Lin Xiaolu's Memories

That night, the gray-black sky looked as though it had been smeared with ink, the moonlight hazy and the starlight dim.

Lin Xiaolu lay on her side by the window, curled up, quietly gazing at the boundless night sky.

Moko had fallen asleep at the head of the bed at some point, her translucent wings draped over her shoulders, her pink down trembling slightly without the slightest sound.

From the floor beside the bed came the occasional faint rustle of fabric, clearly someone tossing and turning there unable to sleep.

"Xiaolu, asleep yet?"

Suddenly, Xia Liang's voice rang out in the pitch-black room.

She received no response; Lin Xiaolu said not a word, turning a deaf ear to it.

"I have to say, this outfit is a bit too tight; it feels restrictive when trying to sleep."

Yet Xia Liang had never cared about such things, and when no one picked up the conversation, she simply went on talking to herself: "So can I sleep naked?"

"...No."

Disturbed by these remarks to the point where she no longer felt any quiet nighttime melancholy, Lin Xiaolu lowered her eyelids and vetoed Xia Liang's proposal.

She first refused off the cuff, then processed what Xia Liang meant by the clothes being tight, instantly feeling even more displeased: "Wearing my clothes, sleeping in my room, where do you get off having so many demands? Do you want me to make you sleep on the sofa in the living room?"

"Naked?" Xia Liang blinked, her cheeks flushing.

"Of course fully clothed!" Lin Xiaolu gritted her teeth.

"I'm just joking, plus it wouldn't look good if your family saw."

"You still remember this is my home?"

Halfway through the banter, the two fell silent for a moment.

After a while, Xia Liang hugged her quilt, tightening her grip around it slightly, and closed her eyes:

"I'm saying, Xiaolu."

"What is it now?" Having already opened her mouth, she could no longer pretend to remain silent, and Lin Xiaolu could only retort to Xia Liang with a touch of annoyance.

"Do you and your dad have a bad relationship?"

Xia Liang's question froze the expression on Lin Xiaolu's face.

Facing away from Xia Liang, Lin Xiaolu pressed her face closer to the inner side of the pillow, making her voice drop even lower: "Can you tell?"

"Yeah, I could feel it."

"Is that so? But it's none of your business, right?"

When this topic came up, Lin Xiaolu's voice turned somewhat hoarse: "Or are you here to lecture me too?"

"Not at all."

Xia Liang said softly in the dark: "I'm just a little curious."

"Curious about what?"

"Your dad should care about you; he's actually pretty good to you."

...How can you tell? Just based on a few words you exchanged?

"It wasn't the words, but his attitude and expression."

At this, a hint of seriousness crept into Xia Liang's tone: "You can tell whether parents truly care about their child from details like that."

With these words came another long silence.

Lin Xiaolu said nothing, seeming to sink into some sort of contemplation, while Xia Liang said no more at that moment.

At length, as if having decided on something, Lin Xiaolu spoke: "He looks like that to you now?"

Xia Liang asked with some confusion: "Now? Weren't they like that before?"

"Of course not."

In the dark, Lin Xiaolu's expression was indiscernible, but her voice seemed squeezed right out of her throat, carrying an indescribable grievance:

"If you haven't seen it, you can't understand the parts of him that are truly unreasonable. That cold-blooded look makes people's hearts turn cold."

"Ever since I was little it was like that—work, work, work, nothing but overtime or business dinners. When he was at home, he wore a stern face, as if he was unhappy no matter what happened and didn't care about anything. For me too, he just kept signing me up for cram schools, buying exercise books, and then telling me to study hard."

"Mom always said back then that we had to understand him, to forgive him. Even when she prepared a whole table of dishes for a holiday and he called to say he wouldn't be coming back to eat, she still didn't have a single complaint."

"And then one day, she died."

"She was completely fine just the day before, and the next day he suddenly told me Mom was dead, that from then on it would just be him and me, and then neither gave a reason nor any closure. I asked him to let me see Mom one last time—guess what his answer was?"

Seeming not to expect Lin Xiaolu to throw a question her way at this moment, Xia Liang reacted slightly: "Um... didn't your dad agree?"

"Hmph, what he said was 'Forget her'."

Lin Xiaolu let out a scoff, but there was not the slightest hint of a smile on her face: "He casually packed away her things, casually hired a few people, and casually held a funeral, as if the whole matter was completely over."

"Then, halfway through the memorial service, he disappeared, hugging some young woman who came from goodness knows where."

"Was he really working outside? Did he actually care about Mom at all in his heart? I don't know, but I was worried and terrified. I went to ask him for a reason, and he skirted around it; even when I cried in front of him, he still had no reaction, only spouting ghost stories about how he was very sad too."

"In the end, I got into a fight with him. I can't even remember what the two of us said back then, only that I truly poured all my anger and incomprehension out to him, and then he slapped me across the face."

"What did he say? 'Who do you think I'm doing all this for'? It was something like that, I think?"

"Who was it for? It sure wasn't for me, right? And it sure wasn't for Mom either, right? Otherwise, why did he have his arms around another woman at home just a few days later?"

"They clearly looked so loving on ordinary days, but once the other person actually passed away, he immediately changed his face—is this what Mom used to mean by understanding him?"

"And then I ran away from home."

This statement made Xia Liang open her eyes slightly.

As if suddenly realizing something, she looked in the direction where Lin Xiaolu lay, but in the pitch-black room, Lin Xiaolu still had her back turned to her.

"So I won't ask why you ran away from home. I know the only kind of situation that makes someone want to run away."

Her voice was muffled; that nameless anger had receded at some point, though whether it vanished or lurked deeper down remained unclear.

"I stayed at a classmate's house for many days. During that time I didn't go to school, just quietly stayed by myself."

She continued speaking of her past experiences: "Then I don't know which day it was—it seemed my classmate's parents contacted the school, the school told him where I was, and then he came looking for me."

"That was probably the first time I saw him look so battered. The dark circles around his eyes were like a ghost's, he hadn't shaved his beard or trimmed his hair, nor was he wearing the formal suit he wore year-round; he just threw on a tacky jacket and came."

"He said 'Let's go home', and I thought to myself, we've fallen out to this degree, what reason do I have to go back with you?"

"But seeing him like that, I don't know why my heart still softened. Sympathy? Or grievance? By the time I came to my senses, I was already gripping his hand like a spell had been cast."

"Ever since then it's been the way it is now. I don't pay much attention to him, and he acts as if making up for something, transforming into a 'good father'—but that's all."

Having reached this point, she seemed to have finally finished what she wanted to say, dissolving a certain emotion as well, and so she let out a long breath and her pace slowed.

"That's it, it ends here."

Lin Xiaolu closed her eyes: "Does this boring story satisfy you?"

Xia Liang didn't answer right away. She let go of the quilt she had been hugging at some point, and as if recalling something, looked somewhat dazed.

After a moment, she lowered her eyelids and softly replied, "Yeah."

"Good then."

Lin Xiaolu pulled the quilt up a bit higher, half-covering her face: "I'm going to sleep."

Peace filled the room, and after a long while, the sound of even breathing came from Lin Xiaolu's bed, leaving only Xia Liang awake as she lay on the mattress on the floor.

She didn't dwell on the slightly tight clothes she wore, nor did she mind the floor pallet that she and Lin Xiaolu had worked together on, only for the padding to turn out rather terribly.

She seemed to say something, but that sentence was audible only to herself.

At last, in the dim midnight, Xia Liang slowly drifted off to sleep as well.

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