I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

Of course, this is probably also related to the fact that they did indeed represent Guo Ning on CCTV programs.

Since he was going to meet Zhu Wenyun, Chen Junqian specially tied the scarf that she had knitted for him as a Christmas and birthday gift before Christmas before going out. This detail was also noticed by her. As soon as the two met, the girl standing there took the initiative to reach out and help straighten the scarf, which actually did not need to be adjusted at all.

To be honest, although the system has always defined the achievement of dressing up as exclusive to childhood sweethearts, in reality, just like the "Time to get up" achievement, Mu Mu has hardly triggered it over the years. After all, domestic school uniforms don't have elements like ties and cuffs that are often seen in Japanese romantic comedies. On the contrary, Zhu Wenjun has always used scarves and aprons to complete the achievement, but it just can't be officially triggered.

"Has Junqian managed to buy a ticket to Lin'an?"

As soon as the two met, Zhu Wenyun asked him this question directly.

After experiencing the entire recording process of the Chinese Character Dictation Competition with Shen Nianqiu, her image of him had completely changed. Compared to Lin Mu, whom she could see as perfectly normal, Zhu Wenyun had no doubt that something would happen between them this time. After all, they had already kissed through a finger last time, so removing that last obstacle next time seemed like a natural thing to do.

Compared to her peers who were 'afraid to talk about sex,' Zhu Wenyun, who had been precocious from a young age and possessed an unparalleled understanding of this subject due to both physical and psychological precocity, also knew exactly what to do next after a kiss. She didn't believe that Chen Junqian was as clueless about this as Lin Mu, blushing at descriptions in biology books. Back when internet control wasn't as strict a couple of years ago, all sorts of content could be directly searched and accessed through a browser.

"Not yet, my sister's too. If I really can't get a ticket, I'll just have someone take me there. It's not that far anyway."

"Hmm, when exactly? I'm a little worried that it might conflict with our trip to Shanghai."

"Probably not, after all, there are still more than ten days before the New Year, and I have a feeling that final exams will be canceled and the holiday will start earlier this year, so there shouldn't be any problem."

Seeing Chen Junqian's determination to go to Lin'an, Zhu Wenyun felt a mix of emotions. She had a strange feeling that even though she knew the two might actually kiss during their meeting, she didn't really want to impulsively stop it. In a sense, she was like the female protagonist in a TV drama who said, "Even if you get my body, you won't get my heart!" She genuinely felt that Shen Nianqiu's approach wouldn't win Chen Junqian's heart, since she herself had already made that mistake once.

Just as Shen Nianqiu realized Zhu Wenyun's personality problems during the summer vacation, Zhu Wenyun could also perceive the flaws in the other person's personality. After all, Shen Nianqiu clearly saw her stealing the phone, but not only did she not stop her immediately, she even thought about sharing it with her afterwards. Such a personality was also very different from her usual behavior. Coupled with the chat records she had seen, it was hard not to have doubts.

On the other hand, it might be a bit like a kind of literary and artistic syndrome. After all, she can easily ignore all the other girls around Chen Junqian, and at the same time, she can use their experiences to make them the female protagonists in her books. Even after being called out by Shen Nianqiu, Zhu Wenyun still feels that the bond and relationship between her and Chen Junqian is irreplaceable.

A high EQ (literary/artsy) perspective:

It is my love for you that allows me to surpass myself. Without you, I would have fallen back to the pitiful level of my mediocre nature. Because I hold onto the hope of seeing you, I always believe that the most rugged road is the best road. After all, when people meet, all they can talk about are fragments of time and a few human affairs. What can be spoken is not the deepest loneliness and emotion. So one day I will sweep away the years and smooth out the past, and then, in the last rays of the winter sun over the mountain, I will see you properly, and you will see me too.

To put it bluntly, it means, "In the end, I'm the only one who can fulfill his wish anyway."

Well, in this respect, Zhu Wenyun's mentality is a bit like that of a strange victim. After all, even when she saw Shen Nianqiu and Chen Junqian kissing with only a finger between their fingers, all she could think was, 'If I fulfill my promise to him, he will take the initiative to kiss me. This is completely different from being kissed like this. I win!'

