When Jì Chengyang walked past the front door of Jǐ Yi's family home, there was a noticeable pause in his footsteps.
How many times when he was in his twenties had he halted his steps as he walked past this door?
Now, as he thought back on those memories, he found that they had already become so distant.
Jì Chengyang quietly stood in that dark corridor. From his pocket, he fished out a cigarette case, pulled one cigarette from it, and gently brought the cigarette against the end of his nose. By the illumination of the moon, he was able to actually see that at the corner by the windowsill, on the white wall, there was a black imprint.
He was the one who had left that behind.
That year in Jǐ Yi's second year of high school, while she had been inside the room, bearing the accusations and denunciation from everyone, he had stood right here, with only a wall between them. At the time, he had lost his eyesight because of the brain tumour, and here in this place, he had listened to that entire absurd event.
Though he had walked down tens of thousands of kilometres of roads, his heart had actually been confined in its original place for many years already, in this place where the love between him and her began.
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When he arrived back at home, Second Sister-In-Law, who had just returned from the United Kingdom, was in the midst of unpacking luggage and pulling out the many gifts she had brought back for people in the family. After she caught sight of Jì Chengyang, she slowly straightened back up and carefully examined this younger brother whom she had not seen for many years. "Looks like you are quite a bit thinner. Why's that? Your Caucasian wife's cooking doesn't suit your liking?" Second Sister-In-Law teased him.
Jì Chengyang glossed over that comment, skirting around the topic by asking, "Where's Nuannuan? She's not coming back this year?"
"She is, but a few days later. She's gone off somewhere with her boyfriend to have fun." Second Sister-In-Law was very willing to talk about the Jì Nuannuan of the present. "You'll be spending the Lunar New Year in China this year, right? You should definitely go see her. I imagine you almost won't recognize her. I'm not sure whether her boyfriend will be coming back with her or not. If he does, you can meet him, too."
From Second Sister-In-Law's words, Jì Chengyang could sense that Jì Nuannuan likely had matured quite a bit. Her turbulent and alarming adolescence was merely a stamp on a point in her life. He still remembered how that day he had carried Nuannuan out from that boy's house and brought her home, where she had been forced to face the condemnation of her whole family.
And now, those things of before that had been so unbearable, that had been in her wild and impetuous days of youth, were long past.
Second Sister-In-Law said a few more words, but all of a sudden remembering something, she immediately went into her own room and then came back out with an envelope in hand. Beckoning him into the kitchen, where they could avoid everyone else, she handed the envelope over to him. "This is the thing that you entrusted me with. Last year when I returned, I heard that Xixi no longer comes back here. I went to the university that she studied in, but she's graduated. I haven't been able to find her, either, so I still haven't given this to her."
Second Sister-In-Law was very much a person of principle. From the time this envelope was given to her, she had never opened it.
Hence, when she returned it to Jì Chengyang, completely sealed and untouched, she still did not know what it contained. However, everyone in the Jì family treated Jǐ Yi well. In Second Sister-in-Law's eyes, Jì Chengyang could be considered to have watched Jǐ Yi grow up, and she could guess that inside, there likely was something that he wanted to gift to Jǐ Yi, such as a large sum of money, given as an elder, to help her cover living expenses, or lucky money, etc. It was probably some sort of compensation given to her because he could not bear to see her being neglected by her family to such an extent.
Jì Chengyang gazed at that envelope and was surprisingly quiet for a while before taking it from her.
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That entire period prior to the Lunar New Year of 2008, the news industry was very busy.
While everyone was doing a countdown to the Olympics that would be taking place in August, the southern parts of the country were faced with a rare, once-in-a-hundred-years snow disaster.
Prior to this, the southern areas had never experienced such large-scale snowfall. It was a snow disaster that had arisen extremely abruptly, without the slightest warning or time for preparation. From January 10 to the end of January, the number of people affected by this disaster had already exceeded eight million.
Jǐ Yi was merely a student intern and had not been sent out to do news gathering on site.
However, as this was a snow disaster, the roads and highways and transportation in the southern parts of China were practically crippled. Many of the reporters from her newspaper agency were stranded somewhere and unable to return to Beijing on time. At the beginning of February, Jǐ Yi, of her own accord, requested to go with He Feifei to the severe disaster area of Anhui province. Before Jǐ Yi left, her supervisor had suggested, "He Feifei is a southerner, so if she goes, she just might be able to go home for the Lunar New Year. Your home is in Beijing. It's nearly the Lunar New Year period. It'd be better to just stay here."
She persisted in her own view, though, and that night, she was on the train heading south.
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The calamity was already drawing to an end, but the transportation hubs were still greatly affected.
They had already lost count of just how many times they were stuck on the highway in the province of Anhui alone.
