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Of course, Zheng Ranran could not possibly skip the college entrance examination.
She looked at Lu Yixin, who had been sent over by a dark-faced Fang Yongnian and had cried so much that her whole face was swollen like a pig’s head. Her curiosity outweighed the sorrow that had been weighing on her these past few days.
“Had a fight? Or did he hit you?” She remembered that these two hadn’t seen each other for about a year, right? Meeting again and it was this explosive?
Having been scolded like a dog during the meal, Lu Yixin pouted in great resentment and let out a snort.
“I’ll go back.” Zheng Ranran smiled and stretched lazily. “Actually, besides you, no one cares where I go.”
So she had no reason to rebel; even if she did, no one would notice.
“There’s also that troublemaker.” Lu Yixin was still pouting. “He almost got punished by the school while looking for you.”
As a qualified troublemaker, this third-year student preparing for exams had gathered a bunch of people from society to look for her.
The show of force was grand; the aftermath was miserable.
As always, utterly brainless.
Zheng Ranran let out a light sneer—but this time, she didn’t laugh at him again.
The closest family around her all had new lovers and new lives, and as for her, only Lu Yixin and that troublemaker were left.
“Fang Yongnian said, if you get into college, win a scholarship, and take a part-time job, your living expenses should be fine.” Lu Yixin sniffled.
She really had been scolded miserably during that meal; even now, her head was still dizzy.
“I don’t plan to save them money.” Zheng Ranran still smiled.
Why should she save them money? Money was the only thing they could give her now.
“I’ll go back in a few days.” She patted Lu Yixin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
Lu Yixin looked at her friend.
She was always calm, always seeming to have everything under control. After only a few days apart, she seemed even calmer now—so calm it frightened Lu Yixin.
“Stop smiling.” Lu Yixin’s eyes turned red. “If you keep smiling, I’m going to cry.”
Zheng Ranran’s smile froze at the corners of her lips.
She sniffled.
Lu Yixin cried even faster than she did. The two girls, who had looked perfectly fine a moment ago, suddenly hugged each other and burst into tears.
Sitting in the car waiting for Lu Yixin, Fang Yongnian pressed a hand to his forehead, at a loss for words.
With emotions so outwardly displayed, who knew how long it would take for them to learn restraint.
He remembered Lu Yixin once saying that when she grew up, she would only become a bigger version of herself.
Growth always came with a price. If one could stay innocent forever, wasn’t that a kind of happiness too?
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
That night, Fang Yongnian had no idea what the two girls had talked about together.
He only watched from afar as they cried and laughed, sometimes talking loudly, sometimes whispering in each other’s ears.
The expression on Lu Yixin’s face was rich and ever-changing.
She would occasionally glance in his direction, stare for a while, then look away.
In her gaze, Fang Yongnian read sorrow.
He understood her sadness. The older he grew, the more he realized how absurd her earlier confession and her once-stirred feelings were in the real world.
Even if she could still raise her chin now and shout that she wanted to pursue him, he felt that after some time, she might not even be able to say those words again.
It was finally in her nineteenth year that he admitted to himself how serious her feelings had been.
He sat alone in the car, window half-open, suppressing the urge to smoke.
He felt grateful for her affection, and he would keep it carefully stored away.
But he did not want to become that person—the cost of her growing up.
From then on, he forced himself to avoid showing partiality.
He no longer avoided her, but neither did he treat her in any special way. He did not allow himself to step outside the boundaries of his plans. He wanted to protect this girl’s innocence, to bring her happiness, to make sure he would not leave a shadow in that pure feeling of hers.
Thus, he was fortunate to be part of Lu Yixin’s final, hectic, and exhilarating days before the college entrance examination.
That was a time of chaos and excitement interwoven together.
A week later, Zheng Ranran returned to school. She became even more diligent, and under her influence, Lu Yixin—during the last mock exam—actually squeezed into the top ten of the entire grade.
Because of this, Lu Boyuan was so happy he practically turned into a two-hundred-jin fat man. That afternoon, with his pitifully small pocket money, he treated everyone to an ice pop.
Once again, the homeroom teacher called in Liu Miqing and Lu Boyuan. This time, the one who accompanied Lu Boyuan back to Hecheng was Fang Yongnian.
Thus, under the identity of Lu Yixin’s “uncle,” Fang Yongnian also attended that parent-teacher meeting.
The dedicated homeroom teacher told Liu Miqing that since Lu Yixin had built a solid foundation, her grades had become very stable. She now had more choices and didn’t necessarily need to limit herself to meteorology.
But Lu Yixin was adamant.
In truth, she didn’t even know exactly what meteorology was. She simply clung stubbornly to it, because it was the first major that had come to her mind, and she had decided that it would be her future.
Liu Miqing talked to her for a long time, sharing the problems she herself encountered at work. Installing weather sensors outdoors to monitor conditions, recording data in abandoned houses in the suburbs, spending every seasonal transition and flood-and-drought cycle apart from her family.
It was not a field particularly suited for a girl.
Yet Lu Yixin persisted.
Fang Yongnian couldn’t even tell whether that persistence had anything to do with him.
On the day of the college entrance examination, for the first time ever, he took the initiative to send Lu Yixin a WeChat message.
It contained only two words: Jiayou [cheer up / good luck].
Lu Yixin didn’t reply.
She turned off her phone and finished the exams. When most of her classmates were celebrating, throwing and tearing their books, she turned her phone back on, saw those two words, and cried for a long time.
