[LMAO, fam! The Lin Yi mom fan in my dorm had a breakdown. She ran out onto the balcony and shouted at the sky, the ground, and all the students on campus: Lin Yi! Mommy clearly picked out a girlfriend for you, why didn’t you want her! Isn’t the Captain good enough? Isn’t Shichen great! Why did it have to be Xu Shuyan! Do you love her that much???]
[And just as she finished wailing, a question came from the dorm building across from us: What do you Lin Yi fans mean by that! You look down on our Xu Shuyan? Our Xu Shuyan, from a wealthy family, the group’s only rapper, the youngest mentor on a survival show, whose solo magazine cover sales are number one by a landslide-how is she not worthy of Lin Yi? Explain yourselves!!!]
[Then it got even better. My roommate was still in shock that the Xu Shuyan mom fan could recite so many titles in one breath and was trying to figure out how to clap back, when someone from the dorm diagonally across from us shouted through a small megaphone: Qi Shi is locked! Teammate mommies, don’t drag unrelated people into your fight! Thanks! If Yan Zhi You Yi turns out to be real, I’m willing to chip in two hundred!]
[I’m dying, I actually got to ship several couples at once!]
[Damn, what an exciting turn of events, hahahahahahaha]
[Such a rich college life, such lively college girls, hahahahaha]
[The two mommies should just give up. What’s the use of trying to find a partner for your daughter all the time? You have to respect your daughter’s wishes! What can you do if Lin Yi just happens to like Xu Shuyan’s type!]
[The funniest part is that Xu Shuyan’s mommy fan doesn’t approve of this marriage either, but the moment she heard Lin Yi’s side looking down on Xu Shuyan, her first instinct was to defend her daughter, hahahahaha]
[Damn! Same world, different outcomes! In my dorm, there’s a group fan, a Xu Shuyan mom fan, a Lin Yi mom fan, and I’m a CP fan. Today, when the airport photos of them going home came out, my two roommates actually shook hands and made peace! The Xu Shuyan mom fan said, ‘Lin Yi is pretty good, the main thing is that my daughter likes her.’ The Lin Yi mom fan said, ‘Xu Shuyan isn’t bad, the main thing is that I trust my daughter’s taste.’]
[…Such dedicated mommies, even at a time like this, they’re still praising their own idol.]
[My roommate is a Xu Shuyan and Zhou Shichen CP fan. She always firmly believed that the rarepairs were the real ones, and the more fanservice a ship did, the faker it was. Now she’s started contemplating life, struggling between shipping them and not shipping them.]
[Thank you to all you internet comedians for bringing a little bit of joy to my miserable finals month. Thank you!]
Lin Yi swore she had taken every possible precaution bringing Xu Shuyan home this time, even deliberately buying tickets for the latest flight. But she hadn’t anticipated being on the same flight as a fansite master who was returning to Mountain City after the winter concert. Since they’d been exposed, however, they stopped being sneaky and even agreed when the fansite master asked if she could post their arrival photos online.
The fansite master often followed their schedules and had become a familiar face. After excitedly getting a personalized autograph, she blurted out, “I wish you happiness!”
Lin Yi: “?”
Xu Shuyan: “Th-“
“No, no!” The fansite master suddenly came to her senses, mentally scolding herself for shipping the CP right in front of them. She quickly corrected herself, “I mean, may your friendship last forever!”
Lin Yi: “?”
Xu Shuyan: “?”
The two of them exchanged a look. “…”
They might as well have just wished them happiness!
Although they had been so composed in front of the fansite master, thinking about it again after they got back, they still felt a little guilty.
“We didn’t do anything inappropriate on the plane, right?” Lin Yi brought up the question again. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed after her shower, trying hard to remember. “No hand-holding, no leaning our heads together, no kissing, right?”
Xu Shuyan was engrossed in flipping through Lin Yi’s childhood photo album and completely ignored her question, giving a perfunctory “mhm.”
Lin Yi was not pleased. She stuck out her foot and poked Xu Shuyan in the waist. “Xu Shuyan! Please answer my question!”
Xu Shuyan subconsciously grabbed her foot and tickled the sole. She looked up, thought for a moment, then said helplessly, “You fell asleep as soon as the plane took off. I hardly had a chance to do anything inappropriate with you!”
“Then what were you doing after I fell asleep?” Lin Yi dodged her hand, her movements small, playing hard to get as if she were flirting.
“I watched a movie.” Xu Shuyan leaned back into Lin Yi’s arms, recalling the plot. “…It was terrible. It ended up putting me to sleep.”
