Chapter 30: Spring breeze blowing for years (I)

After bidding A Luo farewell, Li Shiyi and the others rested at the residence for a few days. In the past, every time they would go on a trip, Song Shijiu would always become exhilarated; this time, it wasn’t clear whether she had once again gotten some lazy affliction or something similar, but unexpectedly, she would close the door and refuse guests, the curtain pulled tight; not to mention her visits to Li Shiyi every morning and evening, even when Tu-saozi, belly protruding, would come to invite her to eat, she would say in a discontented voice, “Go ahead and leave it outside,” and there wouldn’t be any sign of activity. Li Shiyi didn’t know if she’d been made into a cheap mother,^[1] or if was some other mood; in short, she had become concerned; the character of “placid” had been written halfway, the vertical hook cutting it in half, and looking at it, it appeared crooked and at an angle, not upright in the slightest. She crumpled up the paper, washed up, and got into bed to sleep.

Early in the morning on the second day, within the crack of the door was wedged a letter folded over three times; Li Shiyi pulled it out; it was the slender gold script^[2] that Song Shijiu had newly learned, and on the outside was written only a few characters—come quickly to my rooms; urgent, urgent.

Li Shiyi’s throat worked, and she folded the letter back up as it had been originally, two fingers pinching it and putting it into her sleeve; originally, she’d been about to go eat breakfast, and, thinking about it, she still took steps towards Song Shijiu’s room. Arriving within Song Shijiu’s rooms, she in fact saw that the surrounding area of the table was bustling and lively; Tu Laoyao and A Yin had already been waiting for a while, like mist, and, seeing Li Shiyi, Tu Laoyao pushed the melon seeds on the table towards her, himself pinching and shelling a few with cracking sounds. After not too long, Song Shijiu herself came out, her complexion as deathly pale as if she’d seen a ghost, the bags beneath her eyes as if having been painted black with the umber-black dai meant for brows, even the thin red blood vessels spreading across the whites of her eyes. She tugged at the wrinkled hem of her clothes, striving to make herself look a bit more lively, and sat before the three, drawing in a small breath, and said, “Today, inviting you all here, is because I am going to die.”

“You’re going to die,” Tu Laoyao said, cracking melon seeds and nodding. Before even waiting for the sound of A Yin clicking her tongue, Tu Laoyao quivered as if struck by lightning. “What? You’re going to die?”

Song Shijiu had gone through a few days of developing a mental state, and was already incredibly tranquil. She didn’t look at Li Shiyi’s tightly knitted brows, just let out a deep breath, and, following the long-winded speech she’d originally practised, said, “I, in fact, don’t have any more choices. Originally, I’d thought of stopping time, but if you all were to be frozen as well, and I were to live alone and isolated, life in fact wouldn’t have any meaning.” She lowered her head and twisted at the hem of her clothes, her delicate nostrils fluttering like a fish spitting out bubbles, and, roughly, she swallowed the disconsolateness in her nose, only then gathering up her mental state and raising her head, and confessed to a stupefied Tu Laoyao, “Little Tu Laoyao’s name, I’ve thought of; you’re called Tu Sanping, so he would be called Tu Sishun, so from now on, going out, on hearing it, one would know he’s your son.” With red eyes, she bit her lip, and said, “If you think it’s good, use it, and make it a cherishing of memory, and my meeting with you all won’t be in vain.”

“I’ll use it, I’ll use it,” Tu Laoyao said, tongue-tied, unable to even make his speech nimble.

Song Shijiu relaxed, and then turned her head towards A Yin, but heard Li Shiyi open her mouth and say coolly, “In the end, what happened?” Her throat had gained a raspiness of not having spoken earlier, and listening to it, there was an increased sense of magnetism that seeped from it, also bringing with it a hard to discern sense of anxiety; that anxiety was mutually exclusive with her disposition, and caused A Yin to prop up her wrist and raise her head. Li Shiyi’s meticulousness unexpectedly made one feel—a sense of eroticism.

She used the base of her palm to press against her jaw, and shifted her gaze to look at Song Shijiu, and saw her sorrowfully say, “That E Shou was, in the end, ferocious; I saw that my body didn’t have any open injuries on it, so therefore, I thought that it would be, in fact, an internal injury.” She was a bit annoyed, but, towards Li Shiyi’s concerned look, she softened her voice and said, “These two days, I’ve been bleeding a great flow; it’s incredibly strong in a multitude of ways, and I haven’t been able to stop it no matter what I do.” She was mumbling, and her eyes shone with tears. She wasn’t, in fact, that scared of dying; it was only that she had just explained herself to Li Shiyi, and they hadn’t even been intimate, and, leaving like this, without understanding or clarity, of course it had a sense of broken-heartedness.

