Chapter 42 High-Five "Who regretted it... no, who married the snake!..."
Whether Jiu Su slept soundly or not is unknown, but Ashu's sleep was anything but peaceful. She forced herself to lie with her eyes closed for more than half an hour, then suddenly opened her eyes, sat up straight, rolled off the bed, and strode to the window.
She sat down by the window, facing the nine-petaled tree outside, and angrily grabbed a pen and paper, starting to scribble on the paper.
For most of the past half hour, Shu Qing had been listening to the bickering in Ashu's mind. Although she had identified Ashu as "her past self," watching her past self act foolishly was no less of an experience than looking back at her own teenage online posts as an adult; it was giving her a headache.
Now that I see she has a new trick up her sleeve, although I suspect it probably won't be anything constructive, I'm relieved to have finally broken free from the curse in her mind.
When she looked up, "..."
In the middle of the night, instead of sleeping, Ashu actually got up and started drawing in front of Jiusu.
Shu Qing glanced at her hand and, unsurprisingly, noticed that she also liked to press her little fingernail against her palm when holding a pen. She had had this habit since she was a child, and Shu Tong had never been able to correct it for her.
Shu Qing casually looked away, then glanced at the drawing again, only to find it both funny and absurd—Shu had drawn a limp snake hanging from a tree, a few strokes that were quite childlike. The snake's tail was caught on a branch, and its head drooped limply, making it look less like a snake sleeping in a tree and more like a snake hanging itself.
Even the eyes were unique, marked with two conspicuous crosses in vermilion.
The painting style is almost identical to Shu Qing's own. If you add a soul-spitting effect, even she herself would believe that the painting was drawn by her own hand and could not possibly be the work of an outsider!
Shu Qing covered her non-existent eyes, speechless—not to mention the art style, just this way of secretly drawing a picture to mock someone after an argument was exactly how she behaved back in middle school.
It seems that no matter when she was or what she went through, her underlying behavioral logic remained exactly the same...
"But if this isn't reincarnation, then what am I?" Shu Qing pondered. "Two versions of myself from parallel universes? Dual personality? Or some other theory I don't understand?"
While she was pondering, Ashu had already finished drawing the snake hanging in the tree, shook the paper, and examined it from top to bottom. The strokes were simple yet expressive, vividly conveying the artist's feelings of discontent and resentment.
This wasn't the end of it. Ashu was still angry, so he picked up his brush and wrote a postscript for the painting, writing four large characters: "Dead snake hanging from a tree."
Shu Qing: "..."
That familiar, strange, and unsettling atmosphere is truly something else.
Only then was Ashu satisfied. She carefully blew the ink off the paper, strode out the door with her head held high, and went to the tree to stick her newly created calligraphy on the tree.
Jiu Su finally lost his patience with her close-range, aggressive maneuver and grabbed Ashu, who was trying to escape. He was so fast that neither Ashu nor Shuqing could catch him leaping down from the tree, like a snake pouncing on its prey.
He didn't rush to speak, but slowly and methodically examined Ashu's masterpiece from top to bottom. His expression was not like browsing doodles, but like reading some amazing work.
After reading it, he gave a soft, cold laugh and slowly read aloud, "A dead snake hangs from a tree."
"What," Ashu asked, raising his chin, "you think my drawing doesn't look like me?"
“Very similar.” Jiu Su commented calmly, “It’s clear that you regretted it so much after ‘marrying a snake, following the snake,’ that you wanted to find a crooked tree and hang yourself.”
Ashu instinctively retorted, "Who regretted it!" After a moment's thought, she suddenly realized her mistake, blushed, and, trying to cover it up, shouted even louder, "Who married a snake!"
Jiu Su gazed at her, a hint of a smile appearing in her eyes—at times like these, the words that come out of one's mouth are the true ones.
The ensuing sneer was tinged with a hint of gentleness, "Childish."
Shu Qing thought to herself: Aren't you childish?
"Aren't you childish?" Ashu reacted exactly the same way as her, giving Jiu Su a look that was both reproachful and amused. "It's just a little bickering. Is it worth it for you to hang up a tree and sleep alone in the middle of the night? I even made you look cuter in this drawing."
After this round of provocation and exchange, the tension between them had eased considerably. Under the gentle moonlight, a warm affection tentatively began to stir.
“Not bad,” Shu Qing commented in her mind as she watched the show, “It seems the Berlin Wall is about to fall.”
Ashu quietly tugged at Jiu Su's sleeve, "Can we both calm down and talk things out properly?"
Jiu Su let out a muffled laugh from his throat. The aloofness and hostility on his body suddenly faded, as if he had been pleased by Ashu's small gesture, and his whole demeanor softened considerably.
He slightly raised his palm, making a "please" gesture, meaning he was all ears.
"Anyway... it's just what I said before," Ashu said. "In short, I won't give away anything you give me in the future unless it's for a life-saving emergency. If I really want to give it away, I'll talk to you about it properly. If you really mind, you don't have to give me anything. Is that alright?"
Jiu Su shook her head and remained silent.
