Chapter 72: An Unexpected Reunion

After I finished saying that I wanted Li Xiaoyun to treat me, she looked at me with a mixture of laughter and tears again, and after a while, she said, “Alright then, I’ll treat you.”

I immediately felt relieved. The awkwardness of the situation had been resolved by my own audacity. Thinking for a while, I said to Li Xiaoyun, “Don’t go home and tell your parents I couldn’t afford to treat you. If that gets back to my parents, it’ll look really bad!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. It’s just a meal for a friend!” Li Xiaoyun replied readily.

I gave her a thumbs-up and said, “Girl, your understanding is really great. I appreciate you.”

“Sigh! It’s not that I’m so understanding, it’s just that I can’t do anything about it! We’re here on a blind date, and if you can’t afford to pay, it’s obviously going to fall on me!” Li Xiaoyun said with a laugh and a sigh.

Her words made me feel a bit embarrassed, and I awkwardly replied, “I’ve heard that on the path of blind dates, you’re bound to meet one or two oddballs. So you must have met me, right?”

“If we’re talking about oddballs, you definitely take the crown.”

I glanced at Li Xiaoyun’s wallet on the table and then said an even odder thing, “You know, we’re already so familiar with each other. Why don’t you just do a good deed and go all the way? I’m really short on cash these days. Can you lend me some? I’ll pay you back as soon as I find a job and get my salary. It won’t be long, at most two months.”

“How much?”

“A thousand.”

Li Xiaoyun immediately counted out 1,000 yuan in cash from her wallet and handed it to me. I said “Thank you” again and accepted it with my usual thick skin.

About half an hour later, Li Xiaoyun and I finished dinner. In the end, I paid the bill with the 1,000 yuan she had lent me. Of course, this was still a decent outcome, and it could even be considered as me treating her to a meal, because I was definitely going to pay her back.

In the night, Li Xiaoyun and I stood at the entrance of the coffee shop, and I asked her, “How did you get here?”

“By taxi.”

“Then let me send you home.”

Li Xiaoyun shook her head and said, “No need. My home isn’t far from here. It’s very convenient to take a taxi.”

I didn’t insist because I understood that generally, when a woman refuses a man’s offer to send her home, it means she isn’t satisfied with the blind date.

I could understand Li Xiaoyun, and it would be strange if she were satisfied. After all, she had reached the age when a woman should marry, and more importantly, she needed to consider the economic foundation of the man.

Although I understood, I still felt a bit down because in this era where everything needs to be proven with money, pure love has become increasingly rare, even disappearing.

After a brief silence, I said to Li Xiaoyun, “Then can you leave me your phone number? It’ll be easier to contact you when I repay the money.”

Li Xiaoyun nodded and gave me her number. I wrote it down and smiled at her, saying, “I hope this blind date experience hasn’t left you with any shadows.”

“Not at all. I think you’re quite interesting. At least when we were together, it wasn’t boring at all.”

I joked, “Sigh! You saying that makes me feel even more guilty, as if apart from being able to make jokes, I don’t have any other redeeming qualities.”

“Everyone has their strengths; it just takes time to discover them. But you really need to work hard. This is the umpteenth time you’ve gone on a blind date, and you’re the only one…” Li Xiaoyun suddenly realized something and didn’t continue.

I understood. She must have wanted to say that I was the only one who, at the age of 26, still had no savings and no job.

…

After the blind date, I drove the nearly scrapped Santana 2000 that my stepfather gave me to the riverbank opposite Xuanwu Market. I sat alone on the grassy bank, smoking with a heavy heart, feeling somewhat depressed. This gloom came from my inability to get my life in order.

The water in the moat flowed eastward with the autumn breeze under the night sky. I looked at it blankly, gradually feeling that although my body was in this city, I was more like an observer. The lights of ten thousand homes had nothing to do with me.

I thought of Fangyuan and Yan Yan, then of Jianwei and Xiangchen. These four people almost constituted all of my university memories. Perhaps at this moment, they were all doing quite well.

I lay on the grass, looking at the starry sky with a somewhat foolish expression, and suddenly felt empty.

“Zhaoyang, why aren’t you going home after your blind date and staying here alone?” My mother’s voice suddenly came from behind.

