My girlfriend was reborn.

Chapter 21 The Library, A Cup of Coffee

Jiangcheng City Library.

The new building, located in the city center, was renovated five years ago. It is a four-story building, with a coffee shop on the basement level. Zhou Heming has never drunk the coffee there. He mostly uses the tables upstairs to read, study, and write.

The rain continued. Unlike the height of summer, when sudden storms come and go quickly, this season's continuous drizzle, which can now be called autumn rain, sometimes lasts for several days, causing mushrooms to grow in the corners of wooden doors.

Zhou Heming remembers that when he was a child, a small white mushroom grew on the door frame of the bathroom at home. His mother said to let nature take its course and did not forcibly break it off. Every time he passed by, Zhou Heming would carefully observe it.

But later, the mushroom still disappeared.

"Hmm~ So that's what it's like at this time."

Cheng Shuangjiang looked around, feeling a strange sense of unease, like an old man leaving home and a young child returning.

The two strolled around the literature section of the library, one after the other.

“You know, Ah He, you once said that all of humanity’s stories had already been written in Shakespeare’s time, and that later generations were just repeating the stories of their predecessors.”

My fingers traced from Macbeth to King Lear, finally settling on Hamlet.

"The past? It should be the 'future'."

Zhou Heming was speechless. He had only read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet at most, so he probably didn't have such a high opinion of Shakespeare.

"That's right~"

Cheng Shuangjiang nodded and continued forward.

They passed Dickens, paused in front of Ibsen, went past Hemingway, and arrived at Márquez's bookshelf.

Zhou Heming randomly picked up a hardcover copy of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," flipped through a couple of pages, trying to find the bitter almond scent of love, but only saw a long, headache-inducing string of names.

"My only impression of it is that section in the textbook."

He told the truth.

"This book definitely requires a bit of life experience to get into."

The girl took the book from his hand and sighed with some regret.

"Actually, many books and movies evoke completely different feelings when you read them as a child and when you watch them as an adult. It's just a pity that you can't forget the content and watch them again."

"I actually quite enjoy watching movies repeatedly."

After all, he was someone who would reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy every year. Zhou Heming remembered that after the end of elementary school, he would pack his things and go home, and then start reading The Fellowship of the Ring and read all the way to The Lord of the Rings. He would be so engrossed in reading that he would forget to eat or sleep, and by the time the story of Middle-earth ended, it was already late at night.

But after the third year of junior high school, he no longer had that mindset.

"Oh right, the coffee shops around here seem to show movies every Sunday afternoon."

As if remembering something, Cheng Shuangjiang naturally took Zhou Heming's hand.

Because of the bandages, the two could only hold hands with a few fingers, which made them seem a little awkward and restrained, but this distance was just right for eighteen-year-old Zhou Heming.

The library on the basement floor wasn't crowded at the moment. After all, a cup of coffee costs fifteen yuan, which is 50% more expensive than the cheap hot pot at a certain restaurant. Unless the study tables and chairs upstairs are full, people are too embarrassed to sit here for free.

Cheng Shuangjiang seemed to have no such concerns at all, and directly pulled Zhou Heming to sit down near the projection screen on one side, without any intention of ordering food.

Zhou Heming felt uneasy. He glanced at the waiter wiping the table and was surprised to find that he was struggling and seemed to be injured. It wasn't until the young man in uniform came to their table and wiped it that Zhou Heming realized that he might be disabled.

"Please, make yourselves at home, don't be shy."

The young man's voice was a little hesitant. His gaze swept over Cheng Shuangjiang's arm, which was in a cast, and he smiled at the two of them.

"Thank you, I'm really looking forward to the movie!"

Cheng Shuangjiang responded gently, without showing any discrimination because of the other person's uniqueness.

Zhou Heming nodded hesitantly.

He still reluctantly ordered the cheapest coffee, which cost fifteen yuan.

Come here.

"Many of the waiters and staff here are disabled. The library opened this coffee shop as a way of doing charity and giving them a job."

After the young man left, Cheng Shuangjiang leaned over and whispered in Zhou Heming's ear.

The soft, long hair made Zhou Heming's cheeks itch. He didn't dare turn his head, worried that if he looked over, he would appear too intimate with the girl.

"Then consider it as supporting public welfare."

The deliveryman quickly brought over a paper cup of hot coffee, and Zhou Heming glanced at the girl next to him and pushed it towards her.

