Chapter 90: Yet with the xiansheng's closed jade coffin (I)

The sound of the thunderstorm thundered against the small building; the beautiful dream woke up from the dark depths of the sky. A Yin leaned against the window, holding an edible bird's nest from Shanghai in her handkerchief, holding a pair of silver scissors and carefully plucking away fine feathers; A Luo, draped in a cloak, sat to the side, coughing with each page of the book she flipped through.

Her body was more or less better, excepting for a bit of reccurrence with the overcast, rainy skies; her back was wet and cold, as if having caught the rheumatism of the neighbouring uncle. Each time she coughed, A Yin knitted her brows, yet she didn't say anything, only privately increasing the speed at which she plucked feathers from the bird's nest.

A sound came from the corridor; Li Shiyi and Song Shijiu coming downstairs. A Yin looked furtively; the two didn't seem as clingingly intimate as before, and between them, they maintained a half-body's distance, not even their hands holding, just each of them holding the railing on one side and descending. Li Shiyi wasn't looking at anyone, her head lowered and looking at her feet, walking both steadily and deftly. Yet Song Shijiu still extended a hand at the corner to support her, only delaying for half a moment, and then reservedly drawing back.

That's not right. A Yin furrowed her fine brows, her gaze sweeping back and forth. The distance between people was a science; usually, when reaching the extremity of familiarity, it became courtesy, and the part of most implication was precisely the estrangement after becoming closer.

The two greeted A Yin and A Luo, yet Li Shiyi didn't at all have the intent to explain why Song Shijiu had returned, and directly sat on the sofa, her right hand curled in a loose fist and pressing against the tip of her nose, and she coughed a couple times quietly; Song Shijiu's ears twitched, and she extended a hand to touch the pot of water on the table, lifting it up and leaning over to pour a boiling hot cup of water for her. When she passed it over to her, her gaze still remained, staring, at the table, as if the newspaper laid out atop it was utterly worth investigation, and the raised back of her hand was only making a casual motion.

Li Shiyi took it, pressing it against her lower lip and taking a sip. Her expression was ver exhausted, such that she didn't even have the desire to flip through a book, and only propped her arms up on the armrests, tiredly massaging the space between her brows. The motion at the space between her brows paused, and her lashes trembled faintly a couple times, and the space between her brows furrowed minutely, her eyes weakly narrowed. Song Shijiu unfolded her crossed legs, stepping on her heels, rising to light a lamp.

The room brightened, and the ravines between Li Shiyi's brows smoothed out in a split second; she held up her temple, pressing her lips together, her eyes holding a not too obvious smiling expression. A Yin looked at Song Shijiu, who had returned to the sofa once more, lowering her head and looking at a book, then looked at the idle-expressioned Li Shiyi, and her mind let out a phrase of scolding profanity. It was as if a little kitten, who had just come to full term, bored stiff, was clawing at her heart, and in the midst of the flaky itchiness was an excessive pain, causing her to inquisitiveness to be aroused to a rampaging boundlessness.

"What will you eat?" Li Shiyi finally spoke, bringing along a heavy nasalness, her voice also somewhat hoarse. Only at this did Song Shijiu turn her head, plucking her hanging hair behind her ear, blinking and first looking at Li Shiyi's lips, and only afterwards seriously thinking it over. In the instant of raising her head, her eyes hadn't had the slightest substance, vast and indistinct as if she were going on a mental journey into space; in only one glance, A Yin understood that she hadn't taken in a single word from just before.

This sort of absentminded expression, A Yin was incredibly familiar with; this sort of clarity of missing the person beside you, regardless of whether or not they were there, developing into an idea, A Yin was also very familiar with. This time, she didn't need to ask A Luo; she understood it herself.

Li Shiyi had been slept with; and, more over, it ought to have been a repetitive, tossing and turning sleep. She suddenly felt an inappropriate pity. In the end, why this sort of strange mood had arisen, she didn't know either; but she was often like this, coming across hard to describe signs, and within her mind, she would first sigh—

What a disaster.

In order to coax Song Shijiu to return, she'd actually paid this sort of price.

"Will you eat wontons?" Li Shiyi asked again; when she spoke, it brought along the final syllable like mist, and when the vapour dispersed, her thin upper and lower lips touched, her glossy, fair neck drawing back as she breathed, the veins covered up by the cross of her garment's collar also shifting as a result. Song Shijiu couldn't necessarily say that this was erotic, but in the texture of Li Shiyi's arteries and veins, she found an appeal that caught her off guard.

