Chapter 38

It was high summer, and the holiday belonging to students about to start their third year was nearly over.

Late July is Ji Ran and Gi Changning's shared birthday.

A fortnight before it, her father and Ji Changfeng asked Ji Ran on an after-dinner walk what she wanted.

Two thoroughly straightforward men have no idea how to spell surprise, and having asked they stared at her hopefully, as though a word from her would have them up fetching a cloud down out of the sky.

Luckily Ji Ran did not want a cloud. She thought about it for a while and said she wanted the two of them to come somewhere with her on the day.

And soon it was the twenty-sixth of July, a Sunday as it happened, a week before Ji Ran's year went back early for the third year.

At half past nine in the morning, Ji Changfeng driving, his father in the passenger seat and the birthday girl in the back, the three of them pulled up outside Four Seasons.

As they arrived, Gi Changning's father was outside talking politely to a customer, mask on and cheerfulness coming off him in waves. "I'm sorry. It's my daughter's birthday today and we're shut at lunchtime. Thank you for thinking of us. Come another day and a bowl of noodles is on me."

The customer was not put out and congratulated him. "Many happy returns to her. And there's no need for free noodles. I'll bring a friend another time."

Having seen him off, he wiped his hands on his apron, hung the closed sign up and went back in for a last tidy before locking up.

As he pushed the curtain aside into the kitchen he heard the bead curtain rattle behind him, and turned without thinking. "I'm sorry, we're closed today. Ranran?"

He was astonished. He had not expected her at that hour.

The two girls share a birthday, and the two households had agreed to keep the lunchtimes separate and all go to Jinhua Gardens in the evening for a second round.

Ji Ran was in a lovely dress with a bag across her, hands behind her back and her eyes curving. "Dad. I'd like to have my birthday at your house. Is that all right?"

All right. How could it not be all right.

Both are flesh and both are his, and having them together was more than he could have hoped for, and he could not get a word out. "Do your dad and your brother know?"

As he said it, her dad and her brother came through the door, and Ji Xuejun laughed grandly. "The two girls have settled it between them, so Changfeng and I are being shameless and asking you for two more pairs of chopsticks."

"That explains it." He slapped his thigh. "That explains Ningning coming home yesterday and telling me to do plenty of food. I thought she was having classmates. Why didn't you two say something sooner?"

Ji Xuejun took it up and made a show of melancholy. "Children grow up. They have their secrets."

He laughed. "Right. Why don't you take Ranran and Changfeng on to ours. Qing and Ningning are both in. I'll shut up here and get some shopping, and tell me what you and Changfeng like."

Ji Xuejun rolled his sleeves up and called over the only able-bodied man on the premises. "Ji Changfeng. Come and give your uncle a hand."

He was about to refuse and Ji Xuejun had already started stacking tables and chairs. "Don't be polite with me. Ji Changfeng has strength to spare. When this is done we'll all go to the market and Ji Changfeng can carry the bags."

The lowest-ranking man present had nothing to say.

A coup, as usual, bore thinking about.

It was eleven by the time the shopping was done, and Ji Changfeng drove them to a different estate.

Yes. The Gis had moved.

The estate is slightly out of the way, and it has a pleasant setting and proper security and a reasonable rent, and the neighbours are mostly retired people and young workers.

Ji Ran knew about the move and had been to see the new place after term ended. It is about a hundred and fifty square metres, three bedrooms and two reception rooms, with wonderful light. The landlady's furniture was old and she did not mind tenants replacing it so long as nothing was broken on purpose. When Ji Ran came, Gi Changning's mother was directing men from the furniture shop, and saw her and pointed happily at the air conditioner and said, "Ranran, we brought the one you bought with us."

She finally has the place with underfloor heating she had been wanting.

The new flat is on the twenty-first floor. All four of them had bags in both hands. Ji Changfeng is the strongest and had the chicken and duck and fish and meat, and Ji Ran was given a bundle of celery for form's sake, while Ji Xuejun and Gi Changning's father worked their way from what to cook to setting up a company and back to what to cook, enjoying themselves enormously.

The lift pinged. Ji Ran had the least to carry and went ahead to knock.

Her mother opened the door, saw Ji Ran's face and three men behind her, and went blank, and then got an arm round her shoulders and looked her up and down. "Good heavens. Ranran."

Then she asked the two Jis in. "Chairman Ji, Changfeng. This is very sudden. Old Gi, why didn't you ring me?"

He had nothing to say.

He had forgotten.

The chairman was a little put out. "Why is he Changfeng and I'm Chairman Ji?"

Far too formal.

She stopped, and gave in. "Right. Brother Ji, then."

Which pleased him enormously. "That's better."

Gi Changning had come home from the coaching school the previous afternoon, heard the noise and put her head out. "Ranran."

The fact that she had clearly expected it brought her mother up short. "Oh, I see. When did you two arrange this? Neither of you said a word. I was going to do Ningning's birthday here at lunch and we'd all go to Jinhua Gardens in the evening for Ranran's."

Ji Ran teased her. "So I've saved you a tank of petrol."

The month before, on the day she passed her test, her mother bought a car outright.

She is now a designer on Anzhi's new trend line, and Fierce Flame, Blazing Sun earned her a very large bonus, and besides the car she had been actively looking at flats of her own.

