The phone was getting hot. Lin Zhixia tightly grasped the phone case and said softly, "See you at the school gate at 8 o'clock on Saturday morning."
Jiang Yubai responded: "See you on Saturday."
Lin Zhixia suddenly remembered that when she and Jiang Yubai were desk mates, they often said "see you tomorrow" to each other - that was several years ago, and she missed it.
There was a light rain on Saturday morning.
Although the rain was light, the wind was strong. Lin Zhixia ran quickly to the school gate and saw Jiang Yubai. Jiang Yubai was holding a black umbrella, with his slender fingers wrapped around the umbrella handle. He looked clean and spotless. Even though the diffuse mist soaked his clothes, he was still a bright sight in the rain.
Lin Zhixia shouted happily: "Good morning!"
"Good morning." Jiang Yubai greeted her and raised the edge of his umbrella slightly.
Lin Zhixia understood what he meant. She quickly slipped under his umbrella and said, "Jiang Yubai, I feel like you're becoming more and more mature."
Lin Zhixia thought he would say "thank you", but he didn't say anything. He just turned his head to look at her, and she immediately asked, "Why do you keep looking at me?"
He explained: "I haven't seen you for a long time."
What he said made sense.
Lin Zhixia took a step forward, the raindrops rubbed the umbrella and passed through her sleeves. Jiang Yubai's umbrella tilted towards her - she noticed this. She held his wrist without hesitation and turned it gently, so that the umbrella handle stood straight in his palm.
"You..." He only uttered one word.
Lin Zhixia helped him complete the sentence: "Can't I touch your hand?"
"That's not the case," Jiang Yubai said frankly, "Of course you can touch it."
Having said that, his actions were still very reserved. He would not take the initiative to approach Lin Zhixia, always keeping a distance from her intentionally or unintentionally. He was polite, noble, arrogant and could not be teased. Compared to when he was nine years old, the current Jiang Yubai was much more complicated and difficult to understand.
Jiang Yubai aroused Lin Zhixia's curiosity.
After the two got into the car, Lin Zhixia hugged a soft pillow with her left hand, and stretched out her index finger with her right hand, with her fingertips resting on the back of Jiang Yubai's hand.
Jiang Yubai clenched his fist, and the knuckles on the top of his fist were protruding. Lin Zhixia felt along the protruding knuckles of Jiang Yubai, and her fingertips went back to the back of his hand, touching a noticeable blue vein.
She stared at his hands intently, slowly pressing on the tendons, then releasing them, and pressing again, like a kitten teasing a mouse.
Jiang Yubai said nothing. He turned his left hand over, palm facing up.
Lin Zhixia suddenly asked: "Do you remember that in elementary school, our classmates liked to read palms and tell fortunes?"
"Remember," Jiang Yubai described, "the squad leader often said that there are career lines, marriage lines, and life lines in the palm of your hand."
Lin Zhixia said softly: "Now I want to read your palm. Please call me Master Lin."
Jiang Yubai was very cooperative: "Master Lin."
Lin Zhixia drew a circle on his palm. He put his five fingers together, as if grabbing an imaginary object in the air: "Are you calculating your career, marriage, or life?"
Lin Zhixia laughed out loud: "Which one do you want to hear the most?"
Jiang Yubai said truthfully: "Career."
Lin Zhixia pretended to be thinking. She touched a line on his palm, moved her fingertips up to the base of his finger, tapped it lightly, and said, "Prosperity, career, good luck, good fortune, and good ways to make money."
"Thank you for your advice, Master." Jiang Yubai politely accepted his verdict.
Lin Zhixia was overjoyed: "I acted very similar, didn't I?"
Jiang Yubai suddenly grabbed her hand and said, "Master Lin, could you please calculate my life and marriage for me again? I don't know much and I haven't asked anyone to calculate it for me before."
