting on a small stool.

A habit formed over many years, initially because she didn’t want to be kicked off the sofa by Yan Xi, later it became like a dog marking its territory – always feeling the sofa was his, the stool was hers, each had their own.

They hadn’t watched “Detective Conan” for a long time, and Shinichi still hadn’t changed back. Fortunately, besides earnestly missing him, Ran’s life was filled more with trivial matters and tomorrow. Ah Heng was quite relieved, although the murder methods in the cases were still perverse.

When the disfigured “ghost” eldest son appeared from the shadows and the case reached a critical point, Yan Xi asked: “Are you scared?”

Ah Heng wanted to say she wasn’t scared, but he reached out and pulled her to sit on his lap.

Ah Heng’s whole body stiffened, but he acted as if nothing had happened, his ten fingers tightly linked around her waist, saying: “I don’t think this person is the killer.”

Ah Heng twisted… turned her head, fortunately, he was only pretending to be calm, his fair face unconsciously red and flustered.

Her heart softened, and she chuckled: “Yeah, I don’t think it’s him either.”

Then, the two of them quietly watched TV, the summer night brought a breeze, blowing the golden-rain flowers, so red and alluring, falling on the windowsill.

In his embrace, she smelled the clean, faint milk fragrance on him, and suddenly felt unnamed emotions.

In the end, the killer was the second son who seemed most like a good person. She turned her head, pressing her forehead against his neck, warm and soft, leaving a large damp patch.

Yan Xi was stunned, his slender hand stroking her hair: “What’s wrong, baby?”

She was silent, raised her head, and leaned gently against his left ear, saying in a voice only they could hear: “Yan Xi, I like you.”

For the first time, she confessed to someone.

Not letting him guess cleverly, she took the initiative to surrender and disarm.

I like you.

Wen Heng… likes… Yan Xi.

It was a like that reserved space, that could be understood as love because of her reserve, a like that wouldn’t be given to anyone else.

His eyes were bewildered, and he smiled slightly, asking softly: “What did you say? I didn’t hear clearly.”

But her heart instantly turned cold, her fingers gently releasing his white T-shirt as she turned her head with a light laugh.

“It’s late, let’s rest early.”