— "It was never He Jitong."
After Gu Jianian finished speaking, he forced himself not to bow his head or run away.
Until the person next to him frowned slightly and asked uncertainly: "...What?"
Gu Jianian clenched his fists, took a deep breath, then took out his cell phone from his pocket, opened the memo, and handed it to him with a desperate move.
"Didn't you... accidentally see my memo before?"
She mustered up her courage and said shyly and desperately, "Then... do you want to watch it again?"
Chi Yan was stunned for a moment, then subconsciously lowered his head and followed her instructions to read the line on the phone screen, the text he had accidentally peeked at.
—"We went to the morning market together today, ate wontons together, and ate the same ice cream together. I'm going to invite him to attend my coming-of-age ceremony later."
"See if..." Her voice sounded in my ear at the right time, softly giving a hint, whispering, "... Is there another possibility?"
Chi Yan read the words, just like doing those meaningless reading comprehension exercises in high school. His usually smart and clever brain seemed like a machine that had been scrapped for a long time.
Let’s go to the morning market together.
Eat wontons together.
Eat the same ice cream together.
Attend her... Bat Mitzvah.
About a century later, fireflies flew in from the wilderness in the dead of night, buzzing and making a great noise.
He took great pains to extract from this sentence the other half of the possibility which he had overlooked from the very beginning due to some highly misleading prerequisites.
He suddenly raised his eyes to look at her.
There was a distinct redness on the side of the girl's fair face. She clenched her teeth and clicked on the picture attached to the memo while the iron was hot.
Chi Yan looked over there.
On the screen was the photo he had glanced at quickly at that moment, a selfie of her in front of the ice cream shop.
He remembered that he laughed at her for being vain at that time.
The girl's red, white fingertips trembled as she swiped across the screen, enlarging the photo inch by inch until—
Before the pixels blurred, another figure appeared in the upper left corner of the mirror.
He propped up his chin, turned sideways to the camera, and looked at her in the mirror with a lazy expression.
In that frozen moment, the girl's skirt was lifted by the morning breeze and brushed against his knees under the table.
Chi Yan looked up in disbelief and saw her eyelashes trembling like cicada wings in the dim night.
Her voice was also shaking.
"So..." She eliminated the wrong answer with difficulty but directly again, "...it was never He Jitong."
Then, without further ado, with a trembling voice, he gave the correct answer.
"Chi Yan, I like you. It's always... you."
The dull night wind rustled through the leaves.
After the sun set completely, neighbors near and far lit up their lights one after another, and the lively and peaceful night unique to the village arrived.
Chi Yan's eyes were trembling, and some emotions came to his heart suddenly and overwhelmingly.
The fingers that were gently pressing on the stone steps tightened again, and the rough marble surface scratched the knuckles.
"I like you."
This incredible sentence struck his ears so clearly, just like when he was traveling alone deep in the Greater Khingan Range and thought he was lost, but suddenly he heard the wind blowing through the pine needles in the thick fog, invisibly pointing him in the direction.