You’re My Belated Happiness

"You are a belated joy"

(It used to be called "Nephrite Wenxiang")

Text/Gu Lezhi

In March, Hangzhou is hot and cold, with spring, summer, autumn and winter every day.

Ruan Yu picked a sunny day and returned to his hometown.

I got news a while ago that the old house there was about to be demolished. Nostalgic people don't listen to this kind of thing the most, anyway, just go back and have a look.

Ruan’s old house was built in the urban-rural junction of Sioux City, surrounded by similar private houses, with a mint green outer wall, three stories high, and a triangular attic on top.

Ruan Yu moved from here after graduating from high school, and hasn't returned for nearly eight years.

The empty house was just cleaned up not long ago, and there was too much dust, just a stale atmosphere. She unlocked the lock and walked around to the attic.

There are some old things from her school days.

The wooden ladder leading to the attic was "creaked". After the curtains were opened, golden light shone in, and some fine dust was floating in the air.

After simple cleaning, Ruan Yu took out an old-fashioned wooden box and sat down cross-legged. As soon as the lid of the box was opened, the phone rang.

She plugged in the earphones and turned it on, and she kept flipping through the box.

There was a female voice in the earplugs: "Ms. Ruan, after receiving this call, it means that as of 1 pm on March 19, you still haven't submitted the outline of the new article to your former editor. And this day, it is before the end of your last book. Eleven months have passed."

Ruan Yu smirked: "It's all my predecessors, you're pretty ruthless in collecting debts?"

"Please correct the debtor's attitude."

She looked at the ceiling and sighed: "Ms. Shen, Ms. Ruan remembers that she said that it will be given to you at the end of March."

"Then did she choose the subject matter?"

Ruan Yu fell down, sniffed and replied, "No."

The person on the other end of the phone became irritable: "It's been eleven months for Ruan Yu, and she has finished confinement after giving birth to a baby! You are a full-time writer, do you want to get rid of it completely?"

She casually opened a diary in the box, looked at it without a glance, and said perfunctorily: "When there is no inspiration, writing a book may not be easier than having a baby."

"You build a car behind closed doors at home every day, who do you expect to inspire you? About writing a book..."

Shen Mingying was still talking, but Ruan Yu suddenly lost his voice. Her eyes fell on the diary, and the whole portrait seemed frozen.

The old paper was slightly yellowed in the sun, and it read this paragraph: "May 11th, the weather is fine. I met Xu Huaisong three times today. For the first time, I went to the office with an English test paper and ran into him. And a few boys in their class were being trained at the penalty station in the corridor. The dean is really the murderer..."

"The second time, I passed by the school art gallery and found him squatting in the grass nearby, feeding a stray cat a can. It turns out that he likes cats too, which is great."

"The third time, when I went to physical education class, I saw him running laps alone in the playground. He looked really good when he took off his glasses. No wonder girls always give him water. I also bought water, but I dared not give it. Dad knows that the objects of my puberty love are the students in his class, and Xu Huaisong may be out of luck! Oh, but he is not necessarily willing to fall in love with me..."

Ruan Yu didn't say anything for a long time, and Shen Mingying thought something had happened to her and asked her where she was.

She replied "At my hometown". After she finished speaking, her eyes brightened a little while looking at the diary: "Mingying, there is it."

"What have you thought of choosing a topic?"

"Yes, background campus, how about theme crush?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and then: "Ballballyou wake up! That kind of groaning youthful mourning love literature has been lost eight hundred years ago, and there is no money to talk about!"

Ruan Yu glanced at the diary: "But... do you remember Xu Huaisong?"

Shen Mingying ignored this strange turning point and asked, "Who?"

"Our high school, the tenth one."

"Oh...just tall, thin and thin, not much, the one you had a crush on back then? You won't meet him in Suzhou, will you?"

Xu Huaisong is indeed from the city of Suzhou, and his grandmother's home is also nearby, but as far as Ruan Yu knows, he left here earlier than her, and the friends around him have not heard of him for many years.

She closed the diary with a smile: "How can it be, do you think it is a novel?" After thinking about it, she said, "I won't talk about it, I will give you the outline in a few days, and it's hanging up."

Back in Hangzhou, Ruan Yu began to ponder the new article that night, finalizing the outline in three days, and for the first time since his inspiration was exhausted in 11 months, his thoughts were like a spring of water.

After sending the outline to Shen Mingying's mailbox, she received her WeChat message: "Isn't this just about you and Xu Huaisong?"

