0083 Suffering
The night before she was to return home, Jiang Jifan was packing her luggage when Tantai Qing saw her packing her second suitcase and asked with some concern, "Jifan, when are you coming back?"
Jiang Jifan folded all the clothes he bought at the children's mall yesterday and put them in his suitcase. Hearing this, he said without turning his head, "When the holiday ends."
"Does that mean we can't see each other for twenty days?"
She stopped what she was doing, squatted down and looked back at him. She saw him sitting on the edge of the bed with his brows furrowed and his face full of worry.
Jiang Jifan found it amusing, crossed her arms over her chest, looked at him, and raised an eyebrow, teasingly asking, "What's wrong? You can't bear to part with me?"
"Yes," Tantai Qing replied without hesitation, "I can't bear to part with you."
Then he added, "Could you come back a few days earlier?"
She stared at him intently, without saying a word.
"Then... is it okay if I ask a day earlier?" He was afraid that his request would seem too unreasonable to her, so he changed his question after careful consideration.
Jiang Jifan suddenly laughed out loud, then got up and walked to him, sat down on his lap, and put his arms around his neck, saying, "I'll come back whenever you miss me."
Tantai Qing put his arm around her waist, looked into her eyes, and whispered, "I will think of you every day."
"Then I won't leave."
"Okay," he replied instinctively, only realizing he'd been tricked when he saw her suppressed laughter.
She was overjoyed, but fearing that the more she made a fuss, the more reluctant he would be to part with her, she pushed him away and went back to pack her luggage.
"I'll be back soon, I won't keep you waiting too long."
Although Tantai Qing felt that she was just trying to comfort him, he was willing to believe her.
Another half hour passed before she finished packing her luggage. Looking at the luggage, she suddenly remembered when she went home for winter and summer vacations every year during her university years.
Because of the long distance and expensive travel expenses, Jiang Jifan spent all his holidays at the university except for winter and summer vacations.
At that time, apart from her, the people in her dormitory were either locals or from neighboring cities. They would usually go home for holidays like Qingming and May Day, leaving her alone in the dormitory.
Whenever she encounters this situation, she chooses to stay up all night working part-time until the next day before returning to her dormitory to rest, because she is very afraid of living alone in an empty dormitory.
After starting work, except for the first year which was quite difficult, she would go home almost every year during her holidays, as a way of making up for the regrets of her four years of university.
Tantai Qing asked her if she also flew home when she was in college.
“How could that be?” Jiang Jifan denied it outright. “I had never been on a plane before I started working.”
Airfare was too expensive for her at that time, so she would take the cheap green train home from university, even though the journey would take several days and nights.
Tantai Qing had never ridden a green train since birth. In his general impression, people would choose to travel by plane, so he had almost no concept of trains as a means of transportation and had only seen them in books and movies.
He remained silent for a moment after hearing this, as if he was thinking about how to speak without hurting her self-esteem.
"Can you tell me about your impressions of trains?" He asked earnestly, pulling her to sit down on the bedside like a scholar eager to learn new knowledge.
"Dirty, messy, and noisy." Jiang Jifan succinctly summarized everything in three words.
Needless to say, the hygiene conditions on ordinary trains are terrible, so someone like her with severe mysophobia would basically never go to a public toilet if she could hold back the urge to defecate.
Moreover, unlike airplanes, long-distance trains carry all sorts of people. Passengers come from all over the country, and most are migrant workers returning home. The mix is diverse, with varying levels of civility.
Jiang Jifan had witnessed many people escalate from verbal arguments to physical fights over things that seemed completely unnecessary to her, leaving a deep impression on her. Therefore, whenever she encountered such situations, she would quietly hide in a corner, praying that the arguments and fights wouldn't injure her.
After hearing her description, Tantai Qing couldn't imagine how she could have stayed in such a "harsh" environment for several days and nights.
"It's not that scary, you'll get used to it." She smoothed his furrowed brows with her fingers and explained with a smile.
The train's management was rather lax, and passengers would always find other ways to pass the long and tedious time. When Jiang Jifan couldn't sleep, he was often forced to listen to them chat in various dialects. He was even pulled in to fill in for them a few times when they were short of players for a card game.
Looking back now, it's quite interesting.
“I also want to ride the old-fashioned green train that you remember,” he said, holding her hand.
He wanted to experience firsthand the hardships she had endured back then.
Jiang Jifan knew him too well and immediately understood what he meant, shaking his head with a smile and saying, "No."
"It's enough for me to experience this feeling alone."
She doesn't believe that you need to truly experience the other person's hardships to be considered "love." If that were the case, she herself might not be able to do it either, so it's already precious that he has this intention.
Let all the suffering end with her.
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