I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

In terms of sheer quantity, it's as if they've already covered the amount needed for the next few months.

Just like the magical system of compensatory leave that is widely criticized by students, it is impossible for a person to work for fifty years and then take ten years of vacation. In fact, she had been missing him and the feeling of kissing him ever since the day after she returned to Hangzhou from separating from Chen Junqian.

When you can't have something, the only thing you can do is not forget it.

Shen Nianqiu wasn't a particularly artistic girl, and she never held the pessimistic view that "as long as you love someone from the bottom of your heart, your life will be saved, even if you can't live with them." She simply felt that the two of them should be together, and if they couldn't be together, it would have been better if they had never met in the vast sea of ​​people in the first place.

When someone doesn't want to accept a relationship from someone in the first place, no matter how carefully the other person tries to avoid the surging crowds, as if afraid of hurting her, being sensitive, being affected by everything around her, or being ridiculed and mocked, when they approach her one-on-one, she will still feel like there are people coming and going around her, countless gazes are like thorns in her back, countless comments fill her ears, and giving a reply feels like it takes immense courage.

But if she really wants to accept someone's relationship, she would want the whole world to witness it. No matter how crowded and intense the crowds are, all the stares and discussions will not affect her in the slightest. She just wants to stand at the center of the world stage and show all the details as if no one else is there.

After all, when a person is vulnerable enough, they will worry about getting hurt even if they touch cotton, and they will let happiness slip through their fingers even if it is within reach.

When she is strong enough, there is no wall she cannot cross, no fortress she cannot climb over, and no moral concern she cannot let go of. In fact, there is no God who can control her.

Last night, the latest news notifications appeared on my phone screen. Probably not many high school students would care about those meetings and policies that seemed so distant to them. After all, the only world they could see right now was their school and home, and the only main task they could take on was the college entrance examination.

However, Shen Nianqiu was different. Rather, she had been closely following the news. The rumors she had heard before finally became a tangible reality. Around the same time, she received a text message from her mother telling her not to come home for the next two weekends and that they could send her anything she needed.

The nightmare she had before going to Beijing became a real nightmare, casting a huge shadow at her with bared teeth and claws. Even though Shen Nianqiu was not at home, she could easily imagine the scene at home right now.

To be fair, with her daughter already this old, her parents, who are over forty, should have reached the stage where "a kiss between middle-aged couples can cause nightmares all night long." Otherwise, her mother wouldn't have bought all those external aids with different functions for the home so early.

The thought of her mother, who always said she was still young but whose figure had long since changed and who was bloated, not only having to go to lingerie stores she had never been to before to buy those brightly colored lingeries that she had never worn before, but also having to squeeze her belly fat to wear them, made Shen Nianqiu feel both sad and desolate. In the end, she ended up laughing alone in her dormitory, holding her phone in her blanket.

Even so, they still wanted a child.

With all her roommates gone home and her alone in the dorm, Shen Nianqiu could comfortably use the shower room on her floor.

The half-mirror on the washstand was blurred by the steam, and the girl reached out and wiped it, leaving a noticeable bright mark that reflected her snow-white neck.

Shen Nianqiu wiped away the water vapor from the mirror little by little, and then took off her clothes one by one and placed them aside.

She was always different from her mother; at sixteen, she was in the prime of her youth.

Watching the water droplets pouring down from her head roll down her undulating curves to her flat, smooth abdomen, I realized that her consistent exercise and dance training from childhood had made her neither too thin nor without an ounce of excess fat. All that could be seen were healthy and beautiful abdominal lines.

In China, the loose-fitting, almost baggy school uniforms have a remarkable effect on blurring gender characteristics and reducing the attractiveness of the opposite sex, especially after entering the autumn and winter seasons. It can only be said that the consensus on preventing early romantic relationships is something that middle schools in various places have recognized and strictly implemented. As a result, many students who have no experience in this area feel strange or even disconnected when they are encouraged by their families to find a girlfriend when they enter university.

"younger brother--"

The girl leaned against the tiled wall of the shower room and muttered to herself.

This was certainly not the first time she had used that title.

Even so, Shen Nianqiu could still clearly hear in her voice, which was as sweet as the handmade pastries the other person had given her, that this term of address, which she was used to saying all the time and which should refer to family relationships, was now making its grand entrance amidst her chaotic thoughts that alternated between coldness and heat.

P.S.: Thank you for reading and subscribing.

PS2: This chapter is 3,000 words long, but it's being combined with the previous half-chapter to count as one extra chapter.

