IMH - 52

In mid-June, Cheng Xiaonan accompanied Yu Qian to the country where she had lived for seven years.

The day they landed was a gloriously sunny one. Peter had sent a message saying he would pick them up at the airport. Cheng Xiaonan seemed to be afraid she’d get sunburned, so he hurried her through the airport, leading the way to Peter’s location.

Cheng Xiaonan pushed the luggage cart with one hand, walking ahead, and together with Peter, loaded the suitcases into the car’s trunk.

Yu Qian stood to the side, suddenly feeling a strange sensation.

Had Cheng Xiaonan been to this airport before?

Why did it feel like he was so familiar with it?

On the way, when Yu Qian asked Cheng Xiaonan about it, the younger man’s face was calm: “I’ve been here on business. I am a boss, after all, I have some experience.”

On their first day abroad, Yu Qian had no work schedule, so she took Cheng Xiaonan to wander around the area near her and Peter’s shared residence.

This was something she learned from Cheng Xiaonan—a way of caring for others.

When she first moved in with Cheng Xiaonan, he often took her for walks around the neighborhood when the weather was pleasant.

Initially, Yu Qian truly believed his explanation of “a walk after a meal to aid digestion.” Over time, she slowly began to understand Cheng Xiaonan’s true intention in doing so—

He was helping her familiarize herself with the surrounding environment, as this was their future home, not a hotel.

After Yu Qian and Peter’s financial conditions improved, they moved out of their cramped shared apartment and later rented the current small villa in the suburbs.

Such a house was nothing special in the sparsely populated foreign suburbs; it wasn’t expensive, but the living environment was much better than before.

The yard was small, only one story high, with an independent basement and attic. Aside from the kitchen, dining room, and bedrooms, there was plenty of living space.

On the stone steps at the entrance were a few potted flowers, the pots hand-painted by Peter, and the fences also had patterns in the same color scheme.

As Cheng Xiaonan stepped down the stairs, his gaze swept over the patterns, and he suddenly felt relieved, thinking, Thankfully, Yu Qian had Peter, an old friend despite the age gap, to accompany her during these years abroad. She wasn’t entirely alone.

________________________________________

Yu Qian took Cheng Xiaonan for a stroll through the surrounding streets, showing him where the market was, where the school was, where to catch a bus, and where to buy fresh milk.

“Can we still buy fresh milk in the afternoon?”

“If you’re lucky, yes.”

Cheng Xiaonan smiled: “Then let’s try our luck?”

In the evening, Yu Qian and Peter would probably have a little wine, and he planned to brew some coffee with milk to join their conversation.

As they walked towards the milk shop, Yu Qian was looking down at her phone, not paying attention to the road.

It was Cheng Xiaonan who pulled her just in time: “Shouldn’t we go this way?”

That strange feeling came over Yu Qian again.

Shouldn’t Cheng Xiaonan be very unfamiliar with this area where she lived?

After all, it was his first time here, right?

By evening, this strangeness and doubt intensified—

Cheng Xiaonan seemed very familiar with the environment she had lived in.

Before dinner, Peter hadn’t returned from his independent studio. Yu Qian and Cheng Xiaonan went to a nearby supermarket together.

This supermarket wasn’t expensive and always had many customers. The vegetables and fruits were very fresh.

Yu Qian rarely had the chance to cook in the Imperial City. This time abroad, Cheng Xiaonan volunteered, saying he wanted to taste her cooking, to eat a meal made by her.

And he said it didn’t need to be extravagant, just the most common home-cooked meals she and Peter used to have.

Yu Qian and Cheng Xiaonan walked into the supermarket together. She stopped at the discounted cooked food stall near the entrance. The stall sold a special type of sausage that was available year-round and tasted very good.

She used to often buy some to take back, slice, and fry with eggs.

Yu Qian weighed the sausage. When she looked back, Cheng Xiaonan had already pushed the shopping cart skillfully to the secluded wine shelf in the corner and picked up a bottle of red wine.

When he returned and saw the sausage in Yu Qian’s hand, he raised an eyebrow: “I like this.”

Handmade sausages, each boss made them taste different.

Yet he said with certainty that he liked this one.

