Try Again chapter 4
At the Door
Jiang Lin’s car was parked near the wooden walkway, and Ji Minglun found it after circling around. After unlocking the car door, he saw a sports chest bag on the passenger seat. He found his wallet and opened it, revealing two full rows of cards.
The right side held Jiang Lin’s ID and bank card, while the left had his various documents from Los Angeles.
Ji Minglun didn’t touch the left side, confirming the ID was there before closing the wallet. As he put it back, he caught a glimpse of a blue-packaged bottle of medication at the bottom, all in English, labeled for treating eczema.
The word “eczema” reminded Ji Minglun of the tiny blisters he had seen on Jiang Lin’s fingers earlier. He opened his browser and searched for eczema images; they looked similar to those on Jiang Lin’s fingers.
Before going to Los Angeles, Jiang Lin only had a bad stomach. After several years of care, he hadn’t been to the emergency room in a long time. Today’s situation was likely quite severe, and now he had eczema.
Looking at the nearly empty bottle of medication, Jiang Lin had probably been taking it for a while. As for the gastritis—
Thinking back to their conversation that morning at home, Ji Minglun couldn’t help but wonder if Jiang Lin’s stomach issues were due to being upset with him.
With that thought, Ji Minglun felt speechless for a moment, realizing he had truly learned nothing from his past mistakes; how could he still be thinking about such things at a time like this?
He zipped up the sports chest bag, got into his car, and drove back to the hospital.
By the time he arrived, Jiang Lin was no longer in the infusion area. A cleaning lady was mopping the floor next to him. He called Jiang Lin, but there was no answer, so he asked the lady if she knew where the young man who was just sitting in that chair had gone.
The lady said that the young man who was receiving the infusion suddenly vomited and was taken by a nurse to the restroom in the front to clean up.
Ji Minglun walked to the restroom. Pushing the door open, he saw Jiang Lin standing at the sink, looking somewhat disheveled.
Next to him was a portable IV stand, and the front of his shirt was damp. His right hand clutched a wet wipe. When he saw Ji Minglun, his lips, which had lost their color, moved slightly but then pressed together.
Without saying a word, Ji Minglun turned and left. Jiang Lin was taken aback for a moment, dragging the stand to go after him. But when he opened the door, he saw Ji Minglun standing at a vending machine not far away, scanning his phone to buy water.
A middle-aged man walked in, brushing against Jiang Lin and bumping his left hand that was receiving the infusion. Jiang Lin frowned in pain, relieved that the needle hadn’t shifted. When he looked up again, Ji Minglun was gone.
In the past, every time he came to the emergency room, Ji Minglun would go and get him warm water to drink, even in the sweltering heat of summer. Seeing that scene just now, Jiang Lin guessed what Ji Minglun was up to, and sure enough, before long, Ji Minglun returned and placed a bottle of warm mineral water on the sink, handing him the sports chest bag.
“Everything is inside.”
Jiang Lin took it and said “thank you.” Watching Ji Minglun go to open the door again, he couldn’t help but call out, “Are you leaving?”
Without pausing, Ji Minglun simply replied, “I have things to do.”
The door closed again, and Jiang Lin lowered his gaze to the bottle of water, then looked at the swelling on the back of his left hand, letting out a deep sigh from his chest.
This time back in the car, Ji Minglun sat for a long time.
He took out a pack of Bohem Mojito from the glove compartment, lit it, and took a long drag. The refreshing lime and mint flavor invigorated him, quickly suppressing that excess, misplaced emotion.
After finishing both cigarettes, he rolled up the window, turned up the air conditioning, and took one last glance at the emergency room entrance.
Although they hadn’t been in contact for a year, he knew better than anyone that after Jiang Lin returned to Xiamen, the only one he could truly rely on was him.
Since Jiang Lin’s mother passed away eight years ago, his relationship with his father, Jiang Jianchen, had grown increasingly strained. Jiang Jianchen never remarried and was quite generous to his only son, but he could no longer provide the fatherly love and complete family that Jiang Lin longed for. Aside from issues related to education and finances, there was nothing left to discuss between them.
Jiang Lin would never seek out Jiang Jianchen when he was sick; this had not changed until last year before going abroad, and from what Ji Minglun understood about Jiang Lin, it should still be the same now.
However, times had changed. Jiang Lin, with his straightforward thinking, might believe that after a year, things had calmed down and that they could return to the way things used to be, but Ji Minglun couldn’t do that.
Looking at his empty left wrist, he wondered if it was fate; the custom bracelet Jiang Lin had given him on his birthday two years ago had a clasp issue last week, so he sent it in for repairs.
If Jiang Lin saw that he was still wearing it, it would be truly awkward and hard to explain.
Pressing the car’s start button, Ji Minglun drove toward Shapowei.
Just a moment ago, when he was helping Jiang Lin heat water, the employee on duty in his café, Xiao Xu, called him. Zhu Zhu and Tang Yang, who were scheduled to work that day, both had something else to do and couldn’t come, leaving the store short-staffed. He agreed to go help, but when he arrived, he found someone had come earlier and was packing two cups of takeout coffee.