A Yin was worried, and searched her mind, circling around her, and said, “Where’s bleeding? Are you spitting it out?”

Li Shiyi’s complexion was a bit pale, and the fingers she’d placed on the table drew back a minute width. Song Shijiu gazed at A Yin and shook her head, and her hand that had been twisting at the hem of her clothes, and jerked her head up, eyes dropping to glance at her lower abdomen.

A Yin was startled, faintly opening and closing her mouth, and exchanged a glance with Li Shiyi, her expression having a bit of subtlety to it. Li Shiyi closed her fingertips, and then opened them once more, her expression having regained some nonchalance, her glossy eyes calmly and easily falling gently upon Song Shijiu, and a moment later, said Tu Laoyao, who was unable to make any sense of the matter, “You, go out.”

“Me?” Tu Laoyao’s eyes widened, and he pointed at his own nose.

A Yin kicked his leg under the table. “Go!”

Tu Laoyao, in pain, covered his lower leg and with each step turning to look back, left the room.

Having waited for Tu Laoyao to close the door, only then did Li Shiyi briefly clear her throat, lowering her fine eyelashes, not looking at Song Shijiu, only indifferent looking at the table, but the words were, in fact, thrown towards her: “In the past, you’ve never been like this?”

Song Shijiu shook her head, and seeing she wasn’t looking at her, hurriedly added a phrase. “I haven’t.”

Li Shiyi thought for a moment; in the past, it was probably a year a day; past this period of time, the growth hadn’t been slowed down for long, and her body had adapted to the natural months, days, and years; it was this that would bring the ebb and flow of tides. She raised her eyelids and gazed at Song Shijiu, asking her, “Does it hurt?”

Song Shijiu replied, “It doesn’t.”

Li Shiyi’s worry eased slightly, and she asked again, “Normally, you’ve only read the Confucian classics, the Shiji, and the Song and Yuan vernacular literature that A Yin dredged up, yes?”

Song Shijiu was started, assuming she was trying to catch up with her, herself about to leave, wanting to compute all the debts, and she hurried to think of a way to cover up the works that A Yin had given to her in private, and in a great rush, waved her hands, and said, “I didn’t…”

Li Shiyi cast her a sideways look, standing up and said to the laughing, bent at the waist A Yin, “Find some medical texts for her to look at.”

She was about to say more; A Yin, paralysed on the tabletop, raised her face to choke out a point. “I’ll prepare the monthly cloths; on the cold things, I’ll urge her about as well.”^[3]

Li Shiyi closed her mouth; she hadn’t yet looked at Song Shijiu again, and she sighed, and bid farewell. Arriving outside, Tu Laoyao was still crouching in the courtyard, and, seeing Li Shiyi close the door and enter the room without speaking, his suspicions rose further, and once again shifted his centre of gravity on his legs.

At dawn on the second morning, the group met to put their luggage in order; the Yan mountains joined Beiping and Chengde, more or less forming the outskirts of Sijiucheng; the way there and back could be made in a day, but, in order to prevent any accidents, they still carried some implements of the business; originally, Li Shiyi had wanted Tu Laoyao to stay behind at the residence and watch over his wife, but while Tu-saozi was staying at hers, if Tu Laoyao didn’t go along on business, she would have felt quite apologetic, and if she didn’t let Tu Laoyao help out, she absolutely wouldn’t dare to live there anymore. Li Shiyi, only on having no alternative, agreed to it.

The rickshaw they’d hired earlier stopped within the alley; just as they were about to set off, Song Shijiu rushed out from within; with just one night’s peace of mind, her spirit had once again gained the flush of excitement and enthusiasm, graceful as a spry and lively bird. It was just that when she glanced at Li Shiyi with some sense of shame, she lowered her head, carrying the bags, and got into the rickshaw. In the past, she had always wanted to be close to Li Shiyi’s spot, but today, she volunteered to go sit in the front passenger seat; Tu Laoyao sat in the middle of the back tow, glancing at the silent Li Shiyi, then at A Yin, examining her nails, then looked at Song Shijiu, whose attention was focused on the scenery outside the window, and temporarily became rather embarrassed, shifting his buttocks, unconsciously humming a folk song.

