The next day Song Die was unavailable. Jiang Ran was supposed to go to the ski resort, either skiing on her own or filling in for a lesson at the last minute. Just thinking that Beijiao might be there made her procrastinate until the afternoon before leaving. She brought her BC RX board, which she hadn’t used in a while. It didn’t have any sponsor stickers on it and was a new model she had received this year. She also wore a snowsuit she had never worn before. Her disguise was perfect.
Even so, on her way to the ski resort, she seized the opportunity at a red light to check flight tickets to Harbin, feeling that Guangzhou was becoming somewhere she couldn’t stay much longer. If things continued like this, he would eventually run into her. That would be really awkward.
Moreover, she still remembered the harsh words he had left with before he left that day—
[“Then make sure you hide well and don’t let me catch you.”]
What would happen if he did catch her? Just thinking about it made her spine tingle.
When she arrived at the ski resort, Jiang Ran was sneaky, looking for a locker to change her shoes quietly. She braided her hair and tucked it into her snowsuit, performing a series of sneaky operations. Suddenly, she heard someone open and close the locker next to her with a “???” sound, and someone said, “Beige doesn’t ski anymore.” Upon hearing that word, Jiang Ran perked up her ears.
She pulled up her snowsuit to cover half her face and peeked out from the locker door, only to see Beijiao sitting on a bench on the other side of the aisle, separated by a row of lockers.
She blinked her eyes, and just seeing his silhouette made her heart skip a beat.
He was still wearing a face guard, which he had apparently pulled down to his chin, probably because it was stuffy. His high nose bridge and thin lips were exposed. Right now, he was bending over to loosen his ski boots—
His movements were skilled. With a lift and pull of his hands, his ski boots were loosened. He let out a long sigh and leaned back on a bag beside him, slumping as he said, “There are too many people, and the snow is bad in the afternoon. Let’s take a break.”
The person talking to him laughed and pointed at the ski bag under his head: “I asked you last time, do you want sponsorship?”
“Forget it, what level am I at?” Beijiao turned over, “Why should I get sponsorship?”
“What level are you at? You’ve only been skiing for a year, but you’re better than 80% of the people on the slopes. In half a season in Chongli, the entire carving circle in Chongli knows your level! Beige, who taught you to be so humble? Were you PUA’d from a young age?” That person kicked him, “The girls and money that are the same as yours have already been grabbed by others.”
Beijiao made a “tsk” sound, completely uninterested.
That person teased, “Ah, I forgot, you’re still abstinent—these days I heard they say you’re avoiding Liang He like a plague! She wants to learn JSBA from you!”
Beijiao lifted his eyelids, about to say something, when just as he was about to speak, as the saying goes, speak of the devil and he shall appear. Liang He rushed in like a gust of wind—
“Get up!”
She came in and started pulling Beijiao’s leg, dragging his legs off the chair where they had been resting. “You gave lessons to others in the morning, now it’s time for me to practice. I calculated your class was over, and the moment I turned around to talk to someone, you were gone! Now there’s really something going on, everyone’s in the group. Are you coming for the group photo or not!”
Beijiao’s legs “thudded” onto the ground. He lethargically squeezed out two words: “No.”
Liang He seemed not to hear what he said, hands on her waist: “You get up!”
The people around were laughing.
Taking advantage of the cover of their laughter, Jiang Ran’s gaze swept over Liang He’s face, inevitably impressed by her liveliness.
She thought of many novels where the ice prince protagonist might initially cherish his white moonlight, but eventually be won over by a lively heroine completely different from the white moonlight type…
So when Beijiao was dragged away by three or four people who should also be in that carving group, she looked at the young man surrounded by stars and slowly withdrew her gaze.
Jiang Ran thought of the conversation she had with Qiu Nian after their date the day before—
“I want to ask you, how would you feel if Li Xingnan helped someone else install and adjust their bindings?”
“What’s wrong with adjusting the bindings?” Qiu Nian asked, “Is it the kind where you hold the owner of the bindings in your arms and teach them how to adjust it hand in hand?”
