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Hot Soup and Soft Bread 5

Synopsis and Table of Contents <- Chapter 4 Read on WordPress here

Chapter 5: Chocomonts V

Zhong Qiuyan called Zhou Cunqu and said, “Try coming down by yourself. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”

Cunqu held his phone in one hand and his umbrella in another and stood still outside the door. Qiuyan continued, “I won’t hang up the call. Just remember, I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”

Cunqu looked down at the stairs in front of him that stretched onto what seemed like the depths of a cave. The faint scent of rain lingered in the air. The sound of Qiuyan’s breaths sounded from the other end of the call. Cunqu slowly walked down the stairs.

Qiuyan asked him: “Do you see the ‘Amiability makes you rich’ yet?”

Cunqu said: “I see it.”

Qiuyan asked again: “And have you passed by the shoe rack outside Teacher Zhuang’s place?”

Cunqu didn’t reply immediately. Qiuyan waited a bit, and then Cunqu said: “I see it.”

Just like that, he slowly descended to the first floor. Qiuyan, holding the phone, gave him a big thumbs up. Cunqu felt a bit exhausted. Qiuyan supported him and said, “You did well. Our little friend[1] Zhou Cunqu did so well.”

Building No.3’s flickering entrance light suddenly dimmed. Cunqu, body stripped of energy, leaned his head against Qiuyan’s shoulder. The latter didn’t dare to move. He moved Cunqu slightly closer to himself and held his waist.

Qiuyan suddenly really wanted to know something. Zhou Cunqu said he liked men. Then has he been with men before? What were their kisses like? What about even more intimate contact? He couldn’t picture it.

Qiuyan let his imagination run wild for quite some time as he hugged Cunqu. Then he suddenly mumbled, “When I lived in the countryside, I quite liked this one girl who grew up with me. Now her kid is old enough to ride my bus.”

Cunqu, confused, made an “en” sound to show he was listening. Qiuyan let go of him and awkwardly rubbed his hair, saying, “It’s nothing.”

Cunqu said: “You, you’re not very capable then.”

Qiuyan was caught off guard for a moment. He then rebuffed: “What do you mean I’m not capable? Plenty of girls liked me. Qiu Xuemei, my mom, said that I rank as one of the most handsome men in the village.”

Cunqu replied: “Aunt Qiu must be very kind.”

Recently, Qiuyan discovered that ever since Cunqu could speak to him more and more fluently, the latter started to exhibit similarities to his grandma Liu Xiaoying. Regardless of whether it’s the open mocking or the backhanded sarcasm.

Cunqu had walked a bit ahead by himself. Qiuyan chased after him and grabbed his hand. He spread out his fingers and started playing with them as he asked: “Ge, what were you trying to say just now.”

Cunqu didn’t pay him any regard.

A couple of days later, it was only Liu Xiaoying and Zhou Cunqu having dinner together. Xiaoying said that Qiuyan called earlier saying he was off today and was meeting up with some friends. She held her red and white senior-friendly phone and replied: “You realy are treating my place like your own, huh? Even going as far as reporting you’re not going to make it for dinner.”

Qiuyan whined in a spoiled tone, “Liu Xiaoying. Starting from today you are my Second Grandma!”

Xiaoying scolded: “What first grandma, second grandma, you brat!”

In conclusion, that night there were 4 dishes on the dining table but only Xiaoying and Cunqu were present for dinner. Xiaoying said: “That youngster went out to see his friends.”

Cunqu nodded and picked up some celtuce with his chopsticks.

Qiuyan’s two childhood friends, a hairdresser apprentice named Da Yu[2] and a car mechanic A’Shan[3] wanted to hold a belated birthday celebration for him. The three of them grew up together in the same village; None of them did well in school and just fooled around all day. A’Shan never liked talking ever since he was little. He remembered when he was in the first grade of kindergarten[4], his mom had left him at the entrance of the kindergarten by the village supermarket. He held a pillow in his arms and squatted unmoving in the front of the building, refusing to budge even when a teacher came out to grab him.

A few of the other kids thought they were playing tug of war, and rushed in excitedly to participate. The teacher, a bit angered, asked in the regional dialect: “Just what are you doing here?”

Large droplets of tears fell with a splatter from A’Shan’s eyes. He cried, “I want to stay here and be a tree.”

Zhong Qiuyan and Da Yu, who were in the second grade of kindergarten then, ran over with excitement and squatted next to him. They asked him eagerly: “How? How? We want to be a tree as well!”

And so the three of them dumbly squatted there for half the day, resembling three mushrooms sprouting from some moss. This continued until Qiuyan asked A’Shan: “Can we turn back to humans for a bit?”

A’Shan nodded. The other two stood up, relieved.

The kindergarten teacher declared that year -- the three of them didn't have much prospects. If they did, she wouldn’t be surnamed Zhong.[5] The funny thing is, apparently this teacher found her birth parents later on and actually changed her last name from Zhong to theirs. But as prophesied, the three of them didn’t grow up to make anything of themselves.

A’Shan cracked open a few cans of beer and clinked his can against Qiuyan’s and Da Yu’s. Although Da Yu’s name meant “Big fish”, he physically resembled a small shrimp. He asked Qiuyan: “Your eyebags are gonna droop onto the ground. You haven’t been around recently either. Do you actually drive buses or did you secretly go off to steer a rocket?”

The open-air food stall[6] didn’t have that many customers at dusk. The female boss placed two large platters of barbecued meat skewers on their table. Qiuyan drank half a can of beer and replied, “You won’t know.”

