I'm so sad I have to break up with him.
"I'm so sad that I have to break up with him."
4.
At noon, Lan Jian went to the cafeteria with Senior Sister Hui to buy lunch, something she hadn't done in a long time. Chongming and Ma Yuehe also joined them, which was a rare occurrence for them.
When Lan Jian was interning at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, she ate at the cafeteria near the west gate of the school. Because it was close to the school gate and the surrounding area was mostly research units rather than students, the prices were generally not very affordable. Her laboratory was five kilometers away from the west gate, and although the cafeteria there was small, it catered to faculty and students, and even the people serving the food seemed particularly friendly.
Sister Hui liked to get her food at window number 2. The person serving the food was a kind-looking, plump auntie. The auntie herself liked people with a similarly plump figure, so Sister Hui, with her broad shoulders and round arms, could always get a mountain of sweet and sour pork and braised pork ribs.
Ever since Auntie Pang started giving Lan Jian two or three pieces of fragrant herbs or duck butts as a side dish, whether she ordered Three-Cup Chicken or Roast Duck Rice, she has stopped queuing at window number 2.
Her chosen window is her younger brother, a part-time worker, number 4.
When her work-study brother told her to put less green pepper in the stir-fried shredded pork, he would carefully sift out as much green pepper as possible. After paying with his meal card, he would also give her a few extra pieces of crispy fish. Lan Jian sighed, "I really am destined to be associated with the number '4' in this life."
Even when Han Li broke up with her, he sent four messages in a row.
"Lanjian, I'm sorry."
"After calming down and thinking about it carefully over the weekend, I realized that I had indeed taken military service and war too lightly. I thought we could overcome the gap in our social status and be together without hesitation, but if the price is built on the suffering of our respective families, then that would be too selfish."
"I agree to break up with you."
I wish you a bright future and that you find your soulmate soon.
After a weekend of reflection and calm, Lan Jian still felt somewhat saddened by Han Li's final, somewhat cheesy blessing.
She looked up at the sky. In December, the southern foothills were always shrouded in a layer of gray mist. She and Han Li were at opposite ends of the mist. Before the clouds cleared and the rain stopped, they had already parted ways.
"What's wrong, Lan Jian?" Chongming was walking with Lan Jian when he saw her suddenly look up, so he subconsciously looked down at her.
Because of their height difference, their eyes met again.
The situation was so similar to that of the morning.
"Han Li is going to join the army." Lan Jian knew, and Chong Ming knew that Han Li was her boyfriend.
"Oh," Ma Yuehe asked Chongming to come to the lab today to ask him to help with signing his military service form. Ma Yuehe and Han Li are the same age, so it's not surprising that they enlisted in the same batch. "Is he also going to apply for alternative service?"
Alternative service is for highly educated personnel selected for the army. After completing three months of basic training, they can serve as civilian staff in the military.
"It's currently the alert period, and I heard that the military doesn't allow alternative service."
Ma Yuehe was lucky; he graduated from a medical school and was assigned the role of medical officer from the beginning.
“I’m so ignorant about that,” Chongming comforted Lanjian. “It’s alright, he’s going to join the army, not going to the battlefield right now. Don’t worry so much.”
"I'm not being overly pessimistic," Lan Jian said in a low voice. "I'm just sad."
Chongming looked at Lanjian, "What's wrong?"
"I'm so sad that I have to break up with him."
It's the same old storyline again.
You can even find another dialogue that echoes it—
It was the second day of the new year when Xue Xiang invited Lan Jian, who had finished class, to the lab for hot pot. That day, they had moved to a new lab, and Senior Sister Hui suggested having hot pot to congratulate Xue Xiang on his move.
At that time, Zheng Xuerou had already left Nanjing University and was waiting to go abroad.
Procurement was Lan Jian and Chong Ming's responsibility. Lan Jian spent all her time in class at school, and her lab was on the twelfth floor. She hadn't seen Zheng Xuerou, who stayed in the old lab, many times. She only casually remarked on the way back, "My senior is going abroad to pursue her PhD. That's great!"