However, Chen Junqian, who could hardly be considered a literary youth in either his past or present life, obviously couldn't understand the girl's strange mentality. He just assumed that she was genuinely worried that he wouldn't be able to go to Shanghai with her to participate in the second round of the New Concept Writing Competition, so he made a few more promises. Suddenly, he had a strange thought that if Zhu Wenyun really became a famous contracted writer in the future, he might also become some kind of agent. After all, she really needed him to be with her in every aspect, from research to writing to the competition.

They sat down in the library, each finding a book that interested them. Not long after, Chen Junqian's phone, which was on vibrate, vibrated slightly in his pocket. He opened it and saw a message from Shen Nianqiu:

"I got a ticket! Even though it's for a bus."

With no high-speed rail yet connecting Guoning and train tickets unavailable, taking a bus is indeed a good option. However, the date on the ticket was later than Chen Junqian had expected, actually January 28th, the end of January. In the lunar calendar, that would be the 28th of the twelfth lunar month, just two days before Lunar New Year's Eve.

"It's good that you managed to get the tickets, but is it really this late?"

"There's nothing we can do, this is the only ticket we have left for this day."

"What about the return ticket?"

"Unavailable."

A few seconds after this concise, three-word reply, the other party seemed to belatedly add two more words:

"temporary."

Then, Shen Nianqiu continued sending messages:

"My mom is pregnant."

P.S.: Thank you for reading and subscribing.

PS2: Attached is a creation from a book club.

Chapter 111: The First Reader (Part 2)

"Excuse me, I need to go out for a bit."

Upon seeing Shen Nianqiu's message, Chen Junqian immediately whispered it to Zhu Wenyun, who was sitting next to him, then picked up his phone and hurriedly left his seat, walking outside the library. He didn't send any more messages to inquire, but instead dialed the other party's number, which was successfully connected a few seconds later.

"Has my sister gone home yet?"

"Not yet, I'm still in my dorm at school, but my family has already told me about it."

Shen Nianqiu's tone and manner on the other end of the phone sounded normal, and her speaking speed was the same as usual, even giving the impression of a hint of relief.

"They have indeed been preparing for this for a long time and have been paying close attention to news about it. We are told that the policy allowing couples to have two children will be officially implemented around the middle of this month. Both of them meet the requirements, so they have been trying to conceive since November last year. The test results are normal now, but who knows whether it will be a boy or a girl?"

Based on Shen Nianqiu's experiences in her previous life, Chen Junqian suspected that the child was most likely a boy, but it was difficult to say such a thing with certainty, so he simply continued to inquire from his own perspective:

"What is your sister thinking?"

“I’ve always been very clear about what I’m thinking, but what’s really bothering me now is what my family thinks of me.”

If Shen Nianqiu was previously considered an invisible person at home, now that her mother is pregnant, she is actually receiving more attention. However, saying she is receiving more attention is not quite right. To be more precise, they have remembered that there is a readily available source of labor in the family that they can utilize.

After all, her mother, Yang Suling, only has one thing on her mind right now: to have another son. So, work and everything else have to give way to this wish. According to Shen Nianqiu, even though she isn't showing any signs of pregnancy yet, she has already quit her job and is preparing at home to wholeheartedly prepare for the arrival of this new life for a full ten months.

Shen Nianqiu's family situation can't be described as good or bad, or rather, Shen Nianqiu herself doesn't know what her family's situation is. After all, from childhood to adulthood, she has practically been a child living in this family. It can be said that she has never lacked anything in terms of food, clothing, or other necessities, but that's about it. However, it is certain that her family is not particularly well-off. Otherwise, when she participated in the "Chinese Character Dictation Competition" program during the summer vacation, curious netizens would have been able to dig up some details about her background, just like they did with Chen Junqian.

"But even if they were really willing to hire a nanny or a postpartum caregiver, they would definitely think it would be better to just call me back and make me work for them. Otherwise, they wouldn't have kept saying a few months ago that I didn't need to go back and that I should just stay at school and study hard. But now that I'm pregnant, they've taken the initiative to call me back home."

