Chapter 44: The amorous are angered by the heartless (V)

After a few days, it was exactly a bright day with clear weather; Tu Laoyao was cooking noodles, and was massaging Tu-saozi’s swollen calves, forehead covered in sweat; A Yin came in, bringing in a bowl of fresh lychees, and, thinking that Tu-saozi shouldn’t be eating cold or raw foods, placed it aside, and said, “They were just in ice water; let them dry and then eat them.”

Tu-saozi, legs bared, felt quite embarrassed, and bashfully smiled. “Thank you for your trouble, A Yin-guniang.”

A Yin leaned over to look at her, and clicked her tongue regretfully. “Looking at your legs, they’re swollen as radishes; when a finger presses, it leaves a depression.”

Tu-saozi stroked her belly, and smiled with a sigh. “Women’s lives are just like this, enduring hardships.” She paused, and then added, “This time, it’s more or less experiencing misfortune; in the future, when A Yin-guniang becomes pregnant, I can tend to you somewhat.”

A Yin hurriedly waved her hand, straightening up and stretching out her thin waist, and laughed. “Don’t, I don’t have that sort of blessing.”

Tu-saozi didn’t know what it was she did for a living, only taking her as a young, abashed woman, and smiled affectionately. Tu Laoyao raised his head, and, without catching onto the joke in the words, only began another line. “Where’s Shijiu? I haven’t seen her all morning.”

“I was just about to tell you,” A Yin said, crossing her arms. “When you have the time, come to the courtyard; I have something to ask you.” Once she finished speaking, she raised her hand and twirled a few lychees in her hands, gathering them in her hand like a plate of walnuts, and, beaming, called out goodbye to Tu-saozi, and only then shifted to leave.

Only after having been fanned by a couple breezes, Tu Laoyao went to go open the door, forearm wiping the sweat on his forehead, tugging at his trouser legs, and with a creaking, sat down on the stone stool next to the grape trellis. “What is it?” The steam hit his head, assaulting his nose until it wasn’t a nose and his eyes weren’t eyes.

“Shijiu has been training her skills for the past two months, and there hasn’t been half an amount of improvement; I was looking for you to ask for thoughts.” A Yin peeled a lychee, its sparkling, translucent, limpid flesh turning tossed between her jade-pale fingers. This seeking him to ask for thoughts, was said without much consideration, not expecting much for him to be able to make a contribution.

Cicadas screeched, their voices calling out; Tu Laoyao’s face was wrinkled, like an elderly Pekingese dog. “Alright, let me think.” He wasn’t much accustomed to others asking him to use his brains, especially those with proper speech and in a good mood^[1] like Yin-da-nainai; it was as if he was being given respect, and it made him squeeze his mind to come up with a suggestion.

“I can’t think of one.” Having squeezed his mind entirely clean; the small figure in his mind knocked against the utterly empty skull with a rattling sound.

A Yin scoffed, shoving a lychee into her mouth, unsurprised; her tongue held it in her mouth, cheeks bulging slightly, and said vaguely, “I’m asking you, when she used her skills last time, what were the circumstances?”

“Mount Ma’er, the E Shou; we were about to die. She,” Tu Laoyao tugged at his white mandarin jacket, and continued, “changed.”

“Pig brains,” A Yin rolled her eyes, disappointed that iron hadn’t become steel. “Was it that we were about to die? It was Li Shiyi about to die.”

“It was, it was,” Tu Laoyao replied hurriedly; actually, the scorching sun had made his ears faint and his eyesight blurry, and the young lady before him hadn’t given him a single chilled, bright lychee.

A Yin, seeing him gazing with impatience, finally gave him one, and began to guide him patiently and systematically. “It’s exactly that. As the saying goes: ‘the sea of learning has no horizon, sitting in a boat of hardship’, what does that mean? It’s not only that it needs hardship and forging on, but stimulating potential. Her days now are this comfortable; where would the urge to kill for property come from? We may as well put her into that sort of situation of imminent peril, a thousand pounds hanging by a thread, and try it out.”

Tu Laoyao was still thinking of “the sea of learning” this and “boat” that, and didn’t know whether or not this was a solution. After he comprehended it, he felt that it had some reason, and asked, “Then, who will go assassinate Li Shiyi?”

His head was spinning on his neck, and he was in terror from the tips of his hair to his heels. A Yin’s brows furrowed, and she put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing saying you want to kill Li Shiyi?”

Tu Laoyao blinked.

A Yin’s smile was furious, and, with a huff, she slapped the remaining lychees down on the table, playing the lute to an unappreciative cow. Tu Laoyao finally reacted, and grasped handkerchief, which was fluttering free, and tugged her back, and, with a flash of inspiration, said, “I have an idea, I have one.”

