FWP Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Udon Noodles

Yóu Dàng was pushed aside by her; he sat blankly, gazing up at Yú Zǐpèi running around.

It was already past 2:30 AM. Outside the bar, shadows flickered, mostly people who had drunk too much. Several were huddled together, watching them and laughing. Yú Zǐpèi, exhausted after half a day, saw that no one was coming to join her in fighting the mistress, and returned despondently to Yóu Dàng’s side.

“Why are they like this?” Yú Zǐpèi sat hugging her knees, feeling fragile and absurd.

Yóu Dàng said, “They are being a bit excessive.”

Yú Zǐpèi started to cry, wailing and sobbing until she was about to throw up. Yóu Dàng, quick-witted, snatched a trash can and held it under her face.

After tending to Yú Zǐpèi as she threw up, Yóu Dàng went to get her water and wet wipes.

The bar’s kitchen was about to close, and they asked Yóu Dàng if he wanted anything to eat. He ordered two servings of mushroom udon noodles and a seafood fried rice, asking them to be delivered to the table outside.

Yú Zǐpèi had downed half a bottle of pure liquor that night, mixed with seven cocktails, and had gone to the nightclub next door for an hour of dancing before that. Everything in her stomach was now gone. She was barely able to maintain her sobriety.

Yóu Dàng handed her a bowl of noodles, considerately asking, “Do you want a little vinegar?”

His face was soft and white in the night. His eyes were narrow and long, with thick eyelashes drooping. His features were clear and defined, making him very handsome. Yú Zǐpèi waved her hand, lit a cigarette, and ate it with the udon noodles.

So Yóu Dàng sat down to eat his noodles as well. Yú Zǐpèi sighed and said pitifully, “Can’t you really tell me?”

Actually, there wasn’t much to it. If Yú Zǐpèi hadn’t brought it up, Yóu Dàng wouldn’t have wanted to recall it at all.

That period hadn’t been easy. Every memory was like rubbing his body’s most tender spots with rough sandpaper, a chronicle of his suffering.

Yóu Dàng picked up a white jade mushroom to eat. A couple of strands of hair were stuck to his eyelid, and he brushed them away. “There’s really not much to it. It was pretty much…”

Before the Spring Festival of 2009, Zēng Hǎitáng was frying spring rolls in the yard. She didn’t know what happened, but her foot slipped, and she almost fell headfirst into the oil.

Yóu Dàng was nearly scared out of his wits. He insisted on taking Zēng Hǎitáng to the emergency room. The initial diagnosis was old age and high blood pressure. They needed to do further tests to determine the specifics. Zēng Hǎitáng seemed fine. The two returned home to wait for two days. Yóu Dàng tried to persuade her to wait in the hospital, but Zēng Hǎitáng insisted on going back to pack her things. She figured she would have to be hospitalized and scolded Yóu Dàng, saying that a young kid like him wouldn’t know what clothes she needed to bring.

The day the report came out was Yóu Dàng’s birthday. Zēng Hǎitáng got up in the morning to make him a bowl of sweet dumplings. After he finished eating, he rode his bicycle to the hospital to get the report, buying two pounds of freshly fried spring rolls on the way. At the hospital, Yóu Dàng waited in line, holding the greasy spring rolls. His mouth had been sweet that morning, and he wanted something savory, so he couldn’t resist eating two spring rolls.

Soon it was his turn. The doctor at the window checked the materials he had brought and handed him a large bag of reports and a CT scan, asking him to go to the second floor to find Doctor Liu.

“There was a tumor, in her brain.” Yóu Dàng ate a mussel from the seafood fried rice. He raised his hand and held it high above the table, about half a meter. “To treat it, you see, it would be about this high, all covered in red bills, stacked up to my hand here.”

“It cost about this much.”

Yú Zǐpèi clicked her tongue. As expected, it was still a matter of money.

“On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, the two of us went to the hospital. My mind was blank. I didn’t know what to do. She had a savings account, for my college education, from when I was born. She had been putting money into it every month. We barely managed to complete the surgery with that savings account.”

Yú Zǐpèi felt a chill in her heart. She had just said it would cost so much money. How could they manage with just a savings account?

Did something go wrong with the surgery?

Yóu Dàng understood her expression. He ate a few more bites and was full. He leaned back in his chair, took out a bottle of medicated oil from his pocket, and dabbed it on his ankles and wrists. “The surgery went smoothly. At the time, we agreed that I would go to school, and my grandmother’s brothers would bring their wives and daughters to take care of her.”

“Give me some of that,” Yú Zǐpèi reached out for the medicated oil. Yóu Dàng gave it to her. He took a deep sniff of the medicated oil scent on his fingers, which stung his eyes.

“But on the eighth day of the new year, or the seventh day…” Yóu Dàng scratched a mosquito bite on his neck. “Or else, let’s go inside. There are too many mosquitoes here.”

Yú Zǐpèi finished her udon noodles in a few bites. She stood up and walked out, and Yóu Dàng grabbed her bag. “Go inside for what? Let’s go to my studio. I have a really big mosquito zapper.”

Yóu Dàng helped her, supporting her arm on his.

Yú Zǐpèi led him down an alley. The alley was extremely narrow, and the residents had piled a lot of things on the road. The most open space they passed was outside the public toilet. Yú Zǐpèi stopped. “I’m going to pee.”

Yóu Dàng let go of her. “Can you stand steady? Do you need tissues?”

Yú Zǐpèi first nodded, then shook her head. She took her handbag from Yóu Dàng’s arm and walked into the women’s restroom with relatively steady steps.

