Fleeting Midsummer

This is a Seriously Awkward Scene (3)

While I was sighing, Fang Yuke had already walked in front of me. He gentlemanly extended a hand to Wang Yimo, “I’m Linlin’s friend, Fang Yuke.” At this, I was suddenly offended that he didn’t say “boyfriend”, but he said “friend”.

Wang Yimo blinked at me, “Hello, I’m the online friend, Wang Yimo.”

The red clothed girl also followed Fang Yuke over. From a closeup, the red clothed girl was very noble and stylish. She was just as benevolent as Mary, sufficiently rousing a man’s Oedipus complex. She used Western style and English to discuss with Fang Yuke. Occasionally, she would even laugh at me. Her smile was full of the hint of observation.

My heart thumped. The scene of Fang Yuke using English to read love letters to me suddenly hit me. I felt unwell from head to toe, so much so that I wanted to puke. This was like turning around and dancing on a foggy night. The crystal shoes underneath one’s feet swelled and pounded the floor. I opened both my arms trying to smell the balmy earth as much as I could, thinking that it was romantic. When the lights brightened, I realized that I was only in front of a mosquito infested bathroom, wearing straw sandals and smelling the marsh gas while I hopped around. All the beautiful things originated in fancy, and all of the things that touched me originated from showering affection on an uninterested party.

My whole body went cold but I still forced myself to smile, “This sister’s English is so good.”

Fang Yuke told me, “She grew up in London. She doesn’t really know Chinese so she can only speak English.” He didn’t explain her identity or her name. Was it because it was not sufficient or because it was inconvenient?

The red clothed girl laughed at me, one hand still unconsciously going up Fang Yuke’s elbow. She was naturally intimate with him.

I suddenly understood. He wanted me to learn and study English to make me into a noble kind of girl. Did he want to make me like her? F**k, I still had the f**king fate of being a reflection of other people. In the past  when I was secretly in love with Xiao Xi, I always thought I could be his sunshine. But now, I thought that I could always be Fang Yuke’s sunshine. I didn’t expect that I was still surviving under someone else’s shadow. I thought I had become a princess but I didn’t expect that another princess had appeared.  Thus I immediately turned pale and automatically turned into an impromptu humorous clown.

When a boyfriend is together with a female, he will not even feel like giving an explanation. What else can I say?

I stiffly asked, “This sister is……”

My heart had a thousand prayers that this sister who couldn’t speak English had a ⅛ blood relationship with Fang Yuke or 1/16 or 1/32, it was all fine.

But Fang Yuke touched his nose and said, “I will tell you in the future. It’s a long story.”

When we were picking our psychology course, it said that if someone is not willing to look into your eyes when they speak to you, and touches their nose, then they are lying.

I sneered. My brain blanked all of a sudden. I don’t know what to say. Everything has come too suddenly. Even if I haven’t received his phone call for a day and a night, this type of indefinite mood is not that unexpected.

I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out. My throat seemed to have a group of thick cotton wad stuck in it. I concentrated and spoke, “Fang Yuke, I’ll bring Xiao Mo around. He said he hasn’t come to Peking University in a long time. I’ll bring him around, bring him around.”

Fang Yuke looked at me and pulled me aside, glaring, “Who is he? How come you always make people worry about you?”

I swallowed my saliva, “Yes, I always make people worry about me. I don’t know how to speak fluent English and I can’t  score 90 points. Right now, I don’t even care about looking at myself in the mirror because I know that I’m already super ugly. The online friend matter is hard to explain in a few words. It’s a long story.”

Fang Yuke looked at me, “Meeting an online friend is a long story? Are you hiding anything from me?”

I lowered my head, staring hard at the floor. Fang Yuke looked back at that woman and turned to me, “Today, I still have some things to take care of. Wait for me to finish and then we can talk.”

I looked at his back as he bitterly laughed and softly explained something to the woman. Inserting a few words, I heard “misunderstanding”, “coincidence”.

See how important English is?

If you understood those important terms, you wouldn’t be tricked like a sillyhead like me. From  what I knew, he anxiously wanted to explain something to someone, taking my coincidence with him into a misunderstanding. And the most worrying thing was that the person that needed an explanation only got a “Let’s put this discussion off until later” opportunity.

I pulled Wang Yimo and smiled to them, and then slammed the door and left.

