Loop, pull through, knot. Loop, pull through, knot.A pair of hands gracefully knotted the red string onto the hook by the arched window’s side. Ke Xin worked slowly and gently for the string was thin and delicate. No one wanted to snap red string especially on the first day of the Spring Festival. Hanging on the red string was a collection of origami mice in honor of the 2008 zodiac. Of course, the shiny paper of the origami was also in red.

Ke Xin stepped back with a smile, admiring her handiwork. The origami mice looked cute, adding the last finishing touches to her temporary Spring Festival room decoration. Almost everything in her room was decked out in the lucky color. All except for the porcelain doll that sat on top of her shelf. Even when Yi Mu suggested moving the doll into a spare room for the time being, Ke Xin refused.  Porcelain was extremely fragile. Being a gift from Lu Han, she wasn’t even going to entrust the most steady-handed maid with it. 

A sudden vibration shook her iPhone, drawing Ke Xin away from her admiring. Seeing the name of the message sender, she smiled unknowingly.

Lu Han: Rubik’s Cubes are so hard to solve! So my first day of the Spring Festival involved brain work. Ugh, thanks a lot. Hehe. How’s your first day going?

Ke Xin: You’re welcome! ^_~ Honestly, the first day has a bit boring for me.

By boring she meant a bit lonely. The estate was practically empty. The Spring Festival was the biggest, most celebrated, anticipated holiday in Chinese culture. It would be outrageous for anybody to be working during the Spring Festival. So the maids and most of the staff were gone. They had done the annual spring cleaning many days before but there wasn’t much to do since the estate was already spotless. Ke Xin’s father had let them take their breaks earlier. Yi Mu and the twins were the only ones that stayed. Well, they lived in the estate along with Ke Xin so they really wouldn’t count. But what made the Spring Festival so lonely was that there were no other children her age to eat rice crackers with, retrieve red pockets with, and no one of her age to enjoy the holiday with.

Not that she was complaining. The Spring Festival was one of the only holidays that Father could actually spend the time off. It was weird really. Usually, around this time of the year, sales and profits skyrocketed, yet Father could make time to stay home and just relax. Whatever, sometimes she just didn’t get business people. At least she had a few more years until she would have to understand them and go into the family business.

Lu Han: Ah, boring, hm? What are you doing tomorrow?

Ke Xin: Not much. Practice piano and ballet. Review some things for my studies. Why?

Lu Han: I was just wondering . . .

Ke Xin: Yeah?

Lu Han: Do you want to go to the night markets with me tomorrow?

The second night of the Spring Festival was all about the teenagers and the young adults. They would head over, in groups of friends, to the bustling night markets in the cities. Usually, they stayed out until late, something only acceptable for this holiday. It wasn’t really a traditional thing. Somehow, in the 21^st  Century, it developed into a custom for the teenagers to go explore the city streets during the Spring Festival without adult supervision.

Ke Xin had always wanted to go to a night market before. She had heard from Jia Yi and Jia Li’s about their experience going to one of  the most well-known night market with their now married older sister a few years back. According to them, the place was awesome. There was so much to eat and so much to do. Ke Xin couldn’t even understand half the things they were saying because their words were coming out in an excited rush. All in short, although it was unheard of for a girl with a status like hers, Ke Xin secretly wanted to go to a night market. Justonce.

Ke Xin: I’ve never been to a night market before, so maybe?

Lu Han: Please? L

Ke Xin: Fine. Only if you don’t spend money on me while we’re there!

Lu Han: Hm . .

Ke Xin: You have to pinky promise!

Lu Han: Alright, alright.

Ke Xin: It’s a date then J

***

“Wow,” Yi Xing read Ke Xin’s last text message from Lu Han’s phone with wide eyes. Lu Han grimaced at the thought of how sticky Yi Xing’s fingers must have been since he was eating brown sugar rice crackers. Lu Han shrugged. It didn’t matter. He was getting rid of that crappy phone anyways. Right now, nothing could damper his mood, especially when Ke Xin was the one who had called it a date.

Lu Han turned the Rubik’s Cube once more, trying to get the single blue square to somehow combine with its color without disrupting the yellow. Yeah, he was actually trying to solve the cube. He didn’t know why, but ever since Ke Xin had given him it, he had felt compelled to solve it.

