The city at night was still bustling, and everyone’s faces looked blurred as they walked in the light. Tao Ran buried his head and started to reflect on his behavior. The way to accomplish the task by himself was to enter the life of the female partner, then interfere with her life, and finally change the female partner's fate.
He wondered now if he interfered too much. As per plan, it was actually enough to let the female lead give up the male lead. The malevolent female partners in the novel were malevolent because they fell in love with the male protagonist.
Now Huang Tao no longer liked Ke Yuan, and she would live with her father. Her life was slowly getting on track; she would be admitted to a good university and then meet a boy who liked her and who she also liked. In this way, a lifetime would pass soon.
Tao Ran pushed open the door, and her mother screamed when she saw him, "Xiao Rui, how did this happen? Went to a fight?"
"It's okay, I fell." Tao Ran said: "The wounds have been treated."
When he came back with a colorful face, his mother was very distressed and fluttered around him in worry. Tao Ran felt a bit hungry, so he said, "Mom, is there any leftover rice for dinner? I'm a little hungry."
"Yes, I have reserved pickled fish for you." Mom went to the kitchen to warm up the vegetables.
Tao Ran sat in his seat and waited. Ke Yuan came down from the stairs and said, "You went to fight with someone? Who is better at fighting than me?"
Tao Ran glanced at him and said, "How many questions have you completed today?"
Ke Yuan immediately looked bitter and said, "I just got beaten up yesterday, and I'm a little weak today, so I'm taking a day off."
"Weak? Did Dad beat you till you had internal bleeding?" Tao Ran pointed upstairs and said, "Go upstairs and do the questions. I will go up and check after I have eaten."
Ke Yuan wilted and went up to do the questions while his mother heated up the rice and pickled fish and brought it up. She sat across from Tao Ran and watched Tao Ran eat. Tao Ran ate a few bites of rice and suddenly said, "Mom."
"Hmm?" She slowly looked at Tao Ran with a loving smile, "What's wrong?"
Tao Ran said, "I ...... I don't want to take the B University exam anymore."
"Why?" Mother said: "You went to school yesterday, you didn’t like it?"
"Neither." Tao Ran did not want to interfere more with Huang Tao's life. The best way was to stay away from her. He said, "I ...... I will apply to take a foreign university."
"So it was like that!" Mom was a little happy, and then a little disappointed. She said: "You have good grades, and you will definitely be able to get into a good university. Going abroad will help you in the future, but... you have never left me and me since you were a child. Your father, I don’t know if I can live alone outside."
"I can do it alone." Tao Ran whispered: "Don't tell Ke Yuan."
Huang Tao woke up in the hospital, and Huang Hu was by her side. Seeing her awake, he said happily: "Daughter, Taotao do you feel any discomfort?"
Huang Tao still remembered what happened before she fell into a coma. She remembered that Tao Ran had kicked the door open to save her. She looked around the ward, her voice hoarse: "Where is Ke Rui?"
"Ke Rui went back." Huang Hu said: "He was injured, so I let him go home and rest. Besides, his parents would be anxious too."
Huang Tao still remembered that Ke Rui hugged her and fell to the ground, protecting herself with his body. She regretted the way she had spoken to Ke Rui when he had tried to help her in Starbucks. Huang Tao looked at Huang Hu and said, "I want to talk to Ke Rui."
How could Huang Hu disagree? He immediately dialed Tao Ran's phone and handed it to Huang Tao.
The teenager's nice voice sounded on the phone as he said: "Hey."
"It's me." Huang Tao said: "Are you hurt?"
There was silence for a moment, then a reply, "Well, it's not very serious."
"I'm sorry." Huang Tao said, "I shouldn't have spoken to you like that before."
"It's okay, I'm also at fault. I shouldn't have hidden this from you."
Huang Tao couldn't help but smile just listening to Tao Ran's voice. She said, "I'll be discharged from the hospital soon.I want to see you."
After another moment of silence, Tao Ran said, "Okay, let's meet when we have time."
After hanging up the phone, Huang Hu came over with a bowl of hot porridge and said, "Taotao, the doctor said you can only eat soft food now. When you get better, dad will take you to eat delicious food."
Huang Tao sipped the congee in silence.
Huang Hu watched her drink the porridge, then a little nervously said, "Taotao, live with daddy in the future, okay?"
Huang Tao looked at Huang Hu. This stranger's eyes were a bit flattering but also a little cautious. She held the porridge, took a sip, then nodded.
Huang Hu laughed immediately; his daughter was willing to accept him.
After Huang Tao was taken away by Tao Ran that day, Li Xiufen kept crying and laughing as she chased them out. Her mind was delirious. As she stumbled onto the road, the sound of people and cars around her seemed to amplify countless times, so noisily that her head was about to explode.
She yelled out in agony, fled in one direction, and then was swept under the wheels of a car amidst the screams of people.
