Chapter 15: 15

I recall how awkward our first meeting after we started dating was.

It was during the winter vacation of my freshman year. On the second day he got home that afternoon, we decided to go out to town and hang out together, and he came to pick me up from my place.

After getting dressed up and making sure to double-check my appearance, I was about ready to set off. While changing my shoes, I said to my mother, who was sewing in the courtyard, “Mom, I’m going out.”

My mom did not even bother to look up from her work and only casually asked, “Where are you going out to?”

“Maybe to the movies or something,” I said

Hearing this response, her busy hands paused. Looking up at me, she began to lecture, “What’s so great about going to the movies? Isn’t it the same thing as watching TV at home? Do you have to waste money to have fun?”

“Well, someone asked me out,” I said, smiling.

As if realizing that two teenagers watching a movie alone by themselves seemed like a rather ambiguous activity, she asked, “And who are you watching a movie with?”

Without an ounce of hesitation, I replied, “It’s XX (Third Master).”

“Why did he ask you out to the movies?” My mother immediately reacted.

At the time, we had only been together for a month or so. 

Feeling a little embarrassed, I avoided her gaze and directly uttered a lie, “It’s probably to get together with me.”

With that, I turned around and left home, leaving my mother to digest the news that her family’s cabbage was about to be eaten by someone else’s pig.

   

As soon as I reached the gate of our community, all it took was one glance to catch sight of the third master standing there. It was not because he was tall or anything like that, but because he had on a really flashy yellow down vest. 

When I got close to him, I realized ‌we had not seen each other in months and became too shy to look at him.

Having nothing else to say, I pointed at the logo on his down jacket and asked, “SpongeBob, huh?”

Third Master nodded and looked somewhat embarrassed, but the donkey’s lips did not match the horse’s mouth1T/N: a metaphor for answering a question with something that does not match or actually answer it. 

“Yeah. I like SpongeBob.” 

“Oh.” I sincerely complimented him, “You’re dressed just like him. That’s cool.”

After saying this, I realized that it was better not to have just said anything at all because after my “compliment,” the atmosphere turned a bit awkward. It seemed he was not that happy to be dressed exactly like his favorite character.

Just when I thought I’d messed this date up and was on the verge of going home to my mother’s arms, the third master spoke again. 

“You want to go watch a movie or sing some karaoke instead?”

There weren’t any good movies lately, so after a bit of contemplating, I said, “Let’s go sing karaoke.”

We walked the whole way to a KTV bar in silence. 

That afternoon, there were not that many people at the karaoke place, so it did not take long for us to book a small box of our own. 

Once the two of us settled down inside, we didn’t do anything shameful; we sat a whole meter away from each other. After putting in dozens of songs, both of us held a microphone in hand as we sang each one by one.

It was almost as if two people were selling at the same time on the street, and at the end of it, one person would continue immediately after the other person finished singing. If anyone had stopped by our box for a while, they probably would not resist coming in to throw a coin or two for our performance.

Anyway, we sang for three hours straight in that small box, without any fooling around mixed in.

Why are we behaving as if we’ve just met? We should be very familiar with one another.

I mused to myself on the way back.

After walking for a while, he suddenly tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to him as he pointed to a nearby McDonald’s. “Do you want a cone?”

Even though it was the winter season, the sun was shining brightly that day, and his proposal only excited me, so I followed him into the store.

While waiting in line, I recognized the server, who happened to be a junior high classmate of mine, working there over the holidays. She also recognized me at first glance and knowingly smiled when she noticed the third master.

“Your boyfriend?” she asked me.

The word “boyfriend” made me feel embarrassed; nonetheless, there was a tinge of pride when I gave my nod of affirmation.

My classmates gave us two extra large cones, one of which was as good as the two and a half I usually buy.

We were too embarrassed to stay in the store. We continued to walk home with the oversized ice cream cones in our hands, the northwest winds blowing against our faces. 

The two of us ate our treats as we walked. Not long after, I could not stand the cold anymore, so I looked at the third master. 

“I can’t eat anymore. Do you wanna finish mine?”

The third master had just finished eating his cone; I was guessing he also felt quite cold himself. He looked at the remaining half in my hand, hesitated a bit before saying, “Then, I’ll eat it.”

If I saw someone eating another person’s cone like this, I would immediately assume they were only being unsanitary.

I don’t know why, but when I saw the third master finish up the ice cream cone I had eaten seconds ago, I just stared at the telephone pole up ahead the road, my face flushed red.

   

After that date, we didn’t see each other again for three days. He met up with some of his former friends to play games or something, and I was at home chatting with my grandparents, my dad, and my mother. 

It was more like being “interrogated” by my mother, as a matter of fact.

She had a particularly good memory, so she remembered all of the times she met and talked with the third master. And so, she also remembered one of their little anecdotes that I, myself, had never heard before.

Because of genetics, the third master had quite a bit of white hair. However, his hair color was not simply just black and white — it was a mixture of three colors: black, white, and gold. Even hair dyeing would not be able to achieve this effect.

