After finishing that sentence, Sister Mu turned around, "You didn’t come just to catch some sun and catch up with me today, did you?"
Laughing, Su Ziceng walked over to her side and took Sister Mu’s hand. Their stroll had taken nearly two hours. By now, the road was busier with vehicles and pedestrians heading home from work, but Sister Mu seemed to pay them no mind anymore.
The tall and the short figures walked towards the setting sun. Back at "Admiration," Sister Mu took out a peach wood picture frame with an old photograph inside, dating back over a decade.
In the photo was a couple, Wen Zimu in her twenties, with her lover’s arm around her shoulders. He was a man of about the same height as Sister Mu, with an unshaven face and a casual blue plaid shirt tucked loosely into his pants. But when the man smiled, he revealed a set of even teeth, and it was this contrast between casual and neat that made a good impression just by looking at it.
"Don’t let Jacques’s carefree appearance fool you; he graduated with a master’s degree in psychology from Brown University," even after six or seven years, Sister Mu’s mention of the man she deeply loved was still full of emotion.
"How did you two meet?" Su Ziceng asked, looking at the radiant smiling couple in the photo, behind whom was a raised sail and the azure ocean.
"The first time I stood on the runway, I dared not look directly at the audience. When I walked off, my legs were still trembling," Sister Mu immersed herself in her memories, her right and left leg clumsily bumping into each other as they had back then.
For such a top model, even New was nervous during her first show, and Su Ziceng couldn’t help but laugh uproariously, "But I heard your first show, the YSL one, was sensational."
"That was all an act, just like your ’Peace Year by Year’ stunt a few days ago," Sister Mu didn’t forget to tease Su Ziceng. Her kitchen table still had newspapers on it reporting "Su Bi Auction House smashes Colorful Eggs," "I bet your first instinct was to throw the porcelain shards in Chang Chi’s face."
Indeed, "only Wen Zimu truly knows Su Ziceng," Su Ziceng nodded in agreement.
"After the show, everyone went to the celebration party, but I took off my high heels and walked barefoot on the empty runway to regain my feeling. While walking, I heard a whistle and a man’s voice, ’Hey, Eastern girl, you walk much more naturally now,’" Sister Mu said with a smile, reminiscing in her young maiden-like tone.
"Was that man Mr. Jacques?" Su Ziceng blurted out, then realized that Jacques was already gone, and the more beautiful the memory, the deeper the pain it left.
"Yes, a wandering drifter with a high education who was never serious," Sister Mu used the adjectives most people would use to describe Jacques. This included Sister Mu herself when she first met Jacques, so their initial meeting was not a pleasant one.
"This man, though unkempt, had excellent cooking skills. He had a great appreciation for many things including food, colors, combinations, life," Sister Mu proudly recounted about the man, "but these were things invisible to others, including my family."
Wen Zimu’s modeling career was only recognized by the Wen family after she became famous. Even then, with her capacity to stand on her own, the Wen family still refused to acknowledge Jacques. The Wen family ancestors had wed foreigners, but none would marry a vagrant, so Wen Zimu’s marriage faced extraordinary opposition.
"The tragedy of being in a great clan," Su Ziceng sighed. Her marriage to Hang Yishao also faced suppression due to strong meddling from both the Su and Hang families. Had Hang Yishao not been forced to marry her, perhaps Su Ziceng wouldn’t have grown increasingly unreasonable, resulting in being seen by the world as a madwoman.
"I, however, paid no mind to these things. When I discovered I was three months pregnant, I returned home with Jacques and explained everything to the Wen family. It was out of basic respect for my parents; I had already decided that whether they agreed or not, I would be with Jacques,"