Chapter 25
If she couldn’t sleep, they could just talk a little longer. Once she got sleepy, she’d be able to drift off.
Lin Baixin still had work tomorrow and needed to get up early. When she had just returned to Kyoto, there was already a mountain of work waiting for her at the shop, all of it needing the boss’s attention. But she didn’t tell Yu Min that. Yu Min didn’t know she was this busy; if she had, she definitely would have hung up much earlier, and most likely wouldn’t have made this call at all. She would have waited until Lin Baixin had time before calling.
After living in the school dormitory for three years, suddenly leaving collective housing and being freed from schoolwork too, Yu Min felt hollow inside. She actually didn’t like living in the dorms. Over those three years, her relationship with her roommates had been very ordinary. Most students were closest to their roommates and grew reluctant to part when the time came; Yu Min had been the first to leave the dorm today, without saying goodbye to the other three, not even a greeting. Now that she had moved into another unfamiliar environment, it felt even worse than dorm life.
At least in the dorm, a bed belonged to her alone. Close the blackout curtain, and it became a little world of her own. But other people’s homes weren’t like that. The room Yu Min was staying in was a child’s room. Yu Shengyu’s new wife was his second marriage, and this room had originally been prepared by her for a future child. But fate was cruel; the room had remained empty all these years, until Yu Min, an outsider with no blood relation to her at all, moved in.
Looking up at the wind chimes hanging overhead, Yu Min lifted a hand and touched the empty air. She never told Lin Baixin these things either. She kept them buried so Lin Baixin would think she had gone back to her original home and knew nothing at all.
“Tomorrow I’m going to see a movie,” Yu Min said after thinking for a moment. “With one of my classmates, at the cinema next to Heyuan.”
Lin Baixin asked, “What movie? Which classmate?”
Yu Min told her the title. She was going with Li Xue Ting. She didn’t want to stay home tomorrow; this wasn’t her home, and she’d rather hide out for a while.
In front of Lin Baixin, Yu Min didn’t say a word about her troubles. She said they’d already made the plans a long time ago, but hadn’t had a chance until now, and since they were free, they wanted to make it up.
“Li Xue Ting’s treating me to ice jelly. I think there’s a new place over there too.”
“Mhm, there is one. It has pretty good reviews.”
“You’ve been there?”
“No.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Lu An went. She recommended it to me, but I haven’t had time to go.”
Once she got sleepy, she’d sleep. By nearly one in the morning, she could barely keep her eyes open. Yu Min fell asleep first; she didn’t even notice when it happened. She had been talking the whole time. Halfway through, her eyes grew tired, so she closed them for a moment to rest—and as soon as she did, she lost consciousness and was out cold.
Lin Baixin, on the other end, waited a while, then carefully called out in a soft voice, “Xiao Min?”
She had fallen asleep. Her breathing was steady, and she was sleeping very deeply.
The call went on for another ten minutes. Only after confirming that the person on the other end was truly asleep did Lin Baixin hang up.
When Yu Min woke the next day, she was groggy and instinctively reached for her phone. When she remembered what had happened, she jolted awake. Her phone had run out of battery and shut itself off. After plugging it in, she saw that, thanks to her body clock, she had slept until a little after six.
At this hour, she didn’t know whether Lin Baixin was already up or still asleep. Yu Min checked the call log, rubbed her messy hair twice, and belatedly remembered how late she and Lin Baixin had hung up last night. She really had talked too much, for too long.
Only then did she realize she had probably delayed Lin Baixin’s work during the day. To make up for it, Yu Min thought and thought, and after a long while finally opened a food delivery app and ordered more than a dozen cups of coffee to be sent to Lin Baixin’s shop.
She had Lin Baixin’s shop address because Lin Baixin had given it to her. She couldn’t do anything else from a distance, so all she could do was send coffee. Not just for Lin Baixin—she ordered cups for the other employees in the shop too.
The order was scheduled for delivery at nine. After Yu Min finished her exam, her brain had been left behind somewhere. The nanny came to call her for breakfast, so she hurried out and forgot to tell Lin Baixin to receive the delivery.
