After walking through a block and making several turns, the girl from the flower shop and I finally arrived at a small snack shop. She smiled at me and indicated that this was the place.
I thanked her and then said, “Let me treat you to a late-night snack to thank you for showing me the way.”
She continued typing her reply on her phone: “I always have my late-night snack here after closing the shop, but I don’t need you to treat me. We’re just strangers.”
I smiled and replied, “There’s no conflict between being strangers and sharing a late-night snack. After I treat you tonight, we can still remain strangers.”
She finally responded with a pure smile rarely seen in this restless society and nodded, accepting my offer.
We ordered two bowls of millet porridge and a steamer basket of buns, then found a corner near the wall to sit down. She immediately took out a notebook from her bag, seemingly calculating the day’s accounts. Feeling her focus, my restless heart finally calmed a bit, and I once again emptied my mind, gazing outside at the steaming baskets.
The shop owner finally brought our food, and I said to her, “Let’s eat first; the porridge won’t taste good if it gets cold.”
She nodded, put the notebook back into her handbag, and began eating with me. She was very considerate and carefully prepared a small plate of pickled vegetables for me, bringing some flavor to this otherwise tasteless night.
After thanking her again, I asked, “I still don’t know your name yet!”
She continued communicating by typing on her phone: “You can just call me Xiaojun.”
“Xiaojun!” I instinctively called out, finding it somewhat of a coincidence. The female singer I admired most in my life was named Junzi. Because of this coincidence, my fondness for her grew a little, and my sympathy deepened as well. A person must feel far lonelier living in a world without sound… In truth, compared to the innate misfortune of people like her, the romantic entanglements that seem so life-and-death to us appear somewhat trivial and exaggerated.
I continued, “Xiaojun, starting tomorrow, could you prepare a bouquet expressing beautiful love for me every day?”
“Why every day?”
“My girlfriend went abroad, and I miss her a lot… So I want to send her a bouquet every day, telling her that I’m waiting for her each day.”
“Does she make you feel very insecure?”
This was clearly Xiaojun’s immediate reaction, yet it hit the nail on the head. In fact, during my relationship with Mi Cai, I had always felt extremely insecure, even pressuring her into marriage at one point. Yet to this day, I still can’t figure out where this sense of insecurity originated.
I couldn’t answer her question. After smiling at her, I changed the topic and asked, “Why don’t you have a counter for selling cigarettes? And the cigarettes you sell seem to be the kinds students prefer.”
This time, Xiaojun typed for quite a while before showing me her reply: “On the street where the flower shop is located, there’s a university. One student from there comes from a family that runs a tobacco and liquor store in the city. He brings me some of the cigarettes students like to smoke for me to sell on consignment. Since I don’t have a business license for selling cigarettes, I didn’t set up a counter… Those students are very nice; sometimes they’d rather take a detour just to come to my place to buy cigarettes, allowing me to earn some money. But smoking is really a bad thing!”
“Everyone knows smoking is bad, yet cigarettes remain the best-selling product. Many people like to pretend they don’t know what they actually do know, simply because they’re unwilling to give up the pleasure smoking brings. But those students are pretty good—they may have limited strength, yet they still try their best to do what they should do… Xiaojun, tomorrow show me your documents, and I’ll help you apply for a cigarette-selling license. Then you can set up a counter.”
“It’s really hard to get a license for selling tobacco and alcohol nowadays. Why would you help me?… We’ve only just met!”
I smiled and replied, “You should let go of your wariness toward strangers because my motivation is very simple. I just think that next time I come to buy cigarettes from you, I’ll be able to buy exactly the brand I want!”
…
After parting ways with Xiaojun, whom I had unexpectedly met tonight, I finally returned to my old house with a weary body. After washing up, I habitually lay on the bed, staring at the somewhat empty room. I felt as if I had experienced a sufficiently long period of time. In reality, Mi Cai was still on the plane flying to America, and only ten hours had actually passed.
For me, it was a somewhat bewildering night. I couldn’t quite imagine what kind of situation and scene would surround Leyao’s wedding, nor could I imagine what my own wedding would be like. But these things really would happen in the not-so-distant future, especially Leyao’s wedding, which could literally be counted down by days. She would go to Beijing tomorrow to start making wedding arrangements.
Therefore, I stopped thinking about my relatively distant wedding and instead imagined: What would my mood be like when I someday received Leyao’s wedding invitation… Perhaps my feelings would depend on her groom. If that man wasn’t a typical rich young man with a roving eye and was willing to give Leyao a happy and bright tomorrow, I would genuinely be happy for her. But I wouldn’t attend her wedding because I wouldn’t have the face to face this woman who had once carried my child during the ceremony…
The notification tone of my phone suddenly rang out in the dark. I picked it up and saw it was from Mi Cai. She told me she had arrived in America and was on her way to the hotel. Only then did I realize that it was already the second half of the night back home.
My thoughts began to wander again. I felt that fate was a kind of dizziness for me. If I had never met Mi Cai, what kind of life would I be living now?
If Leyao hadn’t had that child aborted, would we have already gotten married because of the child?
With such a series of questions I couldn’t figure out, I finally sent a message to Mi Cai: “After you come back to China, you must marry me, okay?”
Dawn finally pierced through the depth of the night. A beam of light from outside slipped through the curtains, shining onto the foot of my bed. However, I hadn’t received a reply from Mi Cai yet, so my mood once again fell into anxiety due to the sensitivity of this particular period.
Finally, Mi Cai replied with a message: “Zhaoyang, can you tell me what happened that made you feel so insecure?… In this question, I see your cowardice and anxious worries!”
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