Chapter 61
"What's going on?" Chen Yuan looked at Yang Ye in front of him, his eyes gradually turning red. He frowned and looked towards the door, then turned back to stare at her and asked, "What did Xiao Zhou mean just now? Are you Zhao Zhao?"
Yang Ye didn't answer. She stared at Zhou Yiheng's stumbling back outside the glass door. He seemed to have tripped, his shoulder about to fall forward, but he didn't stop running, frantically grabbing a nearby telephone pole. He stood still for a moment, then straightened up and walked into the surging crowd at the corner. His hurried shadow struck Yang Ye's heart. Many thoughts raced through her mind, but guilt dominated. She knew she should chase him and explain, but after that, what would happen to them?
The blurred glass door and the street corner were mixed with patches of light that she couldn't see clearly.
Yang Ye slowly turned around, her eyes falling on the photo on the table. She walked over, carefully picked it up, and gently stroked the young Xue Shangyang in the photo with her fingertips. Her eyelashes lowered, and her voice was very soft, "Give me Shangyang's things."
Her words seemed to freeze Chen Yuan in his tracks. He stared at Yang Ye, his pupils filled with disbelief and shock. How could this girl, only in her early twenties, be the person in that photo from eighty years ago? Chen Yuan didn't believe it. He snatched the photo from Yang Ye's hand, comparing the blurry outline in the photo with the clear image of Yang Ye before him. He kept comparing them back and forth, but every time he moved the photo away, the hazy silhouette could be accurately attached to her face, without a single mistake.
Chen Yuan opened his mouth wide, feeling as if all the blood in his body had frozen at this moment.
He watched as Yang Ye took the photo from him. Her movements were gentle, carefully avoiding the brown mold stain on the photo. She seemed so careful not to break it. Then, she reached for the leather bag on the table, the hemp string already taut, and unpacked the contents one by one until she reached the dark brown diary. The leather cover was faded and brittle, the edges frayed. She tucked the photo between the diary's cover pages.
Flipping through the diary, a dry scrap of paper occasionally fell between the pages. When Yang Ye turned to a certain page, she paused. The dark brown sycamore leaves and the yellowed paper were tightly stuck together. She held her fingers in mid-air, her eyes inexplicably sore.
"Shangyang, look at this leaf." She picked up the sycamore leaf that had just fallen from her shoulder.
"What's wrong?" Xue Shangyang was reading a book. Hearing this, he looked up and saw Yang Ye.
"It fell on my shoulder." Yang Ye held up the leaf. It was a green leaf with clear textures.
Xue Shangyang looked at the leaf she was holding in her hand and asked, "What does this mean?"
"My mother said that if a leaf falls on you, it means God likes you and will bring you good luck for the whole year."
Xue Shangyang took the leaf and looked at it carefully in the sunlight. "Isn't this just an ordinary leaf?"
His fingertips brushed the edge of the leaf as Yang Ye continued to turn the pages. The dry pages bore the yellowish-brown marks characteristic of old books, and the pen writing had already blurred.
"Zhao Zhao wants to eat the pea cake from the detail shop again. Remember to buy some tomorrow."
Zhao Zhao stayed in the yard for an extra hour in the evening. Remind Zhang Ma to make ginger soup to ward off the cold tomorrow morning.
Yang Ye looked at the words and suddenly smiled, but the curve of her lips trembled violently. The next second, tears fell uncontrollably onto the paper, leaving clumps of wet stains.
She had thought that after so much time, those things would have been unimportant to her. But when she read the trivial details Xue Shangyang had written in his diary, the events of the past seemed to come back to her. The so-called unimportance was simply something she had forced down. Everyone else was moving forward, leaving her stranded.
Without warning, tears trickled down her cheeks onto her clothes. Yang Ye bit her lip to prevent herself from making any sound, but her throat felt uncomfortable. Her shoulders couldn't stop shaking, and she clutched the diary tightly. Decades of bitterness surged up at this moment, like rising tide overflowing the embankment. She held the diary and lowered her head in front of everyone. The sobs she had suppressed finally burst through her throat. The grievance, helplessness, pain, fear, confusion, everything she had experienced over the years seemed to have a way to vent. Her crying became louder and louder, and she could no longer control her emotions.
Li Cheng and Xiao Xiao stood behind her. Seeing her sudden collapse, they wanted to comfort her but didn't know what to say.
The jazz music in the coffee shop was still playing, drowning out her sobs. Yang Ye stood there, clutching the diary tightly in his hands, as if clinging to the only remaining connection with the past.
Beijing's winter is like a rusty, blunt knife, slowly and cruelly cutting every life exposed.
When Zhou Yi pushed open the coffee shop door, he was met by a strong oncoming wind. The cold wind howled, as if it had come prepared. The rushing wind passed through his open collar and ran down his spine, slowly draining away the heat from his body. The hem of his camel coat was lifted by the wind, and the chill crept up his trouser legs, nibbling away at his remaining body heat. He instinctively hunched his neck, but even though he was practically freezing, his head still burned. Yang Ye's "I'm sorry" kept repeating in his ears, like a nearly red-hot iron, dulling and piercing his chest.
He walked a little further with the crowd and stood at a crossroads, his breath quickly blown away by the wind. He looked out at the unfamiliar alleyway, the people hurrying to and fro, each wrapped tightly in their coats and sprinting along, no one willing to stop for even a second in such a cold day.
