A Walk? Let’s Talk

Li Xingqing took the tissue and stood up. Beside her, Xi Zhen closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the long-missed breeze. It drifted in from the open fields, carrying dandelion seeds and the scent of some unknown flowers, brushing through her hair before slipping away.

“Even kids have things on their minds?” After a long while, Xi Zhen opened her eyes and looked at Li Xingqing.

Those clear eyes left Li Xingqing feeling as if she had nowhere to hide. In that instant, she was reminded that this person had once seen through her lie from the very beginning, and a reckless, self-defeating feeling rose in her chest.

“Yes, I’m very troubled.” She nodded, subconsciously assuming the person beside her would start asking what was bothering her, then offer a few harmless words that only sounded comforting. While she was thinking about how to brush it off, she saw Xi Zhen bend down and pick a wildflower that was blooming brightly.

“Do you know what flower this is?”

What an odd question. Li Xingqing didn’t know what Xi Zhen was up to, but she still honestly shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“This flower is called mallow. It blooms from June all the way to October, so its flowering period is pretty long.” Xi Zhen twirled the tiny petals between her fingers, pinching the stem. “And its flower language is—irony.”

“Irony?” Li Xingqing was a little surprised. She hadn’t expected a flower that at least looked somewhat pretty to have that meaning.

“Yes. Legend says that during the Roman Empire, a satirical poet once praised it for its very good invigorating effect. People came to believe it was the source of satirists’ power, so they gave it the flower language of irony.”

“This irony isn’t that irony.” Li Xingqing nodded; she understood now. Not the verb irony, but the noun irony.

Xi Zhen let go of the stem, and the small pink-purple bloom drifted lightly down.

“Yes, irony. It sounds sharp, but it’s actually very gentle. Poets use it to wake themselves up and write biting lines; the targets are the absurdities and injustices of the world, while it itself is nothing more than a silent accomplice.” She lifted her head and looked at Li Xingqing. “So isn’t irony itself just clarity?”

Li Xingqing’s heart stirred slightly. She suddenly understood Xi Zhen’s intention.

Because mallows brought poets clarity, they were burdened with a bad reputation. It only showed that most people preferred to drift along and didn’t want to face pain. Xi Zhen bringing it up now was her roundabout way of comforting her.

So she really was being treated like a child.

But Li Xingqing didn’t reject that warmth. She picked up the mallow that had fallen to the ground and tucked it into her pocket, then said to Xi Zhen, “Thank you.”

“I already said there’s no need to be polite. Why are you still thanking me?” Xi Zhen smiled as she watched her pick up the flower, then asked, “Want to take a walk? I remember you still owe me a meal.”

Hearing that, Li Xingqing remembered.

At that little home-style restaurant, she really had promised to treat Xi Zhen to a meal next time.

It was just that lately, with filming for *Seal the Heart* starting and one thing after another happening, she had completely forgotten about it.

She checked the time again. It was actually about time for dinner. The evening scene had already been discussed in advance, so she probably wasn’t needed for the moment.

Li Xingqing looked back at Xi Zhen; her meaning was obvious.

“Bai Mo doesn’t have a scene tonight, and I’m off too.”

With that confirmed, the two of them reached an agreement instantly.

Since they were near the film base, there were plenty of restaurants around. Li Xingqing had originally planned to find somewhere a little more expensive to make up for it, but in this kind of setting, that clearly wasn’t realistic.

More importantly, she still remembered the lie she had once told in front of Xi Zhen: that her family background wasn’t great, and she worked part-time to help support her household.

For now, it was better not to let that lie be exposed.

Otherwise, she couldn’t even imagine what kind of image she had in Xi Zhen’s eyes.

A complete and utter liar? Better not.

Li Xingqing made up her mind in just one second; she truly hadn’t realized how much this lie would cost her in the future.

Xi Zhen really was very considerate. Thinking of not letting Li Xingqing spend too much, she deliberately didn’t choose anywhere expensive.

They went to eat hotpot; it was a chain restaurant, known for being affordable.

This time, at last, their tastes were aligned. Li Xingqing, who couldn’t handle much spice, and Xi Zhen, who loved spicy food, no longer had to give in to each other. They had a pleasant meal.

During it, Li Xingqing stubbornly insisted on testing the power of the spicy pot. Unfortunately, it ended in complete defeat. Still, she won Xi Zhen’s heartfelt laughter.

That didn’t seem like a loss either. Li Xingqing drank water in long gulps, openly taking in Xi Zhen’s smile.

After dinner, it was already late, and the crew on their end was probably wrapping up too. The two of them discussed it and decided to walk back to the old house, as if making up for the walk they hadn’t been able to take together last time.

The alley was still long, only this time the old lady wasn’t sitting at the doorway anymore.

Most of the households had already closed their doors, if not locked them. It was late; going to bed with the doors shut was only natural.

With Xi Zhen beside her, someone born with an excellent sense of direction, Li Xingqing had no need to open a navigation app. The two of them walked along with empty hands, chatting idly. Though everything they said was trivial, it didn’t feel boring at all.

“You said last time that your birthday is on the seventeenth?” Right now it was October, so Xi Zhen didn’t repeat the month.

“Yes.” That was the truth. Though she didn’t know why Xi Zhen suddenly brought it up, Li Xingqing still nodded.

