Chapter 165: Talking about feelings slowly in life
After Zhu Yingning's voice came out, Wen Wenxu and Shen Fei were like the mute button was pressed, and both of them fell silent instantly.
After staring at each other for a few seconds, Wen Wenxu turned around, his already small eyes narrowing into two thin black lines from laughter. "How could that be, Captain? We're discussing this solid-liquid mixture at the door."
Zhu Yingning had just gotten up, her hair still sticking up and her eyes a little closed. She looked past them and towards the door, her expression slightly solemn.
"I'm almost done cleaning. Leave this to me." Wen Wenxu swept diligently, turning his guilty conscience into motivation. "Chen Fei said she wanted to drive to the market to buy some food. I'll show her how to get out of the car after I'm done."
Zhu Yingning stared at the stain in silence for a long time before nodding and saying okay, then turned around and went to the bathroom to wash up.
Chen Fei followed in, tears still lingering on her face, sticky like glue. She pulled off a towel, ran some cold water under the tap, and splashed it over her face. She then covered her swollen eyes, her vision hazy beneath the towel. Remembering what she and Wen Wenxu had said behind her back, Chen Fei's conscience troubled her. She muttered, "I'm sorry, Captain."
Zhu Yingning was standing shoulder to shoulder with her in front of the sink, squeezing toothpaste. She was surprised when she heard this and said softly, "It's okay."
She looked in the mirror at Shen Fei's eyes, which were covered by a towel, and said, "If you're curious, you can actually ask me directly. There's nothing I can't tell you about my relationship with my ex-boyfriend."
"Really?!"
It wasn't Shen Feiying who said this, but Wen Wenxu. He was squatting outside the bathroom, holding a mop, intending to wait for the two girls to finish before going in. But he overheard Zhu Yingning's words again, and his gossipy spirit burned brightly. He immediately poked his head in, his eyes shining like a dog seeing a bone.
"Captain, can I listen too?" He blinked.
Before Zhu Yingning could say anything, Shen Fei was speechless: "You..."
"Oh, you can't blame me. Don't you think it's easy to get bored in the mountains? Even though I have my phone, I still feel so empty. Listening to gossip is one of the few pleasures I have. Don't deprive me of it."
Chen Fei said disdainfully: "Don't say 'well' as a grown man."
"Mmmmmm~"
“…”
Their conversation successfully made Zhu Yingning laugh. She turned on the faucet, filled her mouthwash cup with water, and watched the thin stream of water gradually fill the cup. She said concisely, "He and I were classmates at the same school. We started together at the beginning of our sophomore year. We separated because we had different plans for the future."
After she finished speaking, Wen Wenxu waited for a while, but when he saw that there was no further news, he was dumbfounded: "That's all?"
"No more." Zhu Yingning said.
"No, this is too short! Captain, do you really have to be so good at summarizing?" Wen Wenxu wanted to cry but had no tears. He hadn't even had time to take out the melon seeds when the other person had finished speaking.
Zhu Yingning smiled but said nothing.
In fact, if she really wanted to talk about it in detail, there was a lot to say, from the time they met to the time they broke up, but that would be too long, and she didn't want to disclose the details in such detail.
They said it was an amicable breakup, but even the most peaceful ending of a relationship can still feel awkward. They'd had their share of desperate arguments, cold wars, and barbs. Peace is the mournful song of emotions settling into silence. But the well-wishes she offered on the phone were genuine. To this day, if anyone asks, she still says he was a wonderful person. They simply chose separate paths in life, just like their freshman year, when similar aspirations brought them together.
In 2014, during the summer after the college entrance examination results were released, she told Zhang Jiacheng, "Thank you for liking me, but I don't have any plans to enter into a relationship for the time being."
In 2015, at the beginning of the second semester of her sophomore year, she was the one who asked Zhang Jiacheng, "Will you be with me?"
What happened in between is neither complicated nor easy to explain. Let's go back to the hot September of 2014. At that time, she had just finished the military training for freshmen. Because she didn't buy sunscreen, she got several degrees darker than before. She went to the library to preview her new textbooks in such a dark complexion. When she was squatting next to the water dispenser to wash the water cup, she was too dark and blended into the shadows, and unfortunately tripped a passing boy.
She said "Oops" and apologized at the same time as the other party: "I'm sorry."
Because the voice sounded familiar, they looked up at the same time and saw each other's faces clearly, and both of them showed the same embarrassment on their faces.
——As fate would have it, after she rejected Zhang Jiacheng, they were actually admitted to the same university.
They didn't talk much that day. After a stiff greeting, they awkwardly returned to their reserved seats to study, not paying any more attention to each other.
As a result, three days later, she and Zhang Jiacheng appeared at the school student union interview at the same time.
"...Are you also here for the student union interview?" Zhu Yingning asked awkwardly.
"...Yes." Zhang Jiacheng answered awkwardly.
I thought it was outrageous enough that they appeared in the library at the same time and were recruited by the student union at the same time, but I didn't expect that the next day they would show up at the school volunteer association's venue at the same time.
The series of chance encounters have turned the awkwardness into something almost speechless and funny.
She smiled wryly and asked him, "Are you also here for an interview with the Volunteer Association?"
"Yes," he replied with a wry smile, "I heard that volunteering helps with Party membership and securing admission to graduate school." He paused, then managed another sentence, "I didn't expect our plans to be so... similar."
"I didn't expect that either." Zhu Yingning added dryly.
Later, Zhou Tianqing laughed heartily when she recounted this experience, and asked with great interest, "So what are you doing now...?"
