At twelve, there would be a fireworks show over at Happy Square, along with a countdown.
Plenty of people were already making their way over.
Xu Ye checked the time and said to Chen Qingqing, “Come on, it’s nearly twelve. We’ll head back once we’ve seen the fireworks.”
“Oh.”
Chen Qingqing yawned. She seemed to be getting sleepy.
Xu Ye reached out and gave her hand a squeeze, and found it was cold. So he stood up, took off his down jacket, and draped it around her.
The temperature hadn’t been high to begin with, and it was the middle of the night now. In just her wool coat, Chen Qingqing had been feeling the cold for a while — she just hadn’t felt it as sharply while she’d been sitting down. Standing up, though, a gust of cold air came through and she couldn’t help shivering.
The down jacket fit Xu Ye well enough; on Chen Qingqing it hung distinctly large. But the inside of it was already warm from him, and she felt her whole body heat up in an instant.
Xu Ye stepped in front of her, bent down to do the zip up for her, and pulled the hood over her head. Chen Qingqing tilted her small face up, watery eyes on Xu Ye, who now had nothing on but a jacket, and asked softly, “Aren’t you cold?”
Xu Ye grinned. “It’s fine. I can take it.”
Then he called back to the others, “Come on. Fireworks.”
The six of them took the little train that ran around inside Happy Valley over to Happy Square. It was already past eleven-fifty, and the square was packed, everyone craning their necks for the new year to arrive.
It was the first time Chen Qingqing had ever seen in the new year away from home.
She stood with her head tipped up, looking out at the still water in front of her, and drifted for a moment. When she came back to herself she started glancing left and right in a small panic, and when she couldn’t find Xu Ye she turned around quickly to look for him — only to discover he’d been standing right behind her the whole time.
“Xu Ye.”
“Mm?”
“Where are Zhang Ruowei and the others?”
“Toilet. They should be back any second.”
“Oh.”
“Not cold now?”
“Mm.”
“Let me feel your hands.”
Chen Qingqing pulled her hands out of the jacket pockets and held them out to him.
Xu Ye reached over with both of his, clasped her small hands between them, rubbed them back and forth a couple of times, and smiled. “Right, back in the pockets.”
Her hands were warm now. His were plainly freezing.
Winter, the dead of night, nothing on but that jacket with a long-underwear top beneath it — of course he was cold.
Chen Qingqing saw that Zhang Ruowei and the others still weren’t back and that the people around them were all absorbed in their own conversations. So she looked up again and said, quietly, “Xu Ye, I… I’m allowing you to hold me for a bit.”
There were too many people around and Xu Ye didn’t catch it. He bent his head, put his ear next to her mouth and asked loudly, “What did you say?”
Chen Qingqing said, red-faced, “I said, I’m allowing you to hold me for a bit.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before Xu Ye dropped into a crouch and scooped her clean off the ground.
“Ah!”
Chen Qingqing yelped, weightless for a second, and tipped into his arms; her hands flew out on instinct and locked around his neck.
“I only said you could hold me,” she said quickly, “I didn’t say hold me like this. Put me down!”
“No. You’ve already given permission. It’s not my fault you weren’t specific.”
Chen Qingqing made a small fist and thumped it lightly against his shoulder, her big eyes trembling. “You’re a complete rogue.”
“You’re only just working that out?”
Xu Ye laughed. “All right, stop being embarrassed. Look at the rest of them — some of these girls are sitting on their boyfriends’ shoulders.”
Chen Qingqing turned her head to look, and sure enough there were plenty of girls up on their boyfriends’ shoulders, phones raised, waiting for the countdown to start.
But something like that was still far too intimate for Chen Qingqing. She did her best to stay calm; her small heart kept hammering away anyway.
“One minute left.”
A ripple went through the crowd — a lot of people had spotted the sixty-second countdown that had come up on a big screen in the distance.
