WC ⋆ Chapter 62

When Jiang Yishen said “elope,” Qi Lin figured he just wanted to do something romantic, like climb a mountain or see the sea. That was the limit of what he could imagine.

Until Jiang Yishen circled the Residential Complex halfway, then circled back to the foot of the rental building, went upstairs alone to talk with Xing Yun about something, and finally came back down carrying a small bag.

Qi Lin was completely baffled, but still didn’t ask anything, and followed Jiang Yishen into a taxi.

The ride was smooth. The car stopped for about ten minutes downstairs at Jiang Yishen’s building along the way. Qi Lin had no idea when he’d fallen asleep; all he knew was that when he was shaken awake again, he was already standing in the arrivals hall of an airport.

The airport in the small hours of the morning was still a constant flow of people coming and going. Qi Lin nearly tripped getting out of the car. With no luggage at all, he looked around in a daze as Jiang Yishen took his hand and led him through security.

“Where are we going?” Qi Lin was completely stunned. He glanced at his watch. “It’s 1:50 in the morning.”

Jiang Yishen had a backpack on, which held both of their documents. It wasn’t until after check-in, when Qi Lin finally got the boarding pass, that he could see clearly: the flight was a direct one to Hong Kong departing at 2:30 a.m.

“I want to take you to meet my mom.” Jiang Yishen pulled him into a run toward the gate.

Qi Lin felt his adrenaline spike. He had never experienced running through an airport before. They brushed past countless travelers whose faces he couldn’t make out, people returning home and people setting off into the unknown, longing and worry converging in this place, pulling every silhouette toward its own path.

“But we’ll still loop. There’s no way to keep today’s memories,” Qi Lin said.

Jiang Yishen turned his head and smiled at him. “I know. As long as we can remember it while we’re here, that’s enough.”

The boarding queue at the gate had nearly reached its end. They hurried to catch it. Walking through the jetway to board, the chill seeping in through the glass dispersed the sweat that had risen from the run, and Qi Lin understood what Jiang Yishen meant.

Xu Huaying had no way to go back and spend New Year’s Eve with them, and they had no way to truly drop everything and travel a thousand kilometers to see her for real. But the loop could turn every impossibility into reality. This was the only way to meet.

Even if this stretch of memory couldn’t be kept, at least it wouldn’t be too much of a regret.

There weren’t many passengers on the red-eye flight. The last-minute tickets still landed them adjacent seats. The plane taxied and took off three minutes ahead of schedule. In the hum of the engines, Qi Lin watched the navigation lights on the wing outside the porthole blinking. Looking down over the whole city, the streets ran horizontal and vertical like an orange-yellow circuit board. They crossed through the cloud layer and flew toward the distance in the dark of night.

“Was it too sudden?” Jiang Yishen leaned close to his ear and asked.

Qi Lin still hadn’t come back to himself. He stared blankly out the window, and after a long moment said, “A little.”

“Do you like it?”

Qi Lin nodded. “I like it.”

Three hours of flying. When they landed, it still wasn’t light out. Jiang Yishen switched off airplane mode and woke the person who had fallen asleep leaning against his shoulder.

Outside the porthole the lights were blazing. The airport during the Spring Festival travel rush was especially busy. They had no checked luggage. A direct elevator led to the arrivals level. The air was more humid and cold than in the north. Qi Lin pulled his clothes tighter. “Where are we going?”

“I sent my mom a message. She’s probably not up yet. Let’s go eat something first.” Jiang Yishen was searching for a route.

Qi Lin stood there hugging his arms and looked at the sky for a moment, then suddenly remembered something. “You have data?”

“International roaming,” Jiang Yishen said offhandedly.

“Isn’t that really expensive?” Qi Lin said it and then consciously stopped himself. Even if they spent every last cent today, the loop would bring it all back.

They took a bus to Hong Kong Island. Qi Lin spent the whole ride studying the roadside trees along the way. Distant mountains lay low in the dark. He said, “The trees here are really beautiful.”

“The first time I came, I also thought the trees were nice.” Jiang Yishen took his hand and turned it over and over, the way you might play with something interesting.

Qi Lin let his fingers hang loosely without much concern. The sky gradually brightened, as if the coach were racing headlong into daylight. On a winter morning, not a cloud in the sky. The wild emotion slowly settled. A strange sense of detachment made his heart surge.

Six hours ago, he had still been in the Small Rental Apartment on New Year’s Eve, listening to the countdown on the Spring Festival Gala, watching the fireworks Jiang Yishen had sent him. And after just one short sleep, he had appeared in an entirely new city.

The coach passed through crowded streets. Many of the iconic neon signs from old films and dramas had been taken down. The aging high-rises had dense rows of small windows. Large display screens hung on the building facades outside, with bamboo scaffolding for renovations erected below them, crowds weaving through it all.

Leaving that densely populated area, they went uphill then downhill. The city bus didn’t stop, flying past several residential areas with lush greenery, and finally stopped on the north side of Hong Kong Island. The bustling Central district spread out before them, high-rises packed together, glass shimmering with rippling light in the early morning. At the intersections, faces of many different ethnicities appeared, dressed in suits.

Xu Huaying was an early riser. Before eight o’clock she had already replied to Jiang Yishen’s check-in message. From here to the community where she lived still required the MTR[[1]]. The two of them followed the navigation she provided and made their way over.

Xu Huaying was already waiting downstairs. She had deliberately worn a red outfit today, her wavy hair tied back behind her head. Only twenty minutes had passed since they’d exchanged messages, yet she had not only finished applying her bright red lipstick but was also carrying several food containers in her hand.

“Why did you come over today?” Xu Huaying’s surprise seemed genuine. She looked the two of them up and down from head to toe. “Did you have a fight with your dad?”