“…No, just adjusting the bindings.”
“Did Beijiao adjust someone else’s bindings and you saw it?”
“…No.”
“No? It’s written all over your face—you’re seriously messed up. Just think about how you’d feel if Song Die adjusted someone else’s bindings.”
Jiang Ran touched her heart and realized the answer she received was: What’s wrong with adjusting the bindings? It’s just adjusting the bindings. It’s as common as helping someone insert the oil gun into the fuel nozzle during a refueling session.
(Note: “加油战” was interpreted as a possible typo or colloquialism for a refueling scenario, hence translated contextually.)
Qiu Nian pointed at her face: “Right, that’s exactly what a normal person would think.”
Jiang Ran: “…”
She forced herself to tell herself not to get sick, and as long as she didn’t imagine the so-called “sincere efforts will move even the hardest heart,” she could calmly finish tying her shoes and stand up with her board.
When she queued up for the cable car, the group was already at the summit, making a noisy fuss, each with a blue ribbon tied around their arm or waist as a group symbol.
She supported the railing with one hand and held her face with the other, watching from afar as a girl with long curly hair smiled and bent down to tie the ribbon on Beijiao’s arm. After tying it, she seemed satisfied and patted his arm.
He stood there like a zombie, motionless.
During the photo, she stood in front of him.
Jiang Ran switched the hand she was supporting her face with and suddenly thought of something. She took out her phone and poked Qiu Nian, asking her to screenshot Beijiao’s WeChat background.
Qiu Nian sent a question mark but still sent it over—
The background had changed from a group photo taken at the top of the Songbei Ski Resort, circled by an ugly hand-drawn heart, to a snowscape at the top of Chongli Ski Resort.
The group photo was gone.
Of course, it was gone.
Jiang Ran exited the image and put her phone back in her pocket.
The cable car was almost there, and the group of people below were making a noisy fuss, calling out to each other to stand together with their friends. Beijiao ended up standing in the center, the prime spot. When taking the photo, those people laughed and shouted for him to take off his face guard, saying that such a good-looking face shouldn’t be hidden.
Jiang Ran got off the cable car and slid past them on one foot, her board under her.
She had done a great job of disguising herself. A quick glance showed that there were several people she recognized, but none of them recognized her.
With her back to the group, she occasionally still heard Liang He shouting at Beijiao to smile and not look so serious. She strongly resisted the urge to look back, finished putting on her board, and slid down the slope—
At first, she didn’t dare to slide too fast, just pushing the board. When she was sure she was out of sight from the summit, she started to really slide.
The snow at R&F in the afternoon was terrible, loose and messy with snow bumps everywhere. Originally, this wouldn’t have been a problem for Jiang Ran, but when she tried to do a 540° jump to warm up, she fell heavily again.
It might have been because she hadn’t used the RX board in a long time and wasn’t familiar with it, or maybe she didn’t have enough strength because she hadn’t eaten lunch.
Rubbing her sore arm, Jiang Ran felt that everything was so boring.
Sitting on the slope, she opened her phone and typed to Qiu Nian—
[Who’s My Little Duck: I want to go back to Harbin.]
…
On the mountain, the photographer stood in front, asking everyone to get ready for the photo, but the group was noisy and no one really paid attention.
Beijiao slightly furrowed his brows, his eyes fixed on the advanced slope not far away. The slope blocked most of his view until the woman became a small dot sliding to a relatively flat area.
The woman, who had inexplicably pushed the board through the first half of the slope, caught his eye. He saw her jump, not sure if she was trying for a 720° or a 540°, but she fell heavily on her side when she landed, rolling out a circle.
Beijiao raised his hand, pushing through the people in front of him to move forward.
Liang He was pushed aside and turned around, puzzled: “What’s wrong?”
Beijiao seemed to just come back to his senses. When he looked closely, the woman had already gotten up by herself, rubbing her arm, with a few strands of long hair escaping from her snowsuit.
