ATLAS TRANSLATES

Jiang Qi Huai’s bite was a bit forceful, carrying a hint of sullen unhappiness and dissatisfaction as he remained silent.

When the light turned from red to green, Tao Zhi pushed him away. Jiang Qi Huai glanced at the road conditions before straightening up to follow the traffic flow.

His previously downcast eyes lifted slightly, his mood appearing to improve.

Tao Zhi raised her hand to touch her lips with her fingertips. The pain had lessened, but they still felt somewhat numb.

“You bite people just from talking,” she said incredulously. “Are you a dog?”

Jiang Qi Huai replied calmly, “I just didn’t want you to forget me.”

As they drove along, darkness had visibly fallen. January was coming to an end, with just over two weeks left until the New Year. The streets were already decorated with strings of firecracker-shaped lights and red lanterns with upside-down “fu” characters, creating a strong festive atmosphere.

This scenery reminded Tao Zhi of something. She turned her head, wanting to ask about his New Year plans.

Just as she was about to speak, her gaze fell on his cold, indifferent profile. She hesitated and swallowed back her unspoken words.

Grandpa Jiang was gone now, and she didn’t know what his family situation was like, or if he would be spending New Year alone.

Jiang Qi Huai caught her movement in his peripheral vision and asked without turning, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Tao Zhi turned away and lazily leaned back in the passenger seat, casually asking, “Doesn’t your American master’s program take two years?”

“Usually yes,” Jiang Qi Huai said, “but you can graduate once you complete enough credits.”

Perhaps because Jiang Qi Huai had always been a academic genius, Tao Zhi was already used to it. She didn’t really feel the impact of his excellent grades and skipping grades in university and masters until meeting Permed Hair Guy today. Only then did she realize how extraordinary it was to complete two years of courses at UPenn in less than one year.

“Theoretically it’s possible, but practically it’s almost impossible,” she remarked. “How did you manage to graduate in less than a year?”

Jiang Qi Huai turned the steering wheel with one hand to get on the elevated highway: “I didn’t rest.”

Tao Zhi took a moment before asking, “So you were studying and working the whole time?”

Jiang Qi Huai made an affirmative sound.

Tao Zhi found it hard to imagine. She stared at him with wide eyes and asked, “How many hours did you sleep each day?”

“Three or four hours,” Jiang Qi Huai said casually. “I’ve always slept very little.”

Tao Zhi froze.

Even though she had many more questions in mind, she couldn’t bring herself to ask them anymore.

Whether it was because of his words, or his casual attitude while saying them, she suddenly felt a fizzing sensation on her tongue, as if it had been doused with carbonated water, leaving a bitter, explosive taste.

Though it was just a few words without much detail, Tao Zhi could roughly imagine what his life had been like these past few years. She only allowed herself a vague guess before quickly stopping all the active scenarios playing out in her mind.

She couldn’t think too deeply about it.

Whether he felt tired alone, if he was lonely, if he was exhausted — she couldn’t let herself think about any of it.

Since their reunion, Tao Zhi had never once asked Jiang Qi Huai how he’d been all these years.

At first, she thought she had simply forgotten. But now, remembering Grandpa Jiang’s faded kind smile in the cemetery, Tao Zhi suddenly understood.

She hadn’t forgotten — she had always been too afraid to ask.

She was afraid of hearing him say that he hadn’t been doing well these past few years.

For the rest of the journey, Tao Zhi remained silent.

While giving way to other cars, Jiang Qi Huai glanced at her. The young girl was leaning her head against the car window with her eyes closed, her thick eyelashes casting shadows, her breathing light and even, as if she had fallen asleep.

When the car stopped, she almost startled awake.

“Are we home?” she asked, rubbing her eyes and stretching.

Jiang Qi Huai leaned over and helped her unbuckle her seatbelt: “Not getting dinner?”

“Oh,” Tao Zhi mumbled vaguely, “I forgot.”

She opened the car door and got out. The cold wind outside woke up her drowsy mind. Tao Zhi looked around the street before recognizing where they were.

Following the street to the corner led to the night market street, with a convenience store at the entrance, and further ahead was the barbecue restaurant — the one she had taken him to before.

Tao Zhi: “Oh?”

Jiang Qi Huai locked the car and casually tugged her scarf higher: “Let’s go.”

Tao Zhi followed him to that barbecue restaurant. She hadn’t been here much since then, and couldn’t remember when she last visited. Standing at the entrance, she looked around.

The store was twice as big as before, probably having taken over the space next door. There were more servers now, no longer just the owner busy in the front.