"The ice is really bad on the road up ahead. I'm guessing it's another traffic collision," He Feifei tiredly remarked, yawning.
The whole night, Jǐ Yi had not really gotten a good sleep, either. Pillowing her head on the hood of her down jacket, she looked at her with reddened eyes. "Want to get off the bus for a look?" He Feifei shook her head, then very soon fell asleep again.
Jǐ Yi gazed out the window. In that world of ice and snow, it was all vehicles, and also the people who were waiting anxiously inside those vehicles.
This particular period was the travel rush prior to the Spring Festival. Everyone was itching to get home...
Behind her, there was the sound of a crying child, who seemed to be exhausted from sitting and was pouting to his mother. She glanced at the time on her mobile phone, only to discover that there were several logs of missed calls, all from an identical phone number. There was no entry in her address book for it. It was an unfamiliar number.
She wanted to call the number back, but her mobile phone was already shutting off from lack of battery.
She could only drop the idea.
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The sky was already completely darkened when they finally reached Wuhu's urban district.
By the time they had completed check-in procedures and stepped into their hotel room, the two were already so drained that they simply collapsed on the beds. He Feifei soon showered and went to sleep. While charging her mobile phone, Jǐ Yi typed the draft write-up for today on her computer.
"Today, this reporter learned from the Anhui Forestry Department of the effects on this province of that extremely large snow disaster, the snow disaster that has caused the greatest economic loss and had the greatest degree of impact since the establishment of the new China. The snow disaster has brought about a devastating loss to the forest industry of Anhui..." She halted for a moment, leafing through the pages in her notebook where she had written down some numbers, before her fingers continued tapping away on her computer. "As of February 5, twenty-four thousand wild animals have died of the cold. Just the number of Class I and Class II protected species, alone, that have succumbed to the cold has already exceeded...
She had not finished typing that last number, though, when, without warning, all the lights went out.
Receiving a fright from this, her fingers paused above her keyboard. Slowly, she pulled in a breath and comforted herself, it was not big deal; there was another person in the room anyway. She turned her head and took a look at He Feifei, who was still soundly slumbering. Worried that she might disturb her, Jǐ Yi did not dial the number of the front desk and merely quietly stood, picked up the other room key card on the table, and walked outside.
Sure enough, it was also pitch-dark when she stepped out into the hallway.
She was not the only hotel guest doing this. There were several rooms with people poking their heads out the door, in these blackened surroundings surveying the situation out in the hallway and nearby rooms. Very shortly, a member of the hotel service staff strode out from the stairwell and apologetically told them, it was an emergency, intentional brownout to limit power consumption.
This was one of the effects of the snow disaster. Everyone could understand the reason for it, and therefore, no one said anything. One after another, they all shut their doors.
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Jǐ Yi went back into her room and glanced towards her computer, which was the only thing illuminated. Walking over, she discovered that its battery was still at full charge, so she planned to simply finish writing up the draft article in one go. There was no chance of her taking a shower when everything was dark, however.
She went to the bathroom to wipe her face and hands down with a wet towel, deciding that she would just sleep first and then clean herself up tomorrow. She had only just dampened the towel that was in her hand when unexpectedly, she heard her mobile phone's ringtone.
Hastily, she dropped the towel and picked up her phone. To her surprise, it was once again that unfamiliar number from this afternoon.
Holding her mobile phone, she walked out of the room and answered the call in that pitch-black hallway.
"Hello? May I ask who this is?" Her voice was lowered.
On the other end of the phone line, there were several seconds of silence. Then, a choked-up voice was heard. "Xixi."
The familiar voice charged into her ear like a hurricane, shattering away the quiet stillness of where she was. In an instant, all that Jǐ Yi could feel was the tingling of her nose. Tears nearly spilled down. "Mm-hmm."
Her voice seemed stifled in her chest.
"Xixi, where are you? I'll go find you."
"I'm in Anhui." As Jǐ Yi spoke, a thick mist had already veiled her eyes. "Where are you?"
"Huh? Why have you gone so far? Don't tell me you're never coming back to Beijing."
"No, this is just a work trip." Tears fell, splattering onto her white slipper. She could not stop them. "I still live in Beijing." She answered Jì Nuannuan in this way, her voice seeming as if she had returned to those days when they were kids, gentle, soft, and pure.
Since wholly leaving her family and cutting off contact with everyone from her past, this was her true first time having a phone conversation with someone from her memories. From the moment they picked up their phones, both had been crying the entire time. Jì Nuannuan did not even have a chance to denounce her or complainingly demand to know why she had suddenly disappeared. She only sobbed and asked her about some especially trivial things.
