Chapter 47: Love and the Body
The two teenagers were dozing off in the car, seemingly having not slept well last night.
Haruka Tanaka saw two furry heads cuddling together in the rearview mirror, and a subtle smile curled her lips. Then, she raised the glass partition to block out the sounds from the front and back seats, and asked the person next to her, "How do you feel, 悪役さん?"
In the passenger seat, Jiang Cheng smiled faintly: "So my role is Mr. Villain?"
"According to Mizuno, you were just an unexpected villain, but you turned out to be quite effective."
Jiang Cheng didn't deny it. Instead, he asked her, "Why didn't you tell me at the beginning?" After a brief pause, he said, "After all, I wanted to participate too."
Of course he also wants to participate in it. Maybe playing a villain would be more valuable than actually being a villain.
Tanaka Haruka gazed at the mountain road, silent for a long time before saying, "Because I feel this is a private matter between Xiaosong and me."
Perhaps seeing Jiang Cheng fall silent, she added, "I'm sorry."
She said sorry because she knew she had, in a sense, taken Jiang Cheng's child away, not just geographically but also psychologically. Xiao Song didn't have much affection for his father, but he was Xiao Song's father after all, and he had always tried to find ways to be close to his child and to love and care for him.
"Don't apologize." Jiang Cheng finally spoke after she said sorry, "I said, you will never owe me." Especially when it comes to Xiao Song.
Tanaka Haruka didn't say anything else, her eyes were deep, as if endless words were hidden there.
The car finally stopped outside a hot spring resort halfway up a mountain. The two teenagers sleeping in the back seat slowly woke up as the car stopped. Xia Cun rubbed her eyes and looked out the window. Ms. Tanaka and Mr. Jiang had already gotten out of the car. She instinctively tried to unbuckle her seatbelt, but Jiang Song held the buckle firmly in place and whispered in her ear, "If your mother says anything nasty to you, tell me."
Xia Cun looked at him puzzledly, as if he was asking something unpleasant, but at this moment, Ms. Tanaka knocked on the car window. Jiang Song immediately helped her unbuckle her seat belt and winked at her: "Have a nice bath, I'm here."
Although it is summer, Tanaka Haruka has always believed that the hotter it is, the more important it is to take a hot spring bath, so he asked Xia Cun to come and take a hot spring bath together.
Xia Cun told Jiang Song yesterday that she had something to do today, which was to take a hot spring bath with Ms. Tanaka. This was because she had received an invitation from Ms. Tanaka in the flower arrangement room that day, but she was still on her period at that time, so she changed it to today.
This morning, Ms. Tanaka personally drove to pick her up. There were two more people in the car than expected. Ms. Tanaka apologized to her for this: "I'm sorry, I mentioned this at breakfast, and someone wanted to come anyway."
Jiang Song wanted to come along, but Tanaka Haruka refused him on the grounds that the pools were separate for men and women because he was afraid he would be bored. As a result, Jiang Cheng simply put down his work tablet and said that he could take a bath with Xiao Song. Then he turned around and asked the old father at the table, Mr. Jiang Yanyu, to help him with the work. Mr. Jiang snorted twice, but finally took over the work, and the family of three left the old house together.
Xia Cun followed Ms. Tanaka into a guest room. The room was filled with a faint wood fragrance. The tatami was laid flatly, and a pot of cold tea was placed on the low table. Outside was an open-air hot spring pool, hidden behind a quiet bamboo fence, and dotted around with stone lanterns and summer wildflowers.
There was a changing room inside, but Ms. Tanaka changed her clothes in the room as if no one was around. Feeling the girl's gaze, she turned around without hesitation and faced the girl with her naked body.
The girl didn't look away and continued to look at her.
It wasn't her first time seeing a woman's body. When she was learning to swim, she'd seen many women's bodies in the locker room, but Tanaka Haruka was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. Even her body seemed elegant and controlled. But she noticed a curved scar on this beautiful woman's lower abdomen. Although it had faded, it still lingered like an indelible memory.
Is this the mark that classmate Jiang Song left on her that she told her that day?
Tanaka Haruka smiled at her, picked up the hot spring yukata, and put it on while saying to her, "If you keep staring at me like this, I'll be shy too."
Xia Cun looked up at her, as if he didn't understand the emotion of shyness.
