Chapter Ten

After that day, Tu Qin never ran into her neighbor again, nor did she ever search for anything related to pottery studios in the search bar.

She was not someone who felt infatuated easily, especially not with a stranger she had only met a few times. Her work was too demanding; between screenwriting and writing web novels, her waking hours were almost entirely consumed. As time passed, the faint impression left by the cart gradually faded.

Besides, the Lunar New Year was fast approaching.

Tu Qin detested the Lunar New Year, particularly when it snowed during the holiday. There was no central heating south of the Yangtze River, and her nightmares were rooted in childhood memories of damp, freezing cotton shoes while visiting relatives during the first lunar month—sitting for an entire afternoon until her toes were so numb she wouldn't have felt it if they were amputated.

This year was exactly the kind of year she hated most.

It had been snowing intermittently for a week before the holiday. It wasn't the thick, fluffy snow of the north, but a drizzling, slushy mess mixed with rain and goodness-knows-what else. The ground was dirty and slick, and the pant legs of everyone on set were stained with mud. The crew’s outdoor heaters were useless, and after pulling an all-nighter, the cold was so deep that even a hot bath couldn't warm her through.

On New Year's Eve, she had no work. Tu Qin woke up early and scrubbed her little nest from top to bottom. She took out every one of her precious bottles, cleaned them with a specialized solution and a cotton cloth, wiped down every corner of the display cabinets, and reset the humidity levels.

By the time she finished, it was four in the afternoon. Her silent phone, sitting in the living room, showed over a dozen missed calls, all from her father.

Tu Qin sighed but didn't call back. She grabbed the two bottles of wine from the entryway, put on her coat, and headed out.

This was the fundamental reason she hated the New Year: no matter how much she tried to escape it, she always had to visit her father’s house on New Year's Eve.

When she was in a bad mood, she tended to be absent-minded. Tu Qin walked all the way to the stairwell with the wine before realizing she had forgotten her phone. She went back to get it, then realized she had forgotten her scarf. After opening and closing the door two or three times, she finally had everything. But for some reason, the paper bag holding the wine gave out; the bottom split, and the two bottles, gift box and all, tumbled down the stairs.

Before she could even check if they had shattered, the air was already thick with the scent of alcohol.

Tu Qin: "..."

She took several deep breaths in the stairwell before cleaning up the shards of the gift box with a wooden expression. Back inside, she stood in a daze for a long time, then opened the cabinet and rummaged around. She pulled out a gift box of silk scarves—a present from a lead actor to the staff when her last project wrapped. It was unopened and featured the celebrity's autograph, but the packaging was substantial.

In truth, she knew her father didn't care what she brought. Her stepmother usually accepted her gifts with a polite smile, only to toss them, unopened, into the storage room.

Still, she couldn't go empty-handed.

Tu Qin sighed and stepped out again, only to be hit by a fierce northern wind that nearly knocked the breath out of her.

It was snowing outside.

The thick, fluffy kind of snow.

And to make matters worse, the snow was mixed with rain.

Tu Qin: "..."

She raised her middle finger at the gloomy sky and muttered, "Go to hell."

She rarely used the word "Mom," not even when cursing. She had a habit that only Yao Lingling knew about: she vented all her negative emotions into a grey-profile QQ account saved as "Mom."

It was a secondary account she had registered herself when she got her first phone in the fifth grade. The name was "Mom," and the first sentence she ever sent to it was: *Mom, I miss you, and I hate you.*

Human psychology is strange. As far as she could remember, her mother had always been in the hospital. By then, her mother was too weak to speak much, so there was almost no interaction between them; in her memory, her mother was always a blurred, white figure.

When her mother passed away, Tu Qin was only five. Relatives said she wailed at the funeral, but she was easily pacified with a lollipop.

Logically, she shouldn't have felt much for her mother.

However, the word "Mom" was a forbidden, untouchable term for her.

Because she had no mother, her life was different from other children's. Because she had no mother, she had a much harder time than most.

***

Her father had to support the family, so he was rarely home. She lived in school dorms, and during holidays, she was shuffled between her grandmother's and her aunt's, squeezed into other people's rooms, comforting herself with the thought that when she grew up and her father made more money, things would get better.

But then her father started a new family.

That made her an even more awkward presence.

It wasn't until junior high that she realized her father hadn't been traveling just to earn money. He could have stayed with her, but it would have hindered his dating life. After all, being a widower was already a drawback; having a daughter made finding a partner even more difficult.

All of this was because she had no mother, which turned her into an outsider drifting on the edge of the family.

Like an out-of-place block in a match-three game that never quite matched the color of the others.

So, even though she knew how much her mother wouldn't have wanted to leave her, and even though she knew how dark and unreasonable her habit was, that QQ account was the only way she had to commemorate her mother.

She missed her, especially on this miserable, cold New Year's Eve, when the need for a sense of belonging was at its peak.

***

The New Year's Eve dinner was as dull and flavorless as always.

On the surface, things were harmonious. Her stepmother wasn't unkind to her, and her half-brother, Tu Mao, had become more sensible after passing through his rebellious phase; he no longer used a mocking tone when calling her "sister."

As for her father, he was aging and had begun to forget the years he’d treated her like a burden to be tossed around. Whenever he saw her, he’d tell her to move back home.

He said this was her home, and that a girl should always leave from her own house when she gets married.

Tu Qin just ate, saying nothing.

She didn't need to answer; her stepmother would express their stance for her. Aside from her father, no one here wanted her to move back.

No one considered this her home. Even her household registration was separate, with the address listed as her own little apartment.

