Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
That year’s Little New Year fell on the second-to-last day of January.
In Tongcheng, the custom for Little New Year was dust-sweeping, haircutting, and eating sweet glutinous rice balls. Early in the morning, Jiang Se was woken by Jiang Ye’s phone call.
“Second sister, I’m almost home. Should I come find you? I brought you a box of niangao, you can use it to make breakfast.”
There was still an arm locked around her waist, and when she was about to get up, that person wouldn’t let her; his hand slid upward and pressed on her left shoulder, holding her tightly against him, the two of them fitting together seamlessly.
A barely audible laugh sounded.
Jiang Se: “……”
“I just woke up. Wait for me at home. As for the niangao, wait until I pick up eldest sister, then we’ll eat together.” Her voice was a bit hoarse, the result of last night’s exertion.
Hearing her voice, Jiang Ye immediately frowned. “Did you catch a cold? Why does your voice sound weird?”
Another faint, almost nonexistent laugh above her head.
Jiang Se lowered the phone a little. “I’m not sick, Little Ye. I need to get up and wash up. I’m hanging up now.”
She brushed him off in a few quick words, hung up, then turned over and lifted her eyes to look at Lu Huaiyuan.
Lu Huaiyuan let out a shallow laugh. “Your voice does sound a bit strange.”
“……”
Jiang Se didn’t want to pay attention to him. She gave him a glance, lifted the covers, got out of bed, and went to the bathroom.
“I’m not eating breakfast here. I need to go to the airport to pick someone up later.”
“Your older sister?”
“Mm.” Jiang Se squeezed toothpaste onto the electric toothbrush. From the mirror she looked at the man who had followed her in, and said, “Is Auntie Han spending New Year here this year?”
Lu Huaiyuan leaned on the doorframe and looked at her. “No. She’s going back to the Han family for Spring Festival. I’ll accompany her back to Beicheng the day after tomorrow and probably won’t come back until after the New Year.”
The Spring Festival season was always the busiest.
Banquets lined up from year-end to year-beginning, from New Year’s Eve to Lantern Festival. Almost every day required socializing: cups raised, glasses exchanged, and nothing ended before midnight. It was nights of constant revelry.
Jiang Se made a vague “mm.”
Very grateful she no longer had to live that kind of life.
Lu Huaiyuan waited for a moment, and when her face showed no trace of reluctance, he slowly added, “At least ten days without seeing each other.”
Jiang Se then finally lifted her eyes to look at him and said, “I’ll call Auntie Han tonight and wish her a happy New Year in advance.”
Lu Huaiyuan watched her quietly.
After a moment of silence, he let out a light laugh. “Alright, Mother will definitely be very happy to receive your call.”
Jiang Se lowered her eyes and gave a soft “mm.”
—
Jiang Tang’s plane arrived in Tongcheng at around eight. After Jiang Se finished getting ready, she headed out to pick her up at the airport.
Before she left, Lu Huaiyuan had the butler send over two breakfasts. After picking up Jiang Tang, she handed her a kraft paper bag and said, “Buckwheat bread and black coffee.”
Jiang Tang was extremely disciplined with food, never touching anything high-sugar or high-calorie.
Looking at the logo on the kraft paper, she took off her mask and said with a laugh, “Why did you go all the way to Junyue to buy breakfast? You made such a big detour just to get me buckwheat bread and black coffee?”
Jiang Se laughed. “Someone else sent it. Have you finished filming?”
“Wrapped up. Finally made it back in time for Little New Year.” Jiang Tang took a sip of black coffee and said, “I needed the coffee anyway. We only wrapped after midnight yesterday, didn’t even have time to eat anything at the wrap party.”
Jiang Se slowly turned the steering wheel. “Is it alright to skip the wrap party?”
Although Jiang Tang was only the second female lead in this film, she was still a newcomer in the film industry, with no connections to speak of. The director team arranged a wrap party, no matter how much of a hurry she was in, she should’ve at least stayed for half the banquet before leaving.
Jiang Tang turned her head and gave her a sidelong glance, teasing with a smile, “Worried like a little grown-up again? Relax. I talked to Director Gu ahead of time. He didn’t mind.”
Director Gu?
Jiang Se vaguely remembered that for this film, the Gu family of Beicheng was the main investor. And the Gu family had a wealthy idle young master, often described by elders as not doing proper work, he insisted on going to the U.S. to study film, and after returning to China, threw himself into filmmaking.
“Gu Yunzheng?” Jiang Se asked.
“Yeah, but his stage name is Gu Zheng.” Jiang Tang said that, then suddenly thought of something and looked at Jiang Se. “Yesterday Director Gu took me to the airport, and he told me something—”
She paused mid-sentence.
Gu Yunzheng had been filming in Nancheng all this time, so he didn’t really know what had happened at the Cen family on New Year’s Eve. He only knew some accident had occurred that night, seemed like someone had been drugged.
