Tailored to Fit
Li Lan didn’t look well. Her face went white, then red, then finally darkened. It was the first time Zhu Qing had ever seen such vivid expressions on her face.
As if she were forcing herself to hold something back.
Zhu Qing thought to herself that she must look utterly ridiculous. Li Lan probably wanted to scold her, but bound by manners and by the fact that they weren’t close, she could only grit her teeth and endure it. She looked like she might choke herself trying to keep it in.
Zhu Qing covered her face and said muffledly, “Sorry. If you want to scold me, just scold me. Just don’t make it too nasty; I’ll be sad.”
Li Lan lowered her gaze and looked at her for a long moment. Her breathing gradually steadied. In the end, she said nothing. She simply turned and left without a word.
Zhu Qing dropped her hands and looked at Li Lan’s back. The fitted nightdress had a large wet patch on it, the fabric wrinkled and crumpled from Zhu Qing clinging to her arms like a mad wet cat and rubbing all over her.
Actually, Li Lan’s shirt had a long hem; worn properly, it could reach her thighs.
Zhu Qing suddenly remembered what Qian Cancan had said before about the “no pants” style. As expected of a crow’s mouth—by the end, her lower clothes really had disappeared.
She’d made a scene in front of Li Lan while half-undressed. Right, and she’d also scattered all the toiletries across the floor, even knocked over the rack and smashed it into Li Lan.
Zhu Qing sniffled silently and went to take a bath in heavy sorrow.
The more she washed, the sadder she felt. Just thinking about the disgusted look Li Lan might give her made her heart ache faintly. Zhu Qing, Zhu Qing; this was what you got for trying to steal a chicken and ending up losing the rice instead.
She felt just like that internet meme with the long, streaming tears, too speechless for words; the sorrow of washing up was no less than being abandoned after being seduced and discarded.
Zhu Qing dawdled through her shower and dawdled through changing into clean clothes. When she pushed open the door, she froze.
Li Lan was standing outside with a small medicine kit in hand, apparently having waited for a while.
She had changed clothes too. Her expression had returned to normal, and she looked at Zhu Qing blandly.
“Your leg needs medicine.”
Zhu Qing was wearing a slip dress now, one inch above the knee, plain enough to look like some high school girl on summer vacation eating popsicles at home. Li Lan’s gaze paused on her freshly washed hair for a moment, then her brow suddenly furrowed.
“You took a shower?”
Zhu Qing nodded dumbly.
Li Lan’s breathing seemed to deepen again, but she quickly suppressed whatever she was feeling, turned, and walked toward the sofa. “Come here and let me put the medicine on.”
Zhu Qing was a little dazed. Had she said something wrong again? Why had Li Lan suddenly gotten unhappy?
Li Lan took gauze and medical cotton from the kit, soaked them in iodine, then lifted her chin to signal Zhu Qing to sit down.
Zhu Qing glanced at the sofa and sat beside Li Lan, trying to lift her knee.
“Don’t move,” Li Lan said quietly, stopping her.
She took the gauze and crouched down, her head slightly lowered, gently wiping Zhu Qing’s knee.
Zhu Qing’s skin was thin, her veins more visible than other people’s. She’d also lost a lot of weight over the past two months because of her bad mood; she’d even been hospitalized a few days ago, and the weight had kept dropping. Li Lan soon noticed that Zhu Qing’s leg had clearly gotten thinner.
There was hardly any flesh left on her thigh; her kneecap was plainly visible beneath the skin.
As a model, most of the people around Li Lan were extremely thin. But thinness wasn’t all the same; some people had small joints, narrow kneecaps from the start, and even when they lost more weight they still looked like bone wrapped in flesh, lean without looking gaunt.
But most people weren’t born with that gift. Once they got thin, they became all skeleton, and every movement made the curve of the bone unmistakable.
Li Lan had thought she was already used to seeing one skeletal frame after another, but when her fingers touched Zhu Qing’s knee, an inexplicable anger still rose in her chest.
