The maritime climate made the island nation’s sky seem a touch bluer, which, paired with the peanut-oil-golden sun, made the mundane street scenery look as if it were bathed in a soft-focus filter. Shi Bei sat in a wheelchair, lazily soaking up the sunshine as Kong Lingrou pushed her along.
“Where did you go yesterday?”
“Not telling you.”
“…Why are you being so mysterious? You even took the puppy with you.”
“Why leave Lele at home—to help you close the windows at night?”
Shi Bei curled her lip slightly. She had long noticed that Kong Lingrou would inevitably vanish for two or three days every week, and when she asked Kong Lingyu about it, even Lingyu couldn’t explain it clearly.
If she hadn’t been utterly unable to guess, she wouldn’t have brought it up to ask.
Turning a corner, they soon reached the supermarket entrance.
Shi Bei noticed that everywhere they went, there were ramps provided for wheelchairs, and the elevators featured lower, wheelchair-accessible buttons, so one didn’t need to strain and stretch an arm to press them.
Since it coincided with a day off, the supermarket was bustling with people.
Kong Lingrou felt that grabbing another shopping cart would make it hard to navigate through the crowd, so she had Shi Bei hold the shopping basket, pushing her through the aisles just like that.
Shi Bei looked around curiously, dazzled by the array of products all along the way.
Her usual meals consisted of either street-side fast-food chains or convenience store bento boxes; this was her very first time visiting a proper, full-fledged supermarket.
It wasn’t much different from supermarkets back home, except that the items displayed in the produce section were generally three to five times more expensive. A tiny, sparse bundle of green onions cost ten yuan when converted to RMB.
“I want that one.” Shi Bei pointed finger, turning her head to look at Kong Lingrou.
“Green peppers?”
“Mm.”
“You can even eat green peppers now?” She reached out and grabbed a container.
Shi Bei used to dislike a vast variety of vegetables and had once been told by Kong Lingrou that she had “princess syndrome.”
It was precisely because of this that she had suggested buying green peppers—specifically waiting for her to mention it, so she could put on a natural front and say: “I stopped being a picky eater a long time ago. Later we need to buy tomatoes, and mushrooms too.”
Kong Lingrou said casually: “Congratulations.”
“Congratulations for what?” Shi Bei thought she was going to say her princess syndrome had been cured, and was preparing a few lines to fight back.
Kong Lingrou casually picked up a box of peaches and said:
“Congratulations on your taste disorder finally being cured.”
“What? Taste disorder?” Shi Bei bristled instantly and said, “Green peppers, Sichuan peppercorns… and Solanaceae items like tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes are inherently toxic! Do you know about solanine? When you eat too much and get old with gout and rheumatism, don’t blame me for not warning you!”
“How wonderful.” Kong Lingrou picked out another box of strawberries and praised, “In order to prevent getting gout and rheumatism in old age, you started abstaining from vegetables all the way back in kindergarten.”
Shi Bei: “…”
After choking for three seconds, she said: “I eat them now! I said I already eat them now!”
“Is that so?” Kong Lingrou looked as though she were very disappointed. “Then wouldn’t all your hard work since kindergarten go down the drain? What a pity.”
Shi Bei fumed for a long while before saying: “Alright, that’s enough, you’re not allowed to speak anymore.”
Kong Lingrou chuckled softly and continued pushing her through the supermarket.
A little while later.
“How come I haven’t seen any shelves selling knives?” Shi Bei turned her head to look at her. “The knife at your place is too small; I want a kitchen knife that can chop through bones.”
Kong Lingrou didn’t say a word.
Wearing an innocent expression, she raised a hand and made a gesture near her lips.
It was her response to the phrase “not allowed to speak anymore” from earlier.
Shi Bei couldn’t help snorting coldly, “If you don’t say it, does that mean I can’t buy one?”
She lowered her head and used her phone to first look up how to pronounce “knife.”