Lin Yi laughed at her. “Wouldn’t it have been better to just sleep? Why suffer through a bad movie?”
Xu Shuyan muttered, “It was hypnotic.”
She leaned into the crook of Lin Yi’s arm, held up the photo album, and looked up at her. “My wife was so cute when she was little.”
Lin Yi deadpanned. “Seriously, my dad… why did he have to dig out this album?” Then she turned to Xu Shuyan, full of righteous indignation. “And you! You’ve been looking at this album ever since you got out of the shower. What’s so interesting about it!”
“It is interesting,” Xu Shuyan said, pointing to one of the photos. “Where was this taken? Why do you look so pouty?”
When Lin Yi’s dad was young, he was a photography enthusiast. The old-fashioned cameras back then weren’t as high-definition, so the photos always had a hazy filter to them. Her dad loved taking pictures of her mom most of all, and would snap a couple of her while he was at it.
“This one…” Lin Yi started to say, then stopped.
“It’s normal if you can’t remember.” Xu Shuyan didn’t think much of it. “You were only four or five here, right? Unless it left a really deep impression, you usually can’t remember things from that age.”
“I remember,” Lin Yi said.
Xu Shuyan looked up. “Hm?”
Lin Yi pulled the photo out of the album. Looking at the pouting little girl in the beige tulle dress with her hair in pigtails, she said, “My dad told me about it.”
“He said that Mountain City gets really hot in the middle of summer. The fan at home would just spin and spin, blowing out warm air. It was a weekend, so he drove my mom and me to the mountains to escape the heat. I didn’t want to go, but my mom said we could pick fruit in the mountains, and she even prepared candy for me. So I was tricked into going!”
“And then?”
“Of course there was no fruit, and there were tons of mosquitoes, so I was very unhappy.” Lin Yi didn’t actually remember this herself; hearing it from her dad was like hearing a story about someone else. Retelling it now, her tone was calm, and it was hard to empathize with the little pouter in the photo. She yawned. “I guess the photo was taken then.”
But Xu Shuyan got indignant on her behalf. “How could they lie to a child! Devious adults!”
Lin Yi was stunned for a second, then fell back on the bed laughing. She played along, “Exactly! If only you had been there, preferably at your current age. I definitely would have followed a pretty older sister anywhere.”
“Me, at my current age, meeting a five-year-old you?” Xu Shuyan asked.
Lin Yi nodded. “What? You wouldn’t be happy with that?”
Xu Shuyan wrinkled her nose. “I really wouldn’t.”
Lin Yi asked, “Why?”
Xu Shuyan cupped her chin, thinking seriously. “How long would I have to wait for you to be old enough to date me?!”
Lin Yi: “…”
She stuffed the photo back in. “Dating is all you think about!”
“If we’re talking about going back in time, I’d definitely go back to when we first joined the company.” Xu Shuyan continued flipping through the album, daydreaming earnestly. “I’d use my personal charm to make you fall for me, and then we could have a little puppy love.”
Lin Yi couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re quite the dreamer.”
After a pause, Lin Yi added, “Let’s go back to that Christmas Eve. You wake up early and wait for me at the door of the practice room. I was so gullible back then, you could have fooled me with just a few words. I definitely would have thought you were so amazing, and maybe I would have fallen for you right then and there.”
Xu Shuyan clapped her hands. “That’s a great idea!”
Lin Yi gave her a gentle push. “Stop dreaming.”
She closed the album. “Hurry up and sleep. We have to go see my mom early tomorrow morning.”
“Wait a minute.” Xu Shuyan was incredibly curious about Lin Yi’s childhood. With every photo she turned to, she would ask, “When was this? What were you doing? Who were you with? Were you happy that day?”
“This one? This was my first time on a Ferris wheel.” Lin Yi looked at the photo carefully. “My mom had already passed away by then.”
The photo was taken by her grandmother, who was on the outside, just as she got on the Ferris wheel. Her dad was sitting next to her, and she was happily making a V-sign at the camera with her chubby little hand.
Lin Yi recalled, “My grandma always told me my mom had gone to heaven, so I was so happy to ride the Ferris wheel. I told my grandma, ‘You can go now, Dad and I are going to heaven to find Mom.’ That’s why I was smiling so brightly. That day… I was very happy.”
Although she didn’t succeed in finding her mom, she played at the amusement park for a long time-the carousel, the Ferris wheel, the little train. In the end, she was tired out and fell asleep on Lao Lin’s shoulder, her dreams filled with the sweetness of cotton candy and sweets.
