Chapter 1: Farewell in this life, you are not you

  When he came back to himself, Cai Jun sitting opposite had already shifted the topic from "Zhou Yi" to Zhou Enlai.

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  This engineering graduate has an imagination so rich that it's frightening. When he went from Mendelssohn to Longmen Mountain Zhoukoudian and then from Longmen Mountain Zhoukoudian to the I Ching, I was worried that he would go on to talk about the Yijin Jing.

  Before going out, Zhou Yueyue, the good friend who made this blind date and had high hopes for it, seriously advised me: "Song Song, my elder brother's friend is particularly fond of talented women, especially those who share his interests. You should seize the opportunity. Once you've got him hooked, bring him in front of Lin Qiao and Han Meimei, and you'll be able to vent all your frustrations. That will be refreshing, that will be like a serf singing a triumphant song!"

  She then draped a Bohemian-style shawl worth thirty-five RMB over my shoulder and ordered me to change into a pair of Keds sneakers, in order to enhance the credibility that I was a talented young woman.

  Because I had never worn a cloak for the past twenty-five years, I was not familiar enough with its use, so when dining with this talented young man, I accidentally knocked over a cup full of water and dropped a pair of chopsticks stained with sauce. The young man frowned slightly in a very cultured manner.

  I bear the mission of getting to know Cai Jun well, and in order not to disappoint Zhou Yueyue's expectations, I dare not slack off. However, the conversation has been twisting and turning for nine bends and eighteen turns, but it never gets around to Guo Jingjing and Tian Liang's breakup or how many rich men I've dated so far, which is what I'm good at. Just when I was about to lose hope, Cai Jun finally realized that not giving me a chance to speak was a bit against the principle of fairness and equality in our blind date, and held his cup smiling: "Miss Yan, what kind of books do you usually like to read? What kind of music do you listen to?"

  I swallowed the last piece of meat: "Read books? Oh, occasionally take a look at 'Jin Ping Mei' and listen to songs... just occasionally listen to 'Hong Hu Shui' or 'The Big Knife Strikes the Ghosts on the Head'."

  The handsome smile froze on his face, and after a moment of silence, he struggled to salvage the conversation: "Does Miss Yan have any other interests?"

  I put down my fork and asked him: "Hey, have you ever heard of Amway?"

  Cai Jun was completely silent.

  When paying the bill, Cai Jun's complexion wasn't very good. It was clear that he wasn't very satisfied with me and thought that spending this money was a meaningless investment, and he had lost out. I originally wanted to comfort him, saying that in modern society, many working people have too much pressure, every week they have to spend money to see a psychologist to listen to their troubles, the psychologist's two-hour fee is more expensive than the dinner we're having today, if he really can't understand, it could be considered as actually seeing a psychologist for these two hours. But suddenly remembering that Zhou Yueyue had mentioned that Cai Jun was quite concerned with saving face, I thought about it again and decided to remain silent.

  Outside the window, a thousand families' lights, I wrapped my shoulders and followed behind the talented young man. When passing by a dinner table, suddenly felt two sharp gazes, conditioned reflex to turn head and look, saw a Chinese person and two foreigners. However, in this era where it's already hard to distinguish nationality based on facial features, it's also possible that it was a foreign-born Chinese and two Chinese-born foreigners, although the latter possibility is not very likely.

  The one who gave me a sharp glance in this direction was that Chinese young man. For an instant, I thought the glance might be directed at me, but immediately denied my own assumption. Isn't it often shown on TV, where the beautiful woman across the street waves her hand and makes various suggestive gestures towards the protagonist, only to have the protagonist rush over to take advantage of the beauty, when the hot beauty pouts and shouts "Honey" while enthusiastically throwing herself into the arms of ** standing behind the protagonist...

  Every film of Stephen Chow conveys a central idea that has been consistent for decades: "Misexpression is a very sad thing."

  According to the law of Chow Sing Chi, the line of sight of this handsome Chinese or foreign-born Chinese man must be connected to a stunning beauty. I objectively appreciated his good looks and turned my head back to catch up with the pace of the talented young man who was footing the bill tonight.

