On My Way - Chapter 63

Chapter 63 - Adolescent Love Is Like Heavy Snow in the Night

It was already midnight by the time I walked out of Boss Wang’s office.

Thick snowflakes drifted down from a grayish-purple sky. The streetlamps cast thin, sparse shadows that fell across Cheng Xia’s car.

“Didn’t I tell you to go back early?” I said, feeling weary.

“It’s fine. Besides, waiting for people is what I’m best at.” He closed the book he was holding and opened the passenger door for me.

“How did the talk go?”

“How else would it go? I quit,” I said. “I had originally planned on just coasting until retirement there.”

Truth be told, the attitude or the drama didn’t matter to me; the real problem was that he kept testing the boundaries of the law time and time again. With that kind of mindset, something terrible was bound to happen sooner or later.

Cheng Xia smiled, his tone extremely certain. “Even if you didn’t quit, you wouldn’t have lasted long there anyway.”

“Why?”

He let out a long breath and answered with a non sequitur: “In architecture, we always emphasize rigor and balance. But if you go to the countryside and look at all those old houses, many have unstable foundations and chaotic structures. Yet, they manage to house people. They didn’t collapse yesterday, and they won’t collapse today. Everyone just muddles through, faking it as they go, and somehow living their lives.”

He turned to look at me and whispered, “But you... you couldn’t live a life like that.”

I stared at him quietly from the side. The snow-covered ground was bright and silvery, and his smile was incredibly warm.

“No matter what situation you’re in, you will always fight with everything you have to climb higher,” he said to me with a smile. “Even if you’re celebrating your eightieth birthday.”

In that moment, my heart felt as clear and bright as the snowy night outside.

Yes, I wanted to keep climbing, always and forever.

It wasn’t just about having money. I wanted more freedom; I wanted dignity; I wanted a respectable job; I wanted to live filled with bright hope. I wanted to build architecture that could bring people happiness.

I always told myself to be content, but I have always been a greedy person. I cannot live a life of compromise. That is my fate.

“Let’s go! I’m treating you to a meal!” For a brief moment, I felt a surge of grand ambition.

“I don’t eat after six in the evening,” Cheng Xia said.

Immediately, he reached into the back seat and pulled out a sophisticated food container. “But I did bring you some dumplings.”

The dumplings were of two kinds: cabbage filling and celery filling. They were tender and crisp, and when dipped in vinegar and chili oil, they were incredibly refreshing. He had also brought a thermos of dumpling soup.

I ate until I broke a light sweat, and both my stomach and my heart felt warmed.

Cheng Xia truly possessed incredible willpower; he didn’t touch a single bite, just watched me eat with a smile. “Is it good?”

I said, “Where did you buy this? It’s exceptionally good!”

“I made it myself.”

I looked up. “You?”

I thought of Zhou Ting. Is it trendy for men to cook now?

But this was Cheng Xia—the man who once turned even a simple spicy pot into something that tasted like pig slop.

“Yes.”

He reached over and pulled out a tissue to wipe my mouth. “Everything is expensive abroad, so I slowly practiced until I got the hang of it. What else do you want to eat?”

The gesture was too intimate. I flinched back by reflex.

For a moment, we were both a little awkward. Cheng Xia handed me the tissue, straightened his posture, and looked ahead.

The snow was getting heavier now, piling up thick. A group of young women was walking through the snow, holding red basins and "Xi" (double happiness) signs. They were chattering excitedly; one girl, wearing a red cheongsam underneath a down jacket, was surrounded in the center.

“Is that the bride?” I asked.

“She’s probably getting married tomorrow.”

The day before a wedding, it was customary to entertain guests from afar, and the bride would usually stay at her parents' home with her bridesmaids, waiting to be wed.

“Holding a wedding on such a cold day,” I murmured casually. I packed up the food container and said, “Let me wash this for you.”

“No need,” Cheng Xia said. “Stay with me for a little longer.”

“Big brother, it’s one in the morning. I’m a jobless nomad, but you have work tomorrow.”

“Just stay with me. Please.”

He looked at me just like that, his gaze lingering and weak, laced with a sense of pleading.

Cheng Xia... this was Cheng Xia. My heart filled with an infinite sense of sorrow.