A Yin inclined her gaze at him, lips pulled taut and noncommittal. Tu Laoyao, appearing mysterious, and with a grin and shaking legs, said, “Yin-da-nainai, please be kind, won’t you.”

The second day, Song Shijiu was just about to take a midday rest, when the door was struck with a bang; she wrapped a close-fitting, rough silk short skirt around herself, and, with eyes sleep-laden and drowsy, she opened the door, and was hit with a strong force; from the doorstep, she was snatched up by Tu Laoyao and A Yin, who pushed her towards the dressing table; A Yin held up the red-hot hair iron, her face seeping light, anxious sweat. “Incredible!”

Song Shijiu was startled; Tu Laoyao squatted down, and took the new leather shoes from the tarpaulin bag and put them on her feet. “There’s been a big incident!”

Song Shijiu turned her head in a rush; A Yin pulled her face back with the palm of her gentle hand, not allowing any explanation and creating a curl in her hair, instructing Tu Laoyao, “Get out the rouge and cosmetic water and lay them out.”

With a hissing sound, the scent of scalding from smoke floating from the top of the hair; Song Shijiu’s mind became anxious, and she tugged at A Yin’s wrist, repeating, “What…what is it?”

A Yin made a couple of curls , and easily separated the hair into two parts, then picked up the black conch dye that Tu Laoyao had just opened up, leaning over to carefully draw on Song Shijiu’s eyebrows. “Li Shiyi went on a blind date.”

A blind date?! Song Shijiu’s eyes widened, and her lips parted, letting A Yin rouge up both of them entirely. Her mouth and tongue dry, her chest rising and falling heavily, as if she’d slept a long time, her heartbeat thudding, fluttering and short, only after a good while did the wings of her nose flutter, and cautiously and solemnly, she asked, “What’s the meaning of a blind date?”

A Yin, having finished making her up, pulled her behind the screen, gazing at her foolish and dazed appearance, reduced beyond a shadow, and simply sighed and directly changed her into a foreign-style skirt, giving her a satisfied once-over, and then, colluding with Tu Laoyao, picked up Song Shijiu, who was as if struck by lightning, and, in a few moments, shoved her into a car.

The rickshaw surged forward along the street urgently and hurriedly; Song Shijiu’s heart was like a tire being hit by cobblestones; she was agitated and on edge, her state of mind perturbed; she strived to pacify her mood a bit, and only opened and closed her mouth again. “What’s she doing going on a blind date?”

A Yin’s gaze flashed and she looked away; again and again, deceiving the young lady; the thunder collecting, she was afraid, was enough that it could destroy eighteen generations of her ancestors.

Tu Laoyao’s mind was chaotic, reciting, I’m not going to the underworld, who’s going to the underworld?; with a loud voice, he said, “The age has come, thinking of settling down, giving birth to a kid, could it not be a blind date!”

Song Shijiu furrowed her brows, and helplessly bit her lip.

The car stopped a bit later at a fashionable, foreign-style crossroad; Tu Laoyao gently pushed up his sleeves and pushed Song Shijiu down out of the rickshaw; at the same time, he raised his head and gazed at the respectable shop front on the side of the road. That was a Western-style coffee shop, with the tops of parasols rising, the glass door with a water chestnut lattice; the waitstaff at the doorway were also wearing swallow-tailed coats and small Western-style hats, with an incredibly high-fashioned appearance.

Tu Laoyao knocked the front of his cloth shoes; seeing this attitude, the belittling in his bones once more formed an evil spirit, and he didn’t dare to proceed any further. A Yin lazily leaned against the side of the car, brushing Song Shijiu’s face, and urged her, “How about you go in on your own.” Thinking on it, she added a phrase: “If you’re not any match, call out for me.”

Song Shijiu’s ears twitched and rose like a cat’s; her glance cast over A Yin, and she nodded.

The arrangement within the coffee shop was incredibly orderly; square booths, arranged like neat tofu squares, rouge-scarlet sofas contrasting with marble tabletops, dark green table lamps casting a pearlescent glow, and there were, unexpectedly, dim cup candles placed on the ground; aside from reflecting the overhead crystal lights’ expensiveness, it seemed like they didn’t have any use.

Li Shiyi drew her gaze back from the pathetic candle flames, her slender, fair fingers knocking against a small matchbox, and, with a clatter, softly tapped it against the tabletop. In this moment, she had one leg crossed over the other, and her posture was fairly straight; an admirable grace emitted from the languidness, and the young gentleman across from her was in a full-body creamy white suit, and a sling was hidden against the pocket of his chest, and his short hair was neat, without a single hair out of place, and even his fingernails were trimmed appropriately. His smile was restrained, courteous and amiable, and he raised his coffee to draw a mouthful, his motion even more gentle than a sip, and he slowly set it down, only then saying, “Just now, Li-xiaojie mentioned she’s a southerner.”

