...Hang City’s weather in March could be cold one day and hot the next. It could even turn into a different season the very next day....

...Ruan Yu picked a sunny day to go back to her family’s old house....

...She had gotten news that the family’s old house was going to be demolished soon. A nostalgic person couldn’t stand to hear news like this. She decided to go have a last look at the house since she hadn’t been doing anything lately....

...The Ruan family's old house was built in the fringe of Su City. All of the houses in the neighborhood were built in a similar style, with mint green colored outer walls and three stories high with a triangle garret on top....

...Ruan had moved away from here after she graduated from high school and hadn’t been back in almost 8 years....

...The empty house had been cleaned not too long ago, it wasn’t dusty but the air had a stale smell. After she unlocked the door, she walked up to the attic. Some of her old stuff from her days as a student were kept in the attic....

...The stairs squeaked as she made her way up. After she pulled open the curtains in the attic, golden sunlight flooded into the room and she could see tiny dust particles floating in the air....

...She briefly tidied up the place and moved a vintage wooden crate out. Ruan Yu sat down on the floor cross legged. As soon as she opened the crate, her cell phone rang....

...She put an earbud into her ear and answered the phone while checking the stuff inside the crate....

...A female voice came through from the earbud: “Miss Ruan, when you answered this call, it means that up till 1 pm, March 19th you haven’t handed over the outline of your new novel to your ex-editor. In addition, it has been a whole 11 months since you completed your last novel, to the day.”...

...Ruan Yu chuckled: “You’re an ex already, why are you still pushing for it so harshly like a debt collector?”...

...“Please, debtor, correct your attitude towards this matter.”...

...Ruan Yu looked up to the ceiling and sighed: “Miss Shen, Miss Ruan remembers that she told you that she would give the outline to you by the end of March.”...

...“Then, may I ask whether you’ve decided on the theme?”...

...Ruan Yu, dejected, sniffled before answering: “No.”...

...The lady on the other side grew irritated: “It’s been 11 months, Ruan Yu, you can give birth to a child and finish the postpartum confinement month in that time! You’re a full-time writer, do you want to become completely irrelevant?”...

...Ruan Yu began to flip through her diary and perfunctorily said: “When an author doesn’t have her muse, writing can be harder than giving birth to a child.”...

...“You shut yourself up at home everyday, who’s going to give you your muse? The thing about writing……”...

...As Shen Mingying rambled on, Ruan Yu stopped responding. Her eyes landed on one of the pages of her diary and her whole body froze on the spot....

...The timeworn paper looked slightly yellow under the sunlight. The words written on the page: “May 11th, sunny. Today I saw Xu Huaisong three times. The first time, I was taking English test sheets to the office and saw him and some other boys from his class in time out in the hallway, being lectured. The dean was so mean……”...

...“The second time, I passed by the school's arts classrooms and found him squatting in the nearby bushes feeding cat food to a stray cat. So he likes cats too, so nice.”...

...“The third time, I went to PE and saw him running by himself around the sports field. He looks so nice without the glasses. No wonder there were girls who delivered water to him. I also bought water, but I didn’t have the courage to give it to him. If my dad knows that the person I have a crush on is a student in his class, then Xu Huaisong would be in big trouble! Oh, on the other hand, he might not want to be with me anyway……”...

...Ruan Yu was quiet for too long and Shen Mingying thought something might have happened to her. She asked Ruan Yu where she was....

...Ruan Yu answered: “Back at our old house.” After saying so, her eyes, still fixed on that page, gradually brightened up: “Mingying, I got it.”...

...“Got what? You have a theme for your story?”...

...“Right, the setting will be at a school and the theme is a secret crush. How’s that?”...

...The other end of the line grew dead quiet, then very suddenly she said: “Wake up! Those whining and groaning stories about lost loves in their teenage years have long gone out of fashion. There’s no money to make at all!”...

...Ruan Yu took a look at the diary: “But…… do you still remember Xu Huaisong?”...

...Shen Mingying overlooked the sudden change of subject and asked: “Who’s that?”...

...“The one in our high school, from room 10.”...

...“Oh…… you mean that tall and slender guy who didn’t talk much, who you had a crush on? It can’t be that you’ve met him over in Su City?”...

...Xu Huaisong was indeed from Su City. His grandmother’s house was in the neighborhood. But as far as Ruan Yu knew, he had left the city even earlier than she did and no one from her high school had heard any news of him for many years....

...She closed her diary and laughed: “How can that happen, you think life is like a novel?” After thinking it over, she continued: “Let’s not talk about it now. I’ll give you the outline of the story in a few days. I’ll hang up now.”...

...After coming back to Hang City, Ruan Yu started to brainstorm her new story and finished the outline in three days. It was the first time in 11 months of writer’s block when ideas for a story flowed out of her like a spring....

...She sent the outline to Shen Mingying’s email. Then she received Shen’s WeChat message: [Aren’t these stories between you and Xu Huaisong?]...

...[You can say that.]...