He reclined the seat, and we lay half-propped in the driver's seat, listening to a Cantonese song playing softly:

The story ended too abruptly,

Buried before it could even lose its breath.

............

Even if we meet again, we are just strangers in the vast crowd,

I fear I will spend this life missing you, unable to let go.

The snowflakes drifted down slowly, and the windshield wipers swept back and forth in a rhythmic, irregular beat.

Cheng Xia and I were still the same as we had been in the past—we didn’t share much in common, and so we didn’t really talk much when we were together.

But strangely, this silence wasn’t awkward; it was comfortable.

Just being with him like this, saying nothing and doing nothing, just watching the heavy snow in the middle of the night, didn’t feel lonely at all.

“How has your illness been?”

“I haven’t had an episode for a few years now,” he said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have dared to come find you.”

“That’s good.”

The heating was stifling, and coupled with being full, I slowly closed my eyes. “Cheng Xia, do you remember when I borrowed Inuyasha from you in high school?”

“Hmm.”

“Back then, all our classmates liked Kagome, but only I liked Kikyo. She once said: ‘Inuyasha, once the red thread of fate is severed, it can never be connected again.’”

In the past, travel was slow, and a lifetime was only enough to love one person.

But now, life moves too fast. Three or four years feels as distant as a past life.

Since we have both been reborn as new people, there is no need to pick up those overly intense loves and hates from before.

I am too tired.

I fell asleep slumped against the passenger seat.

I had many chaotic dreams. In one, Boss Wang brought a group of burly men to cause trouble for me; I resisted with all my might, but his face twisted and morphed into Chi Na’s, and it seemed I had returned to that dark, heavy night on the grasslands.

In another, I dreamed that I had stayed back then and married Cheng Xia. We were walking hand in hand along a beach in the sunset, with two big dogs and three children...

The colors in the dream were like aged paper, slowly becoming indistinguishable.

Everything I lost was my life; everything I gained is a better life.

When I woke up, it wasn’t quite dawn yet. Under the warm-colored streetlights, Cheng Xia was looking out the window. The snow was still falling in swirling heaps.

“What time is it? How did I fall asleep?” I asked, waking up with sleepy eyes as I sat up.

“Four o’clock,” he said. He pointed toward the building entrance ahead and said, “Look.”

The household hosting the wedding was in a storefront unit. Outside the door plastered with "Xi" signs, the snow was already three feet deep.

But right there in front of the door, there was a bouquet of red flowers—peonies, blooming with vivid, plump petals.

“Is this some kind of custom?”

“I just looked it up. There’s a saying that on the day before a woman is married off, her brother or father should send a bouquet of peonies. In ancient times, the peony was also called ‘Jiangli’ (about to depart), expressing the sorrow of the woman leaving home.”

“Ah? They send them at a time like this? Wouldn’t the flowers freeze?”

“He was the one who sent them.”

Following Cheng Xia’s gaze, I saw a young man. He was tall and slim, leaning against a car with his arms crossed, silently watching the door. He was already covered in a layer of snow.

After a while, a makeup artist arrived in a hurry. The bride opened the door and saw the flowers.

She didn’t pick them up, nor did she look at the boy standing there. She just ushered the makeup artist inside.

Then the photographer arrived, and relatives from the bride’s side came in droves. The sky gradually began to brighten, the sound of firecrackers erupted, and the jubilant groom arrived.

Amidst the golden rays of dawn, he carried his bride away on his back.

As for that boy, he eventually got into his car and kept watching it all, quiet and still.

His flowers lay on the ground, trampled by people, crushed, and left alone to be kicked aside.

By such a twist of fate, we passed by a heavy snowstorm and a story that no one would ever know.

“I don’t think he’s her brother. I think he’s someone who had a secret crush on the bride, sending her off to be married one last time,” I said.

Cheng Xia smiled lightly and suddenly said, “If one day you get married, I will send you off, too.”

I was stunned and turned to look at him.

“You don’t have much family left. I’m afraid people will bully you,” he said softly. “And then, I will wait for you, just as you once waited for me.”

I felt a pang of pain and didn’t know what to say. After a long while, I asked, “How long will you wait?”

He smiled faintly and said, “Until I no longer love you, or perhaps, until you fall in love with me all over again.”