You're my wife, don't doubt it!

"How was it? How was it?" Xiao Yao pushed the test paper over. "Did you do it right?"

Yu Luying pursed her lips and tilted her head to look: "Yes!"

"Hurry up and praise me!"

"Xiao Yao is so smart!" Yu Luying's praise seemed to come from the heart.

“Uh, but this question…” Xiao Yao pushed the test paper out again.

"This question actually uses the same formula as before, but it's been changed to a different form just to trick you..."

Before I knew it, I had finished the test paper, leaving only the last three big questions.

Xiao Yao's mind was exhausted and he was feeling drowsy, but his body was restless from sitting for so long.

Yu Luying smiled and said, "Let's rest for fifteen minutes, then we'll switch to the physics test."

The girl expected the boy to groan, but to her surprise, he simply nodded as if it were a matter of course and said, "I guarantee I'll complete the mission!"

"Great! Very energetic." Yu Luying said, then stood up with a smile and walked towards the photo booth.

"Where are you going?" Xiao Yao asked her.

"Go get some water," Yu Luying said.

Xiao Yao jumped up and ran outside: "I'll go buy you a drink. What do you want to drink? Meinianda or something else?"

Yu Luying lowered her head and thought for a second: "Hmm."

Xiao Yao skipped and hopped through the narrow and winding alleyways, passing the public toilet and spittoon at the alley entrance, and bought four glass bottles of Meinianda.

"Two bottles chilled, two bottles not chilled!"

He thought the glass bottle tasted better and had more carbonation, but they wouldn't let him take the bottle away. He had no choice but to give them two coins as a deposit.

The boy yawned deeply, thinking about the physics test he had to do later, and all he wanted to do was take a nap with any of the three girls in his family.

He suddenly remembered that Yu Luying and Shen Jie both liked to drink coffee, so he went to the newly opened "Kibak" coffee shop across the street and bought two hot lattes.

Xiao Yao originally wanted to buy four cups, but "Kiba" was too expensive—more than thirty yuan a cup, and he couldn't bear to drink it.

When he got home, he found that Yu Luying was not resting on the sofa or anywhere else, but was still sitting at the dining table, helping him choose a test paper of moderate difficulty.

"Teacher Yu, please." Xiao Yao placed a bottle of lukewarm Mirinda and a latte in front of Yu Luying.

"Don't call me Teacher Yu," Yu Luying continued, still engrossed in her test paper. "That's what everyone calls my mom."

"Uh..." Xiao Yao said "uh" as he opened the wardrobe door.

Shen Jie had already gotten up, but Shen Tianyun was not in the room.

While rummaging through drawers and cabinets looking for her things, she had a wireless earphone clipped to her ear... What was it called again? Bluetooth? She was using this Bluetooth earphone to make a phone call connected to Shen Tianyun's white "smartphone".

"Honey, the coffee's here." Xiao Yao placed the Meinian coffee on the table and eagerly handed it to Shen Jie.

Shen Jie nodded to him, took the coffee, and took a small sip.

"Come out and keep us company as soon as you finish your call. It's awkward with just the two of us," Xiao Yao added after thinking for a moment.

"Ahhh." Shen Jie didn't know who she was talking to, she took off her headphones, and waved her hand at Xiao Yao.

The boy kept turning back as he went into the closet and closed the door.

"Who is it?" A woman's voice came through the Bluetooth earphones that the girl had put back on.

The woman's voice was clear and mellow, like a cup of warm tea, rich yet not harsh, or like a gentle, warm breeze. When she spoke, her voice was deep and confident, giving people a sense of maturity and composure.

Overall, she doesn't look like a 47-year-old woman; she looks like she's only in her early 30s.

“Who else could it be?” the girl Shen Jie said, “Xiao Yao.”

A gentle, tolerant laugh came from the other end of the phone: "I'll be going back to Shanghai in a while. Can I see him then?"

“Sure,” the young woman Shen Jie opened another drawer and closed it. “I’m going home anyway, so it’s your turn to keep him company.”

Then, Shen Jie let out a soft, ambiguous laugh on the other end of the phone: "Okay."

“Shen Jie,” Shen Jie walked to Shen Tianyun’s bedside, sat down gently, and placed her hands loosely on her thighs: “Tell me, did I do the right thing?”

"I don't know about that," Shen Jie replied from the future.

"I was the one who brought them together, but I'm still a little upset and jealous," Shen Jie said. "Am I being unreasonable?"

“Choices always come at a price,” Shen Jie replied after a moment’s thought.

