Chapter 7 (2/2)
She unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The apartment was pitch-dark.
Mu Wan switched on the light and set her keys down on the cabinet. The faint clink of metal striking metal echoed through the room.
The place was small. The space should have felt cramped, yet instead it seemed flooded with a strange emptiness.
Mu Wan looked around once, found nothing in it worth looking at, and turned toward the bedroom.
The bedroom was empty too.
Apart from the lifeless furniture, there was nothing there at all. Mu Wan had the sudden feeling that the apartment had never seemed this empty before.
She walked over to the bed and sat down. The mattress gave beneath her, closing around her body as if swallowing her whole.
The place inside her that had felt so full in Liu Qianxiu’s home caved in again.
She had never felt the contrast so vividly before.
Three kittens.
A bowl of clear noodles.
A man.
The kitchen filled with steam.
The cold edge of a marble counter brushes her skin.
All of it circled in her mind.
Lin Wei had been right.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t afraid of loneliness.
It was that she had long since mistaken loneliness for something normal.
“It was only a bowl of noodles,” Mu Wan murmured.
She thought she was being too sensitive. After laughing at herself softly, she got up and went to the bathroom.
The next morning, she had no work, so as usual, she stayed in bed.
Around ten, she was woken by voices talking outside the door.
The moment she recognized one of them, Mu Wan climbed out of bed, all long limbs and sleepy grace, and went quickly to open the door.
Outside, Aunt Wu was standing there chatting with the neighbor from across the hall. At the sound of the door opening, the older woman turned and looked over, the joy in her face pausing for a beat.
“Just woke up?” she asked.
Mu Wan reached out and took the vegetable basket from her hands with a smile.
“I’ve been awake for a while. I just didn’t get up. Why didn’t you knock?”
Aunt Wu said goodbye to the neighbor while Mu Wan carried the basket inside. As she followed her in and shut the door, she said, “I only just got here too.”
Aunt Wu was in her sixties now. She had once worked for the Mu family, and she had watched Mu Wan grow up. Mu Wan’s mother had once shown her a kindness she never forgot, so after Mu Wan’s mother died, Aunt Wu had quietly continued to look after her. In the years since Mu Wan moved out of the Mu household, Aunt Wu would come by whenever she had time to cook her a meal, tidy up the place, do what she could.
Aunt Wu followed Mu Wan into the kitchen.
The apartment looked exactly as it had the last time she visited, and suspicion flickered in the older woman’s eyes. She looked around twice more before coming back to herself—only to find Mu Wan leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, watching her.
“There’s no one here,” Mu Wan said.
Caught in the act of snooping, Aunt Wu only smiled shyly. After that, she tested the waters and asked, “Then what about the one from yesterday?”
Mu Wan immediately understood.
When she and Liu Qianxiu had gone downstairs together the day before, they had run into the neighbor from across the hall. Judging by how enthusiastically those two had been chatting outside just now, that had almost certainly been the topic.
“That was Dr. Liu,” Mu Wan explained. “He came to pick up the cats.”
She knew Aunt Wu cared about her, and she had never hidden anything about her love life from her.
The light in Aunt Wu’s eyes dimmed visibly.
Earlier, outside the door, the neighbor had gone into great detail—how handsome the man was, how refined he looked, how perfectly matched he and Mu Wan seemed. Aunt Wu had been thrilled for a good while because of it.
As she began taking ingredients out of the vegetable basket, Aunt Wu uttered, “You’re not getting any younger. After all these years, is there still no one you like? Even just having someone to eat with would be good.”
At that last sentence, Mu Wan’s lips pressed together for a moment. Something stirred through her mind. Watching Aunt Wu take out the vegetables one by one, she asked, “Why the sudden urge to push this now?”
Aunt Wu had always thought about it, but she had never pressed before.
Aunt Wu lifted her eyes and sighed.
“Mu Qing brought her boyfriend home yesterday.”
At the mention of Mu Qing, Mu Wan’s thoughts drew back at once.
Mu Qing was the daughter of her maternal uncle—her cousin, only two months younger than she was. Mu Wan had grown up in the Mu household with her mother, and a widowed woman raising a child under someone else’s roof never made for a pleasant reputation. Mu Wan’s mother was still considered part of the Mu family, more or less. But Mu Wan, though she carried the family name, had always been treated like an outsider. Nearly everyone in the Mu household disliked her.
Mu Wan and Mu Qing were close in age, but they had never been treated the same way.
Especially after Mu Wan’s mother died.
So once she was able to support herself, she moved out of the Mu family home.
Still, children raised in the same house were inevitably compared. Mu Qing had never been able to surpass Mu Wan while they were growing up, which had made her cry in anger. Later, after receiving the polished education expected of a socialite, she stopped showing such feelings openly.
“Her boyfriend is the future heir to the Shen family,” Aunt Wu said. “They met while traveling abroad. From the way he spoke, he seemed like someone very capable.”
After giving her judgment, Aunt Wu sighed again.
“After all these years, she’s finally managed to come out ahead of you.”
Mu Wan lowered her eyes to Aunt Wu. Her expression was as calm as a drifting cloud.
Putting on a look of mock offense, she smiled and said, “How has she come out ahead of me? Maybe I’ll find someone even more impressive.”
“And where exactly are you going to find someone more impressive than that?” Aunt Wu got back sideways.
Mu Wan laughed.
“The Shen family is only impressive because they have the Liu family behind them. I’ll just find someone from the Liu family instead.”
Aunt Wu looked up at her, saw the joke in her eyes, and said, “No need for someone especially impressive. Just find someone who treats you well. Once you do, you’ll have family again.”
Mu Wan’s smile paused.
Aunt Wu did not continue the subject. Instead, after taking out all the ingredients, she asked, “What do you want to eat?”
Mu Wan glanced over them, then lightly wet her lower lip.
“Yangchun noodles.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment