Chapter 70 Have you ever chased someone else? ...
"Lao Xu, are you and your girlfriend really high school classmates?"
Xu Jiqing nodded "hmm", clicked on the screenshot of the air ticket order that Tao Siyun had just sent, stared at it for a few seconds, curled the corners of his lips, and replied with a small "OK" emoticon without saying anything.
Seeing him like this, the people on the sofa looked at each other in tacit understanding and said in unison: "Puppy love?"
"No premature love."
Jiang Li walked into the living room carrying some cut fruit and casually asked, "Hey, who's chasing who?"
Xu Ji calmly looked up from his phone screen and said, "I'm pursuing her."
Several people started to make noises again, and said in a long voice: "Oh~"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." Duan Jingyi rubbed his chin, shaking his head and sighing uncontrollably. "No wonder we've been sharing a dormitory together for five years, and I've never seen you get close to anyone of the opposite sex. You're so pure and unselfish all day long. I almost suspected you had a problem with your sexual orientation, but you're so good, hiding your secret crush from us guys! This is a huge misunderstanding."
Chen Feng is the only one among them who knows some inside information.
"Go away, go away. Old Xu has remained a virgin for seven or eight years for his young love, Bai Yueguang. He is so pure and innocent. Who can be like you?"
"Look at what it means to 'never forget your original intention' and to 'be faithful to one'. This is it. You guys should learn from it." Jiang Li pointed at Li Zetao.
"Don't point fingers! There are few husbands in the world who are as loyal, faithful, and devoted to you as I am." Li Zetao was innocently caught in the crossfire and quickly pulled his wife to swear to the heavens, "I swear, this is our first love. Really, before I met you, I didn't even distinguish between men and women."
Jiang Li pulled his hand back and scolded with a smile: "Go to hell."
Chen Feng, a single man, couldn't stand it any longer. "Hey, hey, hey, that's enough, you two. Pay attention. We haven't left yet. Stop flirting, okay?"
Xu Chen glanced at the squad leader and said coldly, "Well, I can testify that you've only been to the women's restroom before."
Duan Jing laughed like crazy. He took a bite of the large candied apple from the fruit bowl without hesitation, and murmured incoherently, "Well, if that's the case, then I can testify."
"Get lost! You two just entered the women's restroom." Li Zetao said angrily, "I didn't even know you before college!"
“…”
Several people were making a lot of noise in the living room. Xu Ji went to the balcony to send a voice message. Seeing this, Chen Feng followed him.
"Well, how about you invite your 'Dorothy' over tomorrow and treat us guys to a formal meal?"
Xu Ji just glanced at him, then lowered his head and continued to send WeChat messages to Tao Siyun, and directly rejected him. "I'm going back to Huxi the day after tomorrow. I won't be able to have dinner with you tomorrow. Let's talk next time."
"Tsk." Chen Feng shook off the ash from his cigarette and put a hand on Xu Ji's shoulder. "Are you going to accompany your girlfriend tomorrow?"
"Yeah." Xu Ji took out a lighter and lit a cigarette for himself, "Let's go visit the kindergarten, elementary school, and junior high school she attended as a child."
“…”
Chen Feng coughed violently, nearly choking on the smoke. He laughed and hit him, "Damn it! You might as well go visit the hospital where she was born. It would be best if you could find all the doctors and nurses who delivered her. Ask them how much your girlfriend weighed when she was born, whether she was healthy, whether she had jaundice, and whether she was in an incubator. Just date her properly, why do you have to be so perverted? Are you being too fatherly? You fucking…"
Xu Ji raised his eyebrows and slowly blew out a puff of smoke. "I asked, she was born in the west of Shanghai."
Chen Feng: “…Oh, shit.”
***
In mid-February, the temperature in Beijing was still over 20 degrees Celsius below zero. The thick snow was shoveled by sanitation workers into the woods on both sides of the road. After a severe winter, the soft and fluffy snow had frozen into hard ice.
The ginkgo trees on Tongmen Street, which had been beautiful for a whole autumn, are now bare, no longer pleasing to the eye. At first glance, there is a sense of depression after the bustle, and it is very lonely.
Currently, kindergartens, primary schools, junior high schools, high schools and universities in the city have not yet started classes.
Xu Ji didn't care. Since he couldn't get in, he thought it would be nice to take a look from outside.
So she asked Tao Siyun to take him to walk the route she took to school every day when she was a child.
Tao Siyun just thought he was bored and wanted to take a walk with him, so he took him there.
They walked around the outside of the school in a big circle.
Through the fence, you can see the national flag rising in front of the teaching building from afar on the playground.
The sky was gloomy and the north wind was blowing. Pedestrians on the road were walking hurriedly, all rushing to go home. There was really no other couple like them who were walking hand in hand slowly on the street.
There was a traffic policeman directing traffic at the back door of the school. Xu Ji looked at the busy street and saw a small figure on the opposite sidewalk.
The child, carrying the small schoolbag distributed by the cram school institution, waited quietly for the red light.
In the last few seconds of the green light, the female traffic police blew her whistle and made a gesture, and all the cars on the road stopped at once.
She quickly ran to the little boy across the street, took the boy's hand, and escorted him to the other side of the street.
The little guy was very polite. He raised his right hand and saluted in a not-so-standard Young Pioneer salute. Xu Ji heard him say sweetly, "Thank you, Auntie."
The traffic policewoman stood at attention and returned the greeting with a smile, "Serving the people."
This heartwarming scene made Xu Ji's heart soften, and he turned his head to look at Tao Siyun.
Many years ago, was Tao Siyun also like the little kid just now, carrying her schoolbag, waiting obediently for the traffic light at the intersection, and the traffic policeman took her hand and led her across the road?
