"You are a belated joy"
(formerly known as "Nephrite Jade Warm Fragrance")
Text/Gu Lizhi
In March, Hangzhou is hot and cold, and it is spring, summer, autumn and winter every day.
Ruan Yu picked a sunny day to go back to his hometown.
A while ago, I got news that the old house there was about to be demolished. People who are nostalgic don't want to hear about this kind of thing. Anyway, they just go back and have a look when they are idle.
The Ruan family's old house was built in the urban-rural fringe of Suzhou City, surrounded by similar private houses, with a mint green outer wall, three stories high, and a triangular attic on the top.
Ruan Yu moved away after graduating from high school, and he hasn't been back for nearly eight years.
The empty house had just been cleaned not long ago, and there was too much dust, but it had an old smell. She unlocked it and went in, walked around and went up to the attic.
There are some old things from her student days in there.
The wooden ladder leading to the attic was "creaked". After the curtains were drawn, golden light shone in, and some fine dust mustard floated in the air.
After simple cleaning and tidying up, Ruan Yu moved out an old-fashioned wooden box and sat cross-legged on the floor. As soon as the box was opened, the phone rang.
She plugged in the earphones and turned on the box without stopping.
A female voice came from the earbuds: "Miss Ruan, this call means that as of 1:00 p.m. on March 19th, you still haven't submitted the outline of your new article to your former editor. And this day is the day before your last book is finished. Eleven months have passed."
Ruan Yu couldn't help laughing: "You're already ex-husbands, so you're quite ruthless in demanding debts?"
"Please correct the attitude of the debtor."
She looked at the ceiling and sighed: "Ms. Shen, Ms. Ruan remembers that she said that I will definitely give it to you by the end of March."
"Then may I ask if she has chosen a subject?"
Ruan Yu became depressed, sniffed and replied, "No."
The person on the other end of the phone became irritable: "Ruan Yu is eleven months old, and it's already confinement after giving birth to a baby! You are a full-time writer, do you want to be completely out of breath?"
She casually opened a diary in the box, without looking at it, and said perfunctorily: "When you have no inspiration, writing a book may really be no easier than having a child."
"You work behind closed doors at home every day, who do you expect to inspire you? Writing a book..."
Shen Mingying was still chattering, but Ruan Yu suddenly lost her voice. Her eyes fell on the diary, and her whole figure seemed to freeze.
The old paper was slightly yellowed in the sun, and there was a passage written on it: "On May 11th, the weather was fine. I met Xu Huaisong three times today. The first time, when I went to the office with my English test paper, I ran into him. Standing in the corridor with a few boys in their class for punishment. The dean is a real murderer... "
"The second time, I passed by the art gallery of the school and found him squatting in the grass nearby, feeding a canned food to a stray cat. It turned out that he also likes cats, which is great."
"The third time, I went to physical education class and saw him running laps on the playground alone. He looked so good with his glasses off, no wonder girls always brought him water. I also bought water, but I dare not give it. If I Dad knows that the object of my puppy love is a student in his class, so Xu Huaisong may be in bad luck! Oh, but he may not be willing to have a puppy relationship with me... "
Ruan Yu didn't make a sound for a long time, Shen Mingying thought something happened to her and asked where she was.
She replied "In my hometown", and after she finished speaking, her eyes staring at the diary became brighter: "Ming Ying, I have it."
"What's there, thought of choosing a topic?"
"Yes, how about the background campus and the theme crush?"
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, followed by: "Ball ball you, wake up! That kind of youthful pain burial love literature that groans without illness has been lost eight hundred years ago, and there is no money to speak of!"
Ruan Yu glanced at the diary: "But...do you remember Xu Huaisong?"
Shen Mingying ignored this strange turning point and asked, "Who is it?"
"Our high school, the one in class ten."
"Oh... just tall, thin, and not much to talk about, the one you had a crush on back then? You won't meet him in Su City, will you?"
Xu Huaisong is indeed from Su City, and his grandmother's house is nearby, but as far as Ruan Yu knows, he left here earlier than her, and the friends around him have not heard from him for many years.
She closed the diary with a smile: "How could it be, did you think it was a novel?" After thinking for a while, she said, "I won't talk about it for now. I'll give you the outline in a few days, so hang up."
Back in Hangzhou, Ruan Yu began to think about the new essay that night, and finalized the outline in three days. For the first time since his inspiration was exhausted for eleven months, his thoughts flowed like a spring.
After sending the outline to Shen Mingying's mailbox, she received her WeChat message: "Isn't this the matter between you and Xu Huaisong?"
