WF | Chapter 7

In mid-January, a fierce cold wave swept through Japan, and Tokyo's temperature plunged. Quite a few of Shen Lian's classmates at language school came down with colds, and her throat had started to itch a little too. Based on her experience back home, she drank an anti-cold granule packet she had brought from China ahead of time to prevent it, and did not take it seriously.

But she did not expect that the next morning when she got up, her head was already heavy and dizzy, and her throat hurt so badly she could barely make a sound. She forced herself to go to the Chinese restaurant in Ikebukuro for her part-time job, and by the time afternoon classes came around, she was feeling so awful she could not focus on listening.

With no other choice, she had to call Zheng Tingyu at the last minute to ask for leave, tell her she was sick, and that she could not go to her evening part-time job. She needed her to help adjust the shift temporarily and find someone to cover her work.

Zheng Tingyu, as always, was understanding. She did not blame her for suddenly dropping the ball. Instead, she asked about her condition and whether she needed to rest for two more days.

Shen Lian felt it should not be that serious, and because she needed money so badly, she said no, she should be fine by tomorrow.

Zheng Tingyu did not say anything else, only told her to rest well.

However, the tenacity of the germs once again exceeded Shen Lian's expectations. After sleeping again, she did not get better. Instead, she came down with a high fever.

In a haze of alternating chills and heat, dizzy to the point of wanting to throw up, she turned off the morning alarm, ate a little of the small bread she kept in the box by her bed, swallowed some cold medicine with cold water, and then, feeling miserable, fell asleep again.

This time, she slept as if the world had gone dark, not knowing day from night.

Until, in a daze, she heard someone seem to be calling her name. "Shen Lian... Shen Lian..."

She struggled to open her eyes and saw the glaring glow on the ceiling ripple like waves. Zheng Tingyu's fair face, lit from behind, appeared above her vacant world, pure and bright like a deity.

Thinking she was dreaming, she murmured blankly, "Zheng Tingyu..."

Zheng Tingyu reached out and touched her forehead, asking, "Are you all right?"

Her hand carried the chill she had brought in from outside. Pressed against Shen Lian's still-feverish body, it brought her a fleeting, real, soothing coolness.

Shen Lian suddenly woke up. This was not a dream!

She hurriedly propped herself up on her elbows, struggling to sit up, but Zheng Tingyu was quick to press her down, frowning as she asked, "What are you doing?"

It was the first time Shen Lian had ever seen Zheng Tingyu frown, wearing such a displeased expression.

For some reason, Shen Lian felt a little less confident. She asked hoarsely, "Manager, why are you here? I... my room is a mess."

And she herself smelled awful too.

She had not bathed, had not washed her face, had not brushed her teeth, and had sweated herself damp all over. Even through her blocked nose, she seemed to be able to smell the sour stink floating in the air.

What was more, her roommate was unhygienic. They had agreed before that each person would take out the trash they produced themselves and that they would take turns sweeping every day, but her roommate just would not do it. Shen Lian could not stand it. After cleaning up for half a month, she also got fed up. If you won't do it, then I won't do it either. Let's see who can last longer. So in a space of barely five or six square meters, half a month's worth of snacks and instant noodle trash bags had piled up, nearly turning the place into a playground for cockroaches and rats, with hardly any room for a person's feet to land.

Shen Lian felt ashamed.

Zheng Tingyu stood up, lifted and fixed her bed curtain aside, and glanced around the room a few times without commenting. She only explained, "You didn't come to your evening part-time job. I called you, but you didn't pick up. I was worried, so I came over to see, using the address you filled in when you first started."

"You're still feverish. Have you eaten?"

Shen Lian apologized. "Sorry, I was sleeping too deeply and didn't hear the phone."

Zheng Tingyu said, "It's okay." Then asked again, "Have you eaten?"

Shen Lian said, "I ate. Before taking medicine this morning, I ate a piece of bread."

Zheng Tingyu's pretty brows furrowed again. "It's already night now, and this is how you take care of yourself?" She seemed to sigh. "Your roommate didn't even close the door when she went out. Where's the key? Give it to me. I'll go out and buy you some food."

Shen Lian felt embarrassed and politely declined. "No need to trouble yourself, thank you. I'll just eat something casually."

Zheng Tingyu would not take no for an answer. She held out her palm and said again, "Give me the key."

