Chapter 171 Lemonade's momentary encounter is worth eternity
When she said this, Xu Sirui turned his head back, but turned his head back halfway.
Zhu Yingning wanted to introduce Xu Sirui to Chen Fei, but Chen Fei said, "Since you haven't seen each other for a long time, shouldn't you have a meal together? I won't join you. It's a bit awkward."
"It's okay," she said. "I'll go tell him. He probably won't mind. I can't just go out and eat with you and leave you alone."
Chen Fei shook her head like a rattle: "No, I'm shy, this kind of occasion is too much for me, I'll just go to the hotel and have something to eat. If you're worried, I'll tell you when I get to the hotel."
As she spoke, she lowered her head and used her phone to call a taxi. Zhu Yingning had no choice but to ask Chen Fei to share the Didi itinerary with her.
Chen Fei's car arrived quickly, and as soon as it stopped, she rushed over impatiently, as if a ghost was chasing her. Seeing this, Xu Sirui finally said the first sentence to Zhu Yingning since they met today: "Is your friend leaving now?"
"Yes, that's right." Zhu Yingning nodded. "She went back to the hotel first."
As soon as the words fell, Chen Fei's car drove away, and the atmosphere became awkward for some reason.
Zhu Yingning looked at him and took the initiative to say, "Shall we find a place to have a meal together? I'll treat you." As he spoke, he lowered his head to call a taxi and located it to the nearest business district.
Xu Sirui said, "Let me call a taxi."
He also lowered his head to fiddle with his phone, but as luck would have it, the last car a few kilometers away was just called away by Chen Fei a few seconds ago. As she left, their taxi-hailing interfaces all turned the waiting circle.
They stood there for five minutes before a car that was picking up passengers three kilometers away came to take the order. It was estimated that it would take another ten minutes to drop the passengers off and get to their place.
With so much free time, there was a lot to talk about, but both she and he were unusually silent. There was a distance of two or three meters between them, wide enough to squeeze in a guard of honor.
Ten minutes of silence passed before the ride-hailing service finally arrived. Zhu Yingning habitually opened the passenger door—she always sat there when she called a ride alone, finding it more intimate and less distant than the driver. In contrast, Xu Sirui was a staunch backseat aficionado, always avoiding unnecessary small talk with strangers.
The passenger door and the back seat door opened at the same time. They were both stunned for a moment, then got into the car and sat down.
Of course, they are also silent in the online car-hailing service.
Zhu Yingning would occasionally swipe the screen to check Chen Fei's location, and Xu Sirui in the back seat seemed to have endless messages to reply to.
As they neared their destination, she checked Dianping.com for a few decent restaurants. She could have just asked him which one he wanted to go to, but she silently shared the restaurant links on his WeChat and texted him which one he wanted to eat at.
Their WeChat chat history was stuck a year ago. Scrolling up, there were countless, intermittent transfers, stretching from the winter of 2015 to the winter of 2017. They were all transfers from her to him, and he hadn't accepted a single one, either returning them outright or waiting until the transfer expired and the system automatically refunded them. She stared at the transfer records for several minutes until the bus arrived at the station, then she turned off her phone, opened the door, and got out.
Xu Sirui had already picked a location in the car, a Western restaurant. After getting off the car, he took her directly in that direction.
Enter, wash hands, take a seat, and order food.
The set of movements was completed in one go, without any nonsense in between.
After ordering, any possibility of reconciliation between them disappeared, and the unfamiliarity of four years of separation began to show up gradually.
She lowered her head slightly and stared at the QR code in front of her for ordering food, thinking about how fast the times are changing. She still remembered eating with him many years ago. When taking orders, there were still waiters everywhere. The waiters would walk to the table and ask, "Hello, what would you like to eat?" But now, there are QR codes on the corners of tables in any restaurant.
He himself has also changed in tandem with the times.
Unlike the student uniform she had always chosen for the convenience of movement, Xu Sirui was wearing a suit, the kind of which was obviously extremely expensive just by looking at the material.
It's not like she'd never seen him in a suit before. Back in the day, Model United Nations competitors were required to wear formal attire, and he'd already been striking in a suit. It was quite different now—no matter how dazzling he looked then, it still felt contrived, like a child wearing adult clothes. Now, his frame had fully grown, his long, slender limbs perfectly holding up his shirt, and the extra space left behind no longer looked frail, but rather revealed a carefree, lazy air.
