Chapter 11: My Cousin is Really Pretty

”Oh, Xiao Shen’s back?”

The noise in the hallway made my mom and me stop in our tracks. At the corner of the fourth floor, Aunt Zhang from apartment 503 was carrying a bag of trash and we bumped into each other. Aunt Zhang was in her early fifties, with a perm, a loud voice, and small eyes; she was the kind of person who knew everyone in the neighborhood—everyone knew which chicken had laid an extra egg.

”Hello, Aunt Zhang.” I reflexively put on a smile.

Aunt Zhang’s gaze swept over me briefly before shifting away. To be precise, she was drawn to the person behind me. My mother was wearing that gray T-shirt and jeans today, her hair tied in a low ponytail. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her face was clean, but her natural beauty was so striking that it glowed even in the dim hallway light.

”Oh my, who is this?” Aunt Zhang’s eyes lit up, just like an old lady at the market when she sees discounted pork. “Little Shen, you… brought your girlfriend home?”

My mother’s body stiffened slightly.

”No, no,” I quickly replied, stepping aside to let my mother out from behind me. “This is my distant cousin, Su Qingqing. Her parents have passed away, so she came from the countryside to stay with me temporarily.”

”Cousin?” Aunt Zhang looked my mother up and down, her gaze sweeping from face to toe and back, lingering for a second longer on her chest. It wasn’t surprising; the gray T-shirt barely concealed anything at this distance, and the two prominent breasts beneath the fabric were clearly visible, like two small hills. Aunt Zhang’s expression shifted from surprise to a complex, dismissive click of her tongue. “Your cousin is really pretty; she’d be a star on TV.”

My mom stood half a step behind me, her expression switching back and forth between “thank you for the compliment” and “I’m ten years older than you, so don’t bother me.” Finally, she forced a smile, pursed her lips, and remained silent.

“Qingqing has been slow-witted since she was little.” I reached out and touched the top of my mother’s head. My palm landed on the top of her head; her hair was silky smooth, and the curve of her skull was small. She was thirteen centimeters shorter than me, and at this angle, my palm could cover the entire top of her head.

Her body stiffened for a second.

”Yes, yes, cousin is right.” She squeezed out the words through gritted teeth, her smile so hard it could scrape off a layer of paint.

Aunt Zhang chuckled twice, switching the trash bag from her left hand to her right: “You’d better keep a close eye on your pretty cousin, Xiao Shen. There are plenty of young men in our neighborhood!” With that, she pattered downstairs.

The hallway fell silent again. The motion-activated light above us flashed twice and then went out.

In the darkness, I heard a humming sound coming from my nose, like the prelude to the lid of a boiling kettle being lifted.

”You little brat.”

A hand precisely pinched my ear. The force wasn’t great, but the angle was tricky; the pads of the thumb and forefinger were wedged into the thinnest piece of cartilage above the earlobe, and then twisted.

”Ouch… Mom, be gentle!”

”Whose head are you touching?” Her voice was low, but every word carried the anger of a middle-aged woman who had been offended. “I’ve lived for forty years and you, a mere brat, are touching my head? Do you think I’m a puppy?”

”It’s all an act! What am I supposed to do when Aunt Zhang was around?”

”You don’t have to touch my head.” She released my ear and instead poked my chest, each poke with her index finger uttering a single word: “You, can, not, touch, my, head.”

”Then where should I touch? My shoulder? That would make us look more like a couple.”

Her fingers stopped on my chest.

There was a two-second silence.

”…Fine. We’ll try something different next time.” She withdrew her hand and shuffled upstairs in her slippers. After a couple of steps, she turned back and glared at me. “And what do you mean by ‘stupid since childhood’? Who’s stupid? How is Mom stupid?”

”That line was also an act…”

”Can’t you just say she’s been smart since she was little? Why do you have to say she’s stupid?”

That’s a good question. If you say someone is smart, Aunt Zhang will ask in detail about what aspects they’re smart about and then chat for half an hour; if you say someone is stupid, you can just end the conversation. But this explanation is clearly not the right time to say it.

”Next time, say ‘smart.'” I obediently admitted defeat.

”snort.”

She opened the door and went inside. As soon as she entered, she kicked her slippers aside and went to the kitchen sink to start washing the cups, her movements more forceful than usual. She was still angry. The cups spun around under the tap, splashing water onto the front of her T-shirt, soaking a small patch of the cotton fabric that clung to her collarbone and upper chest, her white skin faintly visible beneath the wet gray fabric.

She didn’t notice and continued washing the cup vigorously.

I sat down at the dining table and opened the math exercises she had done during the day. Five common denominator problems; she got two right and three wrong. One of them had its answer written and crossed out four times; the scratch paper was covered in pencil marks.

I unscrewed the red pen and drew checkmarks next to the two correct lines and crosses next to the three incorrect lines. After marking them, I wrote down the correct steps next to them.

She brought out the washed cup, glanced at the exercise book on the table covered with red crosses, and curled her lips down slightly.

”Mom spent the whole afternoon making it.”

”Hmm, I can tell. You used four sheets of scratch paper.” I covered the red pen. “Your approach to the third problem was correct, but you made a mistake in the final step of simplifying the fraction.”

She paused for a moment, probably not expecting me to point out which approach was correct.

“…Oh.” She sat down opposite, put down her cup, poured hot water into it, and the red dates and goji berries swirled on the surface.

”Ten questions tomorrow.”

She didn’t answer, picked up her cup, took a sip of goji berry water, and looked at me through the rim of the cup. There was something in that look—not anger, not heartache, but something very complex. But she didn’t say anything. After two more sips, she picked up her pencil and started correcting her mistakes.