Butterfly and Whale

Hu Die spent the entire typhoon lazing around in the hospital. Since she fell into the sea last time, her mother, Jiang Man has been stricter in her supervision.

It was almost to the point of sticking to her body, even though Hu Die emphasized more than once that falling into the sea was just an accident, and that she didn’t do it on purpose, her mother acted like she believed her words but her actions said otherwise.

Today, she was boredly lying in the hospital bed as usual. The window of the ward was facing the coast. From the window, she could see the tall palm trees swaying with the sea breeze. She can also see the waves hitting the rocks, and at night, a touch of blue can vaguely be seen from the gaps in the bricks and tiles of the buildings.

Hu Die turned over and turned her back to the window.

On the cabinet next to the bed was a grayish black hat with the words “Tan Island Rescue Team” embroidered with red silk thread in the center, and the word “Bin” crookedly embroidered on the side.

She stared at those words for a few seconds. The medicine she took after the meal made her feel drowsy and she seemed to return to the evening when she fell into the sea in a daze.

At that time, sea water enveloped her from all directions, filling her nose and ears, and the sense of suffocation instantly wrapped her whole body.

She thought dying just like that, seemed pretty disrespectful.

That was what Hu Die thought before she lost her conscious, she slowly closed her eyes and let herself fall to the bottom of the sea.

The second she closed her eyes; she felt someone pull her up.

When she woke up again, she had returned to this familiar ward. Regarding everything that happened that day, only this dirty hat remained to prove that it was not a dream.

Hu Die took a short nap and woke up in the evening. After the typhoon, Rongcheng entered the long rainy season, there was always the sound of rain in the evening.

She got up and got out of bed. She picked out a new wig from the closet and put it on. Jiang Man opened the door and saw her daughter looking back and forth in the mirror and said with a smile, “You already look pretty enough.”

“Not as good-looking as my mother.” Hu Die turned her head to look at her mother and also laughed: “Mom is the prettiest.”

Jiang Man was a retired pair skater. Her partner was her childhood sweetheart and also Hu Die’s father, Hu Yuan Heng. After retiring, she and her husband have been helping out the national figure skating team. Although they are nearly fifty years old now, time had not left many traces on their faces.

“No one can compare to that mouth of yours.” Jiang Man took a thin cardigan and draped it over Hu Die’s shoulders, “Are you hungry? You didn’t eat much at noon.”

“A little, but I don’t really want to eat.” Since the start of chemotherapy, Hu Die’s appetite has been poor, and occasionally she would feel nauseous and vomit when she ate something wrong.

“Then do you want some soup? Your father cooked it and brought it over in the afternoon. It’s your favorite scallop and chicken soup.”

Hu Die didn’t want Jiang Man to worry, so she nodded and said yes.

The chicken soup was kept in the refrigerator. Jiang Man filled a small bowl and put it in the microwave to heat it up. Hu Die followed her around the whole time.

After drinking the chicken soup, Hu Die glanced at Jiang Man, who was sitting at the table reading the recipes, and hesitantly called out, “Mom…”

“Huh? What’s the matter?”

“If it stopped raining two days later, I want to go out for a walk.” Hu Die pouted her lips, “I’ve been in the hospital for almost half a month, I feel like mold is sprouting from my body.”

“You…” Jiang Man has always doted on her daughter. Since Hu Die fell ill, Jiang Man put off all her work and came back from abroad to take care of her daughter herself. The accident last time made her worry to the point that sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night, and had to come take a look to make sure Hu Die was sleeping in her bed before she could feel rest assured.

“I just want to go out for a while, if you are worried, you can come with me.” Hu Die tried to convince her, “I also want to find the person who saved me. I wanted to thank him.”

During this period, Rongcheng’s weather was filled with either a typhoon or the rain, Jiang Man was worried that Hu Die’s condition would worsen, so she forgot about that matter.

She relented, “Then when it doesn’t rain anymore, I’ll go with you.”

Hu Die laughed, “Okay! Thank you, Mom.”

It rained for a whole week in Rongcheng. On a sunny day, Hu Die and Jiang Man went out early in the morning. According to the words “Tan Island Rescue Team” on the hat, the mother and daughter quickly found the office of the rescue team.

It’s just a pity that the owner of this hat was fired two days ago due to work negligence.

“Ah Bin… he has never been serious about his work; he loves to gamble and play. I advise you not to look for him, be careful of being blackmailed.”

“Thank you, but do you have his contact information here? No matter what, he saved my daughter. I should still thank him.”

“Yes, but he might not be there.” The staff member flipped through the staff profile file in the drawer. He found He Bin’s page and handed it over, “Here, that’s it.”

Jiang Man took a picture of He Bin’s profile page with her mobile phone, she thanked the staff and turned to her daughter, “Yue Yue, let’s go.”

“En.” Hu Die slightly bowed to the staff, “Thank you.”

Hu Die followed her mother out of the office, when she passed by the board with staff pictures in the corridor, she saw a two-inch photo with the word He Bin on it in the lower left corner.

The man was well-shaven and was wearing the staff uniform, he didn’t look as sleezy as the staff said.

But Hu Die recognized that his eyes were not the same as the ones in her memory.

Jiang Man walked a few steps and saw that her daughter didn’t keep up. She turned around and walked to her side, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think that was the person that saved me.” When she was taken away by the medical staff, Hu Die had regained consciousness, she was just not fully awake at that time.

When that person put the hat on her head, she only saw that person’s eyes and his hand.

“Don’t we have his phone number? We’ll know when we call and ask.” Jiang Man said, “Let’s go, it’s so hot outside, be careful of heatstroke.”