Thinking of this, Xu Ji couldn't help but raise the corners of his lips.
Tao Siyun was puzzled. "What are you laughing at?"
"Nothing." Xu Ji pretended to be nonchalant and asked her, "Tao Siyun, how did you get home from school when you were a kid?"
"Well... usually my brother would pick me up. I didn't dare ride a bicycle, so he would push his bike all the way." Tao Siyun held Xu Ji's arm and said as they walked, "Their junior high school was just across the street from our elementary school. In the winter, my dad would drive us. Later, when my brother graduated from junior high school, our family moved to a bigger house. The Experimental Middle School and the No. 1 Middle School merged, and we moved to the school district where we live now. My parents took turns picking me up for a year, and then after I graduated from elementary school, I went straight to the Experimental Middle School. I took the bus to and from school every day. It only took three stops and more than ten minutes to get there."
After walking around for the whole morning, Xu Ji felt like he was looking at Tao Siyun's growth history from childhood to adulthood. He didn't feel tired at all. Instead, he enjoyed the feeling of slowly approaching her childhood bit by bit.
Here is her entire life trajectory from childhood to adulthood.
From kindergarten to junior high school, she attended several top universities in Beijing.
Bilingual kindergarten, primary school affiliated to Beijing Fuzhou University, Beijing Fuzhou No. 1 Experimental Middle School...
These schools not only focus on the children, but also on the parents.
"Tao Siyun."
"Um?"
Xu Ji suddenly became curious. "Where did you find so much time to practice piano when you were little? Isn't the pressure of getting into the First Experimental School too great?"
"It's okay. Most of us take extra classes during the winter and summer holidays to learn the new semester's knowledge points. When the teacher starts teaching, it's like a review. So the teacher usually doesn't assign too many basic exercises. He only leaves a few difficult ones for us to solve. We can finish them in an hour, and then we practice the cello for two hours."
Xu Ji said "hmm", meaning to continue.
"I usually only finish half of my homework at school. Sometimes, when I really don't want to do it, I take it home and ask my brother to do it for me. But he always just explains the ideas to me and never does it for me. But I'm still okay. Some of my classmates have to go to Olympiad classes after school."
"Tired?"
Tao Siyun thought seriously for a moment and nodded very honestly, "A little bit, but it's okay. It's definitely much happier than studying Mathematical Olympiad."
Xu Ji chuckled softly.
***
After seeing all the schools Tao Siyun attended since she was a child, Xu Ji asked her if she wanted to go around Peking University, and Tao Siyun said yes.
It’s almost noon, and it’s just the right time for lunch when we get there.
"My brother used to go to university. Every Friday after school, I would take the subway to visit him at Peking University. He would take me to eat at the small restaurants near the school gate, and then we would go home together." Tao Siyun suddenly looked nostalgic. "I remember there was a place that served delicious clay pot rice noodles..."
Xu Ji raised an eyebrow, "Laodingji Casserole from Beimen?"
Hearing this familiar store name from his mouth, Tao Siyun was surprised but also felt particularly close to it, as if they had some connection after having no intersection in the past few years.
It's a wonderful feeling.
As if it was destined, her high school years and Xu Ji's university life were quietly connected in a way of "connecting time and space".
Although apart from her, no one else would think that there is any connection between the two...
But it was this dislocation in time that made Tao Siyun feel a subtle joy from the bottom of his heart.
"Have you ever eaten there? Is it delicious?"
She couldn't wait to know whether Xu Ji liked it or not, because having the same taste would make her feel that they had one more thing in common.
Sure enough, Xu Ji lived up to her expectations and said to her: "Go often."
"I used to go there often." Tao Siyun's tone instantly became like a child who was competing with others. He emphasized the word "often" in front of him, as if this could prove something.
Tao Siyun tried his best to recall everything about Lao Dingji casserole, wanting to find similarities in their memories with Xu Ji.
Including the tables and chairs in the store, the accents of the boss and his wife...
Unfortunately, the memory was too distant. She was still in junior high school at that time, so she could not remember much.
Xu Ji saw that she was trying to tell him that they had been in the same place for a long time and eaten the same thing in different stages of time and space.
Xu Ji pretended to ignore the obvious hint, narrowed his eyes, and looked at her teasingly, "So, Tao Siyun, what exactly do you want to say?"
Their eyes met briefly for a few seconds as the subway sped by, and then Tao Siyun lowered his eyelashes a little embarrassedly.
I must have overacted...
Realizing this, she felt too embarrassed to say anything else.
Tao Siyun lowered her head and tried to calm her inner excitement, but her red ears had already betrayed her inner feelings.
Xu Ji recalled the misunderstanding a few years ago. Seeing that she had become quiet and silent, he deliberately teased her and said, "I once chased a girl on Line 6."
As expected, Tao Siyun froze, slowly raised his head, and looked at him with an indescribably complicated look, as if he hadn't reacted immediately. "...You, have you ever pursued someone else?"
"Yes, I have."
Tao Siyun's mind went blank. Without time to think, he turned his eyes away. "Then...what next?"
Xu Ji watched her every move, with a faint smile in his eyes, and said nonchalantly: "I didn't catch her."
"……oh."
Xu Ji's hand, gripping the handrail, slowly moved upwards and gently touched her. "That girl got off at the Conservatory of Music station with her cello on her back. I was so anxious and couldn't squeeze through no matter what I did. I turned around and realized I had recognized the wrong person."
The reversal came so suddenly that Tao Siyun was stunned. She turned her head and saw Xu Ji smiling at her with a teasing look on his face.
"you……"
Xu Ji held her hand with his other hand, leaned close to her ear, and whispered, "It's a good thing I didn't catch up with her."
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