“You’re still trying to solve that?” Yi Xing incredulously asked, grabbing another rice cracker from the kitchen counter. He put Lu Han’s phone to the side, faced down.

“You’re still going pretend you don’t notice Jia Li’s feelings towards you?” Lu Han threw back. But, he didn’t say it with attitude. It was more like he was trying to divert the conversation away from his own confusing love life.

“Shut up.” Yi Xing threw a rice cracker at him, sighing as he did so.

***

“Ke Xin,” Justin knocked on the heiress’s heavy mahogany door, “Your father said to hurry up. The Mother Hen’s going to be here soon.”

“Okay!”Ke Xin called back to him. She chuckled as she sat in front of her French designed vanity brushing her hair out. Ke Xin’s grandmother was nicknamed ‘Mother Hen’ by the twins and her because she was a small, plump lady. Nainai was sweet but she loved to worry about everything and everyone, fussing all about.  Just like a mother hen.

Ke Xin stood up from her vanity. She smoothed out her white scalloped collar and brushed off any collecting fuzz on her navy blue polka-dotted dress. She smiled at her reflection, tossing her long hair over one shoulder. It was time to see nainai.  

“Ke Xin,” she heard her dad’s naturally loud voice call her, “Nainai is here!”

“I’m coming, dad.” She replied as she slowly walked down the main stairs. She smiled, as the familiar head of hair that had hints of silver appeared in her sight.

Nainai, a tiny old woman, came running up to her granddaughter. “Oh,” Ke Xin’s grandma hugged her tightly, her back, “My beautiful little girl. You’re growing prettier and prettier every single time I see you!”

“I could say the same for you, nainai.” Ke Xin smiled as the old woman let her out of her tight grip.

“Me? Really? Your eyesight must be getting worse and worse!” Nainai joked. Then her facial expression instantly got seriously, “Oh no, no, no, you’ve gotten skinnier, child.” She patted Ke Xin’s cheeks with worry.

“Yi Lin, have you been starving her?” Nainai light-heartedly accused. Father rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. Ke Xin laughed along with Yi Mu and the twins. The holidays have just begun.

***

Ke Xin kept dazing off at dinner time. Yi Mu cooked the best things during the Spring Festival so the food wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she didn’t know how to ask her dad to go to the night market with Lu Han tomorrow. How could she start it off? How was she going to get permission with nainai, who was very paranoid about her safety, here?  

“Ke Xin dear,” Nainai called her name, snapping her out of her temporary blackout, “Are you alright, you’ve hardly touched your plate.”

Everyone on the table, turned to look at her. Ke Xin quickly took a glance at the plate in front of her. She had only eaten some of the salad of her plate.

“Is something wrong? Should I get you something else?” Yi Mu asked.

“No, no, the food’s fine.” Ke Xin shook her head.

“Then, what’s bothering you, Ke Xin? You know it’s not good to harbor worries during the Spring Festival.” Father joined in with the adults.

“It’s just . . .” Ke Xin sighed. Just say it!

“Can I go to the night market tomorrow with Lu Han?” She suddenly blurted out.

There was a silence. Not a single eating utensil could be heard against the porcelain plates. The twins exchanged a surprised look, their mother just as surprised. Out of the corner of her eye, Ke Xin could see nainai frowning. Father, didn’t do either of the actions. His face was completely expressionless and unreadable. He took a sip of his red wine, then turned back to his daughter.

“Do you really want to go?”

Ke Xin nodded, a small ray of hope rising in her chest. Father looked down, thinking it over slightly then nodded.

“Alright then. You can go.” Father smiled, and then turned to the twins, “I hope you two wouldn’t be too burdened to watch Ke Xin for a few hours.”

Justin was about to say something, but Austin smiled and elbowed him. “Not at all sir.”

“Thank you, dad, thanks guys.” Ke Xin grinned, her appetite coming back to her.

The dinner conversation went back to normal right after. Only later did she remember nainai’s frown. Ke Xin wondered why her grandmother didn’t intervene when she could have. Mother Hen had always been the one to put her foot down.

