Frivolous - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The 21-year-old Chen Ran staggered to her feet in the middle of the traffic flow, looking around at the bright red tail lights of the surrounding cars. A heavy coppery smell of blood filled her mouth.

The broken skin on her face seemed to be covered in dirt and was oozing bright red blood.

This, combined with the crimson stream gushing a few steps away, made her experience an uncertain sensation of pain.

Uncertain where the pain was, perhaps the pain was in the dust, in the fibers.

From the moment the flowers, the color of young fruit juice, were tossed into the air and crashed to the ground, Chen Ran’s thoughts tumbled and crawled in the dirt.

The guitar etched with numbers, which Chen Ran regarded as a treasure, was smashed. She opened her palm and looked at the thin tissue of her skin, scraped of flesh and bleeding profusely, thinking:

Should she go see the sea or find Li Nan first?

Taking the first step provided the answer.

The white Passat that had run the red light and turned from the right, knocking her down, seemed unaware that its car had hit anything and drove away without a second glance.

Chen Ran stood up, blood gushing from her nose.

She used the last of her strength to push her motorcycle to the side where it wouldn’t obstruct traffic, clearing away the crushed stems and buds of the flowers.

Then, forcing herself onto the sidewalk, she laboriously raised her hand to take off her helmet.

Her hand was weak, and the helmet rolled to a place she couldn’t see.

She walked the streets of Pingjing, from Xizhimen to Yonghe Road.

When she passed a fruit stand, she pointed at a four- or five-inch long fruit knife and asked the owner, “Do you sell that knife?”

“What for?!” The owner, with a curly explosion of hair, was suspicious.

“To peel an apple. My family member is in the hospital, and they need small pieces to be fed.” Chen Ran casually pulled out a lie completely unrelated to herself.

Seeing the blood smeared on Chen Ran’s face and forehead, the owner asked, “What happened to your head?”

He was exhibiting the kindness and goodwill of a stranger.

Chen Ran shook her head, feeling the dampness and warmth of the blood, and flashed a radiant smile: “It’s makeup. Looks real, doesn’t it?”

“Hey, don’t say that, you really scared me just now,” the owner put out the cigarette in his hand and stood up. “I happen to have an extra one. Ten yuan, you can have it.”

“Okay. Thank you, boss.” Chen Ran curled her fingers into her jeans pocket, fished out her phone with two fingers, scanned the code, and paid.

“I need a bag.” She randomly pulled a red plastic bag from the stall, wrapped the fruit knife in it a few times, and held it tightly in her hand.

She traversed eleven kilometers, arriving in front of an old, dilapidated residential building at six in the evening.

More than a year ago, she had said to Li Nan: One day, I will die at your doorstep.

Now, she was here to fulfill that promise.

She entered the dim first floor and knocked on the iron door.

A portly woman in her forties or fifties walked out of the room. Seeing Chen Ran, she leaned against the door frame, spitting out a sunflower seed husk from her mouth, her tone laced with sarcasm and schadenfreude: “Chen Ran? Why are you here? So much blood on you, did you get into a car accident?”

Chen Ran ignored her, walking straight into the room to examine the decorations, especially the wallpaper.

It was the same as before. The scratch she had accidentally left on the wallpaper was still there.

If there had to be a change, it was certainly more dilapidated than before; there were no signs of renovation anywhere.

The basement was a mere dozen square meters, and Chen Ran was not the owner of the right to reside in those few square meters.

She had previously slept in the staircase landing, separated by wooden boards in the basement. The cramped height prevented her from standing up straight.

She had once killed a leech under the light of her phone’s flashlight, its blood diluted as it flowed onto the damp floor.

“Weren’t you going to change the wallpaper? Weren’t you going to renovate the room I lived in? Why is it more run-down than before?”

“None of your business?”

“I’m not managing you; I just want to ask where my two thousand yuan was spent.”

“It will be used eventually, you ruined my perfectly good room.”

