Chapter 98: CH 98

Walking out of the deserted building, it was very quiet everywhere; in contrast, when they reached the city, even at this time of night boisterous calls and noises surrounded them. Wearing a short black tee, as Yan Yu walked towards his apartment, he threw his jacket casually over his shoulder, and lowered his head to light up a cigarette. 

When he arrived at his apartment building, he didn’t head home right away and instead ordered some skewers at the open air barbeque stall, crouching by the curb to wait.

Xun Chuan silently stood beside him with a blood red hue still lingering in his eyes. Not even the night breeze rustled around him..

It had been a while, for sometime now, since the two of them seemed to have been like this, crouching by the roadside, staying like this for the entire night, without an actual reason. 

Xun Chuan was used to going to the same bar, used to finding the same person to drink alcohol with. Yet on that particular day, Yan Yu was not there and so he walked along the road, walking and walking all the way to this area.

The night was reaching its zenith, and many people were coming and going about their nightly business. Yan Yu, hiding away from the landlady trying to collect her rent, had been wandering around aimlessly under the night sky. 

Nights in the summer were humid and hot, and so he bought a few cans of ice cold beer and sat by the road, never expecting Xun Chuan to bump into him.

The street he was on was a bit narrow and cramped, so pedestrians naturally crowded the entire area as they walked. Yet for some reason, with one glance Xun Chuan could see him through the thick of the crowd. He silently walked up behind Yan Yu, wanting to use this chance to kick him from the back. But Yan Yu caught onto his ankle, gripping it tightly as he did so, and Xun Chuan crashed onto the ground from instability.

“Fuck! Do you have eyes on the back of your skull!” 

Xun Chuan gritted the words out of his clenched teeth from the pain and he’d caught so much attention that quite a few people looked over.

Yan Yu heard his voice and with a surprised tilt to his eyebrows, turned his head and said, 

“It’s you.”

“I went to the bar to find you but you weren’t there. Your friends said you would be hanging around here so I came searching for you.” 

Xun Chuan flipped his overly long bangs up, not knowing how strange he looked as he did so. He patted the dust off his body and, not minding that it was dirty, took a seat right beside Yan Yu on the floor.

Yan Yu was a bit speechless, and gave him a look, 

“For what? Do I owe you money?”

Xun Chuan glared at him, 

“What a load of bullshit. Your bill was on me last time!”

Yan Yu didn’t respond and bit on his cigarette. His shoulders shook as he gave a chuckle while Xun Chuan could only feel the pain from his butt emanating through his body. Whichever position he tried to sit in, it didn’t feel good, and he kept adjusting himself with his eyebrows all scrunched up.

Yan Yu looked over out of interest, and from that angle, half of his face was drenched in shadows, instilling a sense of coolness to him as he said, 

“Being like this will make me think you did something bad.” 

Xun Chuan gave him the middle finger and with an arrogant expression on his face, he said,

“What are you doing on the streets at such a time at night? There’s mosquitoes everywhere.”

Yan Yu raised a finger to point upwards, casually saying, 

“A sad life of course. No money for rent so I’ve been booted out and I can only sleep on the streets.”

“Then come with me to my house.”

Xun Chuan didn’t even think before blurting out, 

“Come home with me.”

Smoke faintly wafted from the barbeque grills, interlaced with the faint scent of meat cooking and burning, abruptly pulling people out of their thoughts. The barbeque stall owner sprinkled on flavouring with quick hands that showed how he has been at this for many years. He held onto the skewers and smacked them over the grill to get rid of the excess flavourings before putting them into a bag. He yelled out loudly, 

“Xiao-Yan, your skewers are ready!”

Yan Yu had always come here for skewers, so much so that he was considered a regular customer. Upon the call, he extinguished his cigarette and went to grab them and pay. 

Xun Chuan silently watched him as he stood in the shade of a tree. All around him, there were numerous headless ghosts, bumping into the crowds and walking everywhere to find their replacements.1

Yan Yu could only dry his hair and grab the pile of clothes back onto the bed. With rusty motions he folded his clothes and as he did so, his eyes drifted to the TV. The show playing on the TV was an old version of << Legend of the White Snake >>, playing right at the scene of Xu Xian confessing to Bai Suzhen on Duan Bridge.2 

Xu Xian: “Milady, if I told you that I’m ill, would you believe it? Only because a few days ago, on Duan Bridge, I met someone, and since then, there has been an illness inside my heart.”

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Xu Xian: “I don’t know who caused this illness, but when I saw you today, I think I understood something in my heart.”

Yan Yu was dumb and completely useless at folding clothes. A collared shirt that was folded over and over again would still be crooked and wonky in the end. Out of frustration, the shirt was just turned into another ball and thrown aside. 

That shirt landed right beside Xun Chuan’s feet and he had the urge to take a look at what Yan Yu was doing. But the only thing he could see was a mountain of clothes and Yan Yu hidden behind it. After a bit of hesitation, he reached out to grab that wrinkly shirt and put it on his knees to fold it flat and perfectly. During that time, only the television made any sound.

Xu Xian: “This illness unfortunately…… looks to be caused by milady here.”

Bai Suzhen was befuddled, 

“We have only met two or three times. How could you be sick because of me?”

