Chapter 62: Chapter 62 At the end of the story, she seemed to still say ~ goodbye
Xu Qingyan couldn't be sure whether the person on WeChat was Lin Wanzhou or not; there were simply too many uncertain factors, so he chose not to bother about it anymore.
After watching an online class for a while, as time slowly passed, a message popped up on WeChat.
Pei Muchan, "Are you free?"
"Yes, the door is open."
Xu Qingyan replied, and after putting down his phone, he couldn't help but take a deep breath, getting up to serve the fruit slices he had prepared earlier, along with some steaming hot tea.
The living room was very quiet; footsteps could be heard from the corridor, light ones.
He looked up toward the door where Pei Muchan paused for two seconds before gently knocking.
"Come in."
He stood up to welcome her, and for some reason, he felt Pei Muchan seemed to be in low spirits. He was already nervous, and now he became even more unsettled.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
Pei Muchan walked to the couch, leaned against the armrest, and sat down lightly before answering his question with another question.
"You want to watch classes, are you saying I'm not teaching well?"
"What?" He was momentarily bewildered, "No, that's not it. It just so happened that Shen Jinyue asked, and I thought, why not take advantage of the opportunity, so..."
"Oh." She glanced at Xu Qingyan.
Upon hearing this, Xu Qingyan was even more confused. What did her 'oh' mean? It wasn't like he was doing anything wrong; he was just taking advantage of Shen Jinyue's online class.
"Then why didn't you ask me for it?" Pei Muchan asked softly.
"You have it?" he ventured.
"Yeah, how would I know you needed it if you didn't ask me?" Pei Muchan turned to look at him, her fingers sliding back and forth on the edge of the sofa's back, her voice distant.
The conversation seemed to be veering off in a bizarre direction, and Xu Qingyan had actually prepared himself for singing. He even wrote down the lyrics on his phone, revising several versions; it counted as leaving a trace.
He pretended the lyrics of "Qing Tian" had gone through several edits before finalization, not just conjured out of thin air.
"Can I ask now?" he carefully inquired, "Do you have any online classes on music theory that I could borrow to watch? Is that okay?"
"Hmm." Pei Muchan nodded, stretching out her hand, "Give me your phone."
After all, she was too embarrassed to reach into his pocket to fish it out herself; she just asked him for it. Xu Qingyan cooperated and handed it over, and as for the lock screen code, she had remembered it after hearing it just once.
"Okay." Xu Qingyan cleared his throat and prepared very amateurishly. Once he started, a languid melody emerged, "The little yellow flower of stories, has been drifting since the year of birth~"
To Pei Muchan's surprise, first, Xu Qingyan's singing was very good, and second, this song was highly finished.
"Re So So Si Do Si La,....."
When she heard this humming part, the first thought that flashed through Pei Muchan's mind was that he hadn't figured out what lyrics to fill in, and the second was that this didn't seem to affect the song's completeness.
"The day I skipped class for you, the day the flowers fell, that one classroom....."
The rhythm in this segment was significantly faster. Pei Muchan's gaze lowered as she swiftly wrote and sketched on the paper. Images were beginning to form clearly in her mind along with the lyrics.
A rainy day, naive boys and girls hiding under the same roof. Pretending to be indifferent, their solemn demeanor, and the nonchalant shifting of gazes.
At the moment when eyes met, eyes drenched, the heartbeats accelerating.
The happiest yet the most bitter thing about youth was the daily undulations following that person's silhouette and the trivial sadness involving an unrequited crush.
Passing by that person's location thirty times in one day. Each time, with a heartbeat quickening like opening a mystery box, even without speaking, walking shoulder to shoulder with a space for just one person in between would make her happy all day!
"On this windy day, I tried holding your hand, but just my luck, the rain gradually...."
Pei Muchan paused with the tip of her pen, starting to realize that this was a complete song, from the melody to the lyrics, it was nearly perfect!
Scenes beautifully reflecting each step of the story, which began with a single small yellow flower. The heart in love flutters up and down, like Feng Ling hanging from the seventh floor of a high tower.
As the wind passes through, the sounds rise and fall, tumbling one after another, knocking on someone's name.
"But in the story's end, you seem to say still~ goodbye."
An unrequited crush, after all, is knowing someone's silhouette better than their eyes. Youth is a poem, the end of the story brimming with regrets, but that person would never fade away.
He would never age, never become worldly.
The young man would always be bright and passionate, wearing a clean school uniform fragrant with lavender detergent, lanky and standing in the sunlight-filled corridor.
Standing at the pinnacle of her heart, imprinted on her fourteen or fifteen-year-old self.
She would never be touched by the mundane, always young and beautiful, wearing a white cotton dress. Standing in that twilight afternoon, forever vivid in his memories.
The end of the story is the naive youth.
Click, Pei Muchan snapped back to reality. There was an ink blot smeared across the napkin, blurring the writing.