Together Forever

Chapter 15.3

A Warm Temperature

This was the first time he had ever spoken to her in such a way.

For some reason, Tong Yan nearly had the false impression that he truly was in the terrible throes of suffering and hardship.

She estimated out the timing. Originally, she had planned on leaving the university after ten days, but if she lined up everything tightly in the schedule, it might only take seven or eight days.

When she returned to the dormitory that evening, she began to rush to pack away her things. The cardboard moving boxes had been readied very early on, and after her books and clothing as well as the random trinkets she had accumulated over three years were packed away, three whole boxes were filled.

"Didn't you say you weren't sealing up your boxes until the day after tomorrow?" Shen Yao grumbled, "You so put your man above your friend. You're going to be heading back to Beijing right away, and by the time you come back here, I'll have gone abroad already ... Mrs. Gu, your Mr. Gu isn't running off anywhere, but your best friend really is going to be leaving."

"He doesn't know how to cook. I can't leave him by himself at home for too long. You be good. During winter and summer breaks, you can go to Beijing and visit me. I'll provide you with food and accommodations."

"Gu Pingsheng should be nearly thirty, right? Let me calculate this," Shen Yao sighed. "You guys had your underground affair for one semester, then you were actually together for one semester. Wait, that's not right. This semester, you can say you were together, but in reality, most of the time he was not even by your side. Tong Yan Wuji, all those years prior, how do you think he managed to survive?"

Tong Yan did not utter a reply and only sealed the boxes with packing tape.

Only after she had straightened again did she suddenly state, "All those years prior, it was really sad for him."

"Sad?" Shen Yao was torn between laughter and tears. "The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. King's College London. No matter how you look at it, he should be a person with high intelligence. Just from my perspective, as someone who was his student for half a year, his EQ is high, too, and his looks are handsome. If your man is sad and pitiable, then people like us can only hug the toilet everyday and cry ..."

Tong Yan gave a couple of dry laughs. "All those years prior, he didn't have me. Of course he was sad and pitiable."

Shen Yao was squelched to silence by this reply and gawked wide-eyed at her. "Tong Yan Wuji, you've finally reached a point where you're even more shameless than me."

At the time, when she had resolutely packed up her bags and moved south with her notice of admission from the university in hand, she had never thought that one day, she would willingly return to this city in which she was born. She had even considered the possibility that after she had settled in another city, she would get Grandmother and bring her to be with her, far away from Beijing and all the people and matters there.

But in the span of just one short year, her mindset had completely changed.

If she compared herself to Gu Pingsheng, those experiences life had thrown her way were perhaps at least a little better than his. If she had been the one to have witnessed her own mother commit suicide right before her and then encountered the SARS epidemic – to have experienced such great trauma, both physically and psychologically – she might not have even known how to make it through. And there were many other hurts that were still hidden away in his past. There was his father.

Her plane landed at Terminal 3, and when she stepped out of its exit, she soon spotted him. Dressed in a black, short-sleeve polo shirt and casual shorts, he looked ridiculously youthful and full of vitality.