My girlfriend was reborn.

Chapter 81 First Kiss
"what--"

In the warm air from the heater, Cheng Shuangjiang yawned, a rare occurrence for her.

It was nine o'clock in the evening, which is not considered late under normal circumstances, but she still seemed a little tired.

"Let's take a break and eat the cake."

Upon seeing this, Zhou Heming put down his pen.

"Mmm, Ah He is so nice~"

She rubbed her eyes and waited obediently for Zhou Heming to bring out the lemon mousse cake that he had bought at great expense.

"Shall we eat half tonight and save the other half for breakfast tomorrow?"

The girl nodded.

Zhou Heming used the complimentary plastic knife to cut the cake and handed it to Cheng Shuangjiang.

She picked up her phone and took a picture.

Zhou Heming's phone suddenly rang with a notification sound. He unlocked it suspiciously and found that it was a QQ space update posted by Cheng Shuangjiang.

The accompanying picture is naturally of the sliced ​​cake.

The text is:

In the depths of winter, I finally realized that within me lies an invincible summer.

"Hehe, how's it going?"

Cheng Shuangjiang put down her phone.

"Great shot! Eat up."

Zhou Heming also took a photo and casually tapped his phone.

The next moment, Cheng Shuangjiang's phone rang with a notification from someone who was paying special attention to her.

"What did Ah He send?"

Cheng Shuangjiang had just taken a bite of cake when she hurriedly put down her spoon, picked up her phone, and opened it.

Similar but different cake photos, accompanied by the following text:
My lifelong wish is to be able to conspire with someone.

The girl didn't say anything, but just blinked hard.

"I wonder what my uncle will say if he sees this."

"Don't worry, I only added my uncle on WeChat."

Zhou Heming patted his chest.

"Then I'll forward it to him, okay?"

"No, go ahead and share it if you want."

The boy hesitated for a moment, but decided to be brave and honest.

"You're just teasing Ah-He, you're so silly~"

She ruffled Zhou Heming's hair, then scooped up a spoonful of cake with her own spoon and handed it to him.

"Try it, it tastes even better than before."

Looking at the tempting cake and cream on the spoon the girl had just used, Zhou Heming found it hard to refuse.

He opened his mouth and let the girl put the cake in.

"It definitely tastes better."

Looking at her smiling face, Zhou Heming felt that the 129 yuan was well spent. He decided that lemon mousse cake would be the only dessert in his family from now on, and that the cake for their wedding would have to be this flavor.

Wait, let's get married.
The boy's mind started wandering, until the girl poked his cheek with her finger.

"Is Ah-He thinking about something strange?"

Coming to my senses, I saw her staring at me with a smile.

"I'm thinking of using this flavor of cake for our wedding."

Zhou Heming's biggest flaw in life is that he can't lie.

Upon hearing this, the girl opposite him panicked for a moment, her movements became shaky, her fair skin visibly flushed red, and her fingertips were tinged with a pitiful blush.

"What...what should I say?"

She said angrily.

"Sorry, I was just letting my imagination run wild."

Zhou Heming lowered his head.

".Okay."

The whispers drifted in so softly that one might mistake them for the sound of the wind outside the window.

Zhou Heming looked up abruptly, only to find that Cheng Shuangjiang had already stood up and was rummaging through a bag next to her.

"I...I'm going to take a shower first. I need to wash my hair today. Can I borrow your bathroom, Ah He?"

She spoke in a slightly hurried and disordered manner, and only her bright red ears could vaguely reveal the girl's shyness.

"Okay, okay."

Zhou Heming didn't dare to stare, turning his head away and pretending to eat his cake to cover up the boy's chaotic state.

Then, he overestimated the soundproofing of the rooms in the tenement building.

I don't know if it was the rustling sound of clothes being taken off, the sound of a showerhead, the sound of squeezing shampoo and shower gel, or the sound of a girl in slippers walking around in the bathroom.

It's much clearer than in the hotel.

In addition, the "reward" that Cheng Shuangjiang mentioned tonight has made the boy's heart like a wildfire spreading across the wasteland, illuminating the night sky, and like a sycamore tree in midsummer, growing wildly.

