Together Forever

Chapter 3.1

Are You Truly Real?

When he arrived, Tong Yan was still beside the bus stop, sitting on the railing surrounding the flowerbeds alongside the street and staring, lost in thought, at the road. She had long since passed the age of trying to blame fate or people, or letting herself fall into despair and give up hope on herself. It seemed Gu Pingsheng's words years ago truly had affected her. "In this world, you have the right to choose anything. The one exception is your parents. You cannot choose them and you cannot give them up."

His face suddenly appeared before her eyes, and it was looking down at her.

As she raised her head to look at him, he was already handing her a bottle of icy-cold water. "It's really hot today." Taking it from him, she noticed that there was some water on his palms, which should have rubbed off from the water bottle.

He pulled out a package of napkins and handed it over to her, motioning for her to wrap the bottle as she drank from it. "I took my friend's car and I'm not very used to it, so I drove rather slowly." The whole time as he spoke, he was smiling.

Right as he was about to open his mouth to say more, Tong Yan had already broken out into a little laugh. "Let's agree first. You can't ask me why I need to borrow money."

Gu Pingsheng put on an expression of great surprise. "Student Tong Yan, I'm trying hard already to avoid that topic. Can't you tell?"

"I can." Tong Yan gave him a meaningful look. "I was just worried that Teacher, you'd keep trying to think of so many things to say to ease the awkward atmosphere, so I thought I'd just say it out bluntly."

She had originally intended to get the money with Gu Pingsheng and then head straight to the bank to deposit it, but to her surprise, Gu Pingsheng handed her a card and directly told her the PIN. "There's ten thousand yuan here. Take it for now."

She looked up at him, somewhat startled. "I only need six thousand. That'll be enough."

He smiled, "I had assumed, since you said you needed to borrow six thousand, you likely had calculated in all your living expense money into that already. I don't want you to come back to me three days later to borrow money to buy your train ticket and then, when you get back to Shanghai, you can only nibble on mantou [plain, steamed bun][1] everyday to get by." He was joking, but he had indeed spoken the truth of the situation.

Tong had no choice other than to stretch out her hand to take it from him and say, "When I've saved enough, I'll pay you back right away."

However, immediately after she said this, he pulled the card back. "I don't have anything to do today. I'll take you to the bank to deposit it."

Later, Gu Pingsheng not only accompanied her to the bank but also very insistently volunteered himself to take her home.

When Gu Pingsheng stated the words, "teacher's home visit," she froze for an entire minute downstairs of her home before finally gritting her teeth and resigning herself to the reality that "good words are required of mouths that ate favours of food and tied are the hands that accepted favours handed to them[2]."

Since it was an old apartment building, it was not part of any so-called community compound.

It was a free-standing, five-storey building adjacent to the road, and right outside its entrance was a main street and a bus stop. Every time Tong Yan sat by the window and gazed out at the cars coming and going, she would admire herself again for her own foresight. It was fortunate that when the property values had first started to soar, she had taken the deed of this place and put it away. Otherwise, sooner or later, her dad would have secretly sold it, and then, she and Grandmother would not even have a home to live in.