Chapter 104, Diary of One Hundred and Four

After riding for a mile, Luo Yan started to run out of steam.

She slowed down, enjoying the summer breeze on her face, and glanced back, unsure of her own feelings.

Zhou Weifang followed at a distance, watching her turn around and fiddle with the bicycle bell a couple of times.

Luo Yan pretended not to hear, looked away and focused on the road. When she was almost at the alley entrance, she freed one hand and waved with the back of her hand.

In summer, many neighbors come to cool off in the alley.

Zhou Weifang was also afraid of attracting some unpleasant comments to her, so after watching her figure disappear, he turned around and went back to the shop.

The apprentice was in charge of the shop that evening. He thought that his master had spent a long time styling his hair before leaving home excitedly in the afternoon, and he would be back very late. Seeing this, he was very perceptive and didn't dare to ask anything, he just reported the accounts.

Zhou Weifang wrote down a few accounts and said, "You can go back now."

The apprentice quickly washed his hands and prepared to leave. Before leaving, he looked at his master and thought he looked like a mushroom that had squeezed out of a corner, the kind that no one would want to eat and would be picked up and thrown away.

He said, "If you're not feeling well, go upstairs and lie down for a while. Anyway, I'll be fine when I get back; I'll watch the stall."

Zhou Weifang wondered if she looked that listless, and said, "I'm fine, let's go back."

But then he suddenly remembered something: "Wait a minute, I'm going out to make a phone call."

The apprentice agreed, knowing that phone calls were expensive and he wouldn't be able to talk for long, his hands still on the handlebars.

Zhou Weifang didn't go for long; when he came back, he told him to leave work early.

As soon as the person left, the little strength he had been holding on for so long dissipated, and he slumped into the recliner. Before he could even sort out his thoughts, he heard someone calling from the doorway: "Master, can you take a look at this car?"

Zhou Weifang responded loudly, "Yes!"

My thoughts were temporarily distracted by these mundane things like firewood, rice, oil, and salt.

But Luo Yan didn't have that kind of pressure.

When she got home, she greeted her parents, took a shower, and sat in her room pondering the situation. She thought that she had rejected Zhou Weifang that night, and that all that was left was to wait for things to change. But now it seemed that nothing had really changed.

What was the point of all this mental preparation I've been doing every day for the past month? Luo Yan clenched her fist at the air, then decided to find something to eat before continuing to think.

The parents had just turned off the TV and were about to go back to their room to sleep when they saw their daughter rummaging around like a little mouse. They chuckled and said, "Didn't you eat out tonight? Were you still hungry?"

There were many snacks in the cupboard, but none of them were what Luo Yan wanted to eat right now. She said dejectedly, "I didn't eat well."

Liu Yinfeng: "What do you want to eat? Mom will make it for you."

Luo Yan just wanted to eat something from outside, glanced at the clock and said, "Never mind, I'll just go to sleep."

"Don't bother calculating," Luo Xinmin said. "Do you want to eat out? Dad will take you."

As the family of three was talking, Luo Hong pushed open the door and entered. Seeing that they were all standing, he joked, "Did they know I brought food and stand here to greet me?"

Both husband and wife had suffered a lot in their early years, and neither of them had a good stomach; they never ate anything late at night.

Therefore, Liu Yinfeng simply said, "My sister is hungry, you two eat, and we're going to sleep."

When his parents entered the room, Luo Hong took things out of his bag one by one and placed them on the table.

Luo Yan, unusually unconventional, grabbed a piece of meat without even washing her hands, chewed it, then went to the kitchen to get chopsticks, which she swung back like a sword.

Luo Hong was delighted and raised his chin, saying, "Eat up, it's all your favorite food."

Indeed, these were all foods that Luo Yan liked to eat. She realized, "Why did you buy so much for a late-night snack?"

Luo Hong hesitated for a moment: "Some people said you didn't eat much tonight."

Hmm? Luo Yan asked her brother for the first time, "Do you really hope that I'll become friends with him?"

Luo Hong's expression became even more conflicted, and he scratched his head: "To be honest, I don't really want to."

It was precisely because his first reaction upon learning of this was reluctance that he felt even more apologetic towards his childhood friend.

Luo Yan was surprised by this answer and asked, "Why?"

Luo Hong explained beforehand: "It's not that he has any problems. All three parties are perfect in every way. I just feel that the two of you don't get along."