Chapter 95: Winter Warmth (Part 2)

After winter arrives, it becomes noticeable that the milk tea shops near the school are doing much better business. With the successive entry of milk tea brands such as Subway and Typhoon Shelter into the small city of Guoning, milk teas that were originally popular among students, such as Xiangpiaopiao and Youlemei, which require brewing themselves, are gradually withdrawing from the market. After all, for the same price, you can save time and effort by buying a hot red bean or pudding milk tea at a milk tea shop.

Lin Mu still maintains the habit of bringing a bag of Want Want Little Buns and asking the shop staff to add them to her drink. Over time, even the shop staff at the milk tea shop have come to know her. She orders double red beans and 70% sugar for her red bean milk tea, and double pearls for her pearl milk tea. Compared to simply drinking it, Mu Mu seems to prefer the feeling of chewing something in her mouth.

In her own words, if it were just drinking, she could gulp it down in no time. Adding half a cup of toppings would effectively extend the time it would take her to finish the whole cup. Besides, she certainly didn't lack the money. Even if she didn't bring any with her, her childhood sweetheart Chen Junqian, who was always by her side, would be responsible for paying the bill.

Thanks to Lin Mu's promotion, Chen Junqian has probably drunk far more milk tea since his rebirth than he did in his previous life at this time. Xu Youwei and the other girls are also often dragged along to buy some. It's common to see Chen Junqian packing up several cups of milk tea after school and carrying them back to the club activity room in a very imposing manner.

Even so, Zhu Wenyun was always the kind of girl who would never buy milk tea on her own initiative. Even when Chen Junqian or Lin Mu treated her, she would only casually order the most ordinary plain milk tea with nothing added to it.

She has always been the most shrewd and cost-effective person, even now that her net worth is definitely among the best in her age group. So much so that Chen Junqian is somewhat curious to see her expression when she finds out that the price of milk tea in many shops has jumped to around twenty yuan on average in a dozen years.

As for what to drink to warm up in the cold winter, Zhu Wenyun also has her own insights and choices, and the place she brought Chen Junqian to today is just such a place.

Zhu Wenyun was probably the most experienced girl Chen Junqian knew when it came to drinking porridge, or rather, congee. According to her, the first cooking skill she learned on the stove, which wasn't really cooking, was cooking porridge. It was convenient, quick, and didn't require any side dishes. All she needed to do was take out some fermented bean curd, chili sauce, and pickled radishes from the refrigerator, and she could easily manage a meal when her grandmother wasn't home.

More precisely, on many weekends or holidays when Zhu Wenyun's grandmother would get up early to go to the market to sell vegetables, this was the kind of breakfast that was left in the pot. Zhu Wenyun would often be woken up by the noise of her grandmother getting up, and then she would be unable to fall back asleep. At four or five in the morning, many TV channels had no programs yet, and all of them were just black and white static screens with a buzzing sound. There was only one local channel showing "The Story of the Cooking Squad," which is still one of Zhu Wenyun's most vivid childhood memories to this day.

"The porridge here is all two yuan a serving. You can sit here and eat it in a bowl, or have her scoop it into a plastic cup for you to seal and take away with a straw. However, the portion will feel a bit small, and it will be too hot. It will take a while to cool down before you can eat it."

She seemed to be a regular here. After entering the shop, Zhu Wenyun naturally found a seat and introduced the place to Chen Junqian:

"We also have sweet fermented rice balls. I usually only buy these if I want to take them away, as it's more convenient to drink them with a straw. As for other things like millet and pumpkin, longan and lotus seeds, mung bean or red bean porridge, I just eat them here. Junqian, just order whatever you want to eat."

"Does Yun usually cook at home?"

"Yes, but I feel like I do it much less now, since I can cook now."

"But sometimes I do crave congee, okay? Could you make me red bean congee next time?"

"Yes, of course you can have it if you want."

As expected, Zhu Wenyun, who was completely unfamiliar with anime and Japanese culture, was equally unaware of the symbolism of red bean rice. After laying the groundwork for a future achievement called "Blessing of Red Bean Rice," Chen Junqian leisurely sat down and ordered a bowl of sweet fermented rice with glutinous rice balls, a very childlike choice, while she opted for her usual millet and pumpkin porridge.

"The pumpkins used in this shop are all from their own farm, and they taste great. I used to buy them from the owner here. Whether you steam them or cook them in dumpling soup, they are very good."