  I parted ways with Zaijun at the restaurant entrance, and as expected, he didn't ask for my phone number. I understand that. What's infuriating is that he didn't plan to send me home, but instead called a taxi and insisted on putting me in it. This made me spend an extra 11 yuan unnecessarily, when I could have walked to the bus station across the street, spent 1 yuan on a coin, and taken the No. 230 bus directly to the entrance of my neighborhood.

  While taking a bath, it seems to hear the sound of wind blowing leaves outside the window. As the autumn night wind, it blows a bit wildly tonight.

  I vaguely felt that the handsome guy in the restaurant who scanned me with his eyes was a bit familiar, and when I wiped my hair, I suddenly remembered that he looked like the rumored boyfriend of a certain female star whom Yan Lang liked. Two days ago, Yan Lang had pointed him out to me on TV, no wonder he looked familiar, what's his name? Qin something? I decided to wait for Yan Lang to finish her Olympiad tutoring class and ask her about it when she gets back.

  I was halfway through washing my hair when Zhou Yue started scratching the door and yelling my name outside. The scratching sound was heart-wrenching. I had to put down the towel and go answer her.

  Zhou Yue poured a glass of water with indignation, took a sip with indignation, and pointed at my forehead with indignation: "You're so disappointing! Just now that young man called me and scolded me for a good while. He said he asked me to introduce him to a talented woman, but I introduced him to a revolutionary nymphomaniac instead. And not only is she a nymphomaniac, but also an Amway saleswoman. What have you done?! Didn't I tell you that it's no good to pretend to be innocent and melancholic? It's even worse to pretend to be a talented woman! You don't need to tilt your head 45 degrees and shed tears for him. Just nod and smile in response, okay?! For the sake of your success, I even lent you my Keds sneakers. You're such an unlucky kid, how disappointing!"

  Although I feel sorry for Zhou Yueyue, I still have to point out a fact: "Those Keds sneakers of yours are actually counterfeit, aren't they?"

  Zhou Yue angrily slammed the door and left.

  Although this blind date ended in a fiasco, it successfully transformed my outlook on life and worldview in some way.

  Before tonight, under the influence of many romantic words, I had an unrealistic beautiful fantasy about the two words "talented and handsome". In my beautiful fantasy, a talented and handsome person must be both talented and handsome, just like Takeshi Kaneshiro in "The Red Cliff", who can make flowers and trees bloom with his smile, change the weather with his mood, occasionally play the piano and lead an army, and even help war horses give birth in his spare time.

  So when Zhou Yueyue told me that the other party was a talented and handsome man, I can imagine how excited I was. But this talented and handsome man first subverted my understanding of the word "handsome" with his sparse hair and duck pear-like body shape, and then subverted my understanding of the word "talented" with stories about Guan Yu fighting Qin Qiong and the discovery of the yuanmou people at Longmen Mountain Zhoukoudian. When I finally adjusted my mindset to listen to the story of crossing over, he used the sentence "After Sima Qian suffered from rotting punishment, his body was completely rotten, how painful it must have been" to deeply stimulate me once again.

  I don't know why this talented man must find a talented woman to be his partner, but I know that his vision of finding a talented woman as his partner is somewhat difficult to achieve.

  Yan Lang didn't come back until 8:30 and missed the broadcast of episode 306 of "Naruto" on TV, so he was in a bad mood for a while. I negotiated with him that as long as he scores over 80 points on his Chinese test this Friday, I'll tell him the password to our home computer, and he agreed.

  The teacher of the cram school left a question, asking them to think about "In ten rooms, nine rooms are lit and one room is dark. If you switch on/off four rooms at a time, can you turn off all the lights?" I made him a bowl of egg fried rice, sat with him under the lamp thinking for a while, didn't figure it out, so went to sleep first.

  I forgot to ask Yan Lang what was the name of that actress's rumored boyfriend he liked.

