Unlike Ha Yue's shocked and jaw-dropping attitude.
Xue Jing remained calm when he first saw Ha Yue, only slightly frowning.
It wasn't that he wanted to show any emotion to his ex-girlfriend whom he had broken up with many years ago, but rather that the piece of cloth wrapped around Ha Yue's head was just too conspicuous.
Death Barbie Pink, a color that Ha Yue had once expressed strong disdain for in front of him.
Xue Jing remembers clearly that when they had been dating for a week, it happened to be Ha Yue's birthday. He went to the cosmetics counter in the mall to pick out a birthday gift for her. Back then, online social networking was not very developed, and dating tips were passed down by word of mouth. He also got a good piece of advice from his male roommate who had been in a stable relationship for many years: girls love beauty, and the first thing to do with makeup is lipstick, especially a set. It's best to get a high-end brand that you can engrave letters on and post on social media, as that's a hard currency.
So the day before, Xue Jing, with a devout heart, used the supplementary credit card his parents had given him to buy ten YSL lipsticks. He had each one engraved with the pinyin of Ha Yue's Chinese name and the initials of her English name. He packaged them properly, sprayed them with perfume, and used them to show his sincerity.
But the next day, when he took the gift out of the paper bag downstairs in the girls' dormitory, he did not receive any praise from Ha Yue.
She had just frowned slightly back then, just like he was now, a hint of disdain showing beneath her calm demeanor. She opened one of the lipsticks with her right hand and complained to him, "Xue Jing, can you please stop wasting money next time? Look at the colors of these lipsticks you bought! Ugh! Deathly Barbie pink, even my mom wouldn't wear it. The sales assistants just love to fool clueless young men like you."
Saying he's young and ignorant isn't enough; Ha Yue suddenly shifts gears and criticizes his immaturity, displaying the viciousness of a logic robber.
"Besides, how old are you? Using your parents' cards, I can't accept this kind of illegitimate gift."
That was Xue Jing's first time in a relationship, and also the first time in his three years of university that he used his parents' credit cards to buy brand-name products with a premium price.
His face flushed red from the failed gift-giving attempt, but his pride wouldn't allow him to easily back down in front of the girl he liked. His eyelashes trembled, his fists clenched, and he insisted on arguing, his face red and his neck bulging, "Don't worry about whose card I used, it's already engraved and can't be returned anyway. How do you know it doesn't look good if you don't try it on? Try it first, maybe you'll like it once it's on your lips. If this doesn't look good, how about this one? The salesperson said it's called 'Missing You Color,' it's super popular in Korea this year."
Later, at Xue Jing's insistence, Ha Yue did apply the Saint Laurent lipstick with its glittering gold packaging on the spot. But as soon as the lipstick touched her lips, Xue Jing understood why Ha Yue called it the color of death.
It was too pink and too purple. Seeing that Ha Yue's fair complexion immediately turned two shades yellow because of the color, and her mouth almost flew off her face, he understood. This color was indeed deadly.
It's about the kind of makeup a girl would wear to scare away lecherous men.
That day, the two of them stared at each other for a long time before Ha Yue finally couldn't help but cover her mouth and laugh. Only after Xue Jing bowed his head and admitted his mistake did Ha Yue take out a tissue from her coat pocket and wipe off all the color from her lips.
Then, with clean lips, she placed a kiss as light as a snowflake on his cheek.
She said, "Xue Jing, you bought a lot this time, please don't buy any more next time, I'm begging you."
The recollection is accurate; Ha Yue was quite clueless about romance in their love story. But it was this unromantic girl who, at the age of nineteen, enlightened him on everything related to women, from color and temperature to gravity and Euclidean space.
But at this moment, Ha Yue actually wrapped her entire face in a headscarf of this color.
There's no need to elaborate on her complexion now; it's not only not white, but it's also black with a hint of green, probably the legendary olive color.
On that face, which needs no further explanation, the lips that Xue Jing had kissed countless times were cracked like parched earth, emanating a deafening roar like the earth itself shifting. "Xue Jing?"
The blame lies with Ha Yue for making such a fuss. Her shout immediately attracted Old Huang, who was squatting by the roadside smoking. He stubbed out his cigarette with the sole of his shoe and asked the two of them with a raised head, "What's going on? Do you two know each other?"
It's quite interesting that the "great writer" they hired to write reportage actually knows a local pig-farming woman. Could there be some kind of romantic scandal between them?
Gossip isn't just for women; men can be just as gossipy.
All eyes were on the seemingly unrelated man and woman. Almost without pause, they turned around and said in unison, one nodding and the other shaking his head:
"know."
"I don't know him."
The person who said they knew Ha Yue was the one who said they didn't know Xue Jing.
Xue Jing's face had already turned pale, and upon hearing Ha Yue's affirmative answer, his expression darkened even further. His voice, too, returned to its usual polite tone. He first gave a very formal, harmless smile as he looked around, then looked into Ha Yue's eyes and asked with utmost courtesy, "Excuse me, do we know each other?"
Others may not be familiar with Xue Jing's character, but Ha Yue had dated him for 2.1 years and knew his temperament very well.
