Gardenia

Jin Xilu noticed that her grandmother would disappear for a period of time every day, sometimes for ten minutes or so after lunch, and sometimes in the evening when she came back from playing outside and found her grandmother was gone.

In short, Grandma always disappears for a period of time each day.

Today, she deliberately pretended to be in a hurry to go out and play at the dinner table. While picking up her bowl and eating rice, she announced loudly with a wandering look in her eyes: "Grandma, Yanan asked me to go to the square to set off firecrackers tonight. I have to go out early."

"Xi Lu, finish chewing your food before you speak. You're mumbling and I can't understand what you're saying." As soon as she finished speaking, Jin Meiling put a cola chicken wing into Jin Xi Lu's bowl.

Kim Hee-ro's eyes lit up when she saw the chicken wings. She had recently lost a front tooth, which greatly reduced the aesthetics and practicality of her speech. As she struggled to eat the chicken wings with her teeth, she noticed that Kim Mi-ryung put down her chopsticks several times.

Seeing Jin Xilu move her mouth and hands, she picked up the biggest cola chicken wing with her chopsticks and put it into her grandmother Jin Meiling's mouth. After swallowing the meat in her mouth, she tried to say, "Grandma, you should eat too. Why are you just standing there in a daze at the table? Grandma, Grandma!"

Jin Xilu called out several times, almost calling her name. Jin Meiling finally calmed down. She blinked and was about to say something when a chicken wing was shoved into her mouth, stopping her.

Jin Meiling took a small bite of the chicken wing skin, then put the wing back in her bowl before asking, "Xilu, what did you just say? I'm sorry, I'm a little tired today and didn't hear you clearly. Could you say it again?"

Something was wrong, something was really wrong, but Jin Xilu knew she couldn't ask that. Her grandmother would never tell her the truth and would only treat her like a child, so she had no choice but to suppress her doubts and continue eating quickly.

"I'm done eating! I'm going to play in the square."

Jin Xilu put down her bowl. She was about to jump up from the small stool when she remembered that she was wearing a clean new white dress today, so she had to hold onto the hem of her dress and slowly get off the chair.

Jin Xilu ran towards the door, then stopped a short distance from the doorway. She turned around and crouched down in the alley next door, thinking that her grandmother must have something on her mind. Usually, when she went out to play, she would repeatedly tell her to come back early. But this time, she didn't say anything and kept staring at the Jiang family's house.

Only Jin Xilu and Jin Meiling ate today. After Jin Xilu left, Jin Meiling couldn't eat anymore. She took Jin Xilu's bowl, washed it, dried her hands, stared blankly at the Jiang family across the street for a while, and finally sighed, her eyes red with unconcealed worry.

"I have to go." Jin Meiling closed the door slightly and left her home in a hurry, looking dazed. She didn't go through the main gate of the Jiang family's house, but instead went around to the back door and entered through a small door in the alley.

Jin Xilu was afraid of being discovered, so she had no choice but to follow behind her sheepishly. She didn't want to get close to the Jiang family in the first place, and she wasn't familiar with this area either: "Strange? How come there's another door here? I didn't know about it."

She walked up the steps, pressed the doorknob, and pushed it with her hand, but it wouldn't budge. It seemed that a key was needed to open it.

Jin Xilu was a little annoyed and tried again, but she still couldn't open the door. Her plan was stopped at the door before it could be implemented.

Although everyone says that Chief Jiang has greatly helped the town's development and is very kind to everyone, she just feels that the Jiang family is always gloomy, and she usually avoids the Jiang family area when playing with her friends.

Thinking about this, Jin Xilu realized she had never really observed the Jiang family properly before. She looked up, trying to count how many floors the Jiang family had: "One, two, three..."

Halfway through her sentence, a stone was suddenly thrown from somewhere, startling Jin Xilu. She immediately turned around to look at the wall, but didn't see anyone suspicious: "Who! Who threw me?"

Jin Xilu was clearly very angry, but because it was Jiang's territory, she still silently took a small step back. Her voice wasn't loud, but her expression was fierce.

She waited for a while, but no one responded. So she regained her courage and walked towards the doorknob. Before her hand could even touch the doorknob, another stone hit her foot.

"Who are you? Why won't you speak? Why are you hitting me?"

Kim Hee-ro quickly withdrew her hand and shrank her neck. Later, she realized that she looked like a coward, so she decided to fight back.

She first picked up a stone from the ground and held it in her hand. After waiting for a while and hearing no sound, she moved to the wall. There was someone behind the wall, and that person must be hiding inside. Although she didn't know the exact location, she threw the stone towards the door.

After hearing the sound of the stone hitting the ground, Jin Xilu breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily, no one was hurt. She was only angry for a moment, after all, she just wanted to find her grandmother and really didn't want to offend the Jiang family.