  For three days, Zhou Yue didn't speak to me, and I enjoyed an unprecedented peace and a rare leisure. In these 72 hours of unprecedented peace and rare leisure, I let Yu Ahong die of leukemia in a foreign land, thus ending my long novel "The Lonely Girl on the Opposite Bamboo Building". The editor expressed relief after reading it and suggested that I rewrite the ending, replacing leukemia with tuberculosis. She thought that as a literary work with strong rural flavor, "The Lonely Girl on the Opposite Bamboo Building" was not suitable for using leukemia, which is a fashionable and Korean cultural element. I strongly rejected her proposal, saying that the fusion of rural culture and industrial culture is an inevitable trend. In this work, I want to make some progress and let multiple cultural elements coexist harmoniously. The editor threatened me that if I didn't change it, the publication of this book would be extremely difficult, and the day when the manuscript fee was deposited into my account would be far away. I counted all the deposits in my wallet's Industrial and Commercial Bank card, Construction Bank card, China Merchants Bank card, and Agricultural Bank card, and expressed compromise to the editor.

  On the fourth afternoon's aesthetics class, Zhou Yue sent me a text message, inviting me to eat pot chicken with her after class. She said that last night was her elder cousin's birthday, and she finally met the talented young man who had been introduced to me before. She felt sorry for me, as she had previously heard her elder cousin praise this young man for looking like a certain great person, so she enthusiastically introduced him to me, but she never expected that this young man looked like a chubby version of Zhu Yuanzhang. I knew that a mere fat talented young man couldn't destroy the deep and profound friendship between Zhou Yue and me, which was as strong as the connection between heaven and earth, so I gladly accepted her invitation.

  Once a person has a pursuit, time flies. In the painful choice between going to the North Gate to eat Chen's pot chicken or going to the South Gate to eat Liao's pot chicken, the second half of the literary aesthetics class slipped away quietly.

  Zhou Yue and I each expressed our own opinions, after some discussion, we finally decided to go to Liao's Pot Chicken at the South Gate.

  There was a newspaper stand at the south gate of the school, and Zhou Yue suddenly thought of buying a copy of "Reference News". Afterwards, I regretted not stopping her from making this impulsive purchase when I took the opportunity to go to the toilet.

  It is said that in the process of buying a copy of "Reference News" for 60 cents, Zhou Yueyue saw through the dazzling array of books and newspapers and spotted a luxurious magazine with a handsome man on the cover. This magazine, called "Ming Zhu", was not cheap at all, and the thin book cost 36 yuan. Zhou Yueyue, who only had 40 yuan on her, had originally promised to treat me to a meal of bibimbap, but she decided to buy the last copy of the magazine instead, which left her with only enough money to buy a pancake for me.

  I took over that sinful magazine and flipped through it, most of the pictures were hotels and resorts, it turned out to be a professional architectural magazine.

  Before I finished eating the yellow sugar pancake in my hand, I was thinking about why Zhou Yueyue wanted to buy a construction magazine. Finally, I remembered that she is a graduate student in the Department of Architecture. Zhou Yueyue has this kind of skill, which can easily make people forget that she is actually a graduate student and even studying architecture. Every time I remember that she is an architecture graduate student, I have to wonder how she passed the exam, of course, it's impossible to come to a conclusion, and can only attribute it to the ninth wonder of the world.

  After eating shaobing, we decided to go to the Happy Forest behind the Basic Teaching Building to take a break.

  After the weather turned cool, Happy Forest was no longer as lively as it was in spring and summer. The men and women who couldn't afford a hotel room and had to settle for a wild adventure here gradually became fewer. Under the cover of night, Happy Forest had a kind of ascetic melancholy.

  The chirping of insects, I was about to take out my phone to calculate whether this month can still afford to buy a down jacket for Yan Lang. Just the moment before, Zhou Yueyue, who was studying a magazine under the streetlight, suddenly let out a loud shout and rushed over to hug my neck.

  A couple walked by under the streetlight next door.

  The woman said: "Ah, look, lace edge."

  The man said: "Ah! Lace edge! Ah? What is lace edge?"

  The girl said: "You don't even know what lace edge is, L-E-S-B-I-A-N."

  The man said: "What is L-E-S-B-I-A-N?"

  The girl said angrily: "What is L-E-S-B-I-A-N, you don't even know, have you ever passed the fourth level of English? If your English hasn't passed the fourth level, I won't be with you."

  The man anxiously said: "My English has passed the fourth level, I even scored 79 points, this word is quite familiar, it's just that for a moment I couldn't think of it, wait a minute, let me check Wenku Xing."

