Chapter 48

Chapter 10: The birthday party confession incident (part two)

Xiao Yunyun's birthday party grew lively. The lights went out, the candles were blown out, and the cake was cut. Her little face was flushed, and it was clear that she was in unusually good spirits as she welcomed another year, full of hopes and expectations for the future.

Meanwhile, with Xiao Yunyun's permission, the girls were already eagerly unwrapping the presents. Wang Andong and the others looked rather embarrassed as the gifts were opened. They had all brought fairly ordinary presents, naturally nowhere near as expensive as Gao Fan's bracelet, and they paled somewhat in comparison. The girls' gifts, on the other hand, were all sorts of strange and varied things.

Chen Lingshan picked up Su Can's box. She had been curious from the very beginning about what exactly he had bought Xiao Yunyun, and the question had stayed on her mind ever since. Her seat was very strategically placed, right next to Su Can's rectangular gift box, so naturally, that was the box she picked up.

Xiao Yunyun had wanted to open it herself, but Chen Lingshan beat her to it. Of course, she could hardly say anything, or the others would notice how much importance she attached to it, which would not be good.

"What's this?" The girls were already leaning closer. As the wrapping paper came away, an elegant rectangular cardboard box appeared before them, pale purple and decorated with a starry sky. There was a cutout in the middle, with clear cellophane revealing the gift inside: a Winnie the Pooh plush with a Disney label.

"Wow, it's so cute!" some of the girls exclaimed despite themselves.

One girl, who had just been boasting about receiving a set of opera masks brought back from Beijing by a friend for her birthday this year, promptly shut her mouth.

A flicker of delighted surprise crossed Xiao Yunyun's eyes. As a girl who loved shopping, she naturally knew the value of this box containing the plush Su Can had brought.

She could not help looking back at Su Can in surprise, either. Even for girls from relatively well-off families like theirs, casually spending three or four hundred yuan on a gift was almost impossible. That was an extraordinary contrast to the rumors at school that Su Can could not even afford a bottle of water.

"What's this, a doll?" Unable to stand having his thunder stolen, Gao Fan gave a speechless laugh.

As Chen Lingshan looked at Su Can now, there was actually a hint of warmth in her faintly shining, dark-rimmed eyes. She smiled lightly. "Yunyun is so lucky. If I got a present like this for my birthday, I wouldn't be able to sleep."

Everyone laughed teasingly. There was something suggestive about Chen Lingshan's words.

Gao Fan's jealousy surged. "Why not? When it's your birthday, Lingshan, I'll buy you eight or ten of them and pile them all over your bed!"

"This is a Disney plush! They're supposed to be really hard to find! And they're expensive, usually three or four hundred yuan each. There are barely even a few shops selling them in Xiahai City! Where would you buy that many?" one girl retorted.

Gao Fan's face alternated between pale and red. He had been about to ask what was so special about a Disney plush, but the price secretly startled him, and he looked at Su Can. This guy had casually bought such an expensive gift. Could he be planning to make a move on Xiao Yunyun?

But he could not take back what he had said, and it only earned him more mocking smiles, leaving him feeling even worse. Ever since Su Can appeared, he had distinctly felt Chen Lingshan grow colder toward him, no longer as warm as before. He had never considered Su Can a threat. He was better in every respect than this boy who stood half a head shorter than him. Yet somehow, this guy had won the favor of both beauties here. How could his feelings not be tangled?

He walked onto the balcony. The balcony at Xiao Yunyun's home had sliding doors. Once the door closed behind him, the bustle inside was shut away, leaving only the faint, clear moonlight, the densely starred deep-blue sky, and, below in the courtyard, shifting tree shadows and streetlights like milk foam.

Su Can took a sip of red wine and rested a hand on the balcony railing. A slightly warm breeze brushed his cheeks and lifted a few strands of his tousled hair, reminding him of how, in his previous life, he could only romp around the courtyard below with the other children from the Construction Bureau's family housing compound. When had he ever been able to become an honored guest in Xiao Yunyun's home like this, standing on this balcony, with the breeze carrying to his nose the fragrance of her little pink camisole and other personal items drying overhead to his left?

The sudden arrival of happiness might not mean a beautiful woman throwing herself into your arms, nor a dramatic leap forward in studies or career. Sometimes, simply accomplishing, little by little, things that had once been impossible was itself a kind of happiness, solidly built layer upon layer.

The sliding door behind him slid open with a rumble, and a gentle, slender figure came to his side.

Chen Lingshan's lovely eyes immediately noticed Xiao Yunyun's bra, little bow-trimmed panties, and the other items hanging on the balcony. She stood beside Su Can, also holding a wineglass, and stared straight ahead. After a long while, her face reddened as she said, "Did you come out here to indulge your voyeurism? You pervert?"

Su Can nearly spat out his wine. There had really been nothing wrong with him standing here, but Chen Lingshan's arrival instantly made the atmosphere awkward.

A boy, a girl, and beside them, a teenage girl's bras and panties dancing in the breeze.

