Xiaolei - Chapter 6

I continued studying at Dafeng.

Six students from my school had originally joined our class. After Chen Wei withdrew, I was the only boy left; the other four were girls.

At first, the four of them and I painted together and rode home together when our routes overlapped.

Within days, every one of them had a boyfriend. They came and went in pairs, and I had no idea when or how any of those relationships had begun.

I was alone again.

Watching people stream through the studio, I thought the place was not so different from a population of animals in nature.

At the age when they were about to mature, each of them found a mate. They studied, painted, lived, and dated together, intimate as could be, dreaming about the future.

Only I remained single.

I had never noticed it much when Chen Wei was around. Now that he was gone, loneliness set in.

It was not that I did not want a girlfriend.

When I met a girl I liked, though, I had no idea how to talk to her or what she was thinking. Speaking made me nervous, never mind looking her in the eye.

The phrase “straight man” did not exist back then. Looking back now, however, a large part of why I remained single was that I was hopelessly straight.

One night, I went alone to draw the still-life arrangement.

After setting up my easel, I saw an empty stool and sat down.

“Someone’s sitting there.”

Those were the first words she ever said to me.

I turned and saw her.

She was not tall. A red puffer jacket hung from her slender frame. Her shoulder-length hair was thick and black, and her eyes were large, but the hard line of her eyebrows and her pale, cool face made her look difficult to approach.

I hurriedly rose, found another stool, and sat to her right.

That put me too far to the side, however. Nearly all I could see of the still life was the shadowed portion.

After she sat, she glanced at me.

We were about a meter apart.

“There’s room,” she said.

Carefully, I shifted my stool toward her until the distance shrank to half a meter.

She stared at me, speechless, and seemed to roll her eyes.

Somehow, that gave me a little courage. I edged closer again.

In the end, only about fifteen centimeters separated us.

I began to paint.

Now and then, I stole a look at her from the corner of my eye.

Her hair almost covered her profile, making it hard to see. Every so often, she stopped painting and took out a cassette player.

She removed the tape, inserted a pencil into one reel, and spun it to rewind. After a while, she put the cassette back and resumed listening.

The player had a rewind function, but people said frequent use damaged the tape head, so we usually rewound cassettes manually with a pencil.

While mixing paint with my head lowered, I casually asked, “What are you listening to?”

She looked at me but did not answer. She put the cassette back, pressed a button, and continued listening.

Embarrassed, I pretended I had never spoken and returned to my painting. I no longer even dared glance sideways.

“Here.”

She was speaking to me.

I turned. She was holding out one earbud.

Her hand was small, with long, slender white fingers like those of a court lady in a meticulous brush painting. It was beautiful.

I froze.

No girl had ever offered me an earbud before.

I looked at her. Her expression was still cool. Then I looked at the earbud, took it carefully, and slowly placed it in my left ear.

It felt warm.

Her warmth.

The heat quickly spread into my ear.

The song was “Qing Fei De Yi.”

Meteor Garden had become a sensation that year, and the song had risen with it. I had heard it countless times.

But it had never sounded as good as it did then.

The earbud seemed charged with electricity.

Current raced through my body again and again.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” she suddenly asked.

“Uh…” I said.

Then I ran out of words. We continued painting separately while listening to the same song.

Near the end of class, I saw her sign the lower-right corner of her painting.

Three delicate characters: Lu Xiaolei.

So her name was Xiaolei.

Xiaolei glanced at my face, then at my painting.

I understood and hurriedly wrote my own name in the lower-right corner: Jinjiao.

She paused, thinking she had misread it, and leaned closer.

“Jinjiao?”

“Mm…”

Her face remained cool, but the expression was beginning to crack.

She pressed her lips together, obviously suppressing laughter, then asked, “A stage name?”

“My real name. Fourth Great-Uncle chose it. He’s from the countryside…”

A blush spread over Xiaolei’s face. At last, she lost the battle, covered her mouth, and doubled over laughing on her stool.

I stared, dumbfounded. How could one person contain such a dramatic contrast?

Afterward, she pressed a hand to her chest and struggled to compose herself. Still flushed, she said, “It’s actually a nice name. Jinjiao… Pfft—the Great King Gold Horn…”

She started laughing again.

People had mocked me plenty for my name while I was growing up.

But I was not angry with Xiaolei.

She had truly tried very hard not to laugh.

She simply failed.

When her laughter subsided, she asked, “Are you coming tomorrow night, Jinjiao?”

“Mm.”