In fact, before Chen Junqian taught her various dessert-related cooking skills, Zhu Wenyun's taste and skills were indeed inherited from her grandmother, who had farmed and sold vegetables all her life. She was just like a new wheat stalk growing strong and breaking through the soil from the field, tall and beautiful. Judging from her height trend, she should be able to surpass Shen Nianqiu, the oldest at present, and become the tallest of the six female protagonists included in the system. She was the kind of person adults would think was playing basketball when she walked down the street.

"Then I'll definitely come and try it next time."

"Uh-huh."

As she spoke, Zhu Wenyun glanced at the time on her phone again, then quickly put it back in her pocket.

"They should be here in a little while."

"What's coming?"

"Of course, it's our other half for dinner. After all, Junqian can't possibly be full after just one bowl of sweet rice balls, right?"

Zhu Wenyun quietly thanked the proprietress who brought over the two bowls of food, then helped Chen Junqian put the spoons away before pushing the other person's bowl in front of him.

It's already late November. After working hard for over a month, Zhu Wenyun finally submitted her first draft for the New Concept Writing Competition just before the deadline, with the help of Teacher Zhang. Only then did she have time to meet up with Chen Junqian, whom she hadn't seen in a long time. It was a way to relax after completing her task. So, after taking a sip of sweet fermented rice balls, Chen Junqian casually asked:

Are you confident about winning the New Concept Writing Competition?

"Teacher Zhang said that I would definitely have no problem with the preliminary test. After all, it was just the preliminary test, and also because I was participating in the junior high school group competition, the pressure would be much less."

Zhu Wenyun brushed the few strands of hair that had fallen beside her ears back behind them. The world in winter always seemed to have an artificially added layer of cold-toned filter, and the more Chen Junqian was in such a winter, the more he could deeply feel the charm of the girl in front of him with her long, straight black hair that she had grown since childhood and that reached her waist. Just like how a girl named Yukino Yukinoshita had to be set up with a character design of long, straight black hair, because the snow in winter and this hairstyle had a charm that was greater than the sum of its parts, and it was even a little breathtaking.

Of course, this only applies to hair. If you look down at the area below the face, you can see that compared to a certain Miss Yukinoshita, Zhu Wenyun's features in this regard are probably closer to another senior with long, straight black hair. It's just a pity that compared to the extensive descriptions of stockings in the original novel, Chen Junqian in reality has never seen any real stockings. Most of his achievements related to stockings have been covered up with the simplest short socks, leaving only the few that are strongly related to stockings untouched.

When can we expect to hear back?

"It'll be at the end of the year, since the semi-finals will start next January when the winter break begins."

Even if it was just for the opportunity to travel with Chen Junqian, Zhu Wenyun put in all her effort for the preliminary round of the New Concept Writing Competition. Moreover, the result of this competition was related to whether she could successfully become a formal contracted writer for "Fireworks" magazine, as well as the promise she had made with Chen Junqian a long time ago.

"I just don't know what the questions will be in this year's semi-finals."

"Last year's interview questions seemed to be a choice between 'The Cat in the Library' and 'The Enemy of Poetry'?"

"Well, I feel that this kind of assigned essay is quite difficult to write. I prefer to start from the material and choose my own angle, so that I can be more free in terms of topic selection and creation."

Zhu Wenyun no longer dared to mention the essay competition to Chen Junqian. The two of them just chatted about reading and writing in a normal way, just like when they first met.

After chatting for a while, just as the two of them had finished half a bowl of porridge, Zhu Wenyun seemed to hear a hawker's cry and immediately stood up from her seat and walked to the shop entrance. Chen Junqian followed her curiously and saw her standing in front of a mobile stall carried by an electric tricycle.

Unlike the stalls where Zhu Wenjun used to frequent and enjoy selling large and small steamed buns covered by blankets, this stall had a metal box on the right side with several round "doors" with handles in the front. The owner opened one of the handles, revealing a "drawer" with a support frame, containing three compartments arranged in a row. Each compartment held a traditional enamel cup, steaming hot, and next to it hung signs for "Rock Sugar Roasted Pears" and "Lung-Nourishing and Cough-Relieving."

Further to the left is a cylindrical stove, piled haphazardly with roasted sweet potatoes and corn. The crispy potato skins crack open to reveal amber-colored sugar syrup, and the sweet mist, a mixture of caramel and potato aroma, can be clearly smelled from a distance.

"Two servings of roasted pears with rock sugar, and then two sweet potatoes."

"okay."

The aunt wearing a woolen hat deftly collected the money and gave change. Then, she used tongs to take out two cups of pear juice from the drawer, followed by two sweet potatoes, packed them together, and handed them to Zhu Wenyun.