“What about this one?” Xu Shuyan opened the album again, turning to the photo she had been staring at the longest. “Who is this? Why are you so close to him? You had already joined the company by this point, right? You were about to become a celebrity and you were still taking pictures like this with people?”
In the photo, Lin Yi was standing with a boy in a high school uniform. The boy had his arm familiarly around her shoulder, his hand making a V-sign. It looked like a still from a teen school drama.
Lin Yi: “…You’re asking about him?”
Alarm bells went off in Xu Shuyan’s head. “Are you feeling guilty?”
Lin Yi’s eyes darted away. “You really want to ask about him?”
“Hold on!” Seeing Lin Yi’s guilty expression, Xu Shuyan was overcome with a tidal wave of jealousy. “Isn’t your sexual orientation innate? Were you just good friends with him? Besties? How come you’ve never mentioned him?”
Lin Yi opened her mouth. “I-“
“Aha, Lin Yi!” Xu Shuyan crossed her arms, looking ready to interrogate her. “If you don’t tell me who this person is today, I’m not sleeping! I’ll- I’ll go back to S City overnight!”
A mischievous glint flashed in Lin Yi’s eyes. “Really?”
Xu Shuyan puffed out her cheeks like a pouting balloon and grunted heavily, “Really!”
Lin Yi: “That’s my cousin.”
Xu Shuyan: “…”
Silence filled the room. The quiet was the music of her social demise.
Xu Shuyan wanted to escape, but there was no escape.
“Why aren’t you talking?” Lin Yi teased her. “Xu Shuyan? Yanyan? Rapper Xu? Little vinegar pot? Say something? Are you still going back to S City?”
Xu Shuyan opened her mouth, then closed it again. When she finally spoke, all her bluster was gone. “…You’ve already explained it, so why would I go back?” She picked up the photo and examined it closely. “So it’s our little brother. No wonder he’s so handsome!”
Lin Yi held back a laugh. “Oh?”
Xu Shuyan nodded, feigning seriousness, and deftly shifted the blame to Lin Yi. “Next time you bring me back for the New Year, I’ll make sure to get to know everyone in our family. We’re all family now, it would be bad not to recognize them when we’re out.”
Lin Yi tried to hold it in, but she couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
Xu Shuyan’s face flushed. She put the album on the nightstand, yelled, “You’d better stop laughing!” and started tickling Lin Yi. The more she tickled, the harder Lin Yi laughed, her giggles turning into full-blown laughter until Xu Shuyan pinned her to the bed, sealing her laughter inside her lips with a kiss.
The playful kiss gradually deepened.
Lin Yi wrapped her arms around Xu Shuyan’s neck, her flushed face tilted up as she kissed her passionately. Their lips rubbed against each other, gasps hidden in their intertwined breaths, and the soft sounds of their kissing were especially clear in the quiet room.
Just as Xu Shuyan’s hand moved passionately to pull off Lin Yi’s nightgown, a cough suddenly sounded from the next room. The two of them snapped out of their passionate haze. “!!!”
Lin Yi, who had been dazed from the kissing, sobered up and realized it was her dad coughing next door. She didn’t know if it was just a cough or a reminder for them to be mindful of their limits. Her face reddened, and she mouthed silently, “The soundproofing in my house is bad.”
Xu Shuyan took her hand, looking aggrieved. “I was all ready.”
Lin Yi’s fingertips were slightly warm, then instantly cool, then became scalding hot with her slight movement. Xu Shuyan pressed her lips together and rested her forehead in the hollow of Lin Yi’s neck, swallowing back a soft moan. “…This is torture, baby.”
Her fingertips trembled slightly in the air before slowly pulling back. Lin Yi kissed Xu Shuyan’s hair and coaxed her in a low voice, “Why don’t we wait until we get back? If we’re heard… how embarrassing would that be.”
Xu Shuyan said “no” in a low voice. Afraid that Lin Yi would ignore her, she started acting cute. “No, I want you.”
Lin Yi sighed helplessly. “Then what should we do?”
Xu Shuyan rubbed against her lightly. A jolt like an electric shock went through Lin Yi, and she trembled but didn’t move, just lying there and letting Xu Shuyan do as she pleased. Everything proceeded in silence, carrying a sense of secret taboo that only intensified their desire.
Finally, Xu Shuyan sat up, her face flushed. “…I’m going to take another shower.”