Noticing an employee nearby organizing shelves, she immediately asked: “Excuse me, I want to buy a knife, where can a knife be… sold?”
The employee was stunned: “A knife? Eh, looking for a place that sells knives…”
She instinctively looked at Kong Lingrou again, harboring an expectation for confirmation.
With a smile on her face, Kong Lingrou repeated Shi Bei’s words in English.
Her excessively standard and fluent English sounded to the clerk’s ears like countless garbled codes flying past. The clerk immediately smiled awkwardly, no longer daring to look at Kong Lingrou.
Shi Bei turned her head to glare at her, whispering softly: “So you’re the only one who can speak English?”
“…”
The clerk Miss was trying hard to think, her gaze sweeping up and down Shi Bei, who was sitting in the wheelchair.
Her expression looked as if she had encountered some immense difficulty.
After a moment, she smiled with sudden realization and said: “I’m so sorry, I’m not very sure. I’ll go ask a senior colleague right now and come back right away.”
Having said that, she bowed slightly and walked away hurriedly.
Shi Bei: “…”
The Japanese spoken by the employee—she felt she understood it, yet feared she hadn’t actually understood it. She turned her head to look at Kong Lingrou.
“Why did you speak English just now? You’re deliberately making things difficult for the clerk, causing trouble for her work.”
“How is it making things difficult?” Kong Lingrou said, “Store clerks get paid by the hourly wage; talking to customers is part of getting paid. I just didn’t want to ruin your opportunity to practice spoken language.”
Soon, the employee from earlier returned, bringing along a middle-aged man.
Shi Bei didn’t have time to talk back; before the clerks arrived, she quickly opened the real-time translation app on her phone.
As the clerk spoke, synchronized translation popped up on her phone:
“We are very sorry, customer. Ours is an ordinary supermarket, so we don’t carry knives. However, there is a specialty shop nearby; you can go check it out, over there they might…”
The app’s assistance made her ears sharp and eyes clear, and the portion she could understand shot up dramatically; yet, it remained thoroughly strange. He enthusiastically said a huge pile of words, introducing a vast amount of background details.
However, the content of his words didn’t seem to have any relation whatsoever to buying a kitchen knife.
She had thought that when the veteran employee came over, he would simply point in a direction or directly tell her they didn’t have any.
The real-time translation on her phone usually worked quite well, unless the ambient noise was too loud or the clerk had a heavy accent. Shi Bei looked at the remaining nonsensical sentences and treated them all as recognition errors.
She guessed that kitchen knives might belong to controlled items in the island nation, requiring qualified specialty shops to sell them.
Once he finished speaking, she hurriedly nodded and thanked the two clerks repeatedly.
As soon as the clerks walked away, another soft laugh came from behind her.
“You can speak now!” Shi Bei looked at her. “Is it really impossible to buy a knife here?”
Kong Lingrou inquired: “How about it, do you want to go check out the place he told you about?”
“I want you to tell me what just happened.” Shi Bei furrowed her brows, feeling aggrieved as she said: “You clearly knew, yet you just wouldn’t tell me. Why are you so mean…”
Those last few words carried a subtle, tiny whimper.
It sounded extraordinarily intimate.
Yet she had only done it unintentionally.
Kong Lingrou’s smile faded, her gaze suddenly carrying an elusive, uncertain nuance.
She didn’t speak for a long while.
Kong Lingrou had hidden a secret since childhood, one she had never told anyone.
Her ears were exceptionally sensitive at capturing musical tones, yet at the same time, her recognition of the timbre of human voices was remarkably dull. When she was little, she often found it strange why other children could understand who was speaking the moment they heard a voice.
In her world, the voice timbres of different people were like low-resolution black-and-white photos, requiring painstaking identification to distinguish clearly, and were almost impossible to recreate in her mind. Even if remembered temporarily, they were easily forgotten.
Only Shi Bei was different.
The moment her voice appeared, it was so clear and vivid, naturally attracting all of her attention.
