Hedgehog's Belly - Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Just as Yan Qingzhu had said, she rarely appeared in her life anymore.

Occasionally, during the breaks of the Japanese classes held in Chongming Building, Luo Mu would catch a glimpse of that figure in her peripheral vision. A high ponytail complemented a slender, fair neck under the sunlight, her hands holding two thermoses, sometimes three.

Sometimes she came with a few friends, but most of the time, Luo Mu only saw her alone. The muscle lines on her arms were well-proportioned, appearing much stronger than one would imagine. Yet, when filling the water, she was always preoccupied; she burned herself many times.

That was the only place Luo Mu could meet her.

That was the only fragment of her that Luo Mu could spy upon.

Halfway through the first semester of senior year, the water dispensers in Chongming Building were dismantled for maintenance and replaced by a centralized water room. The location of the water room was in the opposite direction of Luo Mu’s Japanese classroom—one in the West Building and one in the East Building. Furthermore, the dispensers in the West Building were one floor lower than those in the East Building. Like line segments that are forever offset, they would never intersect.

Luo Mu never saw her again.

Luo Mu didn’t know if that person would ever return.

Perhaps she wouldn’t come back.

Everything had returned to the starting point.

Luo Mu sat in the Japanese classroom; the rotating class system was indeed a bit troublesome. But with only one year left, it wasn’t a big deal.

The Japanese teacher waved to her.

“Luo Mu, you’re free right now, right? Help me go to the main Teaching Building to fetch some water,” the teacher said quietly and politely as Luo Mu finished her exercises.

“The Teaching Building?” Luo Mu frowned in confusion. “Isn’t there a water room in the West Chongming Building?”

Seeing this, the teacher didn’t scold her but instead gave a faint smile.

“Luo Mu, you’ve never drunk the water from the dispensers in Chongming Building, have you?”

“Huh?” Luo Mu didn’t understand the teacher’s meaning, but she didn’t ask further.

She simply took the water bottles of the teacher and a few classmates to the Teaching Building, filled them, and returned to Chongming Building.

It was, indeed—a bit stupid.

Luo Mu returned to her seat in the Japanese classroom feeling awkward. After considering it for a while, she eventually tilted her head and whispered to the classmate beside her, “Why go to the Teaching Building to fetch water instead of using Chongming Building?”

The female classmate was actually quite shocked that she would ask such a question, replying with a rhetorical tone, “Why do you think the water dispensers in Chongming Building are always ‘under maintenance’?”

Luo Mu blinked blankly. “Is it… not good?”

“What else?” The classmate looked back at her exam paper. “Only someone with a massive hole in their brain would run all the way from the Teaching Building to Chongming Building just to fetch water.”

Luo Mu was stunned, momentarily speechless. After thinking for a long time, she asked, “Then what about the people who run from Chongming Building to the Teaching Building?”

The classmate let out a snort, playing along: “They have a small hole.”

Luo Mu knew clearly that the classmate was teasing her, but Luo Mu only gave a faint smile.

Indeed, a hole in the brain.

It was completely different from what that person had said before.

Different.

As it turned out, the water in the Chongming Building dispensers didn’t taste good at all.

Luo Mu’s eyelashes trembled, her gaze grew dazed, and her pen flickered. By the time she snapped out of it, she realized she had drawn several scribbles on the test paper.

Recalling that person’s mysterious invitation when they first met, the countless accidental encounters, and the familiar paths between the Teaching Building and Chongming Building—it turned out everything had a trail to follow.

That person would often hold a water cup, inadvertently tilting her head, searching for a familiar figure.

The distance between Chongming Building and the Teaching Building wasn’t exactly close; it took six minutes just to walk it.

But the break was only ten minutes long.

Those “accidental” meetings were actually long-premeditated by that person.

Luo Mu’s heart ached. A sense of shame suddenly surged in her heart, like a mirror reflecting all of her own pathetic behavior.

Her fingertips turned pale; she couldn’t summon any strength.

At this moment, everything she wanted to lose and forget was dragged up from the deepest parts of her memory.

What right did she have to reminisce about that person?

Luo Mu’s gaze was vacant, her reason slowly clearing—but what of it?

It was already meaningless.

The next time she saw Yan Qingzhu’s name was on the Top 50 list for the Physics track.

“Whoa, Muzi, you—” Qin Jiahui looked at the printed Top 50 list for the entire grade. She had been excitedly trailing off, her eyes scanning down like an instrument, but finally, she said in a disappointed, low voice: “You still didn’t make the top fifty.”

“Short by three points—one multiple-choice question in a minor subject.” Luo Mu stared at the total score and ranking, calculating the gains and losses in her head.

“There are too many people with the same score this time, but my baby Mumu will always be number one in my heart.” Qin Jiahui didn’t know how to comfort people, but she could always come up with words that were both cheesy and laugh-inducing.

Luo Mu smiled faintly, took the ranking sheet, and studied the calculations seriously.

Her gaze flickered, and she discovered that familiar name on the Physics track Top 50 list.

Rank 4: Yan Qingzhu.

Luo Mu had passed by the faculty office before and indeed heard the Physics teachers discussing how, although Class 3 was nominally a regular class, there were always a few “dark horses” who broke through the ranks and could go head-to-head with the elite classes.

And every time the three words “Yan Qingzhu” were mentioned, another name was inevitably included: Zhou Shulei.

Luo Mu shuddered violently. It felt as if she had passed through a long temporal node before her reason gradually returned.

