Chapter 5.9 Running Account (Part 2) (Extra)

I hesitated for a few minutes, but didn’t click on the message. It wasn’t that I was afraid, I just felt that there wasn’t a need to open it at this time. I had spent most of my previous life eager to explore all kinds of possibilities so that I could prepare myself before I met my fate.

When Fatty asked me what was wrong, I smiled and said that Lei Benchang had sent us a New Year’s blessing text. Fatty let out an exclamation and said that the old man was really pitiful.

I turned my cell phone over and put it on the stove as I went to keep busy.

With Xiao Hua’s help, we set a table full of dishes that were steaming hot and emitting a delicious aroma. I had put a lot of thought into every dish so that they would look like a sunflower after they had been placed, with the yellow in the middle and the green in a circle around it. Although they were all local products with similar tastes, everyone was starving after the long journey and climbing the mountain road. They moved their chopsticks and started shoveling the food in.

The Spring Festival Gala was playing on the TV. When my parents were in the city in years past, they would watch it in the living room. I went into my room to surf the internet and wait for the sound of the firecrackers to pass. This time, the Spring Festival Gala would have to be background noise.

During the dinner, Fatty asked Xiao Hua about his business while Xiuxiu waited on the elders who were talking about family affairs. Poker-Face was just staring at the TV, seemingly mesmerized by the Spring Festival Gala (or maybe it was all irrelevant to him).

How did he spend his previous years? Or, since he had such a long life, did he have a larger unit of measuring the passing time than just a year? Maybe our lives were set out in a large grid, and it was the second hand of his life that had just ticked.

I speculated that the Zhang family probably didn’t celebrate the New Year. The year was the biggest step forward in our lives, and we had lost so much of it, so we had to savor it and leave an impression. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything to the Zhang family.

I was feeling very emotional when I thought of this, but I had learned not to get entangled in these unchangeable things.

My parents were very quiet in the beginning, and only said some polite words. As the younger generation, we all toasted our elders. My mother got a little wine in her and started channeling the director of the local committee of the Women’s Federation. At an extremely slow speed, she began to summarize the mistakes she made when educating me, and then slowly shifted the topic to me. Uncle Two was very smart and quickly found a topic to interrupt my mother’s speech, saying that he was incompetent as an elder, and the previous generation left me with all kinds of problems. But those who needed to apologize the most were gone, so he could only say it instead. He drank a glass of wine and looked at me. “You have so many friends here, you can also say something.”

Everyone looked at me eagerly with a bit of sick pleasure on their faces. I looked at Uncle Two and thought to myself, the last time I performed in front of people was when I was eight years old. Now that I’m almost forty, what am I supposed to say? We all know each other so well at this point. I stood up, picked up the wine, looked at the roof beam, and said, “I’m sorry. Thank you.” Then I drank the wine.

In fact, these were the only two sentences I wanted to say, and they were the only two that could represent all my thoughts. Xiao Hua patted my back to show that he understood.

After drinking, I looked at Fatty. He was afraid that I was going to make him give a speech, so he immediately stood up and said, “Today is a really happy day. Let me sing you all a song. But since the elders are here, I won’t sing something from my repertoire. I recently learned a new song called the ‘Song of the Five Rings’ (1).”

Fatty started to sing, and it actually sounded quite nice with the TV’s background music accompanying him. After Fatty finished singing, Xiao Hua got up and started to sing an opera song in the xipi liushui style (2). Uncle Two quickly became a fan. Xiuxiu was shy and didn’t want to perform so it soon became Poker-Face’s turn.

In order to divert attention, Xiuxiu pointed directly at Poker-Face’s position and said: “Girls go only after the boys have finished their turn.” When I turned my head, I found that Poker-Face was no longer in his seat. I immediately looked at the door and found that he had gone out to the yard for some air.

He was truly a quick-witted boy.

During the middle of the night, firecrackers started going off in the village. People in the countryside were more generous when it came to firecrackers, so the continuous crackling and popping echoes made it sound like a hundred thousand of them had been set off. As fireworks exploded in the sky, Fatty shouted jokingly, “The gunfire at the frontlines has started, brothers! Take out all our firecrackers, and let’s show next door what a home-made bomb really is. The explosions will blow all their chickens straight to infertility.”

My ears were numb, so I walked out to the yard. Amid the smell of fireworks permeating the air, I lit a cigarette and sucked the cold air into my lungs along with the nicotine.

Xiao Hua came up and stood beside me with his hands in his pockets, looking at the bluestone road under the street lamp. A lot of people smoked while playing mahjong inside, so he had come out to relax.

“Are you really going to stay here the whole time?” Xiao Hua suddenly asked me.

I looked at him, not thinking that it was a problem. With the cigarette hanging from my mouth, I pumped a bucket of water from the well and washed my hands. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just want to stay here for now.”

Xiao Hua didn’t continue asking, but put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You just don’t want to stay somewhere else.”

I smiled at him. I knew what he meant, but there was no need to discuss it any further. I knew exactly what I wanted.

He and I walked towards the mountain as the village children came out to visit each other. We arrived at a dark place outside the village’s ancestral hall and sat down on the steps in front of the entrance.

We didn’t talk again.

There was no need to discuss any complicated situations, possible changes, or response levels, since we had already talked about such things too much. We were used to it, so now we didn’t have to talk about it. We both found that we didn’t know what to say to each other. I passed a cigarette over, but Xiao Hua refused me for the nth time. We just stayed silent and scrolled through our circle of friends’ WeChat Moments. The phone lights shining on our faces were cold, but it was very peaceful.

<Extra 5.8> <Table of Contents><Extra 5.10>

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TN Notes:

(1) Song by Yue Yunpeng and MC Hotdog. Based on the adaptation of “The Song of Peony”, composed by Tang He and Lu Yuan. I think it’s this one here

(2) Xipi= one of the two chief types of music in Chinese opera. Liushui= flowing water. Xipi Liushui melody/beat conveys a sense of anticipation or excitement. May be used by two characters to debate or argue. A little more info here. Peking Opera info here

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*Hides in corner* 1 chapter is better than no chapter, right? hahahaha. Love how Poker-face ran away so he wouldn’t have to perform in front of everybody