I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

A brand-new electric piano worth 3,700 yuan is now placed in a corner of the room, along with piano lessons costing 200 yuan per session.

Every time Gu Lingguo had a piano lesson, her mother would sit beside her. This wasn't because she wanted to keep an eye on her daughter's safety all the time—after all, the teacher was a gentle and refined middle-aged woman—she was simply immersed in the atmosphere, an atmosphere she herself couldn't even name.

She was already quite old when she gave birth to Gu Linguo, so if you look closely, you can see that this middle-aged woman, who was already aging, had mottled black and white hair.

The black and white piano keys under the daughter's hands, the black and white hair on the mother's head—just these two images alone could probably inspire Zhu Wenyun to write an essay praising maternal love from a small perspective. However, Gu Lingguo had no such thoughts. After all, whether it was the piano in front of her or the lessons she was taking, the source of the money should be attributed to her father's fingers, which had been injured for a hundred days, and to Chen Junqian, who had pressed the emergency stop button at that time.

However, Gu Linguo still did not object to this, even though her father had unusually told her mother that if she was unwilling, she should not force her to learn this kind of thing. But when the choice was put in her hands, Gu Linguo still chose to agree.

She didn't know why her mother suddenly made her learn piano. Was it to make her look better? Was it to give her another skill? Or was it because of something from the past that she didn't know?

Gu Lingguo was unaware of her mother's intentions, but she was very clear about her own.

In "Anime Fever", I once wrote an analysis of the piano girl type of character using Touma Kazusa from "White Album 2" as an example.

People always assign meaning to all sorts of things, transforming them into so-called images.

Therefore, the piano is a symbol of skill, a medium of emotion, and a symbol of psychological trauma, and ultimately it will return to a kind of cute consumption.

But setting aside the inherent elegance and untouchability of this skill, and the female protagonists who are often portrayed as lonely geniuses in stories, Gu Lingguo only pursues one thing.

The girl's aloof shadow was cast by the lamplight onto the snow-white wall, like a bare branch under the moonlight.

On the fair and nimble fingers, the rounded and neatly trimmed nails gleamed under the incandescent light. It was a pair of very beautiful, slender hands, as if they were born to dance on the black and white piano keys.

For her, three words are enough to sum it up.

That is [attraction].

A unique attraction.

Chapter Twenty-One: Chen Junqian, the Man of the Agreement (Part Two)

The Spring Festival in 2013 was on February 10th, the Year of the Snake in the Chinese lunar calendar.

At the same time, this year was also Chen Xi's birth year in the Chinese zodiac.

"Yes, my mom bought me a lot of red socks and underwear."

It can only be said that this person does not treat Chen Junqian as an outsider. However, considering that they will most likely continue to sleep together on New Year's Eve this year, it seems that there is nothing wrong with it. It feels like unless one day the two of them suddenly grow up and become complete adults, they will still be children in the eyes of their elders.

"Although it's my birth year, I'd rather not choose the snake. If I had to choose my own zodiac sign, the rat would be a million times better than the snake."

As in previous years, Chen Xi and Chen Junqian were helping Wang Hongling run the shop. While doing their winter vacation homework by the electric brazier at the front desk of the chess and card room, Chen Xi took the initiative to chat with her brother about the Chinese zodiac.

"I remember your aunt wanted to buy you a zodiac jade pendant before, but you refused. Is that why?"

"Yeah, I don't want to wear a snake around my neck, it's too scary."

As one of the kids who would immediately change the channel whenever a snake appeared on Animal World, it's not fair to say that his sister is timid. After all, the fear of snakes is indeed ingrained in the minds of most human children and even adults. The only snake-themed animated character that Chen Xi could accept in the cartoons she's watched in recent years is probably Green Pepper, the venomous snake from Steel Armor Kakalong.

Well, the main thing is that this thing is less like a king cobra and more like a walking green poop. Its first transformation is turning around, and its second transformation is simply retracting its leg and kneeling down. It's the kind of thing that even a child like Xixi, who is terrified of snakes, would only laugh at.

"Brother, do you think Guoning also has snakes?"

"Yes, I once caught a water snake when Youwei and I were fishing for crayfish in the countryside. She thought it was an eel at the time."

"...If you keep saying that, I won't even be able to eat eel anymore."

"It's alright. As long as you don't go into those wooded areas, you shouldn't run into snakes. Besides, people are afraid of snakes, and snakes are afraid of people too."