Xu Xian: “Two or three times is definitely not a lot, so perhaps, milady, you haven’t really felt anything. But a human’s life is not more than 70 years, and taking away ten years of learning, ten years of being feeble and old, there are only 50 years left. Within these 50, half is taken away by the night, leaving only 25……”

Xun Chuan matched the shirt to its corners, right to the edge, and then folded it tight and flat, folding it perfectly. His personality was a bit special, one that had his possessiveness levelled to the max. He didn’t like other people touching his stuff, and so he had always done his own cleaning.

Some things once started, would not be able to be stopped. Xun Chuan put the folded shirt aside and then quietly grabbed another one, repeating his actions, carefully setting it straight.

All the while the TV was still displaying the show.

Xu Xian: “……And think of eating and drinking, working and getting sick, running around in all different directions during your lifetime, how many days will be wasted? The days that can be left to be with someone you love, counting with our fingers, is actually really smaller than small.”

Xu Xian looked exactly like a studious student who only had his head in the books, but there was some wisdom in him, 

“I don’t want to allow milady to think that I am a flouterer who is on the hunt for girls. But if I only had these two or three chances in this life to meet with milady, I have already missed two, leaving only this one, so how could I let it go?”

Out of nowhere, Xun Chuan suddenly felt agitated, and he didn’t want to fold anything, not even to finish the half folded shirt in his hands. He threw it aside but he didn’t think he would knock down the mountain of clothing instead and also knock over Yan Yu’s folded pile of clothes.

Xun Chuan wanted to turn back towards the TV, but he was pulled over backwards by Yan Yu. Both of his hands were caught and he was unable to move.

Yan Yu was mad enough to laugh, 

“It was on purpose wasn’t it?”

Xun Chuan thought to himself, so what if it was on purpose, and turned his head to the side, not making a sound.

Yan Yu forced his face to turn back, 

“You could be a bit more open about it if you wanted to retaliate against me.”

To speak between the lines, it means to not do things in secret.

Xu Xian: “Do you perhaps not believe my heart?”

Gua Po-Po3: “It’s not that I’m looking down on you, foolish child. A man’s heart has never been stable. You can set your heart on her, but after tonight, who knows who will be there again tomorrow?”

Xun Chuan thought this phrase suited a certain person perfectly. He turned his head back but he was then grasped by the chin and forcefully kissed by Yan Yu. Given a mouthful of smoke, he quickly and immediately turned away from him.

Notes:

If you are interested in the specific timestamps (but didn’t want to take away from the chapter), click here for the chapter with the embedded video parts or click here to jump right into the part where the embed videos start if you don’t want to read all the way through again and here to the list of the specific timestamps  If you want more information on the drama/folktale, please see footnote 2!

I hope you all have been enjoying Volume 4 so far! It’s certainly been an emotional ride so far, and there may be some more coming up, but some fun moments like these do break it up a bit (and the ending’s that much nearer, past the half way mark now ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵ू◌₎♡ with some surprises along the way – good ones I think…) In any case, hope all of you Galactic Judges have a great weekend and see you all on Monday for Chapter 99 ʚ♡⃛ɞ(ू•ᴗ•ू❁)

*1 Finding replacements: this was mentioned during the car accident scene with that couple, but this is mostly based on a belief where ghosts need to find people to be their replacements for whatever the situation that they died in to stop whatever’s limiting them/to get out of this situation.

There’s a few ways to go about this, but one belief is that however the human died (and if by chance they become a ghost), they will be stuck in that position. If someone dies by drowning, they can’t ever get out of the water and must keep “drowning” until someone else replaces them or their “drowning” situation (some of these stories are to explain why some people mysteriously die or what it would be considered as suicide).

Another belief is that they cannot get enough “rest” or peace, until they have a “replacement” even if that doesn’t necessarily actually do that, but ghosts still maintain that kind of belief that they need someone/a living human being to alleviate their suffering. There are other tales of how ghosts need to earn a certain thing to level up to leave, etc, but most of the tales are based on how ghosts need to find a replacement.

*2 The drama in question: the quotes, which do please note that the author does paraphrase a bit so it’s not exactly word for word translation to the actual drama, but it’s fairly close, refers to this episode: of the drama, Legend of the White Snake (9th episode). This is not the newest one if you are into cdramas, but an old version (2006). This drama series is based on an oral folktale, of one of the most famous romance stories passed down (hence quite a lot of variations in movies, novels, tv shows, etc. so you may have seen results matching to this name if you search online).

On a very brief and basic summary, it’s a love story between a snake creature that can turn into a human and a human, and the twists and turns, ups and downs in their relationship. It’s been praised for highlighting the freedom of love between a man and a woman (picking who to love and who they marry) and the hatred and resentment against a society that’s strict and filled with nonsense rules they have to abide by (and not quite a happy ending…)

In any case, I believe the scene mentioned is Xu Xian’s second confession. And to note, Xu Xian is the human man and Bai Suzhen is the snake creature and Gua Po-Po is like Yan Yu, a fortune teller.

*3 Po-Po: what you would call an elderly lady, usually like grandma/grandmother; Gua is actually the gua of ba gua, but in this case, besides symbolizing she’s a fortune teller, it’s also the name to call her (like name/nickname)

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