He knew his sister's personality best. She had always hated change and felt that it was good enough to stay on a path that everyone considered safe and secure, with countless people ahead of her who had plenty of experience to draw upon. Why would she want to do anything risky?

But my childhood friend was the complete opposite. He was adventurous and imaginative. As soon as the car dealership stabilized, he couldn't wait to head south to find new opportunities. No business is ever smooth sailing; who can guarantee there won't be ups and downs?

Two people with completely opposite personalities, how will they live together in the future?

Luo Hong felt it was really inappropriate, but he knew that his attitude would definitely affect his sister's decision, and he didn't want to upset his childhood friend, so he was only now explaining things to her in detail.

However, Luo Yan used all her intelligence on studying, but she didn't think things through when it came to relationships, making decisions entirely based on her immediate feelings—if she liked someone, she would stay with them, and if she felt even slightly uncomfortable, she would break off the relationship immediately.

She said, "Getting married is a long way off. I haven't even thought about it."

Luo Hong: "No rush, you're still so young."

Exactly, Luo Yan: "I'll work for at least a few years after graduation before I talk about it."

She stuffed herself with several things, took a sip of soda, and asked, "Did he come to see you tonight?"

Although she didn't name names, Luo Hong knew who his sister was talking about: "No, she just called."

Luo Yan gave an "oh" and began to mutter about what would happen that evening.

Luo Hong wasn't surprised: "He's not the kind of person who gives up easily."

It depends on the situation. Luo Yan: "From my observation, most men will feel a little resentful when they are rejected at first, but after a while they will refuse to admit that they liked me and say that they were just joking."

Luo Hong wasn't as experienced as his sister in this kind of thing, but he felt he knew his childhood friend well enough to say, "Nothing will happen between the three parties."

Luo Yan was displeased: "Whose side are you on?"

Luo Hong said irritably, "Who can I side with? Can I side with the old lady next door?"

Luo Yan smiled ingratiatingly at her brother, then asked somewhat guiltily, "You two won't break off your friendship over this, will you?"

Luo Hong didn't think things would stop here, but who could say what would happen next?

He said, "Yes, we will break off all ties immediately tomorrow."

Hearing this, Luo Yan was no longer worried.

She poured the leftover midnight snack into the yard for Wangcai and Laifu, which excited them so much that they barked loudly for most of the night. They only quieted down after being scolded a few times by the voices coming from the west wing.

Luo Yan realized she had gotten herself into trouble, so she tiptoed home. Once inside, she picked up the dog hair stuck to her clothes, but it seemed to grow back like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, one hair after another.

Luo Hong took a shower and came out to find his younger sister still in the living room. While drying his hair, he urged her, "Go to sleep early."

Luo Yan: "Right away."

She went back to her room to change her clothes before lying down, and when she lifted the blanket, she flung the flashlight from the bedside table away.

The flashlight spun around under the bed, getting stuck in some crevice. She couldn't see where it was, so she had to rummage through everything under the bed in the middle of the night to get it out.

There were several large boxes under the bed, filled with odds and ends, some useful and some not.

Luo Yan was supposed to push the things back after picking them up, but today, for some inexplicable reason, she wiped the dust off with a tissue, opened one of them, and took out a small wooden box containing her childhood diary.

Calling it a diary isn't entirely accurate, because she only wrote a few lines when she was happy or unhappy, deciding whether to crumple it into a ball or fold it into a small boat based on her mood. However, to make it easier to store, she later flattened them all again, so now we can only judge her mood at the time by the words on them.

Limited by her childhood literacy level, a large portion of these could only be represented by pictures. Luo Yan picked up one at random, looked at it for a long time, and muttered to herself, "What does this say?"

She guessed that some of the frequently appearing symbols were her own pseudonyms for certain people and things, but she couldn't remember what she was thinking when she named them. She only figured that her brother and Zhou Weifang were probably doing something, and she was probably throwing a tantrum. But why did she draw a flower at the end?

Flowers must represent a good mood, right? Luo Yan stroked her chin, completely puzzled and a little anxious. She looked out the window and saw that her brother was still awake. She called him into the living room and asked him to guess as well.

Luo Hong looked at it for a long time: "My name isn't on this, it has nothing to do with me, how am I supposed to guess?"

Luo Yan: "Anything written in red ink belongs to you."

Luo Hong originally liked his name quite a bit, but when she said it, it sounded ordinary. He said, "So you don't give nicknames to outsiders, you only give them to people at home, right?"

