Ch6 - Miēmiē

Just as the evening fell, Chu Mian returned to the Hanning Mansion in downtown Ronggang. 

The faucet flowed with bubbling warm water, and he slowly rinsed the foam from his fingers. His aunt called from outside: “Miēmiē, your mother gave me a call this afternoon and said that she helped you arrange a lounge in the school so that you can go there for naps in the future.”

Chu Mian’s fingers paused a little.

His aunt didn’t hear him respond and asked, “Miēmiē, did you hear me?”

Chu Mian couldn’t help but sneer. He shook off the water droplets from his hand and said in a loud voice, “She might as well build a dormitory building in the school, wouldn’t that make it more convenient for me?” 

His aunt, who was sitting silently at the table, vaguely heard the sound of the bathroom hand dryer buzzing. After Chu Mian finished washing his hands, and came out to sit down, she asked tentatively, “Then I’ll call her back later and say you’ll figure it out yourself, okay?”

“Ignore her,” Chu Mian slowly and methodically mixed his vegetable salad and sent a small, plump tomato into his mouth, “She always makes a mountain out of a molehill, exaggerating to the school how much my illness affects my daily life and routine, and now all the teachers are taking special care of me.”

Chu Mian swallowed the sweet eggplant juice, and then without any inflections in his voice he continued: “Did you know that there is actually a window for me alone in the school cafeteria? What does she want, for me to enjoy the attention of others when I eat at noon every day? ”

She didn’t know since when, but the teenager’s beautiful face had started to become unconsciously shrouded by a layer of inexorable indifference when talking about his mother. As an aunt, Chu Heng saw his emotions that were betrayed by his eyes and tried to give him the maximum level of comfort: “After all, she’s not by your side, so her way of pampering you would inevitably be over the top. When you’ve time, try to communicate with her, or I can help you convey…”

“No, I said, ignore her,” Chu Mian looked straight into the young woman’s eyes, “She just wants to act like a young lady of a rich family, but she always feels guilty for this tiny amount of parental responsibility she has, so she uses this so-called ‘concern for her son’ endlessly to satisfy herself, and inturn embarrass me, do you understand?”

As soon as the teenager’s words fell, Chu Heng felt the oppressive force coming from his cold eyes. She had a momentary trance, and when she settled down to look at Chu Mian again, he had already pursed his lips and bowed his head, concentrating on cutting the beef on his plate into small pieces and eating it in a refined and orderly manner.

Chu Heng quietly heaved a sigh in her heart as she looked at this young boy’s calm and collected features that showed a maturity beyond his age. She also completely agreed with Chu Mian’s statement, so she simply changed the topic that would make him feel unpleasant. The chatting atmosphere returned to its usual light-heartedness. “Hey, the “Harry Potter” film set is open to the public this year. Why don’t we go play when you have your National Day holiday? I’ve seen many people posting pictures on Instagram, it seems very fun.”

Chu Mian was not very interested, but still agreed for this trip. After eating, Chu Heng went back to her room to do route planning with great enthusiasm. Compared to Chu Mian, her fifteen-year-old nephew, she was obviously a bit more playful. 

Since the third year of middle school, Chu Mian had moved into his aunt’s house on the grounds that “staying with his parents felt too stressful”. Chu Heng was an online comic artist with relatively free working hours. In her spare time, she would help Chu Mian study the nutritional balance of his diet. In addition, she was just twenty-five years old, and the generation gap between her and Chu Mian wasn’t too big. The relationship between the two was more like friends who could have fun together and take care of each other.

“The bowl you drank the soup from…” Chu Mian frowned halfway through eating and looked at Chu Heng as if he wanted to say something but then stopped.

Chu Heng looked down to check the bottom of the bowl and found that on the white porcelain three words were written using a marker by Chu Mian at some point: miēmiē‘s soup bowl.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

“Yt, atfs jii ibbx atf rjwf… rbwfalwfr P jmmlvfcajiis ugjy atf kgbcu bcf.” 

