Chapter 1 Memories are like a slap in the face 02
I froze in place at these words.
The cold night enveloped me, and I shivered. July smiled at me and then walked into the road ahead.
The sound of my cell phone ringing brought me back to my senses.
The caller ID shows Shen Huai. Even though we have lived together for so long, I still don't want to mark his name as my father. There is only one father of Fang Weiyang in this world, and his name is Fang Chongyan.
Fang Chongyan ran away with an adopted son who had no blood relationship with him, and didn't care about his biological daughter at all .
See, I still care.
"Wei Yang, are you coming home this week?" After answering the phone, Shen Huai's gentle voice lingered in my ears.
He is always so kind to me.
"No." I whispered.
"No, I won't reply! Your mother has mentioned it many times." Shen Huai murmured, with a hint of disappointment in his tone.
However, he soon changed his tone and comforted me: "That's right, you just entered college, you should get along well with your classmates, there's no need to run home all day. Besides, you are prone to motion sickness, your body can't handle it."
"Yeah, I know." I answered obediently.
Shen Huai gave a few more worried instructions before hanging up the phone. Shen Huai and his mother settled in Huacheng, a small city with spring-like weather all year round. It only takes about two hours by high-speed rail to get to City C where I live. When Fang Chongyan and his mother first got married, they lived in an old house of more than 80 square meters in City C. Later, Fang Chongyan's business grew bigger and bigger, so he bought a luxury car and a beach villa and often did not go home.
Reality forced him to work hard to make money, and reality also shattered their marriage.
Before my mother met Shen Huai, I occasionally stayed at Fang Chongyan's place. After my mother remarried, she took me away from City C. Every winter and summer vacation, I would go to the empty villa by the sea under the guise of returning to my hometown. Now, I have been admitted to a university in City C and returned here.
The trajectory of life is like a circle.
The school was not far from the old house. I had originally applied for day study, but soon after the start of the school year, a junior student had an accident while renting a house outside the school. The school then ordered all students on campus to live in the dormitory arranged by the school. So I had to move out of the old house and live in the school dormitory. There were three girls from other majors living in the new dormitory. They all had their own circles and were not very familiar with me.
Last two weekends, I went back to Huacheng because I was too bored. This Friday, which is today, after class, I decided to go to Fang Chongyan's beach villa, which led to the following things. It was so late when I was delayed. When Shen Huai called me, I realized that I had missed the last high-speed train back to Huacheng.
So, this week, I simply decided not to go back.
I came downstairs to the old house, prepared to eat a bowl of noodles, go upstairs to sleep for a night, and go back to the dormitory tomorrow.
This "Chunyu Noodle House" is a very warm place in my few memories of City C. When I was a child, my parents had no time to take care of me, so I would always sit in front of the noodle house alone, staring at the customers eating with envy. The proprietress, Auntie Pang, is from Northeast China and follows her husband to do business here. When she sees me, she always pulls me in, makes me a small bowl of hot noodles for free, and sometimes gives me some candies.
Aunt Pang said that she has a daughter who is about my age in her hometown, and when she sees me, she will think of her own daughter.
Over the years, I watched the years slowly carve traces on her face, and white hair quietly climb up her head. She always hummed that she would return to her hometown after working for the next two years, but year after year, it seemed endless.
"I am here."
The plump lady greeted me with a smile when she saw me coming in. I smiled and nodded, then found an empty seat and sat down.
Auntie Pang held the big spoon in her hand and looked at me: "Old rules, a bowl of beef noodles, no chopped green onions?"
"Yeah." I smiled.
The long, thin handmade noodles were slapped, pulled, and spun in her hands, and then flexibly rolled into a few circles. They were then thrown into the boiling hot pot in front of her, and milky white mist rose up.
"You've just started college. Are you used to school life?" She raised her voice slightly and asked in a way that warmed my heart.
"It's fine, I just haven't made any new friends yet." I replied with a raised eyebrow, and my whole body melted in her concern.
"It's not a big deal. Friends are made from nothing." Auntie Pang said nonchalantly. She looked at me and suddenly changed the subject. "Didn't the boy come with you? I saw him a few times. I haven't seen him for a long time."