...[You plan to take up the challenge of writing a pathetic story about a female lead’s one-sided crush on the male lead?]...

...Shen’s words stung her....

...Ruan Yu sent a voice chat: “Would I be dumb enough to dig my own grave? It’s not going to be a documentary. If the male lead doesn’t like the female lead, how can it be called a romance?”...

...Xu Huaisong didn’t like her, but art is inspired by life and can go beyond it. Why couldn’t she adapt the pathetic one-sided crush into a two-way crush?...

...Shen Mingying asked amusedly: “Understood. So this is going to be the story about the author’s own fantasies.”...

...Ruan Yu was speechless. Yet, what she had said wasn’t wrong either....

...“Alright, then. But I have to remind you. The kind of tall and aloof male persona like Xu Huaisong isn’t that popular nowadays. In addition, with those disadvantageous elements like the school and crush, I figure this novel won’t do that well.”...

...Ruan Yu didn’t seem to take it to heart. She laughed and said: “I’ll give it a try. If it doesn’t go well, I’ll just think of it as personal amusement. You said it too, it’s just a personal fantasy.”...

...After hanging up the phone, Ruan Yu poured herself a glass of milk tea and sat in front of the computer. She started to flip through the diary to find some entries that she could try her hands on. She hadn’t written for so long, she had to get the feeling back first....

...She stopped on a page which had much more words than the other pages....

...The page was crammed with words and the handwriting was lively, each stroke seemed to indicate her surging feelings. The date of the entry was New Year’s day, when she was in 12th grade....

...Ruan Yu searched her memory and remembered what had happened that day....

...That day was the day she got to be the nearest to Xu Huaisong in her entire time in high school....

...The school had organized a firework party at midnight on New Year’s Eve that year. The sports field was filled with people. She pretended to be inadvertently standing right next to his right hand side. What she didn’t expect was the moment when the fireworks started exploding, he suddenly held her hand....

...She shockingly turned her head, but only saw the apologetic expression on his face under the flashing lights from the fireworks....

...He released her, pushed up the thin-framed eyeglasses on his nose, and embarrassedly said: “Sorry, wrong person.”...

...Ruan Yu wrote this incident into the file....

...But she figured that when readers read about this, they probably would have the same thought as she had at the time: since the male lead said “wrong person,” then there must be a “right” person. Therefore, it seemed the “right” person wasn’t the female lead....

...It sucked! Discarded!...

...She held her head and pondered some more, then added one more line. She added: After saying so, his heart thumped like the beating of drums and his chest was pounding louder than the exploding fireworks above....

...-- --With the added line, it implied that “the wrong person” was only the male lead’s excuse....

...After she finished writing it, Ruan Yu took a sip of milk tea....

...Somehow she did feel that she was just entertaining herself....

...*...

...Around the same time, more than a hundred kilometers away, at an area in Su City which was about to be demolished, a young lady wearing a school uniform ran down the stairs from the attic of the house with a box in her hands: “Mom, is there any use for all this junk?”...

...Tao Rong took a peak in the box: “This is all your brother’s stuff from his high school years. Pack them up.”...

...Xu Huaishi said: “Oh.” She put down the dusty box and took out an old cell phone from inside the box: “He used such an obsolete phone when he was in highschool? It does have a vintage feel to it.”...

...“We were afraid to distract him from his studies, so we specially bought this phone for him.” Tao Rong gave her a glance and said: “Don’t mess up your brother’s stuff.”...

...“It’s just a broken cell phone. It can’t turn on without a battery……” As she was mumbling, she randomly clicked on the buttons. Suddenly the screen of the cell phone lit up. She jumped....

...So many years had passed and the phone was still functional. Was this a cell phone or a fighter plane?...

...Xu Huaishi was taken aback. Seeing her mother was coming her way, she hid the cell phone and squatted down pretending she was busy sorting through the junk. Then she turned around to discreetly play with the phone....

...This phone wasn’t a smart phone. There was no passcode after turning on the phone. By holding down the start key and clicking “confirm”, the phone could be unlocked. She randomly clicked on different keys and easily reached the home page. With a couple more clicks, she saw “contacts”....

...But there wasn’t even one name inside....

...She returned to the “message” page, there was no message there either....

...She thought, very well, this was very “Xu Huaisong” like....

...There was nothing there. She was planning to turn the phone off. Before she backed out, she noticed that right next to the “draft” box there was the number 327 on it....

...Three hundred twenty seven drafts? Was her brother doing math calculations on this outdated phone?...

...Xu Huaishi hesitated for a moment, then clicked on it, and read a random one....

...The receiver was left blank. Date created: 12:10 AM, January 1st, 2010. The contents: [I lied. It’s not the wrong person. Happy New Year.]...

...Xu Huaishi’s hand shook. She could smell puppy love even across from the screen....

...Puppy love? A person like her brother?...

...The way she was holding the phone became rather reverent....