Chongming interjected, "But for me, it's not good at all."
.
Lan Jian was stunned. Chongming rarely said such things, and even when he was joking, he always knew how to keep his distance.
But Lan Jian understood what he meant; he was subtly informing her that he had a girlfriend.
So now Lan Jian is returning it to him in a more straightforward way.
Tell him that she has broken up with him.
What's even more coincidental is that he went to the United States this time to break up with Zheng Xuerou in person.
Why did she and he break up with their partners at the same time?
There was an unspoken secret between the two.
This secret was slowly revealed that afternoon when Ma Yue went to the toilet to pee and Meng Lanjian went to the tea room.
At that moment, Meng Lanjian was about to leave with a water cup when Ma Yuehe, in a panic, came out of the next-door restroom and then retreated back into the tea room, almost getting splashed by Lanjian.
"What are you panicking about?" Meng Lanjian glanced outside, and even she panicked at what she saw.
A man and a woman stood in the corridor. The one holding the discarded paper cup was Chongming, and in front of him stood a petite and lovely girl. Ma Yuehe, with an intrigued expression, gestured for Meng Lanjian to step back a little, but Meng Lanjian eagerly pressed herself against the door, refusing to give up her spot.
"Is this the student from Beiluan that your Han Li is mentoring?"
There aren't many students from Beiluan in the college. Besides Lan Jian, the only other person on the twelfth floor is this senior girl from Han Li's nuclear medicine lab.
"Watch your words, I've broken up with Han Li."
“Tsk,” Ma Yuehe clicked his tongue, “I returned that calendar to Han Li this morning, and judging from his expression, he doesn’t seem like he really wants to break it off.”
"If he doesn't say goodbye to me now, am I supposed to wait until he enlists and then stage a mutiny against him?"
Ma Yuehe gasped upon hearing this, "Jianjian, I can only say that it's fortunate I'm single right now, otherwise the hat on my head after joining the army would definitely be a real green hat."
Shh! You're eavesdropping, pay attention!
"What did that woman say?"
"It seems like they said Chongming broke up with her boyfriend a long time ago, and now that she's pursuing him, he's only letting everyone know he broke up with her now. Is he giving her a chance?" Lan Jian finished recounting the story, then frowned. "It wasn't really a long time ago..."
"Wow, you even know when Chongming broke up?" Ma Yuehe was full of admiration. "You actually dared to gossip with Chongming's face, which looks like it's radiating Buddha's light and is just short of becoming an immortal. Amazing!"
Lan Jian thought to herself, "I know a lot more than that."
"What are you saying now? Why does Chongming have to speak so softly?! It's infuriating!"
"If you raise your voice any louder, when Chongming comes to kill us, I'll be left only to collect your corpse."
Before the two eavesdroppers in the break room could get a clear picture, they saw the girl in the corridor turn and walk towards the laboratory at the other end. Her long hair obscured her expression, and Lan Jian couldn't tell whether her confession had been successful or not.
Just as Lan Jian was getting into a daze, Chongming, who was supposed to be throwing out the trash, suddenly turned around and walked towards the tea room.
When Chongming walked in, Ma Yuehe grabbed the fabric of Lan Jian's clothes from her shoulder, trying to hide behind her. Unfortunately, Chongming was much taller than the two of them, and when he looked down at them from above, his intimidating presence was beyond measure.
As Chongming stepped in, Ma Yuehe grabbed Lan Jian and pulled him back a step.
They were truly terrified.
"Radiation protection has three basic elements: time, distance, and shielding!"
As Lan Jian approached Chongming step by step, he suddenly said to him, "We've kept our distance and used the walls of the tea room to shield ourselves, but given enough time, Ma Yuehe and I will forget everything that just happened!"
Chongming suddenly sneered, completely lacking the usual gentle and taciturn demeanor and bearing of the "senior brother".
"Ma Yuehe, get out!"
"Alright! Okay!"
Upon receiving the order, Ma Yue immediately sacrificed a pawn to save his chariot.