This suit seemed like it was meant to be worn on him.
She was lost in thought, comparing the past with the present, and didn't notice that Xu Sirui, who was sitting across from her, was staring at her intently. When she came to her senses, she realized that she owed him a lot for what happened today, and it was only right that she should thank him sincerely, so she said, "Thank you for today..."
Before I could finish my words, he spoke at the same time: "Are you embarrassed to be with me?"
The two voices overlapped.
Over the past few years, Zhu Yingning had come into contact with many people and situations, and had also learned many diplomatic skills. In the past, she would have answered his questions honestly, but now she knew she could just pretend she hadn't heard clearly and casually brush off his questions by making the voices overlap.
She knew these harmless conversation techniques, but she found that she didn't seem to want to treat him perfunctorily.
After a brief pause, she smiled softly and met his gaze: "Maybe a little. After all, we haven't seen each other for so long, I think..."
The second half of her sentence was "I feel like you're a little strange", but this sentence kept lingering in her mouth and was never uttered in the end.
Xu Sirui didn't respond immediately.
He looked into her eyes, and silence spread between them like a tide.
Just as she was racking her brains to find a new topic to ease the awkward atmosphere, a man holding a child passed by them - the child tickled the man's nose with a feather pencil in his hand, and the man wrinkled his nose and sneezed openly.
The sneeze was subtle, not towards them, not away from them, and certainly not covered with a hand. It came from the side facing them. It wasn't intentional, but the other person probably just had a low level of moral integrity and didn't have the awareness to cover their sneeze with their hands, because his saliva also sprayed his own child's face.
When faced with such a situation, Zhu Yingning would usually choose to ignore it, but at the moment when the man was about to sneeze, she saw Xu Sirui, who was sitting opposite her, quickly stretched out his hands and covered the rims of his cup and hers with his left and right hands respectively.
After the sneeze ended, he did not retract his hand immediately. He stayed for a few seconds until he felt that the saliva factors that he could not see in the air had disappeared. Then he retracted his hand, took out a pack of alcohol cotton pads from the table cabinet with disgust, and wiped the back of his hand repeatedly.
After wiping it, he looked up and met Zhu Yingning's gaze. She stared at him blankly, her eyes lost in thought.
"how……?"
Before she uttered the word "了", she burst out laughing.
At the beginning, she was trying to suppress her laughter a little, and the laughter turned into a breathy hum from her nose. She lowered her head and let her shoulders shrug. Later, she laughed more and more wildly, holding the edge of the table, leaning back and forth, and almost sticking to the table with laughter.
Xu Sirui was stunned for a moment and asked her, "What are you laughing at?"
Zhu Yingning waved her hand, not sure if it meant "nothing" or that she was laughing so hard that she couldn't answer.
He asked again, "What are you laughing at?", but she still waved her hands without answering.
Xu Sirui frowned, and after a few seconds, he couldn't help laughing, although he had no idea what was so funny.
When the waitress came to serve them, she saw the table of guests looking like two idiots, laughing face to face and unable to speak. She silently put down her plate and hurried away.
Zhu Yingning didn't stop laughing until the nerves in her stomach hurt from laughing. She covered her stomach and barely stopped laughing.
She felt so stupid.
It's not because I suddenly laughed stupidly, but because of the thoughts I had not long ago.
Stranger, what the hell. It's only been a few years since they last met, and she's already creating a sense of distance, like they're from two different worlds. But Xu Sirui hasn't changed at all, has he? He's still got the same meticulous cleanliness, still likes to play it cool while being attentive to others, and still—he'll laugh along with her while secretly criticizing her.
She really didn't know the details of his life in the past few years, but a person's nature might not change easily with time and separation.
He is still him, she is still her, they sit here facing each other, both still being themselves.
She suddenly felt her eyes getting moist.
Their farewell during the summer vacation after the college entrance examination was not beautiful at all, and could even be called messy.
