Chapter 13
Qian Yu ran her fingers through the hair at the back of her head, feeling like a bewildered mother opening the door for someone lost and confused.
I'm completely lost.
Song Yihuan glanced at him, then shouted in a high-pitched voice, "I'm here for class!"
After shouting, he skillfully changed into disposable slippers and headed towards Ran Ge's room.
"Huh?" Without even looking at Qian Yu, or even seeing Qin, she raised her voice exceptionally high, "What's wrong with Qin?"
“Um…Song Shen?” Qian Yu called out to her hesitantly.
She seems to have lost her memory.
"What's wrong?" she asked loudly.
The amnesia is a bit too severe.
Qian Yu was completely baffled.
"Yesterday wasn't..."
Before he could finish speaking, a heavy, hot bag was shoved into his hand.
He opened the bag, which contained two dishes and a soup: curry beef, stir-fried amaranth, and winter melon and mutton soup.
Looking up again, Song Yihuan made a gesture as if she were zipping up her mouth.
He immediately shut his mouth.
She then made a gesture of fanning herself twice, silently telling him to go to the side.
Holding the steaming hot food, Qian Yu tiptoed away quickly.
"The piano is broken," Chi Ran said, leaning against the door.
Song Yihuan frowned as she looked at the zither. "Is it that serious? How did it happen?"
The piano keys were dented in a large area, and the black and white keys were broken or cracked, revealing the wooden structure underneath. It was heartbreaking to see.
Chi Ran said expressionlessly, "He hit Qian Yu on the head."
That's nonsense; it was clearly a dumbbell that hit him.
"Oh... well, his head's pretty sturdy, haha." Song Yihuan chuckled dryly.
He suddenly walked towards her, stood in front of her, lowered his head slightly, and his empty gaze also lowered, seemingly landing on her face.
She immediately looked away, feeling a little guilty.
His voice came down from above: "Why are you here?"
She specifically asked Qian Yu, and he told her that the piano was broken, but Chi Ran didn't know that he had said that.
Therefore, she has countless reasonable answers.
Let's go to class.
It's already two o'clock.
Why can't I come?
But his grayish eyes stared at her, blank and empty. This was the first time he had truly "looked" at her, and she suddenly fell silent.
This hesitation means missing the opportunity to give a proper answer.
"Hmm?" Chi Ran urged her to answer.
Song Yihuan took a breath and continued to avoid eye contact.
"Huh? Ivory is supposed to be hard, how could it break?"
After saying that, I felt like dying.
Her change of heart was harder than ivory.
Chi Ran seemed to hum, or perhaps it was just a breath.
“Buying and selling ivory is illegal,” he said.
"Oh, I see. That makes sense; elephants definitely want to keep their tusks."
Song Yihuan quickly continued, "But aren't antique pianos usually made of ivory?"
Chi Ran let out a breath and answered anyway: "It was ivory at first. I bought the instrument a long time ago, before the sale of ivory was banned. It was only after the ban that it was replaced with imitation ivory."
"Imitation ivory... Oh, then it probably isn't very well made, and it's quite fragile."
"How early is 'very early'?" she finally thought of another question.
Chi Ran said, "I bought it in 2016. That year I sold a song and used all the proceeds to buy this antique piano."
"How much does this instrument cost?"
When Chi Ran mentioned a number, Song Yihuan gasped.
"Duo Shao?? You can earn this much from just one song?? You spend this much money on a piano??"
That's truly a genuine feeling.
"I didn't have much of a concept of money back then, so I bought it under the pretext of celebrating my birthday."
Song Yihuan counted on her fingers and asked, "Wasn't that your twentieth birthday back then?"
Chi Ran didn't say anything.
She pressed on, "Wouldn't it be very expensive to repair this instrument? How much would it cost...?"
"Song Yihuan," he suddenly said, calling out her full name.
"...What do you want me to do?"
"Keep pulling this up."
We're doomed.
Those two words were all she could think of, and she pursed her lips tightly.
She was so busy racking her brains for any nonsense she could come up with that she didn't notice that they had been standing face-to-face in the middle of the room the whole time they were talking, very close to each other.
They're not exactly touching, but they're pretty close.
No one would stand so close together and chat, and no one would talk about ivory like this.
One oversight after another.
Chi Ran took a half step back, chuckled twice, and then said, "You knew the zither was broken all along, don't pretend."
declarative sentence.
"Then why didn't you interrupt me earlier!" Song Yihuan muttered, "Were you watching the show?"
He slowly sat down on the piano bench, propped his chin up with his hand, and smiled, "I just want to see how far you can go with this."
"boring!"
"Not boring at all." Chi Ran still smiled. "Who knew you could talk so much nonsense? Elephants definitely want to keep their own tusks, and what's more... the imitation ivory isn't very well made..."
Song Yihuan felt increasingly embarrassed as she listened, and when she felt extremely embarrassed, she started laughing along with them.
They remained silent for a long while, the room filled with that helpless laughter. He managed to suppress his laughter, but as soon as she spoke, he was caught up in it too.
They laughed like that for a long time, one after another.
Silly.
Once the laughter subsided, an awkward and ambiguous atmosphere settled in, and the air became unusually quiet.
Neither of them broke the silence, remaining silent as one stood and one sat.
Song Yihuan looked down at him without any restraint.
He sat on the piano bench, still in that characteristic lazy posture, his hand touching the broken keys, drawing small circles with his fingertips.
Someone has to say something, whether it's defining the scenario or making a decision.
We have to say something, otherwise we'll be stuck here forever.
I don't want to get stuck here.
If we don't get stuck here, where can we go?
She fears hearing unpleasant truths more than being stuck in limbo:
The piano is broken, so I can't teach you anymore.