Fortunately, Lin Baixin guessed it was from her. At nine-thirty, a photo of coffee came through from the other side, along with: - Received it.
Yu Min replied a little later. She wasn’t as talkative during the day as she was at night. Last night she had rambled on and on, but by day she became reserved again. After searching for a while, she finally found a cat-face emoji and sent it over.
Lin Baixin: - They asked me to thank you.
Lin Baixin: - The coffee is very good.
Yu Min stared at the messages for a while before replying: - Mm. I’ll buy it for you again next time.
Lin Baixin: - Okay. But don’t buy so much next time; it’s too expensive.
Yu Min agreed: - Next time I’ll only buy it for you.
They watched the movie in the afternoon. At two o’clock, Yu Min left home, and they agreed to meet at the school gate. After buying a big bag of snacks at a convenience store, they went into the cinema. Li Xue Ting dragged Yu Min along and wanted her to go dye her hair and get her nails done with her. Li Xue Ting told her this was trendy; after the exams, everyone did it.
They had spent three years in high school as country bumpkins; after graduation, they had to become fashionable. Li Xue Ting had asked her mother for several thousand yuan as a makeover fund and planned to work on herself from head to toe over the next few days.
Yu Min didn’t understand the trend. Why go to all that trouble? Didn’t it sound exhausting?
“Not exhausting. What’s so exhausting about it?” Li Xue Ting said, pinching the tip of Yu Min’s ear. “Min Min, you don’t get it. Clothes make the man. In two or three months, we’ll be in university. If we go in looking like this, we’ll be totally out of date. Not cool at all. Besides, I still want—” Li Xue Ting shot her an ambiguous wink. Too embarrassed to say it outright, she gave a silly laugh. “I still want to fall in love, okay? Maybe I’ll meet a handsome guy then. Looking better will raise my chances too.”
“...” Yu Min looked at her and said sincerely, “But you’re already pretty now.”
“Really?” Li Xue Ting was surprised, a little at a loss after being praised. She couldn’t help touching her face. “But I still want to do my hair. I’ve never dyed my hair before. My mom told me to go too, saying I can only be carefree these few years. She told me to have fun; after graduation, I won’t be this free anymore.”
Yu Min still went with Li Xue Ting to dye her hair, but the manicure didn’t happen. The hair salon had a huge queue; all of it was senior graduates getting their hair done. Li Xue Ting was generous, and because she wanted to repay Yu Min and keep her from waiting around bored, she insisted on treating Yu Min to a dye as well. It was hard to refuse that kind of enthusiasm, and Yu Min’s refusal failed in the end. She went along with her and got a gray-brown dye that looked less flashy and high-profile.
Li Xue Ting had boundless energy and wanted to try everything. A couple of days later, she dragged Yu Min to study makeup together. And truth be told, Li Xue Ting was talented at it; she learned fast and applied it accurately. Yu Min picked it up quickly by following along, and the results looked pretty good too.
The next time Yu Min had a video call with Lin Baixin, she had dyed hair and the makeup Li Xue Ting had just done for her, and she answered Lin Baixin’s video call from a milk tea shop outside.
The change looked even more obvious on the phone than in real life. On the other end, Lin Baixin froze when she saw Yu Min’s new look; for a moment, she almost didn’t recognize her. The makeup and hairstyle Li Xue Ting had arranged were both on the mature side. Yu Min usually looked like a plain, honest student; such a sudden transformation made Lin Baixin feel a little unaccustomed to it.
Before Yu Min could say anything, Li Xue Ting pushed into the frame first. This wasn’t the first time she had interrupted their video calls or phone calls. Li Xue Ting was easygoing and acted very familiar with Lin Baixin, cheerfully calling out, “Sister Baixin,” then asking, “Sister Baixin, look at the look I gave Min Min. Pretty, right?”
As she spoke, she adjusted the phone angle to capture Yu Min fully, afraid the other side couldn’t see clearly.
Yu Min was thin-skinned. How could she ask so directly? She felt awkward and tried to hide from the camera, wishing she could dig a hole and crawl into it on the spot.
