Chapter 23
Today is the last day of the National Day holiday and also the 17th day that he and I have known each other.
The weather is very nice today, with bright sunshine.
I woke up at around nine in the morning and received a message from my friend. She said that classmate C was back. The three of us hadn't gotten together for a long time and had only been in touch in a small WeChat group. Now that everyone was finally together, we might as well have a meal together.
I opened his WeChat page, hesitated for a long time, and closed the chat page with him without sending a word, and switched to the common group with my friends L and C.
"Okay, what are we having for lunch?"
They also knew that I was pursuing a boy recently, and I could probably guess what L wanted to talk about at the dinner.
At around 11 o'clock in the morning, we gathered at a hot pot restaurant. We hadn't seen each other for many years and everyone had changed a lot.
L, C and I are high school classmates.
L was my desk mate in my second and third year of high school, and C was my dining partner for three years of high school.
L and I have very similar personalities, which means it's easy for us to disagree and have conflicts on certain things, but fortunately we do have commonalities.
The reason why I can maintain my relationship with C after high school is that I like C's personality and I always feel very comfortable with her.
L and C were not actually close. Even in high school, as far as I can remember, they were just ordinary classmates who would occasionally talk to each other.
After going to college, in order to prevent our feelings from fading, I invited L and C to join a common WeChat group.
Although most of the time it’s L and I, or C and I, we’re probably the only three of us high school classmates who still chat regularly together.
The topic has gone a bit off track. Let’s get back to the topic. L suggested having a dinner together probably because his family was pushing him too hard.
L is the only daughter in her family. While not rich, she has enough to eat and wear. Her only worry is that since last year, her family has been pressuring her to go on blind dates.
L said that the older generation probably has some conservative ideas. They can't understand why we are still single, why we don't want to go on blind dates, and why our blind dates fail.
I told her, "Things like this still depend on fate. To put it bluntly, it depends on the eye contact."
C smiled and asked, "So this is why you went to Qingteng after your failed blind date at the matchmaking agency?"
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Like L, emotionally I am tired of going on blind dates and getting to know unfamiliar people. But rationally I know clearly that if I have not made the decision to remain single for the rest of my life and have not prepared myself for the possibility of being alone in the future and being helpless and having no one to rely on or complain to, then it is necessary to start looking for a partner now.
This contradictory thought has been tugging at me for the past two years, and I happen to not be someone who is ready to be a bachelor.
L seemed to have a lot of troubles to complain about. She said she had been on blind dates countless times. Her mother felt that her daughter was a failure because she was still single, and L herself was also very miserable.
Because in these recurring blind dates, the patterns are surprisingly similar to those circulated on Qingteng.
She doesn't like the ones who like her, and others don't like the ones she likes.
The smoke from the hot pot blocked my vision, and there was a white mist on the lenses.
I don’t know if it was because of the smoke from the fireworks or the discomfort in my heart, but I was coughing and my eyes were sore.
I see the same thing with L.
C handed us both a tissue.
After wiping the lenses of my glasses, I put them back on and took a piece of beef out of the pot.
"Actually, my mom thought I was out on a blind date because she had asked me to go to a social gathering and had the matchmaker match me up with a boy. She thought I was out to have dinner with him. But my mom didn't know that I had already turned him down on the second day of the social gathering."
I smiled and ate another piece of beef. Tears welled up in my eyes but never fell.
L was silent for a moment, then asked, "Are you still pursuing that boy?"
C seemed to glare at her, then asked me: "What do you like about him? I don't think he's good-looking!"
"Maybe I'm too serious about it, so serious that even I think I like it very much." I thought about it for a long time before replying with this sentence.
I remembered what a colleague of mine once said: "My husband showed up when I was desperately looking for someone to help me feel lonely. His timing was perfect, just the right time, and that's why our marriage was possible. But if he had shown up any earlier, or any later, I wouldn't have wanted him."
So maybe... he showed up at just the right time!
When I was tired of the boys introduced to me by the matchmaker, when my parents and elders at home were nagging me every day, and when I wanted to find a boyfriend, he happened to appear.
And because of my friends' teasing, because of the misunderstanding about the initial photo, and because... In short, it's quite complicated.
I threw a few fish balls into the hot pot before looking up at C. “Your family is so nice!”
"Yeah, that's great! I'm so envious!" L exclaimed.
I know what she is lamenting.
The pressure is too great. The relatives and elders around me always like to ask me why I am almost 30 years old and still don’t have a partner, as if not having a partner is an unforgivable sin.