Lin Yi’s face was also red. She let out a flustered “ah.” “Y-You go ahead.”
She watched Xu Shuyan enter the bathroom, the hem of her nightgown soaked with water, fluttering in the breeze. After staring blankly for a while, she rolled over onto her stomach, the scene from just now still replaying in her mind.
Her fingertips grew stiff, moving between the dampness and the warmth, and she quietly clenched them into a small fist.
She screamed ‘Ahhh!’ a few times in her head.
So embarrassing! But so thrilling!
Afraid that Xu Shuyan would come back and see how red her face was, Lin Yi left only a single desk lamp on. It was one her dad had found at an old market, with a dark green lampshade and a pull-cord switch. The light was dim and yellow, making the atmosphere in the room even more intimate.
Listening to the pitter-patter of the water in the bathroom, she couldn’t help but recall, with a touch of melancholy, a line often used in overbearing CEO novels.
Ah, Xu Shuyan! What a vexing little siren!
Winters in Mountain City were cold. The sun hung brightly in the pale sky, offering little warmth, but it managed to shine upon the entire city. As the day wore on, it grew brighter, refracting magnificent colors off the glass windows of the skyscrapers.
An old-fashioned SUV drove unhurriedly across the river bridge. Xu Shuyan was making small talk with Lao Lin.
The last time she came, she had been pretending to be Lin Yi’s girlfriend, and it was during the period when she and Lin Yi were at odds, so she had treated Lao Lin like any other elder. But it was different now. She was the official girlfriend, and this was her wife’s father. She had to communicate with him more.
And through their conversation, she learned quite a bit about Lin Yi’s embarrassing past from the usually quiet Lao Lin.
What Lin Yi considered an embarrassing past, Xu Shuyan found adorable.
She smiled at Lin Yi, who was sitting beside her with her face buried in her scarf, and said, “In third grade, you snuck into the sixth-grade choir to sing, and because you sang so well, the teacher pulled you out for a solo. You even ended up winning an award at a competition. Our Xiao Yi is so amazing.”
She imagined how tiny a third-grade Lin Yi must have been, a little radish sprout among the big sixth graders, looking even smaller. And yet she sang so powerfully and beautifully. Just thinking about it was adorable.
She asked Lin Yi, “How did you manage to fool the teacher?”
Lin Yi let out a frustrated ‘Ahhh!’ and pushed the back of the driver’s seat. “Dad! My dear dad! Why did you tell her that? Can’t you maintain my image in front of my girlfriend?”
Her dad focused on driving and ignored her.
“Tell me, come on, tell me,” Xu Shuyan pestered her, adding righteously, “When you like someone, you have to know everything about them! Isn’t that right, Uncle?”
Lin Yi’s dad grunted in agreement.
Lin Yi: “?”
So now wasn’t the time for focusing on driving and not hearing people talk?
Xu Shuyan smirked.
“Stop smirking like that!” Lin Yi huffed. “Fine. The choir members were chosen from various classes, so they all thought I was from a different class. The teacher who took attendance didn’t come often, so I just wrote my name in the attendance book and snuck in.”
Xu Shuyan nodded thoughtfully. “But what about your height? You must have been a whole head shorter than the sixth graders back then, right?”
“…Someone did ask me once. They asked why I was still so short for a sixth grader.”
“What did you say?”
“I burst into tears on the spot!” Lin Yi looked very proud. “Those older girls panicked right away. They said they didn’t mean anything by it, ‘don’t cry, don’t cry, you’ll still have a chance to grow.’ The next day, someone even secretly brought me eggs and milk.”
Xu Shuyan pictured the scene in her mind. Little Lin Yi must have been so adorable, a beautiful little girl like a pink jade carving, her big eyes full of quirky cleverness. Her tears would have been like little pearls. Whose heart wouldn’t have melted?
Xu Shuyan pinched her nose. “You little liar.”
Lin Yi immediately got indignant. “See! I told you! This incident has damaged my wonderful image in my girlfriend’s eyes! Dad! How are you going to compensate me?”
The car turned a corner. A road sign ahead indicated that the XX Cemetery was five kilometers away. Her dad said calmly, “Well, it’s not like you haven’t said plenty of bad things about me in front of the person I love, right?”
Lin Yi: “…”
That was true.
Lin Yi had been clever since she was a child. She never did things that would make people unhappy and seemed well-behaved and sensible, but she was actually secretly mischievous. Every time she came to see her mom, she would complain about her dad. When she felt wronged from all the complaining, she would start wiping away tears, accusing her dad of “abusing” her and hoping her mom would appear in his dreams that night to give him a fierce scolding.