The wind seemed to be blowing even harder.
Zhou Yiheng clutched his collar tightly, his fingers numb from the cold. But no matter how cold he was, he couldn't suppress the irritation raging inside him. Yang Ye's voice filled his ears, making his temples throb. His mind was a mess, but Yang Ye's expression, her hesitation to speak, lingered in his mind, and the more he thought about it, the more irritated he became. He clenched his frozen hands.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out. It was just a useless, harassing text message. With only 5% battery left, he swiped through his address book, a handful of names flashing by.
He kept going down, his finger hovering over Gao Ran's number. After pausing for a few seconds, he pressed it.
Gao Ran's radio ringtone rang for a long time, but no one answered.
"Answer the phone." He bit his back teeth, and the white breath he exhaled blurred his vision.
The voice of the mechanical girl came from the receiver again.
"Fuck (this is just an adjective)" he cursed and put the phone back in his pocket.
He started walking back against the crowd, with nothing to show for it. He just wanted to pack up and leave Beijing quickly; he couldn't stay here any longer. But after a few steps, he suddenly stopped. They were taking turns driving this time, and Xiao Xiao had the car keys. To make matters worse, he hadn't even brought his ID with him, trying to save time. Without it, his phone was almost dead.
Zhou Yi stood frozen at the intersection, the cold wind howling past him. Gazing at the unfamiliar streets, he felt an unprecedented sense of isolation. He suddenly realized how difficult it was to even take a single step in this completely unfamiliar Beijing.
The sun slanted across the intersection, and the bare branches of the ginkgo tree pointed straight to the sky. The cold wind blew past, and the rugged branches trembled in the cold wind, and the shadows they cast swayed, stretching and winding on the asphalt road.
"Make way!" the delivery rider honked impatiently as his electric bike sped past him. Zhou Yi stumbled back two steps, nearly falling to the side of the road.
Passing by a home decoration store, he saw himself reflected in the black glass of the store.
Gao Ran was leaning nonchalantly on the sofa, his feet on the coffee table in front of him. He was holding a can of beer in his hand. He turned to look at Zhou Yiheng, who had called him out. "Honestly, how did you know you liked her? Could it be that you were just attracted by her beauty?"
Zhou Yi turned his head and said, "Bullshit, am I that kind of person?"
"Then why don't you just say something? You've been sitting there for ages without saying a word." Gao Ran took a sip of beer and continued, "We've only known each other for less than two weeks, and she's your boss. You're saying you like her so quickly. If it's not just for her face, then there must be another reason."
Zhou Yiheng wanted to say something, but then he leaned back on the sofa in frustration. He sighed and said, "I can't say."
"Isn't it still lust after seeing the beauty?"
"It's not what you think." Zhou Yiheng scratched his hair irritably. He gulped down a few gulps of beer and stammered, "When I first saw her, I felt something was wrong. It wasn't me who was wrong, it was both her and me who were wrong."
"What could be wrong with her?"
"I don't know either. The way she looked at me was very strange."
"What's that look?" Gao Ran became interested. "Could it be that she's interested in you too?"
"Bullshit," Zhou Yiheng retorted, "If she was interested in my face, I wouldn't have to be like this now."
"Then what's wrong with you?" Gao Ran asked impatiently.
"I don't know," Zhou Yiheng couldn't say.
"Then tell me clearly what that look is, and I'll analyze it for you." Gao Ran poked Zhou Yiheng with his arm.
Zhou Yiheng rubbed his sore brows, looking ahead in a daze, with an inexplicable confusion and bewilderment in his eyes. "I can't put my finger on it, it's just that when she looked at me, I felt like she wasn't looking at me. Sometimes when she looked at me, it seemed like she was also looking at someone else."
"You are sick, what kind of description is that?"
"So I said I don't know how to say it," Zhou Yiheng exhaled. He always felt that some of Yang Ye's words were spoken to him, but it didn't seem like he was speaking completely to him.
Gao Ran raised an eyebrow, "When did you become so good at observing people?"
"Because she always looks at me like this," Zhou Yiheng suddenly raised his voice, "From the first time we met to when I went out with her, she always looked at me like this."
Gao Ran took a sip of wine and said thoughtfully, "So you fell in love with her because she was attracted to you?"
Zhou Yiheng grabbed the pillow beside him and threw it at him, "Can you please say something serious?"
"You are not serious. You haven't said a word for a long time." Gao Ran took the pillow and kicked Zhou Yiheng's ankle.
Zhou Yiheng didn't say anything, but the irritation on his face became more and more intense.
There was a simple silence around for a moment.
"Hey, let me tell you," Gao Ran kicked Zhou Yiheng again, "if you really care that much, why don't you go and ask clearly?"
Zhou Yiheng looked at the scene in front of him helplessly, his fingers fiddling with his palms. "What are you asking? Why do you always look at me like that? Or do you want to ask her whether she likes me or not?"
"You can ask anything," Gao Ran shrugged. "It's better to ask than to just sit here and guess."
“…”
"Are you scared?" Gao Ran chuckled.
Zhou Yiheng stood up suddenly, grabbed his cell phone and walked towards the room.
"You're leaving now? We haven't finished the wine yet," Gao Ran asked from the sofa.
"I'm going to bed first. I have to go to work tomorrow." Zhou Yi slammed the door without even looking back.
Gao Ran took another sip of wine, smiled, and shouted to the closed door, "I wish you success in advance."
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