As soon as she saw him, Deng Yi smiled sweetly, her dimples showing. After handing the packed coffee to the customer, she leaned against the counter with her hands crossed, pouting, and asked, “Why did you take so long to come?”
Ji Minglun greeted Xiao Xu and walked to the counter to wash and disinfect his hands. “Didn’t they say there was no one here?”
“Xiao Xu called my brother and said the store was short-staffed. My brother was busy, so he sent me over,” Deng Yi straightened up and turned to look at Ji Minglun’s back. “What? You don’t want to see me?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Ji Minglun smiled helplessly, finished washing his hands, took a black apron, and put it around his neck. As he was about to reach back to fasten the straps, Deng Yi naturally took over and helped him secure it.
“Ming Ge,” Xiao Xu said with a worried expression, looking at Ji Minglun, “Table 6 ordered a cappuccino. That guy said he wants to confess to a girl and asked me to help him pull a Cupid arrow, but I tried two cups, and it didn’t work.”
Ji Minglun glanced at Table 6 by the window in the dining area, where a boy wearing glasses was chatting face-to-face with a girl with a ponytail. The atmosphere between them seemed quite good.
Having run a coffee shop in Shapowei for over half a year, Ji Minglun had encountered several customers wanting to use latte art to confess their feelings. Taking the milk frothing cup that Xiao Xu handed him, he tested the temperature and then tilted the frothing cup and coffee cup at two opposing angles, beginning to slowly and skillfully pour.
Xiao Xu and Deng Yi stood on either side, their eyes fixed on his movements. Especially Xiao Xu, who was carefully observing Ji Minglun’s hands. After Ji Minglun completed the final line of the latte art, Xiao Xu exclaimed, “I really don’t know how long I’ll have to practice to be this steady.”
Deng Yi smiled and said, “Talent is really important for this. My brother learned together with Minglun, and he just can’t get it right.”
Ji Minglun set down the milk frothing cup, turned, and took out a box of sugar cookies from the fridge. He selected two heart-shaped ones and placed a 3D wooden house cookie in the middle, serving it to the customer at that table.
He said something to the customers and they both looked very happy. When he returned, Deng Yi said somewhat sourly, “That girl is so lucky. The person she likes will actively confess.”
Ji Minglun knew what she was hinting at: “It may not necessarily be the person she likes. It could be a confession that gets rejected; not all feelings get a response.”
“I don’t agree with that,” Deng Yi habitually retorted, “Even if you don’t like someone at first, you can easily develop feelings after spending time together.”
Such debates had been common since they met. Even though Ji Minglun had clearly reminded Deng Yi of his sexual orientation, she didn’t mind. Perhaps it was because her brother, Deng Feng, was bisexual. Deng Yi viewed such matters with indifference, suggesting starting as friends and who knows, maybe one day he’d be straightened out.
Deng Feng was another partner in the coffee shop, and Ji Minglun had a good relationship with him, so he had to give Deng Yi some face. In situations like this that were hard to explain, he could only choose to remain silent.
Fortunately, Deng Yi knew when to stop. The three of them stayed busy for the rest of the day, and when the shop closed in the evening, Ji Minglun discovered Jiang Lin had sent him a WeChat message in the evening.
“Thank you for coming during the day; otherwise, I wouldn’t know what to do.”
Looking at this line, Ji Minglun’s focus was on the word “thank you.”
He and Jiang Lin had indeed grown distant.
Deng Yi fastened her seatbelt, saw him lost in thought while looking at his phone, and leaned over. “What are you looking at?”
Ji Minglun locked the screen and said, “Nothing.”
When he dropped Deng Yi off downstairs at her house, he happened to run into Deng Feng, who had just come back as well. Deng Feng invited him to join him and Deng Yi for late-night snacks and drinks at a nearby izakaya. The three of them drank until around eleven before Ji Minglun called a designated driver. Sitting in the car, he took out his phone to check.
His WeChat had hundreds of friends and various groups, so it was easy for non-pinned names to get lost in the scroll. He didn’t want to open any of the accounts with red unread numbers, so he pressed down on the screen and scrolled down. After sliding down several times, he finally found Jiang Lin’s name.
After that message, Jiang Lin hadn’t sent anything else.
Thinking of Jiang Lin’s lonely figure he saw at the hospital during the day, his chest felt a bit tight again, but just as this emotion emerged, he suppressed it. Leaning back against the headrest, he closed his eyes to rest, planning to check on Su Yan next door once he got home. However, just as he walked out of the elevator, he saw someone sitting at his door.
Jiang Lin was dressed as he had been during the day, wearing the white plaid cotton shirt Ji Minglun had given him, sitting cross-legged on the chilly floor tiles by the door. He probably felt exhausted; His head was tilted against his shoulder, and even though the position looked uncomfortable, he was sleeping deeply.