“So, did Auntie ever appear in his dreams to scold him?” On the path up the mountain, Lao Lin was once again leading the way while she and Xu Shuyan huffed and puffed behind him. Xu Shuyan quietly asked her, “Has Uncle ever mentioned it?”
Lin Yi stuck her hands in her pockets and walked into a patch of sunlight. She thought for a moment. “I peeked at my dad’s diary once.”
Xu Shuyan was surprised. “A diary?”
Lin Yi: “Mhm, it was specifically for recording the dreams he had about my mom.”
She frowned again. “But I don’t remember it very clearly. I started getting a personality after I entered middle school. He didn’t want to bother with me, like his heart had died along with my mom, so I had to be cold to him too.”
Xu Shuyan approved of this and gave her a thumbs-up. “So cool, Xiao Yi.”
It was impossible to say she didn’t mind.
Xu Shuyan quietly slipped her hand into Lin Yi’s pocket, took hold of Lin Yi’s soft hand, and slowly intertwined their fingers.
She thought back to when she was just Lin Yi’s teammate; even then, she hadn’t approved of her dad’s actions. Now that Lin Yi was the person she cherished most, thinking about all those years Lin Yi had spent alone, she couldn’t help but feel wronged on her behalf.
If only she could have met Lin Yi sooner. To have been there to accompany her through those days when she had to find joy in bitterness. To meet her sooner, take her away from Mountain City, run far, far away, across the world, and into the light.
But there were no ‘if onlys.’ So she could only experience Lin Yi’s past through bits and pieces of stories, and through those retellings, it was as if she had walked that path with her.
As was custom, Lin Yi’s dad walked a short distance away, leaving Xu Shuyan and Lin Yi to talk before the grave.
Lin Yi held Xu Shuyan’s hand, walked to the grave, and pulled her down to kneel. The cold of the marble ground seeped through their clothes. Lin Yi took a deep breath. “Mom, I… th-this is Xu Shuyan. You’ve met her before.”
Xu Shuyan grew inexplicably nervous and stuttered, “H-Hello, Auntie!”
“Don’t be nervous.” Lin Yi patted the back of her hand, then turned to the black and white photo on the tombstone. “Last time, I made a wish that she would stop liking Yuanyuan. My wish came true.”
“…She fell in love with me.”
As she spoke, Lin Yi started to feel quite embarrassed. The mountain wind blew past, cooling her warm face. She continued, “Of course, I like her too. So… I wanted to bring her to see you. If you approve, then we’ll be settled.”
Xu Shuyan listened quietly to Lin Yi’s soft ramblings, spoken for the long-departed, for the mountain wind, and for her.
“Of course, even if you don’t approve, I’ll still be with her,” Lin Yi added. “I’ll convince you. Just like you convinced us to accept your departure back then.”
“So, Lin Yi’s wish for this year is for Mom to bless her and Xu Shuyan.”
They kowtowed three times before the grave. The solemn ritual felt like an announcement to the whole world of their love and their vow to be together forever.
“You go on ahead,” Xu Shuyan said. “I want to speak with Auntie alone for a bit.”
Lin Yi hesitated. “About what?”
Xu Shuyan smiled and swung her hand. “Just a few words from the heart. Go wait for me over there, don’t stand in the wind. Be good.”
Lin Yi nodded. “Then don’t keep kneeling, the ground is cold. Also,” she glanced over at her dad, “be quick. My dad is eager to talk to his wife.”
Xu Shuyan drew out her words in a sing-song voice, “I knooow~~~”
After Lin Yi left, she slowly stood up. Her gaze traveled up from the vibrant bouquet of carnations in front of the tombstone to meet the pair of gentle, smiling eyes in the photo. She opened her mouth slightly, but a smile formed first.
“I actually had a lot I wanted to say to you, but now, all that’s left is ‘thank you.'” Her eyes were slightly red. “Thank you for bringing Lin Yi into this world, so that I could meet her.”
“Lin Yi… she’s wonderful.”
“She loves to laugh, and she always seems tsundere and fragile, but deep down, she’s not fragile at all. She’s very brave, with her own ideas and her own principles. I’m so lucky to be in love with her.”
“I hope you can bless us.”
“So, please allow me to ask you for a wish. Xu Shuyan’s wish for this year is for Lin Yi to be healthy and happy, safe and sound, and to forever be Xu Shuyan’s little princess.”
