My Darling - Chapter 6.4

Chapter 6.4 — Love (4)

In a blink, Lunar New Year also passed.

Though Jian Bianlin wanted to see more of Chu Jian, it was not possible, lest his father detect any hints of something. The ice was finally broken in their relationship of many years, and he feared making any misstep. So, he suffered like this all the way until the Lunar New Year period was over and he went to join his next cast and crew on filming site. Chu Jian had arranged with him that on the day he was leaving, she would drive his car to take him to his company’s office.

They had agreed to meet in the underground parking garage. Jian Bianlin arrived first and turned on the heat to warm up the car for her. After a little while, he felt that it was too hot inside the vehicle, so he turned the temperature down again slightly.

From the elevator landing, Chu Jian ran over, one hand on top of her purse and the other holding down her hat. When she pulled open the car door, she was still gasping lightly. “Right before I headed out, I was setting up wi-fi for your dad. The ethernet port in your place isn’t very stable, so I connected him to my home’s wi-fi.”

He nodded. With both hands turning the steering wheel, he drove the car out.

The temperature in the vehicle was likely too comfortable, because before long, Chu Jian’s eyes were beginning to narrow, and after another dozen or so minutes, she was completely asleep. When Jian Bianlin saw, from the corner of his eye, her leaning back with her head crooked to the side, it felt a little like… a wrinkle had occurred in the space-time continuum.

It was the return trip back from the spring outing of their first year of high school. After every row, from front to back, of every bus had been filled, the students of Class No. 9, as the last of all the classes in the entire grade, were all separated and stuffed wherever there was room in the other classes’ buses.

Chu Jian and a few other girls had been allocated to Class No. 1’s bus.

That evening, while they were driving back beneath the heavy curtain of night, Jian Bianlin, as the class prefect, had been doing a head count with the teacher. Walking to the back row, he saw her, her head leaning against the glass of the bus window and her eyes closed, but he was not certain if she was simply tired or feeling ill. He had hesitated over whether or not he should go over to pat her and ask whether she was sleepy or unwell. As a result of this little thought, he had stood beside her for more than one minute.

So, what had he done back then? It would seem he had changed seats with a boy in his class who was sitting across the aisle. In his new seat, there was only a girl from Class No. 9 separating him from Chu Jian. For the two-plus-hour bus ride, inside that bus interior that was without lights, he had gazed at her under the not-very-bright moonlight as she rested against the bus window, her soft hairs tucked behind her ear. Her hairstyle had been short. Ever since she was a child, she had worn her hair short. If it grew a little longer, she would tuck it behind her ears, and if it were a little shorter, it frequently would be in complete disarray from sleeping on it, such that one day, this part would stick up and another day, that part would be squashed flat.

That night, she had slept soundly. Her forehead, in rhythm with the rocking and jolting of the bus’s motions, would bump a little bit against the glass…

Uncomfortable—he had felt uncomfortable from simply seeing her forehead resting against such hard glass.

If by chance the brakes on the bus were suddenly slammed, her head would collide hard into the window.

Taking advantage of a red traffic light, Jian Bianlin reached behind and grabbed a throw cushion from the backseat. He nudged her awake and handed the cushion to her. Chu Jian was a little dazed, and only after he instructed her to lean against it to sleep did she understand. With a smile that caused her eyes to disappear into squints, she laid her seat down, and hugging that cushion, she continued dozing.

When their car arrived at the destination, the time was still early.

Soundlessly, he sat for a dozen or so minutes until that dozing person finally awoke. Rubbing her eyes, she asked, “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“It’s still early.”

“It’s not like it’s comfortable sitting in the car.” Chu Jian unfastened her seatbelt. “Let’s go up first?”

Jian Bianlin thrummed two fingers against the steering wheel. “Just like that, we’re going to go up? Shouldn’t you do something as an expression of your feelings? …”

Muttering a “Scoundrel!” Chu Jian pointed at her own lips, the meaning of that being, I’m too lazy to move. Come get it yourself.

It had been nearly two months now since they had officially starting dating, and there were some things that she had grown accustomed to.

For instance, he always liked to seize every opportunity to do lovey-dovey things with her. Chu Jian had even discussed this in vague terms with Tong Fei. Tong Fei’s conclusion was that Jian Bianlin must be a man who had never done itbefore… But not far into their discussion, Tong Fei had begun to waver on her certainty of that and hinted to Chu Jian that there really might have been something to that romance rumour about Jian Bianlin that had once circulated around. Even Xie Bin had never directly declared it to be untrue.

Chu Jian’s mind had wandered a bit.

He tousled the bangs of her hair. This time, it really was cut a little too short. The hairstylist had rather bad taste.

But… she was still very pretty.

Jian Bianlin moved in closer, blocking the view in front of her, and gently pressed his lips onto hers. “What are you thinking?” Chu Jian let out an “mmph.” But before she had a chance to speak, his tongue had already slipped inside. It had been several days since he last did this, so the instant he contacted her slippery little tongue, Jian Bianlin very much felt his control slipping.

No longer satisfied with simply caressing her ear, while he pressed down on her tongue, his hand also slid down from beside her neck and, as if compelled by another force, found the edge of the rounded contours of her chest …

It was too real, even through her sweater. He tightened his fingers, unable to stop himself from taking hold of it and kneading it a couple of times.

Breaths that were burning hot.

Letting out a couple of cries of “mmph,” Chu Jian bumped him away. She pulled herself backward, and with eyes that had turned slightly red from anxiousness, she reminded, “We’re still outside…” There was a faint nasalness to each word that she spoke. She was so embarrassed she wanted to jump out of the vehicle, yet at the same time, she also wanted to shove him off the car.

……

In that enclosed space inside the vehicle, she desperately avoided his gaze. The deafening sound she was hearing was the pounding of her own heart.

