Chapter 22: A Cup of Snow, Brewed Through New Year’s

The elderly had said that festivals were painful for vagrants.

An Jie didn’t know whether or not he counted. Festivals meant nothing to him, but… he lowered his head slightly and looked down through the window in the corridor. There were children in groups of twos or threes on break, adults rushing home carrying bags of varying sizes; everywhere he looked, there were signs of festivity.

He breathed out a puff of white air. When the entire world was lively, no one would notice the loneliness of a single person standing silently to the side.

An Jie recalled that when he was young, he liked sitting in the dark, staying in the corners, believing himself to be in control while not attracting attention. But now, even though he wasn’t attracting any attention and he was indeed in the corners of the world… his heart was empty.

‘Everyone is busy being happy and living, no one’s thinking about you. Are you that An Yin Hu from ten years ago, or the An Jie from now?’ he thought against the cold winter air, watching the world that didn’t belong to him.

That was the scene Mo Cong saw as he stamped his way upstairs, carrying a large bag. A young man still with that head of soft, short hair, wearing only a dark blue woolen jumper1, a pair of cotton slippers on his feet; the door to his house was still open, perhaps from just returning from taking out the trash. He was looking out the window, his fingers on the windowsill, his knuckles and fingertips red from the cold. He had a meaningful look on his face, as if he was mocking something, but also as if desiring it.

For some reason, at that moment, Mo Cong didn’t want to disturb his peace, or rather… his loneliness.

But An Jie heard his footsteps and nodded at him with a smile before going back through his door.

Even after Mo Cong opened his own door and Xiao Yu took the things he was carrying, he still couldn’t recover from that smile – it was like a pale and delicate wax statue suddenly coming alive, a certain light rising up from its empty eyes; it may have been a fancy of youth, but he felt as if he could see many, many years of light within.

Mo Cong shook his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose. This neighbor, he really was a natural-born playboy.

It was a rare, lively day for the Mo family today. Usually, either Mo Cong wasn’t home, or Mo Jin was away. Today, the three siblings managed to make dinner together, Mo Cong cooking with Xiao Yu as his assistant, Mo Jin making trouble as she chatted away.

Mo Cong’s face, which had been gloomy for almost a month, finally brightened up as he smeared the flour on his hands all over Mo Jin’s face. Mo Jin was unaware of the hidden weapon at his disposal and fell into his trap, spitting out mouthfuls of dried flour. She wiped it off with her hands, screeched, then lunged at him with her teeth bared, before being subdued.

She lunged again, and was subdued again…

Mo Jin washed the vegetables as she watched the two fight in the kitchen, secretly laughing to herself.

Finally, after a cooking session that had about as much destructive power as a world war, the New Year’s dinner successfully reached the table. Xiao Yu wiped away the sweat that managed to form in winter and sat next to the table, announcing with round and dark eyes, “I’m starving…”

From kitchen to table, the dinner took about two and a half hours to make. Even the news broadcast had come and gone many times.

“Then eat, don’t leave a single speck of rice for the enemy!” Xiao Jin waved her hands, then as if suddenly remembering something, pulled on Mo Cong. “Wait, ge, is An Jie-ge also eating by himself?”

Mo Cong had just picked up a piece of caramelized banana – Xiao Yu had made the sugar sauce so thick that it was cloyingly sweet – and mumbled an answer. “I think so.”

Mo Jin exploded. She grabbed onto her brother’s arm and shook him violently. “Everyone’s on holiday and enjoying each other’s company but a lonely, pretty young man is in the house next to ours, weeping for his past and accompanied only by his shadow?!”

Somehow, despite Mo Jin not caring to study, she still knew some proverbs and idioms. It seemed it wasn’t in vain that he paid for her school registration fees and bribed the backdoor of a selective high school open for her.

Mo Jin was angry and indignant. “Ge, don’t you know how to be kind to women and beauties?!”

Mo Cong almost choked on his rice. “You… is your An Jie-gege a woman or a beauty?”

“Ge,” Mo Jin placed down her chopsticks, her expression serious as she said impatiently, “If you keep being like this, you’ll never get your own harem.”

Mo Cong pulled his arm out of her paws, his expression unchanging. “I never had such a goal anyways.” But even as he said that, for some reason, he was reminded of that pale yet sudden smile from An Jie. He was alone in this big city, did he not have any parents or relatives?

“Ge…” Mo Yu hesitated but kept speaking. “Why don’t we call An Jie-gege over? He’s moved over for a while now and he took care of us quite a bit…”

She recalled the matter with the books, recalled that person’s eyes which seemed to understand everything yet know nothing. After getting along for almost a semester, Mo Yu suddenly felt that this person was even more like a brother than her own brother. He always seemed to be able to get as close to the other person’s emotions as he could without making them uncomfortable, teaching her many things under the excuse of explaining her books, calming her down with just a few sentences.

Mo Yu had yet to finish speaking when she looked up and saw Mo Cong and Mo Jin looking at her as if they had seen a ghost.

After a while, Mo Jin finally stood up, stuttered, “Since Xiao Yu agreed, let’s go call him over! It’s just another pair of chopsticks,” and numbly walked outside, her movements stiff.

Mo Cong knew Mo Yu liked the huge collection of books at An Jie’s place and went there often; it wasn’t as if they had no books at home, but they all belonged to Mo Yannan and she seemed to have a barrier in her heart regarding them, refusing to touch them. He knew that Xiao Yu was different from Xiao Jin; on the surface, she fit in well at school, her grades were good, and she was quite popular, but deep down, she wasn’t close to anyone.

