A Blind Date That Runs into an Ex-Husband
The first twenty-two years of Zhuang Fuyao’s life had always gone quite smoothly.
Born into a highly educated family, with loving parents, good looks, and excellent popularity, she was like a princess living in a honey jar.
When her classmates around her were worrying about employment, she was holding art exhibitions and following the path of a professional artist, and she went from school uniforms to a wedding dress with Liang Huaixu, the heir of a wealthy family.
It was hard to say whether things had gone too smoothly for the heavens to tolerate, which was why, at the age of twenty-two, she was hit with such a huge reversal.
This was the tenth day since Zhuang Fuyao’s soul had transmigrated into herself sixteen years in the future. She lay limp on the sofa, leisurely eating an apple. Beside her, her mother was on the phone with a doctor, speaking German. Zhuang Fuyao could only understand a few words: “selective amnesia,” “psychological factors,” “memory substitution.”
Half an hour later, Madam Ji finally ended the call.
Zhuang Shaoping asked, “How is it?”
Ji Lan said, “The hospital has given the results. They say this falls under a type of amnesia.”
Zhuang Fuyao pretended to be surprised. “Is it serious?”
A few days earlier, Old Zhuang and Madam Ji had noticed something off about her and sent her to the hospital for a series of examinations, which ultimately led to a diagnosis of amnesia.
She felt that this was actually quite good. Compared to something like soul transmigration, which was far beyond scientific understanding, amnesia was much easier for people to accept.
“There’s nothing seriously wrong physically. It’s just that, for unknown reasons, she’s lost her memories from the past ten-plus years.”
Ji Lan tenderly touched her daughter’s face and told her not to overthink it.
After dinner, while out for a walk, Ji Lan continued discussing the matter with Zhuang Shaoping. “I suspect it’s still related to the divorce. Ever since the divorce, Fufu’s personality has been much more repressed.”
Zhuang Shaoping smiled and said, “It might not be a bad thing. Look, Fufu is much happier now than before. Let’s just treat it as if our daughter is only in her early twenties.”
“You can still laugh.” Ji Lan shot him a reproachful glance.
Zhuang Shaoping held her hand and softly comforted her. “What’s happened has already happened. We can only look at it optimistically.”
Ji Lan sighed. “But don’t tell Chaoluo about this for now. Fufu doesn’t want everyone to treat her like a patient.”
“Mm.” Zhuang Shaoping nodded. Then he thought of something his mother, Old Madam Zhuang, had been nagging about recently. “Then should we still let Fufu go on a blind date with Uncle Qin’s grandson?”
Old Madam Zhuang was eighty-seven this year. Her body was healthier than that of most elderly women, but her memory was not very good, and her temper had worsened quite a bit. In the past two years, she had been especially enthusiastic about introducing partners to her youngest granddaughter. In order to make the old madam happy, everyone was quite cooperative.
“Let her go. Whether it becomes a blind date or not doesn’t really matter. The main thing is to let her get out and relax,” Ji Lan said, her thoughts stirring. “But we can’t put it that way in front of her. We have to let her keep a proper attitude. I’ve looked at the other party’s information. His conditions are quite good. Who knows, they might really hit it off.”
*
Early the next morning, sunlight streamed into the bedroom.
Zhuang Fuyao stepped barefoot onto the carpet, preparing to choose her outfit for the day.
When Madam Ji had told her about the blind date the night before, Zhuang Fuyao had instinctively wanted to refuse.
But she suddenly thought of a funny blind date joke.
The woman asked the matchmaker how tall the man was.
The matchmaker said, “Although he’s only one meter sixty, when he jumps, he reaches one meter eighty.”
Zhuang Fuyao laughed until tears came out. Driven purely by curiosity, she wanted to go see for herself what a blind date was actually like.
After changing her clothes, she looked at herself in the mirror with satisfaction.
At thirty-eight, she showed no signs of aging at all. On top of her beauty, she also had an added touch of a lightly mature temperament that came from years of life’s refinement. This was also one of the reasons she had been able to accept so quickly the fact that she had undergone soul transmigration.
After driving for half an hour, when Zhuang Fuyao went in, her blind date had already arrived. A polo shirt, black-framed glasses, and a typical engineering type. However, his features were proper and upright, and his face looked honest.
When he saw her approaching, Qin Zhenglin nervously pushed his glasses up.
He devoted himself wholeheartedly to academics, and his sensitivity to emotions was much duller than that of his peers. When friends around him had long since married and had children, he had remained single. When he was younger, he didn’t feel much about it, but in recent years, when he returned home to an empty house, a sense of loneliness arose, and he followed the advice of his elders and came on blind dates.
He had looked over the other party’s information in advance. Aside from having already had one marriage, her other conditions were impeccable, but he hadn’t expected that in person she would be even more beautiful than in those heavily retouched photos.
“Miss Zhuang, I’m forty this year. When I was younger, I had a relationship, which later ended peacefully because our development plans were different. I currently teach at Jiang University. My professional title is associate professor. I have a three-bedroom apartment, a car for daily transportation, savings, and no loans. If we get married, I can hand over my entire salary. I’m not good at doing housework. If you also don’t want to do it, we can hire a housekeeper. My personality is relatively gentle, and many things can be discussed together. The only thing is that I like children quite a lot. I hope that in the future we can have two children, preferably one son and one daughter…”
After ordering, he introduced himself in meticulous detail and even talked about some future plans.
So detailed that it was like playing some kind of life simulation game.
Zhuang Fuyao felt slightly uncomfortable. “Mr. Qin, today is our first time meeting.”
Qin Zhenglin smiled. “It is indeed our first meeting today, but I’m very satisfied with you.”