"卒" refers to Meng Lanjian's "马" (horse).
"Pawn" and "chariot" naturally refer to his four-wheeled motor vehicle.
After Ma Yue and Yi Liuyan disappeared in a flash, Meng Lanjian was left alone to face Chongming, where the cold air front had dropped the temperature below zero.
Did you hear me clearly?
"ah?"
"just."
Faced with Chongming's taciturn nature, Meng Lanjian could only offer self-reflection and repentance: "I didn't hear a thing clearly, I really didn't even know what kind of nuclide the source was, or whether the reactor device was started."
What simulations have you been running lately?
“O-15, half-life 20.38 minutes.” Meng Lanjian glanced at her watch with feigned nonchalance. “Coincidentally, Ma Yuehe will be off work in 20 minutes. Once he leaves the research institute, he’ll forget who you met in the corridor. By the time he comes to school tomorrow, it will have decayed to nothing!”
"That's really novel. You've actually started researching things that Nuclear Science Department students play with. Is Professor Huang Yi's lab trying to recruit you?"
Huang Yi is the mentor of Han Li and that junior from Bei Luan, specializing in nuclear medicine.
"That's not true!"
Meng Lanjian made up the story to cover for Ma Yuehe. After all, she saw the clock on the wall showed 5:08 before she came to the tea room. She calculated the time difference and just gave a name with a short half-life. If she had known that Chongming would take her seriously, she would have just stood up and admitted her mistake. Why did she have to be so clever?
Meng Lanjian changed his attitude and sincerely apologized: "We shouldn't have eavesdropped on your conversation, we're sorry, senior!"
Chongming's serious expression softened slightly. "Well, this won't happen again."
Meng Lanjian thought that was the end of it.
Unexpectedly, Chongming didn't let her off so easily. "Since you're so familiar with nuclear medicine, I'd like to ask you, do you remember the half-life of TL-201?"
The usually easy-going senior had transformed into a solemn and imposing tiger; only now did Meng Lanjian truly grasp the aura of the lab's second-in-command.
It turns out that his gentle words to her in the past were all out of consideration for her.
No wonder Ma Yuehe, though he occasionally liked to joke about Chongming with Xue Xiang, was terrified of Chongming when Xue Xiang wasn't around.
Amitabha.
Meng Lanjian cleared her mind, racking her brains. Thanks to the occasional lapses in concentration when she was bored, she would flip through the textbooks on her ex-boyfriend's desk, who studied nuclear medicine. Finally, she remembered that the half-life of TL-201 was—
"72 hours."
"That's right, three days."
Three days.
Three days was... the time limit given to her by Lu Jie, a general of the Southern Army, to consider the matter.
It was all thanks to Ma Yue and the eavesdropping scene that Lan Jian had just staged, which made her feel like a spectator and almost forget the outrageous events that had happened to her three days ago.
Looking at the face before him, which bore a striking resemblance to Major General Lu Jie, the relationship between the two was self-evident.
"Have you thought it through?" Chongming tore off the disguise of "senior" and revealed the true face of the son of a major general. His demeanor was that of a person who had been living in luxury for many years and knew how to strategize. "Lanjian."
He didn't need any skill to manipulate people; he simply called her "Lanjian" and it made Meng Lanjian's heart race.
Helping her tidy up the messy building block calendar on the table, letting Ma Yuehe put the hard drive in the storage room, and the midday eye contact and confrontation with each other through the fog... Meng Lanjian thought she was very smart and could see through all the hints.
But unknowingly, they had already fallen into the web woven by fate, unable to escape.
“I had no choice at all, did I?” Meng Lanjian retorted, locking his gaze into Chongming’s dark eyes. “Senior Chongming.”
"Or should I call you—"
"Lu Dingyue".
Ma Bao: I was terrified at the time.
Lan Jian: I haven't gotten over the sadness of my breakup yet.
Chongming: No photos are needed to register your marriage at the southern foot of the mountain; you don't need to force a smile.
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