I pursed my lips in surprise. She was talking about Lin Jiaxuan, who had eaten noodles with me several times here. During the years I lived in Huacheng, Lin Jiaxuan was my neighbor, my only friend, and my only... Achilles' heel.
"He's busy." I made up an excuse.
"Oh, that boy is very cute and a nice guy. Now that you are grown up, your parents can't control you anymore. If you meet the right one while you are still young, you must seize the opportunity." Aunt Pang put a bowl of noodles on my table and winked at me meaningfully.
My hand holding the chopsticks paused, my cheeks felt hot and my face felt inexplicably hot.
"I will, thank you, auntie." I replied vaguely and started eating noodles.
Even others can see what I am thinking. Am I being too obvious ? And what is the person who makes me miss him so much and whom I have just fallen in love with, thinking about him?
After dinner, I went home and made some fried rice. I noticed the blurred string of numbers on my palm. I hesitated for a moment, but saved the number in my phone's address book. Then I washed up and went to bed.
Lying in bed, tossing and turning, the phrase "seize the opportunity" kept coming to my mind.
The whole night passed in a confused dream.
The next morning, I packed up and went back to school. Maybe it was autumn, the air in the morning became cold, and the fallen leaves began to fall one by one.
There was heated fried rice , which I wanted to bring to Lin Jiaxuan. He liked the fried rice I made. I forgot to mention that he is still my schoolmate. Lin Jiaxuan and I were admitted to the same university. At that time, I asked him why he chose to come to City C with such good grades. Lin Jiaxuan looked at me with bright eyes and smiled and said that he wanted to see the city where I lived.
When a boy tells a girl that he wants to see the city where she lived, does it mean that he wants to see the time in the girl's life that he was absent from?
Lin Jiaxuan's tone was too gentle at the time. I could hear the "thump thump" sound of my heart beating out of rhythm, and I followed his gaze, sinking and lost.
Lin Jiaxuan said that I was like a pool of deep water, with deep thoughts and no bottom. On the surface, I looked lifeless. It wasn't that there were no waves, but that no one threw stones into it. He didn't know that he was the stone.
After calling Lin Jiaxuan, he was delighted and asked me to deliver the fried rice to the downstairs of the boys' dormitory. I walked all the way there, but unexpectedly, I encountered some unexpected situations when I passed through a college building.
Someone was confessing their love. To be more precise, a girl was confessing her love to a boy.
The boy was wearing an off-white pullover sweater and casual pants, with a slender figure, and his back was facing me, giving off an aura of "keep away from strangers". From my angle, I could only see the girl in front of him holding a tin of chocolates, lowering her eyes and nervously saying the words of confession. After the last word fell, the girl raised her head and looked at him nervously, expecting a response.
I accidentally saw this scene, and the girl's beautiful face and courage made me smile. I didn't want to disturb them, so I didn't go straight ahead, but turned left and walked past the flower bed.
"That you——"
I stopped on the third step and heard a cold voice behind me. I turned around and saw a pair of deep eyes.
He just turned his head at that moment, with his high nose bridge, cold eyebrows, and when he saw my face clearly, there was a moment of ripples and surprise in his eyes.
That look in his eyes made me suspect that he and I knew each other.
Unexpectedly, he suddenly greeted me and said calmly, "It's you!"
The smile in his eyes made me frown.
"Do we know each other?" I looked at him, but my mind couldn't find any information about this person.
"Who is she? She's so annoying!" The question was interrupted by the girl's angry questioning.
The boy calmly walked a few steps towards me, stood by the handrail in the corridor, looked down at me, and asked, "What do you think?"
I saw the girl behind us blushing and whitening. The boy's indifference obviously irritated her self-esteem. She looked at me with hostility, and the atmosphere became a little awkward. I shouldn't have paid attention to him, I thought belatedly.
I subconsciously pulled my hand out to take out the phone in my pocket, hoping to take the opportunity to escape from this embarrassing situation. However, before I took out the phone, Lin Jiaxuan appeared at the entrance of the building.
He saw me and waved at me happily: "Here!"
When I heard his voice, I felt saved and I relaxed completely.
