WC ⋆ Chapter 51

Qi Lin had no idea what was going on. He was bundled up along with the cart and hustled away by Jiang Yishen in a confused rush, and they didn’t stop until they’d run all the way to the grain and oil dry goods section.

The phone had already been ringing for fifty seconds. Jiang Yishen answered it one moment before it would have cut off automatically, and said in a deliberately casual tone: “Hello? Dad.”

“Where are you?” The voice on the other end was full and resonant.

“I…” In the span of a single breath, Jiang Yishen had already cycled through a hundred thoughts.

He couldn’t lie. One lie required countless more to cover it up, and Dad wouldn’t call for no reason. There was a good chance he’d already been spotted, so lying would be hard to manage.

Tell the truth? That wouldn’t work either. It would make his panicked flight just now look extremely guilty, and if Dad wanted to come find him, he couldn’t very well just abandon Qi Lin.

Jiang Yishen gritted his teeth and chose the most blunt approach: he just answered at random. “Yeah! What’s up?”

There was a second of silence on the other end, as if the answer had caught him off guard.

Jiang Yishen made a gesture at Qi Lin signaling him to get moving, and then immediately heard Dad say: “I just saw you in the supermarket. What are you buying? Come over, I’ll carry it home for you.”

Dad was one to take the road less traveled. He gave him absolutely no room to waver, and just locked the answer down directly.

Now Jiang Yishen was stuck whether he agreed or not. He gripped his phone and looked to Qi Lin for help.

Qi Lin turned him around by the shoulders and gestured for him to go.

“You’re done with your exams? Did you bring your things back from school?” Dad kept firing off heavy hitters one after another. “Did you come with a classmate?”

“That…” Jiang Yishen was afraid Dad would keep reasoning his way to the truth, and cut in hastily. “Dad, where are you? I can’t see you.”

Dad delivered his line without flinching: “I just saw you. I’ll come find you.”

At that, even Qi Lin couldn’t stay calm. Their first instinct was to retreat immediately. One went left, the other went right, and they crashed hard into each other.

“Ow!”

Qi Lin nearly got knocked off his feet. Jiang Yishen grabbed him with quick reflexes and answered the phone in a scattered voice: “Okay, okay, got it.”

He hung up. The two of them braced as if facing a great enemy and immediately assessed the terrain. They were deep inside the supermarket. Leaving would require backtracking. The shelves here were tall and the aisles were wide. They didn’t know which route the enemy was taking, and being out in the open would very likely get them spotted. The best strategy right now was to keep circling around and fight a guerrilla war.

“Go deeper, go deeper,” Jiang Yishen said quietly. “Loop around and get out. If we run into him on the way, sacrifice the cart to cover the general’s escape.”

Meaning: abandon the shopping cart to cover Qi Lin’s retreat.

Qi Lin said: “Actually, you don’t have to. Just go find your dad. I’ll finish buying things and head back on my own.”

“What kind of thing is that to say!” Jiang Yishen rejected the idea without a second thought. “No!”

Qi Lin couldn’t argue him out of it, and this wasn’t the time to debate it anyway. Every sound of a cart rolling past a nearby shelf could be Father Jiang, and it had their nerves pulled taut.

Jiang Yishen carefully poked his head out for a look and immediately locked onto Dad among the crowd of shoppers. There was only one row of shelves between them, no more than three meters by his estimate.

This was the area where they’d stopped to answer the phone. Dad hadn’t seen clearly which way they’d gone. He’d only roughly located them by direction and was standing still, looking around.

“Over here!” Jiang Yishen was already leading Qi Lin in the opposite direction when his phone went off in his pocket like a time bomb, impossible to silence.

Both of them startled. Jiang Yishen grabbed this hot potato in a panic and couldn’t get it to stop.

The person on the other side of the shelf started pushing his cart again.

Jiang Yishen pressed answer, and sure enough heard Dad say: “Never mind, it’s fine. Couldn’t find you just now. I can hear you now.”

“Mm, mm.” Jiang Yishen answered absently, patted Qi Lin on the shoulder, pointed left, then jabbed his own chest and pointed right.

The two of them split up and bolted by unspoken agreement. Qi Lin had never felt this guilty-consciously nervous in his entire life. The shelves were over three meters tall and you had to run to reach the end of the row. Listening to the sound of the cart getting closer and closer, he almost felt like he was playing a horror game.

Jiang Yishen wasn’t in a much better situation. The moment he turned the corner, he looked up and saw Dad appearing at the other end of the front row of shelves.

“You moved? Stay right there! How long is this going to take?” Father Jiang was completely baffled by him, and was getting a little annoyed.

“I didn’t move!” Jiang Yishen insisted shamelessly.

Father Jiang seemed to stop walking. There was a rustling sound on that end of the line, and after a few seconds Jiang Yishen heard him say: “This white fungus looks good. Let me pick some out. Come over here.”

“Okay.” Jiang Yishen stalled for time. “Where’s the white fungus?”

There was no cart sound from that direction. Jiang Yishen waited a moment and then suddenly realized something was wrong. Dad might have left his cart in place and walked out from between the shelves to look at the section signs overhead.

Qi Lin probably hadn’t gotten far yet. If they ran into each other, that would be bad!

Jiang Yishen immediately turned and went back. “I know where it is, Dad, don’t move, stay right there!”

“What’s gotten into you today?” Father Jiang was thoroughly bewildered. He was holding a large bag of white fungus, just two steps from the end of the row, and one look up would show him the sign hanging overhead.

In the blink of an eye, someone came barreling around the corner and nearly sent him flying.

Jiang Yishen scared himself too, stumbling back several steps. He only relaxed when he saw that Dad was alone.

