My Darling Chapter 6 Part3

My Darling (我的曼达林) — Chapter 6.3

by

Now they are truly acting like a couple, and a cute one at that! Hehe… someone has a bit of an ear fixation.

Chapter 6.3 — Love (3)

Although his mind was shouting this, he could not control his hand as it felt its way over to the back of her ear. With the pads of his fingers, he gently caressed it, very patiently rubbing, pinching, squeezing, fiddling.

Before long, that little earlobe was bright red and burning hot from his touches.

Chu Jian's entire body felt out of sorts, and in a voice that was so small it was nearly buried by the whirr, whirr of the central heating system, she could not help protesting, "Why do you keep pinching my ears? …" It hurt a bit.

Jian Bianlin's throat felt a little dry. "Your ears are pretty."

The one he was torturing was most certainly himself, like trying to use a blunt knife to slice off his own flesh as this was dragged out, and the need to hold himself back was exhausting.

Thinking briefly, he decided he should take things slowly, step by step…

It was only after Jian Bianlin was discharged from the hospital that Xie Bin officially made known the news that Jian Bianlin would be resting for a period of time.

For a while, his fans were in an uproar, and all sorts of speculations existed.

According to Tong Fei's descriptions, Jian Bianlin's fans were all "girlfriend fans" or "wifey fans." If the news of his surgery truly was released, there likely would be an uncountable number of people waking in the middle of the night from heartbreak, wishing with all their might that they could have gone under the knife in his place… Moreover, this all needed to be kept secret from their two families. And hence, things were left as they were. It was simply a pity that such a piece of news that could be used to bring in some publicity had to be wasted.

As for the pandemonium that had broken out amongst his fans, Chu Jian did not really take it seriously. What she most needed to worry about now were her parents and Uncle Jian, who were all coming to Shanghai tonight for a short stay…

Jian Bianlin had only just been discharged from the hospital right around the Gregorian New Year period, so he had not been able to return home. However, he had not been able to give the true reason for this either. Uncle Jian had been quite disappointed, feeling that his filial son had forgotten that his ol' dad had suffered a work-related injury, since the boy had not even made use of the holidays to go back for a visit.

Afterward, under the counsel of Chu Jian's dad and mom that helped him see the light, Jian Bianlin's dad decided to take advantage of the fact that Jian Bianlin would be "working" in Shanghai for the next month to go there with Chu Jian's parents for a short stay.

Thus, while Chu Jian's dad was working in full swing in the kitchen and her mom had completely plunged into conversation with Jian Bianlin's dad, starting first with explaining that the daughter of the family living in the first unit of the first building of the community compound had been married off and moving the discussion on from there, Chu Jian threw a meaningful look at Jian Bianlin. "Mom, I just remembered that all the wine is over in Jian Bianlin's home. We're going to go grab some."

"Go ahead." Her mom's voice sailed over from the living room.

Chu Jian shoved him out the door, then reached behind and shut it with a thump.

"I'm telling you, later on, when your dad tells you to drink, make sure you just keep the wine in your mouth and don't swallow. Go spit it out in the kitchen. I'll cover up for you."

The son toasting the father was the Jian family New Year's custom that forever could not be broken.

This had been so since Jian Bianlin was five years old… And hence, this was Chu Jian's greatest worry. It had not even been ten days since he was discharged from the hospital. Alcohol absolutely could not be consumed.

Jian Bianlin expressed no objection to what she said.

And when it came to the actual execution, he did indeed follow Chu Jian's instructions. At the dinner table, Chu Jian's mom was continually replenishing the food in front of Jian Bianlin while, in pa.s.sing, highlighting the key point from her chitchat earlier with Jian Bianlin's dad. "Little Jian… have you thought about when you're going to find yourself a girlfriend?"

Chu Jian gripped her chopsticks tightly. Jian Bianlin, acting as if the topic was of little importance to him, wordlessly shook his head.

"Don't you have a lot of fans? Are there any who are at an appropriate age, whom you can try spending some time with and getting to know?"

Jian Bianlin obviously choked on that suggestion. Covering his face with the back of his hand that was clutching his chopsticks, he coughed fiercely a couple of times, which ended up pulling at his incision site and inevitably caused his brows to twist together.

To these elders who were anxiously longing for him to get married and have babies, there actually was not much difference between "fans" and "young, age-appropriate women"…

"What's up with you?" Jian Bianlin's dad rapped the table. "Auntie is talking to you, but here you are frowning. The longer you live, the more rude and disrespectful you're becoming."

