Old Wounds, New Growth - Chapter 5

Translator: Deyonna

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I helped Jiang Chi up and said, "Let's use each other's meal cards from now on."

Jiang Chi's face doesn't look very good. He may not have recovered yet. "Are you serious?"

 "I'm serious." I nodded. "We can switch back at the end of the semester."

"Not that!" Jiang Chi hesitated, looked left and right, then leaned in close to me and said, "You... really... want to chase… Li Chishu?" 

The class bell rang.

I stood up from my desk and habitually put my hands in my pockets, tilting my head at him. "Not only do I want to chase him, but I also want to be with him for the rest of my life and get married to him abroad in the future. If you can't accept it, then you should work on yourself and accept it sooner rather than later."

At noon after school, I went to the back door of Li Chishu's classroom and saw that he really didn't go to eat. He was sitting alone in the classroom, solving problems.

I didn't disturb him and went straight to the underground supermarket to buy a box of grapes and a box of pre-cut kiwis. I also grabbed some snacks and went back to Class 25, sitting in front of Li Chishu in the opposite direction. "Stop working. Eat some fruit."

Li Chishu smiled and said, "I'm not hungry."

"I know you're not hungry. That's why I bought fruit." I opened the box and handed him a fork. "Jiang Chi paid for it with his meal card, so eat more."

Li Chishu hesitated. "Did… he lose again in basketball?"

I didn't say anything.

If I treat you to a meal every time Jiang Chi loses a basketball game, then I'll have to play with him forever.

I took a piece of paper from Li Chishu's desk and spread it out on my lap. As I peeled grapes, I said, "We made a deal before the game. The winner can use the other person's card for a semester and spend it however they want."

 "What if you spend it all?" Li Chishu asked.

If it's all spent, I'll just recharge it. How can I let my wife go hungry?

But this is something that I can only say silently. Saying it out loud now might scare people.

"If it's all spent... then we can just play another game. Whoever wins will have the right to use the card."

I held the peeled grapes up to Li Chishu's mouth, but he initially leaned back a bit. When he saw the look on my face, he slowly leaned forward and took a bite of the grape.

"Thank you." Li Chishu chewed silently and said thoughtfully, "But if you keep using the card for me, isn't it... not good?"

"It's fine," I said as I picked up a piece of kiwi with my fork and put it in my mouth. "Are the grapes delicious?"

 Li Chishu nodded.

I calmly dropped my fork on the floor, then bent down to pick it up. I placed it on the paper where the grape peels were. "I dropped my fork."

"You use mine." Li Chishu wiped the corner of his mouth and hurriedly passed the fork in his hand to me. 

 "Forget it, it's too much trouble to keep switching," I said, trying to speed up peeling the grapes. Then, in a very manly tone, I suggested, "How about you feed me instead?"

——Every strand of hair was telling Li Chishu: Whoever minds, has something to hide in their heart.

This trick worked too well. Li Chishu stared at the classroom door and summoned his courage and gave me a bite.

The first batch of people who went out to eat was coming back soon, so I finished peeling the grapes and went outside to wash my hands. I grabbed a few snacks that I had bought earlier and put them on Li Chishu's desk. "You can eat these when you get hungry in the afternoon. Don't starve yourself. You're too skinny."

Li Chishu perhaps realized that refusing my offer was pointless, so he thought for a few seconds before slowly dividing the snacks into two portions. He pushed the larger portion towards me and kept only one pack for himself. "You also take some and eat... You're also pretty skinny."

I had already turned around to leave, but when I heard what he said, I found it amusing and turned back to ask him, "I'm skinny?"

"En," he nodded lightly. "Your... hands are very skinny."

Perhaps afraid that being too blunt would make me angry, he added, "And they're also very long."

In an inopportune manner, certain scenes from my previous life where I made Li Chishu have a hard time due to my excessively long fingers came to mind.

That was one of the rare moments of pure joy between him and me during his difficult days.

I averted my gaze and coughed, pushing the snacks back towards him. I deliberately let my fingertips stay on the packaging for a few seconds, allowing Li Chishu to appreciate how long my fingers were. "It's not always a good thing to have fingers that are too long."

Li Chishu was taken aback. "Ah?"

"It's nothing." I moved his chair back to its original position, trying to stifle my laughter. "I'll go first."

That pile of snacks, Li Chishu, only opened one pack and didn't finish it - he didn't really like to eat snacks. Li Chishu once told me that when it comes to things that kids especially like: snacks, ice cream, and carbonated drinks, he desired them more than anyone else when he was still a kid. But after that stage, no matter how much he wanted to make up for it, it was in vain. People eat the food that corresponds to their age, and the desires that have already dissipated can only stay in the years they belong to, and can never come back no matter what.

On my way home from my evening self-study, I passed by a pharmacy. After asking the driver to park the car, I went in and bought two bottles of eye drops for Li Chishu. As I was about to enter the shop, I accidentally glanced at a nearby coffee shop and remembered something Li Chishu had said before.

After he got sick, he always liked to buy a lot of strange things. The more expensive, the better. But when he brought them home, they would just pile up and collect dust, rarely being used. I think it's just a form of retaliatory consumption mentality. In his twenties, he has already achieved success in his career, and he is trying to compensate for the past when Xiao Li Chishu has had nothing.

