As the morning dew rolled its seventh circle around the hydrangea petals, Chen Chunhua discovered a crack in the laundry room's blinds. A damp breeze blew scattered crayon crumbs onto her apron, and the blue and white plaid immediately blurred into a few indigo clouds.
Ye Qingliu squatted barefoot at the edge of the laundry sink, his ankles rubbing pink from the metal rim. Seven different shades of laundry detergent bottle caps floated in the water as he drew swirls on the damp linen sheets with an indigo crayon. The broken off magenta tip lodged between his toes, like a pearl shell embedded in coral.
Ye Qingliu's skin was pale in the morning mist, just like the rain-soaked title page of "The Moon and Sixpence" that Teacher Lin had hidden in the fertilizer bag.
"This needs to be sent to Milan for dry cleaning." The butler gasped at the door, the tips of his crocodile leather shoes stained with splashing foam, "Mrs. Ye specifically instructed..." The words were interrupted by Chen Chunhua stirring the water.
As she squatted, her apron strings swept across the water, and she pushed seven bottle caps into the shape of the Big Dipper - this was the stargazing method her mother taught her before she died, used to identify whether there was a moon hidden in the haze above the Dongguan Electronics Factory.
The wax on the sheets melted in the heat, creating galaxy-like patterns in the linen fibers. Chen Chunhua suddenly grasped Ye Qingliu's softener-soaked hand and guided him to trace a meteor-like golden line across the fabric: "There should be light here."
Chen Chunhua's fingertips touched the coral-colored teeth marks on his wrist, and the sobs from last night's rainstorm seemed to still cling to his teeth. The scent of green apple softener mixed with the rust rose in the air, exactly like the smell of bleach and the blood foam coughed up by his mother, fermenting in the river water when he was eighteen years old, kneeling by the river and beating the bloody sheets.
"Look at this." Chen Chunhua scooped up the floating emerald green bottle cap. The morning light suddenly penetrated the plastic, casting a swaying spot of light on the ground. "Doesn't it look like a swimming green moon?"
The way she flipped her wrist overlapped with her memory of Teacher Lin demonstrating the color-changing experiment of hydrangeas. That morning when the rainstorm had just stopped, the pottery kiln ash sprinkled into the flowerbed also cast a similar phantom on the wet soil.
Ye Qingliu's eyelashes fluttered like a dying butterfly. He saw six bottle caps strung together like wind chimes on a hemp rope, hanging from a rusty window hook. The remaining emerald green bottle cap lay in his palm, cool as a stream stone in early spring.
When the wind blew through the fig tree in the courtyard, the sound of bottle caps tapping against each other reminded him of the jingling of bracelets - the parabola of the gold bracelet when it fell to the ground, now in the form of the symbol "Au" on the periodic table, quietly crawling over the calculus formulas marked by the boy with crayon in the cracks between the tiles.
Tiny whirlpools formed at the bottom of the laundry sink, and the blood-soaked linen was undergoing a strange transformation. Wax and softener crystallized into nebula-like patterns between the fibers, while the dark red liquid oozing from the back meandered along the function curve that Chen Chunhua had taught him to draw.
This is their unique chemical formula, welding pain and creativity into a masterpiece called "the swan song of postmodern trauma art" at the Milan auction.
"Young Master, this is something the Madam sent to you and the young lady."
When Butler Li handed the airlifted truffle chocolates to Ye Qingliu personally, Ye Qingliu's expression changed.
Hua Jinyue only glanced at it briefly and said sweetly, "Brother, eat it yourself."
She went upstairs without looking back.
Ye Qingliu stuffed the truffle chocolates air-shipped from Switzerland into the washing machine, where they floated in the foam along with the faded plaid sheets.
"I want a real gift." Ye Qingliu wrapped the soaked ribbon around his wrist, leaving a red mark like a coral bracelet. His eyelashes were still stained with foam from the washing machine's observation window, reflecting tiny rainbows in the morning light.
Chen Chunhua fished a Mason jar from the bottom of her canvas bag. Inside the acacia blossom nectar she'd collected early last summer lay the remains of twenty-three fireflies.
Those transparent wings were solidified into amber by syrup, and the fluorescent light on the tail still glowed faintly green, as if it would awaken the entire midsummer night's dream at any time.
As frozen strawberries coated in honey came to life on a porcelain plate, Ye Qingliu used a screwdriver to pry open the cracks in the attic floorboards. Chen Chunhua embedded the corpses of fireflies one by one into the honey, watching them plummet like meteorites into a milky white vortex.
Ye Qingliu suddenly opened his shirt pocket and poured out thirty-seven glass beads - all of which were the stars he had secretly hidden on the starry carpet that day.
"We need to be buried together." Ye Qingliu stubbornly pressed the beads into the sticky honey, his fingertips scratched by the crystallized sugar grains, leaving a bleeding wound. When Chen Chunhua bandaged him with hydrangea petals, she discovered that his wrist was injured.
They chose to bury the urn in the southeast corner, among the hydrangeas. Ye Qingliu insisted on using the iron legs of the terrace chair to measure the location, claiming that this way the moonlight would accurately illuminate the ground seven inches below.
When the first shovel of black soil fell, Chen Chunhua suddenly grabbed his wrist and said, "Wait until Qingliu grows as tall as me..."
Ye Qingliu suddenly stood on tiptoe and bit the ends of her drooping hair, tearing off three strands with his canine teeth. Those hairs were eventually sealed in the mouth of the jar along with the locust petals, becoming the key to the time seal.
As dusk dyed the clothesline red, Ye Qingliu stole the flamethrower from the kitchen. When Chen Chunhua found him under the sycamore tree, Ye Qingliu was trying to light a pine branch covered in honey.
The melting bodies of fireflies curled up in the flames, bursting into blue-green sparks, like miniature fireworks exploding in the dusk.
"They're alive!" Ye Qingliu waved the charred pine branches, and sparks fell on his rolled-up trouser legs, burning holes the size of sesame seeds.
The moment Chen Chunhua snatched the gun, the last bit of fluorescence flickered in the ashes, like a dying star.
That night, they wrote secret messages on the terrace glass with honey. Chen Chunhua dipped her fingertips in the golden syrup and drew a plump bee. Ye Qingliu added crookedly next to it: "Qingliu's Treasure Box."
When the moonlight baked the sugar words into glass, a rainstorm suddenly hit, and those sweet vows meandered into a river along the rain marks.
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At dawn the next day, the gardeners noticed something strange about the hydrangea bushes. When Chen Chunhua carried the muddy boy out of the rain, he was clutching the half-emptied glass jar.
Mrs. Night's video request from Switzerland flashed seventeen times on the tablet, finally drowning out the roar of the washing machine.
"Open it now." Ye Qingliu tapped the lid frantically with a spoon, the honey dripping from his fingers onto the first aid kit. Chen Chunhua grasped his trembling wrist and dipped a blood-stained cotton swab into the honey: "Wait until it falls off..."
Ye Qingliu suddenly pressed his honey-covered fingers into her palm. As their fingers intertwined, the twenty-eight-year-old nanny and the six-year-old master sealed a bloody contract in the morning dew. Rain-soaked firefly wings clung to the backs of their hands, like a tattoo bestowed by nature.
The wind chimes in the laundry room rang, and Butler Li finally found the chocolate gift box abandoned in the drum.
The melted truffles are flowing down the drainpipe into the sewer, and a sun saved by a crayon is now sleeping in a linen napkin, waiting for the dryer to give it eternal body temperature.
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