Chapter 46: Black Cat, White Cat
I saw Jiang Song again the next morning. The young man had just recovered from a serious illness. He had a bright smile and was dressed beautifully.
Of course, what's more important is that he already has white hair.
He stood in the narrow stairwell, hunched over and put his face in front of her, just like the first time they were in the hotel corridor, but this time he crossed his arms, which made him look more intimate.
Xia Cun stared at his hair for a while, and finally understood why he had told her on the phone last night that she must be the one to open the door.
Jiang Song is so cute today.
It must be because his hair is so white, he looks more like a docile sheep.
But classmate Jiang Song asked her dissatisfiedly: "Does your hair look better than mine?"
Because she kept looking at the hair instead of him.
"You look good, too."
Jiang Song was barely satisfied.
Last night, he called the girl to announce that he had recovered from his illness, so he hoped to play with her this morning. After thinking about it, Xia Cun decided to go to the flea market with him.
Before they could leave, Xia Lan detained them for a moment. She took a lot of photos of them, saying something about how handsome Japanese boys were. Finally, she smiled and put the camera around Xia Cun's neck, patted her head, and said, "Learn from this."
What should I learn? Take photos like her?
Xia Cun was thinking about these words as he walked on the road, and he always felt that there was something meaningful in Xia Lan's words.
In the past, the two teenagers were eye-catching enough when walking on the street, but on this day, Jiang Song's new hair color seemed to make them even more eye-catching. When the two were buying milk tea at the milk tea shop, someone raised their mobile phone towards them from a distance. Xia Cun noticed them just as he put the straw into the cup.
They were two young girls, perhaps college students. When she discovered them, they gave her an awkward smile, put away their phones, and hurried away.
Why did they want to take pictures of two strangers? Was it the same reason she wanted to take pictures of Jiang Song? Fortunately, Jiang Song didn't notice, otherwise he would be unhappy, because he said he hated sneak shots.
Xia Cun stared blankly at the direction the two girls left, then his eyes went blank. He looked down and saw Jiang Song leaning over, holding her straw and drinking the milk tea in her hand.
“…”
Doesn’t he have his own milk tea to drink?
Thinking of this, Jiang Song had already snatched her milk tea into his own hands, and then handed her his cup: "はい～"
It was the same milk matcha, the same sweetness, because Jiang Song had asked for the same drink, but the only difference was that he had chosen an iced drink instead of a hot one. In other words, the cup he took was hot, while the one he handed her was iced.
“…”
Event 21: Before going to the flea market, I will have a quarrel with my classmate Jiang Song for a while.
"Why are you angry?" Jiang Song asked as he walked beside her. He was holding the cup of hot milk tea in one hand and the cup of ice milk tea that the girl had given him in the other.
"Because Jiang Song is a Baka."
"I'm Baka." He responded nonchalantly, then asked why he was stupid.
After Xia Cun told him the reason, a new logical relationship emerged in Jiang Song's mind -
After all, he grew up in a country where people drink ice water on a daily basis. After all, he has never experienced dysmenorrhea, so he will never understand that cold drinks can cause dysmenorrhea in a girl.
"Gomenne." He admitted his mistake aggrievedly, "Then I'll treat you to lunch at noon, okay?"
Xia Cun treated him to this cup of milk tea because Xia Lan gave her another reward under the pen name "Inspiration Waterfall" last night.
"No, but it's not because I'm angry, but because someone has asked me to have dinner with them."
"Who is it?"
"The one you don't want to see."
Sure enough, Jiang Song's face turned a little worse, but he pretended not to hear anything, and then said to the street ahead: "Wow, we're here."
As they wandered the flea market, Xia Cun noticed that Jiang Song was fond of shiny things, especially the gems from the antique stalls. He bought a lot of them, regardless of whether they were real or fake, acting like a fool with a lot of money. Well, Jiang Song was still a very fat sheep.