Just like that day at Senso-ji Temple when she had asked for her phone, only today she was not smiling when she said it.

Shen Lian realized that when Zheng Tingyu became serious and stopped smiling, she still had the presence of an older sister. Afraid that Zheng Tingyu might really get angry if she said something else she did not want to hear, she obediently fished the key out from under her pillow and handed it over.

Zheng Tingyu's brows relaxed, warmth returned to her eyes, and she tucked in the corner of Shen Lian's blanket before speaking gently. "Sleep a little longer. Wait for me to come back."

Shen Lian could only thank her. "Okay, thank you. Sorry to bother you."

Zheng Tingyu smiled a little, said nothing more, helped her turn off the light, took the door with her, and left.

In the dark, Shen Lian stared in the direction Zheng Tingyu had gone, and a feeling she could not put into words surged through her heart. It was like being suddenly moved and at a loss after receiving care out of nowhere, and yet it was also a little like feeling aggrieved.

She realized how useless she was. She knew perfectly well that her mother did not truly love her. Compared with loving her, her mother loved her husband more, and the son who had not even been born yet, the son who could let her hold her head high in front of all their relatives. But in the morning, when she had felt at her most miserable and most vulnerable, curled up in a ball, she still had been weak, still had thought of her, remembered the warmth she had once given, and then understood even more clearly that now she was someone no one loved, no one cared about, someone whose death would not matter.

Why could so-called parents and family abandon her just because she was not the child they wanted, hate her so much that they wished she had never been born, while Zheng Tingyu, a passing acquaintance, could offer help and ask after her health without asking about her past, without minding the trouble?

Human nature was so ugly, and so noble. Human feelings were so unworthy of attachment, and yet sometimes they made one unable to help hoping, unable to help longing.

She could not make sense of it, and did not want to think about it anymore.

She wiped the tears from both cheeks, weakly got up, climbed out of bed, put on a thick coat, opened half the window for ventilation, then took her washbasin, towel, toothpaste, and toothbrush, and with unsteady steps left the room to brush her teeth and wash her face in the shared bathroom. Finally, she returned to the room and neatly gathered all the scattered trash on the floor into the corner.

When Zheng Tingyu came back after buying the food and pushed open the door, Shen Lian was sweeping the floor.

She froze for a moment. A look of helplessness flashed across her face, but she did not say anything. She only set the key and the bag in her hand on the small table Shen Lian had just tidied up, then went to the window.

"I was worried you might not have an appetite, so I only bought a little vegetable congee and plain noodle soup. Is that okay?" she asked while closing the window.

Shen Lian noticed she had also bought an electric kettle and several boxes of medicine. She set the broom back behind the door, her heart softening, and answered, "That's fine, thank you."

Zheng Tingyu turned back, looking as if she had let out a slight breath of relief. "Then eat quickly. Afterward, you can take your medicine."

Shen Lian said, "Okay."

She pulled a chair out from under the table and let Zheng Tingyu sit, then sat down beside her and took the congee out of the bag.

Zheng Tingyu helped take out the utensils and handed them to her.

Shen Lian suddenly worried, "Did I infect you with my cold?"

Zheng Tingyu said, "No, I got a flu shot."

Shen Lian asked again, concerned, "Since you're here, what about the barbecue restaurant?"

"It's fine. Tanaka-san is there." Tanaka-san was the head chef and deputy manager of UGA Barbecue Restaurant.

In that messy room, under the dim warm light, with the noise occasionally coming from next door, Zheng Tingyu's clear voice and beautiful face made everything feel so calm, so gentle.

Shen Lian looked down at the congee and could not help explaining to her, "It's not that I'm especially sloppy."

"Hm?"

"The reason the room is so dirty is that my roommate never takes the trash she makes out with her, and she refuses to clean too. I didn't want to keep being the only one who couldn't stand it and did everything, so I just stopped too. Let's see who can outlast who."

Zheng Tingyu laughed. "I know."

Shen Lian was the kind of person who even wiped her shoes until they were spotless. She had never once seen Shen Lian let a pair of shoes that had been accidentally stepped on or splashed with kitchen grease stay dirty long enough to wear out a second time. Thinking of the filthy shared kitchen, the public corridor, and the disgusting common bathroom she had seen on the way in that she did not even want to look at a second time, she could not imagine how Shen Lian had endured living in such an environment.