He picked up the mechanical pencil, put it down, picked it up again, trying to press out the lead, but he always failed.

Just when it felt so long that he wondered if someone was secretly manipulating the hands of time, slowing it down, the bathroom door opened.

The girl, dressed in pajamas and with her hair wrapped in a bath towel, came out.

Her cheeks were even more flushed than before, perhaps because of the hot water.

"I'll blow-dry your hair."

Zhou Heming immediately got up to get the hair dryer.

The girl nodded and obediently sat down in the chair, her back to Zhou Heming.

The noise of the hairdryer instantly filled the entire room, allowing the boy to conceal his increasingly rapid heartbeat.

Strangely, despite being a skilled hair dryer, he kept making mistakes today. When his hand accidentally touched her body, the girl's slight trembling reaction was somewhat exaggerated, causing the hair drying time to be significantly longer.

"Thank you."

With her light, flowing hair cascading down her back, the girl with watery eyes lowered her gaze. For some reason, Zhou Heming felt that the girl today possessed an extraordinary, breathtaking beauty.

"Me too, I'll go wash up first."

To escape the beauty that would be etched into his very bones and remembered for a lifetime, Zhou Heming quickly picked up his change of clothes and towel and slipped into the still-warm bathroom.

The damp air was filled with the scent of shampoo, which seemed to be mixed with Cheng Shuangjiang's unique, faint fragrance. Zhou Heming found it difficult to describe the scent with his limited vocabulary, but he did think of the bright moon, the frost on the blue bricks, and the clear morning after a snowfall.

He splashed cold water on his face to clear his head before taking off his clothes to shower and brushing his teeth three times.

Fortunately, Cheng Shuangjiang is a meticulous girl, so the scene where Zhou Heming finds some women's private clothing in the bathroom, which is something everyone would love to see, didn't happen.

When Zhou Heming came out of the steamy bathroom, he saw Cheng Shuangjiang lying on the table, seemingly asleep.

The gentle hum of the heater echoed in the room, while the clanging of a train passing by on the tracks could be heard outside. The girl slept peacefully, so soundly that one couldn't bear to disturb her.

Zhou Heming thought for a moment, then tiptoed out of the cabinet and took out a blanket, gently draping it over Cheng Shuangjiang's shoulders. She only slightly moved her head and did not wake up, which showed how sleepy she was.

Sitting down beside him, the boy picked up his pen and looked at the test questions on the table.

The speed of time is often determined by human perception.

Specifically, once Zhou Heming starts working on problems, he loses all sense of the passage of time.

He only snapped out of his daze when his phone vibrated.

Upon closer inspection, it was a photo of barbecue that Lu Bai had posted in their WeChat group of three.

[Lu Bai]: Only you two can eat cake, while your sister gets barbecue.

But why does this barbecue look like takeout?

Could it be that she was so angry after seeing Zhou Heming and Cheng Shuangjiang's posts that she ordered barbecue takeout and took photos for herself?

[Zhou Heming]: Is it delicious?
[Lu Bai]: This is their specialty glutinous rice tendon, it's so delicious!
[Lu Bai]: I'll bring you two here to eat next time, it's cheap and affordable.

[Zhou Heming]: I saw the takeout box.

[Lu Bai]: You talk too much!

At this moment, Cheng Shuangjiang moved her body and slowly raised her head, her eyes hazy, as if she was still dreaming.

"...Am I asleep?"

She sat up, her voice still faint and distant.

"Looks like you were born in the Year of the Bear."

Upon seeing such a sweet and adorable girl, Zhou Heming couldn't resist teasing her.

"what?"

Cheng Shuangjiang was still not fully awake.

"It will hibernate."

Zhou Heming subconsciously reached out and gently stroked her nose.

"Well."

With a slight frown, Cheng Shuangjiang's eyes became clear.

"Sorry, I fell asleep."

She realized it belatedly. "It's okay. Isn't there a saying that you feel sleepy when you're with someone you like because it makes you feel safe, just like a baby always falls asleep in its mother's arms?"

