I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

"Well, definitely."

After hearing Chen Junqian's answer, Shen Nianqiu finally breathed a sigh of relief, but then pretended to relax and let go of his hand.

"Okay, it's not like it's a matter of life and death. I can contact you again on QQ tonight. Bye-bye then!"

After saying that, Shen Nianqiu turned and left quite gracefully.

However, when night truly fell, she still secretly came to the Expo site alone, without telling her parents.

Although there are far fewer people in the Expo Park at night than during the day, the chances of finding someone in the vast crowd of tourists without knowing their location are still no less than finding a needle in a haystack.

Although sometimes it's better not to see than to see, after all, just like that little girl named Lin Mu never appears in their sight during the day.

Wandering aimlessly through the entire Expo site, Shen Nianqiu came to her senses and found herself near the Belgium-EU Pavilion, so she went inside.

The chocolate waterfall was still spectacular today, but it didn't taste sweet at all when I put it in my mouth. But pure dark chocolate is bitter, so it's probably not that bad.

Chewing on the chocolate in her mouth, Shen Nianqiu was about to leave the Belgium-EU Pavilion out of boredom when she was suddenly drawn to an event taking place somewhere inside the pavilion.

It was an event called "Postcards to the Future," similar to a time capsule. Visitors could write messages to the future on postcards, such as their future selves ten years from now or their children's Expo memories, and then choose to send them out one, five, or ten years later.

Shen Nianqiu accepted the postcard with interest, which featured the Belgian national comic strip "The Adventures of Tintin." She also wrote down some of her thoughts at that moment, but hesitated a little when it came to choosing when to mail it.

One year is too short, and ten years seems too long, so she finally chose five years and handed her postcard to the staff.

It is July 2010.

Four months later, the country’s sixth census began, and the problems it exposed began to prompt adjustments to birth and population policies.

Three years later, in November 2013, the policy allowing couples to have two children was introduced.

In January 2014, Zhejiang Province took the lead in implementing and followed suit.

These macro-level things will certainly not be changed by the rebirth of a certain person, but there will always be some people and some things that develop in a direction different from the other timeline.

At this World Expo, Shen Nianqiu met one more person, wrote one more postcard, made one more decision, and thus gained one more choice.

However, she was unaware of these things at the moment. She was simply leaning on the railing, enjoying the evening breeze from the Huangpu River, looking at the cherry blossom petals in her hand, and wondering with mixed feelings what Chen Junqian, who was with the girl named Lin Mu, was doing at this very moment.

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

On the last night, Chen Junqian and Lin Mu returned to the China Pavilion, also known as the Crown of the Orient, to accompany her on her visit, which had been interrupted just as it began on the first day.

As the symbol of this World Expo, the China Pavilion, illuminated in red and gold under the night sky, is undoubtedly more visually stunning than during the day, prompting several people to take a series of photos.

At night, even the animated "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" scroll is transformed into a glow-in-the-dark version showcasing the night market scene of Bianjing. Thousands of lanterns are lit up in the painting, and the river reflects the moonlight. Nighttime sound effects such as the hawkers' cries and the night watchman's gong are also added.

After pausing to admire it for a while, the group went to the top floor of the Jiuzhou Qingyan Garden, which is modeled after the Yuanmingyuan Garden, and began taking photos from a high vantage point.

There's no way around it; if you don't take a few photos when you're out having fun, it doesn't feel like you've really experienced the trip. Whether it's landscape photos or group photos, Chen Junqian and his family took plenty of pictures. On one hand, they said they would print out the best ones and put them in an album to keep as a keepsake. On the other hand, they went back down to the central courtyard. Tonight's nighttime traditional cultural performance is the intangible cultural heritage shadow puppet show "Journey to the West".

Finding an empty seat, Lin Mu took advantage of the time before the performance officially started to look through the various photos he had taken on his tablet. He then carefully picked out the ones he thought were the best and put them together, apparently planning to develop them all when he got back.

Around this time, the real feeling of the trip coming to an end truly washed over everyone. A mixture of tired satisfaction and longing to return home made everyone feel a little languid and lethargic.

"Did you have fun with me on this trip, Qianqian?"

Instead of directly asking if he had a good time on the trip, Lin Mu deliberately added the prefix "with me" in front of the question. After all, if it were the former, Chen Junqian's answer of "happy" might refer to the time he spent with Shen Nianqiu, so it was important to distinguish between them.

"I'm quite happy, Mu Mu, how about you?"

"I'm very happy too."

On this point, Lin Mu did not try to be stubborn, after all, the scope had been set beforehand, and she was quite satisfied with the evenings she had spent with Chen Junqian.

