Not Seventeen

Lin Yang: “……”

The shooting date was two days before the car accident.

Lin Yang opened her IG to check. Five days before that, she had just posted photos of this brunch spot, along with the location.

The food was indeed only average, but the presentation was nice. Lin Yang had just treated it as pretty food to post on IG for her mother and younger sister, proof that she was “enjoying life.”

And yet Xu Zhitong had seen her IG, gone there to eat, and then called it awful……

For a moment, Lin Yang didn’t know where to start.

Her hand a little stiff, she scrolled down. The second post was of a niche temple in Jiangshi.

Xu Zhitong had photographed a cat in the temple. Her technique was still terrible; the cat was blurry, and only its back made it into frame.

Caption: Bad cat.

Lin Yang had posted a story from that temple before, holding the cat and petting it for a long time. The cat had clearly been very well-behaved, mewing softly in her arms.

She kept scrolling.

Xu Zhitong seemed to post about once a week, with no location tag and no tags at all, making them impossible to search.

Using atrocious shooting skills and terse, snarky captions, every single post was apparently a matching photo to something Lin Yang had posted on IG after returning to the country.

—Too many people at the tourist spot. The movie was boring. The cat café stank. The milk tea was too sweet. I can’t understand what this painting is trying to say. The band was impossible to listen to. The mountain on the hike nearly made her get lost. Someone’s taste is so bad.

Lin Yang pressed her lips together.

She scrolled farther back, all the way to before she had returned to the country.

When she was still studying abroad, many things couldn’t be checked domestically.

But Xu Zhitong could still, in a messy and haphazard way, buy the same snacks overseas and go to similar shops to eat similar food……

Even though the captions were still: gross, too sweet, bleh……

There were even skiing photos. Lin Yang didn’t even remember when she had posted that skiing story; she had never once connected those two things.

What Lin Yang did remember was that Xu Zhitong had gone viral with a video of herself in ski gear, earning over a million likes. She was sitting in the snow, looking impossibly cool, carrying that kind of carefree, wild air, as if the sky were her blanket and the earth her bed.

Back then, Xu Zhitong hadn’t dyed her hair yet. She had a head of flowing black hair; her goggles were pushed up, her expression cool and faint, her voice low, and the recording carried the lonely, melancholy wind of the ski slopes as she sang.

The top comment was: Dear heavens, with that face and that voice, who hurt her so badly?

The nested replies of “me” stacked up into the tens of thousands.

Lin Yang had looped that video for half a month; even her dreams were of Xu Zhitong singing that song.

And in this IG photo, Xu Zhitong had lifted her chin, her goggles seeming unable to hide her smug expression. She made a peace sign toward the phone camera, her back practically seeming to have a wagging tail.

Caption: What’s so hard?

……Childish.

Lin Yang realized the ski outfit was the same one, and she also remembered that the story she’d posted abroad had been a compilation of her spectacular falls. It dawned on her that Xu Zhitong was calling her out and provoking her, and she was practically speechless.

She couldn’t quite describe how she felt at that moment. On one hand, it was probably because Xu Zhitong had actually been following her IG all this time, intermittently checking in on the same places; because of that attention, she couldn’t help feeling happy.

On the other hand, there was also a little sighing.

Xu Zhitong’s captions really did look like she “hated” her.

After all, in the third year of high school, after Lin Yang rejected Xu Zhitong’s confession, Xu Zhitong had practically cut her off in a complete falling-out.

During that period before graduation, they blocked every contact method they had for each other. Their once-everything-shared, once-able-to-walk the streets hand in hand until late at night relationship had become one where Xu Zhitong would even deliberately detour if she saw Lin Yang in class.

Lin Yang knew Xu Zhitong must hate her very much.

Because she knew Xu Zhitong valued her pride most and was fiercely competitive.

These IG captions were also proving exactly that.

Lin Yang slowed down, wanting to look through the posts more carefully, when the car came to a stop.

The driver said, “Miss, we’re here.”

Lin Yang had no choice but to put her phone away.

Her coffee shop was in the prime location of the riverside commercial district. The storefront rent was absurdly expensive, and the neighboring stores were almost all top-tier luxury brands. The district had originally not intended to rent this unit to a food-and-beverage business; it would cheapen the area, not to mention that the luxury shops already provided drinks inside.

At the time, Lin Yang wasn’t anxious at all. She turned around and walked into Lin Corporation, sat down across from the large office desk, and handed Madam Lin the location and budget.

Lin Yang rested a hand on her knee, very docile and gentle, and said, “Mother, the surrounding stores are all places I like to shop.”

