In March, during the damp and rainy season in southern China, Lu Chao was invited to an entrepreneurship forum and got dragged along to dinner by an old classmate.
As soon as she sat down, she saw Jiang Buran. She wore a thin knit dress and a black blazer, with her hair tied low. When she saw Lu Chao, she turned her face away as if she couldn't care less and said nothing.
It was almost exactly the same face as ten years ago.
Her classmates teased her as they tried to persuade her to drink. “Teacher Jiang is really something now. She's a major influencer in her own right, and she runs an agency too. Business is booming.”
“Lu Chao, you used to make the teacher angry all the time. You should hurry up and cozy up to her and apologize for all that youthful mischief!”
Lu Chao didn't drink that night.
When she went outside, she saw Jiang Buran standing alone beneath a streetlamp. Fine raindrops fell around her, but she wasn't carrying an umbrella. Her eyes were dewy as she stared at Lu Chao from a distance.
Lu Chao walked up to her and put a hand on her waist, then whispered in her ear, “Teacher Jiang, are you drunk?”
“Are you coming home with me?”
The waist beneath her hand trembled slightly. Lu Chao lifted her head and smiled, admiring how the older woman blushed to the tips of her ears at her words.
*
At eighteen, Lu Chao wanted nothing more than to escape this stuffy, rainy southern cage. She wanted fresh air, sunshine, and Jiang Buran.
Jiang Buran said no. It was impossible.
Jiang Buran said it would only be one day, one night.
Jiang Buran said, “You little rascal, don't bite.”
At twenty-eight, Lu Chao had made a success of her career, yet willingly returned to this cage.
To catch the caged bird she'd longed for but couldn't have over the past ten years.
*
Jiang Buran had lived her whole life just like her name: flawless, untouched by worldly affairs.
Who could have guessed she'd run into this silly girl?
From head to toe, the girl left her drenched.
A dazzling, bold little sun x a cool, quiet evergreen, with an eight-year age gap
There is no romantic relationship while the teacher-student relationship is in effect. She is not a teacher in the traditional sense, but a tutor who helps students prepare for studying abroad.
Theme: I haven't figured this out yet.
