27
The night wind blew gently, rippling the water in the pond.
The moonlight flickered on the surface of the pool as the water rippled, making people dizzy.
Meng Shuyu originally just wanted to tease Zhou Jun, but when she got closer, she saw her and the bright waves of the pool reflected in Zhou Jun's eyes. He felt a little tipsy even though he hadn't drunk any alcohol, and she couldn't help but step back.
Before she could move, a hand suddenly touched the back of her head.
The next moment, her head was pressed towards the surface of the pool, and the person in front of her suddenly changed from Zhou Jun to an enlarged teacup.
"Try drinking it and you'll know." The water in the pool moved, Zhou Jun held her head, stood up, and rubbed the back of her head.
Meng Shuyu's scalp and neck felt numb, and he shrank into the pond with his head lowered like a lamb to be slaughtered.
However, after only two or three seconds, Zhou Jun let go of her, went around behind her and got ashore.
Meng Shuyu turned around and saw that he had already put on a bath towel.
Thinking back to the way he rubbed her head just now, it seemed as if he was comforting her and thanking her because she had given him the fulcrum to stand up.
Meng Shuyu touched the back of his head which was still numb and looked at him with resentment.
"Do you want to drink more? If not, then leave." Zhou Jun raised his chin towards the tea tray.
"It's only been a short time since I started soaking, I haven't had enough." Meng Shuyu raised his head unhappily.
"Then you continue, I'm going back."
"Hey—" Meng Shuyu stood up suddenly, "This place is so remote, you just ignore me..."
"So what? Should I call two security guards for you?"
"… "
Meng Shuyu was so annoyed that he slapped the water, walked up to the shore in three or two steps, wrapped himself in a bath towel and put on flip flops, and left the hot spring with him.
As they walked, the distance between them and Zhou Jun grew larger and larger, so they whispered, "Can you walk slower?"
Zhou Jun stopped and turned around.
Meng Shuyu hurriedly caught up with him, regretting a thousand times that he had just gotten into trouble. He let out a sigh of anger.
Zhou Jun looked at her and said, "Why are you sighing?"
The emphasis of his pronunciation was not on the word "sigh" but on the word "you".
It expressed her dissatisfaction very accurately - she sighed before he did.
Meng Shuyu tasted his bad attitude and thought that things would turn into the opposite after reaching the extreme. He didn't dare to act like a rogue anymore and made an honest excuse: "It's so expensive to stay here for a night. It's not worth it for me to stay here for just a short while."
"So what's the best deal?"
"It's not even eight o'clock yet, and Chen Xing is drinking with the negotiation department again. I have nothing to do in my room. If I don't take a hot spring bath, at least..." Meng Shuyu tried, "Let's take a walk and see the scenery?"
"Take a walk with a body full of water?"
When Meng Shuyu heard that there was a chance, he compromised and said, "Of course, we can also dry it first."
Zhou Jun didn't say anything.
It seems to be agreed by default.
"Then I'll come to see you after I take a shower. Which room do you want to stay in?" Meng Shuyu glanced at him.
Zhou Jun glanced at her.
"I'm not going to sneak in here and steal. So I'll tell you my house number and you can come find me?"
Before Zhou Jun nodded, Meng Shuyu finished reporting the message: "8:30, 11:06, I'm going back to clean up first."
After saying this, she ran out of the path as if she was afraid that he would change his mind.
Zhou Jun stopped where he was, watched her figure disappear at the fork in the road, paused, and walked forward again.
I went all the way back to the room, walked into the bathroom, threw away the towel, and turned on the air conditioner.
The shower faucet was turned to the maximum, and warm water poured over my head.
Zhou Jun supported himself on the white porcelain wall with one hand, moved the other hand down, lowered his head and closed his eyes.
1106 Courtyard.
Meng Shuyu looked at herself in the makeup mirror reluctantly, thinking that she had spent so much time on this nude makeup that became more beautiful as the night went on.
