Chapter 12 (1/2)

Miss You a Little (1)

In Shen Yao’s words: Everyone else was just background scenery — background scenery that was completely unaware of what it was and oblivious to the situation.

Tong Yan was entertaining herself as she fixed her eyes on the group photo on the computer screen. “Let’s crop just the two of us out and keep the photo as memento.” She pointed at the date on the bottom right corner of the photograph. “Today is February 14th… Must you leave tomorrow?”

While saying this, she turned her head to look at him.

“Leaving one day earlier means I will return one day earlier.”

The reasoning was right, but this decision was too sudden, and it caused her to wonder, just how bad had the results of his medical check-up been? And furthermore, he had all of a sudden changed the location of treatment from Beijing to the United States. Even though the treatment results would potentially be better there, this also made her heart even more unsettled.

She subtly, and not-so-subtly, asked him about it the entire afternoon, but he lightly brushed over it, only promising that he would return to her side, completely healthy, in half a year.

Half a year could be considered not a very short period of time.

Perhaps, based on his personality, he truly would wait until he had completely recovered and was no different from any ordinary person before he was willing to show himself.

Gu Pingsheng leaned forward, one hand supporting himself on the edge of the desk and the other on the back of the chair, and looked at the photograph. It was a rare instance today where he was wearing a cotton, checkered-pattern dress s.h.i.+rt in pale pink … This colour on him did not exude even a hint of frivolousness, and in fact, there was a slight sense of … what was it? “Beauty pure and refined as jade[1],” and “bearing like the orchids and trees of jade[2]”?

Smiling, Tong Yan tugged on his collar. “Mr. Gu, did you purposely wear pink today?”

He saw the teasing in her smile, but still, he merely calmly and leisurely lowered his head to gently take her lower lip between his teeth. “It doesn’t look nice?”

“It looks nice,” she murmured in return, her words indistinct.

He did not look to see what she was saying, and instead, reached forward, hooked one arm under her legs and the other around her body, and lifted her completely out of her chair into his embrace. “Mrs. Gu, you’ve been facing the computer an entire night. That is very bad for the eyes and also very unbeneficial towards nurturing the relations.h.i.+p between husband and wife.”

She actually just wanted to edit one photograph of the two of them and print it out tonight to put into his wallet.

He walked toward the bedroom, all the while kissing her deeply. She felt that even the root of her teeth seemed to go weak. Circling her arms around his neck, she kissed him back, their lips coming together then separating briefly again, over and over.

As he neared the door, she was about to stretch out an arm to feel for the light switch when all of a sudden, she felt their whole center of gravity being thrown to one side. While she reflexively threw her arms back around his neck, he had already swiftly set her down on the floor.

She had been lowered too quickly, and her foot ached slightly from being slammed down.

But the next second, she understood what had just happened.

“What’s wrong?” She knew that he could not hear her but still, she anxiously blurted the question.

Leaning against the side of the door, Gu Pingsheng seemed to know that she had received a great scare. Because he did not know what she was saying, he simply patted her on the forehead and comforted, “It’s okay.”

Even her hands had a slight tremble in them, and she felt around for a long time before she found the room’s light switch.

The warm amber glow of the light illuminated all their surroundings.

Besides his action of leaning against the side of the door, there was nothing unusual about him that could be detected visually. However, from that moment earlier on to now, he had not moved in the slightest, which meant there definitely was a big problem.

Tong Yan wanted to reach out to support him, but she did not know how she should do it. She could only stand barefoot beside him, overwhelmed and not knowing what to do, her heart aching so terribly she was near tears. “What is it that’s wrong? Can you just tell me the truth, please?”

It was to the point that she could not even control the volume of her voice or the tremor that could be heard in it.

Fortunately, he could not hear it.

Gu Pingsheng gave a smile, but as he was about to say something, she could contain herself no longer. Tears began to stream down, and large teardrops, one after another, fell to the floor.

Part of the reason was because he had given her a scare, and the other part was because of the fear within her that she could not control. She feared that he truly did have some sort of serious condition or side effect that he had not told her about, and she was also scared that the results this time of the treatment he was going to have would not be very good …

Never before had fear and trepidation surged up so violently in her, and almost instantaneously, it seemed to invade, from inside out, her every inch of awareness.

He had not expected that she would have such a big reaction and reached out an arm, pulling her into his embrace. “I just suddenly felt a little pain right here.” He pointed at his thigh and pelvic region. “It’s much better now.”