Da Yu let out a “ha” in response. Qiuyan suddenly asked them: “Hey, would you guys be able to stay in your room for two years? And never go outside?”

A’Shan replied: “Isn’t that like spending 2 years in prison?”

Qiuyan chewed on the empty skewer stick, muttering: “Right… Just what kind of thing, would hurt someone so much that they shut themselves up for two years…”

Da Yu probed again: “Zhong Qiuyan, just what have you been up to recently?”

Qiuyan replied the same way. “You wouldn’t understand.” But to be honest, he didn’t understand either.

That day after midnight, Zhou Cunqu slowly walked past “Amiability makes you rich,” slowly walked past Teacher Zhuang’s place, and saw a broken Go board fallen outside of the “double yolk egg” grandpas’ door. When he reached the first floor, he didn’t see Qiuyan. Cunqu immediately felt uneasy. He clutched the long handle of his umbrella and stood stiff in front of the entrance at a loss of what to do. The past couple of days whenever he made it to the first floor, he would always see Qiuyan leaning against the security door. And when Qiuyan saw Cunqu, he’d wave him over and feed him a piece of Chocomont. Yesterday Qiuyan stuffed a fish-shaped cracker[7] instead into his mouth, then he asked: “Aren’t you surprised?” Cunqu was speechless but also amused.

Cunqu took out his phone and dialed his “Smart Assistant.” Qiuyan answered and said, “Come out.”

So for the first time, Cunqu pushed open the security door by himself and walked out onto the entry path of Building No.3. He walked alone down the narrow path, damp from a recent downpour of rain. The world was silent enough that he could hear the sound of his heartbeat. He was thirty-one years old, yet he was terrified of taking a short walk downstairs by himself.

When he finally reached the main entrance of the residential community, he saw Qiuyan standing just outside, holding half a cigarette in one hand. He reached out with his other hand to pull him over. He pulled him outside of Qin Qin Homeland. Cunqu stood still for a moment to process what happened, then he said to Qiuyan: “Give me a cigarette.”

The two of them stood smoking on the side of Breadfruit Tree Street[8]. Cunqu squinted his eyes, inhaled the cigarette smoke, and exhaled towards the ground. “The last time I was on this street,” he said, “it was raining heavily. That was two years ago.” He turned his head and smiled at Qiuyan: “Thank you.”

Qiuyan smiled in response. He drank with Da Yu and A’Shan until nearly midnight, then hailed a cab and hurried directly here. Cunqu said that his entire body smelled of alcohol. Qiuyan purposely clung onto him, saying: “Now you can smell too.”

Cunqu pushed him: “Really?”

Suddenly, Qiuyan reached out and hugged Cunqu. He tended to slur his speech after he drank a lot. One sentence slurring into the next, he quietly said: “Liu Xiaoying said that you used to be a super impressive person. Me and my friends, we’re just a bunch of barely-getting-by not-too-impressive ordinary people. So I won’t know if being a super impressive person is a super tiring thing. But I think it probably is, right? Are you tired?”

Cunqu leaned against Qiuyan’s embrace and gazed listlessly across the street at the newspaper stand closed for the night. Before he realized it, tears had uncontrollably trickled down his face and fallen onto the yellow-green bricks of the sidewalk. -> Chapter 6 Footnotes [1] He uses 小朋友 here, which literally translates to “little friend,” usually used to refer to kids. His entire tone here is that of commending a little kid for doing something well lol. But not in a condescending way, it’s more like a half-joke half-endearment. (If you guys read Fake Slackers, He Chao calls Xie Yu this all the time haha) [2] Likely a nickname, Da Yu literally translates to Big Fish (大鱼) [3] Same for A’Shan, which is the character for mountain（山) and an “A” （阿）in front of it. The “A” itself holds no meaning and is a common prefix before monosyllabic names to make them easier to say or just to indicate familiarity [4] Kindergarten in China is divided into 2 or 3 grades. 小 (small), 中 (medium), 大 (big) 班 (class). US Kindergarten maps to the highest grade 大班 , where kids between ages 5-6 attend. While for the two lesser grades they’re more comparable to preschool, with kids starting as early as 3 years old. [5] This is a pretty common saying to indicate you’re absolutely confident in what you’re declaring, as confident as you are in knowing your own last name. Sidenote, the character for the teacher's last name "Zhong" here is the same as the one for Zhong Qiuyan, but it’s a pretty common last name, and it’s probably even more common given that they're in the same countryside village. [6] An open-air food/drinking location that’s usually bustling later at night. The type of food is usually (unhealthy but delicious) street food like skewers, or just anything that goes well with drinks. [7] He actually refers to the specific brand of the crackers here -- 好多鱼. But I can’t figure out if there’s an English name for this brand. It literally translates to “A lot of fish.” [8] I didn’t know this but breadfruit trees were an actual type of tree! They produce, you guessed it, “breadfruit” which when cooked “is described as potato-like, or similar to freshly baked bread”. And the street right outside of Qin Qin Homeland is named after this tree.

#chinese novel #translation #chinese bl #danmei #hot soup and soft bread #chinese webnovel #really like this chapter #we see some good relationship development between the two #but also i love Da Yu and A'Shan and Qiuyan as a trio #the three of them probably split two braincells #not enough to go around but that's what makes them friends haha #earlier release than usual because i'm making use of the schedule function haha #maybe I can do another one later tonight #novel update

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