Zhou Heming used his rather delicate and slender fingers, which were rather long for a boy, to play with Cheng Shuangjiang's hair.

Just then, Cheng Shuangjiang met his gaze.

Young men and women in love will blush if they look at each other for three seconds.

In an instant, the two looked away at the same time, then secretly glanced at each other again, their eyes meeting once more.

"What time is it?"

Cheng Shuangjiang picked up her phone and, upon seeing the time, also caught a glimpse of Lu Bai's photo.

"Releasing poison in the middle of the night, how outrageous!"

"Exactly, but this must be takeout for her. It's so pitiful that she has to eat cold barbecue after finishing her exams all by herself."

Zhou Heming mocked without any sympathy.

"Let her take us out for barbecue next time, I want some!"

Cheng Shuangjiang also replied directly in the group.

[Lu Bai]: Okay, I'm going to pick out a dress for a gala performance this weekend. I'll take you guys to eat tea-smoked chicken legs. If you have time tonight, let's go to this barbecue restaurant.

Lu Bai quickly sent a voice message, clearly too busy eating barbecue to type.

【Cheng Shuangjiang】: It's a deal.

"Lu Bai's family seems to be in this area as well."

Cheng Shuangjiang murmured.

"The apartment is just over there at the next stop."

"apartment?"

Zhou Heming vaguely remembered that the apartments were all commercial and residential buildings, and in principle, a family would not live in a house with that kind of layout.

"Yes, she told me her address. She lives alone."

"Alone? What about her family?"

Zhou Heming had only heard Qiao Jinchen mention that Lu Bai transferred from Sichuan to Jiangcheng for junior high school, so he assumed it was the whole family. Now that he heard this news, he was quite surprised.

"Her mother was also an actress, but she died of illness when she was very young. Her father seems to have stayed in his hometown in Sichuan and did not come with her."

It's unclear whether Lu Bai told her this or whether Cheng Shuangjiang found out in the future.

"Perhaps it's because my father's work is inconvenient to relocate, or he has to take care of the elderly."

Zhou Heming guessed that people like civil servants or state-owned enterprise employees probably wouldn't come to Jiangcheng with their daughter.

"I'm not entirely sure either. Whether now, in the past, or in the future, Lu Bai rarely mentions her family."

Cheng Shuangjiang said in a low voice, as if she felt a sense of empathy.

"Every family has its own problems."

Zhou Heming did not inquire further.

"However, I went to Sichuan with my parents during summer vacation when I was a child. It is indeed a very suitable place to live, and the pace of life is very slow."

"Hehe, I can revisit this place during summer vacation, and maybe I'll even see the scenery from my memories."

As she spoke, Cheng Shuangjiang moved her arms, which had gone numb from sleeping on her stomach, revealing slightly gruesome scars hidden in her sleeves.

"It's already eleven o'clock. I slept for a long time tonight, and I might have trouble sleeping."

"Then I will accompany you."

Zhou Heming gently grasped that hand.

“Hasn’t Ah He been with me all along?”

She gripped it back with a little more force.

Do we still need to study?

Zhou Heming scratched his head with his other hand.

"That's it for today."

The girl, noticing the boy's thoughts, smiled and closed the notebook.

"After all, Ah He is the top student today, so he can relax a bit. Sigh, it's all my fault. If I had woken up earlier, we could have watched a movie together, whether we've seen it before or not."

"I can watch it this weekend. I'd like to see 'The Story of Spring'."

"It's Rohmer's."

Cheng Shuangjiang appears to have seen this movie.

"Yes, because I kept seeing this director when I was doing practice questions, so I was curious."

Zhou Heming rarely watched similar art films before, but through doing exercises, he became interested in them again.

"Let's read a book together tonight, hmm, a novel or a collection of poems."

The girl got up and pulled out a copy of Hermann Hesse's "The Last Summer of Klingsol" from the books she had brought earlier.

"This book is perfect for reading today."

She thought for a moment, then tapped her finger lightly twice on the hard cover.

"Let's go to bed and watch."

Then, he said this with a smile.

*
Sitting on the bed, using pillows as backrests, Zhou Heming and Cheng Shuangjiang held the hardcover book in their hands.

