Living With a Temperamental Adonis: 99 Proclamations of Love 33 How We Used to Be 3

Song Cheng would complain about her constant presence ruining their fun, labelling her a nuisance, and forbidding her from joining them. Whenever that happened, Song Qingchun would start to wail and hearing her cries, Qin Yinan would always betray Song Cheng to comfort her.

Unlike Song Cheng, Qin Yinan never pulled on her pigtails, calling her names and would not steal her favorite snacks or swipe the remote away from her and switch the channel when her favorite show was on. Instead, Qin Yinan would ruffle her hair and called her ‘Song Song’ in a gentle way. Whenever she cried, he would take her to the mini market in the alleyway to buy sweets for her. He would accompany her to watch her favorite cartoons again and again and tell her many different fairytales.

In her memory, Qin Yinan was like a ray of sunshine. No matter how many years had passed, whenever her mind went back to her childhood, she would feel warmed and protected.

She could not pinpoint when she started to have feelings for Qin Yinan, perhaps like those princesses in the fairytales, she was fated to be his love. She loved his always clean white shirt, loved how he caressed her hair and called her ‘Song Song’ and loved the gentleness in his voice when he told her fairytales.

In any case, she liked him. When she was five and the granny sharing the same courtyard house with them asked her who she was going to marry when she grew up, she licked on the ice-cream he bought her and happily said, “Brother Yinan.”

When she was in kindergarten and the teacher enquired after her dream for her future, she would openly tell the whole class that she would become Brother Yinan’s bride. Qin Yinan was her dream, a dream she started to pursue ever since she knew what attraction meant.

Song Qingchun, Song Cheng, and Qin Yinan attended the same primary school. Song Cheng would complain about her weight, so she would end up sitting behind Qin Yinan’s bicycle seat.

In her memory, Qin Yinan had never said she was annoying. He would teach her patiently when she did not understand her homework questions, unlike Song Cheng who would grumble about the stupidity of his little sister every time he had to help her with her homework.

In secondary school, both Song Cheng and Qin Yinan became celebrities of a sort in their school. Song Qingchun, who was no different from their shadow, would go cheer for them during basketball matches. Whenever the match was over, she would run to Qin Yinan to praise him. Then, Song Cheng would smack her on the back of her head with her mineral water bottle, reminding her that he was her biological elder brother.

Whenever that happened, she would hide behind Qin Yinan and he would help her block Song Cheng’s mineral water bottle attacks. Behind Qin Yinan’s protection, she would stick out her tongue at Song Cheng, riling him up even more.

As she grew older, the promise of marriage that she would constantly announce when she was a little girl, became her own secret.

At the same time, both Qin Yinan and Song Cheng also grew into respectable and handsome young men. Qin Yinan had the allure of the kind brother next door while Song Cheng had the bad boy charm. The two of them together would attract the attention of the girls at school as they fought over who was more deserving of being called the school’s most handsome.

Qin Yinan and Song Cheng would receive many gifts whenever holidays came around and they would all go to Song Qingchun unopened. Therefore, she knew which girls liked Qin Yinan and she would get annoyed at them.