With only a week left, Gao Sijin naturally returned to his hometown of Chuncheng to visit his aunt and cousin.
It wasn’t really planned in advance. He just happened to pass by the train station during a walk that day.
If this were the old Gao Sijin, the corporate slave, he probably wouldn’t have gone home so easily.
The trip from Bincheng to Chuncheng took at least three hours, and the fare was over three hundred yuan. For a young man perpetually in debt on Huabei, such an expense was far too extravagant.
But his current situation was vastly different.
Now, Gao Sijin could take an impromptu trip just like Yu Qingxue. He could be in Bangkok tomorrow, or Paris the day after.
On the phone, Gao Sijin declared proudly to his cousin:
“Bro, we’re rich now.”
He then recounted the story of how he was tipped, an event that had practically become a legend on the website.
Just last month, Yu Qingxue tipped Gao Sijin Little Loli Finger Hearts worth a hundred thousand yuan in one go.
After the website’s cut and tax deductions, Gao Sijin earned over forty thousand yuan. Combined with subscription shares, the perfect attendance award, and monthly tickets, his author fees reached the massive sum of 43,320.05 yuan.
After paying off Huabei, he still had over twenty thousand yuan left.
It felt as if the whole world had shifted from black and white to vibrant color, and his life was brimming with vitality once more.
Gao Sijin held his phone, searching for his seat.
“Huh?”
“Hey, Brother Sijin, what a coincidence.”
Gao Sijin discovered the seat next to him was actually occupied by Feng Na, the girl he’d met a few days ago at the coffee shop.
Could things really be this coincidental in the world?
“You wouldn’t happen to be following me, would you?”
“How could I? We really just bumped into each other.” Feng Na wore a slightly smug smile. “Hurry up and sit next to me, or you’ll block the aisle.”
“Alright.”
Gao Sijin sat down quickly.
Actually, what did it matter if a beautiful girl was tracking him?
She couldn’t just eat him up.
“Alright then, what stop are you getting off at?”
“You even have to ask? Chuncheng, of course.” She rested her chin on her hand, a beautiful smile blooming on her face. “I’m so happy. Riding the train with Brother Sijin, taking an impromptu trip—just thinking about it feels so romantic.”
“Actually, I’m pretty happy too, but I already have a lover…”
“We’re not lovers. We’re purely friends, a platonic relationship.”
Can pure friendship truly exist between a man and a woman?
Gao Sijin didn’t know.
But he had to admit, Feng Na really seemed like a lively and cheerful girl, always reminding him of a cute, affectionate puppy that loves to fawn on people.
If she had a tail, it surely would never stop wagging.
On the road, they talked about all sorts of topics.
During the fight the other day, Gao Sijin thought Feng Na studied medicine, but she said her major was actually literature. She also said she wanted to become a great writer. Gao Sijin smiled faintly, saying he wasn’t a writer, just a deeply humble web novelist.
“Literature, huh?”
“Brother Sijin, what was your major back in university?”
“I was in the science and engineering track,” Gao Sijin paused. “Electronic Information Engineering.”
“That sounds really impressive…”
“Actually, I didn’t study very seriously. Back then, my cousin asked me what industry I could go into after graduation. I answered him self-righteously that I could apply screen protectors for people.” A bitter smile flickered across Gao Sijin’s face. “I even had the shop name picked out back then: Gao Family Ancestral Screen Protector Shop.”
Hearing Gao Sijin mock himself like that, Feng Na couldn’t help but smile.
Her body always pretended to casually lean closer to Gao Sijin, but whenever their limbs accidentally touched, Gao Sijin would make every effort to shrink away.
“Brother Sijin, why exactly did you come back to work in Bincheng?”
“I have connections there.”
“Oh.”
The attendant pushing the cart called out: beer, beverages, mineral water; peanuts, sunflower seeds, eight-treasure congee. Gao Sijin bought a drink for Feng Na.
Chatting with her, Gao Sijin didn’t know why, but it always felt like talking to a family member, so warm and familiar.
“Brother Sijin, are you going back to Chuncheng to see your parents?”
“My relationship with my parents isn’t very good, actually…” Gao Sijin’s expression turned bitter. “They divorced when I was three. I think they only enjoyed the creation process, and I’m just the side effect left behind by it.”
Feng Na pursed her lips. A strong, indescribable emotion seemed to flicker in her eyes.
“Can I hug you?”
“Don’t pity me. My uncle and aunt gave me a home second to none. I don’t lack fatherly or motherly love. When Heaven takes some things from you, it compensates you in another form.”
