I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

Anyway, Chen Junqian didn't really have any particular thoughts about this essay competition. He only came to participate because he accepted Zhu Wenyun's invitation to accompany him.

As he spoke, Chen Junqian sniffed the familiar aroma that filled the air. It was almost lunchtime, and all the snack stalls and restaurants along the road were open for business. The sign in front of the nearest shop read "Authentic Shuiyang Three Treasures".

Following Chen Junqian's gaze, Zhu Wenyun also tilted her head in slight confusion:

What are the Three Treasures of Shuiyang?

"Duck feet buns, duck wings, and Shuiyang dried tofu. Because the Shuiyang River flows through the border of Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, these are sold in nearby Nanjing, Wuhu, Ma'anshan, and Xuancheng. They're actually quite delicious. How about we have these for lunch? One hot pot is enough for the two of us, so it won't cost too much on average. When you're traveling, you should always try some local specialties."

As it turns out, "Since you're already here" truly deserves its place as one of the top three comforting phrases, alongside "It's the New Year" and "You're still a child." Zhu Wenyun was somewhat tempted by it and finally nodded in agreement. After contacting the teacher in charge by phone to let her know that she wouldn't be going back for lunch, she went into the restaurant.

After ordering from the owner, Chen Junqian sat down with Zhu Wenyun, then punctured the plastic wrapping of two sets of tableware, picked up the thermos next to him, and rinsed all the tableware with boiling water before handing them over to her.

When a pot of Shuiyang Three Treasures hot pot, which looked quite appealing and smelled delicious, was served, Zhu Wenyun curiously leaned over to examine it for a while:

"So duck feet buns are duck feet wrapped with duck intestines, right? And there seems to be something else wrapped inside?"

"Yes, it contains a piece of marinated duck heart."

Since it was just the two of them, there was no need to worry too much about table manners. After the dishes were served, they immediately picked up their chopsticks and started eating. After just a couple of bites, Zhu Wenyun's eyes lit up and she gave the dish a very high rating:

"good to eat."

"Right? Sometimes when I really crave this dish, I ask my mom to go to the market to buy it. Actually, Guoning can also buy it. It's great with rice."

Chen Junqian, having picked up a piece of dried tofu soaked in savory broth and chewed it, then shoveled a mouthful of rice into his mouth, soon heard Zhu Wenyun's praise as she bit open a duck intestine and put the small piece of duck heart inside into her mouth:

"This is not bad either, but there's only a little bit in one duck feet bun, it feels too little."

"If you really like it, you can have it all. I only eat the outermost duck intestines and duck feet."

If it were the previous Zhu Wenyun, she would probably subconsciously refuse Chen Junqian's suggestion. After all, she would never deliberately show a particular preference for a certain food in front of close people, whether it was when eating with her grandmother or when eating with Chen Junqian.

Because she always felt that accepting other people's kindness was a rather heavy thing, if Chen Junqian hadn't bluntly lowered all her defenses two years ago and directly said to her, "Right now, right here, I'm here," she would probably still be immersed in that little world of her own.

But that only meant Zhu Wenyun let one person in.

She now wants to slowly start going out a little further.

He wanted to tell others that he knitted his own winter gloves, wanted others to know that they had a good relationship, and wanted everyone to see that they were just like the other two people.

So this time, Zhu Wenyun agreed. She began to try to learn like a child her age to ask for a little something from the outside world, and to say "I want" to something, which was quite rare for her.

"Yes, I want to eat this."

Then she received a response.

Maybe everything is just that simple and logical; it's just that sometimes we overcomplicate things.

After all, Chen Junqian wasn't some nonexistent friend she had imagined.

Before they left, the restaurant owner gave them two small candies to cleanse their palates after the meal. They were two layers connected together with a small hole in the middle, which could be whistled by pressing the tongue against the hole.

Despite it being her first time eating this kind of candy, Zhu Wenyun quickly grasped the technique and was able to blow a clear sound in no time. Chen Junqian, on the other hand, blew for a long time without making a sound. In the end, he accidentally blew the whole candy out of his mouth and watched it fall to the ground with some annoyance. He could only wrap it up with a tissue and throw it into the trash can next to him.

Watching Chen Junqian's back slightly ahead, Zhu Wenyun also subconsciously pursed her lips, moved the tip of her tongue that was pressed against the hole in the candy to the side, and unconsciously licked her inner lip.

For some reason, she actually had the bizarre thought that if the other person said they wanted it at that moment, she would actually do something like pass the candy she was holding in her mouth to them.

Chapter Fifteen: The First Medal from Girl to Young Woman (Part Two)

That afternoon, Chen Junqian and Zhu Wenyun arrived at the venue for the essay competition on time. It seemed that a lecture hall of a local middle school had been temporarily requisitioned. After verifying their identities and names in front of the classroom, the two were separated and sat in two corners some distance apart. Holding the most handy pen they had brought, they began to wait for the competition to officially begin.