“Did you fill out your mock university preference form?” Luo Mu turned to look at Qin Jiahui.

“Ah—not yet—” Qin Jiahui furrowed her brows in distress, complaining, “There are still over two hundred days until the Gaokao. I don’t know what the homeroom teacher is rushing for.”

“Where do you want to apply?” Luo Mu smiled.

“I don’t know. Mumu, you want to go to Lingyang Foreign Studies, so I want to be with you too.” Qin Jiahui moved her head close to Luo Mu’s ear, whispering to her, “Actually, I really want to study French.”

In youth, one’s heart is higher than the sky. The proof of a heart beating fiercely is: I can still have dreams.

“The score requirements for language majors at Lingyang are too high. If I had scores like yours, I wouldn’t have to worry.” Qin Jiahui stretched, her face full of exhaustion.

“But I just want to study French,” Qin Jiahui believed firmly.

But the dreams of youth are held too high, shelved away where no matter how one reaches, they cannot be touched; one can only gaze at them quietly. As time passes, one watches those dreams gradually spoil and rot until there is no longer a reason to touch them.

Thus, dreams become unreachable illusions.

Thereafter, one continues to pour those dusty illusions into the great melting pot of life, never to see them again.

As it turns out, this is probably how people grow old.

“Lingyang is a good place,” Luo Mu murmured in a low voice.

“Why does A-Mumu want to go to Lingyang?” Qin Jiahui stared at her curiously. She knew Luo Mu well; Lingyang wasn’t a place with a strong religious atmosphere, but it was relatively more inclusive in thought and its culture was more novel. For a believer raised in traditional thought like Luo Mu, Qin Jiahui didn’t understand why she was obsessed with Lingyang.

“Because it’s far from Chujiang,” Luo Mu’s answer was simple.

Because it was far from Chujiang, because she could escape her father’s authority.

To escape all the blame, verbal abuse, slander, and vilification here; to escape all the painful memories.

From then on, those pains could no longer bind me.

“It is indeed very far from Chujiang.” Qin Jiahui recalled the distance between Chujiang and Lingyang. “The round-trip fare is really expensive.”

“Have you made up your mind?” Qin Jiahui reminded her again.

Luo Mu nodded.

“That’s good then.” Qin Jiahui rarely calculated gains and losses; she knew that as long as a person lives to their heart’s content, it is enough.

It is already very difficult for a person just to live to their heart’s content.

The Gaokao countdown on the blackboard was constantly updated, along with the completed test papers and used-up pen refills. Solving problems, correcting problems, explaining problems. In those highly tense, boringly repetitive days of continuous knowledge accumulation and consolidation, Luo Mu would describe it years later as: “Painfully taking root.”

The rules for evening self-study at Tianzhong Middle School were constantly changing, shifting from “voluntary participation” to a written “I participate voluntarily.”

Qin Jiahui slumped on her desk, the calculus problems having already caused her to lose quite a bit of hair. She said wearily in a low voice, “Why sleep long while living? One will sleep eternally after death.”

Qin Jiahui muttered again, “I’m going to sleep for three days and nights after the Gaokao is over.”

“That sounds like something you would do,” Luo Mu said with a slight smile, flipping her scratch paper to a new page and laughing wittily.

Suddenly, with a bang, fireworks exploded in the night sky outside the window, accompanied by a sizzling trail that tore through the midnight fear and confusion.

Instantly, everyone raised their heads to look at the fireworks outside, and a sudden clamor broke out.

In those days, besides studying, everything was interesting; everything was worth an extra glance.

The dazzling display was reflected in their pupils, felt along with their heartbeats, yet more impactful than a heartbeat.

Luo Mu gazed at it quietly.

A streak of firework flashed from the darkness, reached a certain height, and suddenly burst apart. It produced violet-red brilliance and light, mixing with the smoke to form a perfect arc. Finally, it slowly dissipated, leaving tiny, shimmering points of light at the tail.

That year, there were fireworks even more brilliant and eye-catching than these.

That year, the winter in Lingyang was much colder than in Chujiang.

—”I will also give a part of my love to Sister Muzi.”

—”Yan Qingzhu, you know that extremes produce the opposite.”

—”I take it as a blessing.”

The entire devotion of a seventeen-year-old was hidden within those five words; they needed no more embellishment, and no embellishment was sufficient.

I take it as a blessing.

That year, that person still possessed a brightness and wildness that hadn’t been eroded by the cold wind.

The sincerity of a seventeen-year-old contained no lies.

Luo Mu’s face was calm as she watched the fireworks bloom and then vanish. But her eyes were shimmering, her nose stinging, filled with a deep sense of helplessness.

The fragments in her memory repeatedly surfaced in her mind. Now, they were like roses covered in thorns blooming in her heart—beautiful yet dangerous. A slight touch would lead to a cut from the thorns, drawing blood that was hard to scab over, leaving Luo Mu struggling in vain.

She thought she had mostly forgotten that person.

She thought her life would no longer be stirred by any waves.

But every now and then, in the inadvertent moments of calm days, the figure of that person would drift like scattered fragments through the most fragile corners of her memory—where she could only exist as a memory.

Before the gears of fate began to roll, what Luo Mu could do was remove the gears so that they would no longer continue to turn.

So that in Yan Qingzhu’s life, the two words “Luo Mu” would never exist again.

She would not bear the pain for me, nor could she bear the pain for me.

Thereafter, the believer who prayed to the gods became a gambler who delusionaly sought to change the path of destiny.

That was the only way seventeen-year-old Luo Mu could think of.