To put it bluntly, she was quite ungrateful.

When a child’s emotions had been betrayed, they would learn how to betray others in turn. Mo Cong sighed. Just as he was about to say something, a shrill shriek came from Mo Jin next door.

Mo Cong froze for a moment. He put down his bowl to see what was going on, just in time to see his little sister, who had vowed to collect all the handsome men in the world, latching on to An Jie and refusing to get up. She chattered in a sticky voice, “This one was so scared! An Jie-giege, you have such a strange hobby.”

Mo Cong coughed and Mo Jin immediately jumped down from An Jie, a bitchy ‘don’t worry brother, I won’t take your man’ smile on her face. “Ge, let me tell you, An Jie-ge didn’t close his door properly and I pushed it open accidentally. It was so dark inside and when I looked up, I saw a female ghost on the TV in the living room facing the front door, laughing at me with her hair down… An Jie-ge which country’s horror movie are you watching? It must be restricted right? It’s so disgusting it almost looks real.”

An Jie leaned against the doorframe, calming down his heartbeat, his expression placid. In truth, he didn’t care much for the horror movie, but that shriek from this girl had scared him. Inside his house, the female ghost screamed, outside, the female demon shrieked. In this romantic New Year’s Eve, he experienced the true meaning of an echo chamber.

Mo Cong had nothing to say and slapped Mo Jin’s head. “All this noise pollution is the result of you lot of demons.”

Mo Jin dodged quickly and snuck behind An Jie. “Yeesh, An Jie-giege, giege is abusing this one again, can you please come eat with her? Pretty please, giege is so mean, this one is scared.”

An Jie inclined his head to look at her and said with a calmness that came from the torture of almost half a year of bombardment in voice, expression, action, and tone from the turkey sister, “How’s this, you can go take refuge in Zimbabwe and I’ll fund you.”

Mo Jin rolled her eyes then pouted relentlessly. “I don’t want to, there aren’t any hotties in Zimbabwe like An Jie-giege! I don’t wanna go, I want to go to UAE to admire the handsome princes there!”

Mo Cong grabbed his phone from his pocket. Mo Jin blinked. “Ge, who are you calling?”

Mo Cong smiled lightly. “The zoo.”

Mo Jin glared with her large, ignorant eyes. “You want to eat state-protected wildlife?”

“I’m telling them to take back their stray animal.”

An Jie laughed; Mo Jin wailed.

Mo Cong grinned at him and made a gesture of invitation, copying the stray beast Mo Jin’s tone. “This handsome giege managed to seduce both the pretty ladies in my house, would I have the honor of having you guide me?”

Mo Yu appeared behind her brother like a ghost and just happened to hear his joke. She said slowly and sincerely, “Mud cannot be made into a wall. Ge, even if you had ten An Jie-ge’s to teach you, you would still only scare all the pretty girls away.”

Xiao Yu stepped up quietly and smiled at her brother. “Confucius once said that rotten wood cannot be carved, a wall of dung cannot be repainted. Thank you, ge, for deepening my knowledge of the ancient texts.” She turned around and looked up at An Jie with a foolish, naive expression. “An Jie-ge, come have New Year’s dinner at our house, we made too much food and it won’t taste as good if we leave it for tomorrow.”

Even though they were both being called ‘brother’, how was there such a difference between them? Mo Cong suddenly lamented.

That night, the Mo family was surprisingly lively. Even though he was an outsider, An Jie acted naturally as if they were family, picking up food for the girls on the dinner table, teaching them the importance of a balanced diet with complete seriousness. After dinner, he even helped with washing the dishes and cleaning up before sitting down with them, making fun of the New Year Eve’s show which showed nothing innovative.

Mo Cong recalled that this family had never been so lively. Professor Mo, who rarely got to eat with his children, had a talent for making everyone lose their tempers, the atmosphere so rigid that it screamed of indigestion.

He suddenly understood why these two girls, and even Xiao Yu, were willing to get close to An Jie – this person, no matter what he did, carried a pampering, indulging attitude, as if he was family… He was like a close elder relative, easily taking control of the atmosphere, even making others accept his suggestions.

He even magically made Xiao Yu eat two pieces of fish, something she had rejected for as long as he could remember. 

He was… someone he couldn’t see through.

Author’s Notes: There’s a power outage today as well! I can’t take this anymore!

1So uh… is his dick out or…? (For Chinese readers, ‘身上只穿了一件深蓝色的毛衣’) (Luci is currently cringing and confused and does not wish to know the answer to this cursed question)

Vera’s Notes: 

The title is a bit hard to translate. Chinese often involves removing 99% of your grammar, verbs, conjunctions, etc to create a more poetic title… which then barely makes sense in English and certainly doesn’t carry the same connotations unless you write a literal sentence. The original title is literally four characters: cup, snow, brew, year, which somehow translates to… the above. Ugh.

So from Luci, a breakdown of the title! 

The cup of snow is a metaphor for An Jie who’s characterized as lonely and cut-off, hence ‘snow’ (cold). Toward the end of the chapter, he experiences what it’s like to celebrate New Year’s with something akin to a family, and likewise for Mo Cong as he says it’s the first time his family is this lively during New Year’s; hence, ‘brewed’ (warmed) over New Year’s. In essence, it’s about two edgy people finally experiencing the warmth of a family, brewing their ‘snow’ into a nice, warm cup of tea. 

Brewing snow into tea is actually something ancient Chinese people did. I’m a little concerned about the hygiene of that; what if someone urinated and a new layer of snow covered it…? It can’t be worth the risk.