Lin Zhixia's favorite game in her life is role-playing. Jiang Yubai always plays very well with her. They have been playing this game since they were young, especially in Chinese and history classes in junior high school, where they acted out almost all the famous scenes in the textbooks.
However, Jiang Yubai had never held her wrist like he did now. She sat still, as if there was a lake in her heart, rippling with circles of ripples, and Jiang Yubai's shadow gradually emerged in the waves.
She didn't want to be shy at this time. She maintained a calm tone: "Okay, let me calculate your life... Yes, you will have both good fortune and longevity, as rich as the East Sea and as long as the South Mountain."
Jiang Yubai smiled faintly: "Why can you only say nice things?"
Lin Zhixia said stubbornly, "I only speak the truth." Then he challenged him, "Are you questioning my ability? The Lotus Sutra says that all sentient beings possess the wisdom and virtue of the Tathagata..."
Before Lin Zhixia finished speaking, Jiang Yubai moved an inch closer to her. She inexplicably did not dare to look into his eyes, and her gaze suddenly moved down and stopped at his collarbone. He would button up his clothes to the top when he wore them on weekdays, and he always maintained a serious, dignified and conservative dressing style. But after he turned fifteen, his personality became more relaxed.
Lin Zhixia sincerely believed that Jiang Yubai and her brother should have a lot in common and could chat with each other. If she had the chance in the future, she would try to mend the relationship between Jiang Yubai and Lin Zeqiu.
Lin Zhixia's mind was full of random thoughts, and Jiang Yubai reminded her: "You are not destined to be married yet."
As soon as he said this, Jiang Yubai felt that he was a bit abrupt. He just wanted to know what Lin Zhixia would predict, after all, that was a long time in the future. He leaned on the armrest of the chair, and for some reason, he suddenly remembered Li Bai's "Changgan Xing", the origin of the term "childhood plum and bamboo horse", which reads: "The man rides a bamboo horse and plays with green plums around the bed. Living together in Changganli, the two children have no suspicion. At the age of fourteen, I became your wife, and I was ashamed to show my face..."
He retreated to the corner of his seat.
The distance between him and Lin Zhixia became greater.
This made Lin Zhixia unable to stop.
Let me ask, why is Jiang Yubai so close to her and so far away from her
What is Jiang Yubai thinking about
How much cooperation can Jiang Yubai have when playing games with her
The above three questions are all within Lin Zhixia’s research scope.
Lin Zhixia said with interest: "I can also predict marriage! I have seen your uncle's wife. You will be similar to your uncle in the future. You will have a beautiful and lovely wife. You will live in harmony with your husband and wife, prosper your family business, and live a happy life."
Jiang Yubai silently wondered in his heart, could she imagine him and another girl developing a family relationship? She didn't seem to mind at all.
Jiang Yubai couldn't help but feel that his future was unpredictable.
Seeing his complicated expression, Lin Zhixia immediately asked, "What do you want from your future girlfriend?"
Jiang Yubai expressed it in a cryptic and tortuous way: "Can you figure out where I will meet her?"
"I don't know about that," Lin Zhixia pretended to be profound, "You have to grasp your own destiny."
Jiang Yubai said nothing.
Lin Zhixia deliberately tested him: "In a few months, you will go abroad to study at university. Maybe you will..."
"No." Jiang Yubai said with absolute certainty.
The car slowed down and stopped on the long road in front of a mansion.
The rain covered the sky and the earth, swallowing up the clouds and the sun, with no sign of abating. Jiang Yubai held up an umbrella and got out of the car first. He stood by the car with the umbrella. When Lin Zhixia came out, he covered her tightly, and the mist filled her eyes. He only said: "It's a bit cold today, what do you want to eat?"
"Shrimp dumplings." Lin Zhixia replied.
The housekeeper opened the front door for them, and Jiang Yubai handed the umbrella to the housekeeper. It was still raining outside, with strong winds howling, but the room was warm and clean, creating an extremely comfortable environment.