Luo Yan said confidently, "I was so young back then, I couldn't even write my own name clearly."

He added, "Don't think I don't know; you're always trying to peek."

As Luo Hong grew older, his manners improved as well, but he wasn't entirely in the wrong: "Who told you to always curse me while you were writing... us."

This group always specifically refers to him and Zhou Weifang.

If Luo Yan weren't afraid of waking her parents so she could yell back, she could only express her emotions with her big, round eyes and say, "Shouldn't I be scolded!"

She shook the paper: "Look at you all, your crimes are too numerous to count!"

The red color was quite eye-catching, but Luo Hong couldn't quite tell: "Which one is the third party?"

Luo Yan held up the paper with both hands to show her brother: "The square one is him."

Luo Hong counted them briefly: "Then it seems he deserves to be scolded more than I do."

Everyone protects their own, Luo Yan said: "Who told you to be my brother?"

She whitewashed her brother's actions, blaming Zhou Weifang for most of the blame when the incident occurred. Now, thinking back, it seems that his problems are the only ones she can be sure of, but subconsciously she knows that this is not the case.

Luo Hong suddenly had a guess: "Is it because of this that you don't like him?"

His crime is extremely serious.

Luo Yan first instinctively wanted to retort: ​​"I didn't mean no."

She then changed her tune: "When I said I liked him, it wasn't that kind of liking. The way I see him is different from how I see Zhou Xiuhe."

Luo Hong now felt somewhat guilty for dragging his childhood friend down, so he spoke up for him: "You have several ways to solve a problem, why do you only really like Zhou Xiuhe when you see him?"

His eldest uncle and his second uncle are both his uncles.

Luo Yan couldn't think of a rebuttal for a moment, and finally stamped her foot: "I, I just know."

As she spoke, she became a little less confident, but the thought of holding hands with Zhou Weifang in the future gave her a strange feeling, so she quickly shook her head to banish the image.

Luo Hong pressed down on his sister's head, which was throbbing like a rattle: "Fine, fine, you decide. Go to sleep now."

Luo Yanbang punched her brother twice, patted the dust off her clothes from rummaging through drawers, washed her hands, feet, and face, and went back to her room. But she couldn't fall asleep after lying down.

There was nothing she could do; a mystery was right in front of her, driving her crazy with worry.

As she pondered, she drifted off to sleep, unsure whether it was a memory or a dream, but she remembered.

It was during the period of school closures. A group of children in the alley were not yet of age to be sent to the countryside, so they wandered around all day.

Many things that seem trivial now, such as who gets the ping-pong table first or who finds the hanged ghost first, can cause a huge commotion in the children's world. There are eight hundred fights a day, and the Harvest Alley team, led by Zhou Weifang and Luo Hong, often comes out on top and wins big.

Fight if you want, but even in war, you shouldn't kill the messenger. But these little brats are completely unreasonable. One day, Luo Yan was out and about, and he was tripped by a foot that suddenly stretched out.

She cried nonstop on her way home, wailing so loudly that everyone in the alley could hear her. Enraged, Luo Hong immediately led his childhood friend to avenge his sister. When they returned, Luo Yan was still crying, her tears enough to irrigate three acres of land.

Luo Hong had tried everything to calm her down, but Zhou Weifang covered his ears and said, "At this rate, forget the Great Wall, the earth will collapse."

Hearing this, Luo Yan howled even louder, wrote a deep note about it in her diary, and resolved not to speak to him for several days.

The next day, Zhou Weifang brought her a large bag of locust flowers to apologize.

In those years, supplies were extremely tight. No matter how much parents loved their children, they couldn't cook without rice, and they couldn't come up with anything new for their daily meals. After washing this bag of locust flowers, Luo Yan ate locust flower cakes for three whole days. How could she still remember that little grudge, sharing her most treasured milk candy with him, and even planning to destroy her diary?

But in the end, she couldn't bear to part with it, because the little girl who hadn't even started school yet had poured all her knowledge into writing a whole page, a page full of bitter tears. So she could only add a small flower at the end as a postscript to show that things had taken a dramatic turn for the better.

She remembered things she herself had forgotten, and only after racking her brains to recall them did she finally fall into a deep sleep, completely satisfied.

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Author's note: No, I have to go out again. If I get back early tonight, I'll update; if I get back late, I'll update tomorrow.

I was just two days away from achieving perfect attendance this month [crying emoji]. It's true, a life without a stockpile of drafts is too risky to withstand even the slightest risk!!