  The boy took out a pair of Step High brand Wen Qu Xing shoes from his backpack, and the girl stomped her foot and ran away. The boy picked up his backpack and shouted behind her: "Xiao Li, come back! My English has indeed passed level 4, you don't believe me? I'll go back and show you my certificate..."

  I patted Zhou Yueyue's back: "Hurry up and let go, look, others think we're a couple."

  She released my neck, and her eyes radiated a light that was close to madness. She said: "Ah... Song Song Song Song Song Song, Qin Mo actually came to C City, he actually came to C City. I never thought that in this life, I would have the good fortune to breathe the same city air as him, what should I do, Song Song Song Song? I feel so excited, so excited, so excited, ah... I'm going to faint, going to faint, going to faint..."

  "Heroine!!!!! Please don't touch my sweater with your paws that have honey on them!!!!!"

  I've heard Zhou Yue mention Qin Mo in a tone of reverence more than once. Apparently, this person is a rare talent in the field of architecture today, a top student from MIT's School of Architecture, who opened his own architectural design firm in New York with a partner at the age of 25. As a practical architect, he has produced many masterpieces over the past five or six years, including the State Art Museum and Memorial Hall in some state in America.

  I remember a female classmate in high school who always scored full marks in math, and we were all jealous of her. This female classmate was later admitted to Tsinghua University with a recommendation, and two years ago she went abroad to study at this very Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I've already forgotten what her name is, and back then nobody really called her by her name, affectionately referring to her as "Alien" instead.

  When Zhou Yue and I left Happy Forest, we saw Han Meimei kissing Lin Qiao behind a big tree. The position where they were hiding was quite secluded. Zhou Yue probably didn't notice because she was busy rehearsing her first meeting with Qin Mo, besides, she had mild myopia. Although my eyes are also nearsighted and have astigmatism, it's worth mentioning that my contact lenses fit very well.

  Zhou Yueyue was always in a state of extreme excitement, making me worry that the calories from a single pancake wouldn't be enough to sustain her for an entire evening. Unfortunately, my worries soon became reality - she hadn't eaten her fill and shamelessly scrounged a bowl of noodles at our place, even swiping a croissant on her way out, despite my hinting more than once that it was Yan Lang's breakfast for the next morning.

  Yan Lang's language exam still hasn't broken through the 80-point barrier. Since he started learning composition in third grade, he has never scored above 80 points on any language exam, but his math scores are always above 95 points. This seriously goes against my genes. I once discussed this with Zhou Yueyue with endless worry, wondering if Yan Lang might not be my biological child. Zhou Yueyue said that's impossible, look at how bad his English is, just like yours. Her argument was too strong and immediately dispelled my doubts.

  Yan Lang finished eating the noodle soup and then went to wash his own bowl. After that, he sat down in front of me with a pitiful look in his eyes, trying to conquer me with them.

  I said: "Yan Lang, 78 points once, 78 points twice, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times you still scored 78 points. Being able to maintain this score at one point is not easy for you either."

  He humbly said: "No, no, you're overpraising me."

  So I asked him to wash the bowl that Zhou Yueyue had used too.

  Can't watch Naruto episode 306, Yan Lang looks a bit down. To alleviate this disappointment, he sits on the sofa flipping through magazines. I sit in front of the computer, ready to use Baidu's search engine to look up the symptoms of tuberculosis, in preparation for modifying the ending of "The Lonely Girl on the Opposite Bamboo Building".

  Yan Lang suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the magazine cover in his hand, and said with a tone of disgust: "Isn't this Zheng Mingming's boyfriend? Mom, why did you buy this magazine? As soon as I see Qin Mo, I get annoyed. He's already over 30 years old, still having the nerve to date a girl in her early 20s."

  The magazine in Yan Lang's hand was the one Zhou Yue forgot to bring back. I took a closer look at the elegant and refined handsome man on the cover, and suddenly discovered that the handsome man who had scanned me with his eyes at the restaurant where I had a blind date with Pang Junjie that night was exactly the same as the handsome man on the cover of this magazine.

  "Isn't he your rumored boyfriend?"

  Yan Lang continued to despise evil like an enemy: "If they're not boyfriend and girlfriend, where did the rumors come from?"