The Little Duck 55p2

Chapter 55 p2

Jian Xin opened the order list and glanced at it. The drink Yan Lu had ordered had a good appearance and a low alcohol content. It was a drink that many shops had, and it was very suitable for girls who couldn’t drink much—Jiang Lan usually liked to order this.

But people who have little contact with alcohol often don’t know what they are suitable to drink in a bar.

She glanced at Yan Lu, ordered a drink absentmindedly, and handed the phone back.

Yan Lu placed the order and looked up at Jian Xin. “You seem very surprised.”

Jian Xin: “Didn’t you drive out?”

Yan Lu: “I’ll take a taxi back. The car won’t be lost if it’s parked outside.”

Jian Xin: “That’s true.”

Nanjiang is so small, it wouldn’t cost much to take a taxi to pick up the car tomorrow.

But when did Yan Lu learn to drink?

When the waiter brought the drinks, Yan Lu picked up her glass and took a sip. After a brief silence, she suddenly voiced the question in her heart.

“Are you curious when I started to drink?”

“Mmm.”

“After we broke up, I had a long period of time where I was very repulsed by music and alcohol.”

“…”

Yan Lu looked at the pale yellow drink in her glass and said softly, “But after a long time, I accidentally tried it with a friend, and I suddenly felt that the things I had once hated were not so unacceptable.”

“It’s like finding out that you’re not that great either. It seems to be just a matter of a moment.”

“It’s just that in the past, I was trapped by something…”

“Perhaps it was the increasingly alienated feelings for you, or perhaps it was the self-loathing that had never disappeared.”

“In the two years we were trying to maintain our relationship and were reluctant to break up, they existed so naturally in our world… whether it was you or me, perhaps we were all affected by them, but no one realized it—or rather, no one could grab them and change them.”

Yan Lu said that later she chose to take a leave of absence from school, and she went far away, to many places.

Just by herself.

At first, she just wanted to escape. Because she didn’t know where to escape to, she just ran around aimlessly.

She just walked along a directionless road, in a directionless way.

When she felt tired, she would rest wherever she was.

Perched by the Roadside was a new name she had thought of for herself on the road.

At that time, she thought that she didn’t need a home. After all, the world was so big, and as long as she didn’t starve, she would just keep walking.

Why did she have to keep walking?

Because she felt that she hadn’t escaped yet.

She had left Yuecheng, left Nanjiang, but she seemed to have taken away some things she shouldn’t have, and left behind some things she shouldn’t have.

She couldn’t quite say what those things were, just that she felt that her world might still be too small, and her heart was trapped in one place and couldn’t get out.

If she could go to enough places and see a big enough world, then there should be nothing that could trap her.

So, with a suitcase, she walked for many years.

Letting go of everything from the past and mustering the courage to start over was harder than she had imagined.

She walked and stopped along the way, encountering too many smooth or troublesome things, and meeting too many cute or annoying people.

She passed by all sorts of scenery, tried to solve all sorts of things by herself, and gradually got used to this wandering life.

To be honest, she didn’t feel that she had become a very strong person, because there were still many things that troubled her.

But at least she started to like this version of herself.

“Jian Xin, you once said that growing up is very fast, but actually, it’s not that fast…”

Yan Lu said, and at some point, she had finished the drink in her glass, scanned the code and ordered another, and then continued to speak.

She said that the matter of growing up has not much to do with age, appearance, or even income.

For a long time, she had been carrying a lot of the past, and on one hand, she was unwilling to let go, and on the other hand, she wanted to escape and walked for a long, long time. There seemed to be a hurdle in her heart that she couldn’t cross no matter how hard she tried.

Until one day, a heavy rain fell in the city she was passing through.

And then she remembered a long time ago, Jian Xin had told her about Doraemon and the Anywhere Door in the rain.

It was at that moment, listening to the sound of the rain outside the window, thinking about the past, that she was suddenly shocked to realize that everything from the past was already so far, so far away from her.

She thought she would have a thousand sorrows and would be in tears with such a torrential downpour that seemed to be able to wash the whole world, but after a brief daze, she found that besides a little bit of an empty feeling in her heart, there was no more sadness.

So she finally belatedly realized that the “growing up” she had been looking forward to was actually this meaning.

The world that had once been filled with one person had finally emptied out a place called regret.

—It could be used to love herself a little.

“In the past, I would always think in my heart that I had to make myself better, that one day I would be good enough to be a part of your world…”

“From the moment I met you, I have been trying my best to get closer to you—at that time, you were my guiding star, my only motivation, the beautiful dream that I had carefully obtained and was afraid of breaking…”

“To be worthy of you, I really did everything I could—at least for the me of that year, I had already tried my best.”

Yan Lu said in a flat tone, as if she were telling someone else’s story.

She suddenly lowered her head and laughed softly, a self-deprecating laugh with a hint of relief. “Do you still remember how you broke up with me back then?”