Yóu Dàng heard a small dog behind the courtyard wall to the left, dragging something on the ground and gnawing it. His ears were keenly open to perceive the sounds of the night. In the distance, several roaring motorcycles passed through the intersection. A delivery rider had installed a very noisy speaker on the back seat of his electric bike. Yóu Dàng smelled the odor of frozen fresh meat, mixed with the smell of human oil that had condensed on people’s bodies from the summer sun. He had already stood at a place relatively far away from the toilet. He didn’t like this smell. He still had Yú Zǐpèi’s cigarettes in his pocket. She smoked fruit-flavored menthol capsules. Yóu Dàng pulled one out and lit it. He rarely took a puff, using the scent of the cigarette to cover up the strange smells around him.

After waiting for five or six minutes, Yú Zǐpèi came out. She washed her face and used a disposable makeup remover to wipe off her eyeliner. “Has my eyeliner been smudged the whole time? Why didn’t you remind me?”

Yóu Dàng walked over, pocketing his hands, and supported her. “I thought it was a new trend in smoky eye makeup.”

Yú Zǐpèi said a few “ohs,” saying that it was indeed a recent trend, an inverted smoky eye, very fashionable. She remembered the things Yóu Dàng hadn’t finished saying. The cause of this matter was too long, not involving Zhōu Zhāo. Her mind was muddled, and she forgot half of what she heard.

On the evening of the eighth day of the new year, Zēng Hǎitáng ate a bowl of thin bean flour. She had no taste in her mouth and lay in bed, sighing and watching TV. The ward was shared by three families. She and Yóu Dàng occupied a corner, with an extra space for Yóu Dàng to lay his bedding. Yóu Dàng sat on a small stool, changing his clothes. He put on his thermal underwear, then a sweater, and put the cotton jacket that had been draped by Zēng Hǎitáng’s feet on his body. “I’m going to get you a basin of water to wash your feet. Don’t move around.”

Zēng Hǎitáng weakly waved her hand, telling him not to worry.

Everyone’s brain was like solidified tofu pudding. After her craniotomy, it was almost like a bowl of weak bean curd. The doctor repeatedly told her not to make any movements. Yóu Dàng had become annoyed by repeating it himself, and stood up to get the foot basin from the cabinet. Zēng Hǎitáng looked at his back and said, “In a couple of days, I’ll borrow some money from my second and third sons. You should go back to school first.”

Yóu Dàng nodded. He caught sight of the half-eaten cantaloupe left in the cabinet and brought it to the bedside table next to the hospital bed. “If your mouth feels bland, I’ll feed you some melon when I get back?”

“You’re such a nag. Go, go.”

“She used to be a soldier for several years, could drive, and taught people how to ride horses. In earlier years, she was even a militia captain and used a gun. She didn’t think she was weak. I put the foot basin next to her, and she said to let her try slowly. I was so muddleheaded that I actually agreed.”

“Then she fell and shook her brain.”

“The nurses came, the doctors came, and later, several of my uncles. They all sat together, looking at her.”

“At that time, she was already paralyzed, her mouth crooked, one eye closed, one eye open, and she couldn’t speak anymore.”

Yú Zǐpèi walked slowly. In the corner of her eye, Yóu Dàng was looking down at the road, with no particular expression. Usually, the things that are regretted for a lifetime are not grand and earth-shattering. Anyway, it just happened like that, on a very ordinary night. The news on TV had ended. The weather forecast predicted rain for tomorrow, and sunny weather for the Leizhou Peninsula. The host was wearing a dark blue suit, her wig was curly, and her lips were rose-pink. Outside of the screen, Zēng Hǎitáng lost many of her rights as a person.

“We needed money, a lot of money.”

“She was still so young. I should have given her a basic quality of life. She had to be able to walk, to eat, to be able to go to the toilet herself, to comb her hair, to control herself so that drool wouldn’t flow down.”

Speaking of this, Yóu Dàng gave Yú Zǐpèi a smile, a gentle smile. Yú Zǐpèi discovered that Yóu Dàng had dimples. Zhōu Zhāo also had one, only on one side, on the left side of his face.

“But how could a student like me, who hadn’t even graduated, come up with so much money in a short time? There were only her and me left in my family. Her brothers were all farmers, relying on the weather to make a living. They also had children waiting to be fed. Even if we smashed our bones to weigh them, we definitely wouldn’t be able to do it.”

“I couldn’t just stand by and watch her be paralyzed for the rest of her life.”

Yú Zǐpèi softly asked, “Later, what did you do?”

“I sold myself.”

“Sold yourself…” Yú Zǐpèi repeated dully, “What does ‘sold yourself’ mean?”

“It’s pretty much what you think it means.”

They arrived outside Yú Zǐpèi’s studio, which was an antique building with large glass windows. Yóu Dàng stopped supporting Yú Zǐpèi. He stood under a pale blue streetlight, his figure very thin. He was wearing a rust-red short-sleeved shirt, with a few black line drawings of clouds printed on the chest, long pants, and a pair of white canvas shoes. If it weren’t for the small braid on his head, he would look the same as when he was in college.

Yú Zǐpèi said, “Wasn’t there a better way? You could have borrowed from us.”

Yóu Dàng said, “He said the same thing. You all say the same thing.”

“The day he came was a sunny day. It had been raining for a long time before that, and mushrooms were even growing on the walls of our yard.”

[Author’s Notes]

Thank you for the 12 starfish, thank you.