One minute before 2:00, the proctors began distributing blank draft papers from front to back, and simultaneously announced the topic of this essay competition on the whiteboard:

April 23rd was World Book Day, a day that reminds us of the importance of reading. Based on your reading experience, discuss how books have broadened your life experiences and helped you discover aspects of your inner world you were previously unaware of. You can describe a book that has had a profound impact on you, or depict the overall changes that reading has brought to you.

The content should be specific, reflect genuine feelings, and be no less than 800 words.

After all, those sitting here are the elite among the primary school students who have made it through the preliminary and final rounds of the exams. Therefore, the word count requirement set by the organizers is directly aligned with the level of middle school students. The familiar requirement of no less than 800 words made Chen Junqian feel somewhat emotional.

Compared to the meme he saw on the internet before his rebirth, "I said a lot of things against my conscience just to get closer to you," writing has never been difficult for Chen Junqian from elementary school to university. Let alone 800 words, he can often fill all the squares in his essays if he has enough time. Sometimes he even writes outside the lines, and he always feels a little unsatisfied after finishing.

After he started his internship and began working, his skills became even more refined. Faced with the editor's requirements for sample manuscripts, he could often submit several manuscripts with very different styles within a week.

But as it turns out, just like in a Chinese exam, writing more words doesn't necessarily guarantee a higher score, sometimes diligence can't make up for a lack of talent. As a result, for a long time, Chen Junqian did many other odd jobs to make a living through the introduction of his university teacher. In addition to the teaching and training work and museum cultural and creative work mentioned earlier, he also tried writing copy for WeChat public accounts and Douyin.

However, unlike the previous additions that required a certain number of words, these platforms all required a subtraction of no more than a certain number of words. The boss's requirement was often that the number of words could be clearly read within one or two minutes, which took Chen Junqian quite a while to adapt to.

"There are too many words."

Chen Junqian not only received this evaluation from them, but also from the child readers he most wanted to have countless times. Whenever he tried to show his manuscript to the children of his relatives, hoping to get the most honest evaluation from them, he would often hear such words from them.

Perhaps this kind of evaluation would be more frustrating for him than watching it and saying it wasn't good. He even feels that everyone has secretly transitioned from "I've read the original work, which means I've read the whole book" to "I've watched the TV series/movie/animation adapted from the original work, which means I've read the original work" and even "I've watched 'XX TV series/movie/animation' in one go, which means I've read the original work."

As Chen Junqian twirled his pen, letting his thoughts wander aimlessly through the essay topic, Zhu Wenyun, sitting on the other side of the classroom, seemed to have already decided what to write, and wrote her opening on the paper:

I once read a sentence like this in a book:

The best way to entice children is to get them to read.

In this way, even if they encounter terrible things, they will know that there is a backup little world, a backup of dreams, a backup of tranquility, a backup of poetry, and a backup of themselves, so that you may suddenly realize that there are so many familiar souls in the world, dancing with you as you read.

Loneliness doesn't drive us to embrace books, nor do books make us lonelier; there's no causal relationship between the two. After all, replacing the latter with televisions and computer games wouldn't cause any problem.

As she wrote this, Zhu Wenyun's once-flowing pen suddenly paused on the paper, but in the end she didn't write the next sentence onto the manuscript, since this time no one was there to add, delete, or revise it for her.

She simply read aloud the answer she had prepared in her mind:

On the contrary, reading only makes people want to share with others, and when one lonely person tries to find another lonely person, the desire for love arises.

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

Chen Junqian had no recollection of what he had written until the bell rang, signaling the end of the writing time. However, it didn't matter, since he was only there to go through the motions. So, he immediately went to find Zhu Wenyun to inquire about her situation.

"It went pretty smoothly. The essay topic wasn't too difficult, and there were many angles to approach it from. I don't know if my approach will impress the judges, but I have no regrets about submitting the paper. Now I'll just wait for the results."

It's clear that Zhu Wenyun is quite relaxed, even looking rather refreshed. She must have performed well, at least avoiding the embarrassing writer's block she used to experience.

"That's good. Let's go. It will take some time to get back to Guoning from Xuancheng. If we are delayed any longer, we will have to have dinner on the road."

"Well, actually I ate quite a lot for lunch, and I still have some leftover bread and biscuits in my bag. If all else fails, I'll just make do with this."

Since the results of the essay competition weren't released on the same day, there was no need for the group to wait there; they could simply wait for news at school.

However, due to the little incident on the way there, even on the return trip, the five students in the van naturally split into two distinct factions. However, Chen Junqian and Zhu Wenyun didn't care. They even saved themselves the inconvenience of having to send messages face-to-face on their phones in the morning and sat there quietly chatting about today's essay topic.

In fact, Chen Junqian was secretly hoping that something like in an old-fashioned urban campus novel would happen, where the other party would suddenly propose a bet, like "Let's see who wins this essay contest." But as it turned out, even elementary school students wouldn't do something so stupid in real life, which left him a little disappointed.

After all, he wanted to see Zhu Wenyun, whom he had nurtured for so long, perform a "pretending to be weak while actually being strong" act, which was the so-called satisfaction of nurturing someone. Watching her dominate the battlefield was, in a sense, fulfilling his dream. Moreover, she had indeed said that she would help him write the story later.