The results came out quickly.
Zheng Ranran was admitted to her first-choice major in Clinical Medicine, and Lu Yixin was also admitted to her first-choice major in Atmospheric Science.
Both of them got into universities in Huating—different schools, but only six bus stops apart.
Among the three of them, only the troublemaker failed to get into any university.
His family wanted him to repeat a year, but he was already planning to open a milk tea shop outside Zheng Ranran’s university in Huating.
The three of them met up for crayfish the day the results were released, and ordered alcohol.
It was the first time in Lu Yixin’s life that she had ever drunk alcohol. Before drinking, she took a photo of the bottle and posted it on her Moments.
Under the photo, Liu Miqing commented, “Have fun.”
After Lu Boyuan saw the post, he started calling her nonstop. When she refused to answer, he went on a long rant in their family group chat. Liu Miqing had to step in to calm him down.
As for Fang Yongnian—
After that single jiayou message, he never appeared again.
After draining that bitter, astringent beer that almost overturned her worldview, Lu Yixin sent a private WeChat message to Fang Yongnian.
“Fang Yongnian, I got in.” She jabbed the send button—furious.
Fang Yongnian didn’t reply. Lu Yixin didn’t look at her phone again either.
The troublemaker had already downed two full bottles of beer, face flushed red and eyes bloodshot.
Zheng Ranran remained as calm and composed as ever. She finished off a whole plate of crayfish, yet not a trace of grease stained her hands.
Lu Yixin poured herself another glass of beer, drank it all in one go, and began to giggle foolishly.
She had finally grown up.
Grown up enough to drink, grown up enough to fall in love.
She really had grown up—so much that she could now understand why, before the exams, Fang Yongnian had suddenly stopped avoiding her.
Only after understanding did she realize how beautiful that avoidance had been.
That someone as proud as him had been so cautious, even afraid to be near her—
what a beautiful thing that was.
Fang Yongnian had spent an entire year untangling their relationship, deciding that from then on, he would only ever be her Uncle Fang.
And in that entire year, she had no part in it.
It was clearly something between two people, yet Fang Yongnian hadn’t even allowed her a name in it.
“Big pig’s trotter.” Lu Yixin bit viciously into the crayfish meat.
The troublemaker, already opening his fourth bottle, thumped her forehead with the bottle opener. “What are you saying?”
Zheng Ranran, halfway through her second plate of crayfish, widened her eyes and kicked the troublemaker. “Why are you hitting her?”
The three of them fell silent.
The first one to start crying, was the troublemaker.
The troublemaker’s real name was completely harmless. His surname was Gu, and for some reason his parents had given this tall, over-one-eighty-centimeter man a double-character name: Lili.
His nickname “Troublemaker” came from the fact that every time someone called his full name, he would lose his temper.
After fighting enough times, he got good at it and from then on, he walked the path of a school tyrant with no way back.
Gu Lili was actually the kind of person who cried easily.
He cried when he drank too much, cried when he couldn’t find Zheng Ranran, and now, after graduating and failing the college entrance exam, he cried again.
He had thought that at least there was still someone like Lu Yixin beside him, someone whose grades weren’t too different from his.
Who would’ve thought that in the second year of high school, Lu Yixin would suddenly start studying like she was on drugs.
Now, only he was left.
The distance between him and Zheng Ranran grew farther and farther.
“You’ll take the exam again,” Zheng Ranran said, wiping her mouth after Gu Lili’s wailing had turned into pig-like squeals.
“I can’t pass,” Gu Lili said, full of grievance.
He felt that everyone in this world was different. Someone like Zheng Ranran was born to study, while someone like him might as well go into small business.
“If you pass, we’ll date.” Zheng Ranran patted Gu Lili on the shoulder, her tone calm and casual—exactly the same as when she usually teased him.
Gu Lili froze.
Beside him, Lu Yixin, who had been biting her chopsticks and pretending to be an elephant with a long trunk, froze too.
“I like you,” Zheng Ranran said, looking at Gu Lili—at that over-one-eighty-centimeter-tall big guy huddled in the corner, panic written all over his face. “Otherwise, why do you think I hang out with you?”
“…Huh?” The one who asked was Lu Yixin.
Gu Lili was already so frightened he could hardly think straight.
“Not the same kind of liking as your liking for Fang Yongnian,” Zheng Ranran said after her confession, still clear-headed enough to explain it to Lu Yixin. “He gives a sense of security.”
Gu Lili was a good person.
He might never betray her in his life, because her intelligence was far above his.
He took care of her.
After she transferred to Hecheng, she had never once carried her own backpack.
He was simple-minded, but he was kind.
That was why she liked him.
Gu Lili’s trembling finger pointed at Lu Yixin, then at Zheng Ranran. “…You like Fang Yongnian?”
That uncle?!
Then his finger shook even harder as he pointed at himself. “You like me?!”
Both girls looked at him with pity.
“Are you going to take the exam or not?” Zheng Ranran narrowed her eyes and ordered another big plate of crayfish.
“Damn!” Gu Lili rolled up his sleeves, wiped his face, and shouted, “Of course I am!”
That night, when the college entrance exam results came out, Lu Yixin witnessed the beginning of Zheng Ranran and Gu Lili’s love story.
And as for herself—after downing two bottles of beer, she crouched in the restaurant bathroom, staring at the tiled wall, and dialed Fang Yongnian’s number.
“I got in,” Lu Yixin said, her voice spilling out like frustration.