"That's it."

"Are you going to challenge the tragic story of a heroine who is unrequited love for the heroine?"

Heartbroken.

Ruan Yu dialed the voice call: "Am I so stupid as to dig my own grave? It's not a documentary column. The male protagonist doesn't like the heroine anymore. It's still a romantic novel?"

Xu Huaisong doesn't like her, but art comes from life and is higher than life. Can't she adapt the bitter unrequited love into a two-way crush?

Shen Mingying happily on that end: "Understood, dare to love this is the author's lewd essay."

Ruan Yu choked. There is nothing wrong with that.

"Yes, but to remind you, Xu Huaisong's cool style is not so eye-catching now. With the slow-heating elements of campus and secret love, I guess the data in this article will not be too beautiful."

Ruan Yu seemed to think very openly, and said with a smile: "Try it. If it doesn't work, just treat yourself as entertaining yourself. You also said it's lewd prose."

After hanging up the phone, she took a cup of milk tea to the computer, and started looking through the diary, preparing to pick a few slogans and try to write. It’s been a long time since I started writing, so I have to find the feel first.

After turning a few times, she stopped on a page with an unusually large number of words.

The paper is densely packed, and the handwriting dances with dragons and phoenixes, and it seems to indicate surging turbulence. The recorded time is New Year's Day in the third year of high school.

Ruan Yu recalled it for a moment and remembered it.

That day was the entire high school era. In that one-man drama-style secret love, she and Xu Huaisong had the closest relationship.

New Year's Eve fireworks at midnight that night, the school playground was crowded with people. She pretended to be inadvertent and stood quietly on his right. She did not expect the fire tree and silver flower to explode for a moment, and he suddenly held her hand.

She tilted her head in surprise, but in the fading light and shadow, she saw the sorry look on his face.

He released his hand, pushed the thin-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, and said embarrassingly, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake."

Ruan Yu typed this paragraph into the document.

But she guessed that when the reader saw this, she must have had an idea with her at the beginning: Since the male protagonist said "wrong", there should always be a "right" person. It seems that the person is not the heroine.

Boring! Discard the article!

She held her head and thought for a while, typed a line of words, and added a paragraph: After saying this, his heart beat like a drum, and the thumping sound from his chest was more violent than the fireworks above his head.

——This implies that the so-called "wrong" is an excuse for the male protagonist.

After finishing writing, Ruan Yu took a sip of the milk tea at hand.

Why is it really a bit self-entertaining?

At the same moment, in a private attic in the Sioux City area to be demolished more than a hundred kilometers away, a girl in school uniform ran downstairs with a box: "Mom, are these broken copper and iron still useful?"

Tao Rong glanced in her hand: "It's all your brother's things from high school. Pack them up."

Xu Huaishi said "Oh", put aside the dusty box, and picked up an old mobile phone inside: "Brother used such a broken old phone when he was in high school? It really feels like a time."

"I'm afraid it will affect my studies, so I bought it for him." Tao Rong glanced at her and said, "Don't disturb your brother's things."

"Isn't it just a broken phone, I can't turn it on without power..." She was muttering while pressing the power button, but she was shocked when the phone screen suddenly turned on.

So many years have passed. Is this a mobile phone or a fighter jet?

Xu Huaishi was stunned. Seeing Tao Rong look over, he hurriedly hid the phone, squatted down and immersed himself in the whole thing, then turned his back and started secretly making a fuss.

Old-fashioned non-smart phones, there is no password after booting, long press the star key, and then click "confirm" to unlock. She entered the main page with a few random clicks, and then clicked twice to see "Phonebook".

Not a single contact.

When I returned to the "SMS" interface, I did not see a single message.

Yes, this is very "Xu Huai Song".

There was nothing. She planned to shut down, but when she quit, she noticed the number at the bottom of the page, on the side of the "Draft Box" column: 327.

Three hundred and twenty-seven drafts? Is her brother doing math problems on this elderly machine?

Xu Huaishi struggled for a while, clicked in, and opened one at will.

The recipient is empty. Editing time: 0:10, January 1, 2010. Content: "It's lie to you, it's not wrong. Happy New Year."

Xu Huaishi shook his hand, and smelled a breath of puppy love across the screen.

Puppy love? What kind of person is her brother?

The gesture of holding her phone suddenly became religious.

Because this may not be an ordinary old machine, but...a new continent that has not been discovered yet.

The author has something to say: Today, I will tell you a love story from the demolition, a story triggered by the old age.