Besides being handsome, her first boyfriend had another remarkable trait: he was also very "remarkable" in his conduct and dealings with others.
From the outside in, everything is always perfectly appropriate, like a pre-programmed social robot.
Throughout her four years of undergraduate studies, from teachers to classmates, Ha Yue never heard of Xue Jing arguing or holding a grudge against anyone. If the two of them hadn't been dating, he would have been the kind of upright gentleman who made people feel warm and fuzzy, always polite and considerate. "Thank you," "Excuse me," and "Sorry to bother you" were his catchphrases.
But it was precisely because Ha Yue had entered into an intimate relationship with him and seen him without his "perfect" persona that she understood that some people's friendliness, which reaches a certain threshold and is perfect in every way, is actually a way of drawing a line and not wanting to easily give their true feelings.
For example, right now, he's using good politeness to express a less-than-good indifference.
As soon as she saw Xue Jing give her a fake smile, she immediately realized that she had said the wrong thing.
Xue Jing once wrote in his second novel: The most dignified ex should consciously and voluntarily disappear from the world.
They should never appear in each other's social circles. If they were classmates, they should not attend class reunions. If they are still colleagues, one of them should resign after severing ties. Even if fate is unfair and they suddenly bump into each other on the street more than ten years later, they should leave in a hurry, pretending that they have never met, and should not even exchange glances.
This is the best way to preserve the regret and beauty of lost love.
At that time, Xue Jing's writing style was still quite arbitrary, with the stubbornness of a young man. He wrote that the most vulgar and lowest form of relationship between men and women in the past was to sit down and chat and reminisce, and to find excuses to appear in each other's lives from time to time, because that only proved that the romance of the past had been extinguished and that old love had become nothing more than a pretext to be controlled by desire.
There's no hope of reconciliation; he just wants a cheap nap. This is a desecration of love and utterly despicable.
When Ha Yue read it, she guessed that he probably didn't create it by taking something out of thin air, but rather he was writing about his own experience in love.
The thought of defiling love made Ha Yue blush, and she couldn't help but think of scenes where she and Xue Jing had defied each other.
Their first time happened six months after they started dating.
In the second semester of their junior year, Xue Jing and her relationship deepened, almost to the point of being inseparable. Their eyes would sometimes lock in a loving gaze. Even so, their conversations were always philosophical. Besides academics, they talked about the Four Arts of the Song Dynasty, Greek philosophy, movies, songs, and life. When things got really intimate, Xue Jing would even read Keats' sonnets to her in his authentic Oxford accent.
When he murmured "Bright Star" and looked up at her with his dark eyelids, his already clear eyes seemed to truly sparkle with bright starlight, a light that reflected the very soul of her.
Young men and women, like dry wood meeting a raging fire, had many opportunities to spend the night together because they missed the dormitory curfew, but Xue Jing never hinted at any further advances towards her. He always had other new ways to avoid the awkwardness of the two of them ending up in a hotel and lying in the same bed.
They went to see Fragrant Hills in autumn, Houhai in winter, and once even bought tickets for a late-night movie screening in a spring when everything was in heat, and watched Lam Ching-ying draw talismans and beat zombies for six hours straight.
At first, Ha Yue found the other party's "goodness" hypocritical and ridiculous. In her opinion, these were all tricks by Xue Jing to cover up his own desires.
However, amidst the chaos of boys around them trying every clumsy excuse to trick girls into hitting home runs, Xue Jing's "playing hard to get" was indeed quite clever.
Talking about love is relative. He had to maintain the image of a good person and a calm attitude, which put pressure on Ha Yue.
Ha Yue believes she possesses the open-minded spirit of a modern woman and sees no need to bind herself mentally. Viewing virginity as capital for dating or even marriage is simply objectifying herself. In other words, she acknowledges that normal women, like men, have physical needs and that having a protected relationship with someone they love is perfectly healthy and needs no denial.
In addition, her spiritual idol after entering university was the French existentialist writer Simone de Beauvoir.
Since she wasn't the kind of girl who needed to be coaxed into having sex, Xue Jing had absolutely no need to play along with her.
When the time was right and they were mutually attracted, she tried to test him a few times, but Xue Jing was very gentlemanly and not easily fooled. He was as gentlemanly as a Taoist priest who lived in the clouds and had long since severed his desires.
So on the day of the first snow, she simply went all out and booked a room at a hotel near Jida University, then texted Xue Jing saying she had an urgent matter and asked him to come quickly.
However, on that same day, Xue Jing was forced to cower at the foot of the bed by Ha Yue, who was wearing a special uniform. His ears turned bright red, and he hugged his shoulders with both hands to defend himself, whispering to her that he really wasn't using any romantic tricks.
Xue Jing has been avoiding having a relationship with Ha Yue because he lacks practical experience.
Like her, it was his first time in love, but they both assumed that the other person must be a seasoned player since they were both so outstanding. He was afraid that he would be ridiculed by Ha Yue for showing his weakness in this matter, so he tried his best to cover up his shortcomings in the relationship.
But in reality, the fact that the two of them worked until sunrise that night is enough to prove that his shortcomings are not only in terms of space, but also in terms of time and space.
He is a model of humility and magnanimity.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