“But Mr. Qin, I think the premise of what you just said is that both of us are satisfied and have decided to continue developing, isn’t it?”
Qin Zhenglin asked in return, “Miss Zhuang, are you dissatisfied with me?”
He felt that conditions like his made him a sought-after choice on the blind date market. The reason he hadn’t married all these years wasn’t because he couldn’t find a wife, but because he didn’t want to. If he really wanted to, he could choose from plenty who were more than ten years younger than him.
Looking at the person across from him, although her conditions were good and she was attractive, in the end, her age was there, and she had been married before.
So Qin Zhenglin really hadn’t considered the possibility of being rejected, and he continued, “I quite like you. Even though you’re divorced, I don’t mind.”
“……”
A sharp retort almost slipped out, but Zhuang Fuyao restrained herself.
She remembered Madam Ji’s instructions and deliberately followed his words in a relatively humorous manner. “Not only have I been divorced, I also have a son who’s already an adult. Even if you don’t mind, I still feel that I’m not worthy of you.”
As expected, Qin Zhenglin frowned. “You have a child?”
*
In a VIP private room at the same restaurant.
He Zongqin had just returned from the restroom and mentioned with some novelty, “Guess who I saw outside?”
Everyone took turns guessing, but none of them got it right. He Zongqin smiled mysteriously. “Old Qin. That single-minded guy is actually on a blind date.”
“Which Old Qin?”
“Who else could it be? The one in our department who’s forty and has never been married.”
With that, everyone understood.
Among university faculty, where the marriage rate was over ninety percent, it was indeed rare for someone to still be unmarried at forty.
Everyone present worked at Jiang University. Even if they were not close to Qin Zhenglin, they had heard some gossip about him. Years earlier, a school leader had arranged a blind date between Qin Zhenglin and a teacher from the Literature Department. On the spot, Qin Zhenglin had posed a math problem. When the Literature Department teacher could not answer it, Qin Zhenglin said the two of them had no common language.
After the story spread, Qin Zhenglin had been laughed at by the Jiang University faculty circle for a long time.
“Hey, Old He, tell us. Did Old Qin give another math problem this time?”
“This time, surprisingly, no. I saw Old Qin chatting quite enthusiastically.”
“What kind of person is the other party?”
“I only saw her from the back. She has quite a bit of poise,” He Zongqin said with a smile. “Why don’t you go take a look?”
“Forget it. I don’t have the nerve for that. If Old Qin saw me, it’d be way too awkward.”
Everyone treated it as light entertainment, laughed it off, and soon shifted to other topics.
He Zongqin noticed that Liang Huaixu seemed to be in low spirits today and went over to talk to him. “Old Liang, are you really planning to take over that land in Nanheng?”
Liang Huaixu replied, “We do have that intention, but the board hasn’t held a meeting yet.”
Others played along. “That’s what you say, but aren’t the directors at Changting basically all listening to you anyway?”
Liang Huaixu was somewhat absent-minded, responding half-heartedly. His mind drifted to what the household aunt had said when he returned from his business trip last night, that a woman with the surname Zhuang had come looking for him.
The only woman with the surname Zhuang he knew was his ex-wife, Zhuang Fuyao.
Several times, he had wanted to send a message to ask, but since she hadn’t contacted him herself, it was probably nothing important. If he went out of his way to ask, he might just annoy her. Unable to dispel the stifling feeling in his chest and mindful that there was a pregnant woman present, he stood up. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”
*
After the topic of having a child came up, Qin Zhenglin spoke noticeably less.
Qin Zhenglin was the grandson of her grandfather’s former comrade-in-arms. Madam Ji had specifically instructed her not to make things awkward for him.
So she held it in for as long as the meal lasted. When the meal ended and she stood up, she finally let out a breath of relief.
Up to now, the two of them hadn’t even added each other on WeChat. It probably meant things were over. She had completed the task without ruining the relationship.
Qin Zhenglin said, “I’ll see you off.”
Zhuang Fuyao replied, “No need. I drove here.”
Qin Zhenglin said, “Alright.”
After that, silence fell again. As Zhuang Fuyao secretly quickened her pace, she only wanted to leave as soon as possible.
But sometimes, life really was that dramatic. As she turned a corner, she ran straight into Liang Huaixu, her husband from sixteen years ago and her current ex-husband.
He still looked the same as in her memory, but his aura was completely different. When Liang Huaixu was young, he had delicate features and naturally fair skin. His emotions were written all over his face. She used to love leaving her marks on his collarbone or doing something else to tease him until his face turned red.
Now, Liang Huaixu stood there in an administrative shirt. He looked gentle on the surface, yet there was a faint, detached coolness about him. It was hard for others to tell what he was thinking.
Sixteen years of time passing abruptly made Zhuang Fuyao feel a bit at a loss. Before she could figure out what to say, Qin Zhenglin, beside her, leaned forward, his tone enthusiastic. “President Liang, long time no see.”
Qin Zhenglin was not very familiar with Liang Huaixu. Although both of them worked at Jiang University, Liang Huaixu also had another identity outside the school. He was a highly respected industry figure, a major player in the business world. Qin Zhenglin was not the type to flatter others. In the past, when they met, he would at most nod in greeting. Today, he was acting this way purely to show off his connections in front of Zhuang Fuyao.
Afraid that the other party might not remember him, he added a reminder. “We even participated in the Tibet Aid Project together back then. I was a member of your team.”
Liang Huaixu grasped the current situation. His gaze shifted away from Zhuang Fuyao without leaving a trace, and he replied politely, “I remember. Professor Qin, correct?”