Chapter 42
"Let me tell you, there are butterflies in the Jiang family's backyard, colorful butterflies..." Zhou Yue leaned on the car window and felt the sea breeze. The breeze blew her hair like flying butterflies. She stretched out her hand and let the butterfly stay on her fingertips.
She was the only one chattering along the way, while the people around her were still silent as usual. She was smiling on the right side of her cheek, but she didn't know if the left side was also smiling.
"Is that Shenzhen Bay Park?" She stretched out her hand and turned to ask him. They were walking through the bustling CBD area, and there was a lush forest across the sea.
"yes."
Zhou Yue looked at his calm face, withdrew her gaze, and leaned against the car window to look across the sea.
They are now going to Nantou Ancient Town. Xiao Yuan said there is a tea shop there, which is a place Jiang Huai would patronize.
The ancient city is full of blue bricks and black tiles, snow-white walls, and the bougainvillea and purple wind chimes in the clay pots next to the round arches are as gorgeous and dazzling as fireworks in midsummer, which instantly brings vitality to the silent ancient city. Bougainvillea has also bloomed, and it blooms more freely, fiery red like a sky full of flames, burning the white walls and the sky. The heavy and overlapping flowers are like fireballs wrapped with green leaves, climbing on the glass doors of one ancient shop after another. When the door opens with a jingle, the morning dew on the petals trembles and falls, leaving you with a refreshing floral fragrance.
"It would be great if I could open a store here." Zhou Yue looked up at the sea of red flowers, which was so vivid that it made people's heart tremble.
She turned to look at him. He also tilted his head back with a smile on both sides of his mouth. "Yeah." He looked down at her. The bright red bougainvillea and her fair face ignited his dark, cold pupils, burning silently in his flat eye sockets.
The shop was really hard to find. Xiao Yuan led her through the winding alleys. The walls were made of rough stones, and the ground was uneven cobblestones. Moss was crawling in the cracks, and fluffy green leaves grew from one side of the alley to the other, blocking the sunlight like a roof. The alley was dimly lit, and the nose was filled with the fragrance of grass and green leaves.
"He is a man who has to find such a secret place to buy tea, as if he is too shameful to show it to others." Zhou Yue stretched out her hand high, and her fingertips brushed over the leaves that were hot and soft in the sun. She accidentally slipped on the moss and fell into a hard embrace. With a thud, it was like falling into a piece of bitter, cold and hard leather tobacco. The black shirt that her nose brushed against was left with a soft fragrance that had been exposed to the sun.
"Be careful." He held her arms with both hands, his voice hoarse and low, with a warning tone, but seeing the smile in her eyes, the fire under the bougainvillea tree went out, and his eyes were like icicles wrapped in black velvety eyelashes in this dark alley, the tip of the icicle slid gently, inch by inch, across her forehead and cheeks, lingered on her lips for a moment, and then looked back into her eyes.
Zhou Yue put her face against his chest, listening to the heavy heartbeat, her arm felt cold and numb in pain from being held in his iron-like grip.
"What are you doing?"
"Listen to your heartbeat." She moved her ear away from his chest and buried her face in his arms. Her eyelashes trembled as she brushed against the buttons on his shirt. "Your heartbeat hasn't changed at all."
"Should I change?" He laughed hoarsely and strangely, looking up at the thin sliver of sunlight filtering through the leaves. "That's right. If the famous Little Moon were to throw herself into your arms, a man's heart would leap out and into your mouth for you to eat. No, chew it, chew it, suck your blood, and then spit it out like sugarcane residue."
She also laughed, and a snot bubble appeared when she laughed, soaking his shirt.
"Are you crying again?" He chuckled, his chest vibrating violently, as if his heartbeat had suddenly intensified. The laughter that came out of his throat was a snorting sound. "Why are you crying? You tamed the powerful Jiang Zong, but failed to tame a dog that Jiang Zong raised. It's very frustrating, isn't it?"
Zhou Yue was silent, and slowly raised her head from his embrace. Her arm, squeezed so tightly by him that it was deprived of blood, was cold even to her fingertips. He still tilted his head back, so she stretched out her arm and touched his eyes with her cold fingertips. Those eyes were so cold that it made people despair, but what she touched was a piece of hot skin and soft eyelashes. They fluttered in her palm like a butterfly, itchy and warm. She held the butterfly and let it fly in her palm for a while before letting go. "I'm sorry, Xiao Yuan, I won't embarrass you like this again."
After saying that, she took a step back and gently broke free from his hand. He hated her, despised her, disliked her for being dirty, or maybe it was simply that as time passed, the love also cooled, but he still couldn't bear to hurt her too much, couldn't bear to see her cry. No one had to love another person for a lifetime, not to mention that this person was not worthy of his love at all. He had his own things to do. Although she didn't understand, she couldn't cause trouble for him and put him in danger.
She walked slowly forward with her hands behind her back, listening to him follow behind her. Her leather shoes stepped silently on the cobblestones, leaving only shadows. She looked down at the long black shadow that emerged through the shadows of the trees. Its head just covered her cloth shoes, dyeing the white canvas black.