In the past her appeal had been covered and hidden by the filth and grime and dejection; now, it seeped through day by day, like a new year's wine which had been fermented sufficiently by age, the ends of her brows and the outer corners of her eyes all incredibly attractive. But this attractiveness had a natural sense of propriety, neither offensive, nor excessive, only extending its keen feelers like a snail, and when it touched the lofty radiance of eroticism, it bashfully withdrew.

Just like this, she didn't wait until Song Shijiu replied, yet waited until her heart was palpitating, and then lowered her eyes with some feeling, her brows not raising half a degree.

Only then did Song Shijiu say, "I'll eat them."

The lowered eyes rose once more, and Li Shiyi said, "I'll make them for you."

"I'll do it," Song Shijiu said, standing up, and then quietly added, "you rest."

The two of them entered the kitchen, one after the other, but apart from the sound of kitchen pots, bowls, ladels, and basins colliding, there weren't any other sounds. Yet A Yin's heart thundered heavily; in the back and forth rejection from just then, desire was like spring rains being sprinkled, not at all covering up the germinating seeds taking root.

So, she set the edible bird's nest aside, and asked A Luo, "The Teng serpent is a spiritual beast; the Zhu Long is as well, isn't it?"

A Luo didn't understand the reason, and softly coughed. "What is it?"

"This spiritual dragon, does it have any relationship with the spiritual snake?" That was to say, did they share any common origins?

The doubt in her eyes was undisguised, and A Luo reacted, laughing slightly. "They're not."

The wontons entered the pot, and it was discovered there wasn't any vinegar; Song Shijiu always liked eating vinegar, and so she opened an umbrella, about to go to ask Zhao-daniang at the mouth of the alley to borrow some. Li Shiyi, draping clothes over her shoulders, went with her, and had just covered her sleeves and stepped across the threshold, when, raising her head, she saw Song Shijiu holding up the umbrella, her gaze falling onto the gate of the courtyard.

The skies before the courtyard were like brush-washing water; piled with wet, dark clouds, pearl-like raindrops falling one bead after another, pattering and rattling, the chill in the air seeping into the bones. Leaning against the courtyard gate was a huddle of dark, muddled shadows, not even as tall as small saplings in the spring, about to fuse together with the old-fashioned door.

On walking closer, two clear balls in the midst of the shadows moved, and only then did the presence of a living thing become apparent. What sort of shadow was this? It was clearly a sallow-faced, emaciated young girl. The young girl wore a cotton jacket, its colour indistinguishable, worn out and tattered and not fully covering her body, only exposing skin which looked like it had been broiled in a coal heap, smudged dark black some places, and light black others, the only colour the dim, pale whites of her eyes, and the frostbite on her hands, like soft white radishes.

She leaned against the gate; regardless of the pouring rain, one hand held herself up on the door, her drenched cloth shoes pulled up, and she fixedly and blankly stared at the bright, neat, beautiful Li Shiyi and Song Shijiu, and only after a long while did she sniffle, extending a hand to tug at the hem of her jacket.

Her hand trembled, and without even using much force to tug at it a couple times, it still couldn't cover up her body, and she didn't try any more, stopping for a while, and then raising a hand to tug at her messy braids. The rice straw on her braids had become utterly drenched, and gave off a hard to bear scent of rot; it seemed as if she wanted to take it off, yet no matter what, she couldn't lean it off, and so she only drew her neck back, once more as she had been when she'd started, staring expressionlessly at Song Shijiu.

She stared at Song Shijiu's warm, fur-collared cloak, her excellently-cut qipao, and then dully looked at her clean, neat high heels, and then, finally, her small throat bobbed, as if she'd scented the fragrance of the wontons inside, and her eyes finally produced some fragmentary envy.

She hadn't drawn her spirit back when she heard a couple sharp footsteps, and a rush of warmth fragrance enclosed her; she raised her head, startled, and saw that Song Shijiu had come to kneel before her in quick steps, her Western wool coat wrapping around her shivering form, the umbrella held to one side. She furrowed her brows and asked, "How are you here by yourself?"

The young girl looked at the person before her, dazedly not saying anything. The rain water dripped down from Song Shijiu's lashes, and even her sorry, embarrassing figure was graceful and magnificent; so, even the overcast rains were this snobbish; in the houses of those in hardship, they fell like rocks into the well, and in the houses of those well-off, they were like ornamentation on the railing.

The rains suddenly stopped; Li Shiyi, holding an umbrella up, came over, and lowered her head and said, quietly, "Come inside first."

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