What damned movie kept dreaming up those scenes in which a boy and a girl meeting on a balcony was always romantic? Reality kept proving itself vastly different from artistic exaggeration, repeatedly catching people painfully off guard.

Su Can nearly threw his back out from the shock. He hurriedly explained, "It's not what you think. I just came out for some air."

But Chen Lingshan burst out laughing first, her cheeks red. "How nice."

"What's nice?" Su Can paused.

"I thought you were just a block of wood who never panicked, no matter what happened. I didn't know you could get nervous too. You don't need to explain it to me." Chen Lingshan blinked, then, just as Su Can's heart settled, added something that sent his blood pressure surging again. "Go explain it to Xiao Yunyun."

Then she turned and made as if to head for the door, and Su Can instinctively caught her hand.

Su Can broke into a sweat. Girls' thoughts really could be complicated. If Xiao Yunyun's family thought he had come onto the balcony with such filthy intentions, he would be done for.

Yet the soft, seemingly boneless feel of her hand traveled through his palm, thread by thread, into his heart.

This was a historic moment. Having returned eleven years into the past, he was holding the hand of the girl he had once secretly loved and missed his chance with. In that instant, the starry night was silent, yet in Su Can's eyes, it was nothing less than a whole screen filled with fireworks.

Chen Lingshan froze slightly, but did not turn around.

What was the most embarrassing thing? It was neither sudden skin-to-skin contact between a boy and a girl, nor the silence brought on by an awkward gesture. It was the voices coming from indoors, through the poorly soundproofed sliding door onto the balcony, just after he had happened to take the hand of Chen Lingshan, the girl who had countless boys at City First Middle School utterly smitten.

"Huh, where's Su Can?" a girl asked conspiratorially.

"I don't know. I think he went downstairs to buy something."

"Hasn't there been a rumor going around lately? I don't know if you've heard."

"You mean Su Can having a crush on Chen Lingshan? Heehee, I heard ages ago. When I saw him earlier, I even pretended I didn't know who he was. It was so hard keeping it in."

The voices came from inside. Though their volume rose and fell, mingled with girls' laughter and boys' curious questions, they still filtered clearly through the countless little gaps in the sliding door onto the balcony where the two stood.

Su Can had not expected that his heart, with all its experience from his previous life, could still feel such an inexplicable tightness at this moment. He listened with his scalp tingling, actually forgetting to release Chen Lingshan's hand. Instead, his nervousness and embarrassment made him hold it tighter.

Chen Lingshan's delicate, pointed ears seemed to prick up involuntarily. Her heart was beating fast. The autumn evening breeze blew, and her face burned fiercely red. She scarcely dared turn around to face Su Can.

"Is what they're saying true?" Chen Lingshan had her back to Su Can, but her lovely voice reached him softly.

Ah, the recklessness of youth. This was the recklessness of youth. Su Can had not expected that the person who made him confront this first love of his life would actually be the girl he had admired for so long.

"I heard Su Can's mom works for Lingshan's family business. He's had a crush on her since back then." The voices inside reached them in fragments.

"Yes! It is!" Su Can nodded, acknowledging the answer to Chen Lingshan's question. His self from eleven years ago had to foot the bill for his present self. It was a strange loop.

The fingers of Chen Lingshan's hand in Su Can's suddenly began to curl slowly, tightening their grip as well.

If this hand kept holding mine tightly like this, then in the future, and the future beyond that, what would become of us?

The security of that firm grip, a future so hazy and impossible to imagine-could the two of us walk hand in hand like this toward forever?

Chen Lingshan's mind flashed back to the first time she had seen Su Can: a child with a dusty face at dusk, an excited little dog bounding about, a scene so grubby in her memory. If that had been a fated encounter, was this the greatest joke God had played on her?

She had imagined romantic encounters with her dark prince countless times, which only made Su Can as she remembered him seem all the further from that ideal.

In fairness, it was not that she felt no affection for Su Can. His grades were poor, but he was hearteningly optimistic. He was not tall or imposing, but he always wore a smile as warm as sunshine. He faced life's difficulties with composure and calm, repeatedly turning danger into safety. But he truly was only a boy from an unremarkable family with an ordinary background.

He had a prince's smile, yet could not give her the haunting flutter of the heart a prince would bring. His thin, frail shoulders likewise could not promise to bear her future.

Chen Lingshan longed to board a ship with her own Jack, as in Titanic, in fine weather, and voyage across the ocean toward the place where sea and sky met.

But Su Can, you aren't Jack, and we can't sail the vast ocean either.

"I'm sorry!"

Chen Lingshan heard her own voice speak. Then she loosened her grip, withdrew her hand, pulled open the sliding door, and silently walked inside.

Su Can saw only the discussion in the living room stop abruptly. Through the gap in the sliding door, under the mingling light and shadow, the boys and girls stared in surprise at the two who had suddenly appeared, bewildered and at a loss.

Many times in the future, Chen Lingshan, who had turned her back and left, would occasionally wonder: if time gave her another chance, and on that starry night she had held that hand tighter instead of letting go, what would her life have been like from then on?

Would she still have shed tears for no reason?