The Immortal Cultivator Signed Up for a Dating App novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Courtyard

Tang Yu interviews the user in her courtyard behind Wenshu Monastery, meets Granny Bai, and is kissed for the first time by someone who has never kissed anyone.

The lane behind Wenshu Monastery smelled of incense, wet stone and roasting chestnuts.

Tang Yu walked down it on Tuesday evening with her laptop bag over one shoulder, looking for a courtyard gate with a red lantern.

Halfway along, a tiny old woman in a blue padded jacket sat behind a tea stall with her hands wrapped around a glass.

Her hair was white as paper, and her eyes were sharp as a sparrow's.

"You're the one," the old woman said.

"I'm looking for Jiang Lü."

"I know who you're looking for. Sit."

"I only have a minute."

"Everyone has a minute. Sit."

Tang Yu sat on the little bamboo stool.

The old woman poured a cup of tea, pale gold, and pushed it across the counter.

"They call me Granny Bai," she said. "I've sold tea on this lane for about eleven hundred years. Drink."

Tang Yu laughed politely and drank.

The tea tasted like a green hill after rain.

"That's very good."

"I know."

Granny Bai studied her for a long moment.

"She's been walking up and down this lane since Friday night with a face like a fool."

"Go through the red gate. Mind the step."

"She'll offer you everything she owns, and you're not to accept it all at once."

Tang Yu finished the tea and went.

The red gate opened into a courtyard house with grey tile roofs and a stone well.

A huge old ginkgo tree dropped yellow leaves in slow spirals.

Jiang Lü stood in the middle of the paving stones with her hands tucked in her sleeves.

"You came," she said.

"I have to interview the user."

"Yes. For the bug. Please come inside."

The main room was bare and bright and smelled of ink.

There was a low bed with a plain quilt, a kettle on a clay stove, and one enormous desk covered in paper.

Tang Yu's eyes went to the desk because it was the only thing in the room that looked lived in.

Stacks of printed pages, tied with red string, rose in leaning towers.

The margins of the top sheets were crowded with tiny brush-written notes in black ink.

A small red ladybug carved from stone sat on the highest pile as a paperweight.

"Is that your study?" Tang Yu asked.

"Yes." Jiang Lü stepped between her and the desk without seeming to hurry. "A long study. It is not finished."

"You collect ladybugs."

"I am fond of them."

"I make a testing tool with one on it. I mean, a library. It's free. It's called Ladybug." She laughed, embarrassed.

"Nobody's heard of it."

Jiang Lü only smiled and began to pour the tea.

Tang Yu took the smile for politeness and let it go.

They sat on cushions with the kettle between them.

Tang Yu took out her laptop and her notebook and asked the questions she had written down.

Had Jiang Lü changed any settings?

No.

Had she ever seen another profile?

She had seen twenty-three, she said, and none had been as interesting as the first.

Tang Yu typed that down, deleted it, and typed it back.

"You've been on the app for two years," she said. "Why haven't you gone on a date before?"

Jiang Lü poured tea with careful hands.

"I have been alone for a long time," she said.

"Not unhappy. Occupied."

"But Granny Bai says nine hundred years is long enough to practice at being alone. She says I should try the other thing."

"And you picked me."

"The app picked you."

Jiang Lü's eyes lifted to hers, steady and dark.

"I would like to learn how people do it. I have read about it."

"I would like to be taught by someone who is kind."

"I'm not an expert. I've never really been in love."

"Then we can be unskilled together."

Tang Yu should have said no.

She should have written a ticket note, closed her laptop and gone home to sleep.

Instead she said, "Five dates. I'll log each one as a test case."

"You tell me honestly what you feel, and I'll tell you what I think."

"I cannot lie," Jiang Lü said. "It is one of my limits."

"Good. Then it'll be a clean data set."

Jiang Lü smiled, very slowly.

The ginkgo outside let go of another leaf, and the sound of it landing was loud in the quiet.

"Is it a date now?" Jiang Lü asked.

"It's tea."

"May I ask what people do at the end of one?"

Tang Yu's throat went dry.

"Some people," she said, "kiss."

"May I?"

She had expected to say something clever.

What she said was "Yes."

Jiang Lü leaned across the kettle, with great care.

Her mouth was warm, and for a moment it only rested against Tang Yu's, as light as a question.

Then Tang Yu put a hand on her sleeve and the kiss deepened.

The red-gold smell of her hair filled the air, and the kettle began to whistle unnoticed.

When Jiang Lü drew back she was breathing fast.

"Oh," she said.

"Was that all right?"

"It was the best thing that has happened to me in three centuries." She swallowed. "May I do that again?"

"Yes."

On top of Jiang Lü's auburn head, a pointed ear of red-gold fur flicked up through her hair.

She clapped both hands over it with a squeak and turned scarlet to the roots.

"Do not look," she said.

"I'm looking."

"It goes away when I stop being happy."

"Then don't stop," Tang Yu said, and kissed her again.

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