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He doesn’t mean to stalk her.
“At least, not at first,” he reasons with Meimei, who looks at him like he’s gum stuck at the bottom of her vintage Vans shoes. He flops back onto his stomach, propping his elbows up by his sides, so he ends up in a weird stretch across the greater half of Meimei’s bed.
She blinks, and her expression shifts to a deadpan look.
“No, I swear–”
“Gege,” she smiles, and Shangqi shivers, because his little sister’s perfected the art of the coveted customer service smile. “What did I tell you about barging into my room like this?”
He cocks his head to the side, surveying her artistically designed room. To Meimei, he’s sure the tastefully dark, ambient lighting, choice of scented candles, and carefully selected gothic-looking furniture was an ode to some lost aristocrat in the 1800s.
To Shangqi, though, he thinks his Meimei’s just going through her emo-punk phase.
He smiles widely, just enough to annoy her. “You didn’t say I couldn’t come in, you only said–”
He gets chased away by flying flip-flops.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
To be very fair, Shangqi really, truly, hadn’t mean to stalk Baker Girl.
If he happens to be at the same place, at the same time, that’s just . . .
Fate.
Or, he grimaces, maybe I’m overstating it. Maybe it’s just coincidence.
To him, at least.
He considers this as he paces around the living room, testing the patience of his Baba, who’s firmly brushing through Mantou’s glossy, gray-white fur. The baby of the family sits primly on Baba’s lap, traumatized after Shangqi had accidentally stepped on her tail the week before.
He knows he’s two or three rounds away from getting told off, but Shangqi’s always been the expert at being the Annoying One, and it’s a lot of fun to watch his father slowly lose his patience every time Shangqi pauses right in front of the TV–
Anyway.
He digresses.
He returns to his deep thoughts and starts rubbing at his chin the way his uncles do when they’re playing mahjong.
He’s never been a good strategist, but he feels he needs to bring his A-game for an A-plus girl.
“Er zi,” Baba calls him, and Mantou leaps from his father’s lap.
Shangqi takes a moment to lock eyes with the feline, feeling deeply betrayed.
Mantou gives him an odd look, as if to say, not my problem, and struts away to begin her daily search for the non-existent mice that live by the floor-to-ceiling glass-wall of their living room.
“Something bothering you, er zi?”
Well. That’s new.
Shangqi nods, then marches towards Baba and plops onto the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of his father who’s perched on his armchair.
The younger Xu puts his hands on his hips and sits upright.
Baba, used to his antics, sighs and starts rubbing his hand across his forehead.
“I’m considering,” Shangqi begins, at his most utmost serious disposition, “how much mochi one can eat before we die of, like, mochi overdose.”
His father takes a deep breath.
Lets it out.
He looks up towards the sky, and Shangqi senses his father praying for the high heavens and begging for patience.
He sits up straighter.
“And why,” Baba sighs, “are you considering that? Also, shouldn’t you be working?”
Shangqi fans his hand at his father. “I’m working remotely. Also, it’s tea-time and, so, here I am,” he spreads his arms wide, “spilling tea.”
His father rolls his eyes. “Does your boss pay you for sitting here with me, gossiping?”
Shangqi scoffs. “Please. As if you don’t want to gossip with me.” He waits a beat, staring down his father. It takes a solid minute before Baba finally caves, giving a heavy sigh before gesturing at him to continue.
He pumps a fist. “So, there’s this new bakery down by the road. It’s called Bake You Too. Heard of it yet? They sell the most amazing croissants. And steamed buns. It’s like a hybrid between Western baked goods and–”
He feels Mantou’s little paws press at the base of his spine, interrupting him. He pauses, waits for the cat to sneak her way under his arm and onto the space between his crossed legs, resting her little chin at the juncture where his shins meet.
Shangqi puts a finger on Mantou’s gray little head.
“Anyway, so, one day, I needed to get out of the house, right, ‘cuz my boss was driving me nuts and I couldn’t listen to him prattle on about anymore budget forecast, so I logged out of Zoom, went out for a walk, and hey, look, there’s a new bakery. I walk into the bakery–”
“–oh, that’s the one by the corner of the road, isn’t it, the one with the young Chinese lady in the yellow frilled apron?”
Shangqi opens his mouth, pauses, then closes it. He blinks at his father. “How d’you know about that?”
“The store’s not as new as you think it is,” Baba tells him gently, scooting forward out of the armchair so he can scoop Mantou up from Shangqi’s lap. He lays the cat onto his torso, petting Mantou’s small head gingerly. “It’s been there for nearly a year.”
“Then why didn’t I know about it?”
Baba shrugs. “You’ve been buried under your work since the pandemic started. We went through three full cycles of Mantou shedding, ni de Mama taking up knitting, Meimei going through puberty –”
“Ssh,” Shangqi hushes him hurriedly, looking around warily. “Meimei doesn’t like that word. She’s got perfect aim, and her Doc Martens are newly bought.” Father and son exchange a knowing, compassioned look.
“Anyhoo,” he begins again, “so I get into the shop, and, Baba, this girl . . . zhen de hen mei.”
Baba only grins an indulgent smile at him. “Yes, she is. She was very kind, also, to give extra buns and cookies for your Ma. I think,” he shifts Mantou onto his lap, huffing at the weight of their fat little baby, “she’d make an excellent daughter-in-law.”
Shangqi’s either utterly besotted, or he’s got a few little loose screws in his head, because he instantly cheers, “Yes! That’s what I’ve been telling Meimei and she won’t listen.” He drops his shoulders, woeful now, as he says quietly, “I don’t know how to talk to her, Baba.”
