Chapter 24.2 - Unable to Get into the Role (2)
She did it on purpose. The whole meal, from start to finish, she did it on purpose. The person who put the fatty meat on the beam was him, something his mother had once boasted about at a wedding when talking about her mischievous son, while she sat quietly at the adjacent table eating.
How dare she put the fatty meat there? Whenever she encountered the hated green onions and fatty meat, she would suppress her disgust, chewing them without tasting them, swallowing them like medicine.
She looked through the steam from the ramen at his clean expression. When she lowered her head, tears fell into the bowl.
“But, thank you.”
Sheng Huainan was stunned for a few seconds at her sudden words.
"Thank you for what?"
“Thank you for treating me to a meal.”
Thank you for remembering that fourth imperial concubine.
She was good at listening and good at chatting, although she rarely spoke.
From who was the handsomest in Slam Dunk to a teacher in moral education who always extended class by twenty minutes and bragged about having removed five-fifths of his stomach, Luo Zhi had never had a conversation that made her eyes and brows smile like this.
And it was a real smile.
Therefore, this conversation in the café truly made them both happy and satisfied.
When they walked out of the café, it was already 1 PM. He had already stood up and taken a few steps, but suddenly turned back, and in the end, he secretly placed the two pieces of fatty meat on the chair's beam and casually took her sleeve, walking briskly out of the restaurant.
Luo Zhi suddenly saw Zhang Mingrui walking out of the third canteen.
Zhang Mingrui saw them too, but didn’t greet them or smile. He turned and looked at the mirror by the door, then walked back inside.
She tilted her head and looked at Sheng Huainan, walking on her left. His right hand accidentally brushed against her left hand a few times. Luo Zhi suddenly felt flustered and quickly put her left hand into her pocket.
When he sent her back to the dormitory, she walked away decisively, without the lingering feeling she used to have.
Who would believe that such a big development, from clearing past misunderstandings to regret over not meeting sooner, actually made Luo Zhi feel not much sense of achievement, but instead some sadness.
She had done it. She had used all her scheming, making topics and coincidences based on the information she gathered to earn Sheng Huainan’s interest. Just outside the dormitory, he had said to her for the second time, “It’s really a pity we didn’t meet in high school.”
This time, Luo Zhi saw sincerity in Sheng Huainan’s smile.
“Indeed, I also think it’s a pity,” she said.
He smiled, thinking it was just her harmless little narcissism. But he would never know that it was the only truthful thing she had said from the beginning to the end.
A self-directed, self-acted play, and the only one who couldn’t get into the role was herself. Luo Zhi regretted that she missed the surprises of the “coincidences” and the “regret of not meeting sooner” that Sheng Huainan had felt just now because she knew the truth, all the truth.
If, just like she had acted, she had coincidentally met Sheng Huainan in college and heard him talk about the story of the fourth imperial concubine, jumping up from her chair, and saying, "So, so it’s you... Damn, I greet His Majesty the Emperor!"
That would definitely have been very happy, her heart beating wildly, real happiness.
But instead, she was sitting in the dorm, calculating carefully whether doing what she did would touch him.
She was not suited to be a pursuer. She seemed to have resentfully envied him for eleven years, humbly looked up to him for four years, but had never thought that her true trump card was pride.
She was proud, from her family to her studies to love. She struggled, and every step she took was because she held her head high and looked ahead.
Maybe it was just because he happened to always be ahead of her.