Intimacy is a magical emotion; true and false intimacy can be felt without even looking. For example, the family of three chatting about how the nanny’s cooking had become too salty lately, or Tu Mao saying he needed to buy a new game console because the dog had chewed up his old one.

They could speak of their needs naturally, with a sense of entitlement and the shared history of living together since childhood.

She had none of that.

After the meal, she rose to leave right as the Spring Festival Gala began, as was her custom. Her father gave her a thick red envelope as usual, telling her to bring someone home next year. Her stepmother smiled and said, "Xiao Qin, it’s time to find a partner; don't work so hard."

Tu Qin smiled and listened, then tossed the red envelope into a storage bin in her trunk. Inside was a stack of such envelopes—one from every holiday and birthday, each containing two thousand yuan. She had never opened a single one; once she accumulated ten, she would donate them to a random orphanage.

She had a difficult personality—vengeful and uncompromising. She had been this way since she was a child. Once someone was cut out of her life, she would never let them back in.

To her, intimacy was just like these red envelopes—meant to compensate for and remind her of those drifting, lonely days. As long as they existed, she felt her space was being invaded.

She had once worked on a suspense web series where a consultant was a psychology teacher. While writing the script, she had discussed her situation with the teacher. The teacher said she had an avoidant attachment style. Because she lacked interaction with caregivers during infancy and lived in an insecure environment, she developed low anxiety and high avoidance toward intimacy as an adult.

Simply put, no one taught her how to handle intimacy when she was young, so as an adult, she avoided it whenever it was required to navigate interpersonal relationships.

Tu Qin didn't have much of an opinion on this theory. She felt she had no need for intimacy. Aside from the holidays when she was forced to return, which caused some abnormal emotional fluctuations, she was mostly stable and normal.

Driving from her father's villa back to her own place meant crossing the entire city of Mo. There was almost no one out on New Year's Eve, and snow had begun to accumulate on the road, causing her tires to slip. The forty-minute drive took an hour and a half, despite the empty streets.

The snow was getting heavier. The car radio said this was a once-in-twenty-years blizzard for Mo City, and it sounded like it would last all night.

Tu Qin parked in her spot and hesitated about putting a cover on her car. She opened the door, felt the biting temperature, patted her precious little car, and decided to let it learn to weather the storm.

As she dashed into the stairwell, hunched over with her hat pulled low, she glanced up at the second floor.

Ever since she met her neighbor, the lights on the second floor were often on. She hadn't seen the person, but it was true that after that day, the three units on that floor would have lights on for several days a week.

She didn't know if she was overthinking it, but she felt the lights were the same as when she took down the envelope her neighbor had taped to the door—a way to ensure that if a thief scouted the floor, they would see that she wasn't living there alone. So, someone would come by at irregular times to turn the lights on.

She had checked the security footage at her door out of sheer boredom a few times; on days when the lights were on, her neighbor or the one with the green dreadlocks would come by around four or five in the afternoon, randomly open one of the doors, go in for a minute, and come out. Then, they would return at two or three in the morning, or the next day, to turn them off.

It was a lot of trouble, but at least four days a week, the second floor had lights on besides hers.

Tonight, on New Year's Eve, she looked up and saw that the second floor was brightly lit.

For some reason, her terrible mood from the entire day improved significantly.

There was still no one in the stairwell. Tu Qin opened her door, turned on the heater, and while taking off her coat, pulled out the Spring Festival couplets she had left by the entryway. She happily skipped back out to stick them up, took a photo, and sent it to Yao Lingling.

Yao Lingling hadn't returned to Mo City for the holiday; she was in the African savanna, dating a guide. She hadn't discovered any "scumbag" traits in him yet, and their relationship was sweet as honey.

Seeing the photo, Yao Lingling sent a voice message back, her voice sounding incredibly happy: "Baby, I will love you even more in the new year!"

Tu Qin laughed and replied with a "refuse/no" meme.

Yao Lingling was obsessed with desensitization therapy, telling her that if she just kept saying "I love you" to her, Tu Qin would eventually get used to it and stop running away.

The truth was, even after a dozen years, whenever Yao Lingling said those words, Tu Qin still felt an itch all over, wanting to block her.

She smiled as she watched Yao Lingling send back a "wounded and collapsed" emoji, wished her a Happy New Year, and sent a random red envelope.

Yao Lingling sent a Happy New Year back, along with a red envelope of her own.

Her luck was good this year; when she opened it, there was eight yuan and eighty-eight cents. Tu Qin accepted it happily and went inside.

With that, her New Year's Eve was officially over. The rest of the plan was to wash up, get into bed, and put on a movie until she fell asleep.

The problem lay in the "washing up" part. She had been busy all day, her emotions had been up and down, and she hadn't checked WeChat carefully.

The group chats were flooded with New Year's greetings, and the property management had pinged "@everyone" several times. Tu Qin couldn't be bothered to click on them.

As it turned out, just as she finished washing her hair and was about to shower, the water was cut off.

Dripping wet, Tu Qin checked WeChat and saw the notice from the residential complex: due to the sudden drop in temperature, external pipes had burst, and the entire complex would be without water after 11:00 PM. Residents were advised to prepare in advance.

Tu Qin: "..."

She tried to optimistically comfort herself: at least her hair was clean, and there was no soap on her body. She could just dry off and pretend she was clean.

Then, the next second, she heard a loud bang outside. It had landed right on the awning of her balcony. After that thunderous noise, her awning let out a weird creaking sound, detached completely, crashed onto the clothes-drying rack, and then slammed down to the floor below.

This was immediately followed by the continuous, wailing blare of car alarms from the vehicles parked downstairs.

Tu Qin: "..."

Just destroy it all.

To hell with the New Year!