"Learning partners," she said.
"That's all?"
"That's all."
"It's pretty good, old-fashioned romance." Zhou Tianqing commented with a smile.
Since they joined the same club, their activities gradually became more aligned, and the awkwardness caused by the failed confession gradually dissipated as they spent time together. They returned to the way they had been in their second year of high school, and Zhang Jiacheng began to naturally invite her to study in the library after club activities.
They have different majors, and the few things they have in common are that they all have to take CET-4 and CET-6 and take political science classes, but this does not affect their mutual supervision.
When she was distracted, he would tap the cap of his pen on her desk to remind her to come back to her senses; when he was distracted, she would point at his textbook with her index finger.
The boys' and girls' dormitories were in opposite directions. After studying every day, they would say goodbye to each other and then go east and he would go west. They would then repeat the same cycle the next day.
"I've lived for nineteen years, and I've never seen such a pure relationship between a man and a woman." Zhu Yingning's roommate Xiaomi lamented, then asked the rest of the roommates, "Have you seen such a pure relationship?"
"No."
“Unheard of.”
Only You Jiaxin, who has rich experience in relationships, said: "I bet five hundred that they will be together sooner or later."
Xiaomi immediately became interested: "Five hundred is enough for a meal, right? I bet you! Just wait and see if you can treat the whole dormitory."
The first semester of freshman year passed uneventfully. When finals week came to an end, Zhu Yingning, seeing her straight A+ grades, gave Zhang Jiacheng a thumbs-up and said, "I'll study with you again next semester."
Zhang Jiacheng just smiled and said nothing.
The changes happened quietly. Zhu Yingning couldn't tell the exact time, she could only remember sporadic events.
The first thing was that at the beginning of the second semester of her freshman year, her professional course teacher asked them to buy the fourth edition of a textbook. She misheard and accidentally bought the third edition. While studying in the library, she casually mentioned it to Zhang Jiacheng and planned to take time out on the weekend to go to the second-hand bookstore to look for the fourth edition. As a result, the next day, he handed her the fourth edition, saying that it was left over from the senior in the same dormitory last year. He found out that the senior had it, so he borrowed it for her.
Their entire dormitory was filled with students majoring in the same subject. Zhu Yingning couldn't understand how a senior in his major could have books in her major.
The second thing happened one night after she participated in a volunteer activity. Because the people she was traveling with rented a house outside the school, she had to return to school alone. When she walked to the subway station, she found that the subway had stopped running not long ago.
Around that time, there was a rumor that a girl had been verbally threatened by a taxi driver late at night. Thinking of this, she felt a little terrified, but with no other way to get back to school, she thought for a moment and decided to walk to the ground floor to get a taxi. But after only a few steps, she saw Zhang Jiacheng running out of the recently closed subway station. He said he happened to be passing by and since they met, they should take a taxi back to school together.
From what she knew, he had a lab that night that lasted until ten o'clock, and she had no idea how he could have "coincidentally" caught the last subway to get to where she was volunteering.
There were many more subtle details that she couldn't figure out. She mentioned them to Zhou Tianqing, who simply asked, "How do you feel about it?"
"I don't know." She was silent for a long time before she said, "It's comfortable to be with him, but I think... liking someone might be more intense."
"Like you liked Ruirui before?"
She was stunned and didn't say anything.
“Do you like summer?”
Although she didn't understand why Zhou Tianqing suddenly asked this, she answered truthfully: "I like it. Although it's very hot and sunny in the summer, I have my favorite watermelon."
"So, do you like autumn?"
"Well, autumn weather is cool and comfortable, but it's too short."
After answering, I was stunned for a moment.
Zhou Tianqing smiled and said, "So, you see, love has more than one form. Don't rush to define what love is. You're still too young, Yingning. You just need to ask your heart - do you want to be with him?"
So she began to question herself, and the answer to this question came half a month later, when Zhang Jiacheng sent her a picture of the sunset. She asked him why he suddenly posted this, and he said it was nothing: "I just suddenly wanted to share it with you."
"Are you in the dormitory now? Come down, I have something to tell you."
Zhang Jiacheng arrived at the dormitory building in confusion. As soon as they met, Zhu Yingning asked him a question directly: "Zhang Jiacheng, do you still like me?"
He was so scared that he thought he was going to be rejected again, so he quickly waved his hands and said, "No, no, no, you misunderstood. I only like you as a friend."
Unexpectedly, as soon as she finished speaking, she stretched out her right hand toward him, like an underground party meeting or a revolutionary martyr exchanging patriotic intelligence. She stared into his eyes and asked bluntly, "Will you be with me?"
"...I just said that. Actually, you didn't misunderstand me." He awkwardly grasped her outstretched right hand and explained incoherently, "What I meant is that my love for you is not just a friendship. I like you... I..."
"I know." She shook his hand vigorously and announced seriously, "From today on, we are boyfriend and girlfriend. Do you want to go to the library later?"
"Yes, I have an exam the day after tomorrow." Zhang Jiacheng adapted well to her unromantic turn of events.
"Then let's go together."
"good."
After they started dating, Zhu Yingning told Zhou Tianqing the result. Zhou Tianqing laughed again, wiped her tears, and said that she treated feelings in the style of a literati from the last century.
"I've always believed that people attract those with similar magnetic fields. Since you're a slow-moving and innocent person, you attract people who are also slow-moving and innocent." She narrowed her eyes and said kindly, "That's good. Life is long, so you can take your time to develop feelings. You still have a long future ahead of you."
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