chapter 18
Chapter 18
She followed the direction of Wu Ai’s finger. Here were loving couples feeding each other; men who had worked all day, holding a beer in one hand and a skewer in the other.
A hundred people, a hundred faces, but all were talking and laughing, sharing the events of their day without a care.
Liu Nanyu finished watching, then smiled with her lips pressed together.
“I understand now. It’s because of the atmosphere of everyday life.”
The two exchanged a smile and continued to immerse themselves in the food.
Liu Nanyu’s tone was more natural now, but she still deliberately kept her voice low.
They strolled along the street for a while longer. Suddenly, Liu Nanyu stopped, and a gust of wind blew past.
It blew away the girl’s hair tie and stirred the boy’s heart.
“I’m going home now. Thank you so much for taking me out today. I had a great time!”
Wu Ai smiled at her, saying nothing.
Tonight’s moon was truly beautiful.
Wu Ai and Liu Nanyu’s figures disappeared around the corner. At that moment, the glass door of the foreign-language bookstore was gently pushed open.
A figure peeked out from inside the bookstore, her gaze complicated as she looked in the direction where they had vanished.
Guo Yi had only come here to borrow some Japanese reference books, but now her face was streaked with tears that hadn’t yet dried, clearly still caught up in her emotions.
She had just witnessed almost the entire interaction between the two from a corner of the bookstore.
Leaning against the cold wall, she closed her eyes, replaying the scenes from earlier in her mind.
Slowly, she raised her hand and gently placed it on her lower abdomen.
There, a tiny life was growing-the source of all her recent struggles.
She felt the warmth of her fingertips, and tears nearly fell again, but she forced herself to hold them back.
Seeing how relaxed Wu Ai and Liu Nanyu were together, she suddenly understood something.
She opened her eyes, and moonlight fell across her face.
Her previous confusion and grievance gradually faded, replaced by a sense of resolve.
Wu Ai returned home, habitually tossing his clothes onto the sofa and pulling out his phone to play with.
Liang Tianhang sent him a message. When he opened it, he found it was an invitation to join a group chat.
As soon as he entered, Liang Tianhang tagged everyone.
“Welcome, Brother Ai!”
The grand welcome made Wu Ai feel a bit embarrassed.
He casually replied with a “Hello everyone,” then clicked into Liang Tianhang’s private chat, intending to ask about the team. Unexpectedly, Liang Tianhang messaged first.
“Brother Ai, are you planning to join the team?”
He’d wanted to think it over a bit more, but with such enthusiasm and being treated as the star player, Wu Ai couldn’t bring himself to refuse.
Just as he was about to sign up in the group, he was startled when he clicked in again.
The group had already grown to over twenty members, with more joining.
“Did you invite all these people?” he asked Liang Tianhang.
“Yeah. Don’t be fooled by the numbers-there’ll be a selection process later.”
“A selection process?”
“Don’t worry, Brother Ai. You’re our team’s ace. As long as you play, I won’t let you leave!”
His words were loyal, but Wu Ai felt a bit uneasy-who knew if there were hidden talents among these people.
He signed up with his name in the group, and two members caught his attention.
Cao Renke and Zhang Boyang-two ordinary names, common in any middle or high school.
The two were requesting jersey numbers in the group: Cao Renke wanted number 10, Zhang Boyang wanted number 30.
Wu Ai smiled. Number 10 was made famous by Pelé, often seen as the mark of a team leader.
Number 30 was worn by the famous footballer Lionel Messi at his current club-clearly, they wanted a bit of star power.
“Those two are pretty confident. I didn’t even dare to pick a number.”
He decided not to worry about it, flopped onto the bed, and soon drifted off to sleep-after all, there were Online Classes to attend the next day.
The next morning, just as he logged into class, his phone rang with a call from the courier.
“SF Express, your front desk won’t let me upstairs!”
Due to the apartment’s management policy-and more importantly, the pandemic-neither deliveries nor food could be brought upstairs.
This meant that the lobby on the first floor was always piled high with takeout bags and delivery boxes. Every time he went upstairs, he had to be careful not to kick something.
Wu Ai hurried downstairs. A cardboard box one and a half times his height appeared in front of him. He quickly signed for the delivery, hugged the box, and carried it upstairs.
Back home, he grabbed a pair of scissors and tore it open. The fresh scent of solid wood filled the air-a brand new guitar came into view.
Kepma, F0 Series solid-top acoustic guitar.
The oak-colored soundboard was smooth and graceful, flawless like a work of art, with a touch of red and black teardrop inlay.
“Damn, this is so cool. I can show off again.”
He loved it, but dropping over two thousand yuan at once still made Wu Ai wince for quite a while.
He set the guitar on his lap, lit a cigarette, and in his mind, found himself standing on the shore of West Lake. A song by Zhao Lei, “Hudson in My Dream,” floated along with the breeze.
“Only after seeing you do I understand the beauty of surrender; in desireless eyes, love never decays…”
Just as he was getting into the song, his phone suddenly started vibrating nonstop.
“Brother Ai… stop singing, your mic is still on!”
Lao Ba’s words snapped Wu Ai back from the West Lake shore. Only then did he realize his phone was being bombarded with messages.
Wu Ai quickly muted his mic. The teacher, probably stunned, was speechless for a long moment.
“Honestly, didn’t my singing just now sound really emotional?”
Lao Ba paused for a while, then asked cautiously,
“Are you showing off because you knew Shang Wanling was in class today?”
“Shang Wanling?”
He immediately leaned toward his computer and scrolled through the meeting list.
Sure enough, Shang Wanling’s name was there.
“It was announced in class yesterday-today’s Chinese class is a joint session for both classes,” Lao Ba said, rubbing his forehead helplessly.
Wu Ai brushed it off with a casual reply and hung up.
Listening to the dial tone, Lao Ba sighed. Gaokao was just around the corner, but Wu Ai still didn’t pay attention in class.
By now, the teacher seemed to have recovered from the earlier shock and resumed the lesson.
Lao Ba put down his phone and sat back at his computer.
Just as he was about to pick up his pen, his eyes landed on a photo on his desk, and his expression grew a little unnatural.
In the photo, the two girls stood on a lush green meadow, with rolling mountains behind them and a few white clouds drifting across the sky.
One wore a white dress, her long hair blowing in the wind, a gentle smile on her lips.
The other wore a white shirt and ripped black jeans, her smile more confident.
Lao Ba picked up the photo and turned it over.
On the back, written in blue ink, was a line:
Tian Mengyi will always love Meng Ruoyun.
“Graduation is just around the corner, and now there are Online Classes too. Who knows how much longer we can be together,” Tian Mengyi murmured to herself.
“I just hope we don’t end up like Wu Ai and Shang Wanling.”
At that moment, Wu Ai had no idea he’d already become the example other couples least wanted to follow.
He was now staring helplessly at his phone, unsure what to do, as if caught in a dilemma.