JFWCM Chapter 4
by VolareSix Years Ago’s Origami Stars
The morning light was faint, sunlight filtering through the gaps in the parasol tree leaves and scattering onto the asphalt road, like a sprinkling of broken gold. Jiang Wan’yuan hummed the latest popular K-pop tune, hopping on one foot to step on each patch of light.
“Wan’yuan, you’ll be late if you don’t leave now!” Her mother’s voice came from the kitchen.
“I know—” Jiang Wan’yuan grabbed her schoolbag, a piece of toast slathered with peanut butter hanging from her mouth, and dashed out the door. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out to see a message from Yi Shang:
[7:10 Wait at the school gate]
Jiang Wan’yuan made a face at the screen and quickly replied: [Yes, ma’am! Academic genius Yi~] Followed by three tongue-sticking-out emojis.
Turning the street corner, she immediately spotted Yi Shang standing at the school gate. The girl was wearing a neatly pressed school uniform, her black hair styled in an meticulous short bob that resembled a still flag in the morning breeze. Jiang Wan’yuan jogged over, deliberately clapping her hard on the shoulder from behind: “Morning, Ice Face!”
Yi Shang’s shoulders twitched almost imperceptibly. When she turned her head, her eyeglass chain flashed with a cold light: “Two minutes late.”
“Oh, wasn’t I just trying to admire Academic Genius Yi’s stunning beauty a little longer!” Jiang Wan’yuan grinned and moved closer, suddenly noticing the convenience store bag in Yi Shang’s hand, “Wow! Fire Chicken Noodles? For me?”
Yi Shang looked away, the tips of her ears faintly red: “Buy-one-get-one-free promotion.”
The lecture hall was empty. Jiang Wan’yuan couldn’t wait to tear open the package. The spicy aroma instantly assaulted her nostrils, and she let out a loud sneeze. Yi Shang silently handed her a tissue, her fingertips almost transparent in the sunlight.
“You specially went to buy these last night, didn’t you?” Jiang Wan’yuan sniffled, “That store closes at ten.”
Yi Shang paused in flipping open her physics textbook. She did indeed wait in the rain for half an hour, simply because she had overheard Jiang Wan’yuan mentioning how much she missed the spicy flavors of her hometown last week. But she would die before uttering such sentimental words.
As the students gradually poured in, Lin Jichuan swept over to their desk like a gust of wind: “Yo, has the sun risen in the west? Miss Jiang is actually here earlier than me?”
“Because there’s a loving breakfast today~” Jiang Wan’yuan waved the Fire Chicken Noodle packaging bag, her eyes red from the spiciness but still determined to stuff another mouthful in. Yi Shang gently kicked her shin under the table and passed her a bottle of mineral water with the cap already unscrewed.
The moment of handing out the tests was always agonizing. When the teacher announced “Jiang Wan’yuan, 26 points,” a rustle of laughter rippled through the classroom. Jiang Wan’yuan dramatically clutched her chest: “Teacher! This score doesn’t match my gorgeous bangs today!” The whole class burst into laughter, even the teacher, who was usually stern, twitched at the corners of his mouth.
Only Yi Shang noticed her fingers trembling under the desk. A test paper with a score of 148 was pushed between them, the margins neatly filled with problem-solving steps.
“Which question don’t you understand?” Yi Shang’s voice was like a feather falling on snow.
“All of them.” Jiang Wan’yuan buried her face in her arms, her voice muffled. Suddenly, she felt a coolness on the back of her neck—Yi Shang had pressed an iced cola against it.
“Start with the third question.” Yi Shang pushed up her glasses. “If you dare fall asleep, I’ll delete the photos you took of me last week.”
Jacaranda flowers were in full bloom along the way home. Jiang Wan’yuan skipped and jumped to reach for the low-hanging flower branches, the Kuromi doll hanging on her schoolbag zipper jingling. Yi Shang suddenly stopped: “Your math is actually very good.”
“I’ve been discovered?” Jiang Wan’yuan stuck out her tongue. “But I hate that math teacher who always compares me to my sister.” She spun the test paper in her hand, the correct answers deliberately written incorrectly beneath the 26-point score.
Okay,
The key turned to the third click before opening the lock—the anti-theft door that her father had just replaced last week always got stuck. As Yi Shang bent over to untie her shoelaces, she smelled the scent of whiskey mixed with sandalwood incense in the air. This discordant combination usually presaged that her father was angry.
“So you know to come back now?”
Her father’s voice stabbed out from the half-open door of the study. Yi Shang saw a pair of unfamiliar men’s leather shoes next to her sneakers. The shiny shoe tips were stained with specks of mud, like some kind of ill-intentioned smile.