"My fans are all young girls." Jian Bianlin steadied his voice and replied in a serious tone.

With a disappointed "ah," Chu Jian's mother remarked, "That day when I went to the supermarket, I saw a poster of you, Little Jian, and there were a few girls who are a similar age to you looking at it pretty happily, too. Are there really none that are the right age?"

In the end, even right before the toasting time, the two of them were not able to clearly explain why he, as an actor, could not be in a relationship with one of his fans. After all, there were already quite a few real-life cases of the contrary.

It was also from this that Chu Jian learned that her parents actually watched entertainment news, too…

When Jian Bianlin's dad motioned for Jian Bianlin to replenish the wine for all the elders, Chu Jian made up an excuse and slipped to the kitchen. "I'm going to go check on the soup." Once she was in the kitchen, she pressed herself up beside the door and peeked back out.

In her gaze, he left his seat, picked up the white ceramic wine bottle, and refilled the gla.s.ses that were in front of each of the elders to a little less than half full. Finally, with the mouth of the bottle facing his own gla.s.s, he also poured himself some.

The toasting words were forever unchanging, having remained the same for more than the last ten years.

Chu Jian kept her eyes fixed on him. When his fair-skinned hand was raised beside his face, she gave a shove at the pan inside the sink and then, with a cry of "Oh no!" called out, "Jian Bianlin! Come quick, come quick, and help me out here!"

"What's the matter?" Chu Jian's mom threw out a sentence in response.

"It's no big deal. You guys eat. Jian Bianlin, come on in here quick."

Jian Bianlin sauntered into the kitchen.

Chu Jian pointed at the sink. Bending his head down, he spit the alcohol that he had been holding in his mouth into the sink. Chu Jian was still monitoring what was going on outside. No one had caught on to their little ruse. Thank goodness, thank goodness.

"You didn't swallow any, right?" Rising up on her toes, she whisperingly asked this by his ear.

Her warm breath gently, yet noticeably, fell against him, along with her voice. He tilted his head to the side. "No."

"That's good." She exhaled in relief.

Today, Jian Bianlin was wearing a red, windproof, zip-up jacket with a hood.

This had been a specific request from Jian Bianlin's dad, who had said that it was for "a new year, new atmosphere and image[1]."

In fact, he very rarely wore such bright colours, but he truly looked so good in them. Chu Jian, her nose touching the black metal zipper of his jacket, was reminded of something some of his diehard fans in her company had said—this man was most gorgeous when he was wearing flirtatiously-teasing or eye-catching colours.

Bright, black eyes that were slightly deep-set and with double eyelids, and skin that looked even fairer against the red colour…

He unexpectedly asked, "What are you looking at?"

"You look quite nice in red," she replied softly.

She never used to notice these little details about him.

Chu Jian remembered the time she had asked her university roommate about how that roommate had decided to start dating her now husband. Chu Jian had thought that it would be something so significant that it could "astound Heaven and move the G.o.ds and spirits to weeping," but to her surprise, the answer had been this: Her roommate really had not felt anything at first from her husband's attempts to woo her, until one day, she saw him wordlessly repairing her gla.s.ses that had lost a screw and she had left on her school desk. As the man fixed it, that roommate had watched—and, just like that, was touched.

If Chu Jian were to compare, that one sentence Jian Bianlin had spoken after he came out from surgery had also given the same feeling.

In the time when he had been most frail and helpless, when his mind had been most unclear, the one thing that he had spoken had still been about her. That was like a pick that broke the ice. From that moment onward, nothing was the same.

After dinner, they each went to their respective homes.

Since Jian Bianlin's discharge from the hospital, the two had become accustomed to spending their evenings together. Now, suddenly being separated to two different apartment units on the same floor left Chu Jian's heart feeling a little hollow.

Dinner had been eaten early, and after keeping her parents company for a long time, watching television, when she glanced at her watch, it was still only eight thirty.

Bored with nothing to do, she wandered over in front of the fish tank. Forgetting that the fish had been fed already today, she arbitrarily grabbed a handful of fish food and dropped it inside the tank. Behind her, her dad shook his head right away and sighed, saying, no wonder several fish had perished under her care lately; they had all died from overfeeding.

She quibbled back with a few words, but then she noticed that a WeChat message had come in on her phone. She tapped it open. It was him.

