Whoever said the truth or told the lie would turn notepaper of time. It would be soaked wet by the rain, blown away by the wind, and buried in the roadside soil you had walked by. Gradually, no one would pay attention to it.
Love confession needed skills.
Someone"s love confession was like simmering the soup with onion, ginger, and garlic. Taking the girl as a black-bone chicken, he first simmered her with low heat and then with fierce heat for about half a year.
Someone"s love confession was like a quick-fry. With a "Bang", you cooked with the firelight surging and blobs of fat flying everywhere. You gambled all your luck on this but knew the result within a dozen seconds.
I couldn"t tell which one was right, for, in the former method, the soup might never be served on the table and turn dry; in the latter method, the too high temperature might make you pockmarked with extreme pain.
Love confession should be like opening different locks with different keys, which was just like the connection problems we usually did in high school, and you"d better do right. You would be doomed to fail if you played quail before girls who liked heroic boys; if you played tricks before those sophisticated girls; if you pretended to be rich before girls who had a holier-than-thou manner; if you put on air of a poor scholar before girls who liked rich boys; if you sold your innocence in front of girls who lacked in the parental love.
My university roommate called Pancake took a fancy to Oriole of the opposite dormitory. She was quiet in daily life and never slipped cla.s.ses. At weekends, she went to the library to read with a small kettle from the sunrise to the sunset.
Having observed her for several days, he decided to make a move.
I spent a whole night persuading him to think twice before a leap. Pretty and delicate, she hadn"t had a boyfriend, so there must be something unknown, and we needed to work out a long-run plan.
I drank with someone the next day. When I went back, the light had been off, and all my cla.s.smates were gone.
Having asked a student next door, I learned that they all were at the top of the dormitory.
I inexplicably felt something wrong but looked forward to this at the time, so I climbed up to the top of the dormitory in a hurry.
Several barebacked boys, led by Pancake, used the flashlights to shine on the window of Oriole"s dormitory. They started to loudly sing a folk song before I could pause for breath.
"Alas...the mountain road here has 18 turns, and Oriole there is really beautiful...alas...Oriole is born to hook up with Pancake...alas...Pancake is poor, which is a perfect match for Oriole..."
I almost spat out blood.
I couldn"t find an a.n.a.logy for such a love confession. As if, in the kitchen, someone was simmering soup, and someone was making a quick-fry, a moron suddenly walked in and grabbed an uncooked pig"s hoof to eat.
The failure was only a drop in his ocean. Soon, he shifted his target. I didn"t pay attention to him for a while. Suddenly, I knew he had a girlfriend called Xuduo who was short.
Virtuous and kind, Xuduo was obedient to him, which surprised us and gave us green eyes.
He proudly told us that she was Oriole"s roommate and asked us was it a coincidence?
A strange thing happened later. Rumor has it that Oriole owed someone a sum of money, and we thereby had a fierce discussion. However, a more authoritative statement was, born into a poor family, Oriole was coaxed by a high school cla.s.smate to join a pyramid marketing and worked as an employee.
The pyramid marketing product was spirulina, a healthy green pill. She spent the whole semester"s fee buying a bunch of them from her employer. However, the problem was, she had to find the employees for herself. Otherwise, she couldn"t get the money back. Owing to her poor eloquence, she got n.o.body for being busy for half a month.
In that case, she swore to her cla.s.smates, saying if they invested her, she would make a profit for them. In the end, she directly wrote an IOU: if they couldn"t get their money back, it would become that she borrowed their money and thereby would pay them back. Thus, the other three girls joined her with the idea of trying.
The money was handed over, but none of them could continue getting employees, so they became nervous and went to Oriole to ask their money back by the IOU. This matter spread over in the university. She cried for a couple of nights and asked several days off to go home to ask her parents for money.
To my surprise, Pancake was gone, too. Xuduo called our dormitory consecutively and didn"t find him, of course. We didn"t know how to explain to her, so we avoided to meet her. In the end, I was pushed out to see her.
In the canteen, there was Super Slams on the TV. Xuduo sitting at the opposite of me kept silent. During the dishes turned from hot to cold, I kept saying, "Everything is fine."
She said with her head bowed down, "Does Pancake still like Oriole? I"ve heard he went to raise money for her."
There was a buzz in my head. Although I wasn"t part of this, I felt like dying.
She pa.s.sed me an envelope after standing up and said, "There is two grand, and please give it to Pancake. He doesn"t need to return it, neither does he look for me again."
She asked before walking away, "Pancake is your friend. In your eyes, did he really like me?"
I replied, "probably."
I didn"t dare to see her, so I didn"t know if she cried.
Pancake wasn"t with Oriole in the end. Having gone for a week, he came back with a different look. He often returned dormitory with himself getting drunk and quit the game of love confession.
Youth was always like this. Your random touch would turn painful.
He didn"t find another girlfriend, neither did Xuduo come back to him.
After accomplishing the junior year, the internship, and the graduation thesis, we parted. I returned Nanjing in 2005 after a short time in Beijing.