I was startled, sitting up from the grass, staring at her, and after a while asked, “Mom, how did you follow me here?”

“When you entered the coffee shop, I followed you. I’ve been sitting at the table behind you and Xiaoyun’s mother.”

My mother’s words made me feel a chill. If she had been sitting behind us the whole time, she must have heard all the conversation between me and Li Xiaoyun!

I asked, “Didn’t you say you wanted us to spend time together alone? Why did you follow us?”

My mother didn’t respond to my question but instead said to me with a serious face, “You unreliable son, do you really think it’s appropriate to ask the girl for money during a blind date?”

“Mom, I really didn’t have any money!” I sighed weakly.

My mother sat down next to me, not getting angry, but instead softening her tone to ask me, “Tell me, how have you been living in Suzhou all these years?”

After a long time, I answered, “Just living recklessly like this… Mom, I really am not a good son. I’ve always been making you and my stepdad worry!”

“Everyone makes mistakes when they’re young. It’s fine as long as you correct them. There’s still a long way to go in life.”

“Mm.” I nodded heavily.

My mother hugged me and smiled, saying, “I’ll try to persuade your dad again to get you a job. You’ll stay with us from now on.”

“If my stepdad is unwilling, don’t force him. I’ll find a job myself. Correcting my mistakes starts with finding work.”

“He’s just stubborn. If he doesn’t help his own son, who will he help!”

I didn’t say anything, because in truth, I couldn’t even figure it out myself: whether having my stepdad help me find a job was right or wrong.

After a while, I finally said, “Mom, you go back first. I want to be alone for a while.”

“Alright then, but before I leave, I need to ask you something.”

“You can ask.”

“What do you think of Xiaoyun? Do you want to continue seeing her?”

I thought for a moment and said, “Let’s talk about relationships later. Right now, everything is so unstable.”

“Has this one blind date already made you this cowardly?”

I rubbed my face and lay back on the grass without saying anything. I admitted that I was a bit of a coward, but it wasn’t because of the blind date itself, but rather my own situation.

I realized that although leaving Suzhou had briefly ended my pain, it had left me even more lost, uncertain about my future.

That night, I stayed by the river for a long time, thinking a lot, but I couldn’t figure anything out. Whether the future would be good or bad couldn’t be decided by just thinking about it.

I didn’t want to go home, so I kept driving around Xuzhou, the city where my life began, looking at the towering buildings outside the car window. Suddenly, I remembered that I had once had grand ambitions. I wanted to become an outstanding entrepreneur, not only to realize my own value but also to help more people achieve their self-worth.

Later, I don’t know on which day I forgot this great wish and started learning the guitar. Since then, I’ve been playing the guitar, singing about the myriad aspects of life but failing to sing out a complete love. So I was even less willing to think about that wish of becoming an entrepreneur!

People either succeed, settle for the status quo, or fall into decline. My luck was bad, and eventually, I fell into this damned decline, but I often couldn’t remember exactly how or when I started declining!

When decline becomes a habit, one gradually stops feeling ashamed of it. So I went to the arcade again, bought a small basket of game coins, and started playing a fighting game with a kid who looked like a middle school student.

I had a cigarette clenched between my teeth, controlling Kyo Kusanagi in the game. I executed a light kick, followed by a heavy attack, then chained into the three-hit Sunflower combo, and finally unleashed the “Eight Gods’ Art,” instantly KO’ing the kid’s character.

The kid looked at me with a flushed face but didn’t dare to speak, which made me feel a sudden sense of lonely superiority, and I laughed at myself. I had actually fallen so low as to seek a sense of existence in a game.

I threw a game coin to the kid, gesturing for him to continue. The kid turned his sadness into joy, inserted the coin into the machine, and we started battling again. Amidst the kid’s repeated cries of defeat, I hammered the game machine with loud slaps.

“Zhaoyang, you play games pretty well!” a woman’s voice suddenly came from behind me.

I was fully focused on the game and didn’t respond at first. Suddenly, I realized: how could someone in the arcade know my name? I quickly turned around and was shocked to find Mi Cai standing behind me.

I stared at Mi Cai like an idiot, thinking I was dreaming, or that I was still in Suzhou. Meanwhile, the kid took the opportunity to launch a big move, killing my character in the game!