Just as she finished throwing things away, not intending to stoop to the level of the people inside, and dusting off her hands, planning to head home for the day and come back next time, she turned around and was hit on the side of her head. This time it wasn't a stone but a gardenia.

"You're crazy! You're making me so angry! You're bullying me!"

Jin Xilu couldn't take it anymore. She squatted down, a small lump on the ground, and stretched out her arms to sweep up all the stones. When both hands were full, she threw any stone she could grab into the ground, regardless of the direction. When all the stones in her hands were gone, only one gardenia he threw over remained. Just as she was hesitating whether to continue throwing, she heard a muttering voice from inside: "Coward, but he's got a pretty stubborn temper."

Kim Hee-ro was about to leave when she heard this, which ignited her fighting spirit. Today, no matter what, she was determined to find this person and make him apologize to her.

Jin Xilu immediately ran home and brought back a stool. When she stood on it, she found that she still couldn't reach the wall. Luckily, there was an empty cardboard box next to her, so she used it to stand on, and the height was about right.

The commotion from Jin Xilu's side was quite loud, and Jiang Yilin, who was hiding behind the wall, could hear it. Hearing her footsteps running away, he thought she had run away and was somewhat disappointed.

Jiang Yilin took a few steps back, looked up at the edge of the wall, and saw nothing. He then patted the dust off his hands.

He managed to sneak out while his family and servants were busy with the festival offerings for a few days. He had originally planned to slip into the dark house to visit the thin woman, but the door was locked again today, and he didn't even know if someone had added another lock to keep out others.

There was nothing he could do; he couldn't find the key. So he changed his mind and went for a walk in the backyard. All his peers had gone to school, but he had always been locked up at home.

Every year when he looks at this wall, he thinks about something very silly: Do people outside see this wall in the same way as people inside see it?

Every time he passed by, he would jump up to compare his height, and then silently estimate in his mind how long it would take for him to climb over the wall. He always thought to himself as if to convince himself: I won't just leave without saying a word. I'm just itching to see what it looks like from the outside.

I'll come back after I finish watching it, yes.

Today was no different. I jumped up when I reached the foot of the wall, and as I raised my arms to touch the edge of the wall, I looked up and met a girl with a bright smile.

Now it was Jiang Yilin's turn to be frightened. He didn't expect this person to be so bold as to climb over the wall to come and look for him after being vandalized.

"So it was you!"

"Hmph, apologize to me! Why did you throw stones at me for no reason?" Kim Hee-ro pointed at him, her eyes wide.

Jiang Yilin had already composed himself, as if he wasn't the one who had just been frightened. He showed no remorse, standing under the wall with an air of maturity despite his young age, one hand in his pocket as he glared at her. He spoke in a low voice: "Get out of my house, or I'll call someone to beat you up."

In April, he wore a thin brown cardigan, exuding a cool, withered leaf-like aura. When he was a child, his white hair wasn't so noticeable. If Kim Hee-ro hadn't been certain that it was him who threw the stone at her, she would have really suspected that this person was a cursed puppet, standing there blankly like a fool.

"You just wait." Jin Xilu said angrily. He was the one who threw the stone at her first, and now he wouldn't admit it.

After a while, her legs got a little tired, and she felt that lying on the wall like this was too strenuous, so she simply used brute force to climb up the wall and sit up.

After she finally managed to sit down on the wall, she saw Jiang Yilin cruelly picking a few gardenias from the flower bushes next to her. Puzzled and exhausted from climbing the wall, she breathlessly advised, "What did the flowers do to you? They were just watching over each other, why did you pick them?"

Soon, Kim Hee-ro knew what he was going to do by picking the flowers.

"Hey! You throw flowers at people without warning. What's the point of your mouth?" Jin Xilu hadn't even gotten comfortable yet, so she hurriedly lay down again, clinging to the wall like a wriggling caterpillar, trying not to be knocked off.

Jin Xilu had already climbed up, and she didn't want to get thrown down again with flowers without any chance to fight back, only to fall miserably.

Jiang Yilin clenched the flower bud in her hand, her tone no longer as panicked as before, and simply repeated, "Get out."

"Apologize! Apologize and I'll come down." Jin Xilu was determined to prove him wrong, and faced with the flower bud he threw at her, she simply changed direction silently, leaving the back of her head with her braided hair for him to see.

After a brief standoff, Kim Hee-ro noticed that he had stopped smashing things and quietly turned her head back, widening her eyes to try and see his face clearly. She first looked at the gardenia tree where he had been standing, but now there was no one there, only the bare gardenia tree standing motionless.

"Strange." The word was still on her lips when her gaze slowly returned downwards, meeting Jiang Yilin's eyes as he prepared to launch a sneak attack. Her eyes flickered, her heart skipped a beat, and she didn't know who had let go first.

In short, Kim Hee-ro felt as if she had bumped right into a gardenia. The gardenia, which had not yet fully bloomed, had green calyxes that were harder than she had imagined, and they brushed against her neck.