Pancake was the general manager of a public relations company headquartered in Hangzhou. When he came to Nanjing on business, he dragged me to a magnificent hotel for dinner, saying that every expenditure within the ceiling cost of the public relations fee would be covered by his company.
After a few drinks, he asked with his eyes narrowed, "Guess why I take you here for dinner?"
I shook my head.
He said, "I gave Oriole six grand the other year, but she didn"t take it."
I asked, "Why?"
He said, "She said she would get it handled herself."
I was shocked.
He continued while shaking his head, "She talked to me for 20 minutes the other night. She said she found a rich boyfriend."
I kept silent.
He continued, "f.u.c.k it! She broke my heart. Not until after graduation did I know that she was a mistress of this hotel"s owner. He gave her ten grand each month and promised to marry her when she got graduation. But how could the rich be trusted? When she really graduated from university, he didn"t get a divorce and just offered her a job."
He approached my ears and said secretly, "She was a manager of this hotel. Now, she"s been promoted to be the general manager."
I asked, "So now?"
He emptied his gla.s.s and said, "What else can she be? She"s still his mistress."
After a serious glance at him, I asked, "How do you know these so clearly?"
He said with a smile, "I don"t care about her anymore. Someone told me about these."
He glanced at the bill upon paying it and then said to the waiter with a sneer, "We spent over 3,400RMB altogether, but why your bill is over 5,000RMB?"
The waiter got blushed and repeatedly apologized to us before going back to recalculate it.
He said with alcohol after the waiter walked away, "Call the general manager over and ask her why she didn"t accept my money that year but now blackmail me?"
I said while shaking my head, "Forget it! Why do you meet her now?"
He patted me on my shoulder while staring at me. "I hear you, bro. Let it go. I know Xuduo gave me two grand, not four grand. It"s you who added another two grand to the envelope."
I gave him a smile.
He took out a wedding invitation to me. "You must come, but your cash gift of two grand was given to me five years ago, so no more."
I unfolded it and saw Groom: Pancake; Bride: Xuduo.
He was drunkenly happy, which looked lovely. "It"s my wife who told me these about Oriole."
I said, "Given that they were roommates, it"s not surprising that she knew these."
He said waving his hand, "Bro, hear me out. If a girl refuses me by saying that "I don"t like you, and we"re bad for each other", I"ll be in pain for a long time, but only she said -"I want to be a mistress and to marry a rich people"- totally got me free. Can you love such a woman? Thus, you can"t understand how grateful I was upon knowing such a result."
The hotel gave us a VIP card with a discount of 80% for an apology. Since he didn"t live in Nanjing, he left it to me, and I thereby filled my information.
The driver sent him back to his hotel, and I found a bar for drinking.
I thought to myself if there was a chance, I would like to hear Pancake and Xuduo personally tell the happy love story between them.
The next day, the hotel called me based on the information I filled and said they prepared a gift to express their apology. I told them to tell me the name of their general manager instead of accepting the gift.
A name was uttered, but it was not Oriole.
I didn"t believe it and asked again, "Did your general manager changer her name? Is her previous name Oriole?"
The person on the phone said with a smile, "Our general manager is male and has worked here for three years. Even if he once changed his name, he did definitely not use such a feminine name."
Two months later, I went to Hangzhou to attend their wedding in the wake of the rainstorm and almost became a drowned rat.
I saw Xuduo who was still short and obedient.
During the time of catching up, she sneakily asked, "Did you go to Oriole"s hotel?"
I nodded.
She looked at me with her eyes full of sadness. "We drank a lot on the day of graduation, and I burst into tears. She asked me why I wasn"t with Pancake. I said he liked her. She asked me how he was doing. I said he was in a mess just like her. Then, she hugged me, and we drank a little more. She asked me to be happy, and I promised her. Afterward, she cried while hugging me with her tears wetting my shoulder. As she cried, she told me that she was a mistress of a hotel owner."
She added after being silent for a while, "Actually, I can"t accept it up to now. Why did she choose such a life?"
Suddenly, a scene conjured up in my mind.
A tender and pure girl stood on the stair of the university square with her body full of coldness and stubbornly said to the boy, "I don"t need your money. I have a boyfriend."
Afterward, she blossomed herself at another place.
However, here, the people surrounded Pancake and pushed him to approach Xuduo. The two hugged each other, smiling happily.
Whoever said the truth or told the lie would turn notepaper of time. It would be soaked wet by the rain, blown away by the wind, and buried in the roadside soil you had walked by. Gradually, no one would pay attention to it.
We walked on the one-way street, so we probably missed someone.
The season was also on the one-way street, so even if you stopped to wait, the flower blossoming for you wouldn"t be the previous one.
You could occasionally feel pitiful, but you didn"t need to sigh.
It cleared up when the rain was over, so good weather would come eventually. I was blessed with various joys that would blossom along my road. It didn"t matter if I missed all of them, but it was totally fine if I could only pick up you to enrich my life.