Sit Softly On Your Shoulder

Chapter 8: Old Memories

Lan Zhan unlocks the blue door adjacent to the shop and takes off his shoes on the grey wooden flooring, a vast improvement on the moth-eaten carpet torn away and dumped into a skip. The stairs leading up to his apartment have been newly polished and a thick grey carpet muffles their steps as they climb up quietly.

Lan Zhan thinks he can hear his heart beating, thudding against the cage of his ribs with each step like a metronome, a foreboding sense of doom and getting closer to it as his flat door comes into view. He's grateful and glad that he's not alone to do it; love and hate warring in his chest as he contemplates this feeling. He desperately wants to know what is on the laptop, and it must be important because otherwise, why would his mother have hidden it away inside that secret safe? Why was it there, and not among her personal effects after her death?

Was it possible that nobody knew about the secret safe?

And so many unanswered questions are what is making him feel jittery with apprehension.

Wei Ying follows him in and accidentally slams the door shut behind him, and the sudden crash of wood meeting brick makes Lan Zhan startle, bringing him out of his reverie with the same surprise and shock as if Wei Ying had shoved his head into the freezer.

He leaves the laptop on the coffee table in the living room, and goes into the kitchen to brew some tea for them both, low in caffeine at this late hour. Lan Zhan has discovered this particular blend of peppermint masking the pungency of valerian root and chamomile to soothe, does wonders for his sleep, and Wei Ying mentioned something along the same lines, so now it's become a habit for them.

He listens to the pleasant gurgling of the water hitting the bottom of the kettle, and there's something soothing about waiting for it to boil, and in that brief interlude of not having tea and having tea, there's the efficiency of each action: to fetch their mugs from the cabinet above the sink, to bring the honey bottle nearer, to drop a teabag in both mugs and each action is perfectly timed for the bubbling electric kettle to deactivate, leaving tendrils of steam curling into the air as it calms down. A peaceful climax to an orderly list of tasks that are strung together like photographs on a washing line, telling a story through each image.

Lan Zhan picks up the kettle and diligently pours the right amount of still bubbling water into each mug, a pale blue one for himself, with that strange new gimmick of white bunnies appearing after the heat touches the porcelain, and a red one with black horns appearing for Wei Ying. It makes him smile as he waits for the tea to steep, and he dips a spoon in each mug, teasing the teabag to let go of more flavour as it weakens.

Peppermint suffuses the air around him, tickling his nose as he inhales and relaxes at once, the sweetness of the honey he's added calming his twitching fingers into stirring each mug gently. The spoon goes into the sink and Lan Zhan picks up both mugs to take with him back into the living room where Wei Ying has flung himself on the couch, impatiently awaiting his return.

"I plugged it in so it doesn't die on us," he says, opening his eyes and sitting up immediately, as soon as he hears the sound of china touching glass.

"Mn." Lan Zhan sets each mug on either side of the laptop and opens it. The password is the same as the combination key for the safe, and it warms his insides to know the connection is still the same.

"Windows 2?" Wei Ying squawks, staring disbelievingly at the screen, before turning to Lan Zhan. "No way...that's ancient!"

"I believe my mother was a...silver surfer."

Wei Ying snorts with laughter. "I'd forgotten that's what the youngsters dubbed old but newcomers to computer tech."

There isn't a separate mouse for this model; it has a built in version as a square patch in the centre under the keyboard, and Wei Ying watches the elegant pale finger move the cursor towards the folders that wear a red dot, drawing the user's attention to that particular app.