Jin Zhuo was even more difficult to shake off than Xun Long had imagined.
Staring at the word “contraceptives” for a long time, Xun Long thought to herself: Since she knew about it, why didn’t she give me a condom the few times she crawled into my bed before?
What was she even pretending for?
Xun Long didn’t reply. She washed up as usual and went to bed at ten.
In the middle of the night, when Jin Zhuo tried her old trick of climbing the wall and opening the window, she found the window double-bolted.
The curtains were drawn tightly shut so that she couldn’t see the person inside, and knocking on the window brought no response.
Residents on Feixian Town’s Old Street were mostly older. A tavern previously rented out to young people had to change its closing time from 4:00 AM to 11:00 PM due to noise complaints.
Stripped of its true essence, the tavern eventually had to relocate outside the street into a non-tourist zone just to stay open all night.
For now, Jin Zhuo could only be considered as having inherited half of her dad’s shop.
At first, her parents hadn’t approved of her returning to start her own business. The blacksmith shop had no rent; it was a shop her grandfather had handed down to her father. Making a modest income from processing farming tools, it relied on cheap raw materials, making the profit fairly decent.
Jin Zhuo’s mother used to work at a certain restaurant. Their combined income supported the children’s schooling and living expenses, and they had hoped Jin Zhuo would follow a predictable path, finding a stable job that didn’t require worrying about the future.
Jin Zhuo had long understood she couldn’t fulfill her parents’ expectations. From her senior year of high school through college graduation, she took on odd jobs during breaks and holidays between classes, scraping together half the money needed for the neighboring shop before her parents finally relented.
Her social media account was doing quite well, though her income was unstable. Fortunately, online reservations and promotions had succeeded.
Later, through a few resource exchanges and local connections in the town, the shop was written into the tourism promotional flyers and became a recommended check-in spot in Feixian Town. It was only this year that Jin Zhuo finally paid back the half she borrowed from her parents to buy the shop.
Her younger sister adored her, saying that whatever her older sister wanted to do, she would succeed, and she wanted to be like that too.
However, Jin Zhuo’s sister, Jin Yao, hadn’t figured out what she wanted to do yet. She had previously asked Jin Zhuo when she decided to come back home.
Jin Zhuo thought about it for a long time and couldn’t give an answer.
That was too vague. Was it probably the exact moment she realized she and Xun Long had zero possibility in this lifetime?
Perhaps Jin Zhuo’s expression had looked too devastated at the time, as her sister actually guessed a fraction of it and asked, “Sis, are you suffering from unrequited love?”
Jin Zhuo said she had never been in a relationship.
Jin Yao understood even better then. “I get it,” she said. “You love someone you can’t have, and the other person already has someone they like, right?”
Jin Zhuo had no choice but to say, “You could say that.”
She thought to herself that this could only be considered a wishful one-sided affection. Xun Long probably didn’t even know who she was, and the people with a secret crush on her could circle the university’s artificial lake several times over.
The year Jin Zhuo graduated from high school, she ranked first in the entire province, and many people hounded Grandpa and Grandma Xun for Xun Long’s exercise books and study notes.
It was a completely chaotic day. Back in ancient times, it would be described as matchmakers wearing out the threshold, but now, people were nearly storming the lantern shop just for a set of study materials.
Taking advantage of her skill at climbing walls, Jin Zhuo snatched one of Xun Long’s 1-inch ID photos out of the chaos.
It was a palm-sized piece of paper, likely a physical copy of an ID photo Xun Long had taken earlier to fill out some documents.
Against a blue background, the person in the photo looked straight into the camera with an indifferent gaze. She was so pale and ethereal, yet her arrogance still managed to pierce through the photo paper straight into Jin Zhuo’s heart.
That truly was Jin Zhuo’s first time, well.
She might have been blaspheming the goddess of academics. Even though Jin Zhuo later pasted Xun Long’s photo right in front of her desk and inside her pencil case where she could see it whenever she opened the lid, it still couldn’t save her mediocre grades.
She didn’t soar to success overnight; her provincial ranking still had a gap of over seven thousand spots from first place, so naturally, she couldn’t become Xun Long’s alumna.
