ATLAS TRANSLATES

The boy’s fine black hair brushed against her ear, his voice muffled by the scarf.

His nose nuzzled her neck, his hot breath bare against her skin, creating a tingling sensation.

His entire being, along with his presence, enveloped her completely.

Tao Zhi paused, then raised her hand, palm cupping the back of his head, gently stroking.

His hair was unexpectedly soft.

“Did something unpleasant happen?” Tao Zhi asked softly.

Jiang Qi Huai didn’t speak, his arms holding her tightly.

She had a pleasant scent.

Like that day when the scorching sun baked the earth, green trees cast shadows, and tender green, fuzzy buds grew vigorously in large patches.

Jiang Qi Huai let out a long breath, loosening his arms slightly and raising his head.

His expression hadn’t changed, as if all those irregularities Tao Zhi had sensitively noticed were just her imagination.

“No,” Jiang Qi Huai raised his hand, pulling up her slightly messy scarf, and said quietly, “Let’s go, I’ll take you home.”

It was already two in the morning when Tao Zhi got home.

She quietly snuck upstairs and took a shower.

Though her eyes were sore with fatigue, feeling like she could barely keep them open, strangely she didn’t feel sleepy at all.

Tao Zhi lay in bed, staring straight at the ceiling, thinking about Jiang Qi Huai from tonight.

Indeed, he was very different.

Too different from his usual self.

He was the type of person who rarely showed his emotions. Even when upset, he would hardly show it obviously, as if wearing a thick mask, with no one knowing what state he was in behind that mask at any time.

Wear a mask long enough, and it becomes impossible to take off.

Perhaps even Jiang Qi Huai himself sometimes couldn’t detect his own emotional abnormalities.

But Tao Zhi could see it clearly.

She looked up, watching as the mask on his face cracked, showing her a slight gap.

But she couldn’t ask any further.

Tao Zhi frustratedly rubbed her face, fished out her phone from under the pillow. The screen’s brightness made her squint. After adjusting for a while, she opened WeChat.

She stared at the puzzle avatar at the top for a long time.

Tao Zhi sighed, locked her phone again, and stuffed it back under her pillow.

Time crossed into the new year, and the calendar in front of the classroom blackboard was replaced with a new one. The large Arabic numbers were crossed out with red pen one by one, and life seemed to continue as before, without any changes.

Jiang Qi Huai hadn’t changed either.

Tao Zhi quietly observed him carefully for several days. He still attended classes as usual, did practice problems as usual, sarcastically mocked her when he should, occasionally got dragged out to play basketball by Li Shuang Jiang and others during breaks and lunch, and tortured the entire Class 1’s spirits and eyeballs like a robot in various tests.

It was as if his passionate yet restrained initiative on New Year’s Eve was just her imagination.

Gradually, Tao Zhi forgot about it.

She focused all her energy on the upcoming monthly exam.

Tao Zhi had spent most of the past half year catching up on progress and reinforcing basics. Although working on test papers didn’t feel as strenuous as before – she could now handle about seventy percent of the problems – she had run into new difficulties.

She was stuck at this stage, hitting a bottleneck.

With some problems, she felt she had written the correct process and gotten an answer, but the results were always wrong.

At first, she was very patient, photocopying all the wrong problems and pasting them in each subject’s error notebook, but as this situation continued without much improvement, her mock test scores weren’t increasing either.

As the monthly exam approached, she began to feel anxious.

Jiang He Sheng noticed her abnormal state and after class one day, talked with Tao Xiu Ping, then found separate tutors for each of Tao Zhi’s subjects, all experienced teachers.

Teachers’ interpretation and teaching methods were notably different from students’, but she continued taking Jiang He Sheng’s classes too. This way, her Saturdays and Sundays were completely filled with tutoring sessions.

Sunday night, after seeing off her physics teacher, her brain that had been running all day was near shutdown. Tao Zhi rubbed her sore eyes and collapsed into bed.

Face down on the bed, head buried in the blanket, she closed her eyes to rest for a while as exhausted drowsiness gradually crept in.

Studying was very tiring.

Tao Zhi didn’t like being tired. During holidays, if she could lie in bed she didn’t want to get up. She’d even skip the 800-meter run in PE class whenever possible, and could have three periods a month – she didn’t want to suffer at all.

But when chasing after something, the moment of achievement brought real satisfaction.

However, she no longer had time on weekends to go play with Jiang Qi Huai.