“What are you doing! How old are you, still acting so reckless out in public.” Dad had been given quite a fright, and this mix-up eased the awkwardness of father and son meeting.

Every time Jiang Yishen came home he had to go through a stretch of subtle awkwardness. The two of them always needed to talk loudly at each other for a few minutes before they could be at ease together.

Right now both of them were a little at a loss. Dad casually took the shopping cart from Jiang Yishen’s hands, put the white fungus he was holding into it, and said without any particular direction: “This white fungus is good, enough to last through the New Year. What did you buy? Is this yours?”

Dad pointed at the fluffy slippers in the corner of the cart.

Jiang Yishen stared hard at those slippers.

“Why’d you buy these?” Dad picked up a box of oatmeal. “You eat this?”

“…Just grabbed it on a whim.” Jiang Yishen scratched his head and ears, trying to think of a suitable excuse, when he noticed a furtive figure appearing behind Dad.

Qi Lin crept over quietly, stopping a few meters behind Father Jiang, and used his eyes to ask Jiang Yishen how things stood.

Jiang Yishen didn’t dare exchange meaningful glances with him at all. Dad was frowning and carefully reading the ingredients list on the oatmeal, and there was a constant risk he’d catch them making eyes at each other.

He did want to come clean with Dad directly, but the situation right now wasn’t quite what he’d imagined. It wasn’t as smooth and natural as he’d pictured. The strange awkwardness made it impossible to open his mouth.

“This big gift box, what did you buy it for, who are you giving it to… oh!” Father Jiang picked up a gift box that looked quite expensive to examine it, and noticed someone quietly drawing near behind him. Before he’d finished speaking he was startled again. He’d been put through the wringer in the space of just a few minutes, and he leaned against the cart to recover for a long moment, studying the person’s face and finding it more and more familiar.

“Dad!” Jiang Yishen sensed disaster and grabbed his arm in a panic.

But Father Jiang’s gaze didn’t move from Qi Lin. He dug through his memory, staring until Qi Lin walked over and stood beside the cart, and finally remembered: “Oh, you’re Jiang Yishen’s classmate, right?”

“…Yes, your memory is really good.” Qi Lin smiled at him. “These things are mine, sorry about that.”

Father Jiang felt there was something odd about the situation, but couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. His eyes still held a trace of puzzlement, but with this classmate standing in front of him smiling properly, he couldn’t very well show his confusion, and simply nodded. “You two came together?”

“Yeah, just browsing around.” Jiang Yishen was so tense that he weighed every word, afraid that saying more would mean getting more wrong.

Father Jiang looked at him with suspicion.

“He came with me to buy things.” Qi Lin stepped in front of Jiang Yishen, shielding the flustered person behind him. Seeing that Father Jiang was still holding the gift box in the same position, he added: “All of this… I bought.”

The cart held a mix of daily necessities and food. Father Jiang looked it over again. “Buying so many things? I drove here. I’ll give you two a ride in a bit.”

Jiang Yishen’s whole body bristled and broke into a sweat at those words.

But Qi Lin was far calmer than him. He nodded at Father Jiang: “No need, Uncle. I rent an apartment around here. I’m not going back to school later.”

Only then did Jiang Yishen realize he’d misunderstood what Dad meant. The string in his head felt like someone had played a full concerto on it, and his palms were soaked.

Qi Lin and Dad were both people of few words. The conversation had already been stretched to its limit and fell into a moment of everyone looking at each other. Jiang Yishen realized he needed to step in and smooth things over, and after wracking his brain he managed to squeeze out: “Dad, this is my senior.”

Qi Lin shot him a startled look. They’d been talking for five minutes before he got around to introductions. Afraid Jiang Yishen’s next line would be “Senior, this is my dad,” he quickly cut in: “We met once at the hospital. It was very rushed at the time, no chance to talk properly. Jiang Yishen was worried about you but too embarrassed to say so, so I came along with him to check on you.”

“Ah, it’s nothing, it’s nothing. He’s always been reckless like that. You’ve all had to put up with him.”

It was the kind of polite remark no one would take to heart. Family had been saying it since he was small, and Jiang Yishen had been hearing it since he was small. Most people on the receiving end exchanged a few pleasantries to get through it, and once heard, it passed.

But Qi Lin smiled and said: “It’s only when it comes to things involving you that he gets anxious. Normally Jiang Yishen is very dependable at school. He’s helped me quite a few times. Don’t worry.”

Father Jiang broke into a smile at that. It was a smile Jiang Yishen hadn’t seen much of, carrying an embarrassed quality from being seen through by the words “don’t worry,” carrying warmth, and carrying a flash of an unfamiliar emotion.

Dad usually wore a mask when he went out. When he got warm from walking around he’d pull it down and let it hang under his chin. He raised a hand to adjust the mask downward now, an unconscious gesture, revealing the corner of his mouth trying not to let the smile show too much.

Jiang Yishen suddenly touched that unfamiliar emotion. During the second half of the year when Dad was kept in the hospital for observation, he’d been chatting with the nurse doing rounds in the ward. Jiang Yishen had just come back with a takeout box and heard the conversation from the doorway.

The nurse said his son was very capable, thorough and steady in everything he did. Dad, sitting on the hospital bed, had worn this same smile.

Even so, by the time Jiang Yishen pushed the door open and went in, Dad had already resumed his usual expression, slightly impatient as ever.

Qi Lin said something else, but Jiang Yishen had stopped taking it in. Only two thoughts remained in his head. The first was that Qi Lin was better suited than him for a career in the civil service system. The second was that this Jiang family had already been effortlessly won over by this person.

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