With tears in her eyes, Jin Zhuo attended an ordinary university, three hours away from Xun Long’s school by subway, even farther than the single wall separating them in their hometown.
Who would have thought that studying could turn a mere wall into an uncrossable chasm?
Jin Zhuo thought: Forget it, forget it.
Since confirming through Xun Long that she liked girls, she might as well have a real relationship she could actually touch without needing to fantasize.
Without Xun Long as a benchmark, Jin Zhuo’s self-evaluation was actually quite high.
Whether at school, through people she met after starting work, or connections made online and offline, there were quite a few who had expressed romantic intentions toward her.
Yet Xun Long was like the plums that quench thirst only in imagination.
Jin Zhuo’s throat could never be moistened because of her, and the moisture sparked by fantasy could never spread any further.
She knew all too well there was no possibility, and she often told herself: Forget it, forget it.
At first, she thought that once she finished the reservation system, she would go find her friend Ni Wen’an.
Ni Wen’an worked outside, with a social circle larger than Jin Zhuo’s, and perhaps could match her with a perfectly compatible partner.
Later, they had even made plans, some gathering or a meetup.
Jin Zhuo still remembered the exact year, month, day, and weather of that day.
As the Chinese New Year approached, every household in Feixian Town was busy preparing for the festival and brewing festive flavors for incoming tourists.
Jin Zhuo had accepted many group reservations and, amidst her busy schedule, agreed to a blind date under the pretext of meeting a business partner, yet she still broke the appointment.
Because something happened to Xun Long that day.
When Grandpa Xun received the phone call, Jin Zhuo just happened to be helping carry some bamboo poles.
Blizzard, car accident, condition not looking optimistic.
Buy tickets, catch a bus, rush overnight to the city where Xun Long was.
Xun Long might die.
Even though the old man didn’t say those exact words, Jin Zhuo felt it through the heavy atmosphere.
Xun Long’s other relatives couldn’t rush over on short notice, so Jin Zhuo drove the elderly couple to the train station.
Even sharing the same roots, people couldn’t always branch out together like a real tree.
The family’s children were scattered, relying solely on the living elders to maintain a final thread of togetherness each year.
Xun Long was the exception.
She had made something of herself, so successful that she seemed unfamiliar, keeping such a great distance that whenever people thought of Xun Long, they always felt she would never meet with misfortune and her life would sail smoothly all the way until her dying breath.
After all, she had lost her parents at a very young age; surely fortunes and misfortunes could balance each other out?
Jin Zhuo originally only intended to drop them off at the station, but it turned into driving through the night to the city where Xun Long was.
Feixian Town’s county seat had just recently gotten a railway line, and transferring all the way would take far too long, while the earliest flight wasn’t until noon the next day.
Jin Zhuo didn’t even have time to notify her parents. Her reason abandoned her, her yearning poured out, merging with her adrenaline as she sped toward the hospital where Xun Long was, so much so that when Ding Hanxing asked who she was, she was left speechless.
A friend? No.
Family? Also no.
Whose person was Xun Long to her?
She shook her head and said, “I’m just the chartered car driver.”
Once Xun Long’s surgery was successful and she settled the elderly couple in, Jin Zhuo drove back to Feixian Town.
She lacked the strength to count how many rest stops she passed along the way.
She slept for a few hours at some rest stop, her dreams a chaotic blur, as if she had returned to childhood when she scurried up to Xun Long and said, “I’ll help you write it.”
White lanterns, the character for mourning, meant for the dead.
A funeral procession’s vehicle would pick it up along the way.
Little Xun Long said, “No need, I’m writing this for myself.”
Then Jin Zhuo woke up.
Feixian Town was a southern town that rarely snowed, and the same went for Ning City where Xun Long worked, almost never snowed.
The blizzard that year was a rare exception; even after it stopped, road conditions remained poor.
Jin Zhuo drove through the mountain roads late at night to get home. Her parents were fast asleep, and Jin Yao, who was on winter break, was still catching up on homework. Seeing Jin Zhuo standing dazed in the courtyard, her sister called out to her, and Jin Zhuo finally snapped back to reality.
There were stars just like these on that day, too.
In less than two years, Jin Zhuo was still standing in the courtyard outside Xun Long’s bedroom window. Even after being served a closed door, Jin Zhuo was still very happy.