Besides the novel mentioned on the cover, there are also the author's essays and poetry collections, making it a compilation.

The book is actually quite short, but the writing is exquisite, wonderful, and bizarre. Even Zhou Heming often needs to stop and think for a long time to grasp the author's thoughts.

Cheng Shuangjiang, being intelligent and having already read it once, seemed quite at ease. Her gaze was mostly on Zhou Heming's face beside her, looking at his eyes, nose, lips, his focused gaze, his furrowed brows, and his sudden realization.

"So, is the copywriting on the internet actually fabricated?"

After finishing the novel and reading a few essays, Zhou Heming belatedly realized what was going on.

"What copywriting?"

"That's the one, um, let me look for it."

The boy took out his phone, found an excerpt that was supposedly from this novel, and read it aloud.

Winter will come again and again, and those who are meant to meet will meet again, so we don't need to dwell on regrets, but rather learn to look forward. But from now on we will never meet again, and the part of me that you changed will take your place and accompany me forever.

"It seems like someone wrote it and forced it onto Hesse's work; it's a marketing tactic."

Cheng Shuangjiang looked at that sentence and smiled slightly.

"But this sentence is indeed from an essay collection."

She pointed to the sentence at the bottom of the phone and read it aloud softly.

"The world is becoming more and more beautiful. I am alone, but I am very comfortable. I have no other desires but to be basked in the sunshine. I yearn for maturity, am ready to die, and am ready to be reborn."

Are you ready to be reborn?

Zhou Heming found the strange coincidence amusing and smiled as he looked at the girl beside him.

At that moment, he noticed that the girl was also looking at him.

The moment their eyes met, an indescribable spark ignited, a spark that seemed to belong only to that moment, and a faint, illusory "crackling" sound seemed to echo in the air.

Zhou Heming suddenly understood why Watanabe and Midori kissed after the fire in "Norwegian Wood".

Like right now.

He and his beloved sat on the bed, enjoying the peaceful and leisurely time, reading the beautiful and exquisite words, and even time seemed to slow down.

If you want to make this golden moment even more lasting, then a kiss is the best choice.

It was a warm, peaceful, and leisurely winter night.

The clanging of a passing train echoed from afar, the lights of the old tenement building flickered, and a boy and a girl, holding books about death and the end of the world, saw only each other's reflections in their eyes.

Then, as the train moved away, in that stillness where even the stars seemed reluctant to sigh, Zhou Heming put down his book, raised his hand, and gently touched Cheng Shuangjiang's earlobe, cupping her beautiful cheek in his hands.

The girl raised her face.

Until, the boy's appearance filled my entire field of vision.

It's like a cup of warm tea steaming in winter, like a shimmering lake, like wildflowers under a rusty wire mesh, like the setting sun bringing spring back to withered trees.

The moment the boy gently touched the girl's soft, pale cherry blossom-colored skin, she trembled slightly, her body tensing up. But she quickly relaxed, her trembling eyelashes closing her eyes, as if she wanted to entrust her past, present, and future self entirely to the boy before her.

It was a light, gentle, and restrained kiss, yet one that would be unforgettable for a lifetime.

A fleeting moment, or perhaps eternity.

Lip points.

As if to hide her shyness, Cheng Shuangjiang threw herself into Zhou Heming's arms, as if she wanted to crush her body into his. From his chest, soft, murmuring sounds flowed like a gentle melody from the black and white keys of a piano.

"This is my and Ahe's first kiss."

In response, Zhou Heming simply stroked her hair gently, causing the girl to lift her face from his chest.

Then, the boy kissed her again.

This was a kiss that, even though both of them had brushed their teeth several times, still retained a faint scent of lemon mousse cake.

"Not just the first kiss, but the second, the third, the fourth, and every kiss after that."

Between breaths, the boy whispered something in the ear of the girl, whose body was feeling weak.

"They all belong to me."

"Even I am yours~"

The sound of a train passing by came again, and amidst the clanging of wheels hitting the rails, the two exchanged a light kiss, engraving their vow to stay together for life.

*
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(End of this chapter)