A Love So Beautiful (致我们单纯的小美好) – Side Story 13.4 [FINAL UPDATE]

Post-Marriage Side Stories | He Became A Father, She Became A Mother (Part 4)

Little kid Jiang Ke had just learnt how to crawl, when Chen Xiaoxi decided to send her to learn the piano when she grew a little bit older. When Jiang Chen was small, he was forced to learn the piano and found it extremely painful, it was painful year by year, plus every Chinese New Year he was pulled out by his parents to perform, so he felt that it was enough to just let her play it casually for fun as she grew up.

It was rare that Chen Xiaoxi was so determined, she had even begun saving up money to buy a piano.

Jiang Chen expressed, before you save up money to buy a piano, shouldn’t you consider if our house can fit a piano? Chen Xiaoxi expressed, you clear out space in your study to place the piano!

It had just been a discussion originally, but one day Jiang Chen came back to find Chen Xiaoxi holding a measuring tape as she gestured here and there in the study, and their two desks had been moved to the door.

Jiang Chen tried to reason with her, for example, Jiang Ke may not necessarily be interested in the piano, for example, Jiang Ke is still small, there’s no need to be so anxious, for example, Jiang Ke’s fingers were so short…… But Chen Xiaoxi was adamant about buying a piano!

As to why Chen Xiaoxi was so adamant about buying a piano for her daughter, it went back to the love-hate between her and Li Wei, actually, there wasn’t any love-hate to speak of, it was just the resentment she felt towards other people’s daughters during the course of her growing up.

Back then, when they had just started primary school, she would see Li Wei with a head of long straight hair sitting in front of the piano, her slender fingers flying, following the swaying motion of her body. Her hairs cut out elegant lines in the air, Chen Xiaoxi touched her own short hair that went down to her shoulders, and thought of what her mum said, “Learning musical instruments, too expensive! Growing out long hair, troublesome, wastes water, and wastes shampoo!” Back then, she hadn’t known what it felt like to like someone, but she had already started to learn how to hate someone, and that was because of envy.

Her musical instrument dream started from then, she would stretch a rubber band taut between two chopsticks, then nail the chopsticks on to a wooden board, and imitate what the people on television did, tilting her fingers up to form orchid fingers* to play the “guzheng*”. Later on she also played the piano, she would draw random piano keys on her school desk, label them “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7”, and play, her little head rocking and swaying, later on her drawing ability became great, she would draw the piano keys according to the piano in the music room on her sketchbook, and even up till high school, when she had nothing to do, she would still play it for fun. (T/N: orchid finger – a hand gesture indicating grace where one pinches the thumb to the third finger and extends the rest, seen in traditional Chinese dance, opera, and the like) (T/N: Guzheng is a Chinese zither)

After Jiang Chen listened to her story, only then did he come to a sudden epiphany, when they were small, he would often see when he looked over through the window, her sitting upright in front of her desk, her two hands, one up, one down, her head swaying back and forth, her mouth seemed to be muttering something. For a while he even felt chills running down his back, this person couldn’t possibly be doing some weird voodoo magic on him, could she?

Later on, Chen Xiaoxi didn’t end up buying her piano, because she recalled that Jiang Chen’s house had a piano that he used when he was small, and he could pass it on to his daughter. Let’s not bring up the devastating story of how little kid Jiang Ke ended up colouring the piano keys of that piano with the colours of the rainbow later on, after all, forcing someone else to complete your own dreams does have its risks.

 

[FIN]

PREVIOUS CHAPTER | TABLE OF CONTENTS

---

Amy | Dolly | Xri

Translator’s Note:

Lol, I reserve comments about their parenting skills. But never never force your children to complete your own unfulfilled dreams guys :3 it’s not cool at all :3 and w.r.t a throwaway line in the previous chapter, clearing a husband’s desk shouldn’t specifically be a wife’s job, okay!

ANYWAY, we have finally come to the very end guys 🙂 What a journey it has been! So sorry for all the long months between certain updates and thank you so much for all your patience and support 🙂 Hope that you guys have enjoyed this, it was really fun on our ends 🙂

Not sure what this blog will be used for in the future, but in any case, do come find us on our socials to play with us and obsess over fandom stuff! I forgot to mention that I have twitter now! I use tumblr a lot too. Dolly is on twitter HERE and Xri is also HERE. Come say hi :3

And now that everything’s all completed, we would like to reiterate once more: Our translations are for non-commercial purposes and we do not own any rights to the book at all. Please don’t repost or reprint or conduct any commercial activities with these translations. Thank you!