“Explain this.” Her father walked out of the study, a photo pinched in his hand. Yi Shang recognized it as a group photo from the school’s Diligence Award ceremony. Jiang Wan’yuan was standing next to her, making a peace sign, and she herself had a rare smile on her face.
Mother Yi suddenly snipped off the overly long flower stems. The “snap” sound was particularly harsh in the silence. White sap oozed from the calla lily cut and dripped onto her sketchbook, smudging Yi Shang’s quick sketch of the starry sky.
“Professor Zhang waited for you for forty minutes.” Father Yi tapped the edge of the photo on the glass coffee table. “And you were with that—”
“Jiang Wan’yuan.” Her older female cousin suddenly interjected, her voice as light as if she were reciting a spell. The flower juice on her fingertips left a long trail on the sketchbook, like a meteor’s tail.
Yi Shang’s school uniform jacket was still hanging on her arm, with the firefly specimen that Jiang Wan’yuan had just given her in the inner pocket. The glass bottle made an almost inaudible clinking sound as her body trembled slightly.
“We’re just friends.” Father Yi tore the photo in half. “Friendships should be between equals.” The tear ran right through Jiang Wan’yuan’s bright smile. “The whole school knows about her sister’s matter.”
Mother Yi suddenly threw the entire bunch of calla lilies into the trash can. In the muffled sound of the white flowers hitting the side of the bin, Yi Shang heard her say: “At least that girl’s sister lived a real life.”
These words were like pressing a switch. Her father grabbed the metal bookend on the coffee table and smashed it against the TV cabinet, causing sparks to erupt from the shattered screen. Yi Shang subconsciously retreated, her back bumping into the full-length mirror in the entrance hall. Cracks immediately spread across her image in the mirror.
“Real?” Her father’s loosening of his tie looked like he was trying to escape a noose. “Like your shameful drawings?” He suddenly snatched Yi Shang’s schoolbag and dumped everything out. Physics textbooks, calculators, pink chalk, and the firefly specimen in the glass bottle—it was the last collection from Jiang Wan’yuan’s sister before she passed away.
Her older female cousin’s eyes suddenly lit up. She picked up the specimen bottle before her father could, her fingertips caressing the date engraved on the bottle—exactly the day before Jiang Wan’yuan’s sister died.
“You get out.” Her father said this to Yi Shang, but his eyes were fixed on the glass bottle in his older female cousin’s hand. “Now.”
Yi Shang opened her mouth, but her throat felt like it was blocked by something. She saw her older female cousin quietly slip the specimen bottle into her bathrobe pocket, a movement so practiced that it seemed like she had repeated it countless times.
“I said now!” Her father pulled open the anti-theft door. A draft of air from the hallway rushed in, scattering the torn photos on the coffee table. One piece landed on Yi Shang’s sneakers, right over Jiang Wan’yuan’s right eye.
Her older female cousin stood in the center of the living room without moving. The glass bottle in her bathrobe pocket refracted the light from the ceiling lamp, casting tiny spots of light on the wall. When her father grabbed Yi Shang’s arm, she just said softly, “There are buns in the convenience store’s warming cabinet.”
In the moment of being pushed out of the door, Yi Shang heard the sound of the anti-theft door locking, followed by her mother suddenly raising her voice: “Your NASA recommendation letter from back then is still with me—” The rest of the words were cut off by the heavy door panel.
The hallway sensor lights went out. As Yi Shang squatted down to pick up the scattered stationery, she found that the pink chalk had broken into three pieces. One of the pieces rolled onto the doormat of the downstairs neighbor. That family was surnamed Jiang, distant relatives of Jiang Wan’yuan.
The night wind blew in through the hallway window, carrying the damp scent of impending rain. Yi Shang felt the train ticket in the inner pocket of her school uniform—a long-distance bus ticket to Jiang Wan’yuan’s hometown on July 15th. On the back of the ticket stub was written very small words in pencil: “The lifespan of a firefly is seven days, but they remember all the light.”
The sound of arguing upstairs came faintly, mixed with the sound of porcelain breaking. Yi Shang carefully put the broken chalk back into her pencil case. When she turned around, she saw her blurred silhouette reflected in the elevator mirror. She suddenly realized that this was the first time she had been kicked out of the house without her mother following her out.
When the sounds of smashing came from Yi Shang’s apartment hallway, Jiang Wan’yuan was squatting by the roadside feeding stray cats. She saw her friend being pushed out of the door, a suspicious dark stain on her school uniform sleeves.
“Oh! Isn’t this a coincidence?” Jiang Wan’yuan jumped up, pretending not to see Yi Shang’s red eyes. “My mom insisted I buy ten bottles of soy sauce. Help me carry them!” She shoved the shopping bag into Yi Shang’s hands. The sound of the plastic bottles colliding drowned out the cursing upstairs.