If she hadn't already entered high school and completed a semester, Shen Nianqiu would have no doubt that if the two-child policy had been implemented a year earlier, or if she had started school a year later, her family would have allowed her to complete her nine years of compulsory education and immediately begin preparing to dedicate herself to the family and her younger brother. After all, that's how her own mother had gone through it. However, the siblings, who are not far apart in age, might indeed have some familial bond, but Shen Nianqiu herself has absolutely no intention of accepting a younger brother or sister who is sixteen or seventeen years younger than her.

This isn't the situation that's often joked about online—'parents ruined their main account and are now preparing to create a new one.' To be honest, it's more like creating a temporary account first, and then transferring all the resources from the original account to the new one once the desired account is released.

Perhaps Shen Nianqiu had also imagined in her life so far whether her parents would be willing to face and accept her one day if she were their only daughter. But with the arrival of this new life, such fantasies naturally shattered.

After all, she could recall the good things her parents had done for her, even if those memories were as barren as a mine that could be completely drained in a few nights. She had been given smiles and kindness when she was little, received birthday gifts, and been taken on trips with them. It just seemed like in an instant, things had turned out like this.

In this respect, Shen Nianqiu's parents did teach her to grow, but their methods were not worthy of gratitude. Just as she had comforted Chen Junqian but could not comfort herself, when she felt defeated and hopeless, there was no safe haven that was generally accepted by the outside world. She did not feel that "it would be better to just go home," nor could she go back to the house with her father and mother to let the days pass by or pick herself up and start again.

So, that bus ticket for the 28th of the twelfth lunar month was intentional. If she really had to choose, tickets for ten days earlier would have been easier to get, since tickets are harder to get the closer to the Spring Festival. It was just that Shen Nianqiu wanted to fulfill the condition of not being home during the holidays.

Being away from her parents on the most important day of the year, which symbolizes family reunion, may be the only way she can express her feelings to them.

"I see."

Standing on the street in Guoning, Chen Junqian nodded again:

"Then I'll wait for my sister to come over in Guoning."

This was something the two of them had agreed upon long ago.

Kinship is indeed something predetermined at birth, which is why he found such a sentence in Masaya Nakagawa's masterpiece "Tokyo Tower," which he was just looking through in the library:

Children leave their parents to seek something beyond the parent-child relationship, to find other, vibrant relationships—such as friends, lovers, and spouses. We leave home in search of these beautiful and genuine connections.

But this is just Masaya Nakayama's own idea. After all, even in this best-selling book, which is hailed as the leading representative of Japanese tearjerker novels, he at least has a mother who has always been there and has always loved him, and a father who occasionally appears after the divorce. Just like Liu Xing in "Home with Kids", he did encounter awkward situations due to family and kinship issues, but there were more beautiful things in his life.

and so.

Many children leave home, perhaps simply to search for their father and mother again.

After hanging up the call with Shen Nianqiu, Chen Junqian stared at the snow piled up by the roadside and pondered for a long time.

and.

Dating someone like that would be incredibly tiring.

He had already experienced some of this emotional projection through Xu Youwei, but in reality, Shen Nianqiu's performance in this regard was perhaps even more obvious.

Often, when people fall in love with a flower, they simply want to like it in a normal way, to want to be with it, to touch its leaves, and to kiss its petals. But you can't uproot all the tangled roots underground, put them in the sunlight, place them in front of it, reveal all of yourself, and then cry out, "Please love me too, this is how I am!"

It's a pity, but there are many times when we just can't.

After all, making positive changes for the person you like, and for the sake of that liking, is also part of being in a relationship.

----------------------------------

“My sister said she will come to Guoning again on the 28th of the twelfth lunar month. Our trip to Shanghai will definitely be before that, so there is no need to worry about any conflicts.”

After readjusting his mood, Chen Junqian went back into the library and said this to Zhu Wenyun.

"The 28th of the twelfth lunar month?"

Faced with this date so close to the end of the year, Zhu Wenyun instinctively expressed her surprise, furrowing her handsome brows and stopping her hand from turning the page.

"So late?"

"I only managed to get tickets for this one day, there's nothing I can do about it."

"Until when?"

"I haven't managed to get a ticket back yet, I'll think about it later."

