66 Chapter Sixty-Five
◎Pinky Promise◎
One sat in the car, the windshield wipers mechanically sweeping, while the other casually leaned against a Roman column. Their eyes met briefly in the rain and mist.
A single autumn rain brings a chill, and the rain stopped as soon as the car was parked. Instead of returning to their room, the two went for a stroll by the lake behind the hotel. Li Yingqiao wrapped her shawl tighter around herself, fiddling with her skirt, occasionally glancing at him and asking where he had been that day.
Yu Jinyang didn't answer. He walked straight ahead, looking directly at the ground, but asked casually, "What were you trying to find out? Breaking? Or me?"
Li Yingqiao remained silent, her knees ramrod straight, kicking her skirt as she marched in step.
"Is it because you missed me after not seeing me for a day?" He looked down at her and asked more casually.
Li Yingqiao immediately turned around and went back to the hotel without saying a word.
He kept his eyes fixed ahead, but precisely grabbed her arm and pulled her back, looking down at her with a smile, "What's wrong? Are you shy?" Finding it somewhat amusing, he said, "Li Yingqiao, I find you quite interesting. When you were little, you dared to say anything. But now that you're grown up, you've become more reserved? Besides, I'm your boyfriend, it's normal for you to think about it, right?"
She finally looked up and met his gaze, her eyes filled with helplessness, completely amused by her own words: "It's not just thinking about it. It's been thinking about it the whole time!! Ever since I sent you that message, I've been thinking about it! I've been thinking about whether you've had lunch, what you ate, and who you ate with. When Sister Liang asked me what my ideal was, I was thinking about what time you left home this morning, and whether you got enough sleep after going to bed so late last night."
He was amused by her attitude, but softened by her words. For the first time, Yu Jinyang felt that a person's heart might be made of rice cake, hot and swollen, stuck in their throat, sticky and gooey, after being roasted by her scalding words. It's probably rare for a man to hear his girlfriend say something like that without his heart turning into a scalding rice cake.
He pulled the person close to his chest and whispered, "You've slept enough. I saw a few old friends, but I was afraid they'd keep asking me all sorts of questions, so I refrained from looking at my phone much."
Li Yingqiao buried her head in his chest without saying a word, turning her head back and forth several times in protest.
He tightened his grip on her arm and looked down at the restless person in his arms: "Making pancakes, Li Yingqiao. Hungry?"
She was amused and burst out laughing. After calming down, she asked, "And you?"
"What about me?"
She looked up at him and glared at him: "Hmm?"
He was still smiling, tilting his head back, his chin resting on the top of her head, his voice lazy: "Hmm what? I don't understand."
"Yu Jinyang!"
"How about this, in the future, when I don't miss you, I'll send you a message; if I don't send one, it means I'm thinking of you."
"No way, I need to go back to work and I really don't have time for you," she said, turning over in his arms.
Li Yingqiao has her own methods for quitting addictions. For example, during high school, she was addicted to a game for a while. She simply stopped eating, drinking, sleeping, and doing homework, and played for two whole nights until she was dizzy and nauseous before she stopped. She never touched it again after that.
Dating Yu Jinyang was indeed a bit intoxicating. Before starting the relationship, she hadn't realized how much she would be infatuated, for various reasons. It was just that the ambiguity and excitement of adolescence were like hot oil poured on soup; the moment it hit, a burst of aroma would rise straight to her head. In those memories, they both possessed that overwhelming heat, and meeting him once felt like being doused with hot oil.
At first, the bowl reflected flushed, oily, and arrogant faces. But upon closer inspection, the faces in the bowl were covered in grease, making them difficult to see clearly. Only by taking a bite could one know whether the taste was the same as before.
She thought she wouldn't get this worked up, probably because his childhood image as a public enemy was so deeply ingrained in her mind. Back in their senior year of high school, he'd call her to study, then go to sleep right on time, refusing to talk to her for even a second longer. Sometimes when Li Shuli came in, she'd instinctively shove her phone under the covers, not wanting her mother to know they were on the phone. He'd only wait twenty seconds for her because he had dance practice. A man so meticulous about time management would only become more extreme as he grew older. And she, being a night owl, had insomnia become the norm.