Before the restaurant was a wutong tree whose leaves were turning yellow.  The wind of the beginnings of winter blew past, the leaves fell off gradually. Sunlight pierced through branches and threads, until it shone on me. I felt the light was somewhat shaky, so shaky that it was hard for me to see things from far away. Also, the moist liquid that was about to fall from my eyes fell. I lifted my head and looked at the sky, trying to walk forward like my life depended on it.

Wang Yimo awkwardly stood behind me, “This…...should I go find Julie? Maybe Julie doesn’t know what happened.”

I touched my face, “Wait for awhile. If you go back to find Julie and Fang Yuke sees you, he’ll laugh at me again. He’ll say: Zhou Linlin, you’re stepping on two boats at the same time, even with online friends. What’s the use of trying?”

I walked around Weiming lake for a long time, passing by the deck chair I had cried on before. I could not hold back the tears anymore.

Wang Yimo  went panicky in an instant, “I’ll still grab Julie. Otherwise, Julie will think I bullied you.” When he finished, he grabbed his phone and called.

Julie really acted out the entire set. Her sim card was in my cell phone.

I touched my tears wanting to grab my sim card,  but I couldn’t find it.

I went through all my pockets, putting my canvas bag to one side, but I couldn’t find  the card. I bitterly smiled at Wang Yimo and said, “I  lost it. People are like this. When it’s there, they take it for granted, it’s only when they lose it that they think to look for it. Since it’s lost, it’s lost. If it’s not determined to be mine, then it’s not mine. I might as well go change a phone number and start over.”

Wang Yimo carefully worded, “That…..aren’t you make this issue more serious than it needs to be? Maybe this was only a normal meeting. Didn’t you just say that you would both leave space for each other?”

I looked at him and shook my head, “It’s not the same. In the past, Fang Yuke didn’t care and could even show me some love letters that were sent to him. He didn’t hide anything. After all, he didn’t care about those love letters. But now he is lying for someone else, and not explaining something to me . There is definitely a problem.”

Wang Yimo didn’t know what to say. He twisted his hands and said, “But I feel that just now, he was speaking to that woman very naturally.”

I suddenly thought of something. Wang Yimo was an American Born Chinese, he should understand what Fang Yuke said to her.

I immediately asked him nervously, “Do you remember what he said?”

Wang Yimo thought about it, “That woman said, ‘Someone’s jealous’, and then Fang Yuke said, ‘It was only a coincidence. Don’t misunderstand randomly’. Then that woman said, ‘I don’t believe you’......I couldn’t hear the rest because I was farther away. Plus, I don’t have the habit of eavesdropping.”

TLN: You’ve already eavesdropped...that much and you stop in the middle?! What a coincidence T_T

My tiny bit of hope was suddenly crushed. Life really made one depressed.

When I returned to the dorm, Julie was already sitting down uneasily.

I angrily and powerlessly said, “That Wang Yimo knew that I was a fake. He also spotted you. So you better just walk off with him.”

Julie’s face was completely flabbergasted, “What happened just now with you and Fang Yuke and that woman? Did Fang Yuke misunderstand what was happening between you and Wang Yimo?”

I waved my hand, “How come you didn’t ask whether I misunderstood them?”

Julie honestly replied, “Fang Yuke has plenty of ability to settle you down. Even if you misunderstand you have nowhere to go. If he ignores you and leaves with that person, what will you do?”

I angrily kicked her, “This old woman went to go buy meat for you and you’re still double-crossing your employer? This time, I’ve played around enough with him! You’re free now!”

Julie was stunned as she looked at me, “No way. Things have yet to take shape and there’s already a misunderstanding? You didn’t even catch a couple in the act on the bed……”

I lay on the bed, disinclined to continue speaking. If I caught a couple in the act on the bed then that would be great because I would admit failure. But now I was hung in the air. What did this count as? In the past,  Fang Yuke would force me to study English almost as if something big would happen if I didn’t pass the class. He spoke some fluent English readily. Did this have something to do with that woman? Why was someone’s relationship a long story? What kind of relationship would make it into a long story? An ex-girlfriend? Someone you admired?

I was spread out on my bed like a pancake. I rolled the blankets up but I still couldn’t sleep. I got up to see if the phone had rang or not. Cautiously and solemnly, I placed the receiver in a good position, staring at it for a long time. I could only get back onto my bed and be a pancake again.

The other three people finally couldn’t stand it anymore. Ah Tao in the lower bunk yelled, “You aren’t allowing anyone to sleep just because you’re yearning for love…...”