She was imagining her mother through Haruka Tanaka, but the image of Xia Qing she remembered seemed to come from her old photos, as if her brain was weaving memories through old photos. She had never fantasized about Xia Qing's body before, and this was the first time, but her imagination had already taken on the shadow of the woman in front of her, and her brain was weaving illusory imaginations with the help of something.
How was she born?
Will there be such a mark on my mother’s belly?
Xiao Lan never told her that she wanted to know her mother.
While imagining this, Xia Cun changed into a hot spring bathing suit and soaked in the pool with the woman.
The warmth enveloped her body, and those random thoughts seemed to melt away in the heat. Ms. Tanaka said nothing, and after entering the pool, she quietly closed her eyes, as if enjoying it. Xia Cun followed her example, leaning against the pool wall and slowly sliding down, even hiding half of his cheek in the water.
She was thinking back to several previous conversations she had had with Ms. Tanaka.
When they first met, Ms. Tanaka flew all the way from Tokyo to H City. She wanted to know why she'd requested a meeting. "Because I want to know why Jiang Song is so unpredictable. I want to know what kind of person he is," she replied. After a pause, Ms. Tanaka said she also wanted to know. If following him would reveal something, she hoped she could tell her the answer someday.
During their second meeting, Ms. Tanaka asked her if she wanted to spend the holiday with Jiang Song. However, she told her that this would require courage, as she might find Jiang Song to be a less wonderful person, or perhaps a more wonderful person. Either way, it would all turn into regrets after the holiday, so she hoped she would think it over carefully before deciding. However, she only pretended to think it over carefully, because she was not one to do so.
Then the vacation began.
Ms. Tanaka would sometimes ask about her new discoveries. She would gradually refine her understanding of Jiang Song from the fragmentary notes in her memo, eventually coming to a crucial conclusion: Jiang Song was a very dishonest person. The day she realized this, she seemed to understand two things.
One thing was that she seemed to understand where his unpredictability came from, perhaps it was because he was not honest and did not want others to know his thoughts. Another thing was that she seemed to understand why Ms. Tanaka agreed to let her follow Jiang Song, perhaps it was because Jiang Song was not honest, he would not even be honest with his mother.
She told Ms. Tanaka this conclusion, and when she met Ms. Tanaka for the third time, she found that she had shown some changes. Her eyes were softer, but also more serious, so contradictory and complicated.
Ms. Tanaka told her that she also thought Jiang Song was a dishonest child, but she couldn't get him to open up. She said that Jiang Song was a soft-hearted person who had loved cats since he was a child and always enjoyed helping cats outside, but he never brought his favorite kittens home because he knew his mother was allergic to cat hair. She knew this not because Jiang Song told her himself, but because she accidentally overheard a conversation between him and a kitten that came home with him. She said, "He changes shape too easily, as if he is afraid of being discovered as his true appearance. He can't open his heart even to the people he likes."
Speaking of "the one you like," Ms. Tanaka suddenly changed the subject and asked bluntly, "Xiao Xia, will you continue to like someone who isn't honest with you?" Perhaps because she hadn't answered for too long, Ms. Tanaka continued, "This may make you sad, but when the vacation is over, I will take Xiao Song back to Tokyo."
At this point, the housekeeper interrupted their conversation and said, "Let's talk about the rest next time we meet."
The next time they met, Ms. Tanaka told her the reason why she wanted to take Jiang Song away.
Because there is still a tangled knot between her and Jiang Song that needs to be untied.
…
This is not my body.
One day, when Tanaka Haruka woke up and looked at her bulging belly, she suddenly had this feeling.
After that day, this feeling gradually became stronger day by day.
She was not ready to have a child, but her parents-in-law thought she was old enough to have one because the Jiang family needed to train an heir.
Of course, she couldn't think that the inheritance system was ridiculous, because she and her mother had spent a lot of effort to let her get the inheritance rights of the Tanaka family, so her mother also thought that she should have a child, or even a boy. If there was no heir, the Tanaka family would most likely be handed over to her illegitimate brother again in the future.
More importantly, her husband also said that he wanted to have a child of their own.
At that time, they had been in love for four years and married for three years. The rumored seven-year itch did not seem to appear on them. They loved each other, so when Jiang Cheng mentioned that he wanted to have a child, she agreed.
But did she really agree? When did her suppressed resistance resurface?
Perhaps it started from the day she felt her body becoming unfamiliar.
This is not my body.
