![]() The glazed fruit added a startlingly light contrast to the meat. When we bit in, the meat was warm, moist, and tender. In an unusual move that had given this restaurant its write-up in the Times, the chicken was layered with a hearty handful of cut fruit: avocado, raspberries, blueberries, and a few slices of jalapeño. Underneath its sprinkling of white sesame seeds, the skin of the chicken pieces beckoned with its coy, crisp, perfectly golden color. ![]() The fried chicken, unveiled from its styrofoam lid, glistened with a honeyed texture. When I put the tray on the table, he said, “This chicken looks amazing.” “Grab some radish, too,” Dake reminded me as I pushed my chair back. “Half-and-half spicy sauce and soy garlic,” Mr. ![]() ![]() The rain made the strip mall look muted, pretty, the neon lights taking on a fairy-tale aura as they blurred through the pane. Kang’s chicken restaurant, we watched the rain drizzle over the billboards and blinking lights advertising the other stores in the strip mall: the Thai restaurant, the shaved-ice cafe, the boba-and-crepe shop, the Tofu House, and the aspirational artisanal grocery store with the twenty-six-dollar charcuterie plates. Aggressive Porsche 718s and equally aggressive Honda CR-Vs competed on right turns, raising miniature tsunamis over the sidewalks. Water poured down from rooftops and pooled in inconvenient potholes. It was raining in LA, a slurry of wet in a city never designed for it. But it had always been true that if we were a little bit younger, a little bit fresher, then we’d be a little bit better. Perhaps there had never been a point when we really felt like we wanted to be older, only to have the things we thought being older entailed: freedom, money, privacy, love. It was hard to articulate the point at which we switched from wanting to get older to feeling like we could stand to be a little bit younger. ![]() Youth.” an exclusive online excerpt from Cleo Qian’s new short-story collection, Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go, available August 15 from Tin House. ![]()
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