“Jjc’a sbe pera ajxf j ibbx yfobgf sbe ajxf la? Tbe’gf mjgfifrr cba pera bcmf bg aklmf.”

“Mlcf, olcf, olcf, P’ii yes wsrfio j cfk rfa abwbggbk, jcv P’ii ulnf jii atfrf ja tbwf ab sbe,” Jte Lfcu afjrfv, “Ktfc, sbe mjc kglaf ktjafnfg sbe kjca, bxjs?”

Influenced by his mother’s education, Chu Mian liked to distinguish his own things from others since he was a child. As he was slightly mysophobic, he would always find ways to put names on the imported tableware and cups to prevent others from misusing them. At home, he would rarely share the same items with his aunt, so Chu Heng would often see sticky notes that read “miēmiē‘s remote control”, “miēmiē‘s cushion”, “miēmiē‘s juicer” and so on. The sticky notes appeared in various places in the house, as if they were silent warnings from the teenager.

As night fell, Chu Mian sat on a soft chair on the balcony to rest, looking out at the bright lights of Ronggang’s commercial district and the shimmering Lanjiang River, the evening breeze crossed over the water and blew gently on his cheeks. He was holding a snow-white python in his arms. Among the polygenic mutation Ball Pythons, the one with the all-white appearance was specially named “White Wedding“, and the name Chu Mian gave it was “Fiona”. 

Fiona could be considered as Chu Mian’s closest family member. It had extremely good character and gentle temperament, and often shrunk into a ball. Chu Mian had been taking care of it for two years already. Now its body had grown to the average thickness of the teenager’s arms.

Chu Mian stroked its smooth scales, let it coil on his forearm, got up and went to the living room to get his school bag.

Chu Heng was lying in front of her computer watching the reports on the Harry Potter film site on the Internet, unable to decide whether to wear a Gryffindor Academy School Uniform on the plane or not. Just as she turned her head, she saw Chu Mian enter the room calmly, with the snake in his arms. She was instantly filled with alarm and panic as if she had seen Voldemort, screaming and holding the keyboard in front of her to resist the other party’s Avada Kedavra.

“Wanna eat candy?” Chu Mian waved a bunch of Alps lollipops in his hand. When Chu Heng dazedly nodded her head, still not having recovered from her fright, he hugged Fiona again and deliberately took a step forward. Chu Heng was so scared that she backed away to her bed and waved the pillow as if to ward off. 

The corner of Chu Mian’s mouth seemed to rise up, revealing a calm and innocent look, as he gently tossed the candy over.

“Didn’t you quit sugar a long time ago?” Chu Heng shrunk in the corner and asked him.

“Someone else gave it to me, so you can eat it for me.”

“A classmate?” Chu Heng asked with bright eyes, “You made friends so soon?” 

“Not a friend,” Chu Mian denied, a blurry face automatically appeared in his mind, “How to say, he should be the type who is inexplicably enthusiastic about others.”

“That’s great. You’ve to keep in touch with such lively kids, so that you’ll also become more cheerful,” Chu Heng stared at Chu Mian, and said earnestly, “Don’t refuse to make friends just because it’s too troublesome to maintain friendships. True friends won’t mind that you’re troublesome, miēmiē.”

Chu Mian lowered his head to avoid her sharp eyes. His originally calm emotions suddenly turned into irritation in an instant, and his fingertips stroked Fiona’s skin texture a bit uneasily, as if he could calm himself by trying to soothe it.

“What a bunch of nonsense,” Chu Mian drily dropped a sentence and left Chu Heng’s view, holding the snake in his arms. 

Chu Heng tore open a grape lollipop and put it in her mouth, inevitably feeling worried about her nephew’s situation. Her impression of Chu Mian when he was a child was that of a boy who loved to make some noise and occasionally prank the adults and after succeeding in his scheme, he wouldn’t stop laughing, but as he grew up, he slowly became more and more quiet and introverted, even to the extent of treating people coldly.