Come to think of it, it had been a long time since she’d eaten Grandpa Jiang’s delicious cooking.

What would Jiang Qi Huai be doing at this time?

On Sundays, he should be working.

She lay sprawled on the bed, only turning her neck to look out the window.

It wasn’t dinner time yet, but the sky had already darkened. Beijing had another snowfall a few days ago, and unmelted snow hung on the tree branches, pressing down a bright layer of white.

Tao Zhi looked for a few seconds, then suddenly sprang up.

She quickly changed clothes, then grabbed her bag from the corner, folded the unfinished test papers on the desk and stuffed them in, left her bedroom and went downstairs.

Dinner was almost ready. Tao Xiu Ping and Ji Fan were in the living room. Seeing her come out fully dressed, Tao Xiu Ping glanced at her sideways and asked though he knew the answer: “Where are you going? It’s almost dinner time.”

“You eat, I won’t be eating at home,” Tao Zhi waved her hand.

“What else could she be doing but going to see her beloved,” Ji Fan was reading manga and condescended to spare her a glance, starting to be nasty, “You’re going just like this? Not going to change into new clothes and dress up, put on red lipstick and blue eyeshadow?”

Tao Zhi expressionlessly turned her head, picked up the gloves from the entrance, walked forward two steps, made a baseball pitcher’s throwing pose swinging her arm, then threw them at him.

Ji Fan was still holding his manga and couldn’t react in time. The gloves flew straight at his face, softly hitting him with a “plop.”

Tao Zhi: “Homer! Home run!”

Ji Fan covered his nose and dramatically cried out: “My nose is broken! Old Tao, she’s using violence against me!”

Tao Xiu Ping watched the two causing a ruckus and sighed.

The son was hard to manage, and now the daughter had grown up and was always flying out too.

Raising children was really difficult.

He pointed at Tao Zhi and said sternly: “Be back before nine.”

Tao Zhi saluted him: “Yes sir!”

Seeing this, Ji Fan lowered his hand covering his nose and approached with the now limp gloves, saying hopefully: “Dad, I want to go out and play too, I’ll definitely be back before nine tomorrow morning.”

Tao Xiu Ping: “You, just stay put.”

Ji Fan: “…”

Besides tutoring, Jiang Qi Huai had quit his convenience store job, but probably still worked at the café because of the high hourly wage. Tao Zhi took a taxi to that café in the city center.

She located the specific position of that store on her phone. Sunday was peak time for foot traffic, and there were many shopping areas nearby, making the roads jammed to a standstill.

Tao Zhi simply got off the taxi a street away and walked over.

She hadn’t told Jiang Qi Huai she was coming.

She had it all planned out – when she got there, she would pretend to be a customer placing an order, then when Jiang Qi Huai looked up, she would suddenly appear, catching him off guard, and pretend not to know him.

Tao Zhi was calculating her little scheme to herself. She imagined what expression Jiang Qi Huai would have then and couldn’t help wanting to laugh.

She pressed her lips together in a smile, following her memory to find the café’s path, walking along the street while looking up.

She hadn’t remembered wrong – that store was not far ahead, but things didn’t go according to her plan. Two people were standing in front of the store.

In the icy snow, Jiang Qi Huai wore only his work uniform, the thin dress shirt material looking cold just to see.

He lowered his head, lips tightly pressed, unlike his usual emotionless indifference. He stared at the man in front of him alertly and irritably, his gaze as sharp as the icicles under the eaves that hadn’t been cleared away.

That man wore a thick black cotton coat. He should have been very tall, but his figure was somewhat hunched, making him appear shorter than Jiang Qi Huai.

His voice was hidden in the bright lights, hoarse and strange, carrying an undisguised malice that made one’s whole body uncomfortable: “Are you even of age to be working? What, that old man doesn’t have money to support you?”

Jiang Qi Huai’s lips moved, saying only one word: “Leave.”

The man said slowly: “That shouldn’t be right. With pension and retirement money, it should be quite a bit. Is he deliberately hiding money from you?”

Jiang Qi Huai still said: “Leave.”

The man completely ignored his attitude, letting out a cold laugh: “That old fossil thinks he’s hiding pretty well, right? But I still caught you, didn’t I? If I can find you, how could I not find him? As for you—”

Before he could finish speaking.

Jiang Qi Huai suddenly moved.