The store was at the end of the tree-lined avenue, isolated from the world. There was a wooden door on the stone wall covered with vines and moss. There was a square fan-shaped glass on the door. Looking through the glass, you could vaguely catch a glimpse of the store.
As soon as you enter the door, you will see a nanmu wood table and two chairs. In the middle of the arched door is a pine ornamental pot, which creates a distant artistic conception. Zhou Yue was looking at it when a man walked out from behind the rosewood carved screen. He looked like the fox demon that appeared in a gust of wind in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, but he was not young anymore, with white hair, wearing a Zhongshan suit, and wearing reading glasses while greeting people with a smile.
"Hello, Mrs. Jiang."
Zhou Yue looked back at Xiao Yuan, but he wasn't looking at her. He just smiled politely and nodded to the old man, then asked him in Cantonese, "Do you have any Jin Jun Mei?"
"Yes, yes." The old man smiled, put on white gloves, and slowly walked into the inner room. After a while, he came out holding a box as if he were holding an antique porcelain.
This tea shop has no counter, and the tea boxes have no carvings of dragons and phoenixes or large gold-plated characters. They are just plain white silk cloth with only the two-character shop name engraved in a small way in the lower right corner of the box.
They also bought a bag of Laobanzhang ripe tea. Xiao Yuan stood in front of Zhou Yue to pay. Zhou Yue walked in front of Xiao Yuan holding the tea. When the two of them walked out one after the other, she looked back and saw the old man still standing in the middle of the store, bowing slightly and seeing them off with a smile. It was really like a fox demon who had transformed into a human form. After they left, he would turn back into a snow fox in a puff of smoke.
They returned the same way. Zhou Yue held the tea box in her arms. A faint fragrance filled her nose, and it felt cool against her skin.
When getting in the car, Xiao Yuan still walked quickly over and opened the passenger door, but she sat in the back seat and fastened her seat belt carefully. When she looked up, he was gently closing the passenger door.
The car drove along the cross-sea highway. White clouds drifted in the sky and the vast skyline stretched as far as the eye could see. There was the romance of driving to the other side as in Friedrich's paintings. Zhou Yue lowered her head and gently stroked the tea box. The sunlight passed through the white silk cloth, like the passage of time.
They walked in silence all the way to school. Today was Monday and the students were all in class. They walked along the quiet tree-lined path. The towering trees crisscrossed each other, and the branches and lush leaves were intertwined across the sky. The sunlight was chopped into specks of stardust that roamed and floated on the asphalt road. Occasionally, they saw an old red brick building. The dust accumulated in the wooden window panes floated like gold powder in the sunlight, as if they were in a dream.
"This tree is so big." Zhou Yue stood under a big tree, looking up at the lush canopy like a dome. The black trunk was covered with a thick layer of moss, like a thousand-year-old tree god.
"If I had always been here, I wouldn't have noticed how much it had grown." She lowered her head, raised her hand and stroked the rough trunk, then smiled. "If I had always been here, I would have graduated this year. I would have come back like I did today, bringing things back to see my teacher."
"Is your work going well? Are you married? When are you going to have children? They asked me a lot of questions," she said, looking at several female students who hurriedly ran past them. They were carrying school bags, looking at their watches while running, their ponytails flying in the air like flames of youth.
"I'm just like them, giving perfunctory answers. Nowadays, young girls get annoyed to death when they talk about getting married and having children, haha."
"What about you? Are you annoyed?" The person who had been silent behind him spoke.
"Yes." She smiled faintly, looking down at their intertwined figures. "If I ever get married, it won't be to someone I love. I'll have a child with someone I don't love. I'll annoy anyone who pushes me to do that, hahaha."
She smiled enough and looked up, "Let's go."
But no one urged her, and no one cared about her. "Is your work going well? Are you married? When are you going to have a baby?" The counselor sat in the office, his washed-out white shirt loosely tucked on the chest with a Hero pen pinned to it. He raised his gray head and saw her. There was a flash of surprise in his gray-covered eyes, followed by desolate sadness, and finally only contempt.
He said nothing, put down the teacup and stood up. He grabbed Zhou Yue's arm with his thin hand and dragged her out of the office under the horrified gaze of everyone. He pushed her out and threw her on the ground with the tea leaves.
The door was suddenly clamped by a hand as it slammed shut, but the heavy iron door still slammed into the back of the man's hand due to its huge inertia, and there were exclamations all around.
"Teacher, what do you mean?" He smiled and held the door, as if he didn't feel the pain.
Everyone was stunned. Zhou Yue reacted quickly, crawling up from the ground and limping over to hold onto his arm. "Xiao Yuan! Don't."
The teacher was frightened for a moment, but soon stood up straight, not even looking at Zhou Yue. He looked up at his face without fear and said with a sneer, "Ask Mrs. Jiang."
Xiao Yuan was stunned for a moment, then he loosened his grip and the door slammed shut in front of him.
He looked at the door, Zhou Yue still holding his arm, the two of them standing in front of the closed door. Everyone in the corridor avoided them and walked away whispering.