Tao Zhi and Jiang Qi Huai chose a spot near the wall to sit down, and she watched as he first ordered a plate of fried rice.

She suddenly remembered back in high school when she brought him out for barbecue, how the young man wouldn’t eat anything else and just quietly ordered a plate of fried rice.

After ordering, Jiang Qi Huai handed the menu to the server and casually pulled out two bottles of beer from the box behind him, opened them, and pushed one forward.

Tao Zhi: “?”

“I know your habits,” Jiang Qi Huai said, “Little alcoholic.”

Having beer with barbecue — she had told him that back then.

Though she hadn’t drunk for many years now.

Tao Zhi only hesitated for a moment before decisively taking it, rinsing a clean glass and filling it.

Jiang Qi Huai had to drive so he didn’t drink, but Tao Zhi was quite enthusiastic. Perhaps because she had abstained for so long, once he opened the floodgates, she couldn’t quite hold back.

Her alcohol tolerance had always been poor.

After less than two bottles of beer, her eyelids were already turning red. She propped her chin up with one hand while the other held chopsticks, struggling to poke at the shrimp head on her plate.

Jiang Qi Huai watched her poke at it for a while: “What are you doing?”

“I’m undressing it,” Tao Zhi said.

“…”

Jiang Qi Huai sighed, picked up her shrimp and put it on his plate. He pulled out a wet wipe to clean his hands, then pinched the shrimp and peeled off its shell.

He tossed the peeled shrimp back onto her plate, then pulled out another clean wet wipe to clean his sauce-stained fingers.

Tao Zhi silently looked at the shrimp in her bowl, then raised her head to stare straight at him.

Jiang Qi Huai finished wiping his hands clean and looked up: “What?”

Tao Zhi frowned at him, complaining, “Why are you undressing me?”

Jiang Qi Huai: “…”

He expressionlessly grabbed her half-empty beer bottle by the neck and took it away, then poured her a small cup of tea from the teapot: “Drink some tea.”

The tea at barbecue stalls was usually very weak, almost tasteless and hardly different from warm water, but when Tao Zhi heard the word, she still wrinkled her nose: “I don’t like drinking tea.”

“Mm, your tea drinking depends on who you’re with,” Jiang Qi Huai said knowingly as he raised his hand to call a server.

Tao Zhi’s mind was a bit slow at this point and didn’t recall what she had said before to anger him, so she didn’t understand his words right away.

She looked at that cup of tea with disgust, then saw the server bring over a small plate of honey and hand it to Jiang Qi Huai.

Jiang Qi Huai took a small spoon and added two spoonfuls of honey to her teacup, then placed it in front of her again: “Now it’s sweet.”

Tao Zhi was stunned for a moment.

She held the small cup and looked at it for a while before slowly saying, “My friend said sweet tea isn’t right, you can’t taste the tea flavor.”

Jiang Qi Huai looked down, saying carelessly, “It doesn’t matter, drink it however you want, don’t worry about what’s right.”

Tao Zhi looked at him, blinking.

The alcohol had made her face flush slightly, and now not just her eyelids but also her nose tip and cheeks were slightly red. She crossed her legs and suddenly said out of nowhere: “I haven’t been drunk for a long time. The last time I was drunk was at the gathering after the college entrance exam.”

Jiang Qi Huai looked up and patiently responded, “It has been a long time.”

Tao Zhi lifted her chin slightly and looked at him, saying, “I went to look for you that day, but I couldn’t find you.”

Jiang Qi Huai froze for a moment.

Tao Zhi pushed the plates and cups in front of her forward and laid down on the table, repeating in a low voice, “I couldn’t find you, you were gone.”

She rested her chin on her arm, tilting her head as she remembered, speaking slowly: “It was so hot that day, and there were so many mosquitoes. I just sat there,” she vaguely pointed forward, “sat there looking at photos, you left me so many photos.”

She looked for a very long time.

His childhood, those moments in time she had never been part of, his precious secrets, the most important things he had hidden in his heart and never told anyone.

He didn’t even take them when he left, as if these things were no longer important to him.

Because they weren’t important anymore, so he discarded them like worn-out shoes.

Because nothing mattered anymore, so he didn’t want them anymore.

Tao Zhi suddenly raised her head to look at him, her eyes slightly red, her voice catching uncontrollably with a hint of grievance: “You didn’t even want the photos, did you plan to never want me again?”

Jiang Qi Huai looked at her, his throat moving, but no words came out.

Like sitting too long had numbed his body, his limbs and heart felt as if they were being pricked by rows of extremely fine needles, creating a dense, tingling pain.

