I’m back. 🙂 A reminder that the next update will be Tuesday evening, N. American time.
Something very significant happens in this update. How many of you ended up reaching back in your own memories after reading this post?
Chapter 8.1 — Shape of My Heart (1)This story was translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. All forms of reproduction, redistribution, or reposting are not authorized. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the copy is unauthorized and has been taken without consent of the translator.
She had thought that when he was telling her about Mount Victoria, he really had wanted to bring her there for a look. The result, though, was not what she had expected.
The next day, Jì Chengyang left and went to the United States.
He likely was bidding a perfect final farewell to that period in his life as a doctoral student.
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Prior to her own departure from New Zealand, her schoolmates were talking on and on when they were buying souvenirs about how they would soon be leaving this country that was the first to see the sunrise every day, and how they really didn't want to leave… Jǐ Yi recalled how, that night in the stairwell, as Jì Chengyang idly conversed with her while holding her in his arms, they had talked as well about this same notion, and he had even jokingly said, "It seems there are many places where the people there like to say that they are the first place to see sunrise every day."
Their plane arrived at the Beijing Capital International Airport some time past ten o'clock at night. The teacher leading their group began doing a headcount while also stating the strict requirement that every person absolutely had to go back to the school first on the bus the school had provided before they all disbanded.
"No one is allowed to leave the group before that, understand?" their teacher reiterated for the last time.
"Teacher, we understand," the students cried out in singsong voices one after the other.
Catching sight of Wang Haoran waving goodbye to her from afar, Jǐ Yi gave a polite wave as well.
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Nearby, some people from Hong Kong were talking about something. It seemed they had come across a huge, terrifying incident.
She nonchalantly pricked up her ears. However, immediately, she began listening with seriousness. In summary, Phoenix TV[1] had just made the news broadcast that some building in New York had been struck by an airplane… Hearing "New York," Jǐ Yi abruptly grew tense, but when she wanted to listen carefully to more, those people had already walked far away.
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Her heart was pounding wildly. In that instant, she could only think of the two words, "Jì Chengyang."
"Teacher, I'll be right back." She stuffed her suitcase into a schoolmate's hands and then straightaway sprinted toward the exit that Wang Haoran had left through. As she ran, she prayed with all her might, Please don't be gone. Only you have Jì Chengyang's U.S. contact details. I don't know at all how to contact him there.
Dashing through the automatic glass doors, in the streams of people who were coming and going, she followed her intuition and went searching where the taxis were. Luckily, she really did see Wang Haoran and his friends standing off to the side, seeming as if they were waiting for a vehicle to come pick them up.
She rushed over and grabbed Wang Haoran's arm. "Do you have Jì Chengyang's U.S. phone number? Can you call it for me?"
Wang Haoran was startled. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"I don't know." There was a tremor in her voice. "I just heard that a plane crashed into a building in the U.S…."
"A plane crashed into a building? In the U.S.?" Wang Haoran felt these words were really too inconceivable. "That can't be, can it?" However, seeing that Jǐ Yi's eyes were reddened, he knew she was genuinely distraught. "Where was this crash?"
"New York." Her voice truly did begin trembling.
"Xixi, don't worry. He's not in New York. He's in Philadelphia."
Wang Haoran began searching for Jì Chengyang's American telephone number.
Soon, the call had gone through, and he handed his mobile phone to her. "This is the number of the place where he lives. When the phone's picked up, just say you're looking for Yang. I'll go ask some other people what's going on." Wang Haoran turned around and began asking the several people with him whether such a bizarre incident truly had occurred.
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only.
Gripping the mobile phone, Jǐ Yi waited. Each passing second felt as long as a century.
The call was finally answered. "Hello."
"Hello." Jǐ Yi felt the person speaking was him, but she was not certain. "May I…"
"Xixi?" Jì Chengyang was very surprised to hear this voice.
Her heart finally settled back into where it should be. She clamped down on her lip, trying to regain her composure, but her voice was still not quite normal. "It's me. I heard that a plane crashed into a building in New York… I was scared you were in the plane, and I was also scared you were in that building. I was scared you…"
"I'm at home." He told her simply and directly, "I'm very safe."
"… Don't go running around." After Jǐ Yi finished stating the first half of her sentence, she suddenly felt that what she was saying was especially silly. Still, she could not refrain from continuing with her words. "And especially don't go to New York. What if something else happens?"
"All right." He actually agreed to these instructions of hers that had been spoken like a little grownup.
The background noise as he spoke was a live news report—the live coverage of that 9/11 disaster. She could roughly hear a few sentences of it. The tone was truly heavy and grave, so she did not continue focusing her attention on listening to it. After learning that he was safe, she suddenly did not really have anything to say.