Jian Bianlin: I'm in the stairwell.

"Mom, I'm going to go take out the trash." Immediately, Chu Jian slipped her mobile phone into her pocket, dashed into the kitchen, grabbed the garbage bag, and ran.

When the door thudded shut, the sound-activated lights in the corridor surprisingly did not turn on.

She tossed the bag of trash down in front of the door of her home, and groping her way in the darkness with only the light of the moon to guide her, she walked around to the stairs. As she poked her head in for a look, someone grabbed her arm and pulled her in.

In the darkness, the lips that pressed against the tip of her nose were hot.

"What were you doing just now?" Acting like a thief, Chu Jian whispered, "I just fed the fish again and then got scolded by my dad for it."

"Weren't they fed right before dinner?"

"Yup…" Chu Jian mumbled, "It's because I didn't know what I could do, and then I forgot about that."

In their indistinct surroundings, he seemed to be in a pretty good mood.

"Is your dad asleep?" She asked another question.

"No."

"Then how did you manage to come out?"

"I'm going downstairs for a run."

"Oh," she giggled, "then you go ahead and have a run."

This little way of urging him to do exactly opposite of what she really meant was particularly enticing. Jian Bianlin did not speak. In his room a moment ago, he had felt as if he simply could not stay there, and he had not been very focused, either, when reading through a script. He had wanted to go for a stroll, but when he stepped out the door, he realized that the thing he wanted most to do was to see her.

All around, apart from the moonlight, there was nothing. They could hear that someone on some unknown floor was also opening the stairwell door, and there was the sound of footsteps, too. Were the footsteps going upstairs? Or downstairs?

Chu Jian was listening carefully to the sounds from both inside and outside the stairwell, feeling a little guilty.

The footsteps were getting closer and closer. Her mind addled, she thought, We're done for, we're done for. But then, she remembered that Jian Bianlin seemed to have turned off all the lights on this floor.

Two silhouettes, one tall and the other short, walked right past Jian Bianlin's back to continue down the stairs, and they even glanced back once.

Jian Bianlin was using his entire body to block her from view. After quiet was restored to their surroundings, his fingers began to silently squeeze her earlobe, their pads softly, aimlessly stroking the back of her ear.

Quietly, he stated, "The people are gone."

She gave an "mm," her cheeks hot.

He leaned in close. "Let's kiss for a while."

The result was, when Chu Jian returned home, her mother felt hat something was not quite right and was constantly staring at her. Extending a hand, she felt Chu Jian's forehead. "You've got a fever from the cold weather?"

"Nope." Chu Jian touched the back of a hand to her own face. "No, I don't."

"That flush in your face is really unnatural. Hey, her dad, come here and feel her pulse[2]." Chu Jian's dad had studied traditional Chinese medicine for quite a long period of time, and he was normally always boasting about how good his medical skills were. So, hearing Chu Jian's mom say this, without asking anything else, he held down Chu Jian's wrist and touched his fingers to it for a while. After some time, his mind was set at ease, and he released his hold. "There are no major issues, just that her heart rate is too high."

"Why were you gone for an hour just to take out the trash?" Chu Jian's mom offhandedly asked.

"There was nothing to do anyway, so I ran a couple of laps around the community…"

[1] Most will know that the colour red is the colour of luck, happiness, etc. in Chinese culture, so Jian Bianlin's dad's request for him to wear something red is basically to start the year off on "the right foot" wearing something of good luck.

[2]把脉 "ba mai." In traditional Chinese medicine, feeling the pulse is not simply about counting beats. Rather, it is to feel what the characteristics are of that pulse (light, strong, slow, rapid, deep, thin, etc.), and these characteristics reveal the physical condition of a person.

Additional Comments:

"’You look quite nice in red,’" she replied softly. She never used to notice these little details about him.”

One of the most exciting things about starting a new relationship with someone is that initial discovery phase where everything about your significant other is so novel. Even though Chu Jian and Jian Bianlin have known each other for so long, I love that the author has still written about this. With her shift in mindset, Chu Jian is suddenly seeing Jian Bianlin with a fresh new set of eyes, and she’s liking what she sees. He’s not just her buddy Jian Bianlin. He makes her heart race faster, and she gets excited to simply see him.

Completed:
1 of 1 Prologue
22 of 36 Chapter segments
0 of 1 Epilogue