Chapter 105
"Why are you accusing me first?"
"Didn't you say you didn't want to dump me first?"
Guan Nan frowned and muttered, "When did I ever dump you?"
"Of course I did!" Jiang smoothed her long hair and said matter-of-factly, "On June 8, 2017, I told you to wait for me under the clock tower, why didn't you wait? If it weren't for you, would I have missed out on six years with my girlfriend?"
After listening, Guan Nan wanted to speak several times, but she lacked the confidence.
She decisively lowered her head, closed her eyes, buried her face in the crook of his neck, and did not look up to argue with him again.
Jiang Li paused for a second, chuckled softly, and then said in a low voice, "Now you're really taking care of me, so you'd better take good care of me."
“I know,” Guan Nan said in a muffled voice, naturally taking over the conversation, “because you’re being dramatic.”
"Well said."
After saying that, Guan Nan shrank back like a quail, not daring to utter another word.
Jiang Li smiled when he saw this, lowered his head and pinched her cheek, and said in her ear, "So you have to take good care of me, and put in some effort instead of just going through the motions."
Guan Nan covered her head, pretending not to hear, and remained silent.
But then I suddenly remembered what I wanted to say to him earlier.
Guan Nan got up and lingered in the bathroom for a while, rehearsing how to bring it up with him, how to get away with it, or how to leave without anyone noticing.
But when she came out, she saw that Jiang Li was no longer sitting on the ground, and the contracts were carefully placed and stood guard at her door.
He leaned lazily against the wall, propping up his strong, lean arm, and aimlessly scrolled through his phone.
"Jiang Li," Guan Nan said after hesitating a few times, straightening up and looking directly at him, but carefully choosing her tone to avoid making her intentions too obvious, "I might have to go out tomorrow."
Jiang Li looked at her, raising an eyebrow slightly: "Where to?"
"Something came up," Guan Nan said vaguely.
"Oh," Jiang Li clicked to lock the screen, his eyes fixed on her, "Is it safe?"
Guan Nan nodded: "It's very safe."
"What about me?" Jiang Li tilted his head and asked in return.
Guan Nan asked in confusion, "What?"
"Not taking me?" Jiang Li stared at her, lazily but not giving up on asking.
"Hmm," Guan Nan said hesitantly, still feeling it wasn't the right time, "Maybe next time."
Jiang Li didn't speak, as if he was thinking.
Seeing that he seemed to be considering whether his words were believable, but Guan Nan was not quite able to say the truth, she hesitated for two seconds and then tried to explain, "There will be a next time, there will be a chance next time."
Upon hearing this, Jiang Li reluctantly agreed: "Alright."
Guan Nan nodded, her expression very solemn.
Just as she approached, she saw Jiang Li's lips curl into a smile as he slowly said, "Are you sure there will be a next time? You can't fool me."
In just a few words from him, Guan Nan realized that in front of Jiang Li, she was a complete con artist, someone who didn't keep her word and whose conversations were always full of deception and trickery.
Guan Nan tried hard to recall.
seem.
seemingly.
like.
There really is a little bit.
They break their promises, disappear after making commitments, and fail to keep their word.
These things always happen between them without any warning or expectation, leading to one unforeseen mishap after another, and in the end, no one listens to or responds to the words they say.
But they stubbornly stayed where they were and waited.
Before Guan Nan entered, Jiang Li called her back, bent down, picked up the bag on the ground, and handed it to her.
Guan Nan reached out to take it, only to find that he hadn't let go.
I was stunned for two seconds.
She heard Jiang Li say, "Guo Yuhang is looking for me."
"Oh," Guan Nan said.
"He asked me to help you find a house."
"······"
"I replied to him."
After hearing this, Guan Nan couldn't help but ask, "You replied to him?"
Jiang Li nodded.
His nonchalant attitude was infuriating, and Guan Nan was quite annoyed at the moment, but she couldn't show it, so she could only imitate his calm demeanor: "What did you reply?"
“I said—” Jiang Li said in a lazy tone.
Guan Nan looked at him quietly, waiting for him to speak.
After a few seconds of pause, Jiang Li said slowly and deliberately, "You're living quite comfortably here."
"······"
“He said it was inconvenient. No matter how good the relationship is, there is a difference between men and women,” Jiang Li said, glancing at her without changing his expression. “I said, there’s no such thing as inconvenience between husband and wife.”