"Oh my!"

Jin Xilu tackled Jiang Yilin, and the two little ones fell onto the haystack, their hair covered in clumps of grass and their faces smeared with lime powder meant to be used as fertilizer.

Just when Kim Hee-ro thought she was unconscious from the pain, she was suddenly pushed aside by the force of her hands and feet. She moved her feet and found that she was fine. She slowly opened her eyes and found that everything in front of her was blurry yellow. She exclaimed, "It's over, I'm blind! You, you, you have to pay for my eyes!"

Kim Hee-ro didn't faint, but a few yellow leaves just happened to fall from above and cover her eyes.

She had just finished yelling at the boy next to her that he couldn't take it anymore. He reached out and decisively removed the leaves covering her face, looking at her with the eyes of someone looking at an idiot. His tone was no longer as aggressive as before, but instead filled with speechlessness and shock: "You didn't hit your eyes, but you didn't hit your head, did you?"

"Hehe, just kidding. This line is the most popular in TV dramas right now. You didn't know that, did you?" Jin Xilu said, sitting up abruptly and shaking off the grass and leaves on her body.

She suddenly stopped shaking the leaves and bent down. Her front tooth had fallen out, so her lips parted slightly, forming a circle. She slowly approached her. Before she could say or do anything, Jiang Yilin hurriedly waved her hand, forcing her to "deviate from the path".

"What do you want to do!" It was only because Jin Xilu was knocked off course that she didn't notice that Jiang Yilin's ears had turned unusually red.

Jin Xilu was knocked aside by him but was not angry at all. Instead, she was still smiling at him. Her eyes were clear and bright, and when she smiled, they looked like two sweet orange segments. With a twitch of her nose and a close of her mouth, even from a distance, Jiang Yilin could almost smell the unique fruity scent on her.

"I'm not doing anything, I just want to help you. There's a caterpillar on your head." After saying that, Kim Hee-ro stepped back to her original spot, crossed her arms, pouted slightly, and looked in another direction, trying not to laugh.

Seeing Jiang Yilin's body stiffen, she finally couldn't help but laugh out loud: "Haha, so you're afraid of bugs? It's okay, I'm not afraid, I'll help you."

Kim Hee-ro scraped the slugs off his hair with a leaf, and to convince him that she wasn't lying, she showed him the slugs on the leaf like jewels.

Jiang Yilin didn't say anything, but just kept turning her head away, rolling her eyes as if she were facing the insects or Jin Xilu.

"Wow, your hair is so beautiful, especially that shiny blonde! My name is Kim Hee-ro, and my house is right next door." Kim Hee-ro said, reaching out her hand to help him up. "What's your name?"

Jiang Yilin remained silent, struggling internally. He was deep in thought and overthinking. He always remembered his father telling him that he was different from normal people, and that the thin woman wanted to escape the Jiang family because she was afraid that he was not a normal child.

Jiang Yilin always remembered his father bending down, his cold fingers twisting his chin and getting closer. His father always had a strong, bitter smell, which made his mind sink into chaos and his consciousness gradually blurred. He only remembered the words his father said close to his ear.

“Yilin, blame yourself. Your mother doesn’t acknowledge you because you’re sick. Be good and stay at home. She will gradually accept your existence.”

The girl in front of him had a bad temper. She was smiling at him now, but she would definitely stay away from him, take revenge on him, and eventually forget him. Jiang Yilin thought to himself.

Just as he was about to give her a random name to fool her, he keenly heard the old woman's footsteps searching for him in the corridor. At that moment, a feeling he had never experienced before welled up in his heart, and he wanted to run away.

Take her with you!

Faced with the hand outstretched to him, he hesitated for a long time, but in the end all his excuses, warnings and concerns turned to ashes, and he took her hand.

All the calculations, hesitations, and concerns in his mind vanished the moment he took the girl's warm hand in his. He had never felt so at ease before, and his steps were light. They were as free and at ease as birds in the forest.

Just when Jin Xilu thought this man was having another episode and wouldn't speak properly, to her surprise, he actually grabbed her hand and led her into the Jiang family home.

His palms were cool, and his skin was dry and delicate, making her feel as if she were touching a smooth white pebble.

Where are you taking me?

"Don't make a sound, just follow me."

Before Kim Hee-ro even knew his name, he had already taken her away, making her feel lightheaded.

At that moment, not only was his hair shiny, but he himself resembled a prince from a story—aloof, distant, and with an exceptionally handsome face that bewitched her. Her steps faltered, and the two of them, in their own cleverness, left their dark footprints together, marking the path ahead.

Not long after, the two children were caught red-handed at the cellar entrance, like two well-fed little mice.

"We'll meet again! My name is Kim Hee-ro." Kim Hee-ro told him loudly before her grandmother took her away that night.