As a small mountain town in southern Anhui, Guoning does indeed have snakes. You can always find snake molts in the corners of walls in the countryside, and occasionally you can see the remains of small snakes that did not follow the rules of stopping at red lights and going at green lights, which were directly sent to another world by trucks. However, most of them are non-venomous snakes like the water snakes he caught. The only venomous snake here should be the bamboo viper, after all, there is a lot of bamboo in Guoning.

"That's what they say... Anyway, I don't want to run into bad luck in my birth year. My mom says that bad luck comes in your birth year, which is why you have to wear red to ward off evil. I hope my bad luck isn't in that way."

"There's no need to worry now. Besides, it's the dead of winter. Even if there were snakes, they would all be hibernating in their burrows. Otherwise, they would freeze into icicles as soon as they came out. And Guoning can't find a little mouse that can play the flute."

"Ah, this is a story from the 'Selected Fairy Tales of Ge Bing' that you gave me before, right? 'The Tears of the Snake Charmer'?"

"Yes, Xixi has a very good memory too."

"of course."

With a slightly arrogant snort, Chen Xi's grades have always been excellent, and she can visibly maintain them until middle school, because history is practically a freebie for her; she's definitely a born history genius.

“After Xixi starts middle school in a few months, she can join our club to have some fun.”

"It sounds like they're conscripting men..."

Perhaps misunderstood by Chen Junqian's busy schedule these past few days, Chen Xi subconsciously made this comment first, but quickly agreed afterward:

Are there any requirements for joining?

"No, because I'm the department head, I can directly approve your formal approval, is that okay?"

"That's alright then. But it seems like your club is really busy. You're still having activities even during winter break. And I'm not particularly interested in literature, so I guess I can only help you out?"

"Ahem, this was just an accident. The main thing is that what Xixi is seeing now is just the surface work we're doing to cover up the true nature of our club. Once we've finished fooling around with the superficial stuff, our club will have time to do what we really want."

As the saying goes, the bigger the storm, the more valuable the fish. The more girls in the club, the easier it is to trigger events and achievements. In order to bring his younger sister into the club, Chen Junqian had already prepared his own set of excuses:

“Xixi isn’t interested in pure literature, but we will work on historical content that you’re interested in later. I’ve also talked to Lin Guo about this, and it will be presented in the form of webcomics or even animation.”

Having jumped from the literature club to the world of animation all of a sudden, Chen Xi was also a little taken aback, and even felt a sense of awe:

"Does the organization still have such skills and talent?"

"Not now, but it will be in the future."

Chen Junqian, a master of empty promises, seized the opportunity to launch into a series of deceptive pronouncements:

"Didn't Xixi say a few days ago that there are a lot of people with strange views on the internet? Since you don't want to engage in a typing war with them, you can try to express your thoughts on history in this way. Do you remember the set of 'Blue Cat Three Kingdoms' that I gave you before? The author of this book was only a high school student when he wrote it."

"That sounds good, so I agree."

Alright, now, apart from Shen Nianqiu who is far away in Lin'an, the other five girls have all been stuffed into the club by Chen Junqian. However, it can't be said that he is just fooling around and making empty promises, because webcomics combined with history is indeed a track. In the next two years, books like "Half-Hour Comic History of China" will gradually emerge and develop towards the field of teenagers and even children. Chen Junqian had participated in similar work in his previous life.

Compared to pure text-based children's literature, comics and even animations are more popular with children. If his own interest in history originated from reading "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty" in elementary school, then more than ten years later, the children of the same age he saw in tutoring classes were holding "If History Was a Bunch of Cats," which can be seen as a facet of the development of the times.

"But can the animation really be made?"

For Chen Xi, who was still watching the animation, the most appealing thing about what Chen Junqian had just said was actually making animation, so after hesitating for a while, she asked him the same question again.

"Of course, Xixi will know when she gets a little older."

"I'm all grown up now, okay?"

“You didn’t say that when you were at my place yesterday and told Grandma you would sleep with me again this year.”

"Tch, that doesn't count."

While bickering with his sister, Chen Junqian took his phone out of his pocket again and opened a domestically produced game that had only been released at the end of last year and already had a certain level of popularity:

Burning Vegetables.

This tower defense game, which is somewhat similar to "Angry Birds," actually confirms what he just said. Animation may indeed be something that is very unattainable for children, but from a company's perspective, it is essentially a business and a means of promotion, especially after the emergence of online animation.

Two years later, with the gold coins earned from the mobile game, the parent company of "Burning Vegetables" collaborated with the parent company of the Pleasant Goat series to launch an animated series of the same name. They even brought in TFboys to sing the ending theme song, which is the famous "Manual of Youth". Chen Junqian, who had never paid attention to this group before, was almost brainwashed by the girls in his class to the point of "follow me, left hand, right hand, one slow motion".