When it was down to ten seconds, the whole square began counting down as one, without anyone arranging it.
“Ten!”
“Nine!”
“…”
Chen Qingqing turned to look out at the water too. When the countdown reached one, fireworks rose off the surface of the water all at once, brilliant blooms opening out across the sky like so many pink roses.
And in that same moment Xu Ye lowered his head and called Chen Qingqing’s name — and as she turned toward him he finally let go, set her down on the ground, took her cheeks in both hands, and bent to cover her soft lips with his own.
In that moment the starlight, the fireworks, and the lights of ten thousand homes in the distance all became nothing more than a backdrop to the two of them, and everyone around them nothing more than the supporting cast in a world with only two people in it.
Xu Ye lifted his head and looked at her, entirely serious. “Do you have any idea? Right now you’re ten thousand times better looking than that fireworks show.”
Chen Qingqing’s cheeks were scarlet. The kiss was over, but she could still feel the damp on her lips.
She dropped her head, took half a step forward, and buried her entire flushed face against his chest.
…
“Shen Xinyi.”
While everyone around them was celebrating the arrival of the new year, Qin Zhiwei finally worked up the nerve to say the name of the girl standing beside him.
Zhang Ruowei and Jiang Yu had said earlier that they were going to the toilet, and on her way off Zhang Ruowei had given Qin Zhiwei a look loaded with meaning. Qin Zhiwei knew perfectly well that the two of them must have come out of the toilets long ago, and that the reason they still hadn’t come back was to give him and Shen Xinyi time alone.
If he could work that out, then naturally Shen Xinyi could too.
So the moment she heard him say her name she was already nervous. She turned to face him and played dumb. “What is it?”
Lit by the fireworks, Shen Xinyi’s face was as luminous as a bright moon. Just looking at her set Qin Zhiwei’s heart pounding. He pulled his backpack open, took out the instant camera he’d bought at the mall that afternoon, held it out to her and stammered, “I… I got you… a New Year’s present.”
Shen Xinyi was caught off guard. She looked down at the camera, then up at him, and found that he was even more nervous than she was. Forcing herself to look composed, she reached out and took it, and said softly, “Thank you.”
Whether something had suddenly clicked into place for Qin Zhiwei or whether it was something else, at that point he said two rather meaningful things.
“I hope we can see the new year in together again next year.”
And then, feeling that hadn’t come out quite right, he hurriedly added, “No — what I mean is, ideally we’d get to be together for… for New Year’s Eve, every year from now on.”
Shen Xinyi smiled faintly. “Maybe… we will.”
…
At the back of the crowd.
Jiang Yu watched the fireworks up in the air and asked, laughing, “Zhang Ruowei, didn’t you say relationships shouldn’t be allowed to move too fast? So how come you’re deliberately manufacturing opportunities like this for them now?”
“I said they shouldn’t move too fast. I never said they shouldn’t move.”
“I feel like Xu Ye and Qin Zhiwei are two opposite extremes. One’s far too good at it, the other’s far too dense.”
“They’re both fine, really. Xu Ye knows how to take care of someone, and Qin Zhiwei may be a bit of a straight man, but at least there’s nothing complicated going on in his head.”
Seeing Zhang Ruowei bring her hands together and clasp them, Jiang Yu asked, baffled, “What are you doing?”
“Making a wish.”
“Wishing for what?”
“Wishing to stop being single next year. Oh, no, wait — it’s 2015 already. Wishing to stop being single this year.”
“Then I’ll make a wish too.”
“What are you wishing for?”
“I’m wishing that your wish fails, and that you don’t get to stop being single until after I’ve found a boyfriend first.”
“Jiang Yu, you’re dead!”
“Jiang Yu, I can’t believe how evil you are!”
“Jiang Yu, you stand right there!”
“Hahahaha — that’s enough out of you. I’m off to spy on Xu Ye and Qingqing kissing.”
(End of Chapter 172)