“Does it hurt a lot?” Stretching her hand out, she rather hesitantly touched his hip, then followed it down, sliding her hand very gently to his thigh area. She raised her head to ask, “Would it help if I ma.s.sage it a bit?”

As she said this, she tentatively kneaded the spot a couple of times.

“It helps a lot.” In his eyes, there seemed to be laughter and also, heat.

“It really helps?” Her heart still seemed to be dangling in her throat, and she gazed at him, not quite convinced.

“It really does help a lot.” His voice was rather soft and tender. The reflection of the bedroom’s wall light could be seen in his eyes, and there was an inconcealable sensualness in his smile. “But Mrs. Gu, if you keep ma.s.saging like that, Mr. Gu really won’t be able to handle it anymore.”

It was so obvious what he was saying; even a fool could understand that.

Besides, she was not a fool …

For a moment, Tong Yan was both annoyed and amused with him.

Pulling back her hand, she wiped away the tears on her face, but in her heart, there pervaded a heavy sense of disquiet that she could not shake.

But right now, on this night before he was to leave, she could not allow herself to create a big fuss over a small issue and cause him to have to worry about her.

“I’m tired. Let’s go sleep, how about that?” Gu Pingsheng moved, still wanting to pick her up into his arms again.

“Alright.” Evading his movements, she strode away quickly and hopped into bed. “I’ve gone onto the bed myself. Don’t go trying at all to carry me here or there anymore.”

Although the floors were warm, it was still wintertime. The instant she slid under the quilt, she covered her slightly cool feet with her hands amd watched as he walked over.

It seemed there really was no issue. The expression on his face had not s.h.i.+fted in the slightest, and the way he walked looked normal as well … She focused intently on observing whether, out of worry for her, he was simply forcing himself to pretend nothing was wrong. When Gu Pingsheng slipped off his jeans, she could not help fixing her eyes on the area around his waist and thigh, scrutinizing it carefully.

And then she suddenly realized that … she had been staring at him for a long time already.

“Finished looking?” He sat down on the edge of the bed and was about to lift up the covers.

Unexpectedly, she placed her hand on top of the edge of the quilt to hold it down. “How about you go sleep in the guest room tonight? Your current condition … is not too suitable for sleeping with me …” She put great efforts into carefully wording her explanation, but in the end, this created the opposite effect to what she wanted and brought about laughter from Gu Pingsheng.

“Don’t worry.” He lifted open the down quilt and with one arm, pulled her towards himself so that she was snug against him. In a low voice, he stated, “I’ll be able to handle such a simple task.”

With regard to whether a man can handle the scenario of sharing a bed, this, indeed, is something that should not be questioned directly to his face. Tong Yan used several seconds to criticize and correct herself and then finally lifted her arms and slid them around his waist. Burying her face into his shoulder, she struggled with herself for a long while before finally, with some difficulty, raising her head and looking directly at him to say, “How about I take the lead?”

She at last discovered the only drawback to his deafness.

These words that should have been quietly murmured in an extremely shy voice had needed to be stated while gazing straight into his eyes.

All her facial expressions, mental processes, and evasiveness of her eyes could not at all escape his detection …

Hence, the direct result of this was that Gu Pingsheng completely used action to demonstrate his ability.

The entire night, they tossed about together in the bed. The down quilt had fallen entirely to the floor. On their bodies, layer after layer of sweat would dissipate, only to form once again on their skin. The wafts of air from the central heating seemed to blow directly onto their bodies, feeling like a slightly damp and cool, yet soft caress.

In the end, her arms were so limp she could barely hold onto him, and haphazardly, they rested on his shoulders.

When at last she utterly fell into a deep slumber, she still had not discerned whether the sky outside the window had lightened already.

The following day, she only had two periods of cla.s.ses, both of which were physics.

She had not expected that, in order to be able to see Gu Pingsheng off, the first time in her entire university career that she skipped cla.s.s would be dedicated to Zhao Yin.

“When Teacher Zhao does a roll call for this first time and discovers that I’m not there, will I be put directly onto her blacklist? But I guess it’s not big deal anyway. With you around, I reckon she blacklisted me very early on …” She deliberately jested at the airport customs entrance, trying to cover up her downcast spirits.

Gu Pingsheng did not speak. From his jeans, he pulled out his wallet and took out a photo from inside, handing it to her.

When he gave it to her, it was face down.