When the crowd had dispersed, Xiao Yuan put his arm around her waist and helped her to the window. He bent down to pick up the tea leaves on the ground, brushed off the dust with his black gloves, and said with a smile, "Such good tea, now it's cheap for me."
He supported her as she walked through the corridor, the sunlight painting their shadows on the white tiles. "The teacher came to Shenzhen to look for me three times. The last time he saw my dance dress hanging on the balcony, and he never came again." She admired their shadows slowly cruising on the wall with nostalgia, felt his arms tightly wrapped around her waist, and his warm body temperature penetrated the fabric of his shirt and skirt and transferred to her skin. "Life is really like one wrong step, and then there are all wrong steps."
"But it's good now," she lowered her head. "I have money now, more than I can spend. I can come back to study. In a few years, when I have a child, I can watch him study, see him go to college, get married and have children."
The person next to her remained silent. She looked up at the wall, and the tall figure also looked at the wall with her. The two shadows, one high and one low, blended together. Her hair was loose, and a moon hairpin hung on her shoulder. The diamonds reflected tiny stars in the sunlight.
They walked to the first floor. The door of the auditorium was open. At the front of the rows of seats was the stage with a black piano on it.
"Hello, classmates." Xiao Yuan spoke to the two students at the door. As soon as he opened his mouth, the two were startled. They were originally sitting on the chairs rehearsing their lines, but now they jumped down and the script fell to the ground.
"Don't be afraid, I just want to ask, can we use the piano?" He smiled and pointed at the stage. The two students exchanged glances and said hesitantly: "Okay... you can use it. We don't have a rehearsal until the afternoon anyway." After that, they ran away.
He helped Zhou Yue over, slowly walked down one step at a time, then climbed three steps, walked onto the stage, and sat next to the piano.
He was too tall, and it was awkward to sit on the piano bench, squeezing Zhou Yue into a corner. His legs in black trousers pressed against her bare knees, feeling warm. He took the iodine and cotton swabs borrowed from the infirmary and carefully applied them to the bruises bit by bit. As he applied the iodine, he played "Starry Sky" and then "To Alice." He smiled and said, "When I was a kid, my mom hated me playing this the most. She said it was like sawing wood."
"You play very well." He lowered his eyes to look at her knees and said softly, blinking his eyelashes. He stood up and put the cotton swab in the iodine bottle. Looking at the black and white checkered keys, he said, "You sing very well too."
"Really?" She lowered her eyes to look at the two hands on her skirt. His hands were also on her knees, so close that she could feel the warmth in the leather. "Xiao Yuan knows quite a lot."
"The first time Mr. Jiang took me to Blue Ocean," he laughed, "he said it was too dirty there and we should just listen to one song and leave. So I waited at the door and followed along, listening to song after song until the early morning. It was so beautiful."
“But my favorite is the third one.”
Zhou Yue stared blankly at the hands of the two people, and after a while she softly said "hmm", "It's Lin Yilian's 'Far Away', right?"
"right."
She raised her head and looked forward. The black piano reflected her face and his lowered head. She sang softly:
"Who can make me love deeply
Make me gentle as clear water
Restoring peace of mind
Make me abandon the worries of my next life
Regaining the pure dreams of the past
Let my heart be comforted again
Let me lie down under the moon
…
Let me lie down under the moon."
…
"Your hand." He spoke in a low voice, his eyelashes covering his eyes so that his expression could not be seen clearly. His fingers wrapped in black gloves touched the back of her hand, where there was a small scar that spread from the palm all the way to the back.
"This?" She turned her hand, and the white bulge stretched across her palm like a severed hand, cutting off all the lines.
"Nothing," she murmured. "The first night I sold her, it was so painful I grabbed the blade. I had hidden it under my pillow, but the blood still seeped out. I was so scared I ran away. But luckily, I paid in advance."
She looked down at the scar on her palm covered by a black glove and said, "Have you ever considered that there are people who are in more pain than you."
"I didn't think about it," she said, "because I wanted to save my lover."
She raised her head and saw his black reflection on the piano covering her face. In front of her was his pupil so close to her. A flame was burning over the silent lake, burning his eyelashes so hard that they trembled.
"You feel sorry for me? You're not feeling sorry for me at all. You're just meddling in other people's business." She smiled foolishly, gazing at the violently swirling, cold black flames. "Your eyes are so beautiful, so black, and your eyelashes are black too."
She lay in his arms, smiling intoxicatedly, stroking his fluffy eyelashes, stroking the raised scar at the corner of his mouth, outlining a smile, "Scars look good too." Her palm moved all the way down, caressing his chest, and she smiled maliciously, "It seems I have tamed the dog." As soon as she finished speaking, he suddenly grabbed her lips, and the strong tobacco and salty tears flowed into her mouth, making her heart tremble with pain. He held her tightly, whimpering and licking her lips, her palate, sucking on the tip and root of her tongue... And she also eagerly sucked on the lips and tongue entwined with hers, climbing onto his shoulders, wanting to rub his burning body into her own, burn up with him...
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