Chapter 11

Jin Zijin’s words landed like a block of ice dropped into hot tea, and the room went still in an instant.

The lively warmth in the living room froze solid; everyone looked as if someone had hit pause.

The smile on Wang Jinyu’s face was still in place, but the muscles at the corners had already gone stiff.

He opened his mouth, as though he wanted to smooth things over, only to let out a muffled “uh” from his throat.

Wang Chenyu kept her eyes down, her fingers gripping the rim of her teacup so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

The polished smile on her face was like glaze drying in the wind; fine cracks had begun to spread through it.

The most awkward of all was Wang Manyu.

She sat frozen on the sofa, looking from Jin Zijin to Wen Yan and back again. Her lips moved a few times, but in the end she said nothing.

For the first time, that face that always seemed to settle into the proper expression without effort showed something close to blank confusion.

What broke the deadlock was Jin Zijin herself.

As if she hadn’t noticed the pressure in the room at all, she turned naturally to Wang Manyu and said, “Mom, can Wen Yan show me around the house?”

Her tone was as calm as ever, as though that emphatic “don’t say bad things about my wife anymore” had been nothing more than casual conversation.

Wang Manyu seemed to come back to herself. Her voice stumbled. “O-of course…”

She turned to Wen Yan, speaking too quickly in her fluster. “Yan Yan, take Zijin around and have a look…”

Wen Yan nodded. “Okay.”

Jin Zijin took her hand and stood up.

The way their fingers were joined shifted from something secret to something public; under everyone’s eyes, they walked out of the living room without the slightest hesitation.

High heels and slippers tapped against the floor, each making a different sound, yet somehow matching.

Once they left the living room, the hallway seemed dimmer.

Wen Yan turned her head and asked, “Do you want to take a walk in the garden? There aren’t many flowers in winter, but…”

“No need.” Jin Zijin cut her off, her fingers lightly brushing Wen Yan’s palm. In a gentle voice, she said, “Take me to your room.”

She paused, then added, “I want to see the place where you grew up.”

Wen Yan smiled. “I didn’t grow up here.”

This duplex had been bought ten years ago, and she hadn’t moved in until she was nearly done with her doctorate.

The place where she had really grown up was the old residential complex in the west of the city, a three-bedroom, one-living-room apartment where she had lived for fourteen years.

Jin Zijin gave a soft “oh,” her tone unreadable. “Still, you lived here for a while. Looking around won’t hurt.”

Wen Yan said, “Okay.”

They went upstairs; the wooden stairs gave off faint creaks beneath their feet.

The second-floor hallway was quiet, and the room at the very end was Wen Yan’s.

When she pushed the door open, the smell of old paper drifted out to meet them.

Sunlight slanted through the south-facing window, cutting a bright drifting patch across the wooden floor.

The room wasn’t large, about thirty square meters.

Compared with the rest of the duplex, it even felt a little cramped.

A single bed sat against the wall, covered with plain checkered sheets.

A natural-wood bookshelf took up an entire wall, packed tightly with books.

The desk by the window held a lamp and a pen holder, along with a slightly worn globe.

In the corner stood a half-body skeleton model, plastic, its surface gleaming a cold white.

Jin Zijin looked around once, her gaze lingering on the skeleton model for a few seconds longer.

She walked to the bookshelf and ran her fingers over the spines. “You’ve kept everything pretty well.”

Wen Yan smiled. “When we moved, my dad brought everything over exactly as it was. He said it would be a pity to throw it away.”

Jin Zijin nodded but didn’t say anything.

She reached out and casually pulled out a middle school Chinese textbook published by People’s Education Press; the cover was already a little worn.

She opened it and immediately saw that the blank spaces on the inner pages were filled with row after row of thin, sharp handwriting.

“Hm?” Jin Zijin lifted a brow slightly. “Running script.”

The handwriting wasn’t especially neat; there was a distinctly untamed energy to it, the kind unique to youth.

Each stroke was like a blade, yet the turns carried a hidden sharpness that couldn’t be concealed.

Wen Yan raised a hand to scratch her face, embarrassment rare in her voice. “I was pretty rebellious back then. I thought regular script was too proper, so I learned running script instead.”

Jin Zijin gave a light hum and brushed her fingertips over the ink. “Mm. It looks good.”

Like a teacher, she offered that comment, then flipped back a few pages.

Beside an illustration in a classical Chinese essay, the blank space held a lifelike mantis.

The mantis was drawn with smooth lines and precise detail; even the sheen in its compound eyes had been captured, as if it might spread its wings and take off the next second.

Something stirred in Jin Zijin. She looked up at Wen Yan. “Who drew this?”