After removing her makeup, Meng Shuyu went to the shower room to take a bath, blow-dried her hair, and changed into an ankle-length mid-sleeved dress.
Anyway, Zhou Jun didn’t look at her, so it was more important to prevent mosquitoes.
Meng Shuyu was used to keeping a sense of time at work. After finishing all these miscellaneous tasks, there were exactly two minutes left until 8:30.
She put her cell phone into the small waist bag she wore across her body and walked out of the yard.
But the doorway was empty, with only a lonely street lamp emitting a faint light.
Meng Shuyu picked up his cell phone and checked the time. It was exactly half past eight.
It’s okay to be a little late, but Zhou Jun wouldn’t not come, would he
In fact, the two of them hadn't made a final decision just now, but she bet that he wouldn't keep her waiting in vain, so she just left without paying any attention.
Thinking of this, and recalling Zhou Jun’s attitude at the time, he was indeed not particularly willing.
Time seemed to stretch indefinitely, from minutes to seconds.
Meng Shuyu waited for a while and looked at his phone. Instead of Zhou Jun, the autumn mosquitoes from the mountains came first.
She clapped her arms to shoo away the mosquitoes, and sighed as she looked at the couples walking hand in hand.
The phone in his palm suddenly vibrated, and Meng Shuyu immediately picked it up to look at it.
Zhou Jun: Come out later, I’ll call you when we get there.
Meng Shuyu: It’s already 8:34 and you’re just saying this. I came out a long time ago.
There was no response to the new message, but at least Zhou Jun had no intention of breaking his promise, so Meng Shuyu did not bother to turn back and stood under the street light, pacing back and forth waiting.
After waiting for two minutes, a male voice came from behind: "Didn't I tell you to come out later?"
Meng Shuyu turned around and saw Zhou Jun, who was dressed neatly in a shirt and trousers.
"Then you should have said it earlier. I've been out for several minutes."
Zhou Jun lowered his head and glanced at his phone.
Away from the wifi in the room, the signal in the mountains jumps back and forth between one and two bars.
The message sent at 8:29 was not sent successfully until 8:34.
Meng Shuyu stepped forward and said, "The business elite is still late."
"You said you asked for my opinion at half past eight?"
"How would I know you take a shower even slower than me?"
Zhou Jun didn't refute this time, and asked: "Where are you going?"
"What's the point of going anywhere for a walk? Just walk wherever you want." Meng Shuyu walked forward first. When he passed a tree, he stretched out his arm and picked a leaf. He turned around and asked, "What kind of tree is this? It's quite beautiful."
"Why just pick fruits without knowing what tree they are from?" Zhou Jun followed.
"… "
I was just picking a leaf, but he called me a scumbag.
"Now that you're here, can we have a good chat?" Meng Shuyu frowned.
Zhou Jun pinched the leaf between her fingers, lifted it up and looked at it: "It must be white wax tree."
"You really know." Meng Shuyu took the leaf back from his hand, looked at it carefully, and thought about it. "Where do you have the time to know so much? Shouldn't you be very busy in the morning at university?"
"I had free time when I was little."
"Weren't you rich second-generations forced to learn this and that when you were young?"
Zhou Jun glanced at her sideways.
"Okay, I'm the one who labeled the rich second generation. You were pretty lucky when you were a kid, but I was miserable. My dad was a Chinese teacher, and our house was filled with books. I don't know how many Tang and Song poems I was forced to memorize when I was a kid."
"not good?"
"I thought it was bad at the time, but later I found it quite useful. After all, I studied Chinese in college. Oh, yes, you should know that after reading my resume."
"Did your father ask you to read it?"
"How is that possible? You have to make your own decision on such an important matter in life. I did like him at the time. But after I started working, I had to use official language when writing documents. I would forget my roots if I didn't use those fancy words for a few years."