It turned out that he could stay up longer than her and would kiss her until midnight. On the contrary, she couldn't stand the two of them being so clingy, so she used a pillow to block their view.
Yu Jinyang laughed and said, "It's impossible for dancers to go to bed early and get up early. After exercising, cortisol levels rise, making it impossible to fall asleep. It'll be even more impossible after you start working. I probably slept even later in my senior year of high school, Li Yingqiao. You really don't understand me."
"It's your fault for saying goodnight every time you hang up the phone. I thought you fell asleep the moment you hung up."
"...Otherwise, do you think I'd expect you, this stubborn bastard, to send me a separate goodnight message?" He glanced at her.
"..."
The two sat on a bench by the lake for a while longer. Li Yingqiao turned to him and asked, "Is breaking tough?" Yu Jinyang thought for a moment and honestly replied that practicing breaking in his senior year of high school wasn't tough, but it was tough when he was in an underground dance crew in Chicago and had to make money through battles. He didn't elaborate, only saying that it was in Chicago that he truly fell in love with the spirit and culture of breaking.
What is the spirit and culture of breaking? Before going to bed, Li Yingqiao was still searching on Baidu: It is peace, love and unity; it is the inheritance of cultural and historical knowledge; it is intergenerational transmission; it is the power of free expression; it is inclusion; it breaks down gender stereotypes; it is building unity in confrontation.
She was engrossed in reading all of these results from Baidu searches.
Yu Jinyang carried the person inside to take a bath, but the stubborn guy was particularly stubborn tonight, saying he didn't need any of his services and refused to be intimate with him.
After taking a shower, she lay on the bed, propped her arm on the pillow, patted the pillow in front of her, and said to him, "Come on, Meow Meow, let's go to sleep."
He pulled off his T-shirt, lay down, lifted the blanket, and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. After a long while, he glanced at her, unsure, and then glanced at her again.
Li Yingqiao remained in the same posture, propping up her elbows, looking down at him without moving an inch.
Yu Jinyang: "You're not angry, are you?"
Li Yingqiao: "Really not. You left before 10 a.m. I calculated that you only slept for less than six hours in total. Now, you should close your eyes and go to sleep."
He said okay, then I'm going to sleep. Goodnight, Li Yingqiao.
The next second, Li Yingqiao was suddenly dragged into the blankets, caught off guard. "Hey! Yu Jinyang!"
“Actually, the spirit of breaking that I like is fairness.” He wrapped her in a blanket like a cocoon, two cocoons trapped in one shell, two young bodies tightly intertwined, his warm breath on her ear. “Once a B-boy gets down on the ground, all the definitions that society gives us no longer apply. Why practice breaking? Because it’s not actually very entertaining. It’s all about constant training and challenges. As long as you conquer your own body, you can reclaim your dignity. There’s nothing simpler in this world.”
Li Yingqiao had just watched a few videos, and they weren't particularly entertaining, lacking any fancy moves—just rolling around on the floor. But to say they were simple was an understatement; some of the moves defied gravity and pushed the limits of human endurance. She had also seen a news report about someone becoming paralyzed from the waist down during training.
She recalled how Yu Jinyang was bullied by older students in elementary school because he was short. They would corner him in an alley and rob him of his money, and he tried to fight back but couldn't beat them. Later in junior high, because of "Brother Si Yi," he was surrounded and stared at by his classmates like a monkey from Mount Emei, but he never defended himself. On the eve of the high school entrance exam, he was kidnapped and nearly blinded, but he still insisted on taking the exam. Because of this, his family later sponsored many impoverished and blind students.
These experiences didn't make him truly fall in love with breaking culture; this spiritual belief only developed in Chicago. It's easy to imagine how difficult those days must have been for Yu Jinyang. Li Yingqiao unconsciously hugged him tighter.
He lowered his head to find her lips, kissing them repeatedly. The room was silent, filled with soft, persistent kisses. Until someone laughed out loud: "Why are you hugging me so tightly? You're pressing down on me, doesn't it hurt?"