He didn't show much interest in most things, but there were a few things that he would put in the effort to tinker with, and one of them was the coffee machine he had bought. I was lucky enough to have tasted a few of his failed attempts at latte art. 

I remember that time when he and I were each holding a cup of coffee that he had made himself. Li Chishu's hands were so thin and bony that I was worried he wouldn't be able to hold the heavy coffee cup. He sat on the carpet at home and spoke softly, "Although the food in the cafeteria on the first floor of our senior high school wasn't as good as the food on the other two floors, at least there were two TVs. Every time I ate there and saw people drinking coffee on TV, I wondered what the coffee in the shop tasted like, how the latte art was made, and if there was any difference when drinking it together with the coffee. Sometimes, I couldn't taste the food I was eating at all and my mind was full of thoughts about coffee. I guess the coffee on TV was better than the instant coffee that my classmates made. But even the instant coffee in their cups smelled so good to me back then."

I asked him, "So which one do you think tastes better now?"

He gazed at the foam on top of his coffee and smiled. "I can't tell the difference. They're all pretty much the same. Bitter."

As I returned to my table with the eye drops I had bought for him, I dialed my mother's number and said, "Mom?"

As expected, my mother was playing mahjong. "Are you done with school?"

I hummed in reply and asked her, "Do we have a coffee machine at home?"

"Yes," she said. "It's in the tearoom on the third floor, right next to where I'm playing mahjong. Do you want to have some coffee?"

I didn't answer her question, and only asked, "Does the Western chef we hired know how to make latte art?"

Actually, my original intention was to ask the chef to make me a latte with latte art the next day, so I could bring it to school.

But before going to bed, I was faced with a problem that I had been avoiding subconsciously: I was afraid to fall asleep.

I was afraid that I would wake up and find myself lying in the cold funeral hall, with only Li Chishu's black and white portrait in front of me.

I would rather not sleep.

However, the night had a powerful force that was hard to resist. I began to understand why Li Chishu was so afraid of it in his past life. I tossed and turned in bed, and the fear spread through every second that I couldn't reach Li Chishu.

At three in the morning, I tried to call Li Chishu's number.

I'm not actually sure if the owner of this phone number is him, but judging from his consistent habits over the past decade, as someone who treasures old things, he probably hasn't changed his phone number in over ten years.

The measures taken by the school towards students bringing phones have always been one eye open and the other closed [1], as long as they are not caught blatantly using them. It is tacitly approved by the dormitory management to use phones privately to contact family members.

[1] Turning a blind eye, pretending not to see

After the ringing, the call was connected and a half-asleep voice of Li Chishu came through. "Hello?"

The stone in my heart suddenly fell to the ground.

I said, "Li Chishu."

He was quiet for a couple of seconds, and then I heard rustling sounds. He was probably trying to avoid waking anyone up by burying his head under the covers.

When he spoke again, Li Chishu sounded more awake. "... Shen Baoshan?"

"En."

"You… How did you get my number?" Li Chishu asked, but before I could answer, he lowered his voice and asked urgently, "What happened? Is something wrong?"

I skipped his first question and just said, "I can't sleep."

I left him speechless.

But I didn't want to hang up, so I just listened to his slow breathing.

After a while, he seemed to give in and said, "Then, what should I do?"

"..." I said, "Can you leave the call on while you sleep? Having some sound to accompany me might help me sleep better."

He yawned and asked softly, "Will this help you fall asleep?"

"En." 

"Well… that's good."

Li Chishu didn't have much time to sleep during the day, especially in his senior year of high school. He only told me that during that year, he slept after one o'clock almost every night, woke up before six o'clock, and took a nap for at most an hour. He was so tired that he could fall asleep immediately as long as he was given a pillow.

So, after he agreed to my request, he quickly went back to his pillow and fell asleep.

I took the phone that was still connected to him, along with my Bluetooth headphones and tablet, and went to the tearoom on the third floor. There, I spent the remaining three hours practicing how to successfully make a latte art coffee that was not so ugly.

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September 23rd, Sunny[2]

[2] Li Chishu's diary entry from the previous life

Today, I had the same physical education class as Shen Baoshan. He played basketball for the entire class and continued playing after class.

I memorized words under the ping-pong table until page 138.

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September 23rd, Sunny[3]

[3]Li Chishu's diary entry in the current life

Shen Baoshan was acting very strange today. During our physical education class, he came to talk to me and asked if I slept well, and reminded me to take care of my eyes. After class, he asked me to accompany him to eat, and during lunch break, he brought me fruits and snacks and even helped me peel grapes. I suspected that he had something to tell me, but he didn't seem to know how to bring it up.

Oh, and he asked me to accompany him to a place during the upcoming long weekend, and warned me that it might be tiring. Maybe it was because of this that he's acting this way towards me now.

Actually, he doesn't need to act this way towards me. Even if he didn't, I would still be willing to accompany him.

However, the kiwis and grapes were really delicious, and I never knew curry tasted like that. I'm not used to it, but the food at the third-floor cafeteria was also very delicious. Thank you, Shen Baoshan.

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