Awkward. Sure.
Saturday morning I walked into the office. J was there alone. He looked up and nodded at me the way you would look at someone who, the previous night, was drunk and acted stupidly, hiding what you really thought with some fake concern.
I walked up to him, extended my hand and said “Good morning J, thank you for dinner last night. I’m sorry I acted like a child.”. His mouth hung open again like it did when I wiped K’s cheek the night before.
I sat down, and soon the Computer Guy appeared. He walked in towards K’s desk, had a short look and asked J something in Chinese. He walked past, around my desk, avoiding eye-contact with me, and left again. How out of place, I thought. He never comes into our office, and I’m sure he asked where K was. I wondered if he liked K and if something happened the previous night.
“Where is K?”, I asked J. “Checking exam papers at another school”, he said. Ah. She had messaged me early in the morning to enquire how I was. I had replied and had sent several other at intervals, but she had ignored them. Now I knew why, or I hoped I knew. She was busy.
She returned around lunch time, but made an effort to ignore me. I sent several more messages, but also got ignored. By the end of the day I was very frustrated again, and this time decided to go running. My hands were a little red and broken from punching the tree. Cool, I thought. Battle scars. If only my opponent wasn’t a defenceless tree and my cause wasn’t an emotional outburst.
I went to the place where we shared our first kiss. It took a while by bus to get there, and then I ran up the path. It’s in the mountains, but it’s not a rough mountain path. It’s quite a casual run, and mildly challenging. I had sent her messages on my journey, about being sorry for my behaviour the previous night, about how I felt about her, about what I was feeling. By the time I had walked back from the mountain, I think I had sent her good 30 or so messages. And I told her I love her in many, creative ways.
Eventually she replied saying “you’re a little crazy, you know?”. “Actually”, I said, “I’m VERY crazy”. That was the only message I got from her for the rest of the night.
Sunday we had classes again, because this week is a holiday week. She ignored me again. After my last class, Sunday afternoon, I asked her “do you have nothing to say to me?”. “No”, she said. I left and went running again.
She called me just as I started. “Where are you?”, she asked concerned. “Just starting to run”, I replied. She was very concerned that I was up there alone. For some reason she, some others, and even King, thinks it’s a dangerous place to be alone. I’m from South Africa, it’s dangerous to be there alone, so I disagreed. There are no funny people, definitely nobody with a gun willing to kill me for 20 yuan, and no real wildlife.
“Call me when you get down, ok?”, she said, expressing cautious concern. I could feel she had forgiven me at least a little. I felt full of energy and bounce and quickly progressed along the path further than I had been before. Eventually I got to some small farmland and encountered some people collecting unidentified stuff. “Can I go along this path?”, I asked, pointing to the path which was disappearing between one or two peasant houses and looked like it might run dead. “Sure”, they said, along with some other things I didn’t understand.
I continued walking. The path ran along a small river. The river was about a meter lower than the path, and about 3 meters wide, although at one particular point it was squeezed by some rocks. Something caught my eye on a flat rock opposite to the bank I was on. I looked down and nearly wet my pants.
The rock was carved, by the river I guess, and formed a smooth, bowl-like shape on the bank of the river. What I saw was longer than I am tall, about as fat as my fore-arm, pitch black and slithering very fast, trying to make it up the smooth, steep bank of the river. It tried several times before it got enough momentum, it’s entire body pulsating from head to toe as it tried to move. I froze and watched it make it up the bank, slithering in underneath the bushes.
It was a [expletive] big snake, and as if to assert it’s size, fairly big bushes rattled fiercely as it slithered past, up and away from me. I was a little numb. I’ve seen snakes in real life before, but relatively smallish ones in safe enclosures. Never big snakes like this which, if it wanted to, could encircle my body at least 3 times and squeeze the life out of me, and certainly never from close enough for it actually to be able to do so. Of course, I’m just a sissy. It wasn’t the squeeze-the-life-out-of-you type of snake, in fact, I doubt it was even poisonous, but still; scary sight.
But, did I decided bravely, I had run far enough and perhaps it wasn’t safe to continue further into the unknown alone. I turned around and ran back. “Oh, coming back so soon?” mused the villagers collecting their stuff. “Yeah”, I said, “there was a really big snake over there.”.
“Oh?”, they enquired with hunger in their eyes, “where?”. “Over there”, I pointed. “Why didn’t you beat it?” asked one of the women, showing me how it should have been done. “Because it was REALLY big,”, I said, “why would I try to beat it?”. “To eat”, said the other woman. Right, it’s China after all. “Hao chi ma?”, I asked, enquiring about the taste. “Yes,” she said, “delicious!”.
I ran back, and at exactly the same place I was before, K phoned me again. “Are you off?”, she asked about my location. “No, but soon”, I replied. “Go home and get some rest”, she advised. “No, I have nothing to do, and to go home is the last thing I want. I’ll go to KFC for a coffee”. “Ok”, she offered to my heart’s delight, “maybe I’ll meet you there”.
Not too long after that I met her at the KFC. We had a shortish coffee and a nice chat about the previous nights events and cleared some things up. The Computer Guy, she confessed interestingly enough, had told her he likes her, the previous night after I had left. “Oh”, I said with not as much disbelief as she had anticipated, “I knew it”. “How?”, she asked. I explained about his strange behaviour. “Yes”, she asked, “but how do you know that is what he was doing and what he asked J?”. “Because I can’t speak the language so well”, I explained, “I have to find meaning in other things. Things that are out of place, people who act strange, body language, etc.”. It was a substantiated claim in light of what he had said to her.
After too little time, she had to go home.
Yesterday I was looking forward to seeing her. I was up early, but she only woke up some time later. She messaged me to say her dad had recruited her for some housework and that she wouldn’t be able to see me in the afternoon, maybe later. I waited. Her message came through after five to say she had eaten too many strawberries, was sick and was on her way to the hospital.
She messaged me again some hours later to say that she was ok, but at home in bed. I didn’t see her and felt terrible for her being sick. We exchanged some messaged before I fell asleep.
This morning I was keen, surely we’d meet each other today. I messaged her when I knew she would still be asleep and waited for a reply. But nothing. I started walking through the whole of Shiyan looking for new shoes. My Timberland’s are about to disintegrate, and I need some new ones before that happens. But, did I discovered having walked the ENTIRE length and width of Shiyan, there are no shoes to my liking above size 10. And size 10, of course, is too small for my petite feet.
I finally went home, tired from walking, fed-up from not finding shoes, and confused about having had no reply from K. Near 6pm she messaged me. “I was sick in hospital”, she said, “nearly died”. I replied to ask how she was. She said she was very ill this morning, was admitted, but now was on her way home. The whole getting sick and hospital story didn’t feel right in my suspicious mind. Like perhaps she was fabricating a story to not see me. I have written it off against the week of insecurity and jealously, and have put it out of my mind.
We exchanged some messages, she slept, and I am now here, close to 1am, because I spent a good part of my day sleeping due to sheer boredom.
Two days without her hurt.