She flipped it over. It turned out to be the photograph taken that time when she had been forced to accompany him to climb the Great Wall. In the photograph, her cheeks were rosy and the sheen of sweat could be seen on her forehead, while beside her, he faced into the sunlight with a smile, looking very handsome.

At the time, the two of them had not yet developed a close relations.h.i.+p, so naturally, when they took the photograph, they had been stiff and reserved.

Even though they had been standing so close their bodies were touching, their expressions had been deliberately proper. Now, looking back at it, there was an additional sense of amus.e.m.e.nt.

What sort of process had brought two people together?

She mulled over this carefully but still was unable to think of any noteworthy event or moment that had occurred. But, they were together now. Baffling, yet it also felt as if this was what it ought to be.

She slipped the photo into her backpack, and then, purposely putting on a pouty manner, she took ahold of his hand. In that instant when their fingers intertwined together, a strong feeling of sadness and not wanting to part from him suddenly swelled upwards. She simply could not at all make herself let go of that hand.

“When you’re back in the U.S., will you run into your first girlfriend? Or maybe some of those blonde or brown-haired ex-girlfriends?” As she joked, she forced herself to pull her hand back, but unexpectedly, he tightened his grip on her, not allowing her to escape.

His hold was very strong, but the smile on his face was very relaxed. “Likely not. My schedule is really packed, so packed, in fact, that I can only spend time in either the hospital or at home.”

“Fine, I’ll believe you for now.” Since she could not break loose of his grasp, she instead applied strength to her hands so that her hold on him was even tighter than his grip on her. “You promised me you would return in half a year, so you must be back in half a year. Otherwise … if you’re late, you won’t be waited for.”

Actually, what she really wanted to say was, it did not need to be perfect; he did not need to seem like he was a completely healthy person before he returned. And he could take his time with any rehabilitative therapy … However, after hesitating for a long while, she still did not end up speaking these words out.

There the two of them stood, hand tightly in hand. All around were people bidding their farewells and many, many words of parting being spoken. But she truly did not know what else she should say and merely tried with all her might to maintain a smile and suppress all her worries into the deepest reaches of her heart.

Only when it was time for him to go into customs did her gaze completely mist over. Right as she was about to steel herself and turn around to leave, Gu Pingsheng suddenly stopped at the customs entrance and looked in her direction.

She thought he wanted to say something.

Merely smiling, he closed his left hand into a fist, brought it up to his lips, and kissed the band that encircled his ring finger. And then, bringing that hand down again, he stepped through the entryway to customs.

When the new semester began, many people also started to systematically plan out their futures.

One afternoon, Shen Yao furtively tugged Tong Yan over in front of her computer and said, “Can you take a look at this email and tell me what you think about the tone? I’m writing it to the old guy from the United Nations, the one from the conference last time. I’m hoping he will write a letter of recommendation for me.”

Pulling over a chair, Tong Yan took a seat and began to seriously read through her letter.

After reading for a while, Tong Yan told her with furrowed brows, “I think, from a content perspective, it should be pretty good. As for your grammar and sentence structure … you be the judge of that. My English is not nearly as good as yours.”

Shen Yao told her some of her plans, and from the sounds of them, she had put much thought into them, to the point that she had even started calculating out what grade point average she must achieve this term before her applications to certain universities would be accepted.

For law students like them, it was actually very difficult to obtain scholars.h.i.+ps at any university that was particularly good because, after all, there was a difference between how universities abroad and Chinese universities viewed law school.

Similar to medical school, law schools in the United States require that students first earn an undergraduate degree before they are eligible to apply to study law. However, in China, it is simply, if you don’t know what to study, then go take law.

“One of my friends who won an award together with me when we were in primary school has already graduated from a music conservatory in Germany.” Shen Yao sighed wistfully, “My dream in the very beginning had actually been to be a pianist, but because of early dating, I wasted my time. Now the other person is already a professional violinist and I’m just still an ordinary undergrad student … So, Tong Yan, I absolutely must become a lawyer.”

Seeing that this was a rare instance where she was being so serious, Tong Yan obliged her by dreaming with her about the future.

When her eyes happened to sweep over the clock on the computer, she abruptly leapt to her feet. “Oh shoot, I’m finished! I have physics this afternoon.”

Grabbing her books and bicycle key, she unlocked her bicycle and dashed away.

Because it was Monday afternoon, there were people everywhere on the campus.