"So Ah He had been planning all along that the two of them would share a drink?"

Cheng Shuangjiang picked up the paper cup and asked a question on purpose.

"I'm just not thirsty."

Let's drink together!

Cheng Shuangjiang took a sip of coffee and placed it next to Zhou Heming.

The boy's gaze unconsciously drifted to the brownish-white milk foam residue at the opening of the paper cup lid. For some reason, he had the illusion that this cup of coffee might be very sweet.

"Great! You definitely haven't seen today's movie, Ah He. I'm looking forward to it." "How can you be so sure?"

Zhou Heming turned his gaze to the girl who was looking at the library's official WeChat account on her phone.

"Because we watched this movie together after we met again, and you said it was your first time watching it and you were really looking forward to it."

That was her past, and Zhou Heming's future.

However, Zhou Heming frowned when he saw the phone screen that Cheng Shuangjiang had turned to him.

"I've seen 'Yokomichi Yonosuke'."

The moment he blurted out the answer, he saw Cheng Shuangjiang's previously excited expression suddenly shrink.

Zhou Heming paused for a moment before trying to make amends.

"Perhaps I had already forgotten that I had seen it by then."

certainly not.

Other things are fine, but when it comes to movies and novels, Zhou Heming would never forget whether he has seen them or not.

The reason why Zhou Heming, who is thirty years old, would say this is probably simply because he wants to have a more enjoyable movie-watching experience with Cheng Shuangjiang.

Like a boy in his school days who secretly hid an umbrella in his schoolbag and insisted on waiting with the girl until the rain stopped before leaving.

"You're still too gentle~"

Cheng Shuangjiang smiled again and raised the cup of coffee.

"I'll punish you by making you drink a sip of coffee, to make you suffer a little."

The boy stared at the milk foam on the rim of the cup, which resembled a faint lip print, and took it with as natural a movement as possible, taking a sip.

It's not bitter at all.

After putting down the cup, Zhou Heming suddenly realized something.

Wait a minute, since Cheng Shuangjiang said that the two of them would watch it together in the future, then she was actually planning to watch this movie with him that they had already seen once.

She glanced furtively at the girl beside her, who was watching with great interest as the staff set up the projector and prepared to play a video.

It was as if the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. After watching the boy disappear around the corner, the girl silently took out her neatly folded umbrella from her schoolbag.

*
The two watched the movie again.

Zhou Heming drank the last sip of coffee.

When the end credits song played, the coffee shop was packed, with quite a few people even sitting on the sofas in the back.

Some people were moved by the beauty of youth depicted in the film, some lamented the protagonist's fate, and others felt bewildered and that their time had been wasted.

"Watching it again after watching it once seems to give me a new experience."

After chatting with Zhou Heming about the movie's plot for a while, Cheng Shuangjiang murmured to herself, a genuine smile on her face.

"Watching it with 18-year-old A-He was definitely the right decision~"

"It's really good, worth watching three times."

Zhou Heming was actually thinking at the same time while watching the movie.

Their purpose in coming today was to "relive" the time when Cheng Shuangjiang and Zhou Heming met in the library. Originally, Zhou Heming hadn't found any clues along the way and couldn't figure it out no matter what.

But after the topic of watching movies came up, Zhou Heming suddenly had a flash of inspiration.

Cheng Shuangjiang kept talking about the "reunion" at the age of thirty.

So, what was the connection between the two seventeen-year-olds?

That was definitely not a casual encounter like meeting on a bus or bumping into each other in the hallway when leaving home.

Instead.

As Zhou Heming turned the clock forward a little, he looked back on his memories, as if he had returned to the afternoon when they first met.

He instantly realized what was happening.

Cheng Shuangjiang once considered suicide, but after being "reborn," she gave up on the idea and instead sought out Zhou Heming.

So, in that timeline, did Cheng Shuangjiang really commit suicide?

She lived next door and attempted suicide by burning charcoal, but failed. The reason was...
"By the way, you said before that you only met me once when I was eighteen."

Boom——

As if a soda bottle cap had been pried open, Zhou Heming's mind was filled with the sound of inspiration bursting forth.

"Is this the side of you I saved when I was eighteen, the side of you that was about to commit suicide?"

The boy saw Cheng Shuangjiang's expression pause slightly, and then she bit her lower lip and muttered in a tone that Zhou Heming had never heard before, a mixture of resentment and guilt.

"Ah He, how could you guess so much?"

(End of this chapter)