Jiang Yubai took Lin Zhixia upstairs. They seemed to be going to accomplish something big, and their steps were very fast. Lin Zhixia asked him, "Have you ever picked skirts for other girls?"
"Never before," Jiang Yubai said, "You are the first."
"Is it also the last one?" Lin Zhixia asked again.
Jiang Yubai seemed to have seen through her thoughts. She was not as indifferent to their future as he thought. His tense heartstrings relaxed a little, and he said softly, "Yes."
Lin Zhixia was led by Jiang Yubai into a spacious room. A designer in his thirties and her female assistant were standing in the middle of the room.
The designer greeted Jiang Yubai and Lin Zhixia respectively with a very gentle attitude, and opened a picture album for them, inviting them to choose the type of skirt they liked. The designer sister said that any style could be further improved according to Lin Zhixia's requirements.
Lin Zhixia flipped through the album and watched silently. She looked at more than a dozen skirts and exclaimed, "So beautiful."
She picked out a burgundy dress with a V-neck and a slim waist. The skirt was draped and flowing, which had a rather elegant and graceful ancient Greek style. She stared at it for a long time, and Jiang Yubai suggested that she should not hesitate to pick out the dress she liked, and he would buy them all at once.
Lin Zhixia concealed her shock. She pointed at the red skirt and said, "This one is enough. Do you think it looks good?"
Jiang Yubai praised: "It looks good."
Lin Zhixia opened another album and started to choose shoes. She realized that there really were crystal shoes in the world, real crystal shoes, but she was not interested in the fairy tale of Cinderella. She remembered that Cinderella's name was "Cinderella". If she were to write a fairy tale, she would make Cinderella a queen, call herself "Cinderella I", and lead the people to create a brilliant industrial revolution.
She turned over the page about crystal shoes and chose a pair of black high heels with bows. The heels were about 4cm, not too high, but she could accept it.
Lin Zhixia returned the album to the designer sister. The sister and her assistant took Lin Zhixia to another small room and used a cloth ruler to measure various sizes. Lin Zhixia chatted with them, asking them about their daily work and whether it was hard. They patiently answered Lin Zhixia's questions, and the whole conversation process was relaxed and pleasant.
The designer sister left a business card. She said that after the clothes and shoes are finished, they will send someone to pack everything and deliver it to your door. Since the clothes are handmade and custom-made, it will take the tailor about nine weeks to make them.
Nine weeks.
Lin Zhixia thought about it in her mind. Nine weeks later, Jiang Yubai's graduation dance would begin and her sophomore year of college would also come to an end.
A prom, as the name suggests, is for dancing.
But Lin Zhixia knew nothing about dancing.
Lin Zhixia's university also held various dances, but Lin Zhixia never went. She was obsessed with studying and the laboratory. When she had free time, she rarely went out to socialize, preferring to run on the school playground with her roommate Feng Yuan. They ran four or five times a week, at least two kilometers each time, all for the sake of the university's physical education test scores.
Yes, Lin Zhixia can run 800 meters without stopping and can do sit-ups without stopping, but she has never danced a single dance. Jiang Yubai told Lin Zhixia that their school had chosen the waltz and that everyone needed to practice it consciously. Of course, it didn't matter if they didn't practice, as Jiang Yubai didn't really understand the music and dance steps.
Lin Zhixia doubted what he said.
However, Jiang Yubai did arouse Lin Zhixia's interest in dancing.
She always likes to explore unknown areas.
In order to find time to practice waltz, Lin Zhixia decided to finish the homework of the "Software Engineering" group early.
The front-end and underlying architecture of the software have been completed - these tasks took Lin Zhixia a lot of time. Lin Zhixia recorded the current results and sent them to the teaching assistant. The senior praised Lin Zhixia's programming skills and said that the school might be willing to buy this software and promote it to the entire Beijing university circle.
When Lin Zhixia heard that the software could be sold, she immediately became excited.