This supermarket felt very much like a fruit and vegetable grocery store. Items were placed quite casually, a few light bulbs hung overhead, and many shelves had no signs.

Cheng Xiaonan, however, leaned on the shopping cart and pointed with his chin towards a chilled meat freezer almost hidden behind the shelves not far away: “They sell steak over there. Want to buy some?”

Yu Qian didn’t speak. She put the sausage in her hand into the cart he was pushing: “You’ve been here before, this supermarket.”

Cheng Xiaonan paused, then chuckled as he admitted under her gaze: “It was many years ago.”

He had indeed been there.

At that time, Cheng Xiaonan had just founded “Eleven.” To say he wasn’t under pressure would be a lie. During the most difficult times, he often browsed foreign websites, hoping to find some news about Yu Qian.

In fact, news about Yu Qian was hard to find. She wasn’t a celebrity, just a model, so her popularity wasn’t that great. Each report only occupied a small corner of the entire entertainment e-paper, just a few lines of text.

That time, before the magazine Yu Qian collaborated with was released, there was an interview with several models in the official website’s preview.

It was a sped-up segment, only 1 minute and 26 seconds long in total, and what little concerned Yu Qian was sparse.

Cheng Xiaonan watched it repeatedly, seeing her calmly face the camera, saying that she wasn’t the type of person who easily gained weight, didn’t really restrict her diet, didn’t deliberately skip dinner, and liked to buy sausages from the supermarket to fry with eggs.

She stood out among the female models in the segment who talked about how they maintained their figures.

Later, gossip broke out that Yu Qian and Peter had a child. People online started digging up their address, not specific, but in that suburban area.

Cheng Xiaonan bought a plane ticket.

Actually, he never intended to genuinely run into Yu Qian or anything. He just wanted to walk the paths she had walked, to taste the things she had eaten.

He lived in the suburbs for half a month. Perhaps due to different routines, he never encountered Peter or Yu Qian once.

However, he did frequently visit that old convenience store, and he also bought the sausages that were perpetually on sale at the entrance to eat.

Yu Qian asked him why he had been there.

Cheng Xiaonan just smiled, hiding the pressures of his early entrepreneurship, and simply said that he heard the sausages here were good and came to try them.

________________________________________

Near their residence, there was a school, and around the school were several small street basketball courts. When they ate dinner at the window-side dining table, they often saw a group of young people joking around with basketballs as they walked by.

Cheng Xiaonan, Yu Qian, and Peter chatted from dusk until sunset.

Peter told Cheng Xiaonan about Yu Qian’s and his impoverished days, as well as their wealthy life.

Peter clutched his wine glass, swirling the remaining half-cup of red wine: “Later, when we became rich, one time, Yu Qian had 460,000 yuan directly deposited into her account. That day, I dared her to borrow a neighbor’s Harley motorcycle, and we rode it all the way to the seafood market on the west side of town. The largest lobsters, expensive and luxurious, we bought two of them!”

“You know how to cook lobster?”

Yu Qian shook her head: “No.”

“Don’t even mention it. We had no idea how to cook lobster. We just boiled them in water. We couldn’t handle the claws. We tried to hack them open with a cleaver to eat the meat inside, but we ended up chipping the knife.”

Cheng Xiaonan lowered his head, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

He held a glass of iced coffee mixed with milk and playfully clinked it against Yu Qian’s wine glass: “Cheers, to our Chef Yu.”

Later, Yu Qian got up to check the sweet potatoes in the oven. Peter watched her disappear into the living room, then lowered his voice and said, “I never thought you’d propose to Yu Qian here. When she was here, she wasn’t happy. I thought she would never want to come back.”

Cheng Xiaonan said, “I plan to make this Yu Qian’s home for her family, and bring her back occasionally. I hope that whenever she remembers any place, it’s with happiness.”

“Tomorrow, Yu Qian goes to work, and we start?”

Cheng Xiaonan gave a lazy smile: “We still need to hurry.”

“Why, is there a specific date for the proposal? Did you have someone calculate it? I see your dad is quite superstitious about these things.”

Cheng Xiaonan said no.

