Chapter 39

The special-topic seminar stretched on for three full days, with at least six hours of expert lectures to sit through each day.

A sea of dark heads in the conference hall, profoundly classic educational topics on the big screen.

After several days and nights soaked in professional ethics and pedagogical edification, it was more than enough to rein in a wandering mind and settle a heart that had been adrift all summer.

Once the seminar officially ended, under the banner, a group of expert teachers gathered for a commemorative photo.

Chu Ruoyou was hidden within the crowd, wearing a summer-style blouse and trousers, standing in a position slightly towards the middle of the third row.

She didn’t rush back but explored several famous scenic spots on her own, combining the work trip with one last solo vacation of the break.

The city was jokingly nicknamed “the Great Furnace” by netizens, and the moment she landed, she felt it was well-deserved. Every day was scorching, the afternoon wind so hot and vicious you couldn’t face it head-on.

She went to the local museum, using her phone to photograph several of the institution’s star treasures, including representative works from various dynasties.

Some of these pictures could be inserted into her courseware to pique students’ interest.

Entering the museum’s gift shop, operating on the “since I’m already here” principle, leaving empty-handed would be a shame.

She planned to buy some fridge magnets and postcards—easy to carry, yet still holding commemorative value.

She’d keep one set for herself; the rest could be given to students.

As she browsed, a hand reached past her and picked up the exact fridge magnet she was examining.

The hand was beautiful, the back of it elegant and slender, the fingers long and slender—clearly the makings of a good pianist. Because the skin was so startlingly fair, the veins were distinct.

It was like a roller coaster reaching its peak, forcing her heart rate to spike violently.

Chu Ruoyou didn’t have the courage to turn and look, yet she instinctively shifted her body slightly to follow the movement of that hand.

A false alarm.

Or rather, a near miss.

The unfamiliar girl was also tall and slender, dressed in a bold, hot style—a fitted camisole and a short skirt.

Boundless vitality and youthful energy radiated from her, but it wasn’t that person.

Although the hands were very similar, the features were vastly different, and the aura was worlds apart.

Yun Huizhi loved to smile. Even looking at a stranger, her eyes held a touch of good-natured, clever sweetness.

Her slightly downturned outer eye corners gave her an innocent, endearing look. The clarity in her eyes was like a mountain stream, washing the dust and grime clean.

Chu Ruoyou’s thoughts were yanked back to that small town far away, nestled among layered mountains. Everything in that town was wonderful, except for that one person, that one person who made her soul ache with restless dreams.

After paying, she put the souvenirs into her bag and sat down to rest in the café area on the first floor.

She scrolled through her album of today’s sightseeing gains, mentally designing how to present them to her students, how to make her lessons more vivid and engaging.

Her photos scrolled further back. Out of boredom, she looked through the pictures Yun Huizhi had sent over these past days.

Familiar locations, familiar scenery, unfamiliar emotions.

She counted. Twenty-one photos in total.

Sent every morning at exactly 5:20. Not a minute earlier, not a minute later.

This precisely controlled timing was just so… juvenile.

Chu Ruoyou could perfectly picture her face, tired yet struggling to stay awake.

If she were there in front of her, who knows how much she’d whine to fish for sympathy, then use it to trick even more sympathy.

Their parting in Jianjia had already been a full month ago.

Time was a good thing; it poured down relentlessly, impossible to dodge. Now, she no longer felt the same melancholy and bitterness as right after she left.

That first week back, she couldn’t even sleep properly. The silence of her room, missing the sound of another person’s breathing and voice, successfully created an atmosphere of insomnia.

Her heart felt both empty and weak, desperately needing to be filled by a fervent emotional form.

Her body felt empty, too. Her lips craved the warmth of another person, her arms yearned to hold someone close, her palms longed to stroke someone’s hair.

It was also vulgarly, unbearably base: secretly, shamefully longing for the uninhibited pleasures of the bed. She wanted to cast aside all pretense, tear up her lucidity, and then be controlled—her body already beyond her control—to release the suppressed id.

She sat in the noisy café, children chattering, making her temples throb.

Not wanting to leave, she expertly pulled up the long message Yun Huizhi had sent her.

As always, the tone was docile, laced with narcissism, expertly playing pitiful, phrasing things in a way that made it hard to refuse.

She didn’t regret making that call, even though she knew it was probably a trap set by Yun Huizhi, so childish it was blatantly obvious.

But she had seen the photo. The leg was undeniably Yun Huizhi’s leg. The wound couldn’t exactly be Photoshopped.

So, she couldn’t eat or sleep in peace. If she didn’t confirm, she might have spent her days in constant anxiety.