You don't need to come.
Chi Ran spoke first: "I was thinking..."
"Don't say it!" Song Yihuan exclaimed.
He said with a hint of helplessness, "Let me explain first..."
Song Yihuan: "I won't listen."
Chi Ran: "I meant to say..."
"Do you want some ice cream?!" Qian Yu yelled, interrupting Chi Ran once again.
He walked in, babbling in the fog with an ice pop in his mouth, and handed one to each of them.
"I just rummaged through the freezer and found a few ice cream bars! God knows how much I craved ice cream, and luckily they weren't expired! I'm so lucky!"
Song Yihuan flipped the ice cream over to look at it, "...It expires the day after tomorrow."
"It's still not expired, isn't it?" Qian Yu mumbled as he walked out, an ice cream still dangling from his mouth.
Chi Ran was interrupted three times, then silently tore open the ice cream and didn't continue.
The atmosphere returned to that indecisive, unresolved state.
The ice cream was a black and white rotating cylinder in a plastic container, and it looked delicious.
Unfortunately, she couldn't eat ice cream; she just held the small stick up and used the box in her other hand to catch it.
The metronome is still beating.
One tap two taps…
Song Yihuan listened to his breathing and her heartbeat in silence.
Are you coming again tomorrow?
Can't you come tomorrow?
What will they say when they arrive? What will they do?
Countless unresolved questions swirled in my heartbeat, creating a chaotic mess.
Perhaps it could be half-jokingly said that she wanted to learn music theory, or that she wanted to learn his drum pad that looked like a game console, so she could come back again.
You can come tomorrow, and you can come the day after tomorrow.
What happens after that?
An excuse is just an excuse, and all excuses have an expiration date.
After it expires, will you come up with another excuse?
The room wasn't very warm, but the ice cream was still dripping and melting. A drop of the melted, milky white liquid clung to her fingertips; she took a sip—it was sweet.
She held the box, catching the sweet liquid dripping from the melting ice cream.
Every now and then, I would sip a bit of the sweetness from my fingertips.
Chi Ran ate her ice cream quietly without saying a word.
Song Yihuan held the ice cream in her hand, looking at him openly. Even though she was the one who told him not to speak, she felt anxious when he actually fell silent.
The ice cream was even more anxious than her, melting completely into the box without her noticing. The black and white parts mixed together, melting into a greasy, unsightly mess.
She stared blankly at the puddle of expired sweetened water, and suddenly three words popped into her mind:
I want to see him.
These three words alone are incredibly vast.
If you want to hide it, you need many, many excuses to cover it up.
Even those clumsy excuses from before, it would take at least two 4/4 time signatures to come up with one, and quite a long time to think of them.
It's easy to imagine that the three words "him" took less than a beat to fill his heart, his mind, and all sorts of other random, unruly organs.
And it only takes a moment to muster up courage.
Song Yihuan suddenly stood up, slammed the melted ice cream container on the ground, and rushed to his side.
She braced herself against the back of the gaming chair, trapping him inside.
Who cares!
She pressed down on the stool and shouted at him:
"I'll come again tomorrow!"
Chi Ran was startled by her actions, her back pressed against the gaming chair, and the popsicle stick she had finished eating fell to the ground with a thud.
He tried to blink, but with the curtains closed, he couldn't sense any light source and couldn't find any powder.
When she leaned closer, the ends of her hair brushed against his face. The force was strong; the area that touched it still stung and burned, and probably turned pink.
The surrounding skin was being poked by strands of hair, causing itching.
The chair back trembled slightly; it was hard to tell whether it was her nervous hands shaking or his.
She said, "I'll come again tomorrow."
She was only twenty years old; she hadn't yet learned the intricacies of relationships, nor had she learned any sense of propriety.
She simply said: I'll come again tomorrow.
But this is probably the most powerful sentence she could think of.
"What are you laughing at?" Song Yihuan asked, annoyed.
"Okay." His smile widened, and he mimicked her tone in a cheeky way, "You come again tomorrow."
Song Yihuan loosened her grip, and the bent chair back bounced back.
"Huh?" she asked blankly.
He repeated, "I said okay, you can come again tomorrow."
Song Yihuan stared blankly at him, tilting her head in confusion, "I said I'll come again tomorrow."
He continued, somewhat helplessly, "I said okay."
He said it for the third time before Song Yihuan's joy caught up, and she chuckled.
Smiling, he repeated, "I'll come again tomorrow!"
Chi Ran mimicked her again: "I'll come again tomorrow~~"
Song Yihuan touched her burning face and belatedly asked, "So what were you originally going to say?"
"What do you think I wanted to say?" Chi Ran rested his chin on his hand, "That you don't need to come anymore?"
Song Yihuan did not answer.
"I wanted to ask you if your birthday is coming up soon," Chi Ran said. "Will you still be under lockdown when your birthday comes around?"
Song Yihuan was stunned and remained silent for a long time.
"Speak." He stretched out his hand and snapped his fingers.
"…Why?"
She hadn't recovered yet; the heat on her face hadn't subsided, but instead spread, making even the air feel hot.
"I won't eat your cake for nothing," he said. "Remember to come find me later."
Song Yihuan was stunned by his words.
She hasn't recovered from the dizziness that will return tomorrow.
Tomorrow is tomorrow, and so is my birthday, but my birthday is the most special tomorrow of all.
A tomorrow that holds special significance.
She asked blankly, "What...do you want?"
Chi Ran snapped his fingers again, the sound booming in her ear: "What do you mean, 'what'?"
"Little Pink, snap out of it."
The snap of fingers rang out again.
"I'm looking forward to my birthday present."
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