Chapter 17 Part2 (1/2)
Continuation of the meet-the-parents event. ? And Yi Wenze gets to look back on Jia He's teenage girl days.
Chapter 17.2 — To Love (2)
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”This is the actual person!” Jia He's mom's eyes were about to spurt fire. However, the instant she lifted her head, she switched modes and put on the most proper of smiles. ”Oh, this has been such a bother. Just look, you're such a busy person. Really, oh dear…” The more she thought about this, the more peeved she became, and her fingers once more pinched Jia He's dad and gave another twist.
Smiling, Yi Wenze replied simply, ”This is something I should do. My mother also specially exhorted me that before Jia He goes to New Zealand, I must, according to custom, first pay a visit to the two of you.”
This one sentence once more succeeded in drawing everyone's attention onto the two of them.
Holding his hand, Jia He fumbled over her words in awkward bashfulness for a long time before finally saying, ”By chance, the next little while, we do have some time that we're free…”
”Holy crud! It's the middle of the night and there's still a celebrity charity event going on?”
A shout of surprise from the door interrupted her. Everyone turned to see one of Jia He's younger guy cousins, the oldest one, bent over at the waist, seemingly having sprinted here in a rush, panting and waving at the youngest guy cousin behind him and instructing, ”Hurry! Hurry and call Big Sis! It's Yi Wenze! He's at the hospital.”
Seriously… Her expression deeply pained, she looked at Yi Wenze. This seriously was a meeting they would never forget for the rest of their lives…
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Fortunately, her mom was there to take control of the situation. Soon, her family left the hospital and went home.
When Yi Wenze drove the car with Jia He's family in it into the community compound, her mom even coordinated well with him and rushed to get out of the car first, afraid the security guard would see who was driving. Even on the way upstairs, she was tense and jumpy. As Jia He watched this elder who was her mother nimbly bound upstairs, as well as how she carefully peered left and right after opening the door, she finally genuflected to her mom's adaptive ability.
In a mere hour, her mom had already completely accepted the reality that Yi Wenze was her boyfriend.
After they stepped into the home, Jia He took advantage of the time when her mom was steeping some tea to follow her into the kitchen, where she eyed her over. ”Mom, are you okay?”
”So, how was I?” Lifting her brow, her mom beamed proudly, ”Your ol' mom didn't embarra.s.s you, right?”
With an ”mm-hmm, mm-hmm, uh-huh, uh-huh” in agreement, Jia He commended her, ”So incredibly stately and poised and genteel.”
”You carry this in.” Mom stuffed the entire platter of fruit to her. ”The time for you to demonstrate your virtuous, gracious, cultured self has come. I'll interrogate you later.”
Poking out her tongue impishly, Jia He obediently brought the platter into her own bedroom.
The instant she stepped in the door, she saw the five huge photo alb.u.ms piled beside Yi Wenze, who was enjoying himself as he looked through them.
To showcase, any time anyone came to visit, the results of her efforts in raising her daughter—seriously, this was her mom's custom that had not changed in a million years. Fearful that he might see some photos that were so humiliatingly idiotic she could die, Jia He hastily set the fruit platter down to one side, pulled off a few grapes, and, stretching her hand over, fed one to him.
Her mom's favourite—chilled grapes. In the middle of winter, holding one in the mouth while in a heated room provided a nice sweet and sour flavour on the palate and also lowered internal heat[1].
She shot a quick, furtive glance at the page at which he had been looking. It was a photograph of her performing a Xinjiang dance at the Children's Palace[2]in Jingshan Park. Back then, her build had been slight. The costumes bought for everyone had all been a uniform size, and on other people they had fit just fine. On her, though, it had suddenly become a costume for a water-sleeve dance[3], the sleeves dangling past her fingertips. As her gaze landed on that photo, on the eye-catching, bright red dot placed by lipstick in the centre of her brow, Jia He was thoroughly embarra.s.sed. ”Don't look at these anymore. Let's watch TV.”
Biting down on the grape, he smiled and looked at her. ”You learned dance before?”
With an ”mm-hmm,” Jia He seized this opportunity to take the alb.u.m away from him. ”I learned it when I was a kid. Not just dance. Back then, it took two hours to get from my home to Jingshan Children's Palace, so my mom thought, since we needed to be there anyway, I might as well register for three or four different cla.s.ses. But there wasn't really any defined goal to these, so in the end I had no real results to show for them.”
