Chapter 48
Jiang Huai brought Liao Jie with him when he went to Shanghai this time. Liao Jie grew up in the alleys of Shanghai. There was no street or alley in Shanghai that he didn't know. Moreover, he was going with different people this time. If something happened, Liao Jie was a professional.
"Call me if you have anything, and find Xiao Yuan if you have any urgent matters." Jiang Huai left this sentence and walked to the door. Zhou Yue squatted on the ground to help him put on his shoes. "Don't forget your suit." He smiled.
"I won't forget." She lowered her head and whispered as she helped him tie his shoelaces. When she looked up, Liao Jie was coming from the stairs with a suitcase, also smiling. Zhou Yue had finally dragged the luggage from the second floor to the first floor, and he held it in his hand like a leaf.
Even though the typhoon was coming, Zhou Yue still had someone take her to the store. The car was driving on the road as if it was swimming in water.
"I'm sorry to bother you. My cloth is still hanging in the yard, and I have orders for customers who have paid in advance. I have reported this to Mr. Jiang. Don't worry, he won't make things difficult for you."
She looked at the water splashing against the window. The heavy rain had broken the branches of the palm trees, and a broken branch swayed in the wind and rain. The person in the driver's seat was more frightened than moved. He turned around and said tremblingly, "Madam, please don't be polite."
After a moment of silence, she looked at the gloomy sky and said, "Are you married?" The dark clouds in her eyes were gray and dull, as if she had cataracts.
"No, no." He turned back to look at her again and said hesitantly, "Madam, is there something wrong?"
"Nothing." She realized it, and averted her gaze somewhat embarrassedly. She lowered her head to look at her hands and said with a smile, "The road is too long and I was bored, so I just asked casually."
"Oh..." The man scratched his head, thought for a moment, and finally said, "Before Mr. Jiang, I had a girlfriend in my hometown. We broke up. As a man, it's more convenient to be alone. Having a family is always a worry."
"She..." He smiled as he mentioned the girl far away in his hometown. "She cried and said she wasn't afraid, that if I became disabled she would take care of me, and that if I died she would die with me. Ha, just her?" He smiled, gripping the steering wheel. "How could someone who eats two pork elbows for a meal be willing to die?"
Zhou Yue also laughed, "Women aren't as afraid of death as you think. She can eat two pork elbows in one meal because you are still alive."
Raindrops rolled down the car window, just like they rolled down her face. "When it's time to live, live. When it's time to die, die. Whatever is to be, is to be."
He stopped smiling, his hands turning pale as he gripped the steering wheel. Zhou Yue continued to stare out the window. After a long pause, she asked, "What's your name?"
"Xie Jun," he turned to look at her, "Ma'am, my name is Xie Jun."
"Take care of yourself, Xie Jun. It's time for President Jiang to hire someone again." Zhou Yue retracted her gaze and looked at him. "My passion is worthy of President Jiang and my brothers, but it's not worthy of her."
"Yes," he said, "Ma'am."
They didn't say a word to each other along the way. When they arrived, Zhou Yue let Xie Jun go. She put on a black raincoat and rain boots in the fitting room of the store and walked into the backyard.
There is a road leading to the outside world through the bamboo forest in the backyard. She stood in the heavy rain, bent down and walked through the bamboo forest, careful not to get her skin pierced and leave marks. At the end was a hole in the wall not much bigger than a dog hole. She knelt on the ground and crawled out. It was a secluded path. She found it one time when she was looking for grass. It was as narrow as a goose intestine and could only accommodate one person. At this moment, it was covered with broken branches and dead leaves, making it even more rugged and difficult to walk. She turned left and walked along the path. She didn't know how long she had walked before she saw two or three passers-by in raincoats in the heavy rain. They all lowered their heads and hunched up in a hurry. No one looked at her.
Walking further, the crowds of people and cars gradually increased. She hailed a taxi and turned one street corner after another in the pouring rain. It was only a little after ten in the morning when she saw the steps under the bougainvillea tree, but it was already completely dark. She walked in the dark corridor, touching the dusty handrails at every turn of the stairs and the spiderwebbed corners of the walls. It was so warm, like hearing the jingle of the milkman riding his bicycle through the streets and alleys. At that time, they had not yet moved into the Audit Office family compound. Kang Xingxing, holding an iron kettle in one hand and her hand in the other, walked between the short and dilapidated tube-shaped buildings. The crisscrossing power lines above their heads cut the evening sky. "Are you taking your sister to buy milk?" someone coming towards him asked him. He held her hand tighter. "Yes!" He nodded rapidly.
There were many people buying milk in the neighborhood. When it was their turn, Kang Xingxing raised her little face and handed the iron kettle to the milkman. The man always wore a beret askew, his fingers blackened by smoke, and frowned in the pungent white mist. She was very afraid of him and hid behind Kang Xingxing, but he always filled their small iron kettle to the brim, sighing as he did so: "Oh... what a sin! Being both a father and a mother at such a young age!"