I pouted my lip, feeling wronged, as I hugged my blankets and sat in meditation like a lotus flower. Wang Jie who was across from me lifted her head to look at me, “Linlin, sitting on top like that in the dead of night is very frightening. In the past, it was okay since your skin was black but now it’s gotten a bit whiter with great difficulty. Why do you come out and scare people?”

I pouted my lip again and lay down as stiff as a corpse.

Julie was sitting further away as she looked at me. Then, she looked down at the bunk below her, “Jie’er, Linlin doesn’t try to rebut anything we say. It seems that what happened in the morning is still bothering her.”

Wang Jie sat up, “Julie, in the future can you not talk to me like you’re chaste? My heart can only take so much burden.”

Ah Tao also sat up and began talking, “Linlin what’s upsetting you?”

My heart silently thought: Rubbish! If I didn’t get upset, would I be able to silently rouse your attentions?

Wang Jie got up to pour a cup of water, as she said, “Linlin, you better tell us from the beginning. You can hold it in if you want, but you can’t not let us sleep peacefully.”

I saw everyone being so enthusiastic, so I sat up again and cleared my throat. Then, I recounted the events of the morning.

The first half hour, I talked about the history of feelings between Julie and Wang Yimo. Wang Jie wanted to see Wang Yimo’s picture even if she had to die to do so. Ah Tao wanted to see their chat history. Thus, the three of us seemed like we were watching horror movies in the dead of night, gathering in front of the laptop in the pitch darkness, as we dug up all of the gossip behind this situation. Only when we finished did we return to the main point I was about to get to.

Ah Tao laughed crazily in her lower bunk, “Linlin, I’m not speaking badly about you but that woman is older than us by 5 or 6 years. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t compete with you.”

Wang Jie cut Ah Tao off, “What are you talking about? 25,26 year old people are the most mature. Right now, how come love between older women and younger men are trending? That’s because younger bros haven’t had a chance to strive into society so they will want to seek novelty in all women at the workplace. Plus it is very strange that Fang Yuke can speak fluent English. Even for those of us practicing speech, when we speak English there will still be a Chinese accent. So, it’s very possible.”

Julie lay in her bed, sticking up a leg as she said, “Unless this is the legendary story of Han Meimei and Li Lei?”

My eyebrows went up as I asked, “What Han Meimei and Li Lei? I must be Polly.”

Julie continued, “Don’t tell me you don’t know the classic story of Han Meimei and Li Lei? Han Meimei and Li Lei are best friends, that sentence, made a lot of people sob. Obviously they love each other, but they have not made their feelings known to  each other. In the end, Han Meimei flew abroad by herself, leaving Li Lei in the country, a lonely soul. Thus, Li Lei studied English with all his might so that one day,he could accompany Han Meimei.”

I stuck out my tongue, “Julie, in middle school when you were studying English did you lean on such sexual fantasies to pass? That way you wouldn’t get sleepy when you learned it. In the future, I will also need  to have your imagination so that maybe I can pass the 8th level of English with half of the ability you used to weave  that story together.”

Julie disdainfully said, “Studying is boring so you have to find some pleasure. I feel Fang Yuke speaks so fluently maybe to chase after that mysterious woman. Perhaps he has always been following her footsteps so that everything he does has been influenced by her. And that’s why he makes you study like your life depends on it. It’s a pity that your rock brain can’t understand. Even if you die, you won’t work hard. He met his Venus, and feels you’re even more vulgar……”

Ah Tao cut in, “Julie don’t scare Linlin. Tonight she’s been suffering from insomnia. Are we going to stay awake with her?”

I sat there blankly. I still hadn’t jumped out from Julie’s story.

After a long time, I finally reacted, “Then Julie, since he likes to follow her so much, how come he would find someone with a rock brain like me? Shouldn’t he find someone like her?”

Julie lowered her head as she thought, “Maybe he wants to get rid of her reflection so he’s giving himself a ferocious dose of medicine.”

Saying this, my heart was chilled.

Ah Tao immediately  said, “Julie reads too many romantic novels. She’s someone who says that she has leukemia if she nosebleeds when she sees someone. She can’t even work through her own matters. Linlin don’t listen to her. If she was really awesome, then she wouldn’t try to meet up with such a black dragon of an online friend.”

My eyes continued to stare at Ah Tao, my mind full of Julie’s descriptions. Could it be that I was the aggrieved substitute from the legends? If this was true, it was too melodramatic, right?