This day of candor arrived so quickly that there was no need to wait until thirty—only a single season was enough.
They spent an entire sweet spring.
Every morning, she could receive different gifts and flowers, and every day she would go on seaside dates with Jiang Ze. But Jiang Xiaoya always felt something was very off. In reality, aside from dating, they were no different from before. She ran ahead, and it followed behind, carrying her shoes.
She felt that Jiang Ze might be fooling her—they might not actually be in a relationship.
Just like when she was little and didn’t want to drink that cough syrup that was both throat-burning and extremely bitter, it would dilute the cough medicine with water and mix it into a milk tea cup and hand it to her.
She asked, “Mom, why does this milk tea taste bitter afterward?”
The youth would tell her it was a newly released bitter melon flavor.
But when she turned five, she grew a clever little brain and became shrewd, and was never fooled again. Now, Jiang Xiaoya suspected that Jiang Ze was using the same old trick. Although they would hold hands, hug, and go on dates, Jiang Xiaoya suspected that it was mixing a large amount of cough syrup into the sweet love it was giving her.
Its embrace was broad and steady, very beneficial to physical and mental health, but it always made her feel uncomfortable all over. She brooded over it, ran up in front of it and leaned in to stare at it, yet no matter what she did, she couldn’t grasp any evidence of its counterfeit fraud.
On a certain day in June, she cupped its face and said, “Kiss me!”
It finally lowered its head and nodded. Like a helpless parent bowing before a willful child.
It had never been a good parent, because even when she was little, it had been powerless against Jiang Xiaoya. As long as she burst into loud tears, it would squat down and ask her, “Baby, what did I do wrong?” It doted on her deeply.
So it kissed her carefully, devoutly and loyally.
She got the kiss. But it felt even stranger. She was certain she tasted the flavor of cough syrup.
That was the taste of being fooled.
It was not kissing her from the heart, filled with yearning and love.
She said it was fooling her! She pulled out her cough syrup theory and questioned it until it was left speechless.
It said slowly, “Alright, alright, good baby, give me some time.”
—In fact, it was still groping its way through how to be Jiang Ze at all. It was used to suppressing its own desires and emotions; it didn’t even know what kind of ‘person’ Jiang Ze was, so how could it immediately provide her with a pure milk tea, untainted by cough syrup?
It looked into her eyes and kissed her forehead, her eyelashes.
And so she gradually stopped being angry. She thought: it must be on some day when it loses control, openly confessing that it loves Jiang Xiaoya so much it can’t extricate itself, so crazed over Jiang Xiaoya that it loses its mind.
───♡───
But what Jiang Xiaoya did not know was that the swamp monster actually did not understand Jiang Ze.
Jiang Ze was Jiang Xiaoya’s mother; its life truly revolved around the child. Just like most full-time housewives. It was only because Jiang Xiaoya loved Jiang Ze that it began to think about what kind of ‘person’ Jiang Ze actually was. If she had not loved it, Jiang Ze would never have appeared in an entire lifetime.
The youth shed the identity of a mother, only to discover that it was standing in an unknown wilderness called Jiang Ze.
Aside from taking care of Jiang Xiaoya, what kind of person was Jiang Ze? It did not know.
When the swamp monster was little, there was actually a period of time when it would often pass by an amusement park. It had seen that kind of Ferris wheel and thought to itself that spinning so slowly was rather boring, yet it always couldn’t help but stop and linger to take a look. But ever since that time when a human broke into the house, it no longer dared to leave Jiang Xiaoya, who was only a few years old, at home for long. Each time, it could only stop to look for a moment before hurrying back home.
At that time, the swamp monster was probably six or seven years old.
Later, when Jiang Xiaoya grew a bit older, sturdy like a little calf, it wanted to take Jiang Xiaoya along to ride the Ferris wheel. But when they got there, the area beneath the Ferris wheel was already overgrown with wild grass.
