A Short Story Collection with Non-Human Protagonists - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: If You Fall in Love in a Small Town

Wuyuan Town was, in fact, a very suitable place for falling in love.

The streetscape seemed frozen in the last century, with red brick and tile Soviet-style buildings—unlike Moqiao City, which was crowded with suffocating skyscrapers. Even time felt sluggish here; people walked slowly on the roads, as if nothing were worth a frantic pace.

And Tang Yanqing just happened to have accumulated many years’ worth of love to spend.

“Ah Qing, no… I’m not suited for those young people’s clothes…”

Liu Jin was somewhat bashful as Tang Yanqing pulled her into a relatively trendy women’s clothing store.

“Don’t worry, you are a young person!”

Those Great Buddhas and Immortals had lived for who knows how many tens of thousands of years; a two-thousand-year-old little deity like her was practically a sprout. Tang Yanqing picked out a dozen items from the racks, stuffed them into Liu Jin’s arms, and pushed her into the simple fitting room partitioned by a cloth curtain in the corner.

“Here, go try them on.”

Tang Yanqing folded her arms and waited outside. Before long, a soft sigh drifted from behind the curtain: “Oh dear…”

“What’s wrong?” Tang Yanqing asked.

“The zipper is stuck…”

Tang Yanqing had specifically chosen so many clothes with zippers just for this moment. “I’ll help you.”

Tang Yanqing lifted a corner of the curtain and slipped inside. The space inside was incredibly small, with junk piled against the wall; one person standing there barely had room to turn around, so forcing two people in meant they had to stand pressed tightly together.

Liu Jin stood with her back to her, the zipper of her cream-colored dress half-way up, exposing her slender back.

“Are you putting this on, or taking it off?” Tang Yanqing asked.

Liu Jin was already sinking into her embrace. Tang Yanqing’s breath fell against the side of the woman’s neck like a desert wind, scorching her skin until the pale white turned a faint red.

“…Let’s change into another one,” the woman whispered.

Tang Yanqing smoothed the fabric on both sides of the zipper, pinched the metal slider, and gave it a gentle tug up and down, quickly bypassing the snagged tooth.

Zzzzt—

The zipper slid all the way down. The soft fabric slipped inch by inch down Liu Jin’s skin. The woman was smooth and white, like a fish without scales.

Tang Yanqing felt a sudden wave of emotion. When Tang Wanzhi saved that little fox all those years ago, she never imagined the little fox would turn into such an exquisite human being. Just standing in front of the little fox made her heart throb restlessly in her chest.

Liu Jin reached for another dress, but Tang Yanqing caught her wrist.

“Ah Qing, don’t…”

Tang Yanqing put her arm around the woman’s shoulder, turned her halfway around, and blocked the unfinished sentence with her mouth. Soft lips pressed against soft lips. Liu Jin gripped her arm, not daring to make a sound, so Tang Yanqing insisted on kissing the deepest, sweetest spots, lingering as she sucked on the woman’s lips, listening to the soft gasps against her tongue.

Behind them, the curtain rubbed against Tang Yanqing’s T-shirt with a rustling sound. People passed by outside. Footsteps, laughter, the sound of customers haggling with the owner—countless sounds were right at their ears.

Liu Jin was so nervous her muscles were tense. A human’s ears were just as sensitive as a fox’s; with a single breath blown into them, her whole body began to tremble sweetly. Her bracelet occasionally flickered with a green afterimage.

Tang Yanqing interlaced their fingers. Within the gaps of her fingers was hidden an entire warm universe.

The shop owner walked past them, almost brushing against the curtain. Tang Yanqing bit Liu Jin’s earlobe, intentionally teasing her: “Auntie Liu, did I do this well?”

Liu Jin couldn’t speak; she simply hugged Tang Yanqing’s neck and stood on her tiptoes, begging her to share her weight. Even so, Liu Jin wouldn’t say a single bad word about her. In the end, she could only look at her with amber, watery eyes, as tender as a spring.

“You did very well… it’s just… we shouldn’t be here…”

No mortal could withstand such temptation. Tang Yanqing swallowed hard, tried her best to endure it, then swallowed again. The “trouble” with Liu Jin was that her heart was simply too soft. And her lips were simply too soft.

After five long seconds, Tang Yanqing reached the limit of her patience. She grabbed Liu Jin’s waist and kissed her again, heedless of everything else.

They eventually bought that long dress; it looked exceptionally beautiful on Liu Jin, the warm white fabric appearing as if she had plucked a cloud from the sky.

Tang Yanqing couldn’t wait to let Liu Jin experience every new and fun thing in this town and this era. They ate barbecue, played arcade games, and shared a bowl of ice cream at a corner dessert shop. She lied to Liu Jin, saying her tooth ached; when Liu Jin leaned in to look, Tang Yanqing planted a big kiss on the corner of her lips. The ice cream was vanilla-flavored and very sweet, but it still couldn’t compare to the sweetness of the little fox.

As night fell, they bought two movie tickets. The theater was old, with peeling wall paint and a roaring air conditioner. Tang Yanqing and Liu Jin snuggled in the shadows of the corner, watching people on the screen fall in love at first sight. The chair springs were aging and poked into her back, so Liu Jin extended a soft tail to serve as a cushion behind Tang Yanqing.

Tang Yanqing held a large bucket of popcorn, eating one herself and feeding one to Liu Jin. Whenever Liu Jin took the popcorn from her hand, her lips would brush against Tang Yanqing’s fingers. Her heart felt as if it were covered in spring willow catkins.