She hated seeing that haggard, bony feeling on Zhu Qing.
“There’s broken skin here,” Li Lan said, pressing lightly against the kneecap with her index finger and moving it aside to show a small patch of abrasion on the inner side. “If the wound gets wet, it could get infected again. You need to be careful these next few days.”
Zhu Qing’s fingers, braced on the sofa, curled slightly. “Okay,” she said softly.
Li Lan continued applying the medicine. Zhu Qing had fallen hard, and her skin was thin; the bruise looked huge, purple-blue and miserable. As Li Lan worked, her expression grew worse by the minute.
From Zhu Qing’s angle, Li Lan was crouched on the floor, one hand gripping her leg and the other resting on her other knee, her legs parted slightly.
Li Lan was crouched right between her legs, only half a hand’s width away. The sight immediately flashed through Zhu Qing’s mind in a burst of indecent fragments; no matter how she looked at it, it was just too suggestive...
Li Lan looked up and frowned. “Why is your face red?”
Zhu Qing stared at her in a daze. Li Lan was even more beautiful when she was angry, her face as cold as frost.
Li Lan’s current posture was undeniably threatening, but Zhu Qing wasn’t afraid. She blinked and shamelessly said, “My leg hurts so much. Can you blow on it for me?”
Her tone was pleading and pitiful; even the end of the sentence was soft and sweet.
Li Lan’s hard expression froze in an odd way, the cracks spreading inch by inch across her face.
Zhu Qing kicked her leg slightly; her ankle deliberately brushed Li Lan’s arm, tugging at the wound on her knee. She exaggeratedly hissed, “It hurts.”
Li Lan came back to herself and immediately caught her misbehaving foot, her gaze shifting.
“Didn’t I tell you not to move?”
Her fingers were pale, slender, and long as they rested on Zhu Qing’s ankle bone. Zhu Qing said in a low voice, “Then blow on it for me. If you blow on it, it won’t hurt anymore.”
Li Lan’s heart shook at the repeated soft coaxing. The emotions she had just forced down surged back up again.
The vein at her temple seemed to be twitching, her racing pulse filling it with blood.
Her cold expression was hard to maintain now.
Most of the time, she really didn’t understand Zhu Qing’s train of thought. They said there was a generation gap every three years; Li Lan was eight years older than Zhu Qing, which rounded out to three gaps. Not understanding what Zhu Qing wanted was actually normal. It was just that Zhu Qing kept provoking her.
She had fallen in the bathroom wearing her own shirt, pressed so close against her in her arms that she’d made a whole scene, and she had practically bared everything. How could anyone be this clueless? Was she like this outside too?
Zhu Qing had already not been close to her for a long time, and Li Lan had normal needs too. Even if Zhu Qing had lost her memory, she shouldn’t be teasing her like this, setting the fire and then refusing to put it out.
And then there was the injury on her knee. The skin around the wound had already started to whiten; there was a strong chance it would become infected and suppurate. Didn’t Zhu Qing know wounds weren’t supposed to be soaked in water?
After a long moment, Li Lan still couldn’t outlast Zhu Qing. She let out a faint sigh and lowered her head to blow on the knee twice.
The cool breath brushed over the hot, swollen skin and stirred a fine tremor. A faint, threadlike tingling spread upward along Zhu Qing’s calf.
Her heart skipped a beat.
In her line of sight, the redness and swelling on her knee became even clearer. After blowing on it twice, Li Lan couldn’t help reaching out with the pad of her finger, hovering as if to touch it from a distance; in her lowered eyes, there was no hiding the tenderness.
“How did you get it this bad?” Li Lan asked hoarsely.
At that moment, Zhu Qing really did feel wronged. Disappointment and hurt welled up in her heart. “I didn’t do it on purpose. My clothes got wet, okay? Who told your shirt to not have pants underneath? I just wanted to dress properly.”