"That's right."
"Are you going to challenge a tragic story in which the heroine is unrequitedly in love with the hero?"
It hurts.
Ruan Yu made a voice call: "Am I stupid enough to dig my own grave? It's not a documentary column. The male protagonist doesn't like the female protagonist anymore. It's still called a romance novel?"
Xu Huaisong doesn't like her, but art comes from life and is higher than life. Can't she adapt her bitter unrequited love into a two-way secret love
Shen Mingying laughed cheerfully at the other end: "Understood, I dare to say that this is the author's obscene article."
Ruan Yu choked. There's nothing wrong with that.
"Okay, but to remind you, Xu Huaisong's high-cold style is no longer so eye-catching. With the slow-moving elements such as campus and secret love, I don't think the data in this article will be too beautiful."
Ruan Yu seemed to be thinking about it, and said with a smile: "Try it, if it doesn't work, just entertain yourself. You also said that it is a pornography."
After hanging up the phone, she took a cup of milk tea to the computer, and started flipping through her diary, preparing to pick a few stalks and try to write. I haven't written for a long time, so I have to look for the feel first.
After flipping through it a few times, she stopped on a page with an unusually long number of words.
The paper is densely packed, and the handwriting is flying like a dragon and flying like a phoenix, and every stroke and stroke seems to show the turbulence. The time recorded is the New Year's Day of the third year of high school.
Ruan Yu recalled for a moment and remembered.
That day was the closest she and Xu Huaisong got to each other in that one-man show-like crush in high school.
The New Year's Eve fireworks at zero o'clock that night, the school playground was crowded with people, she pretended to be indifferent, and quietly stood on his right side, but she didn't expect him to hold his hand when the fireworks exploded for a moment.
She tilted her head in surprise, but in the flickering light and shadow, she saw the apologetic expression on his face.
He let go of his hand, pushed the pair of thin-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, and said awkwardly, "I'm sorry, I pulled the wrong one."
Ruan Yu typed this paragraph into the document.
But she guessed that the readers must have the same idea as her when they saw this: since the male lead said "wrong", there must be someone who is "right". It seems that the person is not the heroine.
Boring! Abandon the text!
She supported her head and thought for a while, typed a line, and added a paragraph at the end: After saying this sentence, his heart beat like a drum, and the pounding sound from his chest was stronger than the fireworks above his head.
—To imply that the so-called "leading the wrong" is an excuse for the male protagonist.
After finishing writing, Ruan Yu took a sip of the milk tea in hand.
Why is it really a bit of self-entertainment.
At the same time, in the attic of a private house in Suzhou City, which is more than 100 kilometers away, a little girl in school uniform ran downstairs with a box in her arms: "Mom, are these scraps of metal still useful?"
Tao Rong glanced at her hand: "It's all your brother's high school stuff, pack it up and put it away."
Xu Huaishi said "oh", put down the dusty box, and casually picked up an old mobile phone inside: "Brother still used such a broken old phone when he was in high school? It really feels old."
"I bought this specially for him for fear of affecting his studies." Tao Rong glanced at her and said, "Don't mess with your brother's things."
"It's just a broken phone, it can't be turned on without power..." She was muttering blindly while pressing the power button, but she didn't expect the phone screen to light up suddenly, which startled her.
After so many years, it can still be used. Is this a mobile phone or a fighter jet
Xu Huaishi was stunned. Seeing Tao Rong looking over, she quickly hid her phone, squatted down and buried herself in fixing things, then turned her back and began to tinker secretly.
Old-fashioned non-smart phones, there is no password after booting, long press the asterisk button, and then click "Confirm" to unlock. She entered the main page with a few random presses, and then two more presses to see the "phone book".
Not a single contact.
When I returned to the "Short Message" interface, I didn't see a single text message.
Yes, this is very "Xu Huai Song".
There was nothing, she was about to turn off the phone, but before exiting, she noticed the number next to the "Draft Box" column at the bottom of the page: 327.
Three hundred and twenty-seven drafts? Where is her brother doing math problems on this elderly machine
Xu Huaishi struggled for a moment, clicked in, and opened one casually.
Recipient is empty. Editing time: January 1, 2010 at 0:10. Content: "The one who lied to you is right. Happy New Year."
Xu Huaishi shook her hands, and smelled the smell of puppy love through the screen.
puppy love? Her brother
Her gesture of holding the phone suddenly became reverent.
Because this may not be an ordinary old machine, but... a new continent that has not yet been discovered.
The author has something to say: Today, I will tell you a story about a love story created by demolition, and a story about an elderly machine.