Before that call ended, Yun Huizhi, as if they hadn’t just experienced separation, had asked her in that simple, slightly coquettish tone: “Chu Ruoyou, do you still want to see me?”

She had no way, nor the mood, to answer.

No, and yet yes.

She ignored Yun Huizhi, but Yun Huizhi didn’t get angry or desperate. These past days, she had, on her own initiative, been sending these photos.

Nothing more, just a single picture.

Lately, the first thing she did every morning upon waking was check what Yun Huizhi had sent her, as if she’d subscribed to a private photographer’s channel.

When she felt pleased by it, she conflictedly felt an immense struggle, a wave of self-loathing.

Reason told her that this back-and-forth with someone from a fleeting affair was utterly meaningless. At best, it was just alleviating temporary loneliness.

But they were never from the same world to begin with. Neither of them even truly knew what circles the other moved in. Neither would give up their original life for the other.

Their meeting had been absurd from the start, the entire process riddled with lies, ending in an unpleasant parting.

This lingering attachment she felt now for Yun Huizhi was only because someone like her had never appeared in her life before. No one else had ever given her such a unique experience, so she couldn’t let go for a while.

She wasn’t harsh on herself. She could allow herself to yearn, to dream.

But she couldn’t bring herself to invest emotionally, or to accept anything heavy.

She didn’t want to exhaust herself for someone else again. To gamble a stable life for a moment’s pleasure, all for a “love” as illusory as the moon in the water or flowers in a mirror.

No, this couldn’t even be called love. What kind of love was this?

They were just objects for each other to dispel loneliness.

Yun Huizhi’s feelings for her might have some genuine sentiment, but they were likely just infatuation and unwillingness born from their entanglement.

This unwillingness was temporary.

Fifteen days together; to forget might take half a year, a year. That was completely normal.

So, just as her anticipation for the daily photos and her longing and dependence on Yun Huizhi were intensifying, she woke up in time. She personally severed the connecting rope.

She sent Yun Huizhi the bank card number she’d asked for in her text.

Since Yun Huizhi said she didn’t need the money anymore.

Since Yun Huizhi was a rich person, anyway.

She knew Yun Huizhi would be hurt receiving that number. She herself felt awful, hesitating for a long time.

But the consequences of failing to decisively cut ties—she had already experienced once with someone else.

Over a decade of silent devotion had already taken root. So now, when she saw Ren Yuhan, even though her heart no longer fluttered, her emotions still instinctively wanted to feel joy for her.

Once reason is bound by habit and weakness, it’s like sinking into a quagmire, unable to climb out easily. It’s a pitiful thing.

The joys and sorrows of that last attachment hadn’t even been fully calmed. How could she stir up new waves again?

Afraid of drowning.

All for an uncertain person, a distant, hazy figure who had lied to her who-knows-how-much, who had shown who-knows-how-much sincerity?

Better to end it here.

Afraid she would waver again, soften, she blocked Yun Huizhi’s social media, along with her phone number.

She completely cut off all means of contact.

Seeing Yun Huizhi’s eyes, hearing her voice, Chu Ruoyou might not have the heart to be cruel.

But with a long separation, unable to receive the other person’s emotions while mired in her own solitary anguish, she could be ruthless.

When school started, she planned to dispose of the things Yun Huizhi had given her, to thoroughly seal away the memories of this summer break.

Seemingly cruel, seemingly her being heartless, but in truth, it was for the best—for her, and for Yun Huizhi.

No need to waste each other’s time for nothing.

If it hurt, they could each cry their eyes out a few times, and then it would be over after the tears dried.

What was so impossible about that? She had been able to put aside someone she’d liked for half a lifetime. Could someone she’d liked for half a month do more than that to her?

She stood up resolutely and left the museum.

Back in Xiacheng, with less than half a month until school started, all sorts of tasks came flooding in. Chu Ruoyou frequently visited the school.

During a meeting, the topic of co-teaching staff came up. The original English teacher was on maternity leave, and a replacement hadn’t been finalized.

Chu Ruoyou had to admire that efficiency. School was about to start, and they were still so unhurried. She wondered what they were planning.

After the meeting, she went home. Under her mother’s supervision, she put together a dignified yet friendly outfit.

The next day was her grandfather’s eightieth birthday banquet. The younger generations of the family gathered together, having booked a restaurant in advance.

The restaurant was on the riverbank in Xiacheng—a standalone building, magnificent and grand, blending Eastern and Western elements.

Chu Ruoyou’s grandfather was a highly respected old doctor of traditional Chinese medicine in Xiacheng. His three children were fairly successful, dutifully filial, yet also somewhat afraid of the old patriarch.