That day, after she met Zhang Jiacheng and told him, "I don't plan to enter into a relationship for the time being," after returning home, Xu Sirui, who came hurriedly, asked her, "Did you promise him?" For self-protection, she subconsciously used friendship to clearly draw a line between them, just like when she asked Zhang Jiacheng, "Do you still like me?", he hurriedly covered up and said it was just the love between friends.
But Xu Sirui's subsequent reaction made her hesitate again.
The thunder drowned out his words, and she could not hear anything clearly, but she saw the tears on his face. The endless tears reflected her determined yet confused eyes.
Why was he crying as if he was abandoned by her?
It was hard to say what was driving her. Perhaps it was the courage given to her by her youth. She thought, one last time - she would be brave one last time. If he responded to her, then she would be with him.
She spoke up and said to him: "I didn't promise him. The person I like is not him."
She was waiting for Xu Sirui to ask, "Who do you like?" As long as he asked, she would tell him the answer and tell him that she had always liked him very much.
But Xu Sirui didn't ask anything.
He suddenly stared at her with wide eyes, and time passed in their long gaze. To this day, Zhu Yingning still couldn't understand the meaning of his eyes, nor did she understand what he was thinking. She only knew that he remained silent for many long seconds.
And she didn't get the answer she wanted.
Zhu Yingning thought she would feel deeply disappointed or hurt, but at that moment, she was surprised that she felt a sense of relief from the bottom of her heart.
The rain stopped outside the window and the sky cleared up. The bright afternoon sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the floor, lighting up their faces.
She looked at his tear-stained face and silently told herself, Xu Sirui, this time I really want to move forward.
Later, when they filled out their college entrance examination applications, they applied to different universities. She stayed in Beijing, while he went to Shanghai.
After the start of freshman year, the geographical distance naturally weakened their relationship.
The frequency with which they contacted each other became less and less.
She couldn't quite pinpoint the exact day they'd lost touch, but she realized it when she noticed Zhou Tianqing always knew about Xu Sirui's situation before she did. She heard about him more and more frequently from other people, even during holidays and class get-togethers. Even Zou Hao, who was studying in Shenzhen, would casually spill a few little details about Xu Sirui she didn't know.
Are they still friends now?
Every time she tried to think about this problem, her busy studies and community affairs would distract her.
Gradually, she didn't even think about Xu Sirui anymore.
Even if I think about it, my heart is calm and there is not much ripple.
Until one day when her first semester of freshman year was about to end, Zhou Tianqing suddenly told her that she would no longer need to save money to repay Xu Zhengkang's scholarship.
She thought it was Zhou Tianqing who paid the money back for her, so she quickly made a video call to thank him. Zhou Tianqing smiled on the other end of the video and said, "It wasn't me, it was Ruirui who paid it back for you. If you really want to pay it back, just transfer the money to him directly."
She was surprised and opened the WeChat account with Xu Sirui, whom she hadn't spoken to for a long time. After thinking for a while, she tried to transfer a thousand yuan to him using the money she had saved from working and studying.
He didn't accept it.
She didn't ask him why he didn't accept it.
After that, every two or three months, she would transfer some money to him using her scholarship or part-time job income, but Xu Sirui never accepted it. He either returned it himself or waited until the transfer expired and the system returned it.
She insisted on transferring money to him, and he also insisted on not accepting her money. The transfer records became their only connection during their four years of college.
Until the second semester of her senior year, she was busy with her graduation thesis and various exams related to her future career and had no time to transfer money to him.
Until now.
Thinking of these past events, she no longer felt sad or regretful. Only a warmth as light as flowing water remained, like the sunlight that shone on their faces through the window glass after the thunderstorm that day.
She looked at the glass of lemonade on the table that he was protecting, and a smile appeared on the corner of her mouth. After a long time, she looked up at him and asked, "Xu Sirui, have you been well these years?"
He seemed stunned for a moment, then responded in a low voice: "...Yeah."
After a few seconds, he asked again, "What about you?"
"I'm fine too."
Separation is not the end. After moving forward separately, they meet at a new fork in the road.
There is no need to ask where you come from or where you are going, a momentary encounter is worth eternity.
She raised the glass of lemonade and waved it in his direction: "Cheers?"
The rims of the cups clinked lightly.
Cheers to everlasting friendship.
Cheers to the sunny autumn days.
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