“Perfectly good room?” A surge of pent-up anger existed in Chen Ran’s heart. “Li Nan, you know best what kind of broken state this house was in when I moved in.”

“So what do you want? For me to give your two thousand yuan back?” The fat on Li Nan’s face wobbled. She pointed a finger at Chen Ran and said, “I’m telling you, no way! No matter when I change the wallpaper, I will change it, but it’s not up to you to tell me!”

“Also, back then I took pity on you, a little girl carrying a suitcase and unable to find a place to live, and kindly rented to you. Why are you biting the hand that feeds you? What kind of job are you doing, that you don’t even understand basic social etiquette? Did you even go to school? You unlucky, stupid brain!”

Li Nan’s loud and irritating voice attracted the people gathered on the first floor to play cards. Several gathered at the doorway to watch the spectacle, some even raising their phones to film.

Someone nudged a companion and asked: Is that the singer who went to jail that everyone’s talking about online? She looks like her, seems quite popular. It shouldn’t be her, though.

Seeing that people were watching, Li Nan threw the sunflower seed husks, still wet with her saliva, at Chen Ran’s feet, as if she were throwing them near a trash pile, saying, “Really unlucky. How did I end up with a tenant like you?”

“Yes, I didn’t go to school, my brain is stupid, and I’m unlucky.”

Chen Ran took the fruit knife out of the red plastic bag, held the knife in her left hand, and slashed at her right wrist, laughing loudly: “Now this unlucky person is going to die in your house!”

Her expression was overflowing with heightened emotions, somewhat excited and manic.

Li Nan was startled by her sudden action and took two steps back. “You, you, what are you doing!”

“I’m going to die in your house.”

The few people at the doorway were also scared. They looked at each other; no one dared to provoke this person holding a knife who looked mentally unstable.

Chen Ran stood where she was, vigorously flicking the blood flowing from her wrist toward Li Nan twice.

Seeing her blood splatter onto the other person’s face, she smiled.

Blood also dropped onto the ground near the door, stirring up dust.

Suddenly, the roar of a sports car was heard from the entrance.

Chen Ran maintained her smile, her eyelashes blurred by the crimson blood flowing down from her forehead. Vaguely, she seemed to see a familiar figure walking toward her.

Before she could clearly see if it was really her, her vision swam, and she collapsed.

“Chen Ran?”

Yu Lanzhou called out, and a bloodied person collapsed into her arms—like a tiny quail that had fallen from a height, been run over, was injured, and was about to die.

Yu Lanzhou knelt on the ground, supporting Chen Ran’s body. She pressed down hard on the bleeding artery in her wrist, dialing the emergency number with one hand, choking out a shout: “Chen Ran!”

The light in the hallway was dim. Li Nan didn’t clearly see the newcomer’s expression. She only raised her hand and waved it violently a few times, as if swatting away a fly.

“You hurry up and take her away. She’s like a lunatic, terribly unlucky!”

Yu Lanzhou was communicating Chen Ran’s injuries to the person on the phone. Hearing this, she looked up at Li Nan.

The landlady quickly pointed to a scratch on the indoor wallpaper that was no more than three centimeters long, trying to explain to the onlookers: “This little girl is something else! She ruined my house like this. This wallpaper, all this dirt and damage, needs to be replaced. Asking her for two thousand is generous of me. And now she comes to my house to slit her wrist! Her brain must have been eaten by a pig!”

Yu Lanzhou’s gaze followed the layout of the basement wallpaper downwards. The seven or eight steps descended into darkness, appearing damp and cold.

She stayed in a place like this when she was in Pingjing?

Yu Lanzhou hung up the phone, took the silk scarf from her neck, folded it into a wide strip, tied a slipknot around Chen Ran’s upper right arm, then pulled out the hairpin from the back of her head, inserted it into the tied cloth and twisted it, before inserting the other end of the hairpin into the slipknot, tightening it to stop the bleeding.

