9、
After the meal, she was politely escorted back to the dormitory. Anning calmly said “goodbye,” walked through the dorm door, and heard Mao Mao saying, “I don’t want blind dates. I want encounters, naturally occurring ones, like at intersections, cafés, airplanes.”
Shen Chaoyang: “If you saw someone who met your standards at a café or on a plane, what would you do? You’d just be strangers passing by, right?”
Mao Mao suddenly became excited. “At moments like this my YY skills are super practiced of course. I’d calculate the perfect angle, wind direction, and speed, then beautifully crash into him ah!”
Anning: “……So that’s how it is.”
Mao Mao: “Of course you’d definitely have to be beside me.” After saying that she hooked an arm around the person who had just entered and sat down.
Shen Chaoyang: “What if you ruin his clothes and he resents and hates you?”
Mao Mao: “That’s why I said Miao absolutely has to be beside me.”
Anning: “To pay his dry-cleaning bill?”
Mao Mao: “If he resents me, you block for me. Of course if he likes me, I’ll wash his clothes for him ah, hahaha, life is so beautiful!”
Shen Chaoyang rolled her eyes. “It’s YY that’s beautiful, right?”
Mao Mao: “Basically it’s ‘if hated, Miao goes up; if liked, I go up.’ Of course if Anning takes a liking to him and wants to take over, that’s fine too. Then I’ll continue searching for new prey. Men ah men, a whole plane full.”
The other two were speechless.
Chaoyang: “Oh right, A-Miao, who did you go eat with just now?”
Anning: “Mm… where’s Qiangwei?”
Chaoyang: “Too obvious, isn’t it? Changing the subject?”
Anning smiled. “You saw through me ah?”
Meanwhile Mao Mao asked, “Who’s accompanying me tomorrow to climb Yin Mountain? There’s a Taoist temple up there oh. We can worship Buddha and pray for men.”
Chaoyang looked disdainful. “Mao Xiaoxu, you’re really vulgar.”
“I’m going home tomorrow.” Anning wondered whether she should tell Mao Mao that entering a Taoist temple to worship Buddha definitely wouldn’t end well.
Mao Mao: “Chaoyang, what about you?”
Chaoyang: “Not going. I burst out laughing whenever I enter a Taoist temple.” Then she reminisced. “Three years ago one spring, I braved a cold to visit Baiyun Temple with classmates. The moment I entered the main hall, I saw chrysanthemums offered on the altar… I instantly froze. Then upstairs, there were the Jade Emperor and Queen Mother, and lilies offered on the altar. Then there were two smaller halls for the Queen Mother of the West and King Father of the East, and they also had chrysanthemums and lilies respectively. The problem was that beside the Queen Mother of the West was a female attendant paired with lilies, while beside the King Father of the East was a Taoist boy paired with chrysanthemums. In the end I laughed so hard I blurted out: ‘Ah, the truth!’ That day my cold worsened and I lost my voice… With such an example before me, ever since then I can’t stop weirdly laughing whenever I enter a Taoist temple.”
Mao Mao also started laughing obscenely. “The world is one big family ah.”
Anning sighed softly. “The Master did not speak of strange powers and spirits.” Ignored.
That day while Anning was showering, Mao Mao came knocking on the door. “A-Miao, your phone’s been ringing forever. Want me to pass it in to you?”
“Mm… help me answer it then.”
So one minute later, Mao Mao started banging loudly on the door. “It’s a man! I told him you were naked taking a shower. He said he’d call back later. I said how about I chat with you instead, and he politely refused—oh right, he said his surname is Xu.”
The next second Anning yanked open the door, face flushed red. “You… what did you say to him?”
Mao Mao: “How about I chat with you instead?”
“The sentence before that.”
“You’re naked taking a shower.”
Anning groaned. “Mao Mao… I’ll never talk to you again.”
As a result, her phone never rang again before bedtime that day. For some reason Anning actually felt slightly relieved.
The next morning she went to the back gate of school to catch the bus home, and then ran into… mm… Xu Moting.
He was leaning against the bus stop sign in casual clothes. Because he had a good figure, his whole person looked especially tall and elegant. Anning looked at the side profile and felt conflicted… Should she walk over and say good morning or something? But she and he didn’t seem to have any particularly special “relationship”… conflicted. However, Anning’s conflict didn’t last long, because Xu Moting saw her.
So someone tried hard to act as if it were a chance encounter (though technically it was a chance encounter…), walked over and smiled shyly. “You’re here waiting for the bus too ah?”
Xu Moting straightened up. “No, I’m waiting for you.”
“……”
“Your roommate said you were going home today.”
Uh… he wasn’t here to see her off, was he?
Facts proved that he really had come to see her onto the bus…
And so, for the first time, Anning didn’t verify the fifty-minutes-and-seven-seconds number deviation while riding the bus. The whole journey she kept thinking… Xu Moting…
At lunch with her mother that noon, somehow the topic turned to “boyfriends.” Mrs. Li’s meaning was basically, “Daughter ah, you’re not that young anymore. Isn’t it about time you found a boyfriend to date?”
Anning: “I’m only twenty-four.” She smiled obediently.
Mrs. Li: “When I was twenty-four, you were already able to call me Mom.”
Anning: “Mm… then do you hope someone will call you Grandma when you’re forty-five?”
Mrs. Li: “……You’re still young. A few years later then.”
While helping her mother wash dishes, Anning thought that if she never married for her whole life, would that count as being unfilial? Maybe her parents’ divorce hadn’t caused her too much harm, but still, there had been disappointment and sadness…