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The neighbor leaves out seasonal fruit for the crows, sliced neatly and peeled as if he’s making snacks for children. On a particularly nice afternoon An Wenyi might notice him perched on a stool reading Hong Ying, the sliding doors pushed open with crows and ravens wandering around as they please.
It must be inconvenient befriending corvids. They imagine he gets followed around by a small flock of them everywhere he goes.
He brings it out at around four every afternoon, though the birds start gathering by three-thirty.
An Wenyi would never admit observing their neighbor so much. It’s because their balconies face each other, they’d insist. The apartment complex is just weird like that. Usually, the buildings are built to face the street or the courtyard, and the fact that An Wenyi can see the neighbor’s balcony from where they study in the living room is nothing but a coincidence.
Luo Ji raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t prod them about it. Much. If it’s not that big of a deal, then why don’t you move?
Move the coffee table, then, they’d reply. They like sitting on the floor to do their schoolwork.
On An Wenyi and Luo Ji’s balcony, they grow plants. An Wenyi’s pots of herbs on the left, and Luo Ji’s strange flowers on the right. Every so often, Baozi would bring another weird-looking plant for his boyfriend to add to the collection.
The neighbor waves when he catches An Wenyi watering the plants. An Wenyi waves back. There’s a touch of purple to the man’s dark hair, and they wonder if he dyes it.
An Wenyi likes to hang charms from the ceiling, strings knotted with bells and pretty scraps of wood and metal and bone. They make soft clinking noises when the wind blows by, or if a ballsy juvenile crow tries to pull at one of them.
The juveniles have blue eyes. An Wenyi remembers searching that up at some point.
The neighbor keeps cut flowers in his house. An Wenyi wasn’t actually staring this time, they swear. It’s just that when the lights are on at night and the blinds aren’t drawn, it’s easy to see inside people’s homes.
When the flowers start wilting, he hangs them to dry behind the balcony’s glass sliding doors. An Wenyi imagines he fills his house with them.
An Wenyi decided to make dumplings one week. No reason, they just got the recipe from their grandmother and they had a few days off from school. It would be fine.
They made everything by hand, like how she would do it— though they underestimated how many dumpling skins to make.
The dumplings didn’t look all that great, but it tasted like childhood. They got the idea to leave out a bowl of leftover filling for the birds.
The next morning, they found a couple magpies digging at the bowl. They raise their head and catch sight of their neighbor drying flowers behind the glass. He turns and meets their eye, and then quickly looks away.
Later, in the afternoon, An Wenyi finds a small pile of dried white flowers next to the empty bowl. They know enough about flowers to see they’re not roses, and that’s about it.
An Wenyi keeps the flowers in an empty wine bottle, in front of the altar they keep for Frigg. They think she’d like it— they do, at least. It makes them think of croaking birds and cut fruit and black-purple hair that may or may not be dyed.
The next time they cast runestones, the goddess seems a little… supportive, for some reason. About what, they have no idea.
It becomes routine to leave scraps of meat out for the birds. An Wenyi brings it out at night, and the corvids come out in the morning. Once in a while, one of them might leave a shiny paperclip, or a bottlecap.
They keep the little things in a dish, on the coffee table where they like to work.
Frigg asks them to make her something. An Wenyi makes her a figurine of a boat, out of a coca-cola bottlecap and a length of wire the crows brought them that morning.
Luo Ji brings home a bouquet of flowers one day, presumably from his boyfriend. An Wenyi gets the idea that Baozi went into a random florist’s shop and got the brightest, most colorful arrangement he saw.
An Wenyi helps him take the arrangement apart— they don’t have any vases in the apartment, just cups and empty bottles. Two roses and some leaves in an empty bottle that used to store cooking wine, and a bunch of orange flowers with the stems cut short in a chipped mug.
An Wenyi gets the rest. To hang up and dry, or something, Luo Ji says.
They pick out the white flowers— they think they’re calla lilies, they looked up some pictures— and pin the rest, like laundry, onto the clothesline.
The neighbor cut up some apricots and an apple for the birds. When night falls, An Wenyi tosses the lilies onto his balcony.
“You know his name, right?” Luo Ji asks, watching An Wenyi mince some pork for the birds.
Their hands pause. “No. Why?” They glance at the kitchen window, cracked open for fresh air. “Do you?”
“Have you ever seen him outside of his house?”
They scrape the knife against the cutting board. Have they? A few times. An Wenyi has seen him in the lobby a few times, carrying groceries in both hands. He brightens up when Wenyi passes him by.
“I haven’t talked to him.” They reply, after a moment of thought. “He doesn’t talk much.”
After lunch, An Wenyi gets the idea to dig out a copy of some book by Hong Ying they were meaning to read, and they drag a stool out onto the balcony. The birds have already started gathering in wait for the neighbor to bring out some fruit.
This time he brings out cherries and grapes. An Wenyi stands up to greet him.
He waves back.
“... You hung up the flowers I gave you.” They start, noticing the lilies dangling in a line from the doorframe.
His lips part in surprise, before twitching into an embarrassed smile.
“I’m An Wenyi. Do you like melon bread? There’s a bakery a few blocks away that makes good melon bread. We can get some, sometime… maybe we can have a picnic in the park across the street?”
One raven opens its beak and croaks before fluttering to An Wenyi’s balcony, followed by another. The bashfulness melts away from the neighbor’s bearing, and he nods. “Zhou Zekai. Friday?”
“Friday.” The first raven hops closer to An Wenyi, and the other dives for their herbs. Almost immediately, they turn to shoo it away.
It flies off, its partner following behind.