Xia Cun took him to a small shop run by an old French grandmother. It was her favorite shop on the whole street because the decoration looked like a witch's cottage. The watermelon red glass lampshade in her bedroom was bought here.
There were many customers in the store, and the two of them were strolling around inside. Xia Cun would take pictures of any small items he liked, of course, he meant taking pictures with his camera. Jiang Song would pick up everything he liked and put them in the shopping cart, and in the end he insisted on taking a glass lampshade with him.
He went to pay the bill. Xia Cun was still looking around. When she turned back, she found that Jiang Song and the old lady were talking. He seemed to be speaking French. She guessed that they were very sweet words because the old lady was smiling happily.
Jiang Song seemed to feel her gaze, turned around holding the lampshade, and seeing that she was pointing the camera at him, he put the lampshade on his head.
The shutter clicked. The apple-green glass lampshade, the white-haired handsome boy, and a beautiful smile were captured in the camera.
Does Xiaolan mean to take a picture of Jiang Song like this?
…
After leaving the flea market, Xia Cun was about to go to her appointment. Although Jiang Song didn't make a scene, he still asked her, "Can we continue playing in the afternoon?"
"I'm going to see my friend's performance with Xiaolan this afternoon."
"Performance? Then I want to go too."
"You can't go."
"Why?"
Because my friend hates you. But considering Jiang Song is fragile, it's better not to tell him.
However, Jiang Song was surprisingly not willful. Seeing that she didn't answer, he asked her politely, "Can we play together tomorrow?"
"I have things to do tomorrow, too."
She discovered last night that she still had a lot to do before the summer was over.
"What's going on?"
"You'll find out."
"All right……"
Xia Cun couldn't help but look at him again.
As expected, Jiang Song is so cute today.
She parted ways with her lovely classmate Jiang Song at an intersection, and went to the restaurant she had agreed to meet with Mr. Mizuno. This was a Japanese omurice restaurant that Mr. Mizuno had booked after asking for her opinion. When she arrived, the restaurant was crowded, and Mizuno was already waiting for her in the booth.
Mizuno was wearing the pair of black-framed glasses that he didn't usually like to wear. When he saw the girl, he smiled easily and looked relieved.
He told the girl that he had completed all the work handovers and would fly back to Tokyo in the afternoon. He also had already booked a flight to Rome and would take his mother with him after returning to Tokyo. Xia Tsun seemed a little surprised by his efficiency, but Mizuno smiled slightly and asked, "That's ten days later than I planned, isn't it?"
It seems so.
At this time, the restaurant waiter brought two pre-ordered curry omelet rice, one with Domingos sauce, and one with ketchup. After putting it down, he said to the customer sitting in the adjacent booth, "Hey, customer, you can scan the QR code with your phone to order."
Mizuno pushed his glasses, swapped the two omurice that the waiter had misplaced, and ate the one with Domingos sauce himself.
He was used to mixing all the sauce and rice together before eating his omurice, so he was very slow. The girl across from him cut the egg shell to protect the white rice inside from being stained by the sauce. He smiled and said, "You two are really alike. Even the way you eat omurice is the same."
He was of course talking about Jiang Song, but Xia Cun tilted his head at his words and asked, "How is he similar? You said before that I was a very frank person."
Mizuno couldn't help but laugh again. "Of course they're not alike, but it's complicated to list the similarities. To put it simply, I think your minds are similar. I have a metaphor that may not sound polite, but it's that you don't seem very human."
“…”
"I'm sorry. But you can understand that I think you two are like two spirits belonging to nature, but you are probably a bit timid."
"Am I a coward too?"
"At least in some ways, don't you think?"
Xia Cunmer.
Mizuno then said, "That night, I didn't have the chance to tell you why I chose to stay for the past two years. Now there's still plenty of time. Xiaoxia, do you still want to know?"
"Um."
Mizuno then told the girl about his past. After he discovered that his mother suffered from bulimia, he had been asking a psychologist to treat her. The psychologist said that his mother's long-term anxiety and sense of deprivation made her unable to adapt to her current safe state, and she had been looking for new enemies. This old fear turned into new anxiety, and food was her means of rebuilding her sense of security.