Li Shiyi furrowed her slim brows, slightly impatiently turning the matchbox in her palm in a circle. Tu Laoyao had, very early in the morning, absurdly talked to her about business, that it was Tu-saozi’s maternal cousin, and because the family was prosperous, usually they looked down on, and held him in contempt; he’d pleaded that she had to go pretend, dress up and be respectable, so that Tu Laoyao’s respectability wouldn’t take a fall.

Although Li Shiyi didn’t much understand what her own respectability had to do with Tu Laoyao’s, but she unconsciously compromised a bit under Tu-saozi’s water-gentle gaze. However, the man before her, as soon as he’d walked in, had asked what she wanted to drink, and eat, and chatted about coffee and places of ancestry, wanting her age and talking about birthdays; originally, she’d assumed that rich families had a great number of taboos; only on demanding to know her thoroughly, after she’d dealt with it a few times, did she gradually begin to feel something wasn’t right.

She made a slightly unapproachable clicking sound, wanting to rise and grab her outer coat and leave, but she’d just turned her head when she heard a charming, lively voice say, “Li Shiyi!”

She raised her brows, shadows enveloping her as she advanced forward; the fragrant scent agitated the beautiful woman she was faced with; Song Shijiu raised her skirt and sat down next to her, maintaining a palm’s length of distance. The one that she had called was her, yet the one she looked at wasn’t her; her half-opened eyes took the measure of the man across from her. The man was a bit stunned, but a fine upbringing caused his face to show no fluctuations, even a faint nod; after he restrained his astonished expression, he smiled indifferently and greeted her. “Who’s this?” he asked, looking at Li Shiyi.

Li Shiyi shot a glance at Song Shijiu; the tip of her tongue scraped gently against the top of her mouth, and a few words came briefly and colourlessly from her: “Meimei, Shijiu.”

Song Shijiu’s chest rose, her pearly white teeth drawing the corner of her mouth in to bite it, and she turned her head to gaze at her. In the past, she’d always said that she herself was her maternal cousin; at the time, she’d been extremely happy, but this time, when she said it again, she was incredibly upset.

The man raised his brows with an “o”. “Shijiu-guniang.”

Who are you to call me guniang. Song Shijiu pressed her lips together, her extremely artful chin trembling, the crisscrossing ravines entwined with a feeling of aggrievement and anger. The aggrievement seemed to be of that muddled, thoughtless “meimei” of Li Shiyi’s, and the anger, in fact, was because of this lovely, superior adornment of her figure. Her hair had been combed smooth and neat, and her face was glossy and sleek as an expansive, clear spring; her shirt and pants were brand new, and she even wore a pair of low-heeled, small leather shoes. Without the disguise she dressed in, her eyes were as if soaked in aged wine; when her face was expressionless, it was engagingly cool; if she only smiled, even a tiny bit of a smile, it intoxicated the heart and spleen.

She lowered her head, her hands unconsciously wanting to touch some object, and when she raised her hand she just touched the coffee cup in front of Li Shiyi, which she touched as if offering it up to a rescuing soldier, but saw the man across from her raising a hand to press it down, apologetically saying, “This cup is Shiyi’s, let me order a cup of something else for Shijiu-guniang.” As he smiled, he passed the drinks menu to Song Shijiu, smiling as he said, “The fruit juice here is fairly good.”

One Shiyi, one Shijiu-guniang, tugging at this and stopping that, and she couldn’t quite understand what she was hearing; although she knew how to read, the characters on the drinks menu crawled like earthworms, twisting and turning into something entirely beyond recognition. The more she looked, the more unhappy she became, and simply gave the menu back, still holding Li Shiyi’s coffee without letting go. “I’ll just drink this, is that alright?”

The last three words were asked to Li Shiyi; Li Shiyi leaned halfway against the booth, and raised a brow halfway. “It’s alright.”

The en-vogue coffee shop, the strange gentleman, the suddenly-appearing Song Shijiu; Li Shiyi gently strung the incidents together; the people who had arranged this behind weren’t hard to think of.

However, the man hadn’t taken offence because of Song Shijiu’s arrival, or say that the brief interlude had caused him to lose his interest in Li Shiyi, only indifferently putting Song Shijiu off to the side, and once again began to speak to Li Shiyi.

