The Healing Sunshine (一厘米的阳光)

Chapter 4.2 - That Person of the Past has Now Returned (2)

It was the weekend, and she went home.

Nuannuan had become obsessed with messenging in QQ, but sadly, because her parents were very strict with her, she could only take advantage of each weekend when Jǐ Yi was home to play to her heart's content. Therefore, as soon as Jǐ Yi arrived home, Nuannuan showed up, reporting for duty.

"My little uncle's back." Her stare fixed on the computer screen, Nuannuan did not even bother turning her head.

She gave an "mm-hmm" in answer, looking over some math practice problems while biting off her apple's skin a little at a time with her teeth. That thick stack of practice problems was covered densely with writing as well as her own annotations that she had added. Alas, though she appeared in this moment to be looking these papers over with seriousness, her nerves had actually already grown somewhat taut, and she wanted to hear Nuannuan continue saying more.

Why wasn't she saying anything?

Flicking a glance at the computer, she discovered that... Nuannuan was in the middle of typing out the words "I miss you, too."

"Nuannuan, you're cyberdating?" She was astonished.

"Shh! Lower your voice." Looking back at her, Nuannuan replied quietly, "It's our class prefect."

Jǐ Yi's eyes grew wide, and bewilderedly, she thought, since when did this happen? How come she didn't know about it?

"He's at a cybercafé. He's working on practice exercises while chatting with me," Nuannuan explained in a low voice. "His replies are so slow."

"Underage dating..." Jǐ Yi murmured.

"Oh, patooey. I'm someone who has an identity card already." Nuannuan turned around and grinned at her. "Little Xixi, if you were dating someone, that would be true underage dating. Our little fourteen-year-old Xixi, eh."

When they were younger, she had not noticed anything, but once they started high school, the age difference instantly had become very apparent.

What was more, since entering high school, Nuannuan especially liked to call her by her childhood pet name and viewed doing so as a hugely pleasurable and amusing thing...

Jǐ Yi lowered her head and carried on gnawing at the apple skin.

Since the question of resident identity cards had been brought up, Nuannuan's thoughts turned to the imminent winter break and also Jǐ Yi's birthday. Every year, during either winter or summer break, Nuannuan would go to Chengdu to stay with her [maternal] grandpa for one week.

"Xixi, come with me." Finally seeing a response from Class Prefect, Nuannuan immediately typed off a string of words with rapid click-clacks, all the while carrying on with what she was saying. "It'll be perfect; we can celebrate your fourteenth birthday. Also, my little uncle's going, too." Nuannuan's last sentence had only been spoken in passing, but the words echoed into Jǐ Yi's ears.

"When we take the plane with [maternal] Grandpa, we won't need our identity cards. When we come back, though, we're going to be taking the plane by ourselves, so you'll have to remember that." Nuannuan did not forget to remind her at the end, "So, little kid who doesn't have an identity card, remember to bring your hukou booklet."

<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only

It turned out that her exam results for this semester were particularly good.

When she got her report card, it happened that her second and third [paternal] uncles had come with their families back to Grandfather's house for dinner. Grandfather and Grandmother were very happy, and so she took advantage of that moment to put forth the matter of wanting to go to Sichuan with Nuannuan. After she finished saying it, she bowed her head and ate the rice that was in her bowl.