But the treatment for his mother had little effect. It seemed that the more urgently he wanted her to change, the more fearful, ashamed, painful and uneasy she became. When she saw the third psychologist, his mother even cried and begged him not to force her anymore. Mizuno realized that maybe his approach was wrong and turned to seek other solutions. Unfortunately, his mother had been suffering from bulimia repeatedly during those years.
He wanted his mother to know that she was safe and that she had nothing to fear with him around, but no matter how hard he tried, it was all in vain. It wasn't until the second year of his work at the Tanaka family's that his mother was diagnosed with early-stage stomach cancer, and he finally felt a sense of unprecedented frustration.
He couldn't heal his mother, and she was sinking deeper and deeper into the shadows, perhaps forever.
For the first time, Mizuno doubted his life creed, the creed given to him by his mother. He suddenly lost the strength to move forward because he was powerless.
While he was arranging the surgery for his mother, he saw the 13-year-old boy in the hospital, chatting and laughing with his mother in her hospital bed. The boy had been running to the hospital every day after school, and after his hospitalization, he began to appear frequently at his home. Soon, Mizuno noticed that his mother started cooking for them. After a month, three months, and six months... Mizuno found that his mother seemed to have recovered from her gluttony.
Later he asked his mother why, and his mother said that it was because Master Xiao Sa told her that she had a child who looked like Ultraman, and such a child must have a mother who looked like Ultrawoman.
"When my mother said that to me, I realized that the person who was wrong wasn't her, but me. I actually regarded her as a weakling, forgetting that she had been an Ultra Warrior before coming to Tokyo. I even claimed that I was saving her, to the point that even my mother forgot that she was a warrior and didn't believe she could still defeat anything..."
Mizuno was silent for a while when he said this, as if he was calming down.
After a long pause, he continued, "So I'm very grateful to him. That's why, after the third year, we had the fourth and fifth years, because I know that he has always been a child who is afraid of being left behind..." At this point, he pushed his glasses up with his left hand again and said, "Xiao Xia, I think this is something you two have in common, right?"
Xia Cun was stunned when he heard this, and the spoon in his hand seemed to become heavy.
"In that case, perhaps I should tell you:
"Xiao Xia, please firmly believe in Miss Xia Lan's love for you."
It seemed like something was coming out of her body. Xia Cun lowered her head and two tears fell on her knees. She put down the spoon, rubbed her eyes, and looked up at Mizuno again.
Mizuno apologized to her: "Sorry, I suddenly became a little sentimental. Now please enjoy your meal." He paused and said, "By the way, I still suggest that you stop rubbing your eyes with your hands all the time."
“…”
"Also, thank you for coming to see me off. Now I need to go talk to another kid."
As he said this, he suddenly stood up. Xia Cun looked at him in surprise with red eyes, and then turned back as if he had realized something.
A young man in a black hoodie suddenly jumped out from the booth behind him. His beautiful white hair was hidden beneath the hoodie. He was wearing sunglasses, his cheeks slightly red, and he said angrily but righteously, "You made her cry!"
Mizuno's face remained calm: "Really? Then you should be ready for tears too, right?"
“…”
Xia Cun rubbed his eyes again, and vaguely saw a white-haired cat flaming up in an omelet rice restaurant.
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The author has something to say: Mr. Mizuno is offline. The teacher who is very good at fishing for cats and fish, holding the script is like this (I originally wrote a 1,000-word farewell scene for the next chapter but later deleted it, so let's stop here!
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I was exhausted writing the rest of the story today. I don't understand why it was so difficult. It might be because the ending I originally envisioned is a little different. Anyway, the ending is quite difficult, so the daily updates I've been keeping for a long time may be interrupted during the ending. I'm going to say this in advance so that I won't be caught off guard one day. [Namaste][Namaste][Namaste]
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