"What's pressing down on you?"
"What did you say?"
She looked up, their eyes glistening with moisture from under the covers. "Yu Jinyang, I confess."
"What."
"Actually, that night at the pier, I was a bit reckless. To me, you were like an oversized doll in my favorite little art museum. Every time I passed by, I wanted to take you home. But I knew that if I actually took you home, the magic would be gone. I even thought we would break up soon."
"And then today I realized I'd been thinking about me all day... Was I too hasty?"
She started flipping the pancakes over and over again, a gesture they'd both enjoyed for a while. During their final sprint in senior year, when they were studying at Liang Mei's house, they'd do this. They'd be writing practice tests until they questioned their existence, then they'd lie on the table with their eyes closed, resting, and then they'd both flip over and continue lying there, silent for a moment, then sigh in unison. Sigh. Every time they did this, Liang Mei and Zhu Xiaoliang would complain that they'd cooked for themselves again, that they were addicted to making pancakes.
He was quite familiar with this gesture, and then laughed out loud, looking down at the woman in his arms. "How many meals do you have to cook for me in a day? I've noticed you're a little anxious, Li Yingqiao," he said, rubbing the back of her head with his palm. "Don't be anxious, okay? I won't leave you."
"Pinky promise." She nestled in his arms, extending her little finger without looking up.
"Pinky promise".
The following day, Li Yingqiao had finished coordinating her work, and Wang Wenxiang had already checked out and left.
Here are two people who, on a rare day, can open their eyes full of energy, lie face to face, and sweetly greet each other with "Good morning."
Li Yingqiao: "Hi~"
Yu Jinyang: "Hello."
They both laughed, one pinching the other's nose and the other playing with the other's ear for a while, until a phone rang.
Yu Jinyang was leaning against the headboard answering the phone when Li Yingqiao was quietly getting out of bed. He swiftly grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into his arms. The phone was now tucked haphazardly under her neck. He nonchalantly pinched her cheek while casually replying to the caller, "Okay, I got it, I'll be right back. Who? Li Yingqiao? In the provincial capital? I don't know, I haven't contacted her."
Li Yingqiao didn't resist much. Afraid of attracting attention on the other end of the phone, she pinched his cheek hard, silently saying, "Liar!"
He remained unmoved, leaning back lazily with the phone between his fingers, intently trying to amuse her. Unexpectedly, Yu Renjie said on the other end of the line, "I just got back from Xiaohua City, and I need to talk to her about something."
Yu Jinyang stopped what he was doing and shushed Li Yingqiao. The latter quickly leaned over to listen and asked, "What is it?"
Yu Renjie said, "The new leader of the Culture and Tourism Bureau called me and said that the little kid's video about the Little Painting City has become popular online. The government is paying a lot of attention to it now, but the Little Painting City is lacking in unique features. They hope that I can take the lead in combining Fengtan wooden toys with the Little Painting City, integrating culture, and striving to create a 5A-level scenic spot next year."
"Where's Li Lianfeng? Aren't they the ones who would rather die than give up on the Fengtan wooden toys?" Yu Jinyang asked.
"It seems he's been transferred to the countryside." Yu Renjie wasn't quite sure. "Anyway, the person who called me was a new leader, very young."
Yu Jinyang hung up the phone and repeated the gist of the story to her. After they reviewed it together, Li Yingqiao leaned against the sink, and she probably guessed who had done it. She was wondering why he suddenly brought up Sister Liang's matter and made her and Wang Wenxiang come to the provincial capital on this business trip. No wonder Sister Wenxiang checked out of the hotel in a hurry yesterday.
After Li Yingqiao finished washing her face and came out, Yu Jinyang answered another phone call. After hanging up, he casually grabbed a T-shirt from the bedside table, put it on, and said to her, "Echo is downstairs. If he talks too much, just pretend you didn't hear him."