After doing all this, she looked up at Li Nan and asked coldly: “Since she paid two thousand for the wallpaper replacement, why didn’t you replace it? Does that minor damage cost two thousand yuan? Is renting out this basement partition legal? Are there any fire safety devices inside?”

Her voice and expression were full of pressure.

Li Nan was left speechless by this barrage of questions, but a few seconds later, she opened her mouth to try to argue something.

Yu Lanzhou scorned to give Li Nan another glance. “Save your spit. Use it when you’re weeping at your own funeral.”

Chen Ran smelled a familiar scent—the dampness, the rainforest, the deep sea, a suffocating inability to breathe.

She recognized her scent first.

It was Yu Lanzhou.

Chen Ran painfully opened her eyes. Through the thin red mist, she clearly saw the faint mole on Yu Lanzhou’s neck artery. Her profile was still noble. Aloof and detached, commanding respect without anger.

She came. In her moment of greatest need, in the moment she loved her the most, making her feel that this love could transcend even this brief, hasty life and reach the heavens.

“Yu Lanzhou.”

Yu Lanzhou’s voice was cold. She tilted her head slightly and asked, “What did you call me?”

Chen Ran said weakly, “Auntie Yu…” She seemed to have crossed Yu Lanzhou’s boundary again.

But she shouldn’t care right now.

“Why did you come…” Why did you come to this dirty, out-of-place place, so mismatched with you?

“The phone has GPS tracking,” Yu Lanzhou responded to her, frowning at the injury on Chen Ran’s head, which looked serious.

No more waiting.

“Put your arms around my neck.”

Chen Ran struggled to raise her already stiff and numb arms to circle them around Yu Lanzhou’s neck, but she couldn’t manage it.

Yu Lanzhou, still half-kneeling, took Chen Ran’s wrist with her warm hand and draped it over her own nape.

“Close your eyes if you don’t want to see her anymore.”

Chen Ran closed her eyes.

Yu Lanzhou picked her up, carried her out under the gaze of the crowd, placed Chen Ran in the passenger seat, and fastened the seatbelt.

Then she returned to the driver’s seat and raised the convertible top.

The white Ferrari disappeared from the old, dilapidated residential area in a roar of engine sound.

Chen Ran and Yu Lanzhou met again eleven months ago.

At that time, Chen Ran stared at her and felt a stirring in her heart like rolling mountains.

The beauty she met at the Yu Lan Art Hall had eyebrows like distant mountains, and her eyes, which left a deep impression on Chen Ran upon their first meeting, were a deep blue. And near the lower eyelid of her left eyeball, there was a crimson mole.

Like a fire burning in the deep sea.

Her long hair reached her shoulders, adorned with luxurious jewelry Chen Ran couldn’t name.

Yu Lanzhou habitually wore black and white during performances, and her casual clothes were mostly black and white. Chen Ran had always suspected that her wardrobe contained no other colors besides black and white.

The person on stage stood under the spotlight; the only beam of light on the stage shone directly on Yu Lanzhou.

She bowed to the audience, yet her gaze was one that looked down on everything.

The first piece played was Wagner’s Lohengrin Prelude, rotating and soaring in tranquility.

Yu Lanzhou’s arms rose and fell with the music.

Perhaps all excellent conductors must possess this kind of mental quality: passionate and unrestrained yet calm and introverted, or perhaps enchanting and blooming yet forbidding any slight.

Whatever color the symphony had, Yu Lanzhou on stage was that color.

But once she stepped off the stage, she would return to being like a snow mountain. Quiet, and occasionally vicious.

Shouting in her presence would only make one feel swallowed up.

That she was only to be admired from afar was etched in Chen Ran’s heart.

In those few years, Yu Lanzhou treated her as if she were some cheap plastic object. Chen Ran still remembered the evaluation she received from the other party more than two years ago: Frivolous (轻浮).

Exchanging a kiss for those two words—it probably wasn’t a loss.

Support Frivolous