She Adopted Me After My Biological Mother Passed Away - Chapter 12

Sisters or mother and daughter, we’ll decide that for ourselves.

“This song is called ‘Powder Snow Buried the Swing.'”

The crowd below surged, a faint clamor beginning to rise.

The intro began a cold, lonely melodic line played on Yu Xiu’s guitar, like the first falling flakes of snow. Immediately after, Tiangua’s keyboard joined in with an ethereal, music box-like tone. The simple, repetitive phrases truly felt like a frozen swing that could never soar high, swaying futilely in an empty, snowy field.

Then, the singer’s voice joined in. Her style was the polar opposite of the band’s previous explosive performance it was low, steady, and narrative.

“Powder snow falls lightly, like a silent letter before the end of the world…”

It was as if she were whispering a long buried story into one’s ear. Shi Shuxue froze for a moment, her earplugs having been unconsciously removed at some point.

Snow… the swing…

“You ask, will the snow bury us? I hide the question within the strings. Every syllable sinks slowly, like footsteps trapped in snow, never to be pulled free…”

“You ask, will the snow bury us? I hide the answer within an embrace. Every breath melts slowly, in your tiny palm, never to be felt again…”

Scattered fragments of images flashed through her mind, forced open by the song through the cracks of time. Piercingly cold air, a vision of boundless white, a blurred silhouette of a woman holding her hand…

Shi Shuxue’s head throbbed with a dull ache. In a daze, she seemed to truly see a swing in the distance, lonely and covered by a thick layer of snow. The woman lowered her head, what did she say? She couldn’t hear it, there was only the roar of the wind and snow filling her ears, and a sense of misunderstood loneliness wrapped in silence…

Who was that? Was it you, Shi Xianyu?

Shi Shuxue’s breathing quickened. She gripped the clothes at her chest, the fabric of her windbreaker crumpling into wrinkles. She tried to capture more details, but the images were like reflections in water, shattering into blurred spots of light at the slightest touch. All that remained was that feeling of coldness, silence, and being enveloped in tenderness, so distant.

The song continued. When it reached the chorus. “Powder snow buried the swing, never to swing high” a deep, almost sorrowful power was injected into her voice. During the bridge, the recurring music box melody stood out again, tinkling rhythmically.

Shi Shuxue looked at the singer on stage, who was singing a song that felt as if it had been carved out of her own heart. Her nose felt inexplicably sore.

The song ended, the lingering notes fading into the air. The entire venue fell silent for a heartbeat before erupting into thunderous applause. As the audience began to disperse, Shi Shuxue remained standing still, as if nailed to the spot.

When Chi Yeyu slipped out from backstage to find her, she saw her looking lost and dazed. She walked over and lightly tapped her shoulder: “What’s wrong? Listened yourself silly?”

Shi Shuxue snapped back to reality and looked up at Chi Yeyu with a rare look of confusion in her eyes. She opened her mouth, her voice a bit dry: “This song…”

“Hmm?” Chi Yeyu raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you mean the last one? How was it? Pretty good, right? During rehearsal yesterday, I suggested adding some humming in the middle, but unfortunately, the three of them unanimously rejected my ‘creative touch.'”

Shi Shuxue ignored the teasing and asked stubbornly: “Who wrote it?”

Chi Yeyu looked at her, dropping the joking expression. She replied: “Your mom.”

A final verdict. That name instantly shattered the last sliver of uncertainty in Shi Shuxue’s heart. It really was her. The mother who had left only a few strokes in her life before making an early exit.

“When you were four, she took you on a trip to Hokkaido. She wrote this song then,” Chi Yeyu said.

Shi Shuxue lowered her head, her long eyelashes concealing the surging emotions in her eyes. She finally understood where that haunting familiarity came from and what those broken images triggered by the song were.

The powder snow buried the swing, and it seemed to have also buried the youthful figure of Shi Xianyu and her unspoken, complex emotions on the other side of time. Now, those emotions had traveled through more than a decade of wind and snow via their band, landing right on her heart.

November 7th. Start of Winter.

For several days, the sky had been leaden gray. The clouds hung low, like water-soaked cotton batting weighing down on the rooftops. Occasionally, a few birds flew low, hurrying across the sky.

Pedestrians on the street bundled up in their coats, hunching their shoulders. The roasted sweet potato vendor set up his stove early: “This year’s cold is strange, feels like a big snow is brewing.”

“I’ll take a sweet potato.” A young woman in a beret stepped out of a nearby white sedan. She was tall and stylishly dressed. Her hands were long and fair, her fingers adorned with intricate rings, yet she had thin calluses.

“Nine yuan.” The vendor picked a large, glistening sweet potato for her and put it in a plastic bag. She took it with one hand, scanned the code to pay, took off her mask, and exhaled a puff of white mist.

Her face was beautiful and cool, with a high bridge to her nose. She impatiently broke open the sweet potato, pressing the steaming center right to the tip of her nose. Her “cool” image vanished in a second as she cried out, “Hot, hot, hot!”

The vendor was about to offer a warning when a girl walking over from the nearby school gates said helplessly: “It’s fresh out of the oven, don’t rush.”

Chi Yeyu gave the other half to her: “It’s cold out, it’ll cool down fast. Eat up.”

Shi Shuxue took it and asked, “Did you pay?”

“Paid, paid. What do you take me for?”