For the first ten minutes, Tang Yanqing watched somewhat seriously—it was about two first loves who met again by chance 20 years after breaking up and starting separate families. Until Liu Jin let out a soft “Oh!”

“What’s wrong?” Tang Yanqing asked immediately.

Liu Jin looked down at the floor. “The shoe… is stuck.”

Tang Yanqing turned on her phone flashlight and leaned down. The heel of the high shoe was caught exactly in a gap in the warped wooden floorboards. Tang Yanqing crouched down, reached out to pull the heel free, and was distracted by the red string around Liu Jin’s ankle.

She had never dared to look so closely before; now that she was near, she realized the string looked strangely familiar… The sand and frost of the border winds blew against her face once more.

She recognized it. What was tied around Liu Jin’s leg wasn’t a red string; it was Tang Shu’s sword tassel. Miss Liu had worn the general’s relic like this, year after year.

Tang Yanqing had no idea what happened in the rest of the movie. Like Tang Shu, she didn’t actually like movies. She only remembered that the theater’s air conditioning was terrible. Liu Jin sweated a lot while being kissed. Water droplets condensed on the paper cup of iced cola, falling drop by drop. Liu Jin’s sweat was also fragrant—sweet, like the scent of osmanthus.

By the time they finally walked back to the inn, the bustle of the streets had faded. Bright silver stars hung low in the night sky. Their shadows were pressed short by the streetlamps, then stretched long.

Tang Yanqing swung Liu Jin’s arm. “Ah Jin, sing a song for me.”

Liu Jin smiled and shook her head. “I don’t know how to sing.”

Tang Yanqing was persistent: “Huangmei Opera is fine too.”

“That was so many years ago, I don’t remember it anymore,” Liu Jin said bashfully.

“Then I’ll sing!” Tang Yanqing cleared her throat. “I once attended the Qionglin feast, I once rode my horse before the Imperial Street, everyone praised my Pan An-like looks, but the gauze cap covers a lady…”

After finishing, she sighed to herself. “Sigh, why is every word describing me?”

It definitely wasn’t because she knew Liu Jin could sing Huangmei Opera that she had secretly gone to learn it.

Liu Jin looked at her with a smile, the corners of her mouth and her eyebrows curving, her eyes flashing with light. “If someone truly wrote a song for you, it would surely be this good.”

Tang Yanqing worried for her—to be blinded by love to this degree, what was she going to do with her? She could only pull Liu Jin’s hand tight and pull her into her embrace. Tang Yanqing truly loved seeing Liu Jin in this vibrant state—flesh and blood, returned to the mortal realm, without needing to be some lonely, suffering deity.

…But Tang Yanqing knew that Liu Jin could never let go of the suffering of all living beings. This was probably why Liu Jin could be a deity while she was just a mediocre mortal.

The inn landlady was dozing at the front desk as usual. Glancing at the Bodhisattva statue in the backyard, Tang Yanqing remembered she needed to fulfill her vow. The two of them stood side-by-side before the Bodhisattva, placing the freshly bought cola and cream puffs on the altar.

Liu Jin pressed her hands together and paid her respects piously. Tang Yanqing also gave a bow. “Thanks a lot. After all that trouble, we finally got a Happy Ending.”

Having said that, she turned to kiss Liu Jin’s cheek. Liu Jin quickly dodged. “Ah Qing, stop it. What if the Bodhisattva sees…”

Tang Yanqing was dismissive. “With so many foolish men and women in the world, what hasn’t the Bodhisattva seen?”

“It wouldn’t be appropriate if the owner saw either…”

Tang Yanqing grabbed a few semi-dry bedsheets from the clothesline overhead, using them as a screen to partition the two of them in the middle. “This should work!”

Without waiting for Liu Jin’s answer, she shamelessly kissed her. Liu Jin’s lips were like mochi coated in sugar—sweet and sticky. She could kiss her until the seas ran dry, the rocks crumbled, and withered wood bloomed. The evening wind blew the sheets around them and lifted Liu Jin’s skirt; the scene was impossibly beautiful. It surpassed every poem Tang Yanqing had read or seen in these two thousand years.

Lying side-by-side on a bed where they could see the stars, doing nothing but embracing was also wonderful. From fingertips to toes, they were pressed together, burying themselves in each other’s warmth. Tang Yanqing had no family left. The human world was a boundless sea of bitterness, a ten-thousand-foot abyss; Liu Jin was her ship and her only anchor.

The woman’s warm fingers slowly stroked her cheek, combing through her hair. If she were a fox, she would be purring with comfort right now. If only days could be lived like this forever, Tang Yanqing couldn’t help but think. No harm from sanctimonious villains, no worrying about the wishes of ten million mortals.

…Oh, right. There was still Li Mingyi.

Life had been so sweet she almost forgot there was still an antagonist to deal with. Tang Yanqing lay on Liu Jin’s soft belly, lost in thought. This person had done every evil deed—striking her with lightning in a past life, forcing her to write a thesis in this one, and constantly acting out against Liu Jin. She had to give Li Mingyi a proper lesson.

Tang Yanqing let out a yawn, and suddenly, a small spark of inspiration was born from it. Every time she drank the plum wine Liu Jin brewed, she would dream of her past lives.

“You… are you able to make people fall into specific dreams?” she asked Liu Jin.