But he was only one year older than her, in fact, not even a year older, only eight months.
She stopped in the pitch-black corridor. A flash of lightning flashed across the hallway, and the iron gate was open. She walked in and closed it.
Outside, a torrential downpour raged, muffling the clamor of voices and horns. In the darkness, the air was filled with the scent of dust clinging to the debris piled in the corridor, deafening even the sound of breathing and heartbeats. A cigarette butt flickered in the humid air, illuminating a broken smile. "You're so noisy, I could hear you from a million miles away." He stubbed out the cigarette on the concrete floor, then embraced her like a carnivorous plant, his rough chin rubbing against the skirt peeking out from under her open raincoat. "I just dreamed of you, and here you are."
"What did you dream about?"
His stubble caressed her belly through her skirt, his voice still hoarse from a dream, "I dreamed you opened a small restaurant and had a little boy, about four or five years old. While you were busy in the kitchen, he was running around outside, serving soda to customers from table to table, calling them uncle and aunt. They were waiting impatiently and wanted to get angry, but when they saw him, no anger could get out." He put his face on her belly and smiled, "Just like you, everyone loves you."
"Heh." She stood there facing the door, looking at the darkness and smiling, tears and rain falling on his face, "This is your punishment for me, right?"
"Just listen to me," he said, smiling and begging, looking up. "I went there and waited until everyone left. I knocked on the door, but the little guy wouldn't let me in, saying they were closing. I guess he thought, 'How could an ugly freak like me deserve to go looking for his mother?'" He chuckled, and Zhou Yue joined in. After laughing enough, he continued pitifully, "I was so helpless. I just looked at you, but you turned your back on me and ignored me. I woke up in a cold sweat."
"But after I woke up, I sat on the bed and thought, you won't always hate me or be angry with me, because you pity me and understand me..." He tilted his head back and held her face with both hands, brushing away her hair that was stuck to her face with tears, "You love me."
"So this is a beautiful dream, right?" He tightened his arms around her and looked at her with a silly smile in the darkness.
She rubbed into the roots of his rough hair, stroked his rough face and stubble, and then touched his eyes. Only his eyes were soft, and his eyelashes were soft too, like a cat's belly.
"Yeah." She nodded, choking with laughter.
"I'll show you something fun." He stood up and carried her sideways. The door was open a crack, and he carried her in his arms. The curtains in the living room were still drawn, and a floor lamp was on next to the sofa. He put her down, and in the dim light, she saw that the vase on the dining table that had no flowers now had flowers in it, Blue Rose.
"Tsk," she wiped her tears and pushed him away, "What's so fun about this? It's just roses!"
"It's the Flame Rose. I'll show you how to make it."
The windows were banging against the branches and heavy rain, but the house was silent. "Is this enough?" Zhou Yue lay on the dining table and looked at the copper sulfate powder at the bottom of the glass. Xiao Yuan just smiled and said, "Enough." He poured water in, and in the blink of an eye it turned into a beautiful blue storm. After heating it briefly, he took a rose beside him and soaked it in the glass.
He held a cigarette in his mouth and blew the petals one by one with a hair dryer. The blue ice crystals on the petals sparkled under the orange light in the kitchen, like a female dancer's skirt inlaid with diamonds. "So beautiful..." Zhou Yue smiled intoxicatedly with her hands on her face, and the tear marks at the corners of her eyes were red.
"It also needs to be put in the refrigerator." He frowned seriously, very rigorous, as if he was back in the chemistry laboratory. The midday sun shone through the iron railings and lush locust leaves on the first floor onto a pile of test tubes and flasks, refracting colorful light. He took several boys to the laboratory to do endless experiments, without eating lunch, from lunch break until the bell rang for the last class in the afternoon, just to prepare for the chemistry competition. She waited until dark, until her stomach growled with hunger, sitting alone in the pitch-black corridor, with a nose full of cold ethanol. As soon as he came out, she jumped up, running ahead, and he followed like a tail.
His silence always made her angry and aggrieved. She would turn around and yell at him with tears in her eyes, "You just forgot about me!", which scared him so much that his chemistry textbook rolled up into a wet, rotten leaf in his hands. But after holding it in for a long time, he finally managed to say, "Yueyue, I like chemistry."
He also has things he wants to do.
The storm raged outside the window. She and he lay by the bedroom window, watching the trees leaning in the strong wind. The treetops were pressed to the ground, then raised their heads defiantly, and then were pressed down again. She seemed to hear the sound of the trunks breaking, and the branches and leaves that were destroyed were torn into pieces by the wind and rain in the blink of an eye, and not even the corpses were seen.
He stroked her neck from behind, clinging to her head, swallowing her screams and cries into his mouth, his withered hands fondly caressing her fair flesh, which was teetering on the brink of collapse in the storm, the bulge in her flat belly. That was how he felt inside her, the more he loved her, the more violent he became, as if he wanted to tear her apart, crush her, melt her into the cracks of her bones, let her live with him, let her die with him, turn into ashes and drift away with the wind in the sun, chasing after her with laughter...