Chu Ruoyou, nearing thirty and still without a partner, was perennially a serious topic of family discussion.

However, their family of three wasn’t the most awkward. Her two older paternal cousins were in even worse straits: one had been in a relationship for eight years but claimed he feared marriage and children; the other, after getting engaged, had his true colors revealed and was dumped by the fiancée.

So even if they got scolded, the three cousins faced it together.

Everyone was numb to it.

When the elders were in the middle of their tirade, Chu Ruoyou’s oldest cousin was composed enough to pick up the serving chopsticks and place a shrimp on her plate, gracefully dipping it in sauce before depositing it.

On such a celebratory birthday banquet, after the old man finished being merry, he had to go looking for trouble, making frightening pronouncements. He bluntly stated he just wanted to see a great-grandchild before he died, and he wondered if any of them possessed the filial piety to grant him that.

Because of this, Chu Ruoyou’s father’s expression darkened, and he glared at her.

Chu Ruoyou found this utterly baffling.

With great difficulty, they endured the banquet to its end. After seeing off the various relatives, Chu Ruoyou let out a long breath.

Chu Jueming, his face stern and emboldened by too much alcohol, couldn’t hold back. “You heard what your grandfather said. Mom and I haven’t pressured you, but that doesn’t mean we’re completely indulgent.”

Chu Ruoyou replied, “Grandpa wants to see a great-grandchild. What does that have to do with me?”

“Yours would also be his great-grandchild. Does adding an ‘on the maternal side’ make it any less so? Stop playing with semantics.”

“What, seeing a great-grandchild grants immortality?”

Chu Ruoyou’s words were startling.

Chu Jueming’s eyes widened in fury. Just as he was about to berate her, Xin Yu intervened, “Ruoyou, say less. Don’t learn bad habits just from listening to your oldest cousin talk nonsense.”

“Even if you’re not in a hurry to marry and have kids, why won’t you go on the blind dates? The ones I arranged, the ones your aunts and uncles arranged—you dismiss them all.”

Once outside, Chu Jueming suppressed his anger and lectured his daughter in a low voice that only they could hear.

Chu Ruoyou didn’t want to argue with him. “I think I left something behind. I’m going back to get it. You guys go ahead.”

Incredibly annoyed, she made an excuse to leave.

She took a detour to the restroom. Coming out, she glanced at her phone, and her mood improved considerably. Her oldest and second-oldest cousins had both gotten thoroughly chewed out.

Walking towards the restaurant exit, she spotted in the distance a woman in a sleeveless dress, with an elegant, graceful figure. She wore white stiletto heels and walked with light steps behind a group of men and women.

It also looked like a dinner gathering had just dispersed, though the physical interaction between them didn’t suggest family.

Her height, her hair, her posture, the way she walked… all of it resembled someone greatly.

Chu Ruoyou quickened her pace. They weren’t far apart. The name was right on the tip of her tongue.

Yet she felt as if she’d gone mute, unable to call out those three words.

It couldn’t be Yun Huizhi. She wouldn’t come all the way to Xiacheng without contacting her. Calling out would only lead to unnecessary awkwardness.

But what if it was? Then what? How would she handle it?

After she sent her bank card number, Yun Huizhi hadn’t transferred the money. Because she’d blocked her, Chu Ruoyou had no way of knowing her intentions.

Most likely, she still hadn’t given up.

Yet Chu Ruoyou admitted, she had been secretly delighted not to have received that money recently.

She was the one who was so heartless, yet she was also the one so conflicted.

Chu Ruoyou rubbed the space between her brows. When she looked up again, the person whose silhouette had so resembled Yun Huizhi had already left her sight.

She thought to herself, I’ve definitely had too much to drink tonight, too.

–

With her mom and uncle accompanying her, the atmosphere of the dinner was excellent.

But this kind of social networking bored Yun Huizhi to death. She could only sit obediently and listen to middle-aged aunties and uncles with minor achievements boast about themselves.

She was the one who had submitted her résumé on her own, taken the normal written tests and interviews, and gotten hired purely on effort.

Yet in the end, she still had to treat a bunch of people to dinner. Something about “looking out for her.”

So frustrating.

After leaving the restaurant, she stood idle in the parking lot, waiting for that group to finish their endless polite small talk.

Wearing high heels made her feet ache. Pretending to be a mature woman was hard work.

In the distance, by the roadside, she saw a woman hailing a taxi.

Her aura was quite reminiscent of Chu Ruoyou.

Xiacheng really is full of beautiful women.