After finishing their shopping, the three of them walked home together. Lin Xun and Grandma Jiang kept to the sidewalk while Shen Yu made his way along the raised tactile path at the edge of the road, tapping his white cane as he went.
His pace was steady. The black cane in his right hand moved like an extension of his body, working in easy rhythm with his legs.
Even so, the walk was never without its complications. Several times, Lin Xun’s heart lurched as she watched him approach bicycles and electric scooters dumped carelessly across the narrow tactile strip.
Shen Yu only frowned. He’d probe the obstacle with the tip of his cane, find a way around it, and reroute onto the open stretch of sidewalk beside it. He was clearly used to this.
When they reached the entrance of the building, Lin Xun set the milk and fruit down at the door of unit 101. “Grandma Jiang, these are for you. For all of you. Thank you for dinner yesterday. It was really good.”
Her tone was as flat as someone settling a tab. She had never, from childhood, been able to do the warm and ingratiating thing with elders.
Grandma Jiang blinked, picked up the bags, and quietly sighed to herself, though her face broke into a wide smile. “Oh, this milk is the kind made specially for seniors, isn’t it? I’ve seen it at that supermarket before. It costs a good deal more than the regular sort. And dragon fruit! My grandson loves this. Look how big they are. We don’t usually treat ourselves to these.”
At that, Shen Yu, who had been in the middle of taking off his shoes, went still. He lifted his head with a faintly puzzled expression. He loved dragon fruit. And he didn’t treat himself to them?
Grandma Jiang paid his face absolutely no attention. She accepted everything with cheerful satisfaction, then immediately launched into pressing Lin Xun to stay for dinner. “I’m making dongpo pork and shuizhu fish today, and a stir-fried sour and spicy pumpkin vine. I guarantee you’ll like it.”
After that first meal, Grandma Jiang had gotten a decent read on Lin Xun’s palate. Unlike most people around Zhoushan who tended toward mild flavors, this northern girl leaned toward bold, saucy, spicy food.
“…”
Lin Xun wasn’t sure how to explain that she hadn’t bought any of this as an excuse to stay for dinner.
Her head said to decline. Her stomach loudly disagreed. The takeout she’d ordered at lunch had been thoroughly unremarkable, and she’d barely managed half a bowl of plain rice. After swallowing her frustration all afternoon, she was properly hungry.
Dongpo pork. Shuizhu fish. Sour and spicy pumpkin vine.
Fine. It wasn’t as if she ate much anyway.
Lin Xun changed her shoes and went inside. This being her second visit, the initial awkwardness had worn off. She followed Grandma Jiang into the kitchen and quietly made herself useful.
Grandma Jiang put her straight to work without ceremony, handing her a bundle of fuzzy pumpkin vine and showing her how to strip it. Then she called Shen Yu in to wash the vegetables.
He was thorough about it. His fingers moved over every surface, finding each corner and crevice, drawing out the faint grit and tiny imperfections that eyes would have missed entirely. Lin Xun had to admit that in certain things, touch was sharper than sight.
The kitchen was small. Three people in it was a tight fit.
Lin Xun gave up her spot by the sink to Shen Yu and settled into the corner to strip her pumpkin vine.
Grandma Jiang worked at the counter on the other side, slicing the pork.
Halfway through, without so much as a change in expression, she reached into a red plastic bucket beside the refrigerator, pulled out a very much alive and thrashing fish, and dropped it into the sink with a wet slap. “Clean it,” she said. “Get the gills and guts out.”
The fish had other ideas. The moment it hit the sink it went wild, tail whipping back and forth, flopping and twisting with impressive energy, sending a spray of water straight into the face of whoever happened to be standing there.
“…”
Lin Xun would swear on her life that she saw something crack across Shen Yu’s otherwise impenetrable expression.
The old woman really played dirty.
Three seconds passed. The muscles near Shen Yu’s back molars visibly tightened. His fingers hung frozen in the air for a moment. Then, with the air of a man accepting his fate, he reached into the sink.
He had no idea where to grab it. His hand found the tail. The fish, unimpressed, spun and launched itself upward in protest.
An extremely unreasonable creature.
Several minutes went by. The fish was completely unscathed. Shen Yu, on the other hand, had dirty water splattered across his face.
Lin Xun caught the vein pulsing at his temple and felt an unexpected pang of something close to sympathy. “Do you want me to…take over?”
Shen Yu was quiet for a moment. But before he could answer, the sound of the cleaver on the chopping board suddenly came down harder.