She asked Shen Lian, "Why did you rent a place like this? Did the agent scam you?"

Although most dorms were not in good condition, the one Shen Lian had rented could honestly be said to be appallingly bad.

It was hard to tell whether Zheng Tingyu's concern and pity were simply too long absent, too rare, and too moving to the tear ducts, or whether being sick made a person too fragile and too easily moved, but Shen Lian suddenly felt a sourness rise in her chest and a bitterness in her throat.

She was not the type to complain to others. She had only ever sent photos to her parents and told them about the conditions here. Their reply had been, "If others can live here, why can't you? Live there if you want to, get out if you don't. Don't think you can ask us for another cent."

No one cared how she was living in Japan. Some people were even waiting in the shadows to watch her make a fool of herself, to see just how far this so-called heaven-sent darling of hers could sink of her own accord. Only Zheng Tingyu seemed to really be worried that she was not living well, that she was not doing well.

She opened her mouth and, for the first time, took the initiative to lower her guard before someone else and tell them her pain point. "My parents rented it through an agent because it was cheaper."

Zheng Tingyu's tone grew even gentler. "For how long did you sign?"

Shen Lian said, "Half a year."

Zheng Tingyu fell silent.

The silence might have lasted half a minute, or maybe not. Zheng Tingyu looked at her and spoke again. She said, "Do you want to move in with me? The place you came to last time is closer to both your school and the barbecue restaurant than here. The only thing that's not so good is that you'd have to put up with sleeping on the floor in the living room. But I rarely bring people home, so the living room can be your private space. I won't charge you rent. You can stay there as a temporary measure until your current lease ends and you find a suitable place to live again."

She spoke lightly, making something so generous, so utterly selfless and troublesome in every possible follow-up, sound as though it were no more than a small favor, a casual gesture.

Shen Lian's throat felt blocked by something. After a long while, she finally asked in disbelief, "Why? What's in it for you?"

Zheng Tingyu could not help laughing. "Silly, do people helping each other have to get something out of it?"

"I want to help you. I just don't want you to keep living here."

At that moment, Shen Lian's tears suddenly began to fall uncontrollably.

Why could someone be this good to another person? Why could someone be this good to her? Why was it that in this trashy, ridiculous world, there really were still such very, very good people?

She turned her head aside to wipe her tears and, her throat so sour it trembled, choked out, "You can't, Zheng Tingyu."

Zheng Tingyu was confused. "Why not?"

Shen Lian said, "It would be inconvenient for you."

Zheng Tingyu said, "It won't be."

Shen Lian insisted, "It will."

She turned back and looked at Zheng Tingyu through tear-blurred eyes, clenched her fingers, then after a pause gathered her courage and asked, "Didn't you ask me before why I chose to come to Japan to work?"

Zheng Tingyu said softly, "Mm."

Shen Lian dug her nails into her palm, took a very difficult deep breath, and said, "Because not only did I fail the college entrance exam, and my parents refuse to let me repeat a year, they also think I have some kind of illness. They forced me to see a psychiatrist, forced me to take medicine, forced me to go on blind dates and get married, so I wouldn't embarrass them."

Zheng Tingyu was stunned.

Shen Lian gritted her teeth and continued, "After the arts and sciences split in high school, in the experimental class I was in, there was a girl, the daughter of my father's superior. We had known each other since we were kids, but we weren't very close. We grew up being compared by our parents. In the second semester of our second year, during one schoolwide class on girls' mental health, several science classes were combined. The teacher expressed very biased, very old-fashioned, and very out-of-date views on gender relations. The whole room was hissing in disapproval, but everyone only dared to be angry and not speak up. That girl, though, stood up and refuted him on the spot. The teacher barked at her with bluster he did not really have, and I didn't want to be the one who carried firewood for everyone else only to freeze to death in the snow, so I stood up and backed her up. She looked at me, and I looked at her. After class, she came to me to add me on QQ. From then on, the two of us went from rivals to friends."

"She didn't like instant messaging. She preferred to send emails, and conveniently, our studies meant neither of us could sit in front of a computer chatting all the time, so we slowly developed the habit of emailing each other on weekends. I can't remember when it started, but our conversations gradually became ambiguous. She started sharing novels and anime with lesbian themes, discussing related topics with me, and confessing to me."