Constant nausea, vomiting, drowsiness, changes in taste, insomnia, bloating, breast pain, body swelling, a bulging abdomen, the need to change her usual posture, and a shift in her center of gravity... Her body was in so much pain, as if it was trying its best to reject the existence of this child, or perhaps her body had been taken over by this child.
Haruka Tanaka looked in the mirror and seemed to see his former self receding and becoming distant.
Did she really love Jiang Cheng that much? Shouldn't she love herself more? Why did she hide her resistance when he said he wanted a child? Or was it really just because of Jiang Cheng?
It was as if someone was talking to her, comforting her, hugging her, and kissing her, but she could neither hear nor see it because it was not her body.
Did he feel rejected by his mother?
Why doesn't he come out?
Tanaka Haruka remembered the blinding white lights on the day of her birth, and a woman's scream, but she couldn't tell if it was her own voice. She only remembered that a baby cried a long, long time later.
It's finally over.
No, it's not over.
She still suffers from insomnia, irritability, restlessness, excruciating pain, and the constant falls. The doctor says it's postpartum depression. It's so unfair. So unfair. Why is she having to endure all this? No one told her it would be like this.
But is this child who laughs when poked my child?
So beautiful.
Tanaka thought that she should learn to love him, maybe everything would be different if she fell in love with him.
Her children are growing up, one year old, two years old, three years old...
He called her mom, but often she would only respond after he called her several times, as if she didn't hear him, and she was slow to respond. It was as if she had tried every way to prove her love for him, but she couldn't get rid of that tiny resistance.
Didn't she still love her child? No, she loved him. So what was wrong?
How can she stop this terrible state?
No one told her, she had to find the answers herself.
Until one day, her husband, who never stopped expressing his love for her, suddenly said to her: "Let's separate, Haruka."
He usually likes to call her A Yao in Chinese, but today he called her name in Japanese.
The moment Tanaka Haruka heard this, she felt as if something that was pressing tightly against her body broke apart, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
So this is where the problem lies? She has been using every possible means to prove that the person she loves is not her child, but her husband, and the person she resists is not her child, but her husband.
He already knew the answer, but he had always pretended nothing had happened and hadn't told her. So why was he suddenly saying this now?
"I want to take him away."
"But you..."
"He is the child I gave birth to."
"……good."
She took her child with her almost without any hindrance, and returned to Tokyo, back to the starting point of Tanaka Haruka.
She wants to turn back into Tanaka Haruka.
Haruka Tanaka's child also has a Japanese name, similar to her surname and given name in Chinese. He's such a sweet child. When she falls asleep on the sofa from working, he'll pull a blanket, much bigger than him, over her. Sometimes she'll still drift off into a trance, and when she comes to, she'll find him imitating her, sitting by the window. When she asks him what he's doing, he'll smile and show her the drawing he's just made of her.
In the fifth year of being a mother, Haruka Tanaka found that she seemed to have succeeded. She successfully opened her heart and loved her child bravely and completely. But why did she always feel that something was wrong?
Until one day, her mother accidentally said to her: Xiao Sa is really hard to figure out.
Why do you say it’s hard to guess?
Aren’t children’s minds very transparent?
From then on, and for many years afterwards, Haruka Tanaka realized the same problem over and over again - her child seemed to have closed his heart to everyone. Even though he always smiled and looked approachable, he was actually avoiding the love of others.
There was no doubt that this was caused by her, but her memories of those years were so vague that she couldn't even remember what kind of harm she had brought to her child.
How can I make him believe in love completely?
How can we make him feel at ease and bold to be attached to them?
Tanaka Haruka opened her eyes, which gradually regained focus. She looked at the girl standing by the pool, her cheeks flushed and looking a little dizzy, and curled her lips slightly.
"Xiao Xia, have you figured out how to end this summer?"
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The author has something to say: I really like this chapter [poor]
I was telling a friend today that the most surprising thing about writing this story was how I made these two lighthearted characters feel so logically grounded, even a bit heavy. Whether it's the electric connection or the ambiguity, there's a reason for it. Maybe that's why writing it was so painful. The two babies are really starting to grow, and I'm really worried about how they'll grow up (>_<)
I originally just wanted to write a simple story about a strange first love in summer, but it ended up getting complicated (I accept it), but I hope it stays lighthearted overall! — I'm feeling really complicated and stressed as I approach the end, so I'll just say what I really want to say [burst into tears]
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