Xiaoya asked it why they had come to such an abandoned place.
Seven-year-old Jiang Ze fell silent for a while, then slowly said, “Mm… Mom just brought you out for a little walk.”
That was one of the very few parts of Jiang Ze that it could recall.
It didn’t know whether what she loved was that steady, reliable Jiang Ze who was a mom, or that Jiang Ze who had lingered at the entrance of the amusement park at seven years old.
───♡───
Summer arrived, and with it came finals week.
This semester, Jiang Xiaoya had to take many more exams and had to make up for the cultural courses she had missed due to her earlier internship. She turned into a spinning top whipped by grades, even tossing aside her grand ambition of making it lose its mind over her.
Because the dormitory was close to the library, she stayed in the dorm for the entire finals week.
This was nothing new—after all, when Jiang Xiaoya was in high school, it had been the same way, and the youth had long been accustomed to waiting.
But it had clearly forgotten that in the past, it had been a mother. When the child was away, there was some concern and longing, but it was never so much as to worry that her feelings would change. Because there was no way she could ever stop wanting her mother.
Familial affection was stable, like the left hand and the right hand; but love was fraught with gain and loss, difficult to control.
Her passion could be extinguished at any time; she could lose interest in Jiang Ze at any time.
One week, two weeks. The phone at home remained silent.
It pretended to be calm as it dialed her number, casually asking whether she had been very busy lately.
The little dog had hurriedly taken a few bites of lunch before rushing off to battle it out in the library. She spoke hastily: “Busy, Jiang Ze. I’ll come home after a while!”
Often, the call would end after just a couple of sentences.
In the seaside house, Jiang Ze held the cold phone, and quite naturally began to connect things with what had happened before.
It thought of how, out of a parent’s pride and the disguise it had not yet fully shed, it had never managed to express that burning love head-on, with honesty. And they had never clearly or definitively established their relationship.
As time went on, her neglect became increasingly apparent.
Jiang Xiaoya was completely unaware that she had neglected Jiang Ze for far too long. She crammed at the last minute, struggling alongside Xiao Chan in the library, frantically praying every day not to fail.
This state of busyness continued until the exams ended on a weekend evening.
After checking her answers and confirming that she had escaped failing, the little dog finally dragged her exhausted yet buoyant body, strolling leisurely toward the dormitory building. A light rain was falling in the evening, and only then did she remember that her phone had been turned off all afternoon.
She had just taken out her phone to call Jiang Ze.
Suddenly, she saw a familiar, tall figure standing not far away.
The little dog was utterly confused and jogged over. “Jiang Ze? Why are you here? I’ll pack up tomorrow and come home!”
Her tone was light and brisk, carrying the easy relief of being reborn after exams.
The tall youth stood beneath the eaves. He did not hold an umbrella, nor did he answer. He only watched her with those vertical pupils.
She was stared at until she felt strange, utterly confused, rising onto her tiptoes to try to see what was wrong with him.
Suddenly, she was pulled into a hard, damp, violently heaving chest.
The youth held her tightly. By her ear, she heard heavy panting, and the thumping of that heart beating against the side of her head pressed close to it.
The youth’s voice was hoarse:
“I like you… I like you.
“Xiaoya, don’t leave me.”
───♡───
It felt that setting aside the part of itself that belonged to being a mother, and laying everything bare with complete honesty, was difficult—like forcing a ferocious beast to expose its vulnerable neck and await slaughter. But tonight, it was willing to bare its neck. It would even ask her whether she was satisfied, whether she wanted it to lower its head to accommodate her height.
On this rainy night, Jiang Xiaoya got everything she wanted to hear. She became the most triumphant little dog general. Without shedding blood—indeed, almost inexplicably—she had won. From this, she became convinced that she was a great strategist in love.
Even after they got home, she was still clinging to it, talking nonstop.
“Is it for me that you’re haunted day and night?”
“Mm.”