He pressed his lips together. “No,” he said, flat and cold. “Go strip your pumpkin vine.”
Then he rolled up his sleeve, set his jaw, reached in, and pinned that slippery fish down with his full weight.
The stance of a man prepared to go down with the ship.
─ ⊹ ⊱ ⊰ ⊹ ─
The preparation had been borderline traumatic. The result was outstanding.
Lin Xun ate steadily while Grandma Jiang talked her through the ingredients.
“That fish was incredibly fresh. I went to the market first thing this morning to pick it out. And it was a steal, only fifteen yuan.”
Beside her, Shen Yu’s chopsticks stopped. He tilted his head slightly, fingers drifting to tug at his earlobe with an uncertain little pull.
The look of a man who had just heard something genuinely baffling.
Grandma Jiang shot him a sideways glance and carried on. “And the pumpkin vine, a neighbor I know well gave it to me. Didn’t cost a thing. A big bunch like that, it’ll last us several days.”
Shen Yu tilted his head again and let out a quiet, vaguely pointed tsk.
Lin Xun had no idea what the young master found so beneath him. He’d eaten that free pumpkin vine just fine.
She listened to Grandma Jiang proudly recount her morning haul and couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. It made her think of her grandmother, back when she was still alive, up early every day to work the market for bargains, haggling over every last item. Half a wizened ginger knob nobody else wanted, a pound of offcuts from the pork stall, a handful of Sichuan peppercorns nearly past their date, and somehow it all became a proper dinner.
That was nothing compared to the time back in Qingyuan. They’d had a garden that ran through every season, vegetables of every sort. Chickens, ducks, fish. Most of it had to be sold, but at New Year and the major holidays, there was always one kept back for the table.
She had never pitied herself for any of it. Not until she was eighteen, at least.
A good life and financial circumstances weren’t strictly the same thing. It depended on who you lived it with, and how you chose to shape it.
She just didn’t have much faith in that anymore.
After dinner, Lin Xun helped Grandma Jiang clean up the kitchen, then walked back to the studio. She still had scripts to get through tonight.
The evening sky was fading, the parasol trees along both sides of the road still full and green, night food vendors unhurriedly setting up their stalls, passersby moving at their own unhurried pace.
A road she had walked hundreds of times, so familiar it barely registered anymore.
Two minutes in, Lin Xun stopped. She pulled out her earphones.
She had never noticed how many bicycles were illegally parked along this stretch.
She rolled her eyes, then patiently began moving them, one by one, from the tactile path back behind the parking line. A few of the electric scooters wouldn’t budge at all, and when she touched them they shrieked.
Lin Xun, jaw tight, kicked each one in turn.
─ ⊹ ⊱ ⊰ ⊹ ─
Back in the apartment, Shen Yu was on the sofa playing a game. Grandma Jiang’s voice drifted in from somewhere, humming along to the opera on the television. Then he spoke.
“What was that about today? Why were you acting so hard up? Worried she’d ask to borrow money?”
He wasn’t only talking about the dragon fruit he supposedly couldn’t afford. That fish had come from a friend of his, a high-grade sea fish, the kind worth several hundred yuan a piece. He’d been keeping it specifically to help Grandma Jiang’s health. Somehow it had become a fifteen-yuan market find in her telling. And the pumpkin vine wasn’t free either. He’d heard her muttering about the price just yesterday when she brought it home.
Honestly, from what he knew of Lin Xun, he didn’t think any of this was necessary.
Grandma Jiang heard him break the silence and turned the television down. She gave him a look.
“What do you know. Does everyone have to be as above it all as you? If Xiao Lin knew that fish cost several hundred yuan, you think she’d stay for dinner next time?”
“That girl’s a bit cold, yes, but she means well. She brought those fruits and that milk because she genuinely thought it would make a difference to us.”
Shen Yu said nothing. He reached out and found the fruit bowl on the coffee table, cool to the touch. Dragon fruit were piled on top, their skin smooth, layered with scale-like leaves.
He had never particularly liked them. Sweet with a slight tartness, slippery in texture, full of seeds.
A contradictory sort of fruit.
Grandma Jiang turned the opera back up. The weathered, measured voice of the laodan had given way to the gentle, winding notes of the qingyi.
She hummed along for a moment, then fell quiet. “That girl is alone in Zhoushan,” she said. “No family, no boyfriend, no real drive to take care of herself. You can’t see it, but aside from what she bought for us, her entire cart was instant noodles. Whole cases of them.”