...Because it was possible that this wasn’t just any outdated cell phone, it was actually…… a new world which hadn’t been discovered by anyone....

In April, the weather in Hang City was still unstable. The temperature had risen for the past few days, but once it was time for the Qingming Festival, it started drizzling again.[1]

On the last day of the festival, Ruan Yu went to meet Shen Mingying. Once she was out of her apartment, she shivered from the cold drizzle blowing into her face. She had to go back to put on a heavier overcoat before heading downstairs again. She went to a coffee shop and gathered her umbrella before going in.

The moisture lingering on her eyelashes gradually evaporated.

In the private room, Shen Mingying had already ordered coffee. Once she saw Ruan Yu’s attire, a cotton sweatshirt with a woolen coat, she frankly pointed out: “You’ve really become more and more informal now. You think you can do whatever you want just because you have a pretty face?”

“It’s already good enough that I was willing to wash my hair for you. I’m not here to walk the runway.”

“Being single, you have to have the awareness that you can have a romantic encounter at any moment.” Shen Mingying cast a sidelong glance at Ruan Yu, then pushed the laptop forward: “Anyway, give me the flash drive. Let me take a look at what a willful writer like you has come up with.”

Ruan Yu took out the white flash drive from her bag and handed it over. Then she picked up the latte and took a sip while checking Weibo on her cell phone. When she saw anything funny, she would share with Shen Mingying.

Shen Mingying would have a laugh with her in the beginning. But then she started to concentrate on the screen on her laptop and grew very quiet.

“What’s wrong?” Ruan Yu put down her phone and asked.

Shen Mingying slowly looked up from the screen: “This story looks like it’s going to be a hit……”

“Didn’t you say last time……”

Shen Mingying waved her hand, interrupting Ruan Yu. As if she had just found a gem, she was too excited to say anything for a while: “What I said before was about the kind of story that's divorced from reality. But this one is a real campus life close to most people’s personal experience. It’s easy for readers to empathize with it.”

Ruan Yu was writing about the First High School of Su City. It certainly would be close to reality.

She moved forward and asked as if she wanted more praise: “And?”

What’s more was that every time Ruan Yu got her thoughts straightened out, she wrote exquisitely. She had been writing for five years and among writers who had been writing for a similar amount of years, she was one of the top writers.

One senior writer had commented on her work-- --In a few words, she could tap the decadent from romance then in the end turn the decadence into splendor. This young lady’s writing is too crisp.

Shen Mingying would simply characterize her as a “proficient” writer. She rolled the mouse a few times and sighed: “Writing based on personal experience really tugs at one’s heartstrings. Very well, it’s a typical example of deep affection.”

“Don’t poke fun at me!”

“Who was the one who talked over and over about Xu Huaisong everyday next to my ear back then?”

Ruan Yu mumbled in a small voice: “Who hadn’t had a chuunibyou past?”

“That means” Shen Mingying glanced at her: “you don’t like him at all now?”

Ruan Yu nodded.

If it wasn’t for that diary, she actually wouldn’t have recalled much about Xu Huaisong nowadays. Even as she was writing in the past few days and reminisced about everything related to him, what was left was just a faint feeling of sadness.

It was almost like the feeling she had for the old house.

Affection? They hadn’t seen each other for eight years. Would there really be someone that sentimental?

Ruan Yu added: “If I hadn’t already gotten over it, would I torment myself by writing this book?”

“Make sense.” Shen Mingying: “Tsk, but you aren’t afraid that he’ll discover this book? That would be rather embarrassing.”

Ruan Yu said: “No, it won’t happen.” The novel would be written from the female lead’s perspective and would be fictionalized and adapted. So many years have passed, who could recognize the prototypes of the characters?

Besides, she felt that Xu Huaisong at the time had never matched her name with her appearance. In addition, would a person who didn’t seem to belong to this world read romance novels?

Ruan Yu’s phone rang.

Shen Mingying noticed that she had changed her ringtone to a piano piece. She suddenly remembered a plot she had just read where the female lead hid in the school flower bed eavesdropping on the male lead playing the piano.

She seemed to understand something: “So it’s that song .”

Ruan Yu nodded while answering the phone: “Mom.” After a few exchanges, she said: “I’ll be over.”

“What’s up?” Shen Mingying asked.

“My mom has come to visit my apartment suddenly.”

“Then you go ahead.”

Ruan Yu stood up to gather her things. Before she left, she said: “I figure she’s here to persuade me to go for blind dates.”

“Then how do you plan to escape from it?”

Ruan Yu frowned: “She comes up from the suburb herself on such a cold and rainy day. I probably can’t get away from it this time.”

Ruan Yu picked up her umbrella and hurried away.

Shen Mingying laughed and gloated at the news towards Ruan Yu’s back: “Don’t forget to stream it then!”

[1]: Qingming Jie (清明节) can be literally translated to “Tomb Sweeping Day.” It’s a holiday where Chinese families visit the tombs of their ancestors to clean the gravesites, pray to their ancestors and make ritual offerings.