The air seemed to freeze.
Seeing that he remained calm and composed, Guan Nan pursed her lips, wanting to speak several times but unable to utter a word.
Then, she suddenly let go.
He retreated almost in a panic, bumped into the half-open door, blushed, and blurted out "You're crazy!" before scrambling inside and closing the door, leaving Jiang Li alone outside.
Jiang Li raised an eyebrow, laughed unrestrainedly, and lowered his head to reply to the message.
"No need to trouble you, she has a family now."
Back in her room, Guan Nan looked at herself in the mirror, her face flushed, and her heart fluttered with longing.
Then I thought of what Jiang Li had just said.
He said:
There's no such thing as inconvenience or not between husband and wife.
Between husband and wife.
couple.
Before this, Guan Nan remembered the way he casually pulled out and held up their marriage certificate, and her eyelids suddenly twitched. It gave her the strange feeling that he carried his ID card around, as if he wanted to announce to the whole world that they were married and husband and wife.
"It shouldn't be that bad," Guan Nan thought, frowning and hesitating.
Also, what did she just say about him? Guan Nan blinked, her expression blank.
She said: You're crazy.
She called him a "lunatic".
That night, Guan Nan tossed and turned for a long time, struggling with whether she should apologize to Jiang Li. She couldn't say those things about him, nor should she have.
After all, those three words were the last thing she should have said, but she said them anyway.
She fell asleep while hesitating.
The next day, Guan Nan woke up and didn't run into him when she went out.
She carried her bag and first went back to Hecangyuan Cemetery, then went to Qingshan Cemetery in the afternoon.
She thawed the dried pomegranate flowers she had stored in the refrigerator, placed the pomegranate jelly she had brought in front of the grave, and pasted a photo of Ran Mingju when she was young, radiating youthful confidence on the tombstone.
She swept away the fallen leaves and sat quietly to the side for a long time.
As if she had prepared her words, she spoke slowly and softly: "Mom, I'm married. He's a good person. I... I was the one who proposed to him. I don't know if I did the right thing. Please don't be angry. If it lasts, I'll bring him to see you. If it doesn't, at least I'll have gone through it and won't want to think about it anymore."
As she spoke, she leaned back as if she were in someone's arms. "Do you think Sister Zhen will be angry if she finds out? What Brother Qiyang said that night was actually quite right. Now that I think about it, do you think I was too selfish, so selfish that I let you down and let Sister Zhen down?"
Guan Nan worried about this for several days. She was afraid that Zhen Jie would blame Ran Mingju, and she was also afraid that Ran Mingju would blame her for it. Lately, she has started to have trouble sleeping again.
I don't regret being reckless, but I'm worried that I didn't do well, and I didn't discuss it with anyone.
The household registration book has only one page and has been kept by Zhen Xiaoya for many years. She has no guardian, no parents or elders, and she is the head of her own household registration book.
Guan Nan felt somewhat dejected, and the image of the woman holding up her phone to take pictures, smiling warmly and proudly, kept replaying in her mind.
She thought that perhaps many years ago, Ran Mingju had looked at her in the same way, holding up her camera.
But she remembers nothing.
The only remaining video footage tells her that she was once happy and content.
But all of this is now a world away from her.
Guan Nan sat in front of the grave for a long, long time, rambling on about recent interesting things, her new friends, her work and life, and the new changes in Hecangyuan in recent years.
Before leaving, she carefully arranged the candles with the flowers she had brought.
Finally, he knelt on one knee and stroked the photo, saying softly, "His name is Jiang Li. You've met him before, but I don't know if you still remember him."
After descending the mountain and leaving the cemetery, Guan Nan took a bus back to Hecangyuan.
She opened the door, tidied up the house briefly, then went into the kitchen, boiled water, made a bowl of instant noodles, ate it, sat on the sofa, found the property certificate for Tangzi Lane, and posted an ad for the house to be sold.
Because it's a school district property with a superior location, excellent surrounding medical facilities and cultural heritage, plus the high cost-effectiveness of second-hand properties and the ability to negotiate prices, it naturally attracts many parents who are worried about their children's education and exams.
As soon as it was posted, people who were observing asked if it was possible to rent a school place without buying a house.
Guan Nan's purpose wasn't to rent a place, so she couldn't offer to separate the location from the room and immediately refused. However, half a day passed, and while there were many inquiries and requests to rent, few were genuinely interested. Looking at her profile again, her favorites were full of price comparisons.