Huang Hu learned the news in the evening of the next day: Li Xiufen did not die but was rescued. A psychiatrist identified her as suffering from schizophrenia. She had multiple fractures and could not move while lying in bed, but still looked in one direction with wide eyes and shouted for her daughter.
Huang Tao was discharged from the hospital, and Huang Hu asked her if she wanted to see Li Xiufen. Huang Tao thought for a while and refused. Until now, as long as she thought about what happened that night, she couldn't help but tremble. Huang Hu really hated Li Xiufen. He sent someone to send Li Xiufen into the mental hospital, and then prepared to take Huang Tao from City A.
If there was anything left for her here, there was only one Ke Rui. Huang Tao took the new phone Huang Hu had bought for her and then dialed the number that didn't need to be recorded because she remembered it by heart.
"The number you dialed is not in the service area..."
Huang Tao put down the phone with a hint of surprise in her eyes, and then she called Ke Yuan. Because she had liked Ke Yuan before and had a good memory, she remembered Ke Yuan's number.
Ke Yuan saw an unfamiliar number calling him, put down his pen in super annoyance, and answered the phone: "Our family has a villa, and we don't want to buy a house. I'm working on a question now. If you dare to call me, I will..."
"Ke Yuan."
"Hey?" Ke Yuan was startled, "How do you know my name?"
"I am Huang Tao."
"Oh, it’s you. I heard that you were hospitalized. Are you well now?"
"Already well, thank you." Huang Tao said: "I called Ke Rui, but he is not in the service area. Do you know what's going on?"
Ke Yuan said, "He went back to our grandmother's house in the countryside. The signal in the countryside may not be very good, so why don't you call later?"
Huang Tao was silent for a while. Her intuition told her something was wrong. She thought about it and said, "I'm leaving here. Do you know what school Ke Rui is going to apply for next year?"
"B University." Ke Yuan said with a smile: "We both want to take the B University. A few days ago, we also went together to see B University. B University is worthy of being B University, it's awesome..."
Then, Huang Tao got in the car with such a regretful mood that Huang Hu comforted her and said, "It's okay, next year, Ke Rui will also take the exam to B University. By then, you can meet him every day."
Huang Tao nodded, and as if imagining how they would see each other every day, she couldn't help but smile.
As the car drove to a road with plum blossoms on both sides, Huang Tao opened the window, and the aroma of winter plum wafted in, lingering at the tip of her nose. The sunlight also followed and spilled in, just like that day in the corridor outside the class.
The sun shone on the upper body of that upright teenager, whose shaggy hair seemed to be shrouded in a ring of holy light. She had asked him why he was so nice to her, and then looked at him, waiting for that unspoken answer.
The teenager smiled at her and said the answer would come at the end of the entrance exam.
She closed her eyes. The sun shone on her eyelids as if she could still see that smile.
The following September, the weather was hot.
Ke Yuan walked around the new campus of B University with his own luggage and also Xu Yun's luggage, sweating profusely. He was so hot that he could hardly open his eyes and complained, "This damn weather, and I have to do military training soon, it's killing me."
"Can you hold it?" Xu Yun wiped his sweat and said, "I should have known better than to listen to you, I should have asked my father to send me."
Ke Yuan said, "We are already adults. As an adult, the first thing to do is to be independent. You're so old that you need to be sent by your parents to report to school?"
Xu Yun couldn't say anything to refute Ke Yuan. She narrowed her mouth behind Ke Yuan: "Then I...have never been far away."
"Don't be afraid, I've been to B University. I'll send you to the dormitory, you can rest assured."
Ke Yuan said that he had been here, very patronizingly saying that he took pictures. Six months had passed, and he no longer remembered where to go correctly. He took Xu Yun around the campus without finding the dormitory for a long time, and finally both of them were exhausted.
Xu Yun said, "Can you find it? I'm almost out of energy."
Ke Yuan had no choice but to bow down to the situation and ask a man who was passing by and said: "Senior, how can I get to the girls' dormitory?"
The boy looked at them contemptuously and said contemptuously: "Come with me."
Then, they followed this boy and continued to run around until finally, Xu Yun and Ke Yuan were already paralyzed. The two of them threw their luggage aside and hugged the tree, saying, "Senior, how long do we have to go?"
Then, they saw the boy stopping a passerby and asking, "Senior, how can I get to the girls' dormitory?"
Xu Yun: "..."
Ke Yuan: "..."
Even though he was tired, Ke Yuan still squeezed a little bit of strength to give the boy who pretended to be knowledgeable a whack.
After finally finding the girls' dormitory, Ke Yuan said, "Take a breather, I don't have the energy to help you get things up."
The three of them stood upstairs in the dormitory panting with their mouths open, and a voice came from behind, "Ke Yuan?"
Looking back, it was an old acquaintance, and Xu Yun said in surprise: "Huang Tao, you are here too."
Huang Hu took the luggage, and Huang Tao ran over with an excited face: "You are all here."
"Yes." Ke Yuan said: "I'm sending Xu Yun to the dormitory."