It was always familiar, warm and sweet, like a piece of rock candy from a fairy tale, crystal clear and pure as it slid into the depths of her heart.
A voice that didn’t flash, yet was soaked in light.
It always enticed Kong Lingrou, intentionally or unintentionally, to want to hear more—of all kinds.
Voices usually didn’t change much.
Even after six or seven years, it was still like this.
She sighed in her heart and answered seriously: “The word for ‘knife’ in Japanese refers to a katana—a samurai sword. The clerk thought you were a tourist looking for a souvenir, so she specifically brought over a senior colleague who was knowledgeable about this area. Her senior colleague just recommended a nearby specialty sword shop to you, saying that place even displays samurai armor, and strongly urged you to go.”
Shi Bei opened her mouth: “…”
The strange phrases translated in real-time turned out to be the clerk enthusiastically introducing knowledge about samurai swords.
Even though it was just a quick outing to buy groceries and Shi Bei had been sitting the entire time, she still felt an indescribable exhaustion. Ever since childhood, she had been totally dominated by Kong Lingrou, and now that she had grown up, no matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t seem to find any opportunity to turn the tables.
Arriving back home, the puppy squatting in the entryway rushed over as usual to nuzzle against Kong Lingrou, before elegantly turning around to paw at Shi Bei a few times, showing her a welcome-home gesture as well.
The puppy’s pure eyes caused Shi Bei’s sense of frustration to vanish in an instant.
“Good baby, I’m already your friend, right?”
Shi Bei spoke while nodding her head from time to time, so the fluffy head followed along, nodding at her too.
Shi Bei instantly grinned in satisfaction:
“You can understand my words, right? You’re a very extraordinary little dog. In order to guard your secret, your mom has killed lots of people, right?”
The fluffy head moved again.
“Oh gosh, you nodded again! Looks like it’s true…”
Kong Lingrou gave her a speechless glance, carried the groceries into the kitchen, placed the ingredients into the refrigerator one by one, and asked: “What do you want to eat tonight?”
“I said I’ll make it. What do you want to eat?”
“Rather than having to assist you, I might as well just cook myself.” Kong Lingrou unwrapped a tea bag and placed it into a cup, saying, “If you really want to show off your grand culinary skills, it won’t be too late to wait until your leg gets better.”
The afternoon light crept into the kitchen through the window, streaming down from the cream-white enamel wall to the soft-light floor tiles, extending straight to the water bar where Kong Lingrou stood.
She stood within the shimmering golden light, her strands of hair like smooth, water-like silk.
Her long, slender fingers holding the cotton thread were as white as jade, tugging the tea bag up and down to let the tea leaves fully steep in the hot water.
Lifting it out, she tossed it into the trash bin nearby.
Shi Bei stared at her back without blinking for a moment, then suddenly said:
“Are you sure?”
Hearing that, she turned her face, squinting her eyes slightly against the light facing her.
“Not sure about what?”
“Oh. I thought you would only pay attention to me for this one month, and once my fracture heals and I move out, you’ll naturally become elusive and won’t easily appear in front of me again.”
Shi Bei’s face bore no expression, her tone calm as well.
So calm that it sounded like a casual remark, entirely unbothered by how others might react.
Kong Lingrou took two steps toward the living room, stepping out of the window’s light, her facial features suddenly dimming in the shadows. She met Shi Bei’s eyes; during the brief pause between the two of them, each seemed able to see her own expression reflected in the other’s outline.
“I do mean that,” she said.
“…”
Shi Bei clenched her hand, deeply regretting the words she had spoken too prematurely.
She hadn’t even secured any playable cards yet; why was she so unable to keep her composure?
“It seems I misinterpret you quite easily, so I must ask things a bit more directly.” Kong Lingrou gazed at her for a long time, as if looking through her face to see many other things. She asked softly:
“Bei Bei, as a person, do I still hold any value to you now?”