Li Lan looked confused. “Why would you dress up at home? You’re fine like this.”
Zhu Qing: ...
Suddenly, she didn’t want Li Lan to blow on it anymore.
After disinfecting it, Li Lan carefully checked the wound, sprinkled some medicine powder on it, and stuck on an adhesive bandage.
“All right. Walk a little more carefully and don’t pull on the wound,” Li Lan said as she stood and held out a hand to Zhu Qing. “Come eat.”
Only then did Zhu Qing remember the table full of dishes she’d made.
“I’ll heat it up,” Li Lan said, handing her a bowl of soup. “The soup is still warm. Have this first.”
Zhu Qing’s original plan to show off was derailed as she was handed a bowl of soup and made to sit in a chair, waiting for the food to be served.
And Li Lan’s considerate care.
Only belatedly did Zhu Qing realize that this felt pretty good. Li Lan hadn’t looked down on her at all; she’d even applied medicine for her!
Li Lan finished heating the food, set it in front of Zhu Qing, and sat down across from her. “Eat.”
The dining table was very quiet, broken only by the occasional clink of chopsticks against the bowl. Zhu Qing ate little bites at a time, sneaking glances at Li Lan now and then. Li Lan’s manner of eating was elegant; her back stayed perfectly straight, and even the movement of her chewing was restrained, as if it were some habit carved into her bones.
Zhu Qing hadn’t had much appetite to begin with, but seeing Li Lan eat so well made her eat quite a bit too.
From what she could tell, Li Lan liked all three dishes and the noodle dish on the table. She seemed to prefer sweet and sweet-and-sour flavors, though she didn’t leave the others untouched either.
Thinking of a meal they’d had before, Zhu Qing asked cautiously, “Do you have to control your diet? If you eat this meal today, will you be hungry all day tomorrow?”
She remembered that models had to maintain their weight.
Li Lan didn’t stop moving; she picked up a piece of sweet-and-sour lotus root and put it in her bowl, then said calmly, “No. My main job isn’t modeling anymore, and I’m not young enough to keep a low body-fat percentage. I probably won’t have many chances to walk the runway after this.”
Zhu Qing thought about it, then smiled. “That’s fine too. You can eat more. Do you want to try this soup?”
She scooped up a spoonful of tom yum soup and handed it over. Li Lan stared at the spoonful of soup, seeming to hesitate. Zhu Qing held her hand in the air and suddenly felt like this was crossing a line; she was just about to pull back when Li Lan leaned forward slightly and drank the soup straight from her hand.
Warm breath swept across Zhu Qing’s fingers; her fingertips trembled, almost making her drop the spoon.
“...Is it good?” she asked softly.
Li Lan looked up at her. The warm yellow dining-room light was reflected in her eyes, like melted amber.
“Mm.”
Just that one word, yet Zhu Qing’s ears inexplicably burned.
Li Lan said softly, “The food you make is very good. Of course I’ll eat more.”
Zhu Qing’s brain suddenly short-circuited. “Ah, my food tastes good, so if I eat more... I’ll get fat. Because of me... did I make you fat?”
Li Lan paused with her chopsticks. After a moment, she shook her head with a quiet laugh.
“It has nothing to do with you. A model’s career is short to begin with. It’s only a job; leaving at the peak is the best ending for a model.”
A hesitant look appeared on Zhu Qing’s face. “Really? Not because you married me, or because I did something that affected you?”
Li Lan looked at her with subtle amusement. “No. What do you think you could’ve done to affect me?”
“I don’t know, but don’t people say you get happily fat after falling in love? A relaxed, carefree state makes people gain weight. Since I’m eating and drinking with you, of course I’ll get fat, and then because life has no pressure, your ambition at work weakens too, and you end up shifting from your career back to the family or something.”
What Zhu Qing was really worried about, of course, was whether she herself had thrown tantrums or caused trouble and delayed Li Lan’s work.