Seeing her hesitating, Jiang Se used the pause at the red light to glance sideways at her. “What did Gu Yunzheng say?”
Jiang Tang looked at her and asked, “Sese, when you went back to the Cen family on New Year’s Eve, did someone bully you?”
Her tone was serious and solemn. Jiang Se was stunned for a moment, then quickly shook her head. “No.”
Jiang Tang breathed a sigh of relief. “If someone bullies you, you have to tell me.”
Jiang Se smiled. “Okay. Has Cao Xun been bothering you again?”
“He came to find me once, but didn’t come again after that.” Jiang Tang said lightly, “Director Gu fought with him that time because he was seriously delaying the filming schedule.”
A fight?
Gu Yunzheng fought with Cao Xun?
The light turned green. Jiang Se released the brake and asked at the same time, “Does Gu Yunzheng like you?”
“Maybe a little crush.” Jiang Tang tore open the kraft paper bag, pulled out the whole-wheat bread, took a bite, and said casually, “But I don’t want to date right now. Filming’s wrapped, and I’m heading straight back to the dance troupe to rehearse. I won’t have many chances to see him again anyway.”
Jiang Tang lived transparently and clearly, and she was very decisive when it came to relationships.
As for her situation with Cao Xun and Gu Yunzheng, Jiang Se didn’t ask further.
Back on Liyuan Street, the three siblings ate niangao in the living room. The bar was closed during the day, and after the niangao, Yu Shiying took them for haircuts. The salon was at the head of Liyuan Street; Jiang Tang and Jiang Ye had gotten their hair cut there since they were young.
Jiang Ye reminded Jiang Se, “Remember, don’t ever let Uncle Yaoji design a hairstyle for you. Just let him trim a bit.”
Next to him, Jiang Tang heard that and burst out laughing. “When Little Ye was little, he asked Uncle Yaoji to design a one-of-a-kind hairstyle for him. Uncle Yaoji shaved his head completely, said his head shape was good, and that hair was just a burden for him.”
“……” Jiang Se lowered her head, the corners of her lips curving.
Uncle Yaoji’s name sounded very gangster-ish, but he was actually a chubby, honest-looking uncle.
As soon as he saw Jiang Se, he said to Yu Shiying, “Ah Tang looks like you, Little Ye looks like Old Jiang, so I’ve always wondered, shouldn’t there be one kid who looks like both of you? And sure enough, here she is!”
Yu Shiying laughed. “Uncle Yaoji, you’ve always had sharp eyes. The first time our Sese came—”
Uncle Yaoji quickly made a gesture. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to give her a beautiful cut. Come here, Sese, Uncle will give you a nice hairstyle.”
Before Jiang Se could respond, Jiang Ye jumped in nervously, “Uncle Yaoji, please take it slow. Don’t give my second sister a shaved head or some weird style.”
Jiang Se’s hair had grown quite long, almost to her lower back. Uncle Yaoji didn’t give her any strange style; he simply trimmed it to a shoulder-length cut.
She had a small face, with naturally beautiful lotus-like features, she could pull off any hairstyle.
In the afternoon, when picking up Zhang Yue from the hospital, He Miao immediately noticed her haircut. “Miss Jiang, you cut your hair? It looks so good!”
“Mm. My mom took me this morning. Do you want a haircut? I can take you.”
“I’ll pass, I have to go home and help later.” He Miao glanced at Zhang Yue. “Why don’t you take Master? Her hair hasn’t been cut in who knows how long.”
Zhang Yue’s hair was indeed long, almost to her hips. When she didn’t pin it up, it looked very burdensome.
Zhang Yue instinctively wanted to refuse, but saw Jiang Se turn her eyes toward her and say, “If you don’t cut long hair for a long time, it’ll just keep sucking nutrients from your body and grow worse and worse. Go cut it.”
Zhang Yue fell silent, then after a moment nodded. “Sorry to trouble you.”
Jiang Se first took Zhang Yue back to her apartment to drop off her things, then brought her to Uncle Yaoji to get a collarbone-length cut.
With the long hair gone, she looked entirely renewed, much fresher.
“Wangchuan” opened at six this evening, and they returned to Liyuan Street right on time to have dinner.
Jiang Chuan made a whole table full of dishes. Both he and Yu Shiying were warm and hospitable people, and even someone as reserved as Zhang Yue slowly relaxed bit by bit in all the liveliness.
The dessert after dinner was Tongcheng’s special brown-sugar rice dumplings.
Zhang Yue was from Tongcheng; as a child she also ate the brown-sugar rice dumplings her mother cooked for her. She ate this small bowl very slowly, chewing every bite carefully, swallowing slowly.
As if she were savoring the beautiful childhood she once had, and also savoring the bit of sweetness she had finally tasted after eight long years.
