Hedgehog's Belly - Chapter 66

Chapter 66

After greeting Brother Wang, Luo Mu noticed that Yan Qingzhu looked exceptionally exhausted. Despite having showered, Yan Qingzhu refused to return to her room; instead, she went to the living room sofa and tumbled onto Luo Mu’s shoulder while she was reading.

“If you’re too tired, go to rest early.” Luo Mu set her book face down and rubbed Yan Qingzhu’s cheek.

Suddenly, Luo Mu frowned; the skin was scorching to the touch.

“My head hurts,” Yan Qingzhu said, her voice tied in knots, sounding muddled.

Luo Mu stood up immediately, cupping Yan Qingzhu’s face with both hands to test the temperature; it was indeed far higher than normal. Yan Qingzhu stared at her blankly, her eyes moist, shimmering with the unshed tears of a half-conscious fever.

“The temperature in Lingyang has fluctuated a lot lately. You probably caught a chill when we got out of the car.”

“Caught a chill” was the local Chujiang way of saying someone had caught a cold. But Yan Qingzhu laughed sillily, completely defenseless: “Muzi-jie… who gets out of a car without catching a bit of wind?”

Luo Mu was about to get the thermometer from the medical kit, but Yan Qingzhu caught her wrist.

“If you don’t let go, you’re going to burn into an idiot. Let’s see who wants you then.” Looking at that flushed face, Luo Mu actually felt a bit like laughing.

Yan Qingzhu’s eyes were blurry, but she spoke very seriously: “You will.”

Luo Mu was speechless. She took a breath and raised her voice: “Who is the Universe’s Super-Invincible-Thunderclap-Patter-Warrior?”

“Me!” Yan Qingzhu instantly released Luo Mu’s wrist and threw her hand high in the air.

A few seconds later, Yan Qingzhu laughed at her own antics.

Luo Mu stifled a laugh. Fortunately, she hadn’t burned her brain out; she just liked to play-act.

The acting was truly clumsy.

After finally coaxing the fool into bed, Luo Mu turned the mercury thermometer toward the light to read it, muttering: “It’s a low-grade fever.”

Luo Mu turned off the main lights, leaving only a warm yellow carved lamp. On the nightstand sat a glass of dissolved granules.

“Hot…” Wrapped in the quilt, Yan Qingzhu actually tried to burrow deeper into it.

“I thought you’d kick it off,” Luo Mu laughed, sitting at the head of the bed and tucking her in again.

“I’m very good,” Yan Qingzhu said, half her head poking out, her voice thick with nasal congestion. “When Yan Yu was little and got sick, she always kicked the blankets. I wanted to tie her up with a rope.”

“Yes, you’re super good. I’ll give you a big red flower.” Luo Mu rubbed the space between Yan Qingzhu’s brows, but a surge of bitterness flooded her emotions.

Once upon a time, Yan Qingzhu was just a child who knew nothing, yet she had to care for her sister alone. For so many years, it had always been this way.

“Muzi-jie.” Yan Qingzhu’s voice grew faint, like a child testing the waters.

“Mm,” Luo Mu responded.

Yan Qingzhu poked her head out to take a breath: “The third year after my parents divorced, on one of my birthdays, even I forgot it was my birthday.”

The hazy warm light outlined their silhouettes; the distance between them felt so close that no secrets could be kept.

When a person’s mind is muddled and they are at their most vulnerable, they cast aside all calculations and rebellion. They only want to drop their guard and easily reveal long-silenced pains to their lover.

“That day, Yan Yu wasn’t looking where she was going. She fell on the way back and was covered in scrapes. I scolded her.” A trace of a smile appeared on Yan Qingzhu’s lips. She reached out from under the covers and hooked her pinky finger with Luo Mu’s.

Recalling the memory of Yan Yu crying with snot and tears all over her face, Yan Qingzhu laughed out loud.

“I found out later she had secretly used her allowance to buy a small cake.” Yan Qingzhu coughed a few times, lying flat and staring at the ceiling.

Luo Mu listened intently to her rambling, able to visualize the scene.

“That idiot got cheated. The cake wasn’t fresh at all; it tasted like plastic.” Yan Qingzhu’s head throbbed with pain, yet she couldn’t stop bringing up the past.

That day, Yan Yu had carefully maneuvered the crooked, fallen cake with a fork, managing to restore a rough shape. Then she stuck thirteen candles into it.