He glanced towards the kitchen, got up to help Yu Qian bring out the food. After standing up, he said, “It’s not about a specific date, it’s that I can’t wait to hear her say yes to my proposal.”

________________________________________

The next few days, Yu Qian was constantly busy.

But it seemed to her that Cheng Xiaonan was also busy with something.

Every day he would go to Peter’s studio, and only when she returned from work would he come back with them to their residence.

Yu Qian’s bedroom here, compared to the one in the Imperial City, wasn’t big; it was just standard, with a very small bathroom inside.

The bed had a rustic style, and the mattress was particularly thick. The two of them sleeping on it fit just right.

However, the mattress had been slept on for many years, so a slight movement would cause a creaking sound.

When Cheng Xiaonan held her to sleep, he would always tease her, saying that the creaky mattress was a nuisance, hindering their intimacy.

Before Cheng Xiaonan came, although Yu Qian had lived here for many years, she had never truly observed it nor liked it.

She hadn’t even noticed the sound of the mattress.

In her memory, it was a quiet little town, and when she tossed and turned unable to sleep at night, the silence was suffocating.

But this time, returning with Cheng Xiaonan, he occasionally went to play basketball with neighbors, and skateboard with the neighbors’ children. This small town suddenly became lively in her eyes.

Even the warm orange glow of the sunset on the light yellow painted walls became a captivating sight.

Cheng Xiaonan returned the skateboard to the neighbors’ children and walked back from this warm-toned world.

He lifted the hem of his short-sleeved shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead: “Did you see what I just did? Was it cool?”

It was truly Yu Qian’s first time seeing Cheng Xiaonan skateboard. She had only seen his skateboard once before, on the day she met Cheng Xiaonan, when the younger man threw his skateboard over the school’s back wall and it hit the rear of her sports car.

Peter said he was very busy today and would stay at the studio, so it was just the two of them at home.

In the evening, Cheng Xiaonan and Yu Qian sat on the steps by the door, sipping iced coffee and enjoying the night breeze.

Cheng Xiaonan asked her why she had gone to the street behind the school that day.

That street was very secluded, with broken streetlights. Apart from residents of the old community who had no choice but to pass through, the only other passers-by were probably truant students.

Yu Qian told Cheng Xiaonan that she had actually met Han Chu that day, and also mentioned that Han Chu and her had differing views, resulting in a very unhappy meal.

She was driving around aimlessly and inadvertently entered that street.

Cheng Xiaonan pouted unhappily in the moonlight, saying, “So, if that’s the case, Han Chu was actually our matchmaker?”

The night view of the suburbs was beautiful, dotted with stars, and the moonlight was bright and clear.

A beautiful pink and white butterfly or moth fluttered its wings around Yu Qian, flying.

Cheng Xiaonan waved his hand, shooing it towards the flowering green plants near his feet: “The flower you’re looking for is over here. Don’t go near her; she’s my flower.”

Yu Qian held her coffee cup and turned to look at Cheng Xiaonan.

It was at this moment that he put down his coffee, turned his head, and leaned in to kiss her.

They kissed deeply. Cheng Xiaonan took the frosty coffee cup from her hand, placed it with his own, clasped her hands behind her back, and exchanged the cool temperature of coffee between their lips.

That night moth flew over, fluttering its wings.

It flew straight towards Cheng Xiaonan’s arm.

Both looked back at the moth simultaneously.

Cheng Xiaonan chuckled: “What’s wrong, causing trouble?”

He had just kissed her, his voice low and husky. He held Yu Qian on his lap and asked, “Shall we continue?”

Yu Qian’s answer was, “I want to be on top.”

Cheng Xiaonan picked her up, kicked open the bedroom door, and entered the house.

Leaving only two unfinished iced coffees on the steps outside the door.

________________________________________

Outside the window, an unknown bird chirped in the trees, and the mattress creaked rhythmically.

Before falling asleep, Cheng Xiaonan, heavy with sleep, negotiated with Yu Qian, asking, “Next time we come, how about a new bed?”

Yu Qian hummed in agreement.

Perhaps because she was relaxed, Yu Qian dreamed of the scene when she first met Cheng Xiaonan.

