Walk Into Your Good Night

07

I suddenly wanted to laugh.

Who hasn’t been misunderstood in their lives? Yet this sort of misunderstanding was hilarious. Obviously, I did all this for Tang Jingchuan, but he mistakenly thought I was interested in his wife.

At that moment, I was annoyed but I found it funny. I had copious amounts of words to explain it, but I knew I couldn’t say anything.

So, I nodded and told him, “Firstly, you aren’t that kind of person. I am not too; I respect both of you very much. So don’t worry, I don’t have that kind of intention towards your wife. Secondly, perhaps you don’t want to admit this, but you have to admit that for some things that I take little to no effort for me, it would be difficult for you. I felt that you were familiar [1], so I treated you as a friend. As such, I wanted to help in exchange for nothing. If you aren’t willing, then I shall mind my own business in the future.”

[1] 一见如故, lit. familiarity at first sight, idiom.

When I said this, I was very calm and serious. He probably panicked, thought that he had misinterpreted my good will, and said very apologetically, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” I did not like hearing his apologies towards myself, “Let’s go, I’m hungry.”

Both of our mansions’ layout were the same, but the interior decorations were different.

Before, I was curious about what kind of environment did they live in. After coming here, I found out that this was a pretty nice villa, yet the decorations were overly simple.

At the time I thought this was their house, and I thought, if they didn’t have money, they could sell their house for some. It was only until during dinner together that I knew that their relatives lent the house to them. Their relatives only did some basic decorating when they bought the house, planning to resell it.

There were a lot of people who bought houses not to live in them, just to resell them for a profit.

Tang Jingchuan helped his wife in the kitchen while I wandered around in the living room by myself.

I found it interesting that the luggage they had when they first moved in were still piled there. Only a few boxes were opened; probably their most used things. I stared at these. I felt that they were always prepared to leave, not treating this as their home.

That was fair, since it’s their relative’s house, it didn’t count as their own home.

With his wife ill, and no fixed place to stay, I looked towards the kitchen. At Tang Jingchuan, who was washing vegetables before the sink, and wondered if this was the so-called plight of the ordinary people [1].

[1] 人间烟火, literally human fireworks, meaning the difficulties faced by ordinary populace

If that was so, then that was too painful.

Tang Jingchuan did not help in the kitchen for too long. His wife drove him out.

He smiled and said, “Xiaoyun said it wasn’t polite to leave a guest in the living room by himself. She asked me to come over and chat with you.”

He didn’t seem well-versed in socialising with others. Every time he spoke with me, he seemed nervous and helpless. I liked him this way, like a small deer being forced to experience the world.

I pointed at those things and asked him, “Are you planning to move soon?”

“Ah…… Sorry, there are a lot of things in my home, so it’s quite messy.” He tided up the open boxes, and covered them with a piece of cloth, “Don’t know for how long we can live here. If they sell this house, we’ll have to move out.”

I nodded, and wanted to say, perhaps you could move to my house then.

But I didn’t, because he had already started to misunderstood me. If I said that, he wouldn’t even let me have this dinner with them.

We stood in front of the window and chatted a lot. He was a person who trusted others easily; I said I did not have interest, and he reopen his heart to me. He told me about borrowing money, selling their house. He intended to wait for his wife to get better, and then they’ll go on a trip and get married then, as a way of making up for both the wedding and the honeymoon.

“You didn’t even have a wedding?”

He nodded, “When we got married, I was busy at work. If I wanted to take a marriage leave it wasn’t impossible, but she said the wedding could be held later. For work, if I can’t do it well, it’s hard to get a promotion.”

I thought about the workers at my own company, silently staying up late into the night, working overtime. Tang Jingchuan was the same type of person as them; for that salary, in order to get a slim chance of promotion every six months, he had sacrificed a lot.

I asked him, “So what is your job now?”

He turned his head towards me, and surprisingly asked me a question. He said, “What type of job do you think I do?”

I couldn’t guess it, but I took the opportunity to size him up, used this excuse to openly stare at him, and then said, “Your temperament is very good, like an artist.”

He laughed out loud. This was even more surprising.

He said, “I don’t have that sort of ability. I’m just someone who codes.”

Actually, I wanted to tell him that he had that sort of ability. For me, he was like an artist of romance. In my world, he drew and composed, making me restless.

Looking at his smile, my mouth became dry. I didn’t dare to look at him any further, afraid that I would do something untoward.

We became silent, standing shoulder-to-shoulder looking outside, seeing a bird, unafraid of the cold, landing in a neglected yard.

We stood like this for an indeterminable amount of time, [until] Tang Jingchuan’s wife called us to dinner.

I turned, and thanked him for [their] hard work.

Tang Jingchuan clumsily opened the bottle of red wine I brought. He said, “Xiaoyun can’t drink because of her condition. Let me drink with you instead today.”