***

Later that night, while Yi Mu was washing the dishes, the twins were watching TV, and Ke Xin was upstairs studying, Mr. Cai was in his office finishing up some paperwork for a new CAI CO. department store opening up in a newly constructed mall. He already knew who had knocked on his office doors before she even stepped in.

“You can come in, Mother.” Mr. Cai said without lifting his head away from his work.

Ke Xin’s grandmother had a quiet, soft tread just like her. Ke Xin resembled her grandmother in a way too. The two had different sides to them, sometimes, when they got enraged, their cool, regal attitudes came out. And sometimes, when they were compassionate, their motherly side would appear.

Mothertook a seat on the leather chaise to the left of the office. She folded her hands together, pursued her lips then asked her question.

“Why’d you do it?”

Mr. Cai lifted his head from his work and set his fountain pen down. He had already anticipated his mother’s visit and that question. He, himself had yet to figure out the answer. Mr. Cai sighed as he tented his finger in front of him and rested on his elbows.

“I don’t quite know the answer myself,” Mr. Cai admitted, looking over to his mother. “I just felt like I owed Ke Xin something. If she was a normal child, she would have already had the experience and fun of a night market.”

Just the words night and market together made him think wistfully of that one time him and Ke Xin’s mother, Xue had stayed out all night at a night market. Her laughter still rang in his eyes, calling his name. Her smile was burned in the back of his mind, Xue’s voice almost like a whisper of a ghost. But she was no ghost. Cai Ke Xin was living proof that there was once a girl by the name of Xue on this planet. Xue lived through Ke Xin.

“You feel like you owe Ke Xin for bestowing the status of wealth on her?” Mother asked without any judgment in her voice. His mother seemed to understand. When he nodded, so did she.

“I felt the same way when you were seventeen, you know.” Mother sighed, unfolding and folding her hands together. “You wouldn’t listen and you would be getting into fights with your father. I thought, if you were just normal you wouldn’t behave like that.”

Mr. Cai stayed silence, sensing that his mother was not yet finished with her story.

“I was the one who suggested your father to make you work on that farm. I thought the simple, quiet country life would calm your teenage rowdiness.” She sighed again, “But I had never expected for you to change that dramatically and fall in love with Xue.”

“Xue, she was a beautiful thing too. That girl, she had less than us, but she was so much happier, so much simpler and without a worry in the world. Just like xue.” Mother smiled affectionately. Mr. Cai smiled too, loving it when his mother speak so fondly of his late wife.

“Why’d you let me give Ke Xin permission to go, Mother?” Mr. Cai asked, unable to contain his own curiosity.

Mother had a whisper of a smile on her face. But she seemed reluctant to tell her son everything.

“Do you remember that time when you asked your father and I to marry Xue?”

“Yes, I do. I remember hoping so bad that you two would give me your blessings.”

Mother nodded. “Today, when Ke Xin asked you to go with this Lu Han person, her voice sounded so much like that day you asked to marry Xue. How could you say no to a girl in love?”

Mr. Cai laughed, remembering what he had read from the background Austin handed to him about Lu Han this morning. He had ran away from home in pursue of a performing dream. He didn’t want to be bounded down to a family business. Lu Han had come from a family with money, he just broke the mold.

“Mother,” Mr. Cai chuckled to himself, “I think Ke Xin’s love story might be the Yi Lin and Xue 2.0 — only this time, with a happier ending.”  

* Nainai: Mandarin for father's mother

*xue: Mandarin for snow

*Spring Festival: basically what we call Chinese New Years

(A/N)

Hi guys! I'm so, so sorry for not updating this past two weeks. But I promise you that *SPOILER* something big will happen in either the next chapter or the one after that. Could be happy, could be bad. Just warning you ;)

Also, you guys might not know but I'm a SeStal (Se Hun/Krystal) shipper. And I writing a threeshot for them.  So don't get all worried, my focus is still on this story. I don't like working on two major things at once. If you're a SeStal shipper, just want to read something with Se Hun or Krystal, please click here. Your support is much loved. 

I would spazz about MAMA on here but it wouldn't look too good on the A/N. . . I'll spazz on the comment section with you!