Chapter 48 Mysterious Numbers Some People Like to Hide Easter Eggs

Just as the child said, it didn't take long for Zhu Yingning to catch up with the ox cart. However, she had been chasing it for four or five miles and her strength was running out. Not long after she caught up, she was left behind by the ox cart again. Then, she kept repeating the process of "being on par with the ox cart" and "being left behind by the ox cart", just like the little character in the 4399 web racing game who was sometimes ahead and sometimes behind.

Xu Sirui had been worried that she might jump onto the oxcart and kill him, but seeing how hard she was running, that worry suddenly turned into a mixture of laughter and tears: "No... are you really that serious, Zhu Yingning?"

"You, you stop the car." She said breathlessly.

Xu Sirui snorted softly: "No."

"Why?! Why, Xu Sirui?!"

"Why stop?" he said awkwardly. "If you want to say goodbye, it's the same now. Goodbye, goodbye. We'll meet again someday. Even if we're thousands of miles apart, we'll still be together. Okay?"

"?"

She looked like she wanted to curse him but was forced to hold it back because of her dignity. Gritting her teeth, she reluctantly ran after the ox cart, panting, "I...I asked you to stop because I have something for you! You left it at our house!"

"Is there anything?" Xu Sirui looked at the suitcase under his butt in confusion. After thinking carefully for a moment, he couldn't think of anything he had left behind. He turned to look at Zhu Yingning. She didn't seem to be carrying any visible items on her body. So he frowned suspiciously, suspecting that she had stopped the car as an excuse to beat him, so he said cautiously, "If you have something you want to give me, it's the same if you give it to me like this." As he said that, he stretched out his arm, spread his palm upwards, and hooked his index finger at her in a provocative manner.

Zhu Yingning had no other options but to continue panting and speaking incoherently, "Then you take it! I, I really can't run any longer..."

"Next, next, bring it to me." He said happily.

She stretched out her arms to reach his palm, and before she completely lost her strength, she slapped his palm hard.

Xu Sirui quickly clenched his fist and felt as if there was a piece of paper in the palm of his hand.

After handing over the note, she was completely exhausted. She slowly stopped, leaning on her knees and facing the ground, gasping for air. Her lungs ached as if they were about to explode. Every breath she took felt like thousands of needles piercing her alveoli. She was so exhausted she felt dizzy and dazed. She couldn't even lift her head to look at the oxcart, let alone speak. She could only weakly raise her hand as a farewell.

Only when she was completely out of sight did Xu Sirui open his palm and stare at the note in it.

...note.

He really didn't want to appear too narcissistic, but in his limited life of more than a decade, everything related to notes—especially those from the opposite sex—had always pointed to confessions. Furthermore, the scene of parting was a perfect time to express the truth that one might not normally dare to say, so he found this inference reasonable.

Could she have written something like "I like you" in it?

Xu Sirui felt that this conjecture was too absurd and bizarre, but his heartbeat could not help but accelerate. He looked at the folded paper, and after a long mental preparation, he mustered up the courage to slowly unfold it.

Then--

He saw the following written in a serious manner:

Zhu Yingning owes Xu Sirui 300 yuan for a down jacket, with interest yet to be determined. Based on this IOU, she will repay the principal and interest before January 1, 2012.

“…”

It was the IOU she wrote to him for his down jacket, but he forgot to take it with him.

...In other words, she chased him so far just to give him this thing.

Xu Sirui gritted his teeth at the back of his mouth, his eyes blazing with fire as he stared at the extremely baffling note. His expression instantly changed from one of secret anticipation to a constipated dark blue. It was not until a few minutes later that he came back to his senses from his extreme speechlessness. He felt an urge from inside out to laugh.

This smile was not only directed at her, but also at himself. He felt that he was really stupid in front of Zhu Yingning. She could always defeat him again and again with this serious and funny smile.

He always seemed to be at a loss for what to do with her.

After barely holding it in for a few seconds, Xu Sirui couldn't help himself and burst into laughter, burying his head in his knees. The child driving the cart was startled and turned around to ask him, "Are you okay?"

He waved back to show that he was fine, but his shoulders were still shaking violently and he was almost laughing with tears in his eyes.

He buried his head between his knees and laughed for a long time until he felt a familiar pain in his abdomen. He slowly raised his head and used his five fingers to push away the sweat-soaked hair on his forehead. The corners of his mouth were still curled up. He put his fingers together, tightly grasped the piece of paper, looked at the vast and overlapping mountains in the distance, and sighed helplessly from his chest.

**

Parting is a very mysterious thing. It is difficult to feel it real when it comes too quickly. Until he walked back home, Zhu Yingning still felt dizzy and as if he was in a dream.

She didn't have time to feel any sadness or reluctance, she just felt it was abrupt.

Everything was normal at home. Yang Ji's photography team hadn't left yet, as they needed to stay to film Zhu Jixiang's return home tomorrow. Suddenly, with one person gone, the place felt a bit deserted, but it wasn't so deserted that it was unbearable.

When did she slowly realize that he was gone? Zhu Yingning thought it started at night when she was sleeping.