Seemingly somewhat dissatisfied with these ambiguous answers, Zhu Wenyun herself seemed to have no reason to offer any further opinions, and could only temporarily change the subject:

“My parents aren’t coming back this year either. I was thinking of letting you meet them, or maybe have you come to my hometown for a day.”

"That's a bit of a pity, let's wait until next year."

Chen Junqian, feeling less pressure about time management after crossing off one of his potential winter break activities, put the book "Tokyo Tower," which he had just finished reading, back on the bookshelf. When he turned around, he saw Zhu Wenyun's phone on the table vibrate slightly. She picked it up, looked at it, and then showed the screen to Chen Junqian.

"The schedule for the semi-finals of the New Concept Writing Competition has been officially set. The semi-finals will be held on the 14th of this month at the Qingsongcheng Hotel in Shanghai, and the results will be announced the following day, the 15th. It's a two-day, one-night trip. The organizers have already bought tickets for us. Teacher Zhang is going with a student from No. 51 Middle School, so I've filled in your name on her ticket. Here."

"The 14th, well, even if the final exams proceed as scheduled, winter break will indeed begin, and for your school, the semi-finals of the New Concept Writing Competition are definitely more important."

It was clear that Zhu Wenyun was a little nervous about the competition two weeks later, and she started looking through last year's reports about the semi-final stage of the New Concept Writing Competition.

"The time limit for the semi-finals is three hours..."

"That should be considered quite sufficient."

"That's what I say, but I'm still worried about not performing well or not being able to write anything."

Zhu Wenyun has been writing for several years now, but most of the time it's been a grueling process of revising and refining her writing. Even the first draft of her New Concept Writing Competition took a month to complete. So, seeing this kind of format where you have to write a manuscript within a limited time makes me a little worried.

"I'll be there with Wenyun from the sidelines. Don't be too nervous, just perform normally. In my opinion, Wenyun is definitely one of the best among the junior high students."

Although Chen Junqian himself was just an mediocre children's literature writer in his previous life, he had indeed met those exceptionally talented writers and had an eye for appreciating and analyzing literary works. In his own opinion, Zhu Wenyun's writing level was undoubtedly among the best of her peers, and it had indeed been tested by the market.

Unlike other essay competitions, the New Concept Essay Competition adheres to the principle of "new thinking, new expression, and genuine experience," so it is quite unrestrained in terms of subject matter and writing style. In fact, in the early years, most of the submissions were related to campus romance, but that did not prevent others from winning awards. In recent years, with the vigorous development of internet culture, the traces of this era have become more and more obvious. For example, the language is bold and less restrained, and the stories are not spatialized or time-travel-based. The judges themselves also feel that compared to their generation, who wrote on paper, which was a non-hidden state, it is a good thing that this generation of students is more unrestrained on the Internet, which makes their writing style more free.

Therefore, from any perspective, Chen Junqian has full confidence in Zhu Wenyun's participation in this competition.

“I know that when Wenjun is writing, he often feels that he is ‘young and carefree, forcing himself to write about sorrow.’ But I think that it is precisely because of this that we should cherish and protect such works, and we hope that Wenjun and such writing will not be harmed and will be preserved in their original form.”

"In this way, even if Wenjun really doesn't write anymore in the future, as long as these past writings are still there, I can preserve that version of myself who was 'forcing myself to write new words to express sorrow' and this memory perfectly. This is the best testament, this is part of our lives. After all, the most terrifying thing is that when we look back at some point in time, we find that we have left nothing behind and accomplished nothing."

"And no matter what, Wen Yun will always have me as her fan and supporter."

In Chen Junqian's eyes, because of her childhood experiences and family environment, Zhu Wenyun was indeed a girl who hoped, no, it should be said that she longed to be needed, expected, and recognized by others, and even in her writing, she eagerly hoped to receive positive feedback from others.

Because of this mindset, she also set a set of almost strict high standards for herself, which is one of the underlying logics that has enabled Zhu Wenyun to make continuous progress on the path of writing.

However, due to the surge in popularity of his work in "Fireworks" in recent years, and the series of positive reviews he has received from many readers and editors, the threshold in their minds has been subtly raised.

This threshold related to needs is something that fluctuates with circumstances, just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, human desires are always endless.