Madam Lin gave a perfunctory nod and said she’d handle it.

A few days later, the lease contract was handed to Lin Yang. She paid three years’ rent with an expressionless face.

The district manager was furious but too afraid to say anything, silently grumbling over why the Lin family’s eldest daughter had returned to the country without joining the company, inheriting a trillion-yuan family fortune, only to open a coffee shop in their golden location.

After half a year of renovation, the shop had been open for a month when Madam Lin suddenly said she wanted to come take a look.

Her coffee shop was called Why Cafe.

On the large sign, the shop name was in Lin Yang’s handwritten cursive English, placed a little off to the left.

The decor was in black and gray tones; the store was filled with fresh flowers, pink and green interwoven to soften the otherwise industrial hard lines inside.

To waste money, Lin Yang had even shipped back rare artworks from overseas: antique lamps, paintings by famous artists, a classical piano……

She had thrown money around in huge sums, and in return got a soft furnishing style with an extreme sense of class and romantic aesthetic appeal.

Anyone shopping on this street in Jiangshi had some level of discernment and taste. If they passed by and saw the decorations inside, those who recognized good things would come in for a coffee and take photos; even if a cup cost one or two hundred yuan, business was still pretty good.

Lin Yang had studied abroad for six years and returned to the country less than a year ago. She hadn’t attended a single social gathering, and had no reputation at all in Jiangshi’s upper circles.

So few people knew that the mastermind behind this coffee shop was connected to the Lin family. Those who guessed only thought she was some taste-minded young lady with spare money who opened a shop for fun; with so much reckless spending, she might even still be in school.

They had no idea this would be Lin Yang’s entire “career.”

She got out of the car and walked into the coffee shop. She had already told the staff to close for the morning, so there were only employees inside, repeatedly checking every hidden corner for cleanliness and adjusting the decor.

Lin Yang picked up the vase of Floyd roses at the entrance. “Put this away. The leaves are a little yellow.”

The staff member took it and said, “Sorry, we were focused on checking inside the shop and didn’t pay much attention to the flowers outside.”

Lin Yang nodded and said nothing. “I’ll look around inside.”

After one round of inspection, Lin Yang confirmed there were no issues inside. She went to the restroom and touched up her makeup in the mirror.

Her mother wasn’t expecting to see how much money she could make from this shop. Regardless of how wealthy the family was, Lin Yang knew what Madam Lin wanted was for this shop, and for her own business, to be proper, beautiful, and low-key.

There was no plan to meet Xu Zhitong today; she had deliberately dressed very plainly, with no intention of standing out.

Just as when she was abroad, she wouldn’t go to crowded, elite social events; she rarely even spoke to classmates in the same courses. They called her a high mountain flower, though the term carried little praise.

Lin Yang knew, but didn’t care, because she’d learned her lesson.

When she first arrived in Country A, she’d made three or five friends. One midterm break, they went on a trip; that was the ski outing Xu Zhitong later checked in on with the same destination.

The people traveling with her were all outgoing and lively, taking photos all along the way, and their cameras especially loved pointing at the prettiest one, Lin Yang. Every one of them posted photos with her on IG.

But there was a little internet celebrity among them whom Lin Yang’s younger sister followed. When her sister saw it, she sent it to Madam Lin.

Without warning, Madam Lin then cut off her card for a week.

At the time, Lin Yang had just flown back to school from the travel destination and needed to pay tuition; for several days in a row, her card wouldn’t go through no matter how she swiped it, and switching cards didn’t help either. Fortunately, before the deadline she met a kind classmate who lent her a hand when she needed it most, and they later became friends because of that.

A week later, Madam Lin called and asked whether she had learned her lesson.

So Lin Yang could almost no longer remember the last time she went skiing.

-

Hospital.

She didn’t know how long she had slept.

Xu Zhitong had sunk deep into a dream. It was the winter break volunteer activity at the nursing home in her second year of middle school; it was there that she had met Lin Yang.

But unlike reality, in the dream she stood frozen on the stage in the activity room, unable to move, forced to keep performing song after song.

The smiling faces of the elderly people below the stage were blurry. Xu Zhitong struggled to look into the distance, and after who knew how many songs, she finally saw a flash of white by the door.

—Lin Yang!

Even her voice was swallowed by the dream. Xu Zhitong was trapped in place, suddenly drenched in sweat; it was sleep paralysis.

Too late, too late, too late…… She wouldn’t be able to meet Lin Yang now; why was she still here singing.