Because the 38th parallel is gone.

The childish mountain of clothes that once occupied her sleeping space and that she had mocked in her heart was now gone. Her sleeping space became very large and empty. When she looked to the side under the covers at night, she even felt that the emptiness was a little scary.

She tossed and turned on the kang for a long time before she finally fell asleep.

The next morning, the feeling of discomfort grew even stronger. No one squatted beside her while she brushed her teeth, and no one whispered irritating words in her ear as she walked to school. For the first time, the journey to school, which had never seemed long to her, felt long and tedious.

When she arrived at school and saw the seat Xu Sirui had sat in, her heart instantly sank even deeper. Although she knew he had simply returned home, unlike Zhu Juan and Zhou Li, who had been forced to move to the city, he had a house in Beijing that provided shelter, convenient infrastructure, excellent educational resources, loving parents, and classmates who admired him. She knew he had returned to Beijing to enjoy life, not to suffer punishment, but she still couldn't help but feel sad and disappointed, even leading the morning reading with a lack of energy.

Other students in the class found that Xu Sirui was missing and asked her about the situation. She had to repeat the fact that the recording ended early many times. Finally, Chen Bin called her to his office and explained it to him in detail.

"Is that so?" Chen Bin sighed, pushed his glasses, and said, "It's such a shame it happened so suddenly. I had planned to give him a farewell party at the end of this semester. Sigh... I wonder if we'll leave him with any good memories here."

Chen Bin's last words, "I wonder if we left him any good memories here," echoed like a curse in Zhu Yingning's mind all morning. The more she thought about it, the sadder she felt, the more guilty she felt. Because, just as Xu Sirui had said before, Zhu Jixiang went to Beijing to enjoy life, while he came to the mountains to suffer. Aside from the better air quality, nothing here could compare to Beijing. In these few short months, had he left behind any good memories?

Had she ever made him truly happy?

**

After being in a trance for the whole morning, Zhu Yingning asked Chen Bin for leave and returned home as she had agreed with Liu Guifang. She drove an ox cart to the town to pick up Zhu Jixiang.

Liu Guifang generously gave her twenty yuan and asked her to use the money to go to the town to buy some daily necessities and some food for Zhu Jixiang and herself. Zhu Yingning nodded lightly and drove the ox cart to the town in a trance.

She arrived early and Zhu Jixiang had not yet arrived, so she could only stare at the photographer and sit on the ox cart bored.

After a long moment of silence, the photographer said, "You know what, I'm not used to Xu Sirui leaving like this."

Zhu Yingning nodded in agreement.

The photographer shook his head and sneered, "We are such cheapskates. What on earth is there to miss about that little bastard?"

Zhu Yingning disagreed with this. She felt from the bottom of her heart that Xu Sirui was a very good person, but his goodness was not obvious and needed to be felt with heart. But as long as you felt it with heart, you would find that he had a soft heart.

Thinking about it, he should be home by now, right? Should she call him and ask about him? But she didn't know his home phone number... and what could she say after calling? Ask him if he got home safely? That was nonsense. Ask him if he was adjusting? What was there for him to adjust to in his own home? Thinking about it carefully, there was no natural topic to start with.

Speaking of which, are they friends now? Does Xu Sirui consider her a friend?

Zhu Yingning's thoughts wandered aimlessly, and the more he thought, the more uncertain he felt.

At this moment, the string of numbers he had casually mentioned in the cave yesterday evening came to her mind. She shuddered and instantly woke up. Suddenly, a possibility occurred to her - could this number be their home phone number?!

……wrong.

She calmed down and recalled the number carefully, and was disappointed to find that the number was nine digits long and was neither a mobile phone number nor a landline number.

So it really was just a meaningless string of random numbers used to test her memory.

She sighed.

Just as she was about to look up to see if Zhu Jixiang had arrived, the Internet cafe at the end of the street came into her sight.

This familiar place led to another possibility that she had overlooked. She stood there in a daze, her brain working slowly, and she deduced another answer that was closer to the truth.

"ah."

The photographer was almost dozing off waiting when he suddenly heard Zhu Yingning mutter "Ah" in a dreamy voice and said to him, "I have to leave for a while for something. I'll be back soon."

"Okay, go ahead. I'll watch over here."

So Zhu Yingning walked into the Internet cafe in a daze. She felt like she was sleepwalking the whole time, until she opened QQ based on the operations Xu Sirui taught her in her memory, logged into her QQ account, and entered the nine-digit number in the add friend column in a daze.

Then--

Enter key.

The web page scrolled and the search results popped up.

This avatar, this nickname...

She didn't even need to look closely to be 100% sure that the account belonged to Xu Sirui himself, because his QQ nickname was simply and straightforwardly written as "Xu.three", and his avatar was also very showy, using a modeling photo he took when he was a print model, pretending to be cool to the fullest.

Moreover, he just happened to be pretending, because he was so handsome in the photo that no one doubted that he was an Internet celebrity.

Such a subtle and yet high-profile approach is indeed very Xu Sirui.

She looked at the computer screen and chuckled silently.