Li Shiyi’s head was lowered, still fiddling with the matchbox, calculating how to find an excuse to bid goodbye; when she raised her eyes, she was completely frozen for a few moments. She narrowed her eyes and gazed at the man before her who was entirely unaware; as before, he was in high spirits over poetry and literature, and as his speech became aroused, he waved his fingers gently. But the skin on his hands was as if it was being drawn on by a water pump, growing withered by degrees, wrinkles like ripples on the surface of dead skin, extending up from his hands to his wrists, covering the protrusion of his Adam’s apple on his neck, eroding the high bearing of the corners of his eyes. His hair, his jet-black, thick hair, in an instant greyed early, beautiful hair becoming grizzled, as if unable to bear the heavy load of adversities, causing his youthful vigour to be depressed and penetrated. It was as if he’d been suddenly, rudely jumped by old age, his eyes closing and his head shaking, and he cleared his throat, and a moment later faced Li Shiyi’s tightly-pressed, thin lips.

Li Shiyi blinked, seeing the old man now past her prime, as if a book flipped through, rapidly returning to the appearance she’d seen first, even being pushed back beyond it a bit, and then a bit more, the firm stubble above his lip withdrawing, exchanged for soft down.

The change of everything was so fast, as if a carousel lantern of paper horses hurriedly turning around. Li Shiyi’s jaw tightened, alarm bells sounding loudly; she hurriedly cast a glance at Song Shijiu; she lowered her head slightly without joy or anger, her left hand still holding the coffee, still warm, her right hand propped on her knee, her palm facing upwards, her five fingers brought together on emptiness, making a motion a bit like clutching a ball. The veins on the hollow of her palm were as if filled with blue, poured liquid, winding like coiling lines, crowding in her palm and making a small gathering of light blue, faint light; Li Shiyi looked at her motions, and then cast a glance at the unknown man; Song Shijiu turned her fingers neatly in a full motion, and he rapidly aged, and when she turned her fingers to the left, he unexpectedly began to become young. This folding and unfolding fluctuation, the man’s state of mind had already become a bit dazzled, and his speech had also become confused and clumsy.

Time’s strange acting acted on his body, causing one’s back to become chilled; by good fortune, at this moment, there wasn’t anyone inside the coffee shop, and the back of the booth was also high; if they were to be seen by someone, it was very likely that they would scream themselves mute.

Song Shijiu tilted her head, and glanced at Li Shiyi, her long, curly hair covering up her finely engraved, delicately cut features; it wasn’t clear if the corners of her eyes, bright red, were painted by A Yin, or formed by her in this moment, a demon’s beauty and flirtatiousness, as if a phoenix on the verge of taking flight, a haughtiness of considering herself unexcelled in this world seeping out.

This wasn’t Song Shijiu.

With a soft bang, the phoenix wings at the outer corners of her eyes rapidly snapped and gathered up, and the mild, obedient crouch returned; Song Shijiu opened her sharply contrasting black and white pupils, bowing her head to gaze at her own hand.

Li Shiyi, just then, had, calmly and collectedly, covered up her hand, the hollows of their palms pressed closely together, cutting off her powers as if electricity cut off. Yet she didn’t look at Song Shijiu, only furrowed her brows and gazed at the once more normal man, her fingers using exertion to hold Song Shijiu’s, and after that, with slight apology, rose, and said, “Excuse me.”

As soon as her words fell, her hand tugged at Song Shijiu’s wrist, her expression indifferent as she took her into the restroom. With a "ka-da," the narrow compartment was locked; Li Shiyi loosened her back and leaned against the wall; across from her was Song Shijiu, a frost-bitten eggplant lacking energy; one hand was stuck in her sleeve, the other still turning the matchbox, and the rustling sound of the two people’s breaths rose and fell in the small, dim space, as if mindful of missing something important.

She hadn’t asked anything, not even having planned to speak, only waiting very patiently for Song Shijiu’s mood to calm. Usually, Song Shijiu would always cling to her, but at this moment, she consciously drew back half a step, herself also pressing against the wall, gazing at the slightly bent right knee of Li Shiyi across from her, her right hand clutching her skirt, the back of her hand trembling slightly.

She opened her hand, wiping it on the skirt vigorously, then clutched it again. Her mood was absurdly complicated; excitement at having learned it, and a sense of sadness that couldn’t be dispelled, and even anxiety that Li Shiyi would be angry, even more a bit of bashfulness at the two of them sharing a room.

The various states of emotion leapt up and down in her mind like the Eight Immortals crossing the sea,^[2] trembling one after the other, and in the end, seeing Li Shiyi’s blind date’s suffering had prevailed, and it made her press the corners of her mouth together and desolately stand up.

After a good while, she heard the person whose head was inclined above her sigh slightly, and say in a gentle voice, “I didn’t know any of the details in advance.”

Song Shijiu suddenly raised her gaze; Li Shiyi looked at her, and then repeated again, “I didn’t know.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: 好声好气 (haosheng haoqi) means doing something gently or kindly but with A Yin’s characterisation I’ve gone with a more literal translation.

[2]: The Eight Immortals from Daoist mythology, who lived on an island in the Bohai Sea, whose water is said to be “weak” and float, unable to support boats crossing it.