That year, she was 21, driving a flashy red sports car, parked on the old back street of the school. Cheng Xiaonan’s skateboard, thrown over the back wall, hit the rear of her car.

The 18-year-old boy was tall and lanky, wearing his school uniform sloppily.

Even though he damaged an expensive car, he wasn’t intimidated. He insisted that she take it to the 4S shop for repairs to avoid being scammed by unscrupulous businesses.

He said, “Whatever it costs, come find me, and I’ll compensate you for everything.”

Later, he asked her for her contact information. She simply extended her arm, revealing her fair skin, and let him write his phone number on the inside of her forearm.

The dream paused at the moment Cheng Xiaonan held her eyebrow pencil. He only wrote a “1” and then stopped, looking up at her.

Yu Qian opened her eyes. Sunlight, filtered through the window screen, streamed into the bedroom, making her squint slightly.

Lace patterns cast shadows onto the bed.

She hadn’t fully woken from her dream. She knew that in the next moment, the person in her dream would slightly furrow his brow and ask her, “Your skin is so delicate. Won’t it hurt if I write here?”

Yu Qian thought, That must have been the first flutter of her life, right?

Otherwise, why would she have extended her arm to a stranger on such an unhappy day?

She moved her arm, and suddenly felt as if dream and reality were intertwined.

The ticklish sensation of the delicate eyebrow pencil tip on her skin from that year was still present.

Yu Qian sat up in bed, subconsciously looking at her arm.

It wasn’t a dream come true; a translucent light purple sticky note was currently attached to the inside of her forearm.

The sticky note, of course, bore Cheng Xiaonan’s flamboyant handwriting—

See you at Milan Road 37.

Yu Qian smiled at the sticky note, peeled it off, and stuck it on the headboard.

Milan Road 37 was Peter’s studio; she had been there two or three times.

Because Peter was a rather uninhibited person when it came to work, his studio was terribly messy, with various fabrics and leathers piled on tables and floors, along with boxes full of buttons and design sketches.

After washing up, Yu Qian applied light makeup.

Peter had said this time that the newly designed clothes absolutely required her to come abroad for a fitting, but after so many days, Peter hadn’t mentioned anything about it. When she occasionally asked, he only said they were still being modified and he would inform her when they were ready.

Additionally, Cheng Xiaonan had been intentionally or unintentionally frequenting Peter’s studio these days. Yu Qian had no trouble guessing that the new clothes Peter designed were custom-made for her by Cheng Xiaonan.

On the way to Peter’s studio, Yu Qian suddenly felt a lightness in her heart she had never experienced before.

The night before last, at the supermarket entrance, Cheng Xiaonan bought a lollipop for a little girl he didn’t know.

Yu Qian asked him why, and he said, “The little girl said she saw you in a magazine and likes you. Since she supports my sister so much, how can I not buy her a little gift?”

Yu Qian just smiled that day.

Since Cheng Xiaonan played that video on New Year’s Eve, gradually, all those past unhappinesses seemed to have dissipated.

For so many years, she had been fighting the harm brought by rumors and gossip. Perhaps she had never truly won, but she had also never been truly defeated.

Cheng Xiaonan’s actions made her understand that perhaps her resilience had also given others a little bit, even just a tiny bit, of courage.

It was enough.

________________________________________

The neighbors’ children skated past her on their skateboards. A younger boy stopped and told her that when he watered the flowers in the garden that morning, he saw two coffee cups left outside her door and helped her put them away, hiding them behind the flowerpots.

Yu Qian smiled and said thank you.

She had been smiling a lot lately.

Peter’s studio wasn’t far from where they lived. On the way, she suddenly felt an impulse:

She wanted to marry Cheng Xiaonan.

This year.

Peter’s studio was a small brick-red house, three stories tall.

The top two floors seemed to be leased to a fabric company that also produced bedding and curtains. Peter had a good relationship with them and often arranged to go to the fabric market together to stock up.

Perhaps to display their products, one could see from downstairs that all the windows on the upper floors had their curtains half-drawn, each with a different pattern and material.

Peter’s door was open. When Yu Qian walked in, Cheng Xiaonan was sitting at a table directly opposite the door.