Echo was also dressed in a hip-hop style, wearing a baseball cap backwards and waiting for them at the hotel entrance. His outfit was exactly the same as the little boy who did breaking last night: an oversized T-shirt and cargo pants, complete with wrist and elbow pads—he looked like he came from a dance class. In contrast, Yu Jinyang appeared much cleaner, wearing a simple T-shirt and sweatpants, casually minimalist. He might wear a hat, but not backwards, and had no flashy accessories, which made him look cleanly handsome and eye-catching.
"Hello, my name is Echo. I used to be in the same underground dance troupe as our Hu Shao," Echo said.
From that floor-rolling guy to being called "Shanghai Shao," it only took one night. Echo has a deep memory of this experience. That day, he and the floor-rolling guy returned to school from the underground dance troupe and found that the dormitory door was already closed. Echo often experienced this, so he casually said that he would just stay at a nearby internet cafe for the night. Unexpectedly, Yu Jinyang casually asked him if he wanted to stay at his house for the night. Only then did Echo realize that the floor-rolling guy's family business was so big that he actually owned a house in Shanghai.
In fact, Echo was quite self-aware and didn't say anything. Instead, after getting into Yu Jinyang's car, Li Yingqiao, sitting in the passenger seat, turned around and preemptively asked Echo, "Why didn't you ask me what my relationship with him is?"
Echo rolled her eyes, thinking to herself, "Is that even a question? Is that even a question? Is that even a question? Didn't you two look in the mirror before you left? Your eyes are practically glued together."
So Echo decided to do the opposite: "It's obvious that you're his sister."
"Thank you for not guessing I'm his father; at least you figured out the gender," Li Yingqiao said, leaning back in the passenger seat with a sarcastic tone.
Echo leaned closer: "So, where are you two planning to take me, this third wheel, with you?"
***
There's an underground dance troupe in the provincial capital that's packed almost every Saturday, with at least two or three thousand people crowding the venue. Yu Jinyang didn't get off the stage until the second half of the show, accompanying Li Yingqiao as Echo ran wild and provoked everyone before finally climbing over the fence to clean up the mess.
This was the first time Li Yingqiao had seriously seen him breakdancing in a crowd. Echo's outfit was so flamboyant that his fluorescent green stood out the most among a bunch of white t-shirts. His expression was even more arrogant, with his chin held high like a baboon that had escaped from the zoo after failing to get a banana. He gestured and provoked his opponents all over the place, until Yu Jinyang pushed through the fence with one hand and jumped into the arena.
With a deafening roar, the entire arena erupted in a deafening roar. Li Yingqiao could even feel the floor beneath her feet vibrating. The overwhelming force of the sound surged through her, making her heart pound so hard she felt almost suffocated. Suddenly, she understood what Yu Jinyang had told her the night before—why the spirit of breaking was about fairness. Li Yingqiao was immersed in the wave of cheers and screams for Yu Jinyang until someone next to her asked, "And your boyfriend?"
Li Yingqiao didn't hear it at first, but after the other person asked three times, she realized that they were talking to her. "Yes, he is my boyfriend."
The other person handed over a business card: "Ask him if he's interested in participating in our program."
Li Yingqiao glanced down and saw that it was the executive producer of a popular dance variety show. She then took out a business card from her bag and handed it to the other party, catching them off guard: "Is your stage set up yet? If not, you can consider our Little Painting City, the one that's been really popular lately."
The other party politely declined: "I'm sorry, we plan to film this episode in New York. Your boyfriend can contact me if he's interested. If you're willing, we can sign him in advance, as long as he's willing to participate in the show."
Li Yingqiao was stunned and didn't react for a moment.
"What's the meaning."
"If he's willing, the championship can be given to him directly."
After everyone left, Li Yingqiao realized what was happening and chased after them: "Isn't the spirit of breaking fair? You're openly rigging this show under the guise of street dance culture. What was the point of making this show in the first place?"
The other person stopped and looked at her mockingly: "Who told you that the spirit of breaking is fairness? After all these years, is he still using this trick to fool young girls?"
"What's the meaning?"
Is your boyfriend named Yu Jinyang?
"yes."
"Then that's settled. Give him my business card." With that, the other person strode away.
[Author's Note]
The update time is not fixed, but I will try to update before 12 o'clock.
See you tomorrow.
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