Meng Shuyu was talking on and on, and suddenly remembered the topic he had talked about with Zhou Jun a few days ago: "By the way, my dad went to Qiming Welfare Home to do charity work and taught the children there Tang poetry and Song lyrics. How about your family?"
Zhou Jun narrowed his eyes and said, "Send the money."
"Oh, that's right." Meng Shuyu nodded, "You really don't think so, maybe it's because our family and your family both went to this welfare home to do charity work, that's why you and I are so destined to be together."
"Meng Shuyu, I think you are being too modest." Zhou Jun looked at her in confusion.
"?"
"You haven't forgotten your roots, and you still have a lot of sour words."
Meng Shuyu choked.
At first, she disliked Jian Cheng's cheesy love words when they were taking a walk, and now her walk with Zhou Jun is not much better.
She tried to keep the situation firm and said, "How can this be sour? The theory of fate has its basis. If you don't believe it, forget it."
"I said I don't believe it?"
Meng Shuyu blinked: "You can still believe this."
“It’s not fatalism in a narrow sense.”
"what is that?"
“Have you read Borges’s “To a Coin”?”
Meng Shuyu stopped and said, "Of course I have read it."
One night in 1966, Borges stood on the deck of a ship and threw a coin into the sea.
Later, Borges wrote a poem to commemorate the coin. There is a sentence in the poem that translates into Chinese as follows: "From now on, every moment of my fate, whether asleep or awake, happy or angry, sad or happy, will correspond to another moment of the invisible coin."
There are many appreciations of this poem. Meng Shuyu has also paid for the romance in the poem, imagining -
A person did a certain action to a certain person at a certain moment, and this small action extended two destiny lines, one is the person's own destiny line, and the other is the other person's destiny line.
Even if these two lines of destiny will never intersect and cannot see each other, they will always echo each other at the ends of the earth and the corners of the sea.
"This is the fate I'm talking about." Zhou Jun followed her and stopped for a moment, then continued walking forward.
Meng Shuyu stared at his back, distracted, and chased after him.
During the second half of the journey, Meng Shuyu kept thinking about Zhou Jun's theory of destiny.
She had originally planned to take a walk in the evening to cultivate Zhou Jun's feelings for her, but she didn't expect that in the end she would have an even better impression of Zhou Jun.
really weird.
Not only did Zhou Jun's appearance fit her aesthetic taste, but his inner qualities also perfectly matched her imagination of romance.
After walking around the area, Meng Shuyu was sent back to the courtyard by Zhou Jun. After saying good night to him, he returned to his room, lay on his back on the bed and was lost in thought for a while.
It wasn't until I started to feel an itch on my arm that I came back to my senses.
Meng Shuyu raised his arm and saw a red and swollen round lump on his forearm.
She was so focused on her walk just now that she didn't notice she was bitten by a mosquito.
This must have been caused by the six minutes that Zhou Jun was late.
It is said that the autumn mosquitoes in the mountains are as fierce as tigers, and it is true.
This mosquito bite is different from ordinary ones. The center is red, and there is a faint circle around it. I don’t know how it got bitten like this.
Meng Shuyu endured the itch, but felt unwilling to accept it, so he picked up his phone, took a close-up photo of the mosquito bite and sent it to Zhou Jun to accuse him.
On the other side, Zhou Jun returned to the room and closed the door. He heard his phone vibrate and clicked on the message.
A small picture of the WeChat interface popped up, his finger slipped, and the phone fell to the ground with a bang.
In the dead silence of the room, Zhou Jun blinked slowly into the void, picked up his phone hesitantly, was silent for a moment, and looked at it again.
The author has something to say: qaq I don’t know what Zhou Jun saw, and I dare not say it, so why don’t you guys tell me, but speak softly.
There are many translated versions of Borges' "To a Coin". The poem mentioned in this chapter and the subsequent appreciation are combined with online information and my own processing. It may not be accurate. You can just take a general idea as an example.