Yan Qingzhu remembered clearly; that was the first time she had used a lighter. The outer flame lit the wicks, bringing a spark of warmth to the cold house. The candlelight flickered, and through the glow, Yan Qingzhu saw a flicker of joy in her sister’s eyes.

A clear, unreserved joy.

“She asked me what my wish was.” Yan Qingzhu’s lashes trembled. She rolled onto her side to face Luo Mu.

Luo Mu noticed the look of pity in Yan Qingzhu’s eyes.

“I said, I hope Yan Yu grows up happy, safe, and sound.”

Luo Mu recalled that back in the Lingyang temple, Yan Qingzhu had made the same wish.

She seemed to have never changed.

There was never any room for Yan Qingzhu in Yan Qingzhu’s wishes.

“But,” Yan Qingzhu suddenly sat up. Even though she was dizzy, she grasped Luo Mu’s hand like a child who had made a mistake, pleading for Luo Mu’s mercy.

The intense fatigue made her voice weak, as if she were desperately trying to explain: “That day, I didn’t actually make a wish.”

“I… I just asked a question.”

Yan Qingzhu stumbled over her words, as if she had committed an unforgivable sin. Faced with a potential rebuke, she carefully organized her words, wanting to pour everything out.

She raised her trembling hand, gesturing a tiny distance in the air. Her heart felt like a clenched fist, twisting painfully.

She seemed to be struggling to grasp a tiny chance for explanation.

“A… very… very small question.”

Her voice seemed destined to be tragic—without melody, leaving only the faintest tremor.

“Can I… please… stop being the Big Sister?”

It seemed like such a simple question.

So simple that the answer for thirteen-year-old Yan Qingzhu and twenty-year-old Yan Qingzhu was the same.

No one—and no one ever would—tell her if there was a correct answer.

But after all these years, Yan Qingzhu had never eaten a plastic-tasting cake again, and she knew that asking questions of a birthday cake would never yield a response.

It seemed a Big Sister could only be a Big Sister. She couldn’t be weak; she couldn’t bow her head.

Talking about it now at twenty, there were no tears in Yan Qingzhu’s eyes. But the thirteen-year-old Yan Qingzhu was filled with grievance.

Perhaps it was because the years were too cruel, forcing her to chew on her sorrows during countless sleepless nights until they became tasteless, only then allowing her a moment’s peace.

“Muzi-jie.”

“Sister.”

Yan Qingzhu’s voice, mixed with tremors, slowly hooked around Luo Mu’s neck. Even her feverish skin couldn’t convey the bitterness in her heart.

Luo Mu gave a soft “Mm.” Her fingertips touched the glass of medicine; feeling it was no longer too hot, she held it out to Yan Qingzhu. Yan Qingzhu blinked, said nothing, and obediently drank it bit by bit.

“I’m here.” When the empty glass was handed back, Luo Mu’s lips curved slightly. She used her thumb to wipe a trace of medicine from the corner of Yan Qingzhu’s mouth.

Luo Mu didn’t dare think too deeply about how the young Yan Qingzhu had endured being sick all by herself.

After helping Yan Qingzhu lie back down, Luo Mu stood to tuck her in and dimmed the lamp to its lowest setting.

“Sister,” Yan Qingzhu murmured, sounding almost delirious. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Talk some more nonsense,” Luo Mu said. Having been put through the wringer all night, she lightly pinched Yan Qingzhu’s cheek.

“Can Muzi-jie sing a song for me?” Yan Qingzhu’s tone softened. Her fingers were still hooked around Luo Mu’s thumb. “I want to hear Muzi-jie speak Chujiang dialect.”

Yan Qingzhu had grown up in Chujiang and always felt the people there spoke softly and delicately. She could understand it but couldn’t speak it, and she certainly couldn’t capture that specific charm.

Luo Mu stood up and then leaned over the headboard so she was at eye level with Yan Qingzhu. She rubbed Yan Qingzhu’s forehead and said in a soft, gentle voice: “Then after the song, you have to go to sleep-sleep.”

Yan Qingzhu was surprisingly obedient: “Mm.”

One of Luo Mu’s hands was held tightly by Yan Qingzhu, while the other mimicked how her Grandma used to soothe her to sleep, patting the other woman rhythmically and lightly.