His lifted foot came back down onto the snow.
“It’s nothing.”
He said.
…
Jiang Ran went straight to the coffee shop with her board and disappeared for a while to drink a cup of hot chocolate. When she came back, the noisy group was gone.
They should have already left.
Most of the carving enthusiasts liked to come early in the morning and ski for the morning, then after making a mess of the snow in the afternoon, they would go home.
She pulled her hair out from under her snowsuit and let her face guard down, removing her disguise. She skied two spots calmly, not thinking about anything, and didn’t fall as much.
When she finally felt a bit tired and was preparing to go home, she checked the time and realized the sun was about to set. She walked out of the ski resort with her snowboard, sore all over, and casually looked at her phone. She saw a message from Song Die from half an hour ago: I’m done. Should I come find you?
She was stunned, took off her Bluetooth earphones, and was just about to say there was no need when she looked up and saw a young man wearing AJ and jeans, a loose hoodie, hands in his pockets, standing in the center of the ski equipment hall, smiling at her.
His casual outfit stood out among the people around him who were wearing bulky snowsuits.
“How did you get here? It’s already so late.” Jiang Ran walked over.
Song Die said, “At this time, what else could I be doing besides coming to find you for dinner?”
“Ah?” Jiang Ran was a bit confused, “Oh, I didn’t check my phone earlier. I only saw your message after I came out of the ski resort. I should have known you wouldn’t come all the way here. We could have met somewhere in the middle.”
“It’s fine. Driving isn’t tiring. I just looked at meeting materials all day today.” Song Die naturally reached out and brushed the snow off her shoulder.
His fingers paused for a moment, then he pushed some of her messy hair that was hanging in front of her eyes behind her ear.
They walked toward the storage lockers while talking.
Jiang Ran changed her clothes, and Song Die took her ski bag from her hand, freeing up his other hand. He smiled and asked, “Can we hold hands?”
Jiang Ran was just about to answer when she thought something was off and said, “When did holding hands require my permission?”
He laughed. Seeing she wasn’t very enthusiastic, he gave up.
Their conversation was interrupted by a loud noise from several locker areas away.
Jiang Ran was startled, “What was that!”
Song Die looked over but didn’t see anything, shaking his head in confusion.
When they finished changing and were leaving the locker area, they passed the row of chairs where the loud noise had come from earlier. Jiang Ran curiously peeked and, sure enough, saw nothing except for a half-open bottle of mineral water in the corner. The bottle was severely deformed, and the cap was lying a couple of meters away. Half the bottle of water had spilled all over the ground.
However, since this area was already full of melted snow water shaken off by others, no one really paid attention.
…
That’s how she spent a hazy month.
Jiang Ran saw Beijiao a few more times at R&F. Once, he was giving a lesson, hand in hand with a girl while pushing the board, the girl staring at the instructor’s face as if the slope was on his face.
Another time, he was skiing by himself, trying a nollie 360° that someone had taught him. She could tell he was trying to practice a 540°, and Jiang Ran, with a bit of mischief, went home and sent a tutorial on nollie 540°. At the moment she clicked send, she thought: Come on! Don’t you dare see this! Hearing even a single word from you is mutual pollution!
There were a few more times when he was skiing with Liang He or other friends, recording videos of each other.
In June, Guangzhou officially entered summer. Beijiao’s followers on the short video app had grown to over ten thousand, and his followers strangely overlapped heavily with those of Dan Chong, who was jumping in the park next door—
Probably because of his face.
Mid-June, Jiang Ran started preparing to return to Harbin. She felt that if she kept seeing Beijiao, she wouldn’t be able to perform a proper nollie 720° this summer.
Men indeed affected her progress.
However, Qiu Nian had a different opinion. Most of their friends were in Guangzhou, and her birthday was coming up soon. She felt she should at least stay until after her birthday.