Xun Long was still alive.
That white mourning lantern didn’t need to be written for herself in advance.
Jin Zhuo had come with disposable bedding and condoms, but left without taking them, placing them on Xun Long’s window frame instead.
Not forgetting to take a photo and send it to Xun Long via WeChat: [Well, let’s keep them for tomorrow then.]
Xun Long wasn’t asleep; she could only sleep with the aid of medication.
Since the accident, her immune system had also plummeted significantly. Foods she used to be able to eat suddenly became forbidden, and she grew extremely sensitive to air circulation.
This was also the reason why she never completely closed her windows, even when the winter was bitterly cold.
She stared at the message for a long time. Unable to sleep anyway, she simply got out of bed.
Her crutches rested to one side; only at moments like this could she accept her own unsightly appearance.
The window latch was unbolted, and she had just opened a small crack when someone suddenly appeared right before her eyes.
Tonight’s moon was rounder, and the moonlight was even brighter.
With her back to the moonlight, the woman had her loose hair styled very much like the female protagonist in the animated film their art teacher had screened back when Xun Long was in school. If her hair were red, she might have looked even more alike.
Xun Long had no interest in such things; she would rather lower her head to do math problems.
Yet some things simply couldn’t be fended off or blocked.
Thinking Jin Zhuo had left, she hadn’t, standing right outside her window with a smile, lowering her voice into a coquettish tone, “You didn’t reply to my messages. Such a bad person.”
Xun Long didn’t look startled at all; she remained eternally detached, making Jin Zhuo wonder what it would take for her to radiate brilliance.
“And you’re a good one?”
“I never said I was good. Maybe only bad women have people love them.” Gazing at Xun Long without needing a single moment of buffer time, she said, “Sister, then love me.”
Leaning on her crutches, her body listing to one side, Xun Long had loose hair acting like a barrier, stray locks veering across her brows and eyes as she delivered a crisp refusal: “No.”
Jin Zhuo let out a disappointed hum. “So straightforward. Can’t you even lie to me?”
“Then I’ll give you everything.”
Xun Long: “Unnecessary. Everything you have, I have.”
Jin Zhuo stared instead at Xun Long’s left eye, which lacked medical gauze because she was sleeping.
Xun Long almost forgot that she didn’t have a sound body.
Jin Zhuo indeed possessed things she lacked.
Not just an undamaged left eye and right leg, Jin Zhuo was even very young, possessed a great self-started career, had followers, and people leaving comments every day saying I will love you forever.
Xun Long didn’t understand what Jin Zhuo liked about her.
Was it a fetishization of disability?
How perverted.
Unlike others, Jin Zhuo’s gaze didn’t carry pity or regret.
Obsessively staring at Xun Long’s terrifyingly hollow eye socket, Jin Zhuo pressed her lips together.
It gave Xun Long the impression that if she didn’t have this window separating them, the other party might just aggressively kiss her mutilated eye.
Xun Long thoughtfully compared the two and concluded: I can’t beat her.
Perhaps because she had focused too heavily on her studies growing up, Xun Long didn’t exercise much.
Leveraging the advantages of her genetics, she didn’t need intentional workouts; her slender physique naturally carried a distinct backbone, and while her temperament wasn’t quite peerless, her looks certainly gave her extra points.
After the accident, the doctor said she had suffered too much muscle atrophy, and without plenty of exercise, even that last glimmer of faint hope would vanish.
Xun Long had no choice but to start moving.
Jin Zhuo was her complete opposite, her body was burning hot, her desires scalding, just like her name, using fire as a spoon to reduce Xun Long to ashes just to satisfy her hunger.
Without a doubt, the person before her was fantasizing lewdly again.
Somewhat admiring her ability to hallucinate at any place and time, Xun Long asked helplessly, “Aren’t you leaving yet?”
Jin Zhuo revealed an expression of agonizing inner conflict, like someone trying to scoop the moon from the water only for it to end before it even began.
“Sister…”
Xun Long thought: Where on earth did I get such a lustful younger sister?
Jin Zhuo closed her eyes. After a deep breath, she asked with a tremor in her voice, “Could you kiss me?”