Looking at it this way, Guan Nan felt uneasy and suddenly didn't know what to do.
I simply added a few more real estate agents on a professional real estate trading app and described the situation to them.
At noon, Guan Nan held a bundle of documents and hesitated for a long time.
In the end, I went out fully armed.
She had clearly mustered all her courage to come, but the moment she stood at the entrance of the police station, all her strength seemed to be drained away. Her eyes were blank, and her hands, gripping the documents, trembled with force.
She forgot how she ended up in the police station, and how she wrote those three words, stroke by stroke.
In those mere twenty-four strokes, it seemed as if she had exhausted half her life's strength, writing for countless days and nights, forcing back tears as she wrote the last stroke, biting her tongue tightly to keep herself from losing control.
The neighborhood committee's death certificate, the deceased's ID card, and the thin household registration booklet.
She secretly wished she could delay any longer, so that Ran Mingju would remain as if she had never left, just like when she was a child, only she couldn't see her anymore. It wasn't that she had closed her account and would never see her again.
Instead of simply saying, "The person is gone."
The person is gone, and their household registration has been cancelled.
Their relationship ended there, as if Ran Mingju had never existed, like a gentle breeze that came and went.
When they stopped at the foot of the clock tower, Guan Nan clutched the ID card with a corner cut off and shamelessly shed tears.
She no longer has a mother.
She no longer has a mother.
This time, whether she accepts it or not, she will have no mother.
She stumbled and struggled her way up, only to end up as a child without a mother.
Guan Nan turned around and looked at the long and endless road.
In a daze, it was as if I saw Ran Mingju when she was young again. She was holding little Guan Nan's hand, and stopped under the banyan tree. She used a fragrant tissue to wipe her sweat, and when she saw that Guan Nan's face was covered in ice cream cone, she pinched her little face.
Xiao Guannan held up an ice cream cone and offered it to her lips: "Mommy, eat."
“Mommy won’t eat, baby will.” With her little backpack hanging on her shoulder, Ran Mingju straightened her collar.
Little Guan Nan took a lick, tilted her head back like a little white rabbit, and smiled innocently: "Mommy, can I have another ice cream cone tomorrow?"
Ran Mingju asked with a smile, "Do you still want to eat?"
"Yes," Xiao Guannan replied sweetly.
Ran Mingju looked at him indulgently: "Then eat."
"Great!" Xiao Guannan skipped and hopped forward, laughing happily without a care in the world. "I can have ice cream cones tomorrow too!"
Ran Mingju smiled and told her to slow down.
Xiao Guannan turned around, tilted her head mischievously, and asked again, "Then I want to eat it again the day after tomorrow."
“No, you can’t,” Ran Mingju shook her head, walked up to her, slowly squatted down, and touched her tummy. “You can only eat one a week. If you eat too many, you’ll get an upset stomach and a tummy ache.”
Xiao Guannan pouted and said dejectedly, "Oh."
“However,” Ran Mingju smiled and playfully pinched her nose, “you can reward your little one with McDonald’s.”
Xiao Guannan's eyes lit up: "Really?"
"Really." Ran Mingju nodded.
"Pinky promise!" Xiao Guannan raised her little finger.
Ran Mingju and she made a pinky promise.
"Pinky promise, a hundred years from now, no take-backs! Stamped!"
After making the pinky promise, she became happy again, her tail wagging high in the air, "I can eat McDonald's again!"
Children always have a lot of energy. After running a short distance, she showed no signs of fatigue. On the contrary, she became more and more energetic and boasted about it for half the street.
Before entering the building, she turned back and shouted with a smile, "Mom, you're so good!" and "Mom, I love you!"
Suddenly, Ran Mingju turned around, her smile still bright and gentle.
She waved in this direction.
Guan Nan choked up, forced a smile, and waved to her.
The two waved to each other across time and space as if saying goodbye for the last time, but the next second Guan Nan saw Zhen Xiaoya walking straight up to him, and the two of them were laughing happily.
Guan Nan sat on a bench under the clock tower, her clothes covered in raindrops.
She remained completely oblivious, like a wooden stake.
After a long while, the rain seemed to stop.
Guan Nan looked up and saw a person standing next to her, holding an umbrella at an angle, and wondered how long he had been standing there.
Why are you here?
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