Jiang Qi Huai didn’t know what mindset he had back then.

The day they parted, he had so many things he wanted to tell her, but in the end, he couldn’t say a single word.

He didn’t want her to wait for him, he wanted her to stride forward confidently, towards a broader sky.

But what if, she still had a trace of lingering attachment to him.

If there was really that one in ten thousand chance that one day, on a whim, she would look back at him.

He took down the photos one by one, then put them back up one by one, neatly arranged on the wall, patiently waiting for their owner to see the person they wanted to wait for.

That was his hope that he couldn’t tell anyone about, his hand holding onto her that he didn’t want to let go of no matter what, his last bit, his remaining darkness and selfishness.

He wanted her to know, I like you so much.

Long before, before we were together, before you liked me, I had always liked you.

The young Jiang Qi Huai had always thought that in their relationship, Tao Zhi was very at ease.

She had had a boyfriend before, she approached him naturally, became intimate with him naturally, and then effortlessly made him submit.

So he chose to leave at that time.

He thought he wasn’t that important to her, Jiang Qi Huai had never experienced what it felt like to be “the most important person” to someone else. Even with Jiang Qing He, he clearly knew in his heart that the most important person to Jiang Qing He was actually Jiang Zhi.

He hadn’t expected that there would really be someone who would think he was such an important existence.

He had done something wrong.

He had completely underestimated and belittled her determination and sincere liking at that time.

Tao Zhi’s eyes were red as she looked at him stubbornly and persistently, as if this was a thorn stuck in her heart, planted on that day when she was drunk, so from then on, she never drank again.

Until she got drunk again, she stubbornly wanted to pull it out.

But Jiang Qi Huai didn’t know how to explain it clearly to her.

He couldn’t say anything, and after a long while, he finally spoke hoarsely: “I wanted to leave them for you.”

Tao Zhi sniffled and looked at him for a while, then hiccuped from the alcohol.

“You wanted me to wait for you to come back?” she stammered.

“Yes,” Jiang Qi Huai said, “but I hoped you wouldn’t wait for me.”

Tao Zhi looked at him puzzled, not understanding what he meant.

She tried hard to organize her thoughts but couldn’t make sense of it.

She gave up, unhappily pouting, and said in a muffled, choked voice: “But you took so, so long, and didn’t come back, you didn’t want to come back for so long.”

Jiang Qi Huai’s gaze fell gently on her as he said quietly: “Zhi Zhi, I wanted to come back to find you every day.”

So he compressed his sleep time to the extreme, then used all the remaining time for studying and working.

In those days after leaving her, even if it was just one month earlier, just one day earlier, he wanted to come back quickly.

But he couldn’t be hasty. Once he had decided to take this path, he could only walk towards the exit. He couldn’t turn back, he could only run towards the end of the road with all his might, trying to go a little faster, just a bit faster.

For a period of time after Jiang Qing He passed away, perhaps weeks, or perhaps longer, Jiang Qi Huai once felt he had entered a desperate and obsessive dead end.

The colors in his life disappeared too suddenly, too unexpectedly, even before he had time to react, things had already happened.

He suddenly felt like his past dozen or so years had been like a joke.

All his persistence seemed futile, he couldn’t protect anyone, and in the end, he couldn’t accomplish anything.

Jiang Qi Huai suddenly didn’t want to run forward anymore.

He let himself be swallowed bit by bit by the swamp, too tired to even move his fingers to struggle.

Until he received Season Fan’s call.

He told him that Tao Zhi hadn’t listened to her family and went to C University to study a strange major, said she spent almost all her pocket money to buy an expensive camera and lens, said she was running around the world every day with friends she met in the university club, taking all sorts of random photos everywhere.

Said she enthusiastically participated in a photography auction exhibition, confidently believing her photos would be fought over by famous artists, feeling delighted that she was truly a genius young photographer.

That day, Jiang Qi Huai sat by his bed waiting until dawn.

He raised his head in a daze and saw the faint morning light through the window.

He went to the photography auction exhibition Season Fan had mentioned.

By then he didn’t know how many nights he had gone without sleep, and his condition was actually quite poor in all aspects. He didn’t know why he wanted to go, perhaps it was just with this last bit of strength, he instinctively wanted to grasp onto something.

Even how he found his way there following the map, whether her photograph captured dusk or dawn, he was somewhat dizzy trying to discern.

He only knew that she had captured two suns.

One hung distantly on the horizon over the sea, accompanied by rolling red clouds.

The other treaded on seawater, stepping on light.

Then, once again brightly shining into the murky swamp, walking towards him.