Just as she was on the verge of collapse, a voice suddenly came through the dream.

“Xu Zhitong, wake up.”

The bizarre dream world suddenly seemed to recede like a tide, yanking away Xu Zhitong’s memory and disappearing without a trace.

By her ear was a familiar, cool voice; Xu Zhitong’s consciousness slowly returned to reality.

She hummed in response and pushed that hand away. “Yangbao, let me sleep a little longer. Call me when the teacher gets here.”

“……”

Xu Zhitong rolled over, then suddenly realized something was wrong.

Under her head was a slightly stiff pillow, her body was covered by a blanket, and the air around her carried the smell of disinfectant. She was obviously not in a classroom.

Her memory came flooding back. Through the dull throb in her head, Xu Zhitong vaguely remembered that she was already 25 now; after the car accident she had been unconscious for several days, and had only just woken up.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Lin Yang standing by the bed.

Maybe it was the evening sun outside the window playing tricks, the blazing orange-red glow too bright; in Xu Zhitong’s groggy, just-woken gaze, she could actually make out that Lin Yang’s eyes were a little red.

Meeting her gaze, Lin Yang let out a light breath and lowered her eyes, hiding her expression.

Her tone was gentle. “The doctor arranged some tests for you. Are you still dizzy?”

“I think I was a little dazed from sleeping just now; my head’s still pretty foggy,” Xu Zhitong said, yawning as she sat up. She looked straight at Lin Yang and asked very bluntly, “Were you crying just now?”

Still that sharp.

Lin Yang brushed it off. “I just got back to the hospital. The wind outside was strong.”

Xu Zhitong didn’t believe it at all.

She tilted her face up and caught Lin Yang’s wrist, looking at her seriously. “No way. Tell me the truth; did someone bully you?”

Xu Zhitong had excellent proportions and bone structure; even her fingers were long. She easily circled Lin Yang’s wrist, and when she gently turned the other person’s body a little, memories surged into Lin Yang like returning dampness.

When Lin Yang had just entered the student council in her first year of high school, several senior girls had quietly pushed her around, dumping lots of heavy, beyond-her-capacity work on her and sternly lecturing her, nitpicking every one of her results with cruel comments.

At that time, she hadn’t yet been worn smooth or forced to face reality. She clenched her teeth and, before returning to class, crouched in the stairwell, fiercely memorizing those people’s names, planning to go home and investigate them.

Even if Madam Lin had a hand in it behind the scenes, she would still have to get revenge on each and every one of them.

But the moment she got back to class, Xu Zhitong immediately noticed something was off.

Xu Zhitong had the same earnest look then, grabbing her wrist and pulling her into a corner by the teachers’ office. No matter how much Lin Yang insisted she was fine, Xu Zhitong still stubbornly and forcefully held her face and examined her.

She said, Yangbao, your eyes are so red; you must have cried. Who bullied you? I’ll get even for you.

Lin Yang hadn’t cried alone in the stairwell, but facing Xu Zhitong in that corner of the classroom full of people almost made her burst into tears from embarrassment.

“……”

Back in reality, Lin Yang’s chest felt as if it had been burned. She pressed her lips together, forced out a smile, and told the truth:

“You just said, half-asleep, that I should wait to wake you until the teacher got here.”

Xu Zhitong froze.

Hesitantly, she opened her mouth.

Lin Yang smiled. Her heart was a little heavy and aching, but being looked at face-to-face by Xu Zhitong so clearly and earnestly also made her unable to stop feeling happy.

She lifted her other hand, the one Xu Zhitong wasn’t holding, and lightly patted the top of Xu Zhitong’s head.

The hair she had looked at through a screen for countless days and nights still felt as soft as it had at sixteen or seventeen.

“Xiaotong, we’re already twenty-five,” she said gently.

Eight years had already passed since those school days.

Xu Zhitong heard the implication and pouted, saying softly, “Mm.”

Lin Yang gave the hand Xu Zhitong was holding a little shake, like a faint reassurance.

“Get up. Let’s do the tests today. If there’s nothing wrong, we can go home from the hospital sooner.”

Huh?

Xu Zhitong hesitated and, having gotten what she wanted, still pretended to be modest. “If I stay here, there are people to feed me and give me shots; if I go back home, won’t it be too much trouble for you?”

That was what she said, but the expectation in her eyes was practically spilling out.

As if asking, You’ll take care of me, right? You’ll take care of me, right?

Looking at her like that, Lin Yang’s heart sank and softened little by little.

“I’ll stay with you,” she said.

Author’s note:

Happy New Year [hug]