Because Chen Junqian could indeed sense a talent he had never possessed in his past or present life from Zhu Wenyun. If his current expectations for Xu Youwei and Lin Mu were for their mental health and safe growth, then his expectations for Zhu Wenyun were much higher.

He wanted to see her talents blossom, to see her shine, and now all he had to do was polish this fine rough stone little by little, making her dazzling and radiant.

Zhu Wenyun could clearly sense this fervent expectation from Chen Junqian. Rather, it was precisely because of this burning recognition that she first had the strong feeling that 'I am different from them. This is something only I can do for him, and something only he would ask me to do.'

However, she did not think that Chen Junqian's mentality was some kind of wolf king dream, because the other party was never a stupid bird that would lay an egg and force it to fly, nor was he a busy bird that would just leave the egg there and then disappear without a trace. He was the one who would give all his tenderness and care to an egg and incubate his own egg with his grandmother.

However, compared to her grandmother, who was already shorter than her and would visibly grow shorter in the future, Zhu Wenyun was willing to believe that Chen Junqian would grow taller than her in the future. Just looking at the growth rate over the past two years, the other party was much taller than her, and girls always develop earlier than boys.

Therefore, Zhu Wenjun wouldn't grumble like Lin Mu about not being too much taller than her, nor would she tell Xu Youwei that she must grow taller than her in the future. After all, from the day they met, it has always been about who is taller than the other.

This is probably also a kind of expectation for the future.

After all, if that day really comes, it means they will definitely be a few years older than they are now.

Physical growth always brings about psychological changes.

Zhu Wenyun recalled a line from "Girl's Diary":

The growth of the breasts is a girl's first badge of honor as she becomes a young woman.

She hoped that Chen Junqian's attitude towards her back then would change accordingly because of her height, instead of intentionally avoiding it or ignoring it as he does now, which even Zhu Wenyun can now slowly look at and formally accept as her medal.

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

One day in June, close to summer vacation, Chen Junqian welcomed Lin Mu to his home again.

Chen Junqian remained remarkably relaxed, just like his childhood sweetheart who seemed to know his way around his house and room as easily as if he were home. He lay on the bed covered with a straw mat, showing no intention of moving at all, and even asked Lin Mu, who came in from outside, to bring him a bag of chilled bayberries from the refrigerator.

"Here, move over."

Even though there was an empty chair in front of the desk, Lin Mu still made Chen Junqian, who was lying on the bed reading, roll over to the wall. Lin Mu kicked off his shoes, sat down next to him, and threw the iced bayberry over while taking apart the three-colored cups he had taken out.

"Damn, it seems like my family only got five three-color cups this time. Mu Mu, you've already used up three in just three visits."

"Ha, as if you're saying that every time you come to my house you destroy fewer torches, Qianqian. If we're talking about price, mine is actually more expensive than yours."

"Of course you can't compare them like that. The three-color cup is the most expensive item in my refrigerator, but the big torch isn't the most expensive item in your refrigerator, so the prices aren't equal."

"quibble--"

After rolling her eyes at Chen Junqian, Lin Mu raised her left leg, which was only covered by capri pants, again and gently touched his stomach:

"Hey, how's that thing I told you about last time?"

"I do plan to go to Tangshan with my mom this summer, but it's different from going to the Shanghai World Expo last year. I mainly want to see my dad. Besides, Tangshan is much farther than Shanghai. It takes more than ten hours by train. It's exhausting to go there and back. There's really no need for her to come along."

However, Lin Mu didn't pay any attention to the dozen or so hours of train time mentioned by Chen Junqian. Instead, he asked with great interest:

"If it's more than ten hours, do I need to buy a sleeper ticket? I've never ridden a sleeper train before. I used to fly to Beijing."

"...So you're really going, huh?"

"Otherwise what? Didn't I already tell Qianqian? We'll go to Tangshan to see Uncle, and then go to Qinhuangdao next to it for a trip. I've already bought summer clothes, and it'll definitely be a lot of fun to travel by sleeper train. Whether it's sleeping in a bunk bed with Qianqian or on the same floor, it'll be really interesting."

Seeing his childhood sweetheart already lost in his own fantasy, Chen Junqian could only roll his eyes back at her.

"What about your uncle and aunt? Do you think they'll agree?"

"So I followed Qianqian's example and made a bet with them. If I improve in this final exam, they will grant me one wish, and then I can tell my parents about it later."

"Um, can it really improve?"

"That's why I'm here today to learn from Qianqian."

Do we look like we're studying?

Feeling somewhat helpless, Chen Junqian got out of bed. Faced with Lin Mu, who was finally determined to study hard, Chen Junqian realized he should put in a little more effort.

"Alright, take out the notebook of mistakes I asked you to do before. Ask me anything you don't understand. After you finish the math, practice your English handwriting and memorize the model sentences I gave you. If you finish everything, it shouldn't be a problem to raise your score by 10 or 20 points."

"Uh-huh."

Lin Mu nodded with high spirits, but his mouth was still full of ice cream, so his words sounded a little muffled.