Luo Mu sang a simple childhood nursery rhyme: “The sky is dark, it’s going to rain…”

Childhood songs never have standard requirements; they are destined to live within memory.

A winding, delicate melody slowly rose in the quiet bedroom.

Luo Mu vaguely remembered that every time the humid “Return of the South” weather hit Chujiang, the walls would be covered in beads of water. But in her memory, that rain didn’t seem much different from the rain in Lingyang.

If she had to say, perhaps the rain in her hometown made her pant legs wet, and it was harder to dry.

The thick mist of that time was very suitable for goodbyes.

“Grandpa takes his hoe, to dig up the taro…”

Luo Mu thought it was a temporary dampness, never imagining it would become a lifelong one. The suona wailed, the music welcomed the spirit, and the funeral procession wore sackcloth and mourning white, with fine rain wetting their hair. Her new shoes were stained with mud, and she shivered from the cold.

Meanwhile, the passing village houses were decked in red couplets, with blood relatives gathered in joy.

In her memory, Luo Mu walked at the very end of the crowd, frequently looking back at the curling blue smoke. The villagers said that if they burned the mattress and bedding she used while alive, she wouldn’t feel afraid on the other side.

Back then, Luo Mu nodded, only half-understanding.

But even without anyone telling her, she knew.

The old woman who sang nursery rhymes to soothe her to sleep would never come back.

After all these years, Luo Mu had long forgotten how to sing the nursery rhymes. She just hummed the familiar melody over and over, repeating the few lyrics she remembered.

The warm yellow light felt cozy and soft in the dim bedroom. Luo Mu’s gaze fell upon their hooked fingers.

She couldn’t help but chuckle softly.

Looking up at Yan Qingzhu again, she saw her long, curled lashes rising and falling with her shallow breathing. It was as if she had fallen into soft clouds; her tense expression had relaxed into its gentlest form.

Luo Mu stood up again and tucked the quilt in carefully. While she was fast asleep, Luo Mu stole a kiss on her forehead.

But Luo Mu didn’t leave in a hurry. Instead, she leaned by the bed, her fingertip lightly touching the tip of Yan Qingzhu’s nose.

She suddenly lowered her head and buried her face, laughing secretly.

She was only laughing at her own youth; she had long since lost the ability to distinguish between being headstrong and being flamboyant.

When she had faced Yan Changde alone and explicitly stated she couldn’t agree, Yan Changde had made things difficult, as if he were clutching onto the question and refusing to let it go.

“If you can’t be her confidant now, can you be later?”

Luo Mu had looked up, her gaze never wavering: “I can promise you, I will definitely return to her side.”

“But have you ever thought,” Yan Changde actually laughed at this youthful arrogance, “what if there’s someone else by her side by then?”

“There won’t be, because no one knows her better than I do,” Luo Mu said calmly and coldly, but her words were unyielding. “I know better than anyone what she wants.”

In the large bedroom occupied by only a few slivers of light, Luo Mu hooked her fingers back, interlocking their palms, her thumb grazing Yan Qingzhu’s knuckles.

She propped her chin on one hand and murmured to herself: “How could I not have thought of that?”

“I…”

Luo Mu paused for a few seconds, slowly lifting her long lashes: “How could I not be afraid?”

If that time truly came and there was a strange face by Yan Qingzhu’s side, what identity would Luo Mu have to face her?

Could she really manage to bless Yan Qingzhu like a normal friend?

Not necessarily.

“Azhu, thank you.”

Luo Mu recalled various past embarrassments and couldn’t help but laugh: “For working so hard to keep me by your side.”

In her life, there had been too many travelers who stayed briefly and then left, never to walk beside her again.

But this idiot would tell unfunny jokes and sulk like a child. And she would rack her brains to study every detail of her lover, carefully collecting every inch of joy.

Yan Qingzhu was different from the others.

But the word “Reunion” was too much of a luxury.

“That ‘encounter’ in high school you and Song Chenxi teamed up to pull on me—if it were anyone else, I would have been angry long ago.”

Thinking about it now, she felt that Yan Qingzhu, that fool, had no acting skills at all.

“Azhu, Luo Mu isn’t good at all.”

Luo Mu lowered her eyes, catching a hint of the steady bitter orange leaf scent. She twined Yan Qingzhu’s hair around her fingers a few times.

The moonlight outside the window was thin—enough for one more beautiful, illusory dream.

“But even so… you don’t regret it, do you?”