Wen Yan paused, then answered honestly, “I did.”

Jin Zijin was surprised. “You draw that well?”

Wen Yan was a little shy. “Not really that well. I just traced and sketched when I had nothing to do.”

A trace of admiration flashed in Jin Zijin’s eyes.

Wen Yan saw that she liked it and couldn’t help adding a little more: “Actually, I’m best at drawing human anatomy. When you have time, you can go to my villa at Mingzhu Meiying. I have a lot of sketches like this there.”

Jin Zijin liked being led along and curved her lips. “Really? Sounds like I’ll have to make a trip there someday.”

She flipped through several more pages, clearly enjoying Wen Yan’s work.

Their marriage had been far too rushed; they had barely prepared anything, and had come to know each other almost entirely by way of hormones.

Their bodies were intimate, but that part of the soul had always remained blank.

Jin Zijin had been curious about that blankness all along.

So every moment they spent together became a good chance to fill it in.

Through these drawings, and through how Wen Yan had handled things at the dinner table earlier, she seemed to see the slim, taciturn girl from years ago; when faced with endless comparisons and put-downs from her family at the table, she had quietly picked at her rice and said nothing.

Then she would turn back to school and, in the blank spaces of her textbooks, build a rebellious world of her own with sharp handwriting and wild sketches.

This had been one of the few breathing spaces she’d had in a suffocating family.

Amazing, Jin Zijin thought.

She had grown up in such a bad environment, yet she had raised herself so well.

Her wife was tenacious and quiet, like top-grade imperial jade: enduring and enduring until she had been polished into this dazzling form.

Jin Zijin lowered her eyes and lightly stroked the seemingly fresh drawing on the page. In a low voice, she said, “So cute.”

Whether she meant the drawings, or the girl who had resisted this way.

Wen Yan laughed softly. “As long as you don’t think I’m childish.”

Jin Zijin pulled out a few more books and flipped through them.

History, geography, biology… some pages were covered with dense notes, the handwriting neat as print; others were so pristine they looked as if they had never been opened.

“These…” Jin Zijin pointed at the untouched books, genuinely curious. “You didn’t take those classes?”

Wen Yan nodded. “I skipped grades. I didn’t attend some of those years much.”

Jin Zijin looked up at her, surprised. “How many grades did you skip?”

“Two in elementary school.” Wen Yan said it flatly, as if she were talking about the weather.

“Why so many?”

“The textbooks were easy.” Wen Yan walked to the desk and tapped the globe with a finger. “If I took the full set home and studied them once on my own, I’d understand everything. Staying in the classroom felt like a waste of time.”

She said it as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Jin Zijin quite agreed.

For people in their circle, school only had to teach enough to get the right scores.

The rest of their time was mostly spent learning general knowledge.

History, astronomy, geography, finance, politics, and so on.

Jin Zijin looked at Wen Yan for several seconds before asking, “Did you skip anything else?”

“Mm.” Wen Yan thought about it. “I skipped eighth grade, and again in eleventh.”

“Plus I went straight from bachelor’s to master’s to doctorate…”

She paused, then summed up, “Anyway, I just kept skipping, and then I graduated.”

Wen Yan said it lightly, as though the academic pressure and workload that made countless others suffer were nothing more than low barriers she could step over at will.

Leaning against the bookshelf with her arms folded, Jin Zijin studied Wen Yan’s face closely.

She suddenly remembered a line in the materials: when Wen Yan received her doctorate, her twin brother Wen Chen had only just finished his bachelor’s degree.

An obvious, enormous gap in intelligence.

Yet the Wang family, including Wen Yan’s mother, had chosen to ignore it.

They still clung to that outdated logic of “the eldest son matters most” and “girls don’t need to be too smart”; they still used that suffocating method in an attempt to trim Wen Yan into the shape they wanted.

Was that vague, intangible “family line” really that important?

Or was it simply that Wen Yan was too smart, too brilliant, and made some people uneasy, so they had to suppress her light to keep their ridiculous “balance” intact?

Whatever it was, Jin Zijin thought it was absurd.

Absurd enough to be laughable; absurd enough to make her cold inside.

No wonder Wen Yan hadn’t joined their conversation. She probably thought they were too stupid.

That was how stupid people were; once you got tangled up with them, it was like carrying a criminal record for life.

Better to act like you hadn’t heard anything and let it go in one ear and out the other.

Thinking this, Jin Zijin silently drew a line in her heart: from now on, any dealings with the Wang family would be limited to the necessary courtesies.

As for business?

Absolutely not.

She had no intention of being dragged down by that kind of stupidity.

