The Seventeenth Fallen Leaf
The arrival of this day had been within Ji Shiqiu’s expectations. After coming down from the mountain, he had grown greedy, continually deceiving himself, while knowing full well that the judgment awaiting him would come crashing down sooner or later. But it was only when Wu Yu appeared in the sweet potato field that he realized the punishment had come even faster than the judgment.
He had not touched a single one of her tears, yet his whole body felt as though it were being scorched to ashes.
Especially his heart.
The pain was beyond words.
He strode rapidly as he pulled her back to the inn, preventing her from lingering too long in the rear field of Old Zheng’s house and giving Sister Lin the chance to notice anything more amiss.
Along the way, his brows were tightly knitted, his thoughts surging and churning, unable to sort themselves out.
He did not want to be misunderstood by Wu Yu, but neither did he want to win her pity or make her cling to him through memories.
Once inside the bedroom, Ji Shiqiu immediately closed the door. He turned around, gripped Wu Yu by the shoulders, and forced her to calm down.
“I…” He had only just begun to speak when the woman was already kissing him.
She practically threw herself at him. Ji Shiqiu did not react in time and fell back against the door.
Her tongue slipped inside. Ji Shiqiu, intoxicated, sucked on it a few times. Between her lips and her eyes, with only a small gap separating them, he tried to speak.
Wu Yu blocked him again, refusing to let him speak, and giving him her answer instead.
She hooked her arms around his neck, as if she wanted to hang from his body.
Ji Shiqiu’s pupils deepened. He clasped Wu Yu around the lower back and lifted her up, kissing her fiercely, from the corner of her lips to her jaw, then burying himself against the side of her neck, sweeping over her in a wild, disorderly rush.
They began undressing each other. Their lips and teeth knocked together, the sounds of their breathing growing louder in the room, dark and delirious, while fabric rustled and rubbed against fabric.
Perhaps they were being truly honest with each other, or perhaps there was little time left. Both their emotions carried the fervor of reaching the summit and the madness of plunging to the bottom.
Wu Yu rarely behaved like this. There was no teasing, no seduction. Again and again, over and over, she only called out one person’s name in a daze, even if the name itself was a lie.
When the room finally grew quiet, the moon outside had already climbed higher.
Its shape had changed, becoming oval, like a solitary golden mango growing on its own.
Ji Shiqiu quietly held Wu Yu in his arms, his narrowed eyes making him look as though he were dozing.
Wu Yu gazed at him for a while, then pinched the tip of his nose, using it to coax his eyelids open.
She called him, “Xiao Qiu.”
Ji Shiqiu hummed in response.
Her voice was a little strange, taking on the rare high, delicate sweetness of a little girl. She sounded like a girl truly in the throes of being in love.
“Xiao~ Qiu~”
Ji Shiqiu laughed and answered with an “Ai.”
He stroked the rim of her ear. “Isn’t there anything you want to ask me?”
Wu Yu said, “I know.”
The corners of Ji Shiqiu’s lips were still curved upward. “You know what?”
“I know…” Wu Yu snuggled a little closer into his arms, finding a more comfortable position, then raised her eyes to stare at him. “You.”
Why had he once thought that her eyes were nothing more than cold camera lenses?
At this moment, Ji Shiqiu questioned himself.
When he had been in middle school, many girls in his class loved gathering together to discuss crystal-bead bracelets whose materials they could not even be sure were genuine, firmly believing that each possessed its own unique energy magnetic field.
Back then, Ji Shiqiu had remained silent, self-righteously deciding that his female peers were superstitious and cementing that judgment in his mind.
But now, he believed.
Wu Yu’s eyes were the warmest black obsidian, reflecting him, containing him, and purifying him.
The turmoil of the past many days finally found peace. Greedy beyond satisfaction, he wanted to hear her say it plainly.
“Me?”
“Mm.”
“What kind of person am I?”
Wu Yu looked at him for a while. “Very handsome, and very good.”
The most unadorned words brought about the purest reaction. Ji Shiqiu revealed a rather broad smile. “Like this…?”
Wu Yu was very certain. “Mm. Exactly like this.”
Ji Shiqiu watched her, smiling and smiling, until his eyes grew a little moist.
Her lack of curiosity, her refusal to pursue the matter, was too precious. It was an incomparable comfort.
