"Aunt Chen's cooking skills are still the same as they were back then. She's almost catching up to my brother's skills after all these years..."
It was clearly meant as a joke, but the moment she said it, it changed its meaning.
Just as Hua Jinyue reached for the rice in the distance, her elbow accidentally knocked over the water cup. The water spilled onto the tablecloth, quickly spreading a dark stain.
"Sorry!" Chen Chunhua immediately turned around to get a rag.
When she came back, she found that Ye Qingliu had already soaked up most of the water stains with a tissue, while Hua Jinyue was staring at the wet tablecloth in a daze, her eyes wandering, as if she was looking at something far away.
"It's okay." Ye Qingliu took the rag from Chen Chunhua's hand. "When Jinyue was six years old, she spilled a whole bowl of soup. It was much more serious than this."
Hua Jinyue stood up suddenly, her chair scraping against the floor. "I'm full," she said, turning around and running upstairs.
Chen Chunhua and Ye Qingliu both looked at her barely touched rice and the half-eaten plate of cola chicken wings. Ye Qingliu sighed inaudibly and reached out to move his sister's bowl towards him.
"She's had a poor appetite lately," he said, as calmly as if he were discussing the weather.
Chen Chunhua nodded, not knowing what to say. She watched Ye Qingliu eat slowly and gracefully, as if he were conducting some kind of precise experiment.
The boy would occasionally stop and gently stir the rice in the bowl with the tip of his chopsticks, as if he was thinking about some difficult problem.
"Young Master..." Chen Chunhua hesitated and said, "Is Miss Jinyue still angry with me?"
Ye Qingliu put down his chopsticks and just looked at her calmly. "Jinyue has never forgiven anyone easily since she was six years old." He paused, "But she will finish the cola chicken wings you made."
Chen Chunhua felt her eyes warm. She lowered her head to clean the dishes, not wanting Ye Qingliu to see her expression. "I...I'll make something else she'll like tomorrow."
Ye Qingliu stood up and handed her the empty plate: "Don't be too serious." He paused and added, "Just like before."
Just like before. Chen Chunhua repeated this sentence in her heart, feeling something warm slowly melting in her chest.
After cleaning the kitchen, Chen Chunhua tiptoed upstairs to tidy up Hua Jinyue's room. The door was ajar, and she knocked gently, but there was no response.
When she opened the door, she saw Hua Jinyue lying in front of the desk with a thick exercise book spread out in front of her, but the girl's eyes were fixed on the window, and her fingers were unconsciously twirling the pencil.
"Miss Jinyue, let me clean up the room." Chen Chunhua said in a low voice.
Hua Jinyue didn't even turn around: "Whatever."
Chen Chunhua quietly began to make her bed and pick up scattered clothes. As she bent down to pick up a fallen notebook, she accidentally caught a glimpse of a photo album peeked out of the desk drawer.
It was a pink photo album with yellowed edges, but Chen Chunhua recognized it at a glance - it was the gift she gave to the little girl Hua Jinyue on her sixth birthday.
"What are you looking at?" Hua Jinyue suddenly turned around with sharp eyes.
Chen Chunhua hurriedly looked away: "Nothing, just..."
Hua Jinyue slammed the drawer shut. "No need to clean up every day. I'm not a child anymore."
"Okay, okay." Chen Chunhua nodded and continued to tidy up the room. When she picked up the water cup on the bedside table, she found that the remaining cola at the bottom of the cup had dried up, leaving a circle of brown marks.
She remembered that Hua Jinyue was like this when she was a child. She always forgot what she had finished drinking, and the cup would become sticky the next day.
"Um..." Hua Jinyue suddenly spoke, her voice softer than before, "Can you put more ginger in tomorrow's cola chicken wings?"
Chen Chunhua looked up in surprise, meeting Hua Jinyue's gleaming gaze. The girl immediately turned away, the tips of her ears slightly red.
"Of course." Chen Chunhua said with a smile, "I remember you don't like things that are too sweet."
Hua Jinyue hummed softly and buried her head in the exercise book again, but Chen Chunhua noticed that her pen tip stayed on the paper for a long time without writing a single word.
———————————————
(Yejiazhaidi)
One fifteen in the morning.
Chen Chunhua stood in front of the study door, holding a cup of warm milk. The milk in the porcelain cup was kept at a perfect 65 degrees Celsius, and a wisp of white mist rose from the cup, appearing particularly warm under the dim wall lamp in the corridor.
She knocked lightly on the door three times, and the dull sound of her knuckles hitting the solid wood door panel was particularly clear in the silent corridor.
No response.
Chen Chunhua hesitated for a moment, then turned the brass doorknob. The hinge creaked slightly, as if afraid to disturb something. The moment she pushed the door open, a faint scent of cedar mixed with the fragrance of ink washed over her.
There was only an old-fashioned desk lamp on in the study. The copper lamp base had oxidized a bit, and the edge of the lampshade was an old yellow. It cast a halo of light on the dark brown walnut desk, covering the piles of reference books and test papers.
The gilded spines of the books neatly arranged on the bookshelf are faintly visible in the shadows, like a team of silent guards.
In the center of this halo, Ye Qingliu quietly fell asleep on his spread-out exercise book. His right hand was still loosely gripping a Montblanc fountain pen, the tip of which spread a small speck of ink on the draft paper, like a small blooming black flower.
The occasional chirping of a nightingale outside the window made the study even quieter. Chen Chunhua held her breath and tiptoed to the desk, her footsteps making no sound on the Persian carpet.
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