He instantly stepped forward and reached out, grabbing the man’s collar and yanking it up sharply. Though the man’s frame looked sturdy, he seemed to have little strength, being lifted up like a chicken.

The thick collar tightly constricted his throat and windpipe. His face turned red as he raised his dirty hands to desperately grab the hand holding him, struggling violently a couple times.

Jiang Qi Huai watched expressionlessly as he futilely struggled in his hand for a while, his jawline tightly clenched as he said coldly: “What about me? You think I’m still like when I was little?”

The man’s struggles grew weaker and weaker.

Tao Zhi’s heart tightened and she ran forward.

As she ran, she called out to him in fear: “Jiang Qi Huai!”

Her voice pierced through the noisy crowd, like breaking through an isolated barrier around them. The young man’s movements froze and he turned his head.

Tao Zhi rushed straight to him, tightly hugging his arm, speaking rapidly: “Let go! Calm down first!”

The man’s toes were dangling, his eyes starting to roll up showing the whites.

Jiang Qi Huai let go as if electrocuted.

The man fell sitting directly on the ground, trembling hands covering his throat as he coughed violently, taking big gasping breaths.

Seeing he was okay, Tao Zhi let out a long breath of relief, her fingers slowly relaxing their grip on his arm.

Jiang Qi Huai lowered his eyes, looking down at the person on the ground with a gaze like looking at garbage: “I told you before, if you dare appear before him again, I won’t let you off.”

Jiang Qi Huai crouched down, his voice hoarse with barely concealed violence: “You can try.”

The man lay sprawled on the ground, greedily sucking in the cold air, unable to say a word.

Tao Zhi pulled his arm and turned to walk away.

Only after walking far away to the street corner did Tao Zhi stop, with the young man following closely behind her.

Tao Zhi looked back towards the distance.

That man was crawling on the ground, with people gathering around now. Some passersby approached to talk to him, but he didn’t make a sound, just sat up and leaned against the wall.

Tao Zhi pulled Jiang Qi Huai around the corner until the man disappeared from view.

She turned around to look at him.

The young man pressed down his eyelashes, standing silently before her, his usually light and beautiful eyes heavily suppressing darkness.

He didn’t speak, his lips pressed tightly together, fingers hanging at his sides slowly curling inward.

More than anything else, being seen by her like this sent cold unease throughout his entire body.

Tao Zhi’s eyes reddened.

After calming down, she felt somewhat scared in retrospect.

She wanted to say something, wanted to scold him, but couldn’t open her mouth.

She didn’t know who that man was, or why Jiang Qi Huai would have such a reaction upon seeing him, or even if anyone had stopped him then, whether he could have controlled himself.

Cold wind swept across the bustling street, stirring up snow pressed on the treetops, falling in small patches.

No one spoke.

Tao Zhi took a deep breath, then raised her hands to take off the scarf from her neck, standing on tiptoes to hang it around his neck.

Warmth instantly surrounded him, and Jiang Qi Huai raised his eyes in a daze.

Tao Zhi didn’t look at him, focusing intently on the scarf. Her fingers pinched the two sides of the red scarf, slowly wrapping it around him circle by circle: “Are you cold?”

She spoke her first words to him.

Jiang Qi Huai held his breath.

Tao Zhi sighed, criticizing him with some worry: “What month is it now? In such cold weather, you’re just wearing a thin shirt out here, do you really think your constitution is that good?”

The young girl’s eyes were still a bit red, with moist light under the bright lighting. After putting the scarf on him she unbuttoned her coat, continuously mumbling criticism: “It just snowed the day before yesterday, if I wasn’t here you would’ve turned into a snowman, you know? I don’t want to hear news at school in a few days about the top student turning into an ice sculpture on the street.”

As she spoke, she opened her coat, pulling its wide sides closer to wrap him inside.

The coat was still a bit small and Tao Zhi couldn’t cover his entire body, barely managing to cover half of him tightly. But it was warm enough.

She tiredly hugged him without letting go, chin resting on his chest as she looked up, smiling at him: “I’m warm, right?”

The young girl’s body pressed close, her body heat continuously transmitted through the soft sweater. Snow falling from the tree branches landed in her black hair, glittering brilliantly under the street lights for a moment before slowly melting and disappearing.

Her eyelashes curved, bright black eyes looking at him.

Indeed, it was warm enough.

Jiang Qi Huai’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he looked at her deeply, then lowered his neck.

His cold lips carefully, almost reverently, touched her warm eyes.