Lin Baixin didn’t speak right away. She picked up her cup and took a sip of coffee, playing along with Li Xue Ting’s teasing, and said, “Pretty.”
It was just a casual response, but it landed in Yu Min’s ears like something else entirely. When the camera turned back to her, her face had somehow gone blazing red, redder even than a cooked shrimp.
Li Xue Ting was so annoying. Afterward, she even teased Yu Min: “Aiya, Min Min, you blush so easily. What’s there to be shy about? Hehe, you really are a beauty too; no wonder you’re my deskmate, a beautiful genius girl.”
Maybe Li Xue Ting had teased her too much. That night, lying in bed, Yu Min still felt embarrassed when she thought about it; her ears were inexplicably hot, and her whole body felt uncomfortable.
It wasn’t exactly unpleasant. It was just awkward and restless, and she couldn’t say what felt off.
For the following week, she didn’t contact Lin Baixin. Yu Min went to learn how to drive, and since Li Xue Ting didn’t want to learn, Yu Min signed up on her own. Coincidentally, Zhao Shi Yu and Wen Yun were also at the same driving school.
Zhao Shi Yu and her sister were both pretty nice. They were learning to drive at the same school, and from time to time they even brought food and drinks for Yu Min. When they learned that Yu Min was still staying in someone else’s house, Zhao Shi Yu, who had always loved talking, tightly shut her mouth and didn’t ask anything stupid. She behaved very properly.
Actually, once she got used to it, it was fine. Maybe Yu Min had grown accustomed to this kind of life. She felt it was more comfortable than staying at Aunt’s house. That woman really was quite good; she was even more reliable than Yu Shengyu and Zheng Qing combined. Her own father wasn’t even as attentive to her as that woman was, yet the woman cared quite a lot about Yu Min and even bought her a graduation gift, saying it was to congratulate her on graduating.
Yu Min accepted the gift, but for the time being she still couldn’t quite accept the woman’s presence. She thanked her and remained very polite.
“Treat this place like your own home. If you need anything, come find me,” the woman said, clearly intending to treat Yu Min as half a daughter.
Yu Min said nothing. When she turned around and faced Yu Shengyu, she had even less to say, not even bothering to put on a polite front.
She put her energy into other things. After the college entrance exam, there was still plenty to do: wait for the scores, then fill out her application choices, then wait for the admission letter. In the meantime, there were all sorts of miscellaneous tasks too, like buying things she’d need for university, such as a computer, and buying study materials to learn English. Universities required CET-4 and CET-6, so she had already started self-studying, and she had also paid online for a foreign tutor to practice speaking with.
The graduation gift Lin Baixin gave Yu Min was a brand-new computer, an Apple laptop. The courier delivered it to Heyuan, and Yu Min took a taxi there to pick it up.
In late July, the exam results came out. Yu Min performed steadily; getting into X University was more than enough. The day she received her admission letter, Yu Min had a talk with Yu Shengyu. The father and daughter faced each other, and Yu Min stated her request directly. She hoped that during these next few years of university, Yu Shengyu would stop interfering in her life. Studying medicine was even busier and more exhausting than senior year of high school; she hoped Yu Shengyu could understand and support her.
Yu Shengyu, dazzled by her high score, not only failed to object at the time; he also quite agreed with Yu Min’s idea of devoting herself to her studies. So when Yu Min said she wanted to go to Kyoto early to get familiar with the place and look around, Yu Shengyu even transferred her some money, trusting her completely.
Two days later, in mid-August, Yu Min boarded a flight to Kyoto alone and found the address written on the note.
She hadn’t told Lin Baixin in advance. After arriving, she stood by the house entrance and waited.
She arrived in Kyoto in the afternoon. By evening, Lin Baixin still hadn’t come back. Instead, her friend and shop partner Lin Qi arrived first and unexpectedly ran into the girl. Startled, Lin Qi immediately contacted Lin Baixin and called her back at once, blurting out, “It’s over, you’re in trouble; someone’s come knocking and asking you to take responsibility.”