Chapter 14 (2)

Inner Thought Confessions

Cheng Jingbo and Bo Ziren walked out of the long alley, and when they reached the intersection Bo Ziren looked up at the sky. It was dark, but her mood was very bright.

“I like Grandma Xu’s house very much,” she couldn’t help saying. “I feel very happy.”

“Because the food was delicious?”

She shook her head, and gathered a bit of courage, before continuing.

“No, actually, I feel very happy with you.”

He nodded. “This shows that you can make friends, just like most of your peers can. Sometimes the problem is not as serious as you think, and it all smooths itself out after you take that first step.”

“…oh..is that so?”

This was not what she had meant to say. He might have misunderstood because she didn’t express her words well enough, so she added cautiously, “But I don’t do this with everyone.”

“This is normal.”

“Sometimes, maybe there are only a few people you can talk to.”

“That is understandable.”

“Sometimes it’s just one person.”

“What did you say?”

This time he really didn’t hear her clearly because her voice had gotten lower and lower with each sentence.

“Nothing.”

She didn’t have the courage to say it again.

Once they got to the car, Bo Ziren sat a bit forcefully as she swung herself into the passenger seat, and a date fell out of her pocket. They both bent their heads simultaneously to pick it up, and when he raised his, his forehead lightly grazed her cheek. Her heart twitched and she could feel her face heating up. He didn’t notice though, and he waited patiently for her to move back into her seat before returning the date to her.

They drove in silence for a bit, with Bo Ziren’s mind turning in slight confusion. While she was caught up in her trance, she heard a sentence she could barely believe.

“Do you like me?”

She felt her heartbeat almost come to a complete standstill, and her skin felt like it had been dipped in both a glacier and a basin of boiling water.

“Is this question difficult to answer?” he asked.

“I think it might be possible…”

“If you like something, you like it, if you don’t like it, you don’t. There is no middle answer.”

She held her breath, before finally answering.

“Because I have never experienced anything in this area before, I’m not sure if what I’m feeling right now is real or not. I think I can give you an answer in a few days. After all, such a thing is very solemn…”

Cheng Jingbo’s usually calm eyes looked utterly dumbfounded.

“I just asked you if you like the book I recommended?”

“…”

It seemed she had only heard the middle part of his question and had understood him very wrong.

“You don’t need to be so stressed out from this type of question,” he said, trying to regulate her emotions.

“Oh, it’s about a book. Let me think about it.”

Bo Ziren’s heart rate immediately calmed down, and she racked her mind for the names of the books. She realized she hadn’t liked any of them because they had been too difficult to read.

“If you didn’t like any, I can recommend something else.”

“Can you recommend something more simple and easy to read?”

“Now that I think about it, there is an autobiography of “The Traveler” that you might like.”

“Traveler? Like traveling on a journey?”

“Yes. It’s the autobiography of a Nobel physicist. He describes himself as a traveler in the book, as someone who is exploring and searching for the truth.”

After hearing this description, she became interested.

“This book isn’t that easy to find though. If you can’t obtain it from your school library or a nearby bookstore, I can bring it to you next week.”

“Okay. I would love to read it.”

They stopped at a red light, and Cheng Jingbo took out a paper and pen from a small drawer in the lower right corner of the car. He wrote the title of the book and the author and showed it to her. She turned her head to look, and at that exact moment, a beam of light shone in through the window onto her face. Her features seemed to be captured as if in a freeze-frame from a movie shot.

A person’s first chance at getting to examine a girl’s facial features so clearly is always a pleasing feeling. However, before he could let himself think any further, his subconscious reared up and attributed this sudden pleasing scene to the beautiful scenery of the street they were on, thereby curbing any extra gratuitous thoughts.

Before she turned her head away, he politely withdrew his sudden intense gaze, and stayed quiet, not rushing to fill in the silence.

This sudden hush in the car made them both feel a bit embarrassed. What was more, he did not take the initiative to break the awkwardness that now settled between them. Usually, if she couldn’t say what she wanted to say, she could always count on him to say something to help ease the atmosphere. This time though, he said nothing.

Did he realize the weird vibe along the way?

He still didn’t speak once they arrived, and he climbed out of the car. Sighing inwardly, she climbed out as well and said a quick goodbye to him. He smiled faintly back, nodding.

But when she turned around to leave, she heard his voice slowly and clearly call out under the sparse winter moonlight.

“Bo Ziren, are you 23 years old this year?”

It was her turn to turn back around to him for the first time. She nodded,

“Yes. Is something the matter?”

“It’s nothing. I was just asking. Go on in.”

She stood there for a bit in case he did have something more to add, before finally turning around and walking inside.

Cheng Jingbo went back into his car and sat silently thinking.

Twenty-three years old. He had been an adult for a while, responsible only for himself. He was twenty-eight years old. They shared a generation in which they could be friends, so why did Dr. Chen tell him that what he feels is reasonable and appropriate? To him, she seemed like a child who needed taking care of.

He had never been so patient with anyone. When it came to his students, he only ever answered their doubts on the lesson, never participating in their private lives. He’d always kept a strict distance between him and others, and used his actions to show any facts. He was the only male teacher in school who had zero ‘lace’ scandals. You could say, to a certain extent, that his identity had become too set in stone to be able to change now.

He sat lost in these now spreading thoughts, before suddenly being interrupted by the horn of a car behind him. He looked into his rearview mirror, only to see a boy carrying a girl, swaying her in his arms. As they came closer, he got a good look at their faces and felt a sudden distinct feeling that they were a good match. It was a simple and pure feeling.

He sat thinking a bit more before he finally put the car in reverse and slowly backed up out of the campus.