After dinner, Jiang Ye originally planned to take Jiang Se and Jiang Tang out to play.
But Jiang Tang, who had stayed up all night, only wanted to sleep, and Jiang Se was still accompanying her friend, so she had no spare time to go out.
“Why aren’t you going to look for Lin Ke?” Jiang Tang teased him. “You only have one day off. You spent half with us, shouldn’t it be your girlfriend’s turn now?”
Lin Ke was “Keaiduo,” Jiang Ye’s classmate for all three years of high school.
Jiang Ye’s ears turned a little red: “She also has things to do during the day. I was originally planning to bring her along to hang out with you guys.”
“Bring two single older sisters as light bulbs?” Jiang Se glanced at him. “If you really brought us along, you wouldn’t even be able to hold Lin Ke’s hand tonight.”
Jiang Ye: “…”
After Jiang Ye left, Jiang Se brought Zhang Yue to her room next to the persimmon tree.
The two sat by the window looking at the persimmon tree in the yard. The persimmons had long fallen off; the bare branches only held fist-sized glass lamps and a few red lanterns.
At dusk, with the sunset still sketching its last streak of glow across the distant sky, the lights in the yard already came on.
The cold and quiet yard felt lively because of the warm yellow lights and the festive red lanterns.
A kind of liveliness that had lost human presence but still brimmed with the aura of ordinary life.
Zhang Yue looked at the persimmon tree, the corners of her lips lifting in a faint smile. “Your home is very lively.”
Jiang Se hummed, then asked with a smile, “Aren’t you curious how I went from being a rich family’s daughter to becoming the second daughter here?”
Zhang Yue held a cup of warm water. Hearing this, she shook her head.
She didn’t want to pry into someone else’s sad matters.
“There’s nothing that can’t be said,” Jiang Se said. “When I was born, someone set fire to the hospital and switched me with another baby. It wasn’t until last May that I learned my real family was here. A few days before that, I had just found information about you. When I learned that the owner of that handkerchief might also be in Tongcheng, do you know what I felt then?”
Zhang Yue said she didn’t know.
Jiang Se took a sip of black tea and said slowly, “I felt that the stagnant pool my life had become was finally going to change. As if something in the dark was guiding me to come to Tongcheng, telling me that once I came here, I could find myself again.”
There was a fire simmering inside her, a fire whose seed had been planted seven years ago.
This fire burned her painfully.
She had to use other ways to make this fire burn slower, until Zheng Huan told her, We might have found Zhao Zhicheng’s past.
Zhang Yue asked her, “Don’t you hate me?”
Jiang Se looked at her. “I don’t hate you. I only hate Zhao Zhicheng. The love between you and Zhao Zhicheng… was very moving. He could kill for you, and you could die for him. But no matter how moving a love is, it cannot be used to beautify a crime. Zhao Zhicheng redeemed you, but he harmed me. No matter what difficulties he had, he harmed me.”
Zhang Yue lowered her eyes. “You indeed should hate him.”
The room fell quiet. After a while, Jiang Se looked at the orange-red afterglow outside the window and suddenly asked, “Boss Zhang, do you think today’s sunset is beautiful?”
Zhang Yue lifted her eyes and looked outside.
It hadn’t snowed today; it was a clear day. The setting sun fell with exceptional grandeur, the afterglow painting the sky into a gorgeous canvas, the gold-edged clouds torn into drifting strands across it.
Zhang Yue stared in a daze. “It’s beautiful.”
When the last ray of afterglow disappeared at the horizon, Jiang Se pulled her gaze back.
“People always say sunset is despairing, because it can’t stop night from arriving. But it’s precisely this sunset, one that has endured darkness, that will rise again in a place we can’t see, on the other side of the world, unstoppable, becoming the morning sun and the blazing noon sun again. Boss Zhang—”
Jiang Se looked at Zhang Yue, smiling as she said, “Let’s find a time to go watch the sunrise together.”
—
When Zhang Yue left Liyuan Street, she took with her the stack of Spring Festival couplets Jiang Se bought for her. She said she would come back with He Miao in a couple of days to paste them up together.
She wanted to have a good New Year.
After Little New Year passed, the New Year atmosphere grew stronger. Every household was busy hanging lanterns, decorating, buying New Year goods, and pasting couplets.
These days, Jiang Se stayed at Liyuan Street.
In ordinary families, social exchanges are also indispensable during the festive season. In just a few days, the courtyard was filled with New Year gifts from relatives and neighbors.
A pot of kumquats appeared in Jiang Se’s room, gifted by Aunt Eleven, the one who gave her a big watermelon when she first came to Liyuan Street.
The golden fruits were bright and festive. She would pluck one, wash it, bite it, and the sweet-sour juice would fill her mouth.