“No, I just wanted to come see you.” Jiang Yishen took the things from her hands and glanced at Qi Lin, who was hiding behind him.

This wasn’t Qi Lin’s first time meeting Xu Huaying, but the last time had been a pure coincidence, and several loops had interrupted things, so there hadn’t been much mental preparation. This counted as a proper meeting, and he was so nervous he didn’t know what to do with his hands and feet.

“Hello, Auntie.” He intended to bow, but hadn’t decided how deep to make it.

Xu Huaying didn’t give him the chance. She patted his shoulder warmly twice and led them into the apartment building. “Come up and have something to eat.”

The two of them walked side by side in front, Jiang Yishen squeezed to the back following along. After pressing the elevator button, Xu Huaying asked again, “Does your dad know you came?”

“Yeah.” Jiang Yishen nodded.

The building had one unit per floor. Outside the elevator sat a small kumquat tree, and next to it were several pairs of slippers. They changed into them before opening the door and going inside. The living room wasn’t large, but it was clean and bright. Xu Huaying directed them to open the food containers, which held a packed dim sum breakfast[[2]].

“Your dad was asking me just a few days ago whether I’d be coming back for the New Year,” Xu Huaying said. “I’d agreed at the time, but then work really couldn’t be shuffled around. Going and coming back would be too rushed, so I didn’t go.”

Jiang Yishen stared at her blankly. “When was this?”

“Just a little while ago,” Xu Huaying said, and gave him a look that was half a smile. “When you came out to your dad.”

She brought three pairs of chopsticks out from the kitchen. Seeing that Jiang Yishen still had that dazed expression, she asked, “He didn’t tell you?”

“I… didn’t know.” Jiang Yishen pulled out a chair and sat down, a feeling he couldn’t put into words rising in his chest. “I thought the two of us had talked it all out pretty openly at the time, and yet he still…”

Xu Huaying had anticipated this. She said knowingly, “Your dad cares about face. He won’t say it out loud, but inside he’s clear as a mirror. Otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to let you run off here over the New Year.”

With that, she poured tea for the two of them and set it on the table. “If anything, you’re even more mature than he is. You’ve handled your relationship really well. You’ve learned a lot.”

Qi Lin accepted the teacup, his instincts telling him that what came next was aimed at him.

Sure enough, Xu Huaying leaned against the table with a cheerful smile and said, “Last time we met you were still saying you hadn’t gotten back together. A few days apart and you’ve changed your mind?”

Qi Lin was practically breaking into a sweat. He held his teacup and had no idea what to say.

Xu Huaying watched him for a moment, a pleased smile at the corner of her mouth, then turned and took two red envelopes out of the cabinet. “Lucky money[[3]]. One each.”

Qi Lin was about to decline, but Jiang Yishen had already taken them without even looking and stuffed one into his pocket for him, so he could only say quietly, “Thank you, Auntie.”

“Very good. I was worried before that once you two split, you’d never get back together.”

Jiang Yishen poked at a shrimp dumpling and muttered, “We handled things pretty badly back then.”

“Hey.” Xu Huaying held up one finger and waved it in front of him. “There’s no such thing as a failed experience.”

“There is. My whole second half of the year was pretty much a failure,” Jiang Yishen said.

Xu Huaying crossed her arms casually and said at a leisurely pace, “You learned how to handle difficult problems on your own, learned how to process your emotions, learned how to get along with the person you love. How is that a failure?”

“But I was forced to learn all that because I broke up, didn’t get into grad school, didn’t study properly, and didn’t take good care of Dad.”

Xu Huaying leaned back slightly, rocking her chair in an unhurried way, then suddenly turned to Qi Lin and asked, “Do you think my marriage was a failure?”

Qi Lin was in the middle of trying to pick up a piece of cheung fun[[4]] with smooth stainless steel chopsticks. He looked up at her when he heard the question. Xu Huaying’s eyes were always bright, as if she were born with a built-in sense of direction.

He gave a soft laugh and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Xu Huaying spread her hands and laughed too. “You see. Losing something doesn’t mean failure.”

Jiang Yishen wasn’t entirely convinced. He felt these grand principles had a suspicious twist to them somewhere, but his mom was always like this, and he couldn’t figure out exactly where the problem was.

The reason his mom could say these things with such ease was simply that she had always been clear about what outcome she wanted. When she was dating Jiang Changpeng, she was pursuing love and had been happy enough. After giving birth to Jiang Yishen, she wanted family, and life had been very fulfilling. When she divorced, she needed her career more, wanted to break free from the emotions endlessly consumed by the marriage, and so she had no regrets about it.

But Jiang Yishen hadn’t been able to do that yet. He was someone who got pushed along by life, not someone who chose life with ease.

“Actually, you don’t need to think about it so complexly. It’s just a matter of shifting your mindset,” Qi Lin finally managed to pick up the cheung fun and carefully shepherded it to the small dish in front of him. “When you encounter something you didn’t handle well, don’t dwell on how bad it was. Just find a way to make it better.”

That he understood. He suspected Qi Lin was using the moment to bring up the fact that he had been the one to initiate the breakup.

“Mm-hm.” Xu Huaying gave an affirming sound. “The first time I met Xiao Qi, I felt like we clicked.”

Jiang Yishen turned his head and saw Qi Lin finish eating the cheung fun, then go back to carefully picking up another piece, his movements very focused, like he was working through an unsolved mathematical problem of the world.

He knew that if he didn’t ask this question today, he might never find such a good opportunity again in his life.

“Are you talking about me being the one who brought up the breakup?”

Qi Lin played dead over his cheung fun.

“Mom!” Jiang Yishen immediately sought out a judge. “He’s ignoring me.”