“Can you tell me about them?”
“Never mind that. I want to tell you a bit about my uncle.”
Gao Sijin remembered it vividly.
Actually, his uncle wasn’t a responsible man in the past.
When he was young, he drank heavily and hit his own kid. His greatest hobby was playing mahjong.
His cousin often got beaten by his uncle for no reason as a child. He complained to Gao Sijin:
“Your uncle treats you better than his own son. I’d accept it when he hit me for being naughty, but one time, I scored eighth in the whole grade. It was school holidays, and I was watching a movie at home. He walked in and just gave me a beating. I didn’t even understand why he hit me! Thanks to him, I got eight stitches in my head.”
That’s what his cousin said, but Gao Sijin had never once been hit by his uncle since childhood. His uncle doted on him and loved him dearly.
In elementary school, everyone was into yo-yos. Back then, if you had a yo-yo costing over a hundred yuan, you could instantly become the coolest kid in school.
Gao Sijin had always wanted a more high-end yo-yo.
His uncle asked how much it cost. Gao Sijin told him it was over one hundred and fifty yuan in total.
In that era, one hundred and fifty yuan was not a small sum. His uncle looked shocked and didn’t buy it:
“This stupid thing costs one-fifty? That money’s better spent on some ribs to stew.”
Gao Sijin knew his uncle and aunt weren’t his biological parents and had no obligation to raise him.
Besides, it was just a small toy. He shouldn’t be so naive and harbor such unrealistic fantasies.
But the next day, when his uncle picked Gao Sijin up from school in his Jetta, Gao Sijin saw the yo-yo he’d been longing for sitting on the front seat.
In the end, his uncle had bought it for him. He said lightly:
“Won it playing mahjong.”
His cousin once said that because his uncle hadn’t properly raised him and had failed in his duty as a father, he poured all the remorse he felt for his own child onto Gao Sijin. But Gao Sijin didn’t think that was the case.
Gao Sijin called him “Uncle” with his lips, but in his heart, Gao Sijin considered him his true father.
When Gao Sijin was in the second year of junior high, a brain tumor often left his uncle in a mental haze. His uncle’s range of motion was reduced to a single bed. He couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t even go to the toilet, tormented only by pain, moaning all day long.
The very first time Gao Sijin cooked was when his uncle had the brain tumor. Even though it was just a bowl of instant noodles, his uncle cried, because it was the first time Gao Sijin had ever made food for him.
Actually, his uncle’s favorite food was fish, and Gao Sijin had always wanted to cook a fish for him.
But at the time, Gao Sijin didn’t know how to prepare fish, didn’t even know how to scrape off scales. His aunt was also hospitalized with leukemia then and couldn’t teach Gao Sijin how to cook.
Today, as an adult, Gao Sijin could even bake Western pastries at home by himself. But the chance to cook another meal for his uncle… that chance was long gone.
Because the man was already gone.
A month before his passing, his uncle said to Gao Sijin:
“Back then, you were only six. One time, I passed by your house, and you were clinging to the iron gate, saying to me, ‘Uncle, I’m hungry.'”
At that time, Gao Sijin’s father had left with nothing, and his mother wasn’t around. Only an irresponsible nanny was left at home with Gao Sijin.
In fact, even back then, his uncle understood Gao Sijin’s mother. She was a woman who, to maintain her figure, hadn’t even breastfed her child. Because Gao Sijin was afraid of needles and shots when he was little, she hadn’t even gotten him his vaccination shots. This resulted in Gao Sijin being extremely susceptible to illness from childhood, plagued by constant colds and fevers year-round.
And it was that fateful encounter that made Gao Sijin a child of his uncle and aunt’s family.
Thirteen days before his passing, his uncle said to Gao Sijin in a hoarse voice that back in their hometown, there were seven siblings. But when his uncle was twelve, the youngest, Old Seven, was swept away by a flood. His uncle said his seventh brother was only six then, with a chubby, plump little face that was so fun to play with, looking very much like Gao Sijin when he was small.
In the early morning hours of April 23rd, his uncle passed away. Gao Sijin wasn’t by his side at the time.
Not long after his uncle’s death, during a midterm exam, Gao Sijin’s historically dead-last grade shot up to twentieth place in the class. Since it was the experimental class, that result put him in the top fifty of the entire grade.
After finishing his story, Gao Sijin said dejectedly:
“If only a time machine existed in this world. Then I could cook a fish for my uncle…”
“Time machines exist,” Feng Na chimed in.
“In Nobita Nobi’s drawer?”
“In the not-so-distant future,” Feng Na said.