After a long time had passed, Jian Bianlin finally dared to rest his chin on her shoulder. In a husky voice, he stated, “There’s a little bit of a problem.”

Her heart still feeling tingly, she shirked away from him. “… What’s wrong?”

“I want to get married.”

Jian Bianlin avoided most of the parking garage and got into a company vehicle. Xie Bin asked him, “Where’s your wife? She’s gone back?”

He did not answer.

Surmising that Jian Bianlin must still be in new-couple bliss and was not used to being separated from his love, Xie Bin abandoned his questions. Throwing his jacket over his own face, Xie Bin went to sleep first.

By the time they arrived in Hengdian[1], it was fast approaching midnight. Fortunately, Xie Bin came here often and was well acquainted with the several restaurant owners. When they stepped inside, more than half the crew was already waiting there. To have a work kick-off dinner at midnight—there sure were not many people who did that.

Jian Bianlin was a big-name movie star, so it was not often that he came to Hengdian.

They had just arrived and now jumped straightaway into filming some night scenes. On one filming site, there were four or five different sub-teams of crew. Over on this side, there was a fight going on; that side, imperial court was in session; and off in the distance, there was even some scheming going on in the palace—such a delightful scene, was it not?

Beside him, someone set down a paper cup and poured coffee into it. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you here in Hengdian.

The voice sounded familiar to Jian Bianlin, so he lifted his eyes. Her?

“It’s been a few years.” The lights’ reflection could be seen in Ruan Xi’s eyes. “You’ve been rather unkind, Jian Bianlin. Back then, we could be considered to be friends, but later, the condition that your agent gave to a producer every time was that you would not appear in the same cast as me. You made me lose quite a bit of face.”

Jian Bianlin was wearing one of the custom-made down parkas that were a specialty of Hengdian, and it garbed him from his head all the way to his calves. When he heard this chain of sentences, he did not offer even a response. Pulling up the hood of his parka, he slipped it on.

Giving the cold shoulder to people like this was common behavior for him.

In the end, even Jian Bianlin’s assistant felt bad for Ruan Xi, that she was not being given face, and, stepping up to them, he helped to smooth the situation over. When she left, the assistant, Xiao Yu, muttered under his breath, “Don’t tell me she doesn’t even know that our Jian Ge doesn’t drink coffee? And here she’s still trying to throw herself at him.”

His assistant took the coffee and walked off, treating it like trash and throwing it away.

Ruan Xi had indeed been correct in what she had said: After the singing competition—to be more exact, after Jian Bianlin shot up in popularity last year and some photographs from the competition were released to the public—Jian Bianlin’s side had, in a single night, lost several hundred thousand in the form of red packet money[2] in order to suppress the rumour that had been going around. While they were at it, whenever any producers sought Jian Bianlin out, the one stipulation that was laid out was that the cast that Jian Bianlin was joining could not have Ruan Xi in it.

Though the situation had been labeled as a “hot piece of romantic gossip,” it was actually merely a set of photographs that contained the two together with no one else around.

During the competition, there had been a gathering of a bunch of people having fun and goofing around. He remembered, that day had been Chu Jian’s birthday. He had taken first place in the competition and had wanted to share that moment with her but had not been able to get ahold of her for the entire day. In a moment of overthinking, he had consumed some alcohol and then chatted briefly with Ruan Xi in a corner, their backs facing the group. The content of their conversation had all been about Chu Jian.

That night, someone had selectively chosen a strategic angle and taken many photographs of them.

Actually, he and Ruan Xi were not the only ones. That night had been a farewell dinner gathering. Everyone had consumed quite a bit of alcohol, and there were photographs of each person whispering head to head with someone else… except he was the only one who was now big and crazily popular. Naturally, then, of the photographs that ended up getting exposed to the public, a greater number of them contained him.

Jian Bianlin unconsciously spun that small pinky ring of his.

Yawning, Xie Bin walked over to him.

Not far away, a film crew was shooting one of those silly, melodramatic dramas[3] while playing a Yangko[4] folk song. In the middle of the night, this was just too weird. Xie Bin listened with a painful gimace as he asked, “What are you thinking about? You’re looking so preoccupied it’s like your soul has drifted out of your body.”

Jian Bianlin let himself flop back into his folding sling chair, his eyes fixed  on a palace lantern in the distance that was swaying in the wind. “I’m thinking about my wife.”

He wanted to hear her voice, to hear her call him with cries of “Jian Bianlin, Jian Bianlin.”

[1] Hengdian World Studios is a film studio located in the town of Hengdian, and is the largest outdoor film studio in the world with replicas, not facades, of both the Forbidden City and the Old Summer Palace, as well as themed areas such as streets of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, grottos, riverside town, etc. Movies and television dramas alike are filmed in this place, but actors who film television dramas, in particular period dramas, would spend more time here.

[2]Refer to footnote [1] in chapter 5.5. In this case, Jian Bianlin’s side gave out cash gifts to the media and other powers that be to stop the spread of the romantic rumour going around that was linking Jian Bianlin to Ruan Xi.

[3]雷剧 “lei ju.” A “lei ju” is a slang term used on the internet describing a drama that either strives to be silly in style (e.g. period drama with dialogue that contains modern slang) or is so melodramatic it becomes almost ridiculous.

[4]大秧歌 “da yangge.” Literally meaning “rice seedling song,” Yangko [sometimes simply transliterated using its pinyin form, Yangge] is a form of rural folk dance in China and can be traced back a thousand years. It was originally a dance for fertility for farmers planting rice in their fields. The number of dancers is not fixed, and it is not an uncommon sight to see crowds of people dancing in a line or circle on the streets together. A characteristic feature of the dance is the use of colorful fans. Here is an example of a Yangko dance performance.