With only another five minutes before cla.s.s started, everyone was in a hurry, and bicycles were being ridden as if they were in a high-speed race … She sped along on the small pathway between the several dozen dormitory buildings, and right as she turned a corner, she managed to successfully collide head-on into three or four girls who had been riding side-by-side in a row and heading directly toward her.

A peal of shrieks rose up as girls and bicycles all crashed to the ground.

Her teeth clenched in a painful grimace, Tong Yan pulled herself up from the ground. Her physics book had been flung somewhere far away.

This was truly a year of ill luck.

All the while saying sorry, she and the other girls picked up the fallen bicycles. Fortunately, they were all students, so aside from apologizing to one another, no dispute arose between them.

It was only after those people had left that she discovered there was a tear in her down jacket because of the fall. Soft, white feathers could faintly be seen poking out from the royal blue … Although the rip was not large, it still pained her terribly.

This was Gu Pingsheng’s Christmas gift to her.

“Tong Yan,” someone spoke up, handing her book to her, “you okay?”

Looking up, she saw it was that Cla.s.s Rep Shen. She had not seen him since the end of her elective course last semester.

“Thanks.” She took it from him. “I can’t talk right now. I’m going to be late for cla.s.s.”

Upon saying this, she was going to ride away, but Cla.s.s Rep Shen unexpectedly stretched out an arm and grabbed ahold of the back of her seat. “Can I ask you a question?”

Puzzled, she turned back to look at him.

There was uncertainty in Cla.s.s Rep Shen’s eyes, but hesitantly, he still voiced his question. “I’ve heard people say that you and your faculty’s Teacher Gu are together now, and that Teacher Gu even resigned because of this?”

Many people walked by beside them, and because the fall she had taken had left her in a bit of a sorry state, where her pants and down jacket both had several rips in them, pa.s.sersby were constantly turning to glance their way. Those who did not know them even thought that they were a couple who had gotten into a quarrel plus a physical fight …

She took another look at her watch. “I really am late.”

That boy was still as introverted as before and did not have the courage to ask a second time.

Due to this unexpected mishap, by the time she stepped into the cla.s.sroom, she was already ten minutes late.

She had taken three semesters of Zhao Yin’s cla.s.s already and knew that this teacher had a practice of taking a roll call right after she walked into cla.s.s. The attendance check did not contribute to actual grades, but students with poor attendance would absolutely not receive credits for her course.

Once Tong Yan entered the teaching building, she deliberately removed her jacket and hugged it in her arms. In that five hundred-person lecture theatre, the instant she walked through the door, she attracted the attention of everyone.

At that moment, Zhao Yin, with chalk in hand, was writing out notes on the blackboard and did not seem to have noticed her.

She felt a little awkward. Part of this was because she was late, but another part was because of Gu Pingsheng.

Out of the three, four hundred people present, ninety percent of them were university freshmen, and now, they curiously appraised this person who was standing at the doorway.

“Teacher Zhao,” she finally greeted when she saw Zhao Yin set down the chalk.

“You’re late?” Zhao Yin glanced at her, then walked over to the podium to flip through the attendance book. “You did not show up last cla.s.s either. Tong Yan, if this semester you still do not pa.s.s and have to re-take the course in your fourth year, it will directly impact your interns.h.i.+p. Your faculty requires that your interns.h.i.+p term is an entire year of full-time work, and no interns.h.i.+p employer will give you a half day off, twice a week to come back and attend cla.s.s.”

“I’m sorry, Teacher Zhao. Last week, I had some personal family matters. I won’t skip cla.s.s again.”

Zhao Yin opened her book and did not look at her again. “Go find a seat.”

A simple little incident. Zhao Yin had not purposely tried to be hard on her and make things difficult, but Tong Yan still felt very uneasy, especially when she thought of what Cla.s.s Rep Shen had said.

That night when she returned to her dormitory room, she specifically told Shen Yao about this incident. Chomping on her soy-sauced pork chop, Shen Yao asked her in a voice m.u.f.fled by the food, “Tong Yan, what are you afraid of? So if people talk, are you going to lose anything? If you ask me, I’d say you should learn from w.a.n.g Xiaoru and her superstar style. No matter how dreadful your opinions of her may be, she still only does what she pleases in her own way and is just living a better and better life.”

The aroma of soy-sauced pork chop had infused their entire dorm room.

Shen Yao munched down her dinner while starting her daily, two hour-long, long-distance lovey-dovey talk time.