In fact, the main reason for this was “narcolepsy” which not only made him sleep unrestrainedly but it also triggered cataplexic symptoms in addition. This cataplexy was often triggered by sudden, strong emotions such as laughter, sadness, or anger, so Chu Mian had to maintain a stable mood at all times, otherwise once he got a little excited, it was possible for his whole body to suddenly lose its strength and fall to the ground. If he wanted to laugh out loud, he had to hold on to the support in advance so as to avoid hurting his body when he suddenly collapsed.

With the exception of very rare situations, Chu Mian was in a clear state of consciousness and could talk to people normally even during cataplexy. So this year, during the summer vacation after the high school entrance examination, in order to train his ability to control his emotions, Chu Mian specially asked his aunt to read him the “Collection of Jokes” and funny online jokes.

When Chu Heng had read “I’ve lived for 42 years, and they’re the two most boring people I’ve ever seen”, Chu Mian had tried biting his lips to keep himself from laughing out loud, but he still lost his strength and collapsed on the bed. 

A minute later, Chu Mian regained his strength and sat upright.

Chu Heng had asked him compassionately, “Do you still want to listen?”

“Yes.”

Chu Heng couldn’t bear it: “Then I’ll read a not so funny one to you… It’s written by that Professor Yin — ” 

“Ha…” The corners of Chu Mian’s mouth curled up, and surprisingly, he lost his strength once again and collapsed on the bed.

Because he naturally had a low laughing point, Chu Heng had to repeatedly read to him a full thirty pages before he was too tired to laugh again. After that, even if he heard the funniest content, Chu Mian just lay on the bed and praised in a weak voice “pretty funny”.

For ordinary people, “laughter” was a symbol of happiness, but for Chu Mian, it was a risk where happiness and pain coexisted. Especially in a lively and happy atmosphere, if he suddenly fell to the ground, not only would he get embarrassed and be humiliated in public, it would also overwhelm others.

So normally, in addition to taking anti-cataplexy medication, he also forcibly stabilized his emotional changes in a safe range, which meant he must be cautious when he came in contact with recreational activities. 

This did indeed ease the symptoms of cataplexy, but Chu Heng was very worried that Chu Mian would miss the opportunity to have fun with his classmates for the sake of his so-called self-esteem.

But Chu Mian did not seem to care about it. After being pulled into the class group by the class president, he directly blocked the group messages, and when a classmate added him as a friend, he only used auto-reply to perfunctorily greet the other party. He was more concerned about studying than building friendships with them — To him, suddenly collapsing in public was not the most humiliating thing, rather it was not getting the first place in an ordinary high school like Chengjun.

It was precisely because he slept longer than anyone else every day that he had to work twice as hard when he was awake. He put Fiona back into the snake box and sat down at his desk to carefully recite the “The Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion” and the commentary at the bottom of the book, striving to master all five mandatory language books by the end of the National Day holiday.

After he finished reviewing that day’s lesson, Chu Mian took out his black leather notebook as usual. On the title page was a neat script he had written a long time ago “Everything that Miēmiē Hates” 

When he first learned to speak, apparently he used to always pronounce “Chu Mian” as “Chu Miē”, so everyone lovingly called him “Miēmiē” when referring to him.

When he started elementary school, his parents seemed to agree that he was beginning to have a sense of independence, so they just directly called him by his full name, lest Chu Mian complained later that the nickname they gave him was too childish. But in reality, Chu Mian still preferred to be affectionately called “Miēmiē” by the adults, but now only his aunt was willing to call him that.

Chu Mian turned the page of “Everything that Miēmiē Hates” to the most recent record.

[August 2012] 

1. Mung bean soup made by my aunt, not delicious.

2. Phone case, heavy.

3. Mosquito coil, causes irritation and choking.

4. Bluetooth headphone, hurts my ears. 

5. Carbon ink.

……

……

38. Communist Youth League, intuition. 

39. Chengjun’s next-class bell, a little sad melody, obviously everyone likes to get out of class.

40.

After writing down the next even number out of habit, Chu Mian lifted his pen and thought about what to fill the position with. The tip of the pen first paused, then it fell smoothly on the paper, finishing the three words neatly.

“Yu Ran, Muggle.”