"Grandma, I'm at the hospital..."
"What happened? Are you at the hospital alone?"
Su Baixue was just about to call Su Cui anyway, so she stood up and said, "No. Granny Li is here too, and also Master Qin's son, the one who fixed the faucet, um..." Here she realized she didn't know Xiao Qin's full name and paused, looking at him, "and Xiao Qin. We saved someone tonight and brought them to the hospital."
"...Saved someone?"
"Mm." Su Baixue breathed on her hands. "Don't worry. Granny Li and I are here. Did you just get back? The person we saved had no money, so Granny Li helped cover the medical costs. We called the police and will head back soon."
*
"Called the police? Where did you save this person?"
Su Cui could feel the biting wind swirling up the stairwell.
"Next to a dumpster?"
Only one voice echoed through the stairwell—Su Cui's old, hoarse voice, rising with the wind and reverberating clearly throughout the building.
"Grandma, how did you know!" Su Baixue's young voice came through the phone.
Silence.
Su Cui walked back home. She listened quietly as Su Baixue recounted what had happened tonight. She unlocked the door, changed clothes while listening, took off her scarf, took out an eyebrow razor, and went to the bathroom mirror.
"Mm... okay, Grandma knows. I'm glad you're safe." Su Cui removed the cap from the eyebrow razor. "Grandma will come to the hospital now... No, I must come. I'm not sleepy... Mm, Grandma also wants to see who my precious granddaughter saved."
"It's almost dawn. I won't sleep."
"Grandma wants to see the sunrise. I'll be at the hospital now. Bai Xue, keep Grandma company to watch the sunrise, okay? It's been so long, and I haven't seen the moment the sun rises. It must be beautiful... Mm, good girl."
She hung up.
Using the eyebrow razor, Su Cui meticulously trimmed her messy eyebrows, which she had let grow for a long time. She had long been dissatisfied with Su Cuihua's face but never changed anything. Originally, she thought changing too fast was bad. Later, it was also a precaution.
Su Cuihua's eyebrows were thick and messy.
So Su Cui thinned them and shaped them with a sharp arch. As for the scattered black hairs at her temples, she would dye them all black after the sun rose.
She looked around the old house.
Lately, Su Cui had been looking at many houses elsewhere and had identified a few locations. Although she hadn't decided whether to move, she would have to arrange it soon.
She couldn't be sure if Tapana would die.
And from the fact that today Su Baixue had found a trash bag near a dumpster, Su Cui had a feeling that Tapana, having escaped tonight, would definitely come back.
With the heavy snow on Christmas Eve, it seemed something was approaching City A.
The storyline that had always revolved around Su Baixue had already been shattered by Su Cui's interference. But the harmonious book world centered on Su Baixue seemed dissatisfied with this disruption.
This unsettling night felt like an omen.
An omen that, in some inaccessible, unknown corner, a pair of hands had noticed the deviation from the book's track and was about to realign everything that didn't belong on the chessboard.
*
After hanging up, Su Baixue handed the phone back to Xiao Qin: "You can keep playing your game."
Xiao Qin waved his hand, looking at his phone that had turned off due to dead battery. He sighed. "Forget it, I'm done."
Su Baixue put the phone back in her pocket and sat down next to Xiao Qin.
She asked a little sheepishly, "Xiao Qin, I still don't know your full name."
"My name is Qin Yang." Xiao Qin scratched his face. "I heard the sun was especially bright the day I was born, so my grandpa named me that."
"Qin Yang..." Su Baixue paused. Gazing at the white hospital walls and the snow outside the window, a person suddenly came to mind.
But unlike Qin Yang, that person's complexion was always pale, and their body was so thin it seemed a gust of wind could blow them away.
"Yeah, pretty ordinary name, right?" Xiao Qin grumbled. "I always feel like my bad grades have something to do with it. Su Baixue, you know, my dad actually picked another name for me—Qin Shubo! But my grandpa insisted on Qin Yang, so my dad had no choice."
"My dad, seriously—I'm his only son. 'Shubo' sounds so cultured!" Qin Yang shrugged.
Su Baixue smiled.
"I think Qin Yang is a nice name, but Xiao Qin rolls off the tongue better."
"Then you can call me Xiao Qin. Everyone does! I'm used to it." Seeing that Su Baixue kept looking out the window, Xiao Qin stood up and joined her.
"Such heavy snow."
Xiao Qin sighed. "Your name is Su Baixue. Were you born on a heavy snow day?"
Su Baixue shook her head.
With a happy, reminiscent smile, she answered softly.
"It's from Snow White."
"The day I was born was a bright, sunny day."
Xiao Qin: "Huh?"
"I heard that the person in the bed next to my mother was reading the story of Snow White."
"'In the deep of winter, snowflakes as big as goose feathers were flying all around...' When that person got to the part where the queen wished for Snow White to be fair of skin with hair as black and shiny as ebony, my mother went into labor."
"After I was born, that same person was reading the story to her child again."
"Right at the part where Snow White and the prince get married and live happily ever after with joy and bliss.'" Su Baixue laughed as she spoke. "So my mother named me Bai Xue."
Xiao Qin teased her. "You must have read that fairy tale many times—you can recite it."
"Mm." Bai Xue nodded. "My mother wanted me to be as happy as a fairy tale."
"But fairy tales are just fairy tales, I guess."