This is simply the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. It's like two people in the desert seeing a half-full glass of water at the same time. The former will say, "Oh! Luckily there's still half a glass of water," while the latter will say, "Sigh, how come there's only half a glass of water left?"

For Lin Mu, these evening hours were like half a glass of water.

Of course, although the trip was very enjoyable, Lin Mu did feel a bit homesick.

Besides genuinely missing his parents whom he hadn't seen that day, the main reason was that after the initial novelty wore off, Lin Mu realized he wasn't quite able to adapt to this unfamiliar city and its unfamiliar streetscapes.

She has always been a girl who prefers to stay in her comfort zone, but this trip to the World Expo has given her such a strong feeling, which is of course partly due to Shen Nianqiu.

After all, as long as they return to the familiar Guoning, to the small county town in southern Anhui that is completely different from the international metropolis of Shanghai, everything will become familiar and dear again in an instant.

Just as with scenery, interpersonal relationships are naturally similar.

She no longer needed to worry about a taller older sister suddenly appearing out of nowhere and pulling Chen Junqian away from her side, because she knew all about his interpersonal relationships in Guoning, since she was originally standing in the position closest to him.

In that case... it would allow Lin Mu to settle down again. What she likes most is this kind of stable relationship, just like her parents who have never argued with her since they got married.

Moreover, after returning home...

Her diary shouldn't be as difficult to write as it has been these past few days, with every sentence requiring corrections and erasures with a mechanical pencil and eraser, and each day feeling like it abruptly ends at the very end.

Just as Lin Mu was thinking about the diary on his last day in Shanghai, a middle-aged man in Guoning, thousands of miles away, had just finished reading another diary that his daughter had deliberately let him discover.

Worried about his daughter's mental state because of certain sentences in the text, Xu Zhiling unconsciously went to the balcony and smoked in frustration. After thinking for a long time, he finally decided to call his daughter's homeroom teacher.

Then he got another boy's name from the other party.

"The area where the employees live in the wear-resistant factory's dormitory?"

Touching his neatly groomed stubble, the chairman of Phoenix Wear-Resistant Materials Co., Ltd. decided to investigate thoroughly when he went to work tomorrow.

Chapter 70: At worst, it's just puppy love (Part 2)

As before, Chen Junqian spent most of his summer vacation at his grandmother's house in the countryside. After all, children have summer vacation, but adults don't. They still have to go to work as usual, so at this time, they usually leave their children in their hometown to be taken care of by their elders.

Because Xu Youwei had brought him a gift during last year's National Day holiday, Chen Junqian returned the favor by bringing her a souvenir this time, since he had taken a rare trip. He bought her a set of Expo-themed colored pencils with the China Pavilion design, as he remembered that Xu Youwei was learning to draw.

However, he found nothing when he went there the first time.

Since there was no internet access at his grandmother's house and Chen Junqian had no idea about Xu Youwei's home phone number, he could only ride his tricycle to her maternal grandmother's house. However, he found the door locked. He knocked a few times, but no one answered. Instead, he was greeted by the barking of the neighbor's stray dog.

The second time he went, there was still no one there. It wasn't until the third time that he finally met Xu Youwei's grandmother.

The elderly woman looked quite old and was hard of hearing. After she loudly explained her purpose for a long time, the other party belatedly realized that her granddaughter did not have the habit of staying at her place during winter and summer vacations, since she lived in a big house in the city.

Because he genuinely wanted to learn more about Xu Youwei, Chen Junqian, who had accumulated a wealth of experience in communicating with the elderly through years of working in the vegetable market, simply pulled up a common pine chair found in rural areas and sat down. He began to fan the old woman with a large palm-leaf fan while chatting with her about Xu Youwei.

Although the old man spoke in a rather rambling manner and frequently drifted into various memories that jumped between endless timelines, after sorting through the information he had gathered and combining it with some information he had learned from Xu Youwei, Chen Junqian was still able to barely reconstruct the other party's family situation.

First and foremost, it's certain that the other party's family is quite well-off.

However, Chen Junqian had anticipated this, as evidenced by Xu Youwei's behavior of only sending a child to Lin Mu's birthday party last year and giving a gift of 500 yuan, as well as Yu Yuzhong's ability to constantly produce all sorts of novel toys.

According to her maternal grandmother, Xu Youwei's father was a very, very wealthy CEO. He even said that if she wanted, she could move to the city to live in a big house and hire a nanny to take care of her. However, she had already gotten used to rural life, so she just stayed in the old house by herself.