When her sobs reached their end, Jì Nuannuan gradually recovered her innate nature and began to display her indignation over the matter of Jǐ Yi's disappearance. "I'm telling you, don't think that me crying means that I've forgiven you! So uncalled for! All you did was get dumped. When you get dumped, shouldn't you just come find me to have a cry? You should have called me! Told me my little uncle got married and dumped you! I definitely would have flown back right away and thrown that woman out of our family's household! You have me! What do you need to be scared about? Why did you need to leave? ..."
Jì Nuannuan was caught up in resentment and tears, but afraid that people inside her home might hear her, her voice was still purposely restrained.
As Jǐ Yi listened and listened, her tears, which had just ceased, began to tumble down again.
She could even imagine what Jì Nuannuan, that tall girl, would look like, waving her arms in front of her as she berated her, wearing that unreasonable look on her face of "Only I'm allowed to pick on you; no one else is allowed to do anything to you."
"Did you hear what I said? The call didn't get cut off, did it?"
"Mm-hmm," Jǐ Yi responded in a soft voice.
"That's good. You keep listening. I still haven't finished yelling at you." With sobs still choking up her throat, Jì Nuannuan huffily carried on ranting, "I'm telling you, I heard Jì Chengyang tell my dad that he's already divorced. Even if he's divorced, you're still not allowed to talk to him, you hear me? That scumbag and a**hole of a man absolutely needs to be taught a good lesson. You can't just let him off so easily."
It was as if someone had given a swift prick to her heart with a needle.
Not hearing a response from her, Jì Nuannuan seemed to detect the mental shift that had occurred in her, and she softened her tone. "But since we're talking about Jì Chengyang and you... I'm actually quite conflicted. Xixi, do you know? When I got back yesterday and saw him, I nearly got in a brawl with him. I was even thinking that if I saw that woman in my home, I'd definitely make a huge scene. But today, when I heard him tell my dad that he's divorced, the first person I thought of was you, and I wondered whether there's still a chance between the two of you. I just feel like he should belong to you. It's a feeling like, finally, he's been given back to you."
Jǐ Yi did not utter a sound.
She did not tell Jì Nuannuan that Jì Chengyang had once said to her that he had actually never married anyone.
"I got your mobile number by asking him for it. He actually has your current mobile phone number. What does that prove? It proves that he definitely still holds you in his heart." Jì Nuannuan continued telling her, "But don't be rushed. When you get back, we'll first meet up and then we'll talk about the issue regarding him."
The topic concerning Jì Chengyang came to an end at this point.
Jǐ Yi informed Nuannuan that she would be going back some time around the Spring Festival, but it would depend on whether transportation was restored and smooth again. If for some reason another heavy snowfall came, she would end up being delayed again.
By the time this call ended, her mobile phone, which she had charged just prior to this, once more only had less than ten-percent battery life remaining.
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When she returned to her room, the power was still out, blackness still cloaked everything, and her colleague on the bed was still fast asleep.
It was as if time had been frozen at one point, and all changes in the space had been halted. Only that feeling of being touched in her heart after the phone call with Nuannuan was still there.
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Stepping up beside the window, Jǐ Yi slipped in behind the heavy curtain and stared out at the moonlight beyond the window and the frozen city under the moon's brilliance.
Running over and over through her mind were Jì Nuannuan's words.
Her phone number had been in Jì Chengyang's mobile phone all along, but he had pretended that he did not know it, the whole time waiting for her to contact him. With this little thought alone, it was as if she had returned to her teenage days, where, because of a single vacation packing list, a single hug, or even a single sentence from him, she would secretly be happy...
She pressed her palm against the window, imprinting a faint mark into the moisture and then watching as that imprint rapidly faded away.
Then, picking up her mobile phone, she lowered her head and slowly input a text message:
Asleep yet?
After thinking about it, though, she deleted that and changed it to become,
To all my fellow schoolmates and colleagues,
Here, in far-off Wuhu, Anhui, Jǐ Yi gives all of you her early wishes of a happy Lunar New Year!
She disguised this message to make it seem like a group text message. At last, after finally finding his phone number, she sent it out.
However, immediately after it was successfully sent, she regretted it, scared that she would be waiting for his reply. People generally do not even reply to this type of mass text message...
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Before that feeling of regret had lasted for even one minute, a reply popped up on her phone.
She opened it up. It really was from Jì Chengyang.
Anhui is a severe disaster area. If you can't make it back on time for Lunar New Year's, just wait until transportation is smooth again. Safety is most important. Happy New Year, Xixi.
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only.
压岁钱 "ya sui qian." During the Lunar New Year period, money in red envelopes, called "ya sui qian," is given by elders to young people. It represents blessing and well wishes for the upcoming year. In English, it is often referred to as "lucky money."