“If you were me,” Shen Jie said, “no, you were me to begin with. If you traveled back in time and were reborn at the age of 17, would you make the same choice as me?”

“…No.” Shen Jie replied after a few seconds of silence.

"So that means I did something wrong?" Shen Jie's voice became tense. "You mean I'll regret what I did in the future?"

"Perhaps it's because people always harbor fantasies and regrets about the path they didn't choose." Shen Jie's voice became much lower in the future.

Both of them—actually, she was alone—fell silent.

The young girl, Shen Jie, pondered the words she had just heard, but after thinking about them for a long time, she still couldn't understand their meaning.

Just as she was about to ask a question, Shen Jie spoke up again.

“The reason I made this choice,” Shen Jie said in the future, “is perhaps because I don’t know Yu Luying. When I met Xiao Yao, she was already gone—I think if I had known her, I might have made the same choice as you.”

"Not here... what do you mean?" The young girl, Shen Jie, was taken aback.

“It means exactly what you think,” Shen Jie said in the future.

"Why? When?" The smile on Shen Jie's face froze. She stood up abruptly, spilling a cup of coffee on the floor. "How did she die?"

"I don't know that."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" The girl, Shen Jie, asked urgently.

"You didn't tell me earlier that you knew that name, did you?" Shen Jie's attitude hardened in the future.

"...Could you help me find out? There should be some channels, right?" Shen Jie stood up and paced back and forth in the room. "By the way, ask Xiao Yao, your Xiao Yao."

"...I understand." After a long pause, the other party gave this ambiguous answer.

"Then, I'll leave it to you, Shen Jie," said the young girl, Shen Jie.

at the same time.

No, to be precise, thirty years ago.

"Come on, let's do the test." Yu Luying unfolded the physics test she had chosen in front of the boy.

"We agreed on a 15-minute break, right? Let me enjoy myself," Xiao Yao replied, holding up his iced Meinian drink. "Have a chat with me."

“We’ve already rested for 15 minutes,” Yu Luying told him. “Doesn’t buying drinks count as time?”

Xiao Yao: "..."

"Okay, what do you want to talk about?" Yu Luying didn't use a straw, but instead lifted the paper lid of her coffee cup.

Xiao Yao was stumped by the question and didn't know what to talk about for a moment.

“This ‘Meinianda’,” Xiao Yao said, pointing to the soda on the table, “means that you have to drink it every year.”

"what?"

“Look at this character ‘答’ (da), it has a mouth at the bottom, which means to drink,” Xiao Yao said. “Because Meinianda is so delicious, we drink it every year.”

Yu Luying chuckled and quickly covered her mouth: "No way... You're not going to be a screenwriter, you're going to be an advertising copywriter, right?"

"I don't want to do any of this crap advertising copy," Xiao Yao thought. But it was truly remarkable that such a boring joke could make the girl laugh: "When I was little, my cousin used to argue with me about Meinian like that."

"..." Yu Luying fell silent again.

"Then..." Xiao Yao hesitated for a long time before finally managing to say, "So, you really want to be my girlfriend?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how incredibly stupid he had been.

Yu Luying didn't speak, but picked up the draft paper in front of her, wrote five delicate characters, "It depends on you," and then pushed it in front of Xiao Yao.

"Why would you switch to written communication if nothing's wrong?" Xiao Yao asked.

"Because your question was too vulgar, I couldn't answer it," Yu Luying said seriously.

How is that being a hooligan?

Oh! Xiao Yao thought again, so that means as long as it's written down, it's acceptable to be a hooligan, right?

Xiao Yao picked up his pen and wrote on his notebook: "When I was cooking just now, I saw your hands and I thought, if I were to marry you, I would never let you do any housework."

Upon seeing this line, Yu Luying blushed slightly and wrote back: "Don't make promises to others about things you know are impossible."

Xiao Yao didn't know whether "something that he knew was impossible" referred to "marrying you" or "not letting you do housework," but it was probably the former, so it wasn't worth delving into.

“I mean, if…” Xiao Yao began.

Yu Luying ignored him.

"Your socks look great today," Xiao Yao wrote after thinking for a moment.

“You’re not just a hooligan, you’re a filthy hooligan!!” Yu Luying kept her head down, not looking at Xiao Yao, but just wrote these nine words and then added two heavy exclamation marks after them.

"This seems to be the first time I've seen you dressed like this since I've known you," Xiao Yao continued shamelessly.

Yu Luying replied, "This is the etiquette for attending a funeral."