During a vacation back in high school, the two of us went home together with another girl. We ran into that girl’s mother on the way, the both of us saying hello to the aunt before leaving. 

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A few days later, during a parent-teacher conference, that same aunt said to my mom, “Bu’s grandfather is so young!” (She had met my dad before, so she went up a generation instead.)

My mom was so confused and had no idea what she was going on about. When she came home, she went and asked my grandfather when he had picked me up from school.

Later, when we went to college, the academic pressure was not as much as it was in high school, and the third master’s hair slowly regained its color, getting darker and darker as time went on. 

Though he still cared a great deal and did not want to be regarded as a “very young grandpa” by ignorant passers-by whenever he walked with me, so he always dyed his hair black.

On more than one occasion, I told him I liked his hair just the way it was.  

“We’ll talk about it when I finally do become a grandpa,” he always said.

After the first boring date, Third Master did a fantastic job. It was his dark history, but it also directly determined that he had given way to me for many years to come.

   

The third master suddenly broke up with me.

It was the first and only time he said he wanted to break up, and it wasn’t even on a phone call — he sent me a QQ message in the middle of the night, which wrote, “I want to break up.”

Did he get hacked?

That was my first instinctive reaction to the text message.

Then, I also thought hackers weren’t that inactive either, as there were no further follow-ups after that; he didn’t ask me to pay for youth loss, spiritual compensation, child support — none of these at all…

At that time, I was too naive to ask for a proper explanation. 

“Okay,” I replied, furious.

Without any rhyme or reason, we parted ways just like that.

The day after that was New Year’s. I slept all day until lunchtime. 

When I was washing my face, it finally dawned on me that I no longer had a boyfriend. I had barely eaten a few bites when I ran back to my bedroom, depressed as I covered myself head to toe in my blankets before going back to sleep. 

It did not take long for my mother to come marching in with a shoe in hand, hitting me through my quilt and telling me to get up and go to work.

I remembered everything ‌clearly. When I started to wrap my third dumpling, my phone rang.

It was the third master who called and asked me what I was doing. 

“I’m wrapping dumplings,” I said. 

He asked if I could go to the park near our two families.

After being enslaved by my mother all afternoon, I readily gave a positive response, put on my overcoat, stepped into my cotton boots, and ran out.

There was not another soul in the park. The elderly men and women often occupying the space should have all gone home to make dumplings. 

Standing across the lake, I saw the third master dressed in his SpongeBob getup, sitting alone on the bench. I could not see his expression clearly, but I could tell he was rather down.

I went over and sat next to him.

“Can we not break up?” he suddenly asked with a choked voice.

I wasn’t sure whether he wanted to cry or continue to stay frozen until he became a big block of ice. So I plopped myself on the bench and did not outright start the conversation.

When the moment comes when this guy starts rolling around on the ground, should I call for help, or should I give him a teensy kick first before I call for help?

Instead, I pondered solemnly.

Unable to get an audible response from me, he could only continue to talk to himself. 

“Last night, I was listening to Faye Wong’s ‘In our lifetime, we meet on narrow roads, and we cannot be spared (Fleeing Years)’ and I suddenly felt very empty in my heart. Everything has felt so surreal lately. I’ve liked you for so long, and now suddenly, you want to be with me. I can’t help myself from feeling insecure. I was content liking you from afar — I didn’t need you to respond to my feelings back then, but now that we’re together, I’m just scared that one day, you’ll suddenly say goodbye as casually as you did when you agreed to start a relationship with me. I don’t want to wait for the day you’ll come and say, ‘I don’t want to suffer so much, I want to go on with my old days’.”

It felt as if ten thousand alpacas were running through my heart. He actually wanted to break up after listening to a song? !

His eyes were red at the end of his speech. 

“But you agreed so quickly after I sent that message; it made me stay up all night. I’ve been in a restless state all day long. When I was shaving my face, everything sunk in for me. I found out that even if we broke up now, I could never be as at ease as before. I know I was wrong. Can we not break up? I promise I won’t do that ever again.”

My anger did not subside at all, but looking at the way he was at that moment, I could not help feeling sorry for him.

As I struggled to make a decision, my mother’s phone call abruptly cut our conversation short. She happily told me my sister just gave birth to my little nephew.

It was not worth mentioning that teenagers’ sorrows were nothing before the joy of new life. 

“We’re going to the hospital to see my sister. She just gave birth to a son — my nephew,” I said to him.

He nodded in response, but tugged at my sleeves as I was about to leave.

“What about me?”

I was in a hurry to leave and had ignored him. After taking a couple of steps away, I looked back to see him sitting there with his head down, so I ran back and kicked him in the leg. 

“If you pull this stunt again, I swear, I’ll throw you into that lake over there!”

He laughed so gleefully when he got kicked. “I’ll jump! I’ll jump in myself!” he said.

Later on in life, he has always been ‌fond of my little nephew, and the two often played with each other like real brothers (?).

   

The author has something to say: It is inappropriate to say that they are brothers, one is my nephew, and the other is my son (?), they should be cousins. [Serious face.]

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