Home Early in the Bitter Winter

Ning Qing sat on the sofa with her legs together, The Thinner Book resting on her lap.

The book lay open, with her phone between its pages.

Ning Qing held the last dried persimmon between two fingers. She had already eaten half of it, and used her free ring finger to tap out a reply to Chen Shu.

The dried persimmon really tasted nothing special.

The persimmon fragrance was fairly rich, but the bitterness-removal process Chen Shu claimed to have done clearly hadn't worked very well. If she tasted carefully, she could still detect a trace of bitterness. Yet when she pictured them picking and peeling the persimmons together, then tying strings around them and hanging them from the tree, watching them turn into dried persimmons day by day, it tasted a little sweeter.

Ning Qing smacked her lips.

Just then, the dorm room door swung open—

"Ning Qing! Ning Qing!"

Zhang Suannai trotted in with a spring in her step. Today she wore dark leggings, sneakers, and white athletic socks. The leggings' smooth, matte, elastic fabric clung to the curves of her legs, and with the sneakers, her legs looked especially strong and long.

On top, she wore a loose sweatshirt whose hem covered the tops of her thighs, though even that did nothing to diminish the length of her legs.

She really had a great figure.

Whatever she had come to say, she was all smiles. But when she saw Ning Qing press the lock button on her phone, her expression turned suspicious.

"What are you doing that you don't want anyone to see?"

"Chatting."

"What's so secret about chatting? Who with?"

"Someone I'm chatting with."

"A man or a woman?"

"A man."

"Let me guess. Your dad?"

"No."

"Do you have an older brother?"

"No."

"Show me!"