The two of them one steady, one flighty, looked nothing alike, and their psychological ages seemed completely reversed. The vendor watched them, thinking they didn’t look like classmates, nor quite like sisters.

By evening, tiny grains of snow, like salt, began to fall. They pattered against umbrellas but melted the moment they hit the ground. Vegetable vendors hurried to pack up, and stray dogs ducked into alleys.

Driving the car, Chi Yeyu said, “Don’t let the light fall fool you. This is ‘trial snow.’ Once the temperature drops tonight, it’ll change its tune.”

Shi Shuxue nodded: “So that’s how it is.”

Chi Yeyu smiled: “The sweet potato guy told me that.”

“I guessed as much,” Shi Shuxue said.

Chi Yeyu pouted: “Can’t you leave your elder some dignity?”

Shi Shuxue had no way of giving her something that hadn’t existed from the start.

They had hot pot at home that night. When she got up in the middle of the night, the snow grains had turned into swirling flakes, dancing around the streetlights. Shi Shuxue went downstairs for water and found Chi Yeyu sitting cross-legged on the sofa working, her laptop on her lap.

“Still not sleeping?” Chi Yeyu looked up and asked.

“Air’s dry, I was thirsty.” Shi Shuxue stood by the window behind her with her glass. “The snow’s getting heavy.”

“Cold? Turn on the AC if you are,” Chi Yeyu said. She had been there all night, the vegetation by the road was already draped in a thick white coat.

“Not cold. Aren’t you going to sleep?” Shi Shuxue’s expression was hard to read, her tone characteristically cool as she watched the snow, asking the person behind her.

Shi Shuxue’s pajamas had been picked out by Chi Yeyu, long-sleeved and long-legged, black fabric embroidered with childish little white rabbits. Though they didn’t fit Shi Shuxue’s aesthetic, they were warm.

Chi Yeyu thought she looked cute. “There’s rehearsal tomorrow. I want to finish this work.”

“Another performance?” Shi Shuxue asked.

Chi Yeyu stretched and rubbed her neck: “End of the month. Rehearsal might not even happen tomorrow, if the snow is this big, those guys probably won’t show up.”

The next morning, Shi Shuxue woke up to an unusual silence. Outside the window, the world had been swallowed by a pure, absolute white. The snow showed no signs of stopping, still falling in drifts, covering streets, cars, roofs, and every sharp edge.

Shi Shuxue opened her phone. News alerts popped up one after another on the lock screen, city paralyzed by heavy snow, traffic at a standstill, all primary and secondary schools closed, work-from-home encouraged.

Chi Yeyu’s prediction came true; the band’s rehearsal was naturally canceled. She was in the kitchen making takoyaki and brought out a plate of “mush” for Shi Shuxue. The latter finished it expressionlessly, wiped her mouth, and said, “The fried egg you made last time was actually quite good.”

Chi Yeyu squeezed a pile of salad dressing on top, searching for octopus bits in the sauce: “So the takoyaki isn’t good this time?”

Shi Shuxue didn’t know where she got the nerve to ask that. She stood up to clear the dishes and took the tray into the kitchen.

After eating, Shi Shuxue curled up on the sofa to memorize vocabulary. Chi Yeyu went to the study to work for a while, but soon came back downstairs to sit beside Shi Shuxue, restlessly nudging “her” kid: “Shuxue, what are you doing?”

“Studying English,” Shi Shuxue said. They had exams at the end of the month. English wasn’t like other subjects; it required daily accumulation, so she had to prepare in advance.

Chi Yeyu was surprised: “You actually study? I thought you didn’t bring anything with you.”

“I still study a bit,” Shi Shuxue said.

“Study hard then,” Chi Yeyu offered the symbolic encouragement a parent usually gives, then pulled out her phone to play.

The room fell into a silence broken only by the slight sound of pages turning.

As Chi Yeyu scrolled through her phone, she tapped on a notification, her eyebrows knitting slightly.

Li Lingling was sending messages in the group chat in a frantic stream.

[A Dead Fish Screaming (4)]

Don’t Ever Make a Bass Joke Again: Holy crap, holy crap!!! Don’t Ever Make a Bass Joke Again: Are we about to get famous?? Don’t Ever Make a Bass Joke Again: That song from the last show went viral! Don’t Ever Make a Bass Joke Again: Yu Xiu, have you seen the data? Oh my god, Powder Snow Swing is climbing the charts!

The song Shi Xianyu wrote had caught fire.

The trigger was the band’s final performance before the Start of Winter. A fan-shot video of the live performance of ‘Powder Snow Buried the Swing’ had been quietly circulating among countless netizens.

In the video, Chi Yeyu’s low, soft vocals merged strangely well with the atmosphere of the silent falling snow outside the window, striking a common emotional chord in people’s hearts.

Initially, it was just small-scale sharing and emotion, until someone commented under the video: “The original creator of this song was Shi Xianyu, the former leader of ‘Screaming Goldfish.’ What a pity… the snow falls as it always did, the swing is still there, but the one who wrote the song has long been buried by time.”

This comment was like a wedge, prying open the gates of public curiosity and resonance. People followed the digital trails, digging up more fragments about Shi Xianyu and her old band.

The rough, grainy live performance videos from those years were re-uploaded and shared. Music platform algorithms sharply caught onto this wave of traffic and began aggressively pushing ‘Powder Snow Buried the Swing’ and other works by Screaming Goldfish.