Returning to the old house where Mi Cai and I had countless arguments, I chewed on a painkiller and lay on the sofa to relieve the pain. Mi Cai poured me a glass of water and sat across from me.

She asked, “Are you feeling better?”

“After resting for a while, I’ll be fine.”

Mi Cai nodded and said, “When you feel better, I’ll take you back.”

I sat up in pain and asked, “Where am I supposed to go?”

“Aren’t you temporarily staying at your friend’s place? I’ll take you back there.”

I replied angrily, “Can’t you show a little humanitarianism? I’m a patient now!”

Mi Cai calmly said, “This is my house, not a hospital. Why do you have to act like a patient? Or do you think your health is really bad? I can take you to the hospital.”

I lay back on the sofa, showing no interest in talking to her. Thus, we entered into a cold war due to our differing opinions.

After a short while, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I turned over and took out my phone. It was an unfamiliar number from Shanghai. I answered the call in confusion, “Hello, who is this?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone before the voice said, “It’s me, Jian Wei.”

My mind suddenly went blank, and I couldn’t even feel the pain in my stomach. After a long pause, I mechanically responded, “What’s up?”

“Come out and meet me at our usual place.”

Before I could react, Jian Wei hung up the phone. She was still the same as before, never giving me a chance to refuse. That’s why I didn’t reject or ask for a reason when we broke up.

The phone had been disconnected for a while, but my heart was still shaking. However, one thing was certain – if she invited me, I would definitely go and meet her. At the very least, we were still ordinary friends.

I finally put the phone back in my pocket and said to Mi Cai, “I’m going out to meet a friend. Can you keep the door for me?”

“Just go, there’s no need to keep the door. Take a look around the house and take anything that belongs to you.”

At this moment, I had no intention of arguing with Mi Cai. I glanced at her again, then walked towards the door. My stomach was still aching, and perhaps the pain in my heart was even harder to bear.

…

I stood outside the residential area, waiting for a taxi, but I was pondering where Jian Wei meant by “our usual place.” Was it CC’s music restaurant? Or by the moat? I couldn’t be sure. This also indicated that we had too many memories about Suzhou, too many places we had lingered in. Each place was a memorable past.

In the end, I chose to go to the moat. It used to be the place where we took walks every evening. We laughed and played here, enjoying the picturesque scenery.

Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the moat, the section of the road we used to walk on the most. I sat down on the lawn, lit a cigarette amidst the pain in my stomach. Because my heart was restless, I didn’t know why Jian Wei suddenly asked to meet me, I didn’t know how to face her, and I didn’t know what to say when we met… Look, this is the change of time, turning our once intimate relationship into ignorance!

Half an hour had passed, and Jian Wei still hadn’t arrived. In the cold autumn wind, I finally realized that I had come to the wrong place. Perhaps Jian Wei was waiting for me at CC’s music restaurant.

I immediately took out my phone and dialed her number, but Jian Wei’s line was busy. After I hung up, her call came in again. It seemed that we had dialed each other’s numbers at the same time.

I answered the call, and Jian Wei told me she was at CC’s restaurant. I told her I was at the moat, and I said I would go find her. She said she would come find me. Naturally, I complied with her, and thus ended the call and began a new wait.

I felt a bit disappointed. I couldn’t choose the old place in Jian Wei’s heart. Our hearts were no longer in sync, so breaking up was inevitable.

…

The autumn wind covered the night, neon lights reflected everything around me. I lit another cigarette by the seemingly beautiful moat, watching the smoke fill the air and eventually dissipate.

After another 20 minutes, I saw Jian Wei’s Cadillac CTS parked by the riverbank. This top-of-the-line CTS was a graduation gift from Jian Wei’s father three years ago. It was also this car that forcefully tore us apart from our innocent campus romance. I still remember it vividly: the day Jian Wei drove her new car and took me for a ride, how I forced a smile, as if in that moment, I already painfully anticipated the ending between Jian Wei and me. In fact, I did anticipate it.

Jian Wei opened the car door and got out. She was dressed lightly, wearing only a short women’s leather jacket, slightly loose gray-white casual pants, and her hair was simply tied up. She looked casual, unlike the last time I saw her in the bar, where she was dressed in luxury brands that I couldn’t even look at.

I couldn’t meet her gaze with my eyes. I turned my head away and took a deep drag of the cigarette in my hand. Just one puff, and half of the cigarette turned into ashes.

The familiar scent of a woman wafted into my nostrils from Jian Wei’s body. I finally looked up at her and said stiffly, “Why did you invite me?”

Jian Wei sat down next to me, “Do I need a reason to ask you out?”

I tried to relax a bit, smiled and asked, “Didn’t you go to Nanjing with Xiang Chen? How come you’re back so soon?”

“I have my arrangements.”

“Indeed, you have your arrangements.” I echoed Jian Wei’s words, but didn’t know what else to talk about with her. So, I lit another cigarette, looking at the river surface stirred by the wind, my emotions alternating between confusion and anxiety.

Jian Wei took the cigarette from between my fingers, looked at me and said, “Don’t smoke in front of a lady, you should be a gentleman.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. Jian Wei was actually asking me to be a gentleman. Time indeed changes a person. She used to enjoy playing and fooling around with me, even smoking the cigarette I was smoking. At this moment, I realized: she had really walked too far away from my world, and I couldn’t keep up with the times, just standing foolishly in place, which was why I so abruptly smoked in front of her.

After the silence, I finally said to her, “Tell me, what’s the matter that you asked me out for? We shouldn’t just sit here in the cold wind.”

Although I said so, I was willing to sit here with her all night, watching her, carefully observing her appearance three years later, letting her know how much I liked her sparkling eyes, her slightly upturned mouth, her blooming smile, her calm demeanor, the feminine scent on her, her seemingly scolding but caring love, her whispering in my arms, our heavy panting after making love…

I liked everything about her, everything about being with her. But now, she was like a kite that I had lost, I could only hold the broken string, helplessly watching her fly to the distant north, disappearing in the sunset of dusk, and finally only walking once in my memory.

How lost, how melancholy, how reluctant!

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Third update, for the physical book of the previous novel, how many people want to pre-order, leave a message in the book review section, if there are many people, we will open it again.