After being gazed at for so long by the young man’s deep, earnest eyes, Wu Yu could not help herself.
“What about me? How do you see me?”
Ji Shiqiu blinked, suppressing the soreness and bitterness at the tip of his nose. He was even a little at a loss for words.
“…I don’t know.”
He did not know.
“What?” Wu Yu pretended to be unhappy, clenched her fist and lightly struck his chest, gritting her teeth. “You don’t know?”
He did not know.
He only knew…
Ji Shiqiu suddenly raised his eyebrows and sat up. He dragged over the long trousers at the foot of the bed and took something from the pocket.
Because it had been folded down for too long and then pressed beneath something, the leaf had already become soft and wrinkled, while its tender stem had tangled itself into a knot, making it somewhat difficult to unravel.
He sat there carefully putting it together, and Wu Yu leaned over to take a look as well.
She discovered that he had made a sweet potato leaf pendant.
She had made one at home when she was little, too.
Her mother had a strange and quick-tempered disposition, and none of the girls her age around her were willing to play with her. In late summer, as autumn approached, she would amuse herself by sitting beside the sweet potato field, plucking the leaves and breaking them apart evenly, section by section. Their veins remained connected, and the slender green stems were not easy to break, turning them into naturally made strings of beads. Just as balsam flower juice could be applied to the fingernails as rouge, these radiant plants had adorned almost every girl’s childhood.
To make sure he did not break them, Ji Shiqiu separated the veins with the utmost patience. Finally, he let out a breath and spread two intact “earrings” across his palm.
“You don’t have pierced ears,” he said, glancing at Wu Yu’s earlobes, then lowering his head. “Besides, they’re not very fresh anymore.”
But Wu Yu quickly snatched them over, hanging one on each ear. She even shook them childishly, letting the leaves brush against her cheeks.
She could not see herself, so the two hung at different lengths. Ji Shiqiu laughed when he saw it and reached over to straighten them for her.
“Do they look good?” Wu Yu asked.
Ji Shiqiu did not take his eyes off her. “They look good.”
Wu Yu narrowed her eyes slightly. “How did you know this could be made into earrings and necklaces?”
Ji Shiqiu froze for a moment.
Wu Yu’s tone turned threatening. “Tell me. Have you made them for other girls before?”
Ji Shiqiu looked innocent. “Only for my mom, when I was little.”
He did not know how to describe what was good about her.
He only knew...
In this lifetime, the second girl who had made him instinctively want to make a sweet potato leaf pendant for her, besides his mother, was only her.
And it could only be this way.
Ji Shiqiu’s expression darkened slightly. He quickly concealed it, but Wu Yu caught it. She leaned closer and pressed down on the back of his hand, no longer concealing her plan.
“Ji Shiqiu, leave with me tonight.”
Ji Shiqiu looked at her in astonishment.
The corners of his lips drew in slightly, but he did not respond.
Wu Yu had always been straightforward. “I saw your wanted notice online before. Today, I went next door to buy cigarettes and discovered that they’d posted it in the village too...” She stopped herself from making the statement too cruel, leaving an appropriate amount unsaid. “So...”
So that was why she was in such a hurry.
“We can’t put it off any longer. We’re leaving tonight.” Once the sun rose tomorrow, in this cramped little village, more people would see that notice. Sister Lin, Old Zheng... everyone who had seen Ji Shiqiu’s face.
Wu Yu did not dare think any further.
She could guarantee that she herself would not waver, but the scales between emotion and justice weighed differently in everyone’s heart.
But it did not matter.
She had thrown herself recklessly toward him, and she was bound to take responsibility for him to the very end.
She was the one who had pulled him down from the cliff.
So she would give him more opportunities and more time to experience the mountains and sea, and true affection.
She had never been favored by God since the day she was born. Since she was going to hell anyway, she might as well walk that dark road all the way to the end.
From childhood to adulthood, falling into ruin had been her way of saving herself. She did not care. It did not matter.
Ji Shiqiu was the first person she had ever wanted to save. If not for that chance encounter in this autumn, she would never have met someone like him in her entire life.
He was outstanding, sincere, clean and without blemish, someone who should have been destined for the bright summit of a mountain. It was only because of that little storm that the fork in fate had sent him to her side.
If fate was meant to be this way,
she was willing to sink with him.