"I didn't know whether I liked her, but I found out I really did not seem to like boys. I liked girls more. Even when watching TV, I would only pay attention to the heroine. It's just that before that, I had never thought about it that way."

"We went on like that for more than half a semester, speaking ambiguously. In the second semester of senior year, during the city exam, her email was still logged in on her father's computer and she forgot to log out. The emails we exchanged were seen by her parents. They could not accept her sexual orientation and found my parents, accusing me of corrupting their daughter. They even made a scene at school, publicly exposing my sexual orientation, saying I would corrupt my classmates and ruin the school atmosphere. They demanded that the school not keep my guaranteed admission spot and that I be expelled from the experimental class."

Ning Xin, who had once dared to slam the desk and stand up to rebuke the teacher in front of everyone, became utterly helpless before the pressure from her parents and the school. She did not even dare to look her in the eye and confront her. She simply followed the excuse her parents had found for her and pushed all the blame onto Shen Lian.

"My father was already deeply dissatisfied with my being born in the first place. It was only because of his job, and because he could not have another son, that he had grudgingly raised me, this daughter, all these years. He was being held by that girl's father, who pointed at him and cursed at him over work, and he didn't dare argue with her parents. So he turned around and took it out on me, calling me sick, calling me disgraceful, saying I had caused him to be the subject of gossip and that he could not hold his head up at work or in front of people he knew."

He even wanted to drag her to electroshock therapy, because the other side claimed the treatment could cure homosexuality and make her return to normal and fall in love with men. And her mother, the mother she had worked so hard all these years to please by studying hard, to become her pride and become the so-called child from someone else's family, so that even though she had failed to bear a son she could still hold her head up in front of others, did absolutely nothing. Aside from crying, she only stood by as a silent accomplice.

In that kind of environment, Shen Lian had no way to properly review or prepare for the college entrance exam. After she failed it, her father told her not to repeat a year and not to study anymore. A trash university would be useless even if she went, so she might as well just find someone to marry. Shen Lian was unwilling, and she also did not want to keep living under their influence and letting them manipulate her in China.

She used the fact that her mother was pregnant, had gone to Hong Kong for a blood test, found out it was a boy, and was planning to give birth in secret, to threaten her parents, forcing them to send her to Japan.

At that time, the two-child policy had not yet been implemented, and in those days, homosexuality was still viewed by most people as a terrifying plague.

"Zheng Tingyu, I'm a lesbian. I like girls. Living with me won't be convenient for you." She finished the last sentence with a trembling voice, her nails digging deep blood trails into her palm.

She did not dare lift her head to look at Zheng Tingyu's expression. She was afraid of seeing on Zheng Tingyu's face the same shock, or even disgust, as on her parents', teachers', and classmates'.

Even so, the moment she said it out loud, she had already prepared herself mentally.

But there was none of that. Zheng Tingyu called her, "Shen Lian... Shen Lian..."

Still, as always, gentle.

At Zheng Tingyu's call, Shen Lian had no choice but to raise her head and look at her.

In the hazy, wet field of vision, amid the howling winter wind slamming against the window, Zheng Tingyu's gaze, Zheng Tingyu's voice, Zheng Tingyu's touch, were almost merciful.

She reached out to wipe away her tears and comforted her. "Shen Lian, you aren't sick, and it won't be inconvenient for me either. They are the ones who are ignorant."

She reached out and hugged her, telling her, "Homosexuality is not an illness, and liking someone is not wrong either. I only think you're smart, brave, kind, and very strong."

Shen Lian's tears broke free all at once in her embrace.

She had never known that she had been longing for such an embrace for so long. She had never known she was such a crybaby. She had never known she had so many tears wanting to spill out.

She was as miserable as a stray dog with mange, driven everywhere by people, but Zheng Tingyu did not find her dirty, did not fear that she would bite, and embraced and accepted her without the slightest hesitation.

She suffered in her arms, and she was saved in her arms.

After that day, she moved into the home Zheng Tingyu rented in Shinjuku and began living together with Zheng Tingyu.

Author's note:

Thank you, cuties, for the downpour of deep-water, shallow-water, rocket launchers, hand grenades, and landmines. Thank you, cuties, for the nourishment of your nutrient solutions, and thank you, cuties, for your comment deliveries. I've decided to add another chapter, mwah~ (Waaah, having a stockpile is so great. Finally I can say the words "add another chapter" with confidence too.)