Jian Xin unconsciously opened her mouth, too nervous to speak.

“It’s fine if you don’t remember, it was just that day,” Yan Lu said to Jian Xin with a soft laugh. “That day, I suddenly found that you were right. We really are not on the same path, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t be a part of your world.”

“In those three years of university, I was always thinking about how to earn more money. In my life, in my mind, besides writing, there was still writing.”

“I have never had a drink, never been to a concert, have no interested celebrities, no favorite anime or TV series, don’t want to go out to travel, and have no interest in anything you are interested in.”

“I have been pretending to understand you, and I have also been playing the role of being well-behaved. I always feel that I can be an eraser, and with a little squeeze, I can become the shape you like—but the more I am like this, the more tired I feel.”

“I don’t know if you will understand, but it’s just that you are really working hard on something, and you can clearly see a very obvious change, and the people around you will say—’Hey, you’ve really changed, you feel much better than before!’ But you are just under this change, step by step, walking into the abyss of inferiority.”

Because all of this is just an act.

Only you know that the real you is not like this.

Those who are liked, who are praised, are all just your exhausted disguises.

And these disguises will always be exposed, pointed out, complained about, and condemned by the person you care about the most without you realizing it…

You start to hate yourself. Why is it that such simple things, so many people can do them easily, but you always use all your strength, yet you can still mess them up so easily?

Yan Lu said, and laughed, “These emotions, on that night, were completely ignited by one of your sentences.”

That was a fire that burned in her heart all night.

Or rather, it had actually burned for a much longer period of time.

But that night, it made her understand one thing.

—The things she had once chased, had been obsessed with, and had been unwilling to let go of no matter how much it hurt, had actually been on the verge of crushing her.

She told herself, with the last shred of reason, that a person cannot just climb out of one darkness and then, holding on to a glimmer of light that is about to be extinguished, fall into another bottomless abyss.

So, after she had left the person she had once never wanted to leave, she had learned to drink the wine she had once never wanted to touch.

“When I drank the first glass of wine, do you know what I was thinking?”

“…What?”

“I was thinking, how are you doing now, and do you still like to hang out with a lot of friends and chat and laugh in a bar…”

Jian Xin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “That would depend on which year it was.”

Yan Lu lowered her eyelashes with a faint smile and continued, “And then I suddenly really wanted to find a place to settle down.”

Jian Xin: “Just as your cousin was in Jincheng, so you came over?”

Yan Lu: “…I guess so.”

She replied softly, her gaze hazy as she looked at the wine in her glass.

She thought, Jian Xin still didn’t know.

She always had some secrets she couldn’t say, and she even felt that it was hard to say them to a little duck and a little dog.

Just like how she had actually had some unspeakable thoughts about Jian Xin since junior high.

Just like how three years ago, even though she was full of awkwardness and timidity in her heart, she still couldn’t help but fantasize that one day she would be able to accidentally meet Jian Xin in the vast Jincheng.

Just like the first night she had tried to drink, what she had thought of was not just what she had just said.

At that time, she had also imagined another possibility in her heart.

—If only I had met Jian Xin a little later.

If they had met at a different time, maybe everything would have been different.

What a pity, there was no such if.

If she hadn’t met Jian Xin back then, perhaps she would have already been dragged back to Liang County and lived another unknown life.

Perhaps, this was already the best arrangement of fate.

…

That night, Jian Xin didn’t drink much, but Yan Lu drank quite a bit on her own.

This person was also quiet when she was drunk, not noisy, and could still walk. She was very easily sent back to the homestay by her.

Jian Xin had gone out to drink with people so many times after she started university, and every time she was sent back to her dorm or home by someone. This was the first time she had played the role of sending someone home.

She had to coax and persuade her, and finally, she managed to get Yan Lu, who had collapsed on the sofa and refused to move, to go to the bathroom to wash up. Then she led the way a little, and seeing that she was lying safely in bed, she finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Before she left, Jian Xin crouched down at the door, petted the Xin Xin and Cauliflower who had been woken up by the commotion, and then took a taxi home by herself.

On the way home, she looked at the countless lights that were on all night outside the car window.

They were scattered, and who knows how many unspeakable secrets they held.

She had read the stories in Yan Lu’s pen.

There were birds without wings, there were fish that could fly, and there were people who, to escape a rain that would not stop, packed their bags and ran to a distant place alone.

These were all the wounds that Yan Lu had once been unable to let go of.

For so many years, Yan Lu had been trying her best to heal herself.

Now that she could tell her in person, did it also mean that everything was really in the past?

Just as Yan Lu had said—the things she had once hated were not so hard to accept, and the things she had once liked, she could also say “it’s just so-so.”

Jian Xin felt that she was a little disappointed, but she also felt that this was quite good…

The sea of flowers that she could only see after passing through the fog in her dream had actually bloomed in a place without her.

If they had really stayed by her side, they would not have been able to bloom so luxuriantly.