Chapter 12.1 - The Fragrance of that Tea (Part 1)
Ai Jingchu walked back alone, with staff from the scenic area clearing snow along the way. When he reached the halfway point, he saw his car.
There was snow piled on the hood and roof.
He didn’t know which child had drawn a large heart on the snow on the hood, and a few tourist-like students were adding an arrow shooting through it. He slowly walked over, and only one girl with big eyes noticed him. When he took out his keys and pressed the remote, the car beeped, and the lights inside turned on. That’s when they realized Ai Jingchu was the owner of the car, and they all exclaimed, quickly running away.
The girl with the big eyes didn’t react as quickly and stood still, caught in the act.
After running a short distance, the others turned around to look and saw that Ai Jingchu wasn’t planning to pay attention to them at all. They stopped, pointed at the girl, and laughed happily.
The joyful atmosphere infected Ai Jingchu, and he tilted his head, unable to hold back a smile.
When he smiled, his lips curved gently, the corners of his mouth slightly dipping inward, creating two small dimples, and his eyes narrowed slightly. There was a kind of shy, heart-pounding beauty in that spreading smile.
The nearby girl stared at Ai Jingchu, seemingly unable to move.
The distant boy noticed his girlfriend’s awkwardness and called out displeased, "Nannan, are you coming or not?"
She snapped back to reality, hurriedly running off.
As she moved, her phone fell out of her pocket. She ran a few steps before realizing, and when she turned back, she saw Ai Jingchu had already picked it up for her. She blushed, walked back, and took it from him. Her boyfriend, eager to hold her hand, said, "How long are you going to stall? We’ll miss the sea of clouds."
"Thanks," the girl said.
Suddenly, Ai Jingchu asked an odd question, "How old are you?"
The girl paused for a moment, "Nineteen."
Ai Jingchu stood still for a moment, then composed himself, opened the door, and got in the car.
Nineteen...
Such a distant age for him.
He didn’t teach undergraduates; most of his students were in their twenties or older. Some were doctors sent from lower-level hospitals for training, so some were even much older than him.
At nineteen, he was almost done with his undergraduate degree and preparing to enter medical school. He was smarter than most people, using less time to study, but he didn’t have any spare time for anything else.
What were others doing at nineteen? First or second year of college, an age when love could be pursued freely.
And what about at fifteen?
As Ai Jingchu fastened his seatbelt, he glanced over at the mineral water bottle on the passenger seat. One was full, and the other he had drunk halfway.
He couldn’t help but pick up the half-drunk bottle, examining it.
Like many of his colleagues, he had mild obsessive-compulsive tendencies, particularly when it came to eating utensils or anything else. Even if he got his hands dirty in the morning, the first thing he did when he reached the mountaintop was to borrow a bowl of cold water from the Eastern Mountain Temple to wash his hands clean. As for overnight water, he never drank it, so he almost never drank from an opened bottle of water.
But now, at this moment, he twisted the cap off the bottle and took a sip.
The clear liquid slowly flowed from the bottle mouth into his mouth, sliding down his throat and into his body.
It was cold—
A month later, Zeng Li ran into Ai Jingchu again. To be precise, she wasn’t meeting him on purpose; she was at the hospital for a follow-up appointment. The appointment had been made the day he got his braces fitted.
She registered, handed her follow-up card to the nurse, and then sat down in the waiting area. The place was packed—this was the first couple of days back after the New Year, so patients who hadn’t been seen in over a month were all coming in at once.
Zeng Li was a little late, so she ended up waiting for over an hour with no sign of her turn.
A beautiful woman sitting next to her couldn’t help but strike up a conversation. “What is going on here?” she asked.
As soon as she spoke, Zeng Li couldn't help but admire her and blurted out, “Your teeth are so white.”
The woman smiled with pleasure, “Everyone says that.”
“To have teeth so white even with braces, that's impressive.”
The woman smiled confidently and took out a makeup kit from her bag to check her reflection. “I was thinking of adding some rhinestones too.”
After a while, the woman started complaining again, “So annoying, waiting like this. Hospitals are supposed to be service industries. How can they be like this?”
“Yeah,” Zeng Li sighed in agreement.
Around eleven, her name was finally called.
She hurried into the consultation room.
Zhou Wen, the doctor, greeted her, “Zeng Li, if you don’t mind, you’ll need to wait a little longer. You’re still behind one patient.” She said this while continuing to work at the side of the treatment chair.
The patient before Zeng Li, a young boy still in school uniform, seemed to have broken his braces.
Zhou Wen asked, “How many did you lose?”
“Two,” the boy answered.
“Did you eat a lot of good food during the New Year? How did you break them?”
“I bit into a rib,” the boy said.
“Looks like you didn’t listen to what Dr. Zhou and Teacher Ai told you,” Zhou Wen said, scolding him gently, “I told you not to eat hard, cold, or things that go from hot to cold. Next time you break them, I won’t help you. You’ll just make me more work.”
The boy stuck out his tongue.
The whole conversation made Zeng Li, who was waiting nearby, feel a bit embarrassed. She was older than the boy by a year, and yet she hadn’t remembered the instructions either.
She glanced around and spotted Ai Jingchu’s figure in the distance. When he wore the white coat, he looked completely different compared to his casual clothes—he seemed cold and distant, almost like he was unapproachable.