"Yes, yes. Nobody looks after me like my daughters." She had had her hair permed into lovely waves that look slightly red in the light, and close up you could smell the oil on it. She got an arm round each girl, pushed them down onto the sofa and poured them each a glass of warm water.

Give Gi Changning an inch. "Do we get a reward?"

"You do not." Her mother reached over and tapped the back of each girl's head. "And for not telling me in advance, neither of you is allowed in the kitchen today."

Both of them pulled faces of mock injury.

Her mother's mouth did not come down once. She went almost skipping into the kitchen to wash fruit for her daughters, and close up you could hear her humming without knowing she was doing it.

Ji Ran saw a copy of Basic Principles of Marxism on the sofa with a notebook inside it. Her mother's handwriting is neat and every stroke carefully made. Ji Ran poked Gi Changning. "Is Mum doing the self-study degree exams?"

Her mother did not have much schooling and has an alarming gift for design, and even so, when she first joined the company there was quiet laughter about her qualifications. That is not a thing anybody else can fix for you. So she won the design department over with the gift, and after leaving the mill she began studying design properly and bought a shelf of professional books, and found time to pass her driving test, and has now signed up for an online course towards a qualification. The sheer hard work of it embarrasses Gi Changning.

Gi Changning had not got over it. "The pressure is awful. We do politics on the arts side, and last night Mum asked me a whole string of questions on Marxist philosophy and I could only answer half of them."

Being asked by her mother is more frightening than being picked on in class, and after wandering back to her room she took the lesson to heart and learned every answer she had missed, and dreamed about Marxist philosophy.

Ji Ran asked, out of nowhere, "What are the two basic attributes of a commodity?"

"Value and use value," Gi Changning said straight off.

Gi Changning had nothing to say.

She turned her head slowly towards Ji Ran.

Ji Ran put the book down and tipped her head and looked back, holding in a laugh.

Ji Ran cracked first. "Very fluent. You haven't been slacking."

Gi Changning appealed to heaven. "Who are you? Give me back my gentle, sincere, saintly Ranran."

She had not cut her hair since the May holiday, and nearly three months is enough for it to grow out, and it was up in a scrunchie. Leaning back against the sofa had rubbed it half out.

Ji Ran took something out of her bag and held it in a closed fist in front of her, then opened her fingers, and a pendant swung there, and Gi Changning shot upright and the scrunchie came off completely onto the sofa.

She caught it and looked at it closely. A little goldfish the length of half a finger, made up in the round, stuffed full of wadding so the belly was plump and soft and springy to the touch, with a red tassel hanging below it and one small jade bead above the tassel, which is what finishes it.

More to the point, Gi Changning had never anywhere seen a goldfish made in the round by Ji Ran. Which is to say the one in her hand was the only one there is.

Ji Ran watched her face. "The goldfish I promised you. Happy birthday."

Gi Changning opened her arms and hugged her. "I love it. I'm putting it on my school bag, and it's coming to the arts exams with me."

Her mother finished the fruit and set it on the table, having heard the end of that. "Ningning has a present for Ranran too. She wouldn't even let me see it."

Gi Changning was half wheedling and half mysterious. "Because I want Ranran to see it first."

With which she put her slippers on, took Ji Ran's hand, led her to a door, took the handle and opened it.

The room was already finished. The wooden shelves were packed with medical books of every kind, enough to make you wonder whether a bookshop had been moved in. The top shelf held wuxia novels by the four great names, and medical journals somebody had collected, with a few colour comics about doctors in among them.

On the desk, in the most obvious place, was a family photograph of the Gis from before. The accident had not happened yet. Her mother was in a white shirt and her father in the chef's whites he valued most, and a small Ji Ran had hold of both their hands with her feet off the ground, swinging without a care in the world.

As if time had run back to a day in the first month, Gi Changning copied what Ji Ran had done then and pulled out the desk drawer, showing a new album. "Luckily the film was still there. They printed up clear enough."

"Ranran, you were lovely when you were little."

The pale blue curtain lifted a little in the wind and laid a small moving shadow across the orange bedding, and time came awake.

Ji Ran came back to herself. The room is far bigger than the second room in the attic, with space for large shelves and a wide desk and a wardrobe.

Opening a book in here on an autumn afternoon would be very comfortable indeed.

Ji Ran asked quietly, "When did you start on this?"

Gi Changning was not going to answer it. "Probably every day you can think of."

From the day Ji Ran left the Gis. From the day Ji Ran kept that room for her at the villa. From the day the Gis moved.

Gi Changning had wanted to do it for a very long time. At weekends when the coaching school was off she came home in secret. Every book on those shelves she carried back from a shop herself, her mother cut the curtains, her parents chose the furniture together, and she did the room.

Ji Ran went in and touched the photograph with time stopped in it. "There's something missing."

Gi Changning took offence and her eyes went wide. "There is not. What's missing?"

"You." Ji Ran put the photograph back. "Let's take one later and stick it on the desk."

Gi Changning did not know what face to make, and could only marvel that Ji Ran is Ji Ran and will always have the ability to leave her with nowhere to put her hands. She got her phone out, resigned. "Right. Selfie now, printed this afternoon, and you're taking one back to Jinhua Gardens and sticking it where everybody can see it."

Oh, this wretched need to win.

Ji Ran leaned in. Under a front-facing camera you can see the smallest thing a face does. "You still owe me something."

"I know." Gi Changning said it before she pressed the button. "Happy birthday."