With only half a phrase exiting his lips, he suddenly heard A Yin quiver, covering her chest and asking him, “What are you doing!”

“Singing, singing a song,” Tu Laoyao said, his legs shaking; when he was embarrassed, he would think of singing a song; it was his natural fault.

A Yin’s eyelids flickered. “The sound of a slaughtered pig is in fact more graceful and subdued than your singing.”

Song Shijiu, at the front, smiled; A Yin had become spirited, and called to her, “Xiao Shijiu, you go ahead and hum a poem to listen to. That one, the one that I taught you a few days ago.”

Song Shijiu was a bit embarrassed, as Li Shiyi was in the back, and it wasn’t too scholarly; she bit her lips, and only then hummed a few lyrics through her nose. “The hair at the temples cut out like glossy raven’s feathers, a small lotus on the narrow forehead/Fearing to dress herself for her mother to find out/Inevitably, the golden hairpin is inserted, half dishevelled and half askew.”

This poem was called “Half a Mention of Passion”,^[4] and was written by Wang Heqing, and it talked about the lady’s chamber of a young lady who was going to meet her sweetheart, sitting across from each other, and her appearance as she looked at herself in the mirror. The cloud-like hair, the flower on the forehead, and the young woman who had just gotten ready was already beautiful enough; unfortunately, the golden hairpin atop her head, because of the ripples of the thoughts on her mind, had been stuck in awry, and her hair, in its coil, was dishevelled, as if the sentiment that the young lady couldn’t gather up into order.

Song Shijiu’s voice was both sweet and clear, and not well versed in the affairs of the world; it was at turns light and at turns heavy, and it rose and fell with the movement of the swaying wheels of the rickshaw, the disharmony rather large, and her final, slightly vibrating final syllables couldn’t fully be heard, but it was truly this kind of naturally gentle humming which travelled back and forth within the noisy smoke and fire, as if the flowing of a stream accompanied by the evening drums and morning bells, causing one’s soul to become orderly and calm.^[5] The corners of A Yin’s lips rose in a smile, her pensive expression settling on the rickshaw’s window, her eyes glancing at the front, while also seeming to not be glancing there.

This poem, she’d sung for Li Shiyi before, her voice both gorgeous and aggrieved; put away in the low-grade brothel, it was unparalleled. The clients liked hearing this, the idle worry within the mellow voice, as if a prostitute also held deep, zealous love, which was emptily entrusted to their bodies, which caused in them a sensation of hardship in reciprocal love and care to arise. Men were the clumsiest, most stupid creatures under the heavens; they degraded respectable families’ regard, and even went looking for romance within a low-grade brothel. A Yin laughed, and out of the corner of her eye, spied Li Shiyi gazing at her with a thoughtful expression, and then turn her head to gaze ahead. So, then, the Li Shiyi who listened to poetry wasn’t the same either; when she’d listened to the A Yin of before singing, she’d smile, and listening to the A Yin of after singing, she became worried. But there was never a moment where she had been as listening to Song Shijiu; the shadows of her eyelashes hid an earnest expression, and the press of her smiling lips wasn’t indifferent; when Song Shijiu’s voice rose, her eyelashes trembled, and when Song Shijiu’s voice lowered, her eyebrows wrinkled. Only after wracking her mind did she understand; that which enveloped the end of Li Shiyi’s nose was the first glimmer of dawn; this expression of Li Shiyi’s was that of hope.

Within a chaotic world, it was easy to cry, and easy to smile; for life, what was needed was hope, and that wasn’t easy.

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Translator's notes:

[1]: Often used in time travel or transmigration stories; the mother of the protagonist after they transmigrate is considered a “cheap mother”.

[2]: Invented by Emperor Huaizong of the Song dynasty; so called due to its appearance being similar to twisted gold filaments.

[3]: In traditional Chinese medicine, women are urged to not eat cold foods during their menstrual cycles, which is believed to obstruct the flow of blood. The coldness of foods is not necessarily literal, though there is an overlap.

[4]: A Yin recited this same poem in Chapter 8; its Chinese title is Ban’er Tiqing.

[5]: The evening drums and morning bells refer to the Buddhist monastic practice.