Li Lan rested one hand against her forehead, her gaze deep and unreadable. She reminded her word by word, “Zhu Qing, you also have a job.”
Zhu Qing froze.
Li Lan said, “You’re an assistant at Xiyuan Kindergarten. It’s a job with a monthly salary that isn’t very high, and you didn’t give it up. Why would I give up my career?”
No pressure after marriage? Li Lan had only felt pressure after getting married; along with it, though, came plenty of motivation.
That house had been bought for 16 million in a lump sum, and it was only a flat of less than 200 square meters. She had a daughter to raise and had to give Zhu Qing the best possible life; the pressure was only greater, not less.
Zhu Qing always looked for the reason in herself whenever something happened, and she came up with all kinds of reasons Li Lan couldn’t even imagine. She could twist anything into her own fault. Li Lan was a little speechless and didn’t really want to continue this topic.
She lifted her eyes to Zhu Qing and said evenly, “Besides, I won’t get fat being with you... because you rarely cook.”
Zhu Qing had already learned this from Xiao Bao and said guiltily, “I’ll cook more in the future.”
Li Lan caught the wording immediately. “We? Who else? Who are you planning to cook for?”
Zhu Qing innocently replied, “Xiao Bao. She ordered a whole bunch of dishes, and I also made her breakfast this morning.”
Li Lan was silent for a few seconds, then said flatly, “Mm.”
Then she added, “She has a nanny, and the kindergarten provides three meals. You don’t need to worry about her.”
Zhu Qing was just about to say something when Li Lan used the serving chopsticks to pick a piece of meat into her bowl and frowned. “Stop talking. Eat more.”
“Oh, okay. Actually I’m not that hungry.” Zhu Qing said it while Li Lan kept serving her food, and soon her plate piled up into a little mountain. “I can’t eat this much.”
Li Lan said in a low voice, “Eat more. You’ve lost a lot of weight.”
“Really?” Zhu Qing hadn’t paid much attention to her own figure. Anyway, no one had ever said she was fat, and the words diet or losing weight had never appeared in her vocabulary. “Maybe I just get summer weight; I’ll regain it in winter.”
Li Lan said coolly, “That’s not how it works. You gain winter weight in winter.”
“There’s no such thing as winter weight,” Zhu Qing laughed. “Then I’d be getting autumn weight too.”
Li Lan pressed her lips together unhappily. “I’m not lying to you. You really have lost a lot of weight. Have you been on a scale recently?”
Zhu Qing thought about it. “No idea.”
Li Lan said directly, “Go weigh yourself.”
She took a scale out of the kitchen, set it by Zhu Qing’s feet, and helped her up.
Zhu Qing thought Li Lan was making a mountain out of a molehill and laughed. “It’s fine, I’ll do it myself. My weight should be, year-round, just barely into triple digits... ninety-two!?”
Li Lan looked down at the two numbers, then looked at Zhu Qing again. Her gaze carried obvious reproach.
Zhu Qing chuckled awkwardly. “Pretty much. Rounded up, it’s a hundred. Maybe I even deliberately lost weight to fit into my wedding dress, and then just kept it that way hahaha.”
Li Lan said expressionlessly, “The last time you weighed yourself was sixty-seven days ago. Ninety-seven jin.”
Zhu Qing was stunned. “You remember that too?”
Li Lan ignored her and repeated in a deep voice, “You need to eat more.”
Seeing how serious Li Lan was, Zhu Qing started to worry too.
When she’d had her physical in her senior year of college, she’d been 171 centimeters tall and just over one hundred jin. She’d usually been about that weight; it was rare for her to be in the nineties.
Zhu Qing obediently nodded, and was just about to agree when something occurred to her. She said troubledly, “Then the clothes I bought won’t fit anymore.”
She had just bought five sets of clothes yesterday, all fitted styles in her current size. By the time she gained those eight jin back, she definitely wouldn’t be able to wear them. What a waste.