Looking at the white hair on her parents' temples, she, like me, did not have the courage to continue to maintain her previous carefree life and could only choose to compromise.
But I seem to be a little luckier than her. At least I have a target that I like and want to try, but she doesn't.
Just like me before, almost every time after meeting a blind date, L would numbly say hello.
"Actually, my father is also very anxious." C said slowly.
L and I looked at her in surprise.
C smiled and said, "Why? You don't believe it?"
L and I were no longer annoyed and directly picked up the dipping sauce dish. While eating the hot pot, we looked at C with interest.
"My dad has arranged three, if not five, blind dates for me since last year. But they all ended in failure."
"Why?" I heard L ask, "Is it because you don't like it?"
C hummed, "Partly, but mostly because it's not suitable, and I don't really feel like trying it."
"What happened next?" L asked again.
C smiled, fished out a piece of yam, and ate it before saying, "As you know, I'm a nurse and don't have much time to rest."
L and I understood.
We didn't bring up the subject again.
At this moment, his message suddenly popped up: "I noticed that your txt was already organized in advance. Can I take a look at the embarrassing content?"
"Is he looking for you?" L asked.
I nodded and replied, "Yes, when you asked me for this thing that day, I temporarily omitted those things with ellipsis."
Not long after, his message came again: "You are indeed interesting."
This is the third time I've heard him say this.
To be honest, every time I see him say this, I feel like he is making fun of me like a dog. Maybe he doesn’t mean that, and I misunderstood him, but I always feel very uncomfortable in my heart, maybe because I’m tired.
"He sent you a message again, aren't you going to reply?"
C's words rang in my ears, and I glanced at the lit screen: "You are the first girl to write a diary for me."
"You showed him that story?" L was surprised.
Oh, yes, she and C didn’t know about this.
When I heard her ask this, I nodded and thought back to the time when L and I were playing around in Starbucks. I always felt that there was something strikingly similar about us, like her wide-open eyes.
For a moment, I was caught off guard and laughed out loud.
"I've already let it go. It's rare to find someone you like, but just as often, being in love doesn't guarantee success. Just like my pen pal said, I'm not giving up yet. I just want to try my best, so that at least when I look back on it in the future, I won't have any regrets."
I clearly remember something my colleague said to me one night in early September when I was on a business trip to Chongqing.
"I actually regret not being honest with him and not trying harder. Even after we got married, I still wonder if the outcome would have been different if I had tried again."
"And then?"
"Later, I found out from another classmate where he worked. Coincidentally, my husband and I needed to change cars, so I took the opportunity to visit him. After that, I let it go. I have no regrets."
…
After coming to my senses, I said to L and C, "Don't think I'm speechless now, but maybe after I meet him, I won't have such thoughts anymore."
After saying that, I looked down at WeChat and said to him, "Is there a possibility? It's also written, but you don't know because they didn't show it to you. I also let it slip because I felt a little guilty about it because of my friends' rubbing."
His message came back five minutes later: "I don't know. Some people wrote love letters before, but no one kept a diary."
I seemed to notice something, and when I looked up, I saw two faces that were very close to each other. "What are you doing?"
"Don't be like that, we're curious and want to take a look."
I curled my lips, thinking that they already knew most of it, so I didn't block them and started chatting with him directly in front of them.
"Love letters are too difficult, I can't do that. I wrote a diary because I thought it was difficult to do, so I wrote it. Maybe it can be used as material for a novel in the future."
"So you added me just to have another teammate playing King of Glory?"
I felt helpless: "You don't know how to fight."
"Yes!" he replied confidently.
I added, "Don't I know that you didn't talk much before because of work?"
He: "It's my fault for not explaining it clearly at the time. I didn't expect you to be so conflicted."
Me: "Really? It's a good thing I liked your profile picture so much, otherwise I would have given up in three days."
"It seems that I gave up often in the past." He sent an emoji of eating melon.
I smiled and said, "You're right."
We continued chatting intermittently until L, C, and I finished our hot pot. After L left, we talked about our previous blind dates and the reasons why they failed. I heard him say something familiar again: "Maybe you'll know if you meet me in person."
I sighed softly and thought to myself, why don't you let me have a chance to see you offline first?
"Then why were you rejected by girls?"
"To be honest, I don't know."
C and I were stunned by this answer.
"What does he mean? Why do I feel..."
Don’t say it, I understand.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