Seeing her enter, he seemed relieved: “Sister, did you sleep well? I’ve been waiting for you all morning. I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Where are the clothes?”

After trying on the clothes, she would ask him about marriage.

“What clothes?” Cheng Xiaonan feigned ignorance.

Yu Qian stood still, more than a meter away from him, looking at him.

She could tell he was in a good mood, sitting comfortably stretched out in Peter’s usual office swivel chair, his long legs casually extended.

Just the usual playful teasing, Yu Qian was quite good at.

But now, she wanted to ask Cheng Xiaonan if they should get married this year.

If she asked such a question, would it count as her proposing?

If she proposed, would it be okay to not prepare anything?

Would it seem a bit too hasty?

________________________________________

In the few seconds of Yu Qian’s silence, Cheng Xiaonan pushed the table, and the wheeled chair moved forward with his momentum.

He stopped in front of Yu Qian and asked, “What are you thinking, sister? Don’t zone out. Today, I really have something serious to talk to you about.”

Yu Qian was still a bit distracted, but out of the corner of her eye, Cheng Xiaonan pulled out a flat box and opened it, placing it in front of her.

Inside the black velvet-lined box lay a piece of sheer fabric.

“What is it?”

“Just pick it up and see,” Cheng Xiaonan said with a pleased smile, pushing the box closer to her.

Yu Qian was still considering her own proposal.

She was the type of woman who didn’t care much about trivialities, just like when they decided to be together, she didn’t discuss it with Cheng Xiaonan, but simply thought about buying a house closer to him.

Now that she wanted to get married, she similarly didn’t care who proposed between them.

Still distracted, she picked up the sheer fabric from the box.

Her fingertips paused in the air.

A veil?

For wearing at a wedding?

Cheng Xiaonan had spent these past few days learning from Peter and personally sewed a veil for Yu Qian.

He asked Peter to find the lightest bead materials. Rice-sized beads gently shimmered with a light purple glow in the sunlight. He embroidered a few Chinese violet cress flowers on the veil with the beads.

Yu Qian was momentarily stunned.

Cheng Xiaonan stood up, kicked the obstructive chair aside, and helped her put on the veil.

He took a small step back, looked at her, then smiled: “I’m not bragging, but I think I did a really good job on this veil.”

As he said this, he knelt down on one knee.

Cheng Xiaonan was too nervous. Only after he knelt down did he remember that the wedding ring was still in the jewelry set box.

He simply took Yu Qian’s hand and kissed the back of it: “Sister, will you marry me?”

________________________________________

Was he proposing?

He proposed first?

Yu Qian shook her head. Cheng Xiaonan sprang to his feet, so nervous his voice was hoarse: “You won’t?”

He didn’t give her a chance to explain, pulling her towards the inner room.

The inner room was originally where Peter kept his ready-to-wear clothes, but now all the messy mannequins and clothes were gone, and it was cleaned thoroughly.

Gift boxes lay open on the table. Beautiful jewels rested quietly inside the boxes. The wedding dress, dazzlingly white in the sunlight, had Chinese violet cress patterns embroidered on its skirt with the same beads.

“I wasn’t unprepared. I have the diamond ring, the jewelry set, and the wedding dress. Don’t be so quick to refuse...”

Yu Qian interrupted Cheng Xiaonan: “It’s not a refusal. On my way here just now, I thought of something.”

“Hm?”

“I was going to ask you, too, if we should get married this year...”

________________________________________

That evening, to celebrate Cheng Xiaonan’s successful proposal, Peter drank a few too many glasses and passed out on the sofa.

Cheng Xiaonan had no choice but to help the drunken man up and send him back to his bedroom.

When he closed the door and came out, Yu Qian was sitting by the window, her silhouette bathed in moonlight and lamplight, quietly watching him.

Cheng Xiaonan said, “The moonlight is so beautiful. I’ll make a wish.”

“Another French kiss?” Yu Qian asked.

Cheng Xiaonan, however, was much more serious.

He looked into her eyes, enunciating each word clearly: “I wish Yu Qian will forever stay by my side, and forever in my heart.”

“Okay.”

[End of Main Text]