In the end, the phone was returned to Wang Haoran. Once Wang Haoran knew there was no danger to Jì Chengyang, he began more so to query him on the situation of that terrorist attack. She listened for a while, but then, she spotted that some of her schoolmates whom she was travelling with had already run out through the glass doors and seemed to be calling to her to rejoin the group. Hastily, she gave a pat to Wang Haoran's arm. "I'm going now. Thank you."
"You need to go home now?" Wang Haoran asked her.
On the other end of the line, Jì Chengyang heard this question, and he said something to Wang Haoran. The phone was once more handed over to her.
Jǐ Yi was somewhat taken aback, not certain what he would say to her. As she held the phone, she did not utter a sound.
"I'll be back in Beijing in a couple of months," Jì Chengyang told her, "probably some time in early winter."
"May I call you?"
He chuckled. "It won't be all that convenient. I'm often not at home."
Jǐ Yi grew dejected.
Two vehicles happened to drive by in front of her at a relatively high speed, and they were quite close as well. Wang Haoran hurriedly pulled her back. She, however, was somewhat preoccupied and did not even pay attention… Her only thought was, he did not like her calling him.
"I will call you," his voice told her.
Jǐ Yi's heart, which only a moment ago had plummeted into a bottomless chasm, instantly soared back up lightly.
"I'm normally at school." She was stating her situation that he had already known about long ago, but still, she repeated it one more time, for fear that he might call and be unable to get ahold of her. "I go back home on the weekends. During the daytime… there are no other people at home."
Finally returning the phone to Wang Haoran, she went back to rejoin her group and received in passing a couple of sentences of both annoyed and amused admonishment from her teacher.
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They were taking the school's bus, and when their teacher heard Jǐ Yi describe the incident of planes bombarding into buildings, she also urged someone to turn on the bus's television.
Surprisingly, there was absolutely no news coverage from CCTV [China Central News Television] on the incident.
Jǐ Yi called Nuannuan. Nuannuan was at home and was not asleep yet. She had been watching Phoenix TV's news broadcasts the entire time, and she told Ji Yi that the two towers, one after the other, had collapsed. It felt especially horrifying, as if all the media in the entire world were talking about this event. Outside the bus's windows, those travellers who still had not learned of this incident were calmly making their way through this dim night, coming and going in a hurry.
Leaning against the window, Jǐ Yi watched their bus leave the airport. As she gazed at those trees along the roadside that were continuously whipping past, her heart was still unsettled, and she felt that this disastrous event was so unfathomable. She was not alone. The students and the teacher all felt as if this was a rumour. Who would have imagined that an airplane full of passengers would smash directly into New York's World Trade Center? But, this sort of situation that should occur only in disaster movies had actually happened in real life.
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only.
With every tragedy, everyone will ruefully state, "The things of the world are unpredictable. Cherish the ones who are with you now." Before long, though, they will all begin once again to rush about in pursuit of fame and fortune. Ultimately, the ones who truly understand the meaning of these words are only those who have actually lost loved ones to either natural disaster or calamities created by man… To the Jǐ Yi of this moment, the fact that Jì Chengyang was not in New York and that there was no threat to his safety was already enough. The she of this time could not think that far ahead. At most, she wanted simply to muster up her courage and let him know that she liked him. Even the thought of "being together" was one that she only dared allow to flash across her mind, let alone that profound concept of "cherish the ones who are with you now."
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By the time they were back at the school, it was already very late.
Jǐ Yi, lugging her suitcase, floor by floor climbed up the staircase of her dormitory building.
There was a problem with the elevator. In times such as this, the ones who were saddest and most wretched were absolutely the senior-year high school students like her who lived on the top floor. Lights were already out at this hour. Only the stairwell and corridors had lights. While she was trudging along, someone chased after her and, catching up, helped haul her suitcase with her. Jǐ Yi looked over. It was Zhao Xiaoying.
"You're getting back so late?" Jǐ Yi truly was surprised.
In order to have some extra remedial help, in this last year of high school, Zhao Xiaoying had also applied to stay in the school dormitory. Jǐ Yi did know this.
"Mm-hmm. I was doing some practice papers." Zhao Xiaoying smiled. "I also took notes for you."
Jǐ Yi let out an "Ah?"
Actually, the thought that came cross her mind was that she had completed all of the required senior-year high school curriculum already and did not need any sort of notes. However, when it transformed to words, it became, "Thank you. I'll treat you to KFC tomorrow, how about that?"
Zhao Xiaoying hastily answered, "Oh, no, you don't need to. We grew up together, but yet you're still being so overly polite."
Jǐ Yi simply stated, "We'll go tomorrow after school." The two had climbed to the top floor and now finally headed in separate directions. Once she was back in her own dormitory room, she first put her suitcase under her bed. After washing up simply and brushing her teeth, she lay down on her bed. However, when her eyes closed, all that filled her mind was Jì Chengyang, and what she thought about was the sound of his voice, against a background noise of English dialogue, speaking Chinese.