"It's hot right out of the oven, handle it carefully."

"Yes, thank you, Auntie."

Zhu Wenyun took the items, turned around, and walked back into the shop to sit down. She also pulled Chen Junqian back with her. She opened the lid of the enamel mug on the table. The whole stewed pear, which had been cored, and rock sugar had melted into a honey soup. Longan and goji berries were bubbling in the soup. The translucent pear flesh softened with a gentle touch of a spoon. After blowing on it to cool it down, it instantly turned into a warm current and slid down the throat, warming one from the inside out.

"Actually, I don't eat this very often, because five yuan a cup is really not cheap."

Judging from her remarks alone, it would be hard to imagine that this girl, who is unusually sensitive to prices of a few dollars, currently has savings exceeding six figures. However, if Zhu Wenyun were to become extravagant one day and talk about luxury goods as eloquently as the female protagonists in Guo Jingming's "Tiny Times," Chen Junqian would probably find it even more difficult to adjust.

Unlike her grandparents' generation, Zhu Wenyun is simply frugal most of the time. She's not so stingy as to refuse to throw away moldy, spoiled leftovers that end up costing her more money in the hospital. She spends money as usual. The tricycle she used to sell vegetables has been upgraded to an electric version. Luckily, it doesn't require a driver's license, and Zhu Wenyun's grandmother was able to drive it smoothly after a few practice sessions, saving her a lot of effort in pedaling it.

"Should I say that you've gone to so much trouble?"

"It's not that bad. I was just thinking if I could make this at home too. That way, when you come to my house in the summer you can have plum juice and in the winter you can have roasted pears with rock sugar. That would be all you need."

Compared to some girls who crave their first cup of milk tea in every season, Zhu Wenyun is preoccupied with creating seasonal drinks for each season. Her passion for food is indeed quite high, but it's not like Lin Mu and Chen Xi's simple eating; it naturally extends to making, that is, cooking.

It is precisely because of this that among the repeatable achievements in Chen Junqian's mind, the one that has been steadily increasing over time and is even expected to surpass the "Head Pat" achievement to reach the second thousand times is "Love Bento". Moreover, it is the only achievement that was triggered entirely by Zhu Wenyun alone.

The reason we say there is hope is mainly because their final year of junior high school is only six months away.

They started going to evening self-study sessions, so many parents chose to bring their meals to the school gate so their children could quickly eat there and rush back to school.

"When I have evening self-study sessions on the third day of the Lunar New Year next year, can I cook for you and bring it over to eat together?"

When Chen Junqian heard the girl in front of him ask him so casually, there was a hint of unease in her voice. It was as if she was afraid of being rejected, but also as if she had already prepared herself to pretend that nothing had happened even if she was rejected.

"Doing it every day would be too troublesome for Wenyun, but doing it occasionally is fine."

A neutral answer.

But that was enough to make her show her brightest smile this winter.

Christmas and Chan Kwan-him's birthday are almost here.

Like a cycle, she has come full circle again this year, preparing to knit a pair of gloves for the other person.

The pair I wore a few years ago are no longer wearable.

After all, they've all grown up.

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Chapter 96: A Young Girl's Feelings Are Always Poetic (Part Two)

Although the official Lunar New Year is on January 31st of next year, the Gregorian calendar date is obviously more intuitive for modern people. When the last month of 2013 arrives, the footsteps of 2014 are already quietly approaching, announcing the end of another year.

In December 2013, different young men and women also experienced their own troubles and concerns.

Chen Junqian's first childhood sweetheart began to enthusiastically build their fifth Christmas castle. Even though the agreement had become a custom, and the custom had become a routine, and her feelings were different from the beginning, Lin Mu still had amazing enthusiasm every time she did it, as if she were compiling the essence of the whole year's diary into an annual summary report to submit to Chen Junqian for review.

That's why she's starting to write or prepare earlier and earlier every year. After all, Mu Mu has never been a girl with a good memory. Plus, she always feels like time is passing faster each year. Many things that she thought happened last year are actually from the year before. Or maybe she and Qianqian have done this kind of thing every year?

While biting the tip of her ballpoint pen, Lin Mu flipped through the contents of her diary from the past year, meticulously checking the dates as she spoke. In fact, many girls in her class, although they never had the habit of writing diaries, consistently shared their feelings and experiences on QQ Space every day. In her opinion, this was also a kind of diary that could be looked back on years or even decades later.