As she lifted her head to heave a lengthy sigh, she finally noticed the scads of posters plastering her walls. Instantly, she froze.
Oh no! Why didn't I take those down ahead of time?!
Darting a peek at Yi Wenze, she saw that he had picked up a different photo alb.u.m and was paging through that one. Shuffling up beside him, she suggested quietly, ”How about you go into the study to look at these?”
When Yi Wenze flicked his eyes over to her, she added with guilty evasiveness, ”I need to change.” And while I'm changing, I'll take down all the posters…
Yi Wenze seemed to be smiling, but also seemed to think this was not a big deal. ”Go ahead and change.”
Fine, that excuse was a sucky one. Her neck stiff, Jia He continued desperately struggling against the odds. ”I haven't been back for a long time. You should at least let me first tidy up my room a bit, right?”
At last, he nonchalantly closed up that alb.u.m. Lifting his head, he took a glance at the poster—the biggest one—near the balcony door. ”That one is out of print already. Let's bring it home.” One sentence completely scattered any hopes she might have had of being lucky enough that he would not notice those. Mumbling some ”mms” and ”uhs,” Jia He tossed out, ”If you want.” Then, gripping that cup of tea from which she had only taken one sip, she dashed out of there and went back to pouring tea for him.
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The end result was that he not only took with him that poster but also more than forty photographs.
Her mom was extremely generous with him. With a broad wave of her hand, she told him, ”Take them all. If we keep them here in the home, they'll just take up s.p.a.ce anyway.” Jia He turned a tearful look on her mom, not daring to refute her. Heaven knew just how much she wished her mom would have feelings of deep attachment to her daughter right now…
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Late into the night, Jia He carried a fresh comforter and pillow set into her room, instructing him in low tones, ”You sleep here tonight. I'm sleeping in the guest room.” Her mother had insisted, no matter what, on having him stay for the night, and with it being so late already, Jia He could not really say anything to the contrary. Moreover, Yi Wenze had so naturally agreed to the invitation.
After she made up the bed for him, she was about to turn around, but he swept her up into his arms and carried her onto the bed.
This was her own room. The lights and bed were familiar to her, as was the writing desk. The plants out on the balcony were all ones she had kept since her high school days. On this bed, she used to lie and memorize her lessons, watch television, and, early in the morning, get her blankets yanked off of her by her mom and be hurried to get up. And now, all of her was completely sunken into the comforter, lying on his arm as he noiselessly kissed her.
The door was closed, but not latched. The sound of her mom quietly urging her dad to go to sleep could be heard. Vaguely, there was also her dad's voice softly asking whether they should cook a late-night snack, but her mom completely shut down that idea with a one sentence retort before closing the master bedroom door. The entire home abruptly became quiet.
Jia He had just taken a shower, and her hair was still wet. Before long, a patch of dampness had spread on the comforter. Never before had his kisses been so tender. They moved from her lips and slid over to her ear. Lightly, he nibbled on her earlobe, his voice soft as he called her, ”Honey?” Jia He could not control the urge to s.h.i.+rk away from him, but he successfully held her in place. Able only to grasp onto the last shreds of her cognitive ability, she uttered a light ”mm.”
He, though, was in no hurry to speak and began to follow the contours of her extremely slender neck to trail kisses all the way to her collarbone. With his teeth, he undid one of her b.u.t.tons.
Didn't he have something to say? Jia He's brain was still trying with all its might to figure out what it was that he wanted to say, and it was not until the third b.u.t.ton had been unfastened that her mind finally caught up and reacted. Immediately, she rolled out of his arms to the other side of the bed. ”… We'll talk about it when we get home.”
She shuffled backwards a little bit more but then lurched, nearly tumbling off the bed.
Luckily, he reacted quickly and pulled her back. ”Talk about what?”
Jia He was struck dumb by his question, too embarra.s.sed to continue with this topic. She could feel her body's heat rising rapidly. Pressed against his body, which was just as scalding hot, she wrestled with herself for a long while before murmuring, ”Didn't we already… just before we left the house? …”
Though she tried hard to put on a solemn expression, her conscience was guilty and afraid of being found out, and she p.r.i.c.ked her ears up, listening with intense attention for any activity or movement in the living room.