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The end result was that after school the following day, the original two-person get-together beween her and Zhao Xiaoying successfully added Nuannuan into it, and it became a three-person gathering.
Since starting high school, Zhao Xiaoying did not often hang out with them, so when they were eating, Nuannuan was constantly feeling a little awkward and did not talk. Fortunately, though, she had her mobile phone, so she was fine sending text messages.
"You really don't want to keep learning the guzheng?" Jǐ Yi dipped a French fry into ketchup and stuffed it into Zhao Xiaoying's mouth.
Fuzhong particularly placed value on cultivating its students. So long as a student was willing to learn, even if he or she had no musical foundation, the school would arrange for someone within the orchestra who was willing to do it to teach that student for free. After Jǐ Yi entered Fuzhong and learned of this practice, where the school would provide the instrument and practice room free of charge, every week in their first year of high school, she had purposely freed up time to teach Zhao Xiaoying the guzheng. Unfortunately, later on, Zhao Xiaoying had not persisted in learning it.
"No, I'm not going to." Zhao Xiaoying felt especially sheepish. "I don't have much talent in it. I even wasted a year of your time for you to teach me. Right now, all my brain can think about are the college entrance exams and doing practice problems. I don't dare think about anything else."
"Don't put too much pressure on yourself," Nuannuan offhandedly threw in this comment. "Careful you don't end up messing up your exams."
Jǐ Yi felt that this young miss always liked to speak the truth, but she also always managed to stab someone else's sore point. In fact, most of the time it was not intentional. But they were all grown up now; who was truly able to just listen and not take things to heart?
With her head down, Zhao Xiaoying sipped her cola. "I keep wanting to get into a good university, but I also feel that I won't be able to do it for sure. I can't compare to you guys at all."
Skirting around this topic, Jǐ Yi urged Zhao Xiaoying to eat her hamburger instead.
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On the weekend, when it was time to head home, Nuannuan deliberately waited for Jǐ Yi and Zhao Xiaoying to take the bus with them. The three squeezed together onto the backseat. Nuannuan was busy making a phone call, so Jǐ Yi picked up Nuannuan's portable CD player and listened to it for a while. There was an English song that was particularly nice. Its subdued tune caused an image to float up in its listeners' minds of a brilliant, gorgeous flower blooming in an otherwise purely gray world.
She looked down and read the name of the song on the CD player: "Shape of My Heart."
"Good song?" Nuannuan happened to finish her phone call right then, and grinningly she said, "Before my little uncle went to New Zealand, he watched a movie at home. This is its theme song. He watched it twice, so he probably really likes it. What my little uncle likes for sure can't be bad."
Putting on nonchalance, Jǐ Yi asked her, "It is a pretty nice song. What movie was it?"
"I think its name is…"—Nuannuan searched through her memory—"Léon: The Professional. He said it's an old movie from some time in the nineties."
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only.
[1]凤凰卫视. Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings, or simply Phoenix Television or Phoenix TV, is a Hong Kong-based television station.
This story was translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. All forms of reproduction, redistribution, or reposting are not authorized. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the copy is unauthorized and has been taken without consent of the translator.
Additional Comments:In my introductory words for this novel, I mentioned how the author wove in real movies and world events into this story, and those help us connect to the characters as we “experience” these with them.
I remember, when I was in junior high, my social studies teacher told the class that anyone who was alive when it happened will never forget when Neil Armstrong first landed on the moon, and can clearly recount to you where he/she was and what he/she was doing when it happened. She said, there are some events in world history that are so significant they cut across all borders and impact everyone. Now, the first man on the moon was far, far before my time, but I daresay that 9/11 is another one of those significant world events. I can very clearly remember standing in my living room with my backpack on my back, waiting for my brother to drive me to school and watching transfixed as this event unfolded on my television screen. I can still clearly hear my dad, who was sitting on the couch behind me, saying that this was going to change the world and how it worked. I remember everyone being late for school that day because we had all stayed at home and could not tear ourselves away from the news, teachers included.
So when I read about Jǐ Yi trying to find out more about this event, the teacher turning on the TV on the bus, Nuannuan staying planted in front of the news playing on TV, and Jì Chengyang also watching the live news broadcast, there was such a particular feeling, like I share the same world and live in the same era as them. It makes the story feel real to me.
How about any of you? For those of you old enough to have been born before 9/11, do you remember what you were doing when it happened?
As a side note: Anyone ever have a Discman (or other portable CD player)? I can’t for the life of me recall any that displayed the name of the song on the player. Wasn’t it just track number with the timer? Googled around and found maybe a relatively later-made model that potentially had a bigger screen that could display more? Oh my, I can’t really remember music before the iPod (my first mp3 player) came into existence. :p
Completed:
17 of 69 Chapter segments
0 of 1 Epilogue