She ate one or two every day. By New Year’s Eve, the pot was nearly bare.
Seeing the bald pot of kumquats through the window, Jiang Ye laughed so hard he almost bent over: “Who eats festive decorations bald like this?”
After laughing, he went back to his room and brought over the pot Aunt Eleven had given him, placing it over the window onto Jiang Se’s desk.
“I’ll give you mine for decoration. Don’t eat this one bald.” He glanced at her. “If you really like them, wait until after the seventh day of the New Year.”
The youth wore a red tang jacket and had a buzz cut. Jiang Se looked him over. “Little Ye, today you look like a crosstalk performer. When you go out on your date later, remember to change your clothes.”
Jiang Ye choked and shot back, “You look like a—”
His gaze swept over Jiang Se, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
The clothes made by Aunt Qi were the same, but Jiang Se’s improved two-piece qipao was personally overseen and altered by Zhang Yue, and wearing it was in no way inferior to the traditional one-piece qipao.
Jiang Ye searched a long time but couldn’t find the right words, so he said, “Like a big red flower!”
Today, not only Jiang Se looked like a big red flower, but Yu Shiying and Jiang Tang did as well.
The family of five finished their reunion dinner and then sat in the yard to take a family photo.
Yu Shiying and Jiang Chuan sat on chairs, Jiang Se stood in the middle behind them, flanked by Jiang Tang and Jiang Ye.
At the moment the fireworks burst over the Fuchun River, Jiang Ye shouted, “Are the kumquats sweet?”
“Snap” —
The camera standing in the middle of the yard captured this exact moment of all of them saying “sweet” forever.
Far away in the old Lu family mansion in Beicheng, Lu Huaiyan ate a dull and tasteless New Year’s Eve dinner, handed out red envelopes to the younger generation, then went back to his room and called Jiang Se.
It was only ten o’clock then. He had already finished two events and was about to attend a third.
It was a drinking party specially arranged by Guo Song.
Lu Huaiyan held the phone between his head and shoulder, leisurely undoing the buttons of his shirt. When he reached the fourth button, the call connected.
“Lu Huaiyan.”
“Mm, finished dinner?”
“Finished.”
Hearing the noisy background on her side, the man smiled and asked, “Where did you go to play?”
“…I’m by the Fuchun River, watching fireworks with Dad, Mom, and Big Sister.”
“Are the fireworks good?”
“So-so.”
Hearing this, Lu Huaiyan curled his lips, took a new shirt and put it on, saying, “It’s rare to have fireworks that meet your standards.”
“…”
If he were in front of Jiang Se now, she would probably roll her eyes at him.
Buttoning the last button, he smiled faintly, “I won’t disturb our miss watching fireworks. I’ll meet Guo Song and the others, and call you tomorrow evening.”
After the call, Lu Huaiyan put on his coat and went to the Mayfair Club.
The private room Guo Song booked was on the top floor. When he arrived, about ten people were already seated inside, including Cen Li.
“Ah Yan is here!” Guo Song came over with a drink. “We were just betting on when you’d arrive tonight. Ah Li knows you best, said you’d definitely be here before eleven.”
Lu Huaiyan’s gaze briefly swept over Cen Li. He took the alcohol glass Guo Song handed him and said, “What’s the bet?”
Guo Song said, “The Gu family’s shares. Their company has been having a terrible month, scandal after scandal. The stock has dropped 30%.”
Not just the Gu family; the Zhang family and Hu family, who had many joint projects with them, were also suffering.
Lu Huaiyan didn’t respond and scanned inside, picking an empty chess room, carrying his drink inside.
Obviously, he wasn’t in high spirits tonight.
Guo Song stepped up and followed. Glancing at Cen Li seated on the main hall sofa, he lowered his voice, “What’s really going on between you and Ah Li?”
Last time at this venue, their relationship was clearly not broken.
Guo Song didn’t even know what happened; suddenly they had fallen out.
He arranged this gathering hoping they’d clear things up and reconcile.
Lu Huaiyan sat in the cigar chair, legs crossed resting on the chair, smiling as he asked back, “What could I possibly have with him? If you worry about us, you might as well worry about your little sister.”
Lu Huaiyan never cared about others’ family matters. Suddenly bringing up Guo Qian startled Guo Song.
He opened his mouth to speak, but noticed Lu Huaiyan looking over his shoulder.
Guo Song turned to see who entered, none other than Cen Li.
“You coming is best. You and Ah Yan settle your matters yourselves. I won’t interfere.”
Guo Song left, closing the door behind them.
The room only had wall lamps on, the light dim.
Neither spoke.
After a moment of silence, Cen Li suddenly said, “That night at the Cen family, when you tore into me with those words, I was a bit unwilling to accept it. But later, I realized you were right. I really didn’t fulfill my duty as an older brother. Sese, she—”
“Never got better.”