Jiang Ran thought about it and agreed. She couldn’t avoid men to the point of not celebrating her birthday. That would be too pathetic—
The previous two years, she hadn’t celebrated her birthday properly because the first year she hadn’t yet made friends with Qiu Nian and others, and the only one around was Beijiao;
The second year, she had many friends, except for Beijiao, and the country prohibited gatherings of more than three people…
This year she was used to it. Fortunately, Guangzhou had opened up entertainment venues, and as long as it wasn’t an illegal gathering, who cared, she wanted to celebrate her birthday.
Jiang Ran’s birthday was on June 23rd, the second day of the Cancer zodiac. It was said that Cancer and Scorpio were the most compatible, she rolled her eyes to the sky.
On her birthday, many people came to Jiang Ran’s apartment, which was essentially a party. The pandemic had kept the kids cooped up for so long, and finally finding a suitable reason, a proper time, and a legal gathering made everyone very enthusiastic.
The coffee table was cleared and had five or six cakes on it. At first, Jiang Ran was very patient about opening and closing the door to greet guests, but after doing it ten times, she felt like her door was about to break—
So she just left the door open and let people come and go freely.
After all, her apartment had a private elevator and a private household, so she didn’t have to worry about disturbing the so-called neighbors.
From the afternoon onwards, people kept coming and going. A group of people noisily went in and out of the kitchen, and everyone had dinner together. Because there were so many people, they had a hotpot. It was summer, but the air conditioning was set to 18 degrees, and having hotpot was quite a unique experience.
When it got dark, Song Die finally finished his work and came over. By this time, most of the people in the house were skiers who knew that Jiang Ran had recently started dating a little brother—
Not officially together, but it seemed like they were close.
When Song Die arrived, everyone started making a fuss. Jiang Ran was holding a glass of wine and laughing, but her eyes kept glancing past the young man’s shoulder toward the entrance behind him.
It was already dark outside, and everyone who was supposed to come had arrived.
Her face was forcibly turned sideways by a pair of warm, soft fingertips. Qiu Nian smiled and whispered in a voice only the two of them could hear, “Stop looking. Song Die is already here. It’s impolite to keep staring.”
Even Qiu Nian thought that she and Song Die were on the verge of taking the final step.
Jiang Ran turned her head just in time to see Song Die taking off his coat and casually placing it on the sofa while chatting with Li Xingnan. Somehow, he had already become quite familiar with all her friends.
“Why does it feel like everyone is expecting something to happen between us?”
“Just go for it,” Qiu Nian said indifferently. “It’s more like ‘no more shops after this village.'”
Jiang Ran clicked her tongue in response.
In the late hours of the night, everything started to fall into chaos when Zhao Keshan, heartbroken and drunk, began acting out on the sofa, jumping up and down. He invited a bunch of people Jiang Ran both knew and didn’t know, and her living room turned into a disco.
She was forced to drink most of a bottle of white wine and half a bottle of whiskey. It was a wonder she could still stand. She stood in her house and recorded a video carefully, announcing that although it was her home, any accidents or mishaps from now on had nothing to do with her. If anyone had complaints, they should contact Zhao Keshan.
As she was recording the video, Zhao was behind her, playing a game with a new female acquaintance: “I take off one piece of clothing if I lose, and you do the same if you lose.” He was laughing hysterically, and then suddenly burst into silent tears, covering his face.
He looked like a complete lunatic.
Jiang Ran found them too noisy and pushed open the glass door to go to the balcony. She had just stood in the night breeze for three minutes when someone placed a coat with a faint scent of tobacco around her shoulders.
She turned around and smiled at Song Die.
“How old are you now?”
“Twenty-six,” she sighed. “After midnight, I’m practically knocking on thirty.”
“You’re still young.”
“My dad started warning me this morning that he’s going to start pushing me to get married. If I don’t take action myself, he’ll set me up on blind dates…” Jiang Ran smiled. “It’s fine, anyway, because of the pandemic. He’s in Canada, so he can’t come back, and I can’t go there either.”