“Um.”

He Bin’s phone was switched off. Jiang Man and her husband went to his house to look for him. The neighbors said that he was often away from home for a week or two, and they don’t know when he would come back.

Hu Die insisted on calling him every day, and she even topped up a hundred yuan to his number. She didn’t know why she was so persistent but she just thought she had to find the person who saved her.

Even if that person really is He Bin.

Finally, her hard work paid off. He Bin answered Hu Die’s call at 8 o’clock on Wednesday night. He was probably in an Internet café; she could hear a lot of noise in the background.

“Hello…is this He Bin?”

“Yes, who are you?”

“Um… well, I, I am… do you still remember that you rescued a girl at the beach of Tan Island on the tenth of this month?”

“What, did you call the wrong number?” He Bin cursed out loud, Hu Die thought that he was impatient, and was about to say something else when she heard the other party curse again: “Damn, what is this marksman doing? Did you eat shit? Can’t you see the enemy entering the crystal?”

Hu Die: “…”

She took a deep breath, “It’s like this. I am the family member of the girl who fell into the water. When she came to the hospital, she was wearing your hat. It was gray and black, with the words “Tan Island Rescue Team” embroidered on it, also the “Bin” character.”

When she mentioned the hat, He Bin realized what she was talking about, but he was in a hurry to push the tower so he just said in a rush, “I didn’t save you, you’re talking about Jing Yu. I’m hanging up.”

“Wait……”

Before Hu Die could ask who “Jing Yu” was, He Bin had already hung up the phone, and when she called him again, he had switched his phone off again.

She pursed her lips and put down her phone. She changed out of her hospital gown, put on a bob wig and prepared to go back to the place where she fell into the sea.

The hospital is not far from the beach. Before the accident, Hu Die liked to come to the beach to watch the sunset in the evening. Watching the moment the sea swallowed up the sun, she will have a sense of luck that she passed another day safely again.

The seaside in summer was crowded with people, the waves crashed against the rock reefs and it pushed out into waves of different shapes.

Hu Die walked to the place where she usually watches the sunset, a wooden guardrail was added at some point to keep the crowd away from the edge, there was a wooden notice board was erected beside ion the side.

——There are reefs below, dangerous, please do not approach.

Hu Die: “…”

Inexplicably, she felt that the fence and the sign were there because of her.

Hu Die walked around the beach, whenever she encountered a person wearing a rescue uniform, she would subconsciously look at the other person’s eyes and hands.

They’re not the right person.

As night fell, the crowd on the beach dispersed and the shore lit up with colorful lights, making the entire area look like a galaxy falling from the sky.

Hu Die went back to the hospital and told her mother what she found out. Jiang Man called the staff who received them at the rescue center that day. There was no staff named “Jing Yu” in the rescue center, and they don’t know who that was.

Jiang Man said, “Then maybe it was He Bin’s friend.”

Hu Die nodded in agreement, “I’ll call him again tomorrow and ask.”

Jiang Man didn’t say anything about her daughter’s obsession with finding this person, she just said, “You should also pay attention to your body, don’t overwork yourself.”

“I know.”

Hu Die started to go to the beach to watch the sunset again every day, but recently she also had the task of finding her rescuer. She no longer stayed in the same place like she did before. Occasionally she would go for a walk on the beach, and sometimes she would even walk around the whole shore.

It’s just that she didn’t find this “whale” until the next rainy period came.

Whale.

It was her code name for this person based on the pronunciation of the word “Jing Yu”. Unfortunately for Hu Die, this whale never returned to this area nor did she find out the correct characters for “Jing Yu”.

Today is the last sunny day in Rongcheng.

In the evening, there was a wind blowing by the sea, the sunset was broken into several pieces, and the moon was covered by dark clouds.

The tide was continuous, the rain is about to come.

Hu Die walked around the beach; she unknowingly went back to the place where she fell into the sea. The sign and the fence couldn’t stop the roaring sounds of the tide.

She took a step forward subconsciously. Before she reached the fence, she heard someone call her.

“Hey.”

Hu Die took a step back and turned to look at the source of the sound.

Several street lights in this area were broken so the area was relatively dimmer than its surroundings. The person who called out was standing in the shadow so Hu Die couldn’t see his appearance clearly.

The boy walked out of the darkness slowly, his tall and slender figure slowly came into the faint light, and his eyebrows and eyes were revealed one by one.

He had short hair, a few strands hanging messily on the forehead, and dark eyes. His complexion was very white and there was a sense of somberness in his demeanor.

He wore a large white t-shirt and black overalls pants, revealing a section of his lean calves, and a pair of black flip flops.

He was holding a bag of fruits in his hand. The blue veins on the back of his hand were particularly clear because of how tight he was holding onto it. His wrist bones were also prominent, like jagged peaks shrunk down to proportion.

As his footsteps gradually got closer, Hu Die saw clearly that he had inner double eyelids, the folds at the end of the eyes were not very obvious, and his eyelashes were identical to the ones in her memory.

They were curved and long.

He stopped two or three meters away from Hu Die, his eyes falling on her face. During the few seconds of silence, Hu Die wondered if he had recognized her.

In the next second, her guess was confirmed.

The boy sighed helplessly; his dark eyes never leaving her face. His voice sounded like ice soda downed in one gulp after a long summer run.

It was cool and memorable.

“If you jump down again today, I’m not going to save you anymore.”

Jing Yu is 2 years older than Hu Die. Also, the meanings of Hu Die and Jing Yu’s names are not “Butterfly and Whale”, they just have the same pronunciation as those two words.