Time was pressing. Wu Yu stopped thinking further, pulled on her clothes and got out of bed. Her expression calm, she began packing her things, and asked, “You didn’t have your ID card then. How did you get here by car from the north?”
Ji Shiqiu watched her slender figure moving busily, his brows drawing tightly together, his eyes shaken.
When Wu Yu saw that he did not answer, she turned around and urged him, “Why are you just sitting there like an idiot? Aren’t you getting out of bed to pack?”
Ji Shiqiu’s expression suddenly relaxed. He got out of bed to help, and also answered her earlier question.
“After leaving home, I walked for a long time, all the way to the national highway. I flagged down a private car and asked if he could give me a ride for part of the way. That uncle was a good person. He said he would only charge me half the expressway toll.”
Wu Yu briskly stuffed things into the luggage bag. “Good. We’ll keep walking too, and use the same method.”
Ji Shiqiu looked at her. “Won’t Lin-jie find it strange if we leave in such a hurry?”
Wu Yu stopped and was silent for a moment.
“I’ll just say my dad is critically ill and I have to hurry home to see him one last time.”
Ji Shiqiu suddenly smiled.
Wu Yu shot him a glance. “What are you laughing at?”
Ji Shiqiu said, “The way you make up lies is quite...”
“Quite what?”
“Quite cute.”
Wu Yu kicked him.
Ji Shiqiu did not dodge, leaving a shoe print on his trouser leg.
He asked, “Have you decided where we’re going?”
Wu Yu answered honestly, “I haven’t. I haven’t had time to think about it yet. We’ll try to leave the province, then find somewhere as remote and beautiful as Suixiu, somewhere with mountains.” She was already imagining the future, and repeated, “There have to be mountains.”
Ji Shiqiu tucked a loose strand of hair behind her, then straightened the sweet potato leaf earring tangled in her hair. “Aren’t you afraid?”
Wu Yu looked back at him. “Afraid of what?”
Ji Shiqiu said, “What if we get caught?”
Wu Yu gave a slight shrug. “Then we get caught. Prison is still better than my home.”
There was a sense of conviction and security in her that was completely at odds with her small frame.
“You might not know this, but I escaped too. We’re no different. This time, I’m taking you and running. You don’t have to worry about going hungry or freezing, you don’t have to sit outside alone for so long, and you can even bring your mom to see the sunrise over another mountain. You can compare it and see what’s different from the one on Lian Mountain.”
She said it so casually, yet Ji Shiqiu’s eyes grew slightly moist.
“There probably isn’t much difference,” he said.
Wu Yu disagreed. “How could there be?” Mountains rose and fell at different heights, so naturally the scenery would be different.
Ji Shiqiu looked at her.
“But there is only this one sun.”
Wu Yu froze, and said nothing more.
They had almost finished packing. Wu Yu opened her phone and glanced at it. It was already nearly eight.
The people of Suixiu Mountain rose with the sun and rested when it set. Based on her observations over the past few days, leaving between nine-thirty and ten would be the safest time.
Thinking of this, she could not help letting out a long breath. There was also the tightness in her chest that came before fleeing. She turned to Ji Shiqiu and said, “I’m going to take a shower, then you shower. Once we’re done, we’ll leave.”
Ji Shiqiu nodded. “Okay.”
Wu Yu did not stay under the showerhead for long. Rubbing the wet ends of her hair as she came out, she was just about to urge Ji Shiqiu to take his turn when her gaze stopped, her movements abruptly freezing.
All the things in the room that had already been packed away had been returned to their original places.
And Ji Shiqiu was sitting at the foot of the bed in silence, as though waiting for her.
Wu Yu stared at him in astonishment.
The young man’s hands, resting on his thighs, slowly curled into fists.
“What are you doing?” For a moment, Wu Yu could neither process nor understand it.
He stood up in one motion and walked straight toward her. Once he stopped, his heavy figure cast a shadow over her.
“Wu Yu.” He called her by name. “I want to tell you something.”
“You’ve changed your mind?” Wu Yu faintly sensed what was coming. “You don’t want to leave with me anymore?”
Ji Shiqiu pressed his lips together hard, turned his head aside, and took a deep breath. Finally, he looked at her again.
“While you were taking a shower, I used your phone to send the police a text message reporting myself.”
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