These thoughts made a full circuit in her mind, but her expression never changed.

A faint smile curved her lips, a teasing note entering her voice. “Looks like I picked a mother for our future child with a very high IQ.”

Wen Yan: “…”

She froze.

The tips of her ears reddened visibly.

Jin Zijin enjoyed her rare embarrassment for a while before turning back to the bookshelf with a smile.

She flipped through a few more books, and then, in the gap between a stack of books, caught sight of a dark red corner.

Jin Zijin pulled it out and found an eighth-grade graduation certificate.

The moment Wen Yan saw the cover, she nearly lunged forward to stop her. “Wait…”

Jin Zijin lifted a hand and easily dodged her.

She tilted her head and looked at Wen Yan’s slightly flushed face, raising a brow. “Why can’t I look?”

“The graduation photo…” Wen Yan bit her lower lip, her voice dropping. “It’s really ugly. I don’t want you to see it.”

Jin Zijin looked at her strangely. “Are you very ugly?”

She paused, then added, “Dr. Wen, please don’t question my taste.”

Wen Yan: “…”

With no other choice, she let go and said resentfully, “Then look.”

Jin Zijin opened the certificate; the graduation photo pasted inside came into view:

A round-cheeked teenage girl with a neat ear-length haircut, smiling stiffly at the camera.

Her eyes were large, but because her face was so round, they looked a little squinted.

The whole photo carried a kind of plump, soft foolishness that made people want to reach out and pinch her cheeks.

Like a magnified Cherry Maruko.

Jin Zijin froze.

A few seconds later, she couldn’t help it; the corners of her lips lifted.

“At the time…” Wen Yan stood off to the side, her voice muffled. “My eye was infected, and I was taking steroid medicine. I put on a lot of weight.”

Everyone called her a fat woman and pointed at her body without restraint, which was why she didn’t want Jin Zijin to see it.

That period was one of the pasts she least wanted to remember.

But Jin Zijin lifted her head and let her gaze settle on Wen Yan’s face.

The face before her was slim, its contours sharp and clear, the jawline clean and defined.

It was almost like a different person from the round little girl in the photo.

But those eyes… they were still so bright.

Clear and clean, like a pool of newly melted snow.

Jin Zijin suddenly reached out and lightly touched the outer corner of Wen Yan’s right eye with her fingertip.

“Now?” she asked, her voice unconsciously softening. “Is your eye better?”

Wen Yan went still.

Jin Zijin’s fingertip was cool, but the touch itself was soft.

That faint chill pressed against her skin like a spark, burning so hotly that her heart trembled.

“Completely… completely better.” Wen Yan heard her own voice tighten.

In truth, it wasn’t completely better.

Optic nerve damage was irreversible; the vision in her right eye would never return to what it had been.

But there was no need to tell Jin Zijin that.

Jin Zijin looked at her for a long time.

After a moment, she raised her other hand and gently cupped Wen Yan’s face.

Her movement was very tender, like she was handling something fragile, something made of porcelain.

Jin Zijin leaned in, closing the distance.

Wen Yan instinctively closed her eyes.

A warm kiss landed softly on her right eye.

Very light.

Barely there.

Like a butterfly coming to rest, or a feather brushing past; so light it almost felt unreal.

Wen Yan opened her eyes.

Jin Zijin was still cradling her face, their distance very close.

Close enough that Wen Yan could see the faint light caught on her lashes, could see the unreserved tenderness in her eyes.

Jin Zijin smiled.

Her eyes curved, and her voice softened into something coaxing, almost childishly gentle: “Pain, fly away.”

Wen Yan looked at her.

Looked at this woman who was usually cool and elegant, yet now had her eyes bent with a smile, saying the most childish words in the gentlest way.

She suddenly felt that Jin Zijin was like water.

Warm, soft, able to wrap around a person completely.

Making one want to sink into it and never surface again.

Just like now; she wanted to sink in, stir her up, turn her into something else, and make her sing softly in her arms.

At that thought, Wen Yan reached out and wrapped her arms around Jin Zijin’s waist, pulling her forcefully toward herself.

Jin Zijin stumbled into her embrace and looked up at her in surprise. “You…”

Wen Yan didn’t give her a chance to finish. With one hand still cradling Jin Zijin’s face, she followed the sweet orange scent of her breath, lowered her head, and kissed her without hesitation.

TL Note:

running script (瘦金体) = a Chinese calligraphy style with thin, sharp, angular strokes.

Cherry Maruko (樱桃小丸子) = the round-cheeked girl protagonist of the Japanese manga/anime *Chibi Maruko-chan*.