Leaving aside the fact that the gameplay could not be innovated and gradually fell behind the times, just looking at the last two years, this development method has indeed brought considerable revenue and traffic to the game. Three Fierce Dogs is also a company that determined its cartoon character from the beginning of its business, and it has a natural advantage in this regard.

Therefore, the group of three fierce men will naturally establish a related animation department later.

Of course, a small middle school club of just a few people couldn't produce animation.

But foreign players will also be available at that time.

This was also what Chen Junqian and Gu Linguo had agreed upon.

----------------------------------

The Spring Festival of 2013 was not very lively for children; in fact, it was rather quiet.

Since the beginning of this year, Guoning City, which is striving to become a civilized city, has issued relevant regulations prohibiting the setting off of fireworks and firecrackers. As a result, Xu Youwei has lost the opportunity to do it again this year. It is unknown whether she will remember the scene of that last fireworks display in a few years.

Shen Nianqiu was also unable to do the same as last year. With the high school entrance exam approaching, her entire winter vacation had been compressed into a week centered around New Year's Eve and the first day of the new year. She needed to stay at school for tutoring before and after, so naturally she couldn't come to Guoning or have Chen Junqian go to Lin'an to find her.

Studying and preparing for the high school entrance exam are always the most important things, after all, there are only four months left.

On the eve of the Lunar New Year, Chen Junqian, as always, played games with his younger sister while talking on the phone with his older sister. This year, instead of racking their brains over a table of mahjong tiles, they played the Spring Festival Gala in the background and sat on the sofa, each taking one life to play Temple Run, which was also released last year.

With the huge success of Temple Run, parkour games officially entered the history of smartphone games. Later, classic works such as Subway Surfers and Temple Run, which cost Zhong Yu at least one-fifth of his pocket money during his three years of junior high school, were born.

Incidentally, based on Chen Junqian's understanding of Zhong Yu, this is roughly how he spent his pocket money in junior high school.

One-fifth goes to his own food and drink, one-fifth to his girlfriend, one-fifth to League of Legends, one-fifth to Counter-Strike Online, and the last one-fifth to Temple Run.

It can only be said that the last reason for Zhong Yu, a veteran who has been playing CF since its launch, to quit the game was undoubtedly the "Rage of the Qilin" update last December. The two hero-level weapons, Qilin and Fire Qilin, priced as high as 688 and 888 respectively, dazzled all players.

It's not that Zhong Yu can't afford those two permanent hero-level weapons; after all, he's already spent a lot of money on the game. But he just feels that playing like this isn't very interesting. This is clearly just the beginning, and since they'll definitely be giving you a whole bunch of so-called hero-level weapons in the future, he might as well quit the game.

"Are you with your sister today too?"

Shen Nianqiu's voice on the other end of the phone pulled Chen Junqian back to reality. Although it was just over the phone, Chen Junqian could still sense the faint fatigue in her voice. After all, she was different from other girls who would rush over to tell him anything. Even though he had said something similar to Shen Nianqiu before, the long-distance relationship between them was still there, so he couldn't accompany her the whole time.

"Yeah, Xixi and I are playing Temple Run."

Glancing at his sister, who seemed oblivious to his call with Shen Nianqiu and whose attention was entirely focused on the figure running and fleeing on the phone screen, Chen Junqian proactively asked again:

"How have you been lately, sister? You sound quite tired."

"Yeah, it must be a bit tiring. Didn't I tell my brother before? One of the girls in our dorm dropped out of school, and now she just wanders around the school gate every day while we're having our winter break tutoring sessions."

"Is my sister interested too?"

"What's so tempting about this? I think she'll regret it sooner or later. Giving up the high school entrance exam and running away to escape... Forget it, there's no point in talking about this during the New Year. I hope next year will be better—may she get good results on the high school entrance exam."

Hearing what sounded like stretching, Shen Nianqiu, who was lying in bed, was apparently called by her parents on the other end of the phone. After responding, she said goodbye to Chen Junqian for the time being.

"My mom wants me to come over, I'll call you back later."

"Yes, I know it was before midnight."

Since 2009, the other person has always said "Happy New Year" to him at that exact time, just like the TV host. This has become a tacit agreement between the two of them.

Just as Chen Junqian hung up on Shen Nianqiu and took over the temple escape that had cost him his life, another call suddenly came in.

It was Lin Mu, who had never called him at this time before.

What the other party wanted to talk about was, of course, the thing the two of them had agreed on a year ago.

A year has passed in the blink of an eye, and now it's time to fulfill the agreement.

"Then, remember to come back to my hometown with me tomorrow, Qianqian—"