Hearing about the clothes, Li Lan asked the question on her mind. “The one you wanted to wear was the one in the bathroom?”
If she wasn’t mistaken, that one was ordinary in fabric and cut.
And the one on Zhu Qing now was ugly too, though the style was very consistent.
Zhu Qing said, “Qian Cancan and I shopped for half a day before buying them. Clothes are so hard to buy these days.”
Li Lan looked at her silently for a long moment, then said, “They’re not hard to buy.”
Zhu Qing shot her a puzzled look.
Li Lan said, “I can buy them for you.”
It took Zhu Qing two seconds to react. Oh right, Li Lan was a model and collaborated with all the major brands; the entertainment industry and fashion industry were tangled together too. If she wanted to know what to wear, why not just ask Li Lan?
“Then help me buy them,” Zhu Qing said with delight, adding a bit of her own little scheme, “Buy whatever style you like. I don’t know what suits me; you choose.”
Li Lan didn’t refuse. “Okay.”
“Then do you know my size?”
Li Lan was just about to say yes when she remembered Zhu Qing had lost a lot of weight, so she shook her head.
Overjoyed, Zhu Qing brought over a soft measuring tape and placed it in Li Lan’s hand. “Then measure me.”
Li Lan: ?
She stared at the measuring tape, then shifted her gaze to Zhu Qing and fell silent again.
This person who could light a fire at the drop of a hat and absolutely could not put it out—Li Lan very much wanted to keep some distance from her.
Zhu Qing urged, “Measure me, measure me.”
Li Lan opened her mouth to refuse, but couldn’t think of a proper reason.
Zhu Qing said happily, “I’m getting new clothes!”
Meeting Zhu Qing’s expectant gaze, Li Lan let out a faint sigh.
She took the measuring tape with a kind of resigned calm.
“Stand straight.”
Zhu Qing obediently spread her arms; the fabric tightened slightly with the movement, outlining the curve of her waist. Li Lan’s gaze slid from her collarbone to her waist, then quickly withdrew.
When the tape passed around her shoulders, Zhu Qing smelled the faint cedar scent on Li Lan’s wrist.
“You smell really nice,” Zhu Qing blurted out.
Li Lan’s hand paused; the knuckle of her finger accidentally brushed the back of Zhu Qing’s neck. The sensation vanished in an instant, quick as an illusion.
“Don’t talk,” Li Lan said, her voice lower than usual, as if veiled in mist.
When the tape slid to her waist, Li Lan’s fingertips hovered beside Zhu Qing’s side, always keeping a distance that was neither close nor far.
Zhu Qing thought it tickled a little and couldn’t help shrinking her neck. “Have you measured someone else before?”
Li Lan’s hands never stopped moving. “Never.”
Zhu Qing curved her lips.
“Breathe in,” Li Lan said suddenly.
Zhu Qing subconsciously did as told; as her chest rose, Li Lan deftly tightened the tape.
“Got it,” Li Lan said quickly, then stepped back and rolled up the tape.
Zhu Qing felt like something had been left out. She asked skeptically, “You’re done measuring already?”
Li Lan nodded.
Zhu Qing tilted her head and looked down at herself. If she remembered correctly, hadn’t they missed the hips?
“Seems like you forgot the hip measurement.”
The air went still for a moment.
Li Lan’s eyelashes trembled faintly; her knuckles pressed against the tape, whitening slightly.
“No need to measure,” she said after a pause. “It hasn’t changed.”
————————
Zhu Qing suspected: How do you know it hasn’t changed?
Li Lan lowered her eyes and said nothing.
TL Note:
“下衣失踪 (no pants style)” is fashion slang for the oversized-top/no-pants look
“乌鸦嘴” is basically “jinx” or “bad-luck mouth”
I translated “闹夏/闹冬” as “summer weight/winter weight” to keep the seasonal weight-gain pun.