She felt a little melancholic as she said this. It had been two years since she last saw her father. They were both alive and well, yet unable to meet due to flight suspensions, visa issues, and other absurd circumstances.
When Song Die heard her mention “blind dates,” he chuckled and smiled. “Next time you video call him, invite me along.”
“Don’t do that. Then he’ll finally have a specific target for matchmaking,” Jiang Ran waved her hand. “I can’t handle that—”
Song Die looked at her flushed cheeks from the alcohol and knew she understood his meaning, but she pretended not to notice with a hazy gaze.
Just as he was about to say something, the balcony door slid open, and Zhao Keshan rushed in with a goofy duck-like laugh: “Hurry up, hurry up! It’s almost midnight! Let’s play the game!”
Jiang Ran was dragged back into the room by him. A group of people were eagerly waiting to play games. Everyone was an adult, but acting like mischievous kids, waiting for the candles to be lit at midnight. After Jiang Ran blew out the candles, the lights would be turned off for three minutes.
During those three minutes, anything went.
“Can you guys not be so perverted?”
“How perverted can you get in three minutes? What can you even do?”
“Exactly! Even taking off your pants would take at least a minute—”
“That’s because you’re wearing complicated pants. Look at me, I can do it in two seconds!”
Everyone laughed and giggled. Jiang Ran was surrounded by the crowd. By now, most of the lights in the room had been turned off, while Qiu Nian and Li Xingnan were inserting six candles into each of the many cakes.
Ju Jie lit a lighter, and when the first cake’s candles were all lit, Zhao Keshan happily turned off all the lights.
The only source of light in the room was the candles in front of Jiang Ran. In the flickering orange glow, she lifted her eyes slightly, as if she were having a hallucination—
It seemed as if the person she longed to see had walked in through the door, hands in his pockets, leaning down as he approached.
Her heart skipped a beat. She looked again, only to find the doorway empty.
She touched her nose lightly and secretly mocked herself for imagining too much.
Then all the candles on the cakes were lit, and the alarm clock in Qiu Nian’s hand rang for midnight.
“Happy birthday, Jiang Ran.”
Qiu Nian’s voice was unusually tender. Through the flickering candlelight, all her friends surrounded her, smiling and offering their blessings.
Touched, Jiang Ran puffed her cheeks and blew hard, painstakingly extinguishing each candle one by one. As the room grew darker and darker, the teasing and laughter from the people around her grew louder and louder—
“It’s starting! It’s starting!”
“Get ready!”
“My sweetie, come here to your big brother! I’ll protect you first!”
Finally, she blew out the last candle.
The room instantly plunged into complete darkness.
The curtains were drawn, not even a hint of starlight could penetrate.
Suddenly, everything went pitch black, and Jiang Ran’s eyes struggled to adjust when she heard someone shout—
“Damn it, don’t step on me!”
“Ahh, who touched my dick! Pervert! Waaah!”
“Don’t push!”
“Where’s the sofa! Where’s the sofa! Let me lie down, I have a headache!”
“Happy birthday! Let’s make this year productive!”
“Where’s Jiang Ran? Come give me a kiss!”
“Who is that! Hands where are they going!”
Jiang Ran fumbled her way up from in front of the cake, accidentally touching the edge of one and getting cream on her hand. Instinctively, she put her fingers in her mouth to lick them off, blinking hard to adjust to the darkness.
At that moment, she felt someone approaching.
She instinctively shrank back but accidentally collided with the person’s solid chest. She froze, clearly sensing that the person had also gone silent for a moment.
“Sorry—”
Before she could react, a large hand reached out and precisely gripped the back of her head, fingers sliding into her hair.
The next second, lips carrying a faint scent of tobacco pressed against hers.
Jiang Ran panicked, but the person’s grip was too strong, pinning her in place. His tongue relentlessly forced its way into her mouth, invading and plundering, entwining with her tongue, then gently coaxing.
The alcohol dulled her usually sharp senses. It felt as if all the blood in her body had rushed into her heart at once. She gasped for breath, her mind going completely blank.
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