Huang Tao looked around and asked, "Where is Ke Rui?"
Ke Yuan: "Huh?"
"Don't you know?" Xu Yun said, "Before the college entrance exams, Ke Rui received an acceptance notice from Yale University, and he left before the summer vacation."
Huang Tao's eyes widened as if she didn't understand why this happened.
The three people in front of him looked at the agitated Huang Tao, all a little overwhelmed. Huang Hu said sadly: "Taotao, why are you crying? Don't cry! don't cry, who bullies you tell dad ......"
Tao Ran studied physics at Yale University. Although with Xiaomei present, studying languages or anything, was not a problem. But he still regretted it a little bit. Since he came here, he basically hadn’t eaten a good meal. The taste of Chinese food in the United States was very different from that in China. It was not until later that he rented a house to cook by himself that the situation improved.
He returned to China after studying as a graduate student in the United States because of his excellent grades. He had never returned to China once in the past five years.
He just got off the plane, and his parents, who had come to pick him up, cried with their arms wrapped around him. This troublesome child had been away for five years, and he didn’t even know how to take the time to come back.
Tao Ran said while avoiding his mother's hand: "Don't touch, I haven't changed, just use your eyes to see."
Tao Ran hadn't changed much. Except that he had grown taller and his face was not as tender, everything was the same as before. Unlike Ke Yuan, who was not only taller but also stronger, the older the twin brothers got, the less they resembled each other.
Mother said: "It's just right that you are coming back now. Xiaoyuan is about to get married. It doesn't seem like an event if you are not here.
"They are getting married." Tao Ran laughed: "Is it Xu Yun?"
"Yes, that's her." The mother couldn't stop smiling, "They have been classmates since high school, it's really destiny."
Tao Ran said, "That's right.” If the main character was not destined to have a destiny, then who else could have a destiny?
Ke Yuan studied really hard for Xu Yun back then. Tao Ran still remembered that one night when he got up to go to the bathroom, he passed by Ke Yuan's room and found that the light was still on. He pushed the door in, and Ke Yuan sat at the desk, pouring coffee bit by bit.
He checked the time. It was three o'clock in the morning.
It is probably the happiest thing in the world to give sincerely and produce results.
The day of Ke Yuan's wedding was very lively, and many relatives from the family came. Tao Ran greeted them from the inside and out, and finally, his head was tired with all the greetings that he rushed to the hotel door to hide. Turning to see, Dad was squatting in the doorway and smoking.
The two of them looked at each other. Their smiles revealed embarrassment.
Dad handed over a cigarette: "Do you smoke?"
Tao Ran waved his hand, "Smoking is harmful to health."
So dad put out the cigarette and continued to go in with pain and pleasure.
Tao Ran stood at the door with nothing to do, wondering if he should buy a bag of melon seeds. At the same moment, a Rolls Royce parked in front of the hotel. Tao Ran felt that luxury cars were becoming less and less valuable these years; just when Ke Yuan got married, a lot of luxury cars had arrived in such a short time, and he felt deeply impressed by the popularity of his father.
Then the car door was opened and a black high-heeled shoe landed on the ground.
Tao Ran looked up and saw a person he had been avoiding.
Five years have passed, Huang Tao had already graduated a year back. She had become a strong business woman in the mall sector after a year of honing her skills with Huang Hu. She got out of the car, revealing her nice skirt, and walked towards Tao Ran step by step.
Tao Ran watched her approach step by step, then revealed an apt smile and said, "Here for Ke Yuan's wedding?"
"Yes." Huang Tao said, "It's been five years since I've seen you. You don't seem to have changed at all."
Tao Ran laughed awkwardly, "Is that to say that I haven't grown?"
"No." Huang Tao said, "You still look as good as before."
"Good-looking?"
The two people walked inside as they said this. Huang Tao wrapped a big red envelope, and then sat with Tao Ran and watched Xu Yun's father holding Xu Yun's hand and walking towards Ke Yuan step by step.
"He has liked Xu Yun since high school." Huang Tao suddenly said.
"Yeah." Tao Ran said, "From the first year of high school, seven years have passed."
Huang Tao said, "I asked you a question in high school, and you said you would give me the answer after the entrance exam, but now this answer is five years late. Are you ready to answer me?"
Tao Ran had a wonderful feeling in his heart. He said, "Do you still need this answer?"
"If you don't tell me, how do you know if I need it or not?"
So Tao Ran put his hand under the table and reached out to hold the hand that he hadn't held in five years. The two hands were clasped tightly underneath, their fingers interlocked.
The master of ceremonies on the stage said, "Ke Yuan, are you willing to obey your marriage vows to love, comfort, honor and protect her in poverty or wealth, in sickness or in health, in beauty or in loss, in success or in disappointment? And are you willing to remain faithful to her throughout your lives?"
Ke Yuan said, "I am willing."
Huang Tao stared forward, holding Tao Ran's hand, her eyes moist.