His father frowns, deep wrinkles creasing his forehead. “ . . . what did you do.”
Shangqi crosses his arms, tucking his hands under his armpits as he glares at Mantou’s flying fur on the wooden panels of their flooring. “Not really what I did, more of what I said.”
Baba’s silence afterwards is more than enough to goad him into talking.
He sighs, slouching. “She asked me what I wanted to have, and I said,” he feels a telltale warmth spread across his cheekbones and right onto the tips of his ears, “’you.’”
Mantou’s soft purring is all the sound that takes up the space between father and son.
He sneaks a peek up towards Baba, wincing back in chagrin when he notices his father’s face dropped into the palm of his hand. He hears a string of muffled Chinese resound from him, barely holding back the need to gripe when Baba says, “ . . . I knew I dropped him on the head way too much as a baby . . .”
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Baba looks up at him.
Shangqi gulps.
Baba’s got his scary company executive look on his face.
Shangqi’s well acquainted with that look; it’s the same look his father wears whenever Mama sends him out on a grocery run – all strategic, critical thinking put to good use in favor of getting the best two-for-one deals and bargains.
It’s also the same look he used to don whenever Shangqi does something odd, like when he was four and happily ran straight into the deeper end of the swimming pool even though he couldn’t swim.
Or when he was seven years old and brought home a pet toad.
He takes a moment to mourn Le Le, who’d been with them for only an hour before Baba had found him sitting atop a pile of old newspapers.
“Er zi,” his father finally breaks the silence, “why exactly are you telling me this?”
Shangqi lifts a shoulder, then drops it flippantly. He grins cheekily. “Because Meimei’s going puberty and won’t give me good advice.”
His father’s deadpan look is exactly like Meimei’s. “Ni bendan, ma? She’s only fifteen.”
He raises his chin defiantly. “So? She’s smarter than me, and I’m the one who graduated college,” then, under his breath, “well, barely, but, whatever.”
Baba sighs, leaning over to flick at his son’s forehead. “Twenty-five years old and still with the brain the size of a peanut.” He tsks, rapping his knuckles at the crown of Shangqi’s head. “If you wanted advice on how to talk to girls, you should’ve come to me.”
He hears someone snort from behind them and whips his head around, only to watch his mother casually stroll past their presence in the living room, mouth barely containing a grin as she fights to keep a straight face.
Baba, with his feathers ruffled, puts both hands over Mantou’s little head and leans forward, saying to Mama’s back as she disappears into the kitchen, “I was popular with the ladies before you, okay,” he pushes his chest out, calling louder, “I was!”
“If you say so, dear!” Mama calls back from the kitchen, voice saccharine enough that Shangqi knows it’s nothing but her calling his father out on his nonsense.
Baba huffs, and Shangqi turns back to look at him.
“Alright, er zi, listen up.” Shangqi sits up right, eyes locked on his father’s determined gaze. “Here’s what you want to do if you want to woe that girl of yours–”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
It starts likes this:
Shangqi’s deep into a new record-breaking thirty-eight hours-long OT when his body decides enough is enough.
He finds out, after a ten-minute manhunt, that Mama’s apparently gone for a walk with Baba and Meimei’s locked in her bedroom blasting My Chemical Romance like she’s going through Things.
Shangqi’s got his brain flooded with network diagrams and system implementation plans he’d have to change to fit into his boss’s budget, when he somehow manages to shrug half his body into a coat.
He heads out the door, feet dragging across the sidewalk as he muddles through the various failover plans he’d mapped out for his latest project.
He’s nearing the end of their street when his nose catches a whiff of something heavenly.
He barely manages to keep himself from drooling all over his chin, and quickly sniffs his way towards the mouthwatering scent’s source.
Ultimately, it’s his nose – and mainly stomach – that leads him to the bakery right across the corner of their street.
He barely registers the name of the bakery before he crosses the street, surviving on pure, dumb luck as he somehow manages to make it across without getting hit by a car.
When he pulls the door open, he notices a line to the cashier, and quickly joins the queue. His eyes are trained on the menu, though, and Shangqi wills his stomach to stop grumbling like he hadn’t been subsisting off coffee, Red Bull, and the occasional banana.
Busy as he’d been, grappling with the life-altering choice of whether he’d like a simple, almond croffle or some hot, read bean buns, he hadn’t noticed he’d reached the front of the line till, “Hi, welcome to Bake You Too! What would you like to have?”
He looks down, and promptly swallows his tongue.
His brain doesn’t quite reboot as it should, because all that Shangqi can manage, staring at the cute girl with the yellow-frilled apron, a loose bun barely keeping her long, black tresses together. She smiles at him patiently, eyes crinkling up, button nose scrunching a little, and all Shangqi can think is–
Fuck, she’s adorable.
“Sir,” she prompts him again, “what would you like to have?”
“You.”
It’s like everything happens in slow-mo, then.
The girl’s smile drops in disdain, gaze changing from friendly to slightly judgmental.
Shangqi wants to die.
He clears his throat. “Bah, I, uh,” he short-circuits. “Ciao!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Later, Meimei finds him lying face down on the living room floor, Mantou sitting right on top of his back, licking her paw delicately.
“What happened to you?” She asks, bending over him. She hears him mutter something through the carpet. “What was that?” She crouches to hear him better.
“Ciao,” he manages to groan out, feeling a deep shame within him.