“For who?”
“Jiang Xiaoya.”
“Are you hopelessly in love with me, so deeply rooted that you can’t pull yourself out?”
“Mm.”
“Who do you love?”
“Jiang Xiaoya.”
She couldn’t control the smug curve of her lips; her tail and ears were practically turning into joyful propellers. She hummed a song of victory, wishing she could hear its declaration of defeat one more time.
And indeed, it collapsed in utter defeat.
Her spirited, smug appearance was adorable and self-satisfied. Its gaze lingered greedily on her soft lips. It was desire brewed from longing and anxious attachment. The urge to kiss her surged like a tsunami.
It discovered that confessing wasn’t that difficult after all. Because this was a yearning that came straight from the heart.
For a long time already, it had been dazzled, completely undone.
Tonight’s atmosphere was too good. It was more than willing to coax her into happiness, clumsily exhausting the entirety of its lifetime’s vocabulary, racking its brains to make her eyes shine brightly.
Yet Jiang Xiaoya still felt unsatisfied.
She had grown up being fooled by Jiang Ze, and so developed a habit of suspicion.
She always had to worry whether the milk powder it gave her was actually coffee, whether the milk tea was actually cough syrup.
After the initial loss of control, she felt that the tall youth before her already seemed to have regained his composure. His tone was sincere, but no matter how she looked at it, it felt like he was trying to sell her counterfeit goods.
She was not satisfied with verbal confessions.
She insisted on turning everything inside out, emptying him completely, to see whether inside there was genuine, real love for her.
On a night with no stars and no moon, the waves were silent.
The youth came out after showering. She heard the sound of the door closing, the sound of water, and immediately ran over, burrowing into his arms. The tall youth was still wearing a sleeveless undershirt, steam rising from his body. His skin, warmed by the water, had taken on a human temperature, no longer so cold. She immediately hugged him sweetly, calling out, “Jiang Ze, Jiang Ze.”
It sensed that she was harboring some mischief.
With some difficulty, it averted its gaze, brushing her off and telling her to go watch TV—that it would blow-dry its hair and then come over to keep her company and talk.
But she refused. She didn’t want it to keep fooling her; she wanted one hundred percent genuine goods, not a single drop of water mixed in.
The little dog was fierce and imposing, but the space was so cramped that it had no choice but to lower its eyes, forced backward by her small frame. The large one was pressed into a corner. She wrapped her arms around its neck, and the youth hunched over, with nowhere left to retreat.
It could only say, “Good baby, can you get down first, alright?”
Its green eyes shifted from lake water to a bottomless deep pool. Inside were dangerous storms, yearning, and greed. But its voice was barely calm, just a little hoarse.
She looked into its eyes and felt satisfied. She inspected its face, then smugly kissed its cheek. Her kiss carried a little dog’s brand of persistence and possessiveness. She wanted to keep kissing—kissing its lips.
Its Adam’s apple rolled once. Instinctively, it wanted to turn its head away, but she stubbornly twisted its face back, pressing her forehead against its own, insisting that the tip of her nose touch its nose. Just like every time she insisted on looking straight at it like this, as though doing so would let her see through its heart and soul.
It asked, “Do you have to do this, baby?”
Her eyes said: I have to.
It calmed down and quietly looked at her.
Their foreheads pressed together, noses intimately touching, eyes locked.
It asked, “Do you have to see me lose control, do you have to watch me kiss you?”
—This was the first time the monster said “I.”
It laid bare its desire, its craving and love for her. Rather than using Jiang Ze to split its soul into two halves.
Tonight, there were no stars and no moon. The waves were silent.
It lowered its head, and a storm of kisses fell.
Mm? Baby.
Baby… mm?
Why aren’t you talking anymore?
Tender yet devout, feverish yet yearning.
It yearned for her from the depths of its heart, and kissed her. Its soul became whole, so candid that there was no longer any concealment or reservation.