Xu Youwei's mother passed away at the end of June last year. It was not an accident but due to illness. However, Chen Junqian listened for a long time but still couldn't figure out what illness she had. After all, the old lady herself probably didn't know much about it, and it was clear that she didn't really want to talk about it.

For a long time afterward, Xu Youwei's maternal grandmother kept talking about Xu Youwei's biological father. To summarize, it was a story about a man who became bad when he got rich. She said that he kept a mistress and had a child with her, and the mistress was naturally Xu Youwei's stepmother.

Undoubtedly, this series of changes was a significant blow to both Xu Youwei's maternal grandmother and Xu Youwei herself.

If Xu Youwei was just a simple, slightly spoiled young lady before, then after last summer vacation, she became even more eccentric. This is the Xu Youwei that Chen Junqian first met, who liked to wander around outside after school instead of going home.

It can only be said that real-life stories are sometimes more exciting than family dramas, especially when it comes to the fact that the two of them didn't even dare to have a wedding and just got a marriage certificate. Xu Youwei's grandmother said indignantly that as long as she was alive, if the two of them dared to have a wedding, she would bring her family to make a scene.

However, with the relationship between the two families reaching this point, the one who is most hurt is naturally the child caught in the middle. Xu Youwei's maternal grandmother is well aware of this, so when she was talking to Chen Junqian, she still held his hand and asked him to come and play with Xu Youwei more often in the future. After all, it is always better to have a companion than to sit there alone and think aimlessly.

She can indulge in her own daydreams because her days are numbered, but the other person's life is just beginning, which is completely different.

Two days after I reluctantly agreed and left Xu Youwei's grandmother's house, Xu Youwei actually came to my door on her own initiative.

Xu Youwei, who had easily bribed the local dog Xiao Guai with a one-yuan sausage, seemed to have come all this way today. As soon as she entered, she naturally went to the water pump in the yard, pumped some water to wash her face, and then greeted Chen Junqian, who was sitting inside doing his summer homework.

"You're back from the Shanghai World Expo, Qinqin."

"Yes, I came back a couple of days ago."

“I heard from my maternal grandmother that you came to see me a couple of days ago. At that time, I was in the city taking a painting class and couldn’t come over.”

Before Chen Junqian could speak, Xu Youwei had already noticed the colored pencil set placed beside her. She sat down, grabbed it, and smiled at him.

"It's for me, right?"

"Yes, I bought it at the World Expo souvenir shop."

"Not bad, not bad. I just bought a watercolor set from Mu Mu a couple of days ago. So you two planned this all along, didn't you?"

"Then we definitely can't buy duplicates."

How was your trip?

"I'm having a great time. How about you? Aren't you planning to go on a trip during the summer vacation?"

"I don't have that plan for the time being."

As she spoke, Xu Youwei noticed the bamboo mat that was rolled up and placed vertically in the corner:

Can this be opened?

"Well, if you want to lie down, you can just lay it on the floor."

After obtaining Chen Junqian's permission, Xu Youwei immediately spread the entire bamboo mat out into the room, took off her shoes, and sat cross-legged on it, stroking the bamboo weave patterns with her hands.

"It's quite cool. I remember we used to have a bamboo cooling bed at home, but it was thrown away a couple of years ago because it got moldy."

"My family used to have one too. If it's hot, would you like a popsicle?"

Faced with the summer homework of elementary school students, Chen Junqian was able to multitask easily. While chatting with Xu Youwei, he did not delay his work at all. He finished all of today's tasks before putting down his pen, walking to the refrigerator in the living room, and turning back to ask Xu Youwei a question.

"I want to eat glutinous rice balls, do you have any?"

"I do have some, here you go."

He casually tossed a glutinous rice ball he found to Xu Youwei, and Chen Junqian took one for himself as well.

Unlike ice cream that you might worry about melting and dripping onto your hands or other places, this stuff can be eaten directly from the bag. It has a cool, glutinous rice skin on the outside and creamy ice cream inside, making it quite convenient to eat and tasting pretty good.

At this time, Chen Junqian's grandmother's house did not have air conditioning yet, but on this summer afternoon, lying on a bamboo mat, eating ice cream, and fanning himself with an electric fan was quite cool, and even made Chen Junqian feel a little sleepy.

My birthday is in just over ten days.

Suddenly, he heard Xu Youwei, who was lying next to him, say something.

"Yeah, August 10th, right? I'll definitely go, since I promised you last year. Are you planning to have dinner at home or have the banquet at a hotel?"

Although it wasn't a grand tenth birthday celebration, Chen Junqian still asked the question because of the other person's family background.

"This time it's at home."

I had a feeling that Xu Youwei hesitated a bit when she said that.

"What's wrong?"