The streetlights suddenly turned on, illuminating the undried tears on Yi Shang’s eyelashes. Jiang Wan’yuan pulled out a crumpled Fire Chicken Noodle wrapper from her pocket and folded it into a crooked paper airplane: “Watch this!” The paper airplane streaked through the twilight and landed steadily in the community fountain pool.
“…Childish.” Yi Shang said softly, but she clutched the key to Jiang Wan’yuan’s house tightly.
The entrance hall of Jiang Wan’yuan’s house was always piled with colorful canvas shoes. Yi Shang hesitated at the door for half a second before being pulled into this warm chaos.
“Mom! I found a stray cat!” Jiang Wan’yuan pushed Yi Shang forward.
The sound of dishes clattering came from the kitchen. “How many times have I told you not to bring them home—” Jiang’s mother, wearing a strawberry apron, rushed out with a soup ladle in her hand. She suddenly stopped when she saw the wound on Yi Shang’s forehead. The soup ladle “clanged” to the ground.
“Auntie, hello.” Yi Shang’s bow was as standard as a textbook demonstration, her back ramrod straight. “I’m intruding.”
Jiang Wan’yuan saw her mother’s eyes redden—just like last year when she found her secretly raising an injured sparrow in the attic. “I’ll go get the first-aid kit!” She ran upstairs, the wooden stairs groaning under the weight.
When she came back with a Pikachu-printed first-aid kit, she found Yi Shang being pressed onto the sofa by her mother, who was applying medicine. The ice-cold academic genius who dared to argue with even the teachers at school was now as stiff as a statue, not even daring to blink.
“Gently, gently!” Jiang Wan’yuan squeezed in, deliberately bumping Yi Shang with her shoulder. “My mom used to be the head nurse. The expression on your face right now is more exciting than a kid getting a shot!”
Yi Shang’s ears were red, but she caught sight of the same Kuromi band-aid on Jiang’s mother’s wrist. This discovery inexplicably relaxed her, like the moment she suddenly saw through a trap in a physics exam question.
Dinner was a bubbling army stew. Jiang Wan’yuan picked out all the kimchi and put it in Yi Shang’s bowl: “Eat more! You’re so skinny you could be used as a compass!” Her own bowl quickly piled up with a mountain of fish cakes—all of them silently placed there by Yi Shang.
“Wan’yuan,” Jiang’s mother suddenly put down her chopsticks. “Yi Shang’s change of clothes…”
“Wear mine!” Jiang Wan’yuan jumped up, suddenly realizing something and covering her mouth. “Ah, but my pajamas are all…”
Yi Shang stood in front of the pink lace pajamas, lost in thought. This piece of clothing with a plush rabbit sewn on the chest, like Jiang Wan’yuan herself, brazenly announced its presence.
“Or you could wear my mom’s…”
“This one.” Yi Shang quickly grabbed the pajamas, adding as if to cover something up, “…It’s just for one night anyway.”
As the sound of water started running in the bathroom, Jiang Wan’yuan was lying on the carpet flipping through photo albums. “Look!” She pointed to the elementary school graduation photo. “I wanted to be friends with you back then! The way you gave the speech as the freshman representative was so cool!”
Yi Shang’s hand, which was drying her hair, suddenly paused. In the photo, Jiang Wan’yuan with pigtails was making a face in the third row, and her own eyes, standing on the podium, seemed to fall right on that area.
“You remembered wrong.” Yi Shang hung the towel squarely. “I never looked at the audience when I gave a speech.”
Jiang Wan’yuan suddenly moved closer, carrying the peach scent of shower gel. “Then how did you know I wore a star hairpin that day?” She shook her phone triumphantly. The screen showed a video of Yi Shang’s award-winning speech from that year—when she said “shine like a star,” her gaze in the camera clearly drifted in a certain direction.
In the middle of the night, Yi Shang tossed and turned on the unfamiliar bed. Jiang Wan’yuan’s bedroom looked like it had been bombed by a rainbow, and there wasn’t even a blank spot to be found on the walls plastered with idol posters. She stared at the bedside night light—it was a moon hugging a star, the warm yellow halo dyeing Jiang Wan’yuan’s sleeping face.
“Yi Shang…” Jiang Wan’yuan mumbled in her sleep, “Next time…I’ll make you spicy stir-fried rice cakes…”
Yi Shang got up gently and took out the black notebook that she never let anyone touch from her schoolbag. Tucked inside the page filled with formulas was a yellowed paper cutting—a crooked star shape, with the serrated edges of children’s scissors still visible. This was the “meeting gift” that some reckless person had given to the “freshman representative” on the first day of school six years ago.
Outside the window, the early spring night breeze swept through the treetops. Yi Shang pulled the blanket towards Jiang Wan’yuan, her movements as gentle as if she were handling some fragile treasure.