Chapter 1 (2/2)

For a period of time during diner, the television channel would be broadcasting a Taiwanese television series <mother, love=”” me=”” once=”” more=””>, apparently an adaptation from a famous movie, every time his mother ate diner she’d eat and sigh, immersed in the world where the maternal love was selfless. During that period of time, his mother would always wipe invisible tears from the corners of her eyes before telling Qi Ming about the greatness of mothers.

Qi Ming would always eat silently, occasionally letting out a sound to affirm his mother.

Like fibres lying across blood vessels, locking the flow of blood. “The blood is clotting up.” His heart always felt repressed. He always felt that one day, a thorn would pierce from his blood vessel, through his skin and become exposed to the air.

Every time his mother wipes a crocodile tear, the pain in his blood vessel could increase.

Yet this was just a pa.s.sing thought, for not every person could face their disgust towards their mothers calmly. This was abnormal and unethical. Hence these thoughts only bubbled up from the bottom of his heart occasionally, and then they would disappear immediately on the surface of the water, breaking apart with a loud sound. A little splash of water.

Unlike Yi Yao.

Yi Yao’s hatred was vivid and straightforward.

A conversation when he was thirteen.

Qi Ming said: “My mother is a teacher, she always likes talking about principles, it’s annoying. What does your mother do?”

Yi Yao had turned and said: “You’re talking about Lin Fenghua, she’s a prost.i.tute, a horrible woman. I hate her. Yet sometimes I still love her.”

Yi Yao’s thirteen-year-old face had been calm as it was exposed to harsh sunlight; her skin had seemed almost translucent, as if the red capillaries would appear at any second.

I hate her. Yet sometimes I still love her.

Prost.i.tute. Horrible woman. These words, that summer when they were thirteen, submerged the young lives like high tide.

Like a handful of bramble seeds had been sowed in Qi Ming’s thirteen-year-old heart.

After dinner. Qi Ming stood to put away the cutlery but his mother yelled for him to stop, telling him to revise in his room, saying, “how can you waste your time on

Things like this.” To be frank, Qi Ming disliked his mother making a fuss.

He put down his chopsticks, picking his bag up from the sofa, he walked towards his room. From the gap in the door as he entered his room, he could see the satisfied expression on his mother’s face as she cleared the table and moved towards the kitchen.

Just as the door closed, Yi Yao’s voice drifted over from the other side.

“Ma, are you going to eat or not?”

“Who cares!”

“If you’re not going to eat then don’t ask me to cook, it’s hard……”

Before her sentence finished, the sound of plates shattering on the ground could be heard.

“It’s hard?! Cooking is hard? Do you think you’re some rich princess?”

“You better not break plates,” Yi Yao’s voice did not betray her emotions, “If you break it, we’d have to buy it, we don’t have that much money.”

“You’re talking money with me?! What right do you have to talk money with me! ……”

Qi Ming got up to close the window; the words became blurred, only the shrill voice of the woman could be heard, exploding continuously. A while later, the kitchen light from the other side turned on. Under the dim yellow light was Yi Yao’s silhouette. Qi Ming opened the window again, listening to the running water.

A long time later, the sound of another plate being smashed could be heard.

He didn’t know who threw the plate.

Qi Ming turned on the desk light, his pen flying across the paper densely packed with numbers.

Densely packed. Filled the heart.

Just like a piece of paper full of calculations. Not a single s.p.a.ce left unwritten.

As if he couldn’t breathe.

“Why don’t you die early!” could be heard from the other side.

Everything became quiet again.

06

A line with two points is a segment.

A line with one point is a ray.

A straight line has no point.

Qi Ming and Yi Yao were like lines that set off from the same point, yet they moved towards different directions. Hence, further and further away. Further and further away.

Every day, things become even more different that the day before, their lives written in two versions – scribbles and proper. And then time washed away the colours. Hard to decipher.

Before they were twelve, their lives were at the same point.

Grew up in the same suffocating and long longtang. Put on the red scarf of communism in the same year. Liked watching Doraemon during dinner. Back then Qi Ming’s family had been an average family. His father hadn’t earned two million to buy a luxurious condominium yet. The sunlight had shone on the lives in the darkness at the same angle.

Yet the year they were twelve, the rays of life shot through to two different directions rapidly.

In Qi Ming’s memory, it had been dusk in summer Yi Yao’s father dragging his heavy suitcase leaving this longtang. When he left, he had squatted down to embrace Yi Yao, Qi Ming had been leaning against the window, looking at the hot tears that had rolled down her father’s face.

When they were thirteen, he heard Yi Yao say, my mother is a prost.i.tute. She is a horrible woman.

07

Like a wrinkled yet strong seed.

Yi Yao laid in the darkness. Thinking like this.

Outside the window was the cool air of winter. The grey skies had large grey clouds. The moonlight could not s.h.i.+ne through.

Then again, what moonlight?

It was just that Qi Ming’s light from across was still on.

Her curtains looked like there was a ring of fluffed glow from the yellow light of his windows. He was probably still reading, beside him sitting a cup of hot coffee or milk tea. Maybe even a freshly cooked bowl of wonton.

In the end, he was not a person like her.

The seventeen-year-old Qi Ming had a face that practically radiated the gleam of youth. Under his white s.h.i.+rt and black uniform were muscles and bones that grew stronger by the day. A boy’s seventeen year old is like a time where they could hear their bones creak as they grew.

Top in the school. Cla.s.s representative. Second place in town for a short run compet.i.tion only because he injured his foot the day before. Average family, yet was about to move out of this longtang soon, into a high-cla.s.s district where they had a view of the river.

Wore his uniform according to the school rules, never dyed his hair, had no piercings, would never wear a t-s.h.i.+rt in place of his s.h.i.+rt in order to look more handsome like the other guys.

Liked biology. Also liked European art history.

From the moment he set foot in the school, he had started receiving love letters from seniors and juniors alike. Yet no matter how many letters he received, every single time, his face would flush pink.

And herself?

Using the slightly venomous words from her mother, she was, “dank”, “lifeless”, “if you stay at home any longer you’d have a body full of bugs”.

A girl like that, yet every single morning in the longtang, she’d meet Qi Ming who was the complete opposite of her.

And then walk together towards the mouth of the longtang where the light rays gathered.

Walking towards the entrance to the source of light.

This seemed like such a sorrowful metaphor.

*longtang refers to the narrow alleyways of old Shanghai

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