“Your twentieth birthday?” Xi Zhen asked step by step.

“Yes, twenty by the lunar calendar, though technically I’m already twenty-one.”

“And you’re in your fourth year of university?” Last time, when Bai Mo had asked Li Xingqing’s age in the car, Xi Zhen had felt something was off. Then she remembered that the little thing was probably hiding out from her family, so making up a degree was indeed very reasonable.

“My fourth year is real.” Realizing there was teasing in Xi Zhen’s words, Li Xingqing hurriedly added, “I skipped a grade, and my birthday falls a little later in the year.”

“Oh, so you’re a little genius who could skip grades. Your grades must be excellent.” Xi Zhen played along very well.

“They’re not that great.” Li Xingqing had heard the word genius so often since she was little that she thought she had long since become immune to it; yet now, hearing Xi Zhen say it, her ears inexplicably turned red, and there was a warm, swollen feeling in her chest as well.

“Haha, you’re being modest.” Xi Zhen recalled the name of the university she had seen on Li Xingqing’s resume and felt that Li Xingqing really was being far too modest.

She didn’t know how this person’s resume had ended up in her hands in the first place, but looking at it now, hiring her had been an extremely correct decision.

“How old is Sister Zhen this year?” Li Xingqing had long since forgotten that asking someone’s age could be rude; or rather, Xi Zhen simply didn’t care about such things at all right now.

“I’m ten years older than you. Quite a lot, right?” she answered readily, as if she didn’t mind at all.

Ten years?

Li Xingqing rolled those two words around in her mind several times, and in the end, she sincerely felt that it wasn’t that much.

So she said solemnly, “Not really. Sister Zhen looks very young. Besides, age is just experience.”

Unexpectedly, such a formal answer could be given in response to her offhand teasing, and Xi Zhen was amused.

“Do I really look young?” She suddenly leaned her face close to Li Xingqing, then pulled back again, lifting a finger to hook Li Xingqing’s cheek. “Look at all that collagen; no comparison.”

Li Xingqing: “...”

Having succeeded in her little scheme and neatly sidestepping the age topic, Xi Zhen burst out laughing again.

Somebody’s dim yellow light spilled down, stretching their shadows longer and longer.

Li Xingqing seemed to hear the sound of her own heartbeat, like a pot of water boiling, gurgling nonstop. She didn’t choose to turn down the heat; instead, she let that warmth swell in her chest, waiting only for the moment the lid would be lifted.

The town itself wasn’t big, so they arrived after only a few steps.

The motion-sensor light newly installed downstairs at the old house was dutifully working away. With darkness no longer limiting her, Xi Zhen’s steps had been much smoother lately.

She turned to Li Xingqing and praised her, “The neighbors around here really get along well. I only mentioned the streetlight issue to the guy next door a while ago, and I didn’t expect them to have fixed it by the time I came back.”

The night Xi Zhen noticed the light was broken, she had asked the neighbor next door the very next day whose line it was connected to. The neighbors next door were a family of six, and the one who answered was a very straightforward older brother. As soon as he heard Xi Zhen asking, he knew what was going on. He quickly explained that the line was connected to the public supply, so there was no need to worry about electricity costs.

After hearing that, Xi Zhen nodded and planned to find someone to fix it when she had a chance. She hadn’t expected that when she came back that night, the light would already be on. Naturally, she assumed it had been done by that forthright neighbor.

“Yes, they are really harmonious.” Li Xingqing nodded in agreement, glanced up at the glowing bulb, and said nothing in the end.

Seeing that she had nothing to do at the moment, Li Xingqing didn’t care what Xi Zhen was going to do and simply turned back into the house.

With the balcony curtain drawn, she sat down at the desk by the window; her hand, however, reached into her pocket. When it came out again, her fingers were pinching a flower that seemed to have suffered quite a bit.

—Mallow?

Li Xingqing looked at the petals, opened the notebook she used for notes, and carefully tucked it inside.

But just as she closed the book, something bright slipped out from the title page. She pressed it down with a quick flick of her fingers, only then realizing it was the strawberry-flavored candy wrapper.

The wrapper had been tucked inside the book for quite a while. Though its surface still looked a little wrinkled, it had already been pressed flat.

Li Xingqing subconsciously brought the wrapper to her nose. After so many days, there was hardly any scent left. But she still seemed to catch that faint perfume unique to Xi Zhen.

The rabbit on the bedside still said nothing. Only when Li Xingqing realized exactly what she had done did she get a fright. She shut the notebook, put it properly into her backpack, and then began studying tomorrow’s scene.

Although she was only a scriptwriter following the production, Ke Wei was never rigid about how she used people. More importantly, there were already many young faces in the crew, and Li Xingqing had followed her in helping several actors with their scenes.

And the price of getting off work early today was that tomorrow she would have to shoot two major scenes back to back. Looking at the script, which wasn’t even a few pages long, she figured that wrapping up in ten hours would already count as very good. Li Xingqing opened the script and started revising and patching it up again.

The light in her room stayed on very late. Unfortunately, what she didn’t know was that the light in the next room went out even later than hers.

Author’s Note:

srds, randomly picking flowers is not a good habit.

Li Xingqing: She’s comforting me; she must love me very much.

Xi Zhen: She looks so pitiful. I should dote on her a little.