The sky was pitch black, and raindrops as big as beans hit the window with a crackling sound, the sound becoming muffled through the glass. He was breathing heavily behind her, with a cigarette between his fingers. He rubbed her neck with his nose with lingering desire, buried his nose in her hair and sniffed it, and sucked her earlobe with his dry and hot lips. In the silent air, she could hear his blood flowing in his veins and his heart fibrillating in his atria.
"Is it good to smoke?" Zhou Yue lay on the pillow and looked out the window blankly, with tears and sweat drying on her face.
He took the cigarette from his mouth and placed it between her lips, choking her and making her cough. She waved her hands and laughed as she coughed, "It's choking! You really can smoke it?" She turned her head to look at his burning eyes through the smoke that swirled between them. It was like watching magma surging under black ice. Even her voice was hot: "When the pain is severe, smoke a pack and it will go away."
"Where does it hurt the most?" She smiled with her face tilted up, holding his face with tears in her eyes, and licking the scars at the corners of his mouth and on his collarbone.
He took her hand and placed it over her heart.
"Do you hate me?"
He didn't say anything, just buried his face in her chest, his eyelashes fluttering, and nodded after a while.
"So, do you forgive me now?" She looked at the ceiling and rubbed her fingers into the roots of his hair for a long time. He nodded and she chuckled, "Why are you so useless?" He laughed too, raised his head and rested his chin on her naked chest, rubbing her with his stubble and looking at her.
"When did you forgive me?"
"The first time I saw you."
"Silly boy." Her fingertips lightly stroked his eyebrows, outlining his features. "I had it all figured out on the way here. Jiang Huai needs two or three days to get to Shanghai, which is plenty. I'm going to take you back to the Audit Office's family compound to find Old Man Deng. He was the Deputy Director of the Municipal Public Security Bureau before he retired. The police there would call him Uncle Deng. With him around, Jiang Huai couldn't touch you. But then I thought I was really stupid..." She smiled and gently stroked the scar on his lip. "You should know that group of people better than I do."
He lowered his eyes, shamelessly lying on her chest, just like he had avoided her question "Do you love me?" in the past. His hands, which were only made of muscles and veins, were as ugly as a skeleton, hanging on her sweaty and heaving belly. He mustered up the courage to cover her belly, gently stroking it again and again, as if stroking a sweet dream. This was the only time in his life that he was selfish.
"If I hadn't left you, would you still do this?" She held his head in her arms and stared at the ceiling in a daze.
"meeting."
"Haha," she giggled, "you're getting better and better at lying now."
He also smiled, reached out and took out a royal blue velvet box from the bedside drawer, placed it on her sweaty belly button, and watched the box rise and fall with her breathing, like a drifting boat.
"The summer vacation when I was six years old, Guangzhou was extremely hot. I couldn't sleep at night even with the fan on. That morning, my mother came into my bedroom, tiptoeing. Seeing that I was awake, she smiled carelessly and asked why I didn't make any noise after waking up. She bought me a black cat sheriff driving a police car and placed it by the bed. She told me not to rush to take it apart and to wait for her to come back from get off work that night to take it apart with me. I waited until it was dark, then dawn, then dark again, but she never came back..."
"You asked me if there was anything I wanted to do," he finally looked up at her, "this is what I want to do."
"Have you ever thought about what I should do?"
He was silent for a while, then hugged her and smiled, "I am so useless in your heart, why don't you believe me?" As he spoke, he opened the box, took out a ring and put it on the ring finger of her right hand. She also smiled, stretched out her hand to look at the ring. A sapphire crescent moon encircled a platinum star inlaid with diamonds, with the star on the left and the moon on the right. With a turn of his hand, the star and the moon shone together.
"I believe it," she said.
…
The rain stopped. Zhou Yue hugged his waist from behind and was carried to the kitchen by him like a koala. She watched him take out roses from the refrigerator. The blue petals were covered with ice crystals, sparkling in the night, as if covered with tiny stars.
"So beautiful..." She smiled as she leaned on his bare shoulders. His black shirt was too big for her and it slipped down when she smiled. The sleeves had to be folded several times before revealing her wrists. She poked at the frozen petals and asked, "And then?"
He smiled triumphantly, and with a click of his lighter, the petals instantly caught fire. The blue-green flames and hissing golden sparks danced recklessly in the darkness, illuminating her and his young faces.
At that moment, they were back to the midsummer night more than ten years ago, under the big banyan tree in the yard. The two little heads were put together to watch the blue butterfly's wings covered with golden pollen trembling, and they exclaimed "Wow..." one after another, their saliva almost flowing out. The cicadas chirped around them and stopped, and there was a quietness as gentle as water. The cruel fate would never touch them.
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