"What?" Ashu glared at him. "Now that we've come this far, do you expect me to swear an oath to God?"
Jiu Su shook her head again, lowered her gaze under Ashu's glaring stare, and spent about fifteen minutes reconciling with the lingering awkwardness in her heart.
He said in a low voice, "I'm not angry because you gave away the things I gave you."
Ashu perked up her ears keenly, "Hmm?"
“Your master…” Jiu Su glanced at Ashu’s expression and quickly changed to a more tactful way of putting it, “Your master isn’t very friendly to us demons. Among the demons under my command, quite a few have been injured or crippled because of him. Whether his injuries heal or not doesn’t matter to me, but for those weaker demons…”
Considering Ashu's feelings, he omitted the more cruel words that followed and skipped directly to the last sentence: "I feel guilty towards them, I'm angry with myself."
For a moment, Ashu was speechless, and her mind went blank.
Faced with this dilemma, Shu Qing was also at a loss for words, only feeling quite sympathetic, because she would be just as helpless in her current situation.
Jiu Su stared intently at Ashu's expression, a pang of sadness gripping his heart. He thought: This is my own business, why should I be so harsh on her?
This was already a difficult situation, and the fact that she made such concessions for me is more than enough.
He then stroked her hair and raised a hand: "It's a promise, just this once?"
“Okay.” Ashu nodded, feeling Jiu Su’s guilt, and her expression softened. “Then you have to promise me that you won’t give me the silent treatment anymore. At the very least, you have to tell me why you’re unhappy.”
Jiu Su agreed, saying, "Okay."
The two children gave each other a high five, and all the "hatred between them" and "a dead snake hanging from a tree" were put on hold.
They were just two teenagers, their minds not as deep as adults', and their resentment was shallow. Once the chapter was over, it was all gone, and they went back to enjoying the happiness of mutual affection. Any quarrels were like the wind, gone without a trace, blown away with a single breath.
In that instant, Shu Qing recalled: the last time she paired Xiao Hong and Niannian up, Jiu Su wrote her several hundred words late at night, subtly telling her, "Monsters are single-minded."
"You have to tell me why you're unhappy"—it turns out that the seed of that unhappiness was planted at that moment.
Shu Qing woke up from her dream, her mind still almost immersed in that sweet past. With a slight smile, she didn't open her eyes, but used the rationality she had gained after a good night's sleep to review the relationship before and after.
Ashu is herself; that's a done deal, there's no mistake about it.
If it's just a resemblance in appearance, that can be considered a coincidence; if it's just a resemblance in personality, that might be a connection.
However, now their appearance, personality, mannerisms, habits, and behavioral logic are all exactly the same. Even their names have a subtle coincidence. Her name is "Ashu," and when she chose her online name, she subconsciously also called herself "Ashu."
No two leaves in the world are exactly alike.
Shu Qingxin said, "It is said that Jia Baoyu and Zhen Baoyu are both shadow clones of Cao Xueqin."
She opened her eyes and looked at the pillow beside her. The little white snake's head was resting in her hand, still fast asleep. Jiu Su was clingy to her, yet afraid she would feel awkward, so he always slept with her using his own snake body. Now he was quite a large snake, nestled beside her, the tip of his tail hooked around her ankle.
Shu Qing inexplicably thought of the joke about snakes comparing their height to their owners, and thought, "Hmm, it'll be able to eat me soon."
She chuckled at her own erratic thinking, which woke Jiu Su up. Still half asleep, Jiu Su clung to her.
“Hey,” she poked Jiu Su’s snake head, “wake up, turn into a person, I have something to ask you.”
Jiu Su yawned, lazily transformed into human form, moved her head onto the pillow, and made a muffled "hmm" sound.
"Didn't you say last time why I filmed 'Get Rich' but not 'Yourself'?" Shu Qing carefully chose her words and tentatively asked, "Last time it was an educational video, which was quite serious. I'd like to film something light and funny to lighten things up. Would you mind appearing on camera?"
"Okay." Jiu Su half-opened her eyes, looking at her with a smile in them. "What do you want to film?"
Those eyes were like lake water at sunrise, half hidden by eyelashes, half shimmering with light, and Ashu saw his own reflection in them.
She had prepared a whole bunch of ideas, like "Our tree in the last video was quite prominent" or "I wanted to use it as a prop," but now, she suddenly didn't want to beat around the bush with him anymore.
Shu Qing jokingly said, "I recently learned a new phrase, 'a dead snake hanging from a tree.' We happen to have a tree at home, would you be interested in doing a friendly cosplay?"
Jiu Su's eyes widened in an instant, his expression momentarily unnatural, but he quickly reverted to his ambiguous, half-smiling expression.
"A dead snake hanging from a tree?" he asked with a laugh. "Where did you learn that?"
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The author's note: Both Zhen Baoyu and Jia Baoyu are incarnations of Cao Xueqin; this view comes from Hu Shi.
The phrase "a dead snake hanging from a tree" originates from Su Shi's criticism of Huang Tingjian's calligraphy.
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