Dream

Qin An kept holding Ye Zhulan's hand. Her warm hand gradually grew cold with nervousness, and her small body trembled slightly. She was clearly struggling, hesitating, not knowing what to do...

She wanted to pull her hand back, but she was afraid of hurting Qin An. She was even more afraid that he would do something that made her blush just thinking about it, worried that she might flee in panic and become a stranger to him from then on...

"I had a dream. There were two people named Ye Zhulan and Qin An in it too, but they weren't you and me... They were both thirteen, both teachers' children who had started school very early. That Qin An took the college entrance exam before he was sixteen and scored slightly above Peking University's cutoff, but he received admission letters from several prestigious universities in the United States. He didn't go. Instead, he went to an obscure, third-tier undergraduate college in the north...

"No one could understand his decision. By his second year at that college, he had passed all five certified public accountant exams with frighteningly high scores. All he had to do was wait until graduation to receive his practicing certificate... A famous accounting firm in China invited him to join them, but his original goal had been to take the American CPA exam, which was much harder...

"He went to the United Kingdom during the summer of his second year, renting small apartments near Eton College and Cambridge for over a month. After coming back, he dropped out...

"He went to Changsha to learn pottery from a master known as the last inheritor of the Changsha Tongguan Kiln tradition...

"Then he returned to the small town where his grandfather had grown old and put the old house in order. He spent two whole years sorting out the family's books and cleaning up the house. Like an old man, he liked sitting in a wicker chair in the sun, brewing a pot of tea, then covering his face with a book and sleeping the entire afternoon away...

"After that, he went to Changsha again and worked as a janitor at a university Ye Zhulan had already left. Wearing a red vest and carrying a broom, he swept up fallen leaves and scraps of paper...

"He did that for three months, then began looking for a normal job like a normal young man...

"Before long, he returned to his hometown and became a pottery teacher...

"Later, he began managing his family's school. In the near future, he would own a private school with more than five thousand students, perhaps even more, because the school kept expanding...

"He also had a wife and child of his own...

"As for Ye Zhulan, nothing ever developed between her and Qin An. But during her first year of college, when a boy suddenly confessed to her on a bus, she agreed to go out with him. It was the first time she had ever seen that boy...

"Not long after graduation, they broke up. Ye Zhulan joined a patent agency in Shenzhen. Many years later, that agency belonged to her, and her net worth had passed a hundred million... Well, that meant she could buy more than a hundred schools like ours...

"In her everyday life, she was no different from any other unmarried woman past the usual marrying age. She did yoga, took advantage of the convenience to go shopping in Hong Kong on weekends, flirted with handsome men, and occasionally looked for a one-night stand at a bar...

"A woman like that never married. The last I heard, she had adopted a child and named the child Qin Siwei or something like that..."

Qin An did not tell her the ending of the story. The Ye Zhulan in the story had driven her Murciélago SV sports car into a highway guardrail at three hundred kilometers an hour, ending her life and leaving the Qin An in the story forever without a chance to say those words...

Perhaps because they shared the same names, Ye Zhulan became interested in Qin An's story and forgot that he was still holding her hand. As she listened, her spirits gradually sank. She seemed to understand something, yet a trace of sorrow tangled around her young, sensitive heart. For no clear reason, tears welled in her eyes as she looked at Qin An in silence...

"Those two people in the story, both Qin An and Ye Zhulan, liked each other, didn't they? I think if Qin An had finally told Ye Zhulan he liked her when they were young, maybe it wouldn't have ended that way..." Qin An released Ye Zhulan's hand and sat up...

"Are you worried that you and I will end up like those two people in the story?" Ye Zhulan finally understood...

Qin An nodded. Ye Zhulan was still too young. Once she grew up, she would be so dazzlingly talented that she would be impossible to hold on to, unless he planted a seed in her heart now...

"We won't..." Ye Zhulan's voice was unexpectedly firm. "Actually, I've thought about it. If we stay good friends like this, I'll marry you when we grow up..."

The girl's most private dream had blossomed just like that. Like a dewy flower bud opening its petals, the fragrance its heart released in that instant could leave someone lost and engulfed...

The two blushes on Ye Zhulan's cheeks cast an enchanting glow like the setting sun. "We're too young now. Don't talk about things like that... And you're not allowed to say those things to me again, or what I just said won't count..."

Happiness was like flowers, like vast waves of wheat, like swaying rapeseed blossoms. What exactly was happiness like? Qin An did not know. He only felt that he could no longer control himself...

Qin An shouted, sprang to his feet with a kip-up, and performed aerial cartwheels across the grass like a whirring windmill...

"Ah... Help!"

There was a low earthen slope ahead, with a soft, loose pile of wheat straw at its foot. Qin An fell into it and lay there on his stomach, turning his face to watch Ye Zhulan run over, her face deathly pale, while he beamed brightly...

"You jerk!" Ye Zhulan scolded, then could not help laughing too...

As evening drew near, Qin An and Ye Zhulan played around for a while, then went to their respective homes...

At the time, Qin An's family lived in the teachers' quarters in town. There were two large apartment blocks, and each teacher's family was assigned an apartment with two bedrooms and a living room. The apartments were not large, but they were just right for a family of three...

Between the apartment blocks was a large courtyard. Qin An ran into Sun Pao at its entrance...

"Pao!" Qin An patted Sun Pao on the shoulder. Sun Pao, who was the same age as him, was one of the few friends he would have in the years to come. They had drunk together and stolen chickens together, fought together and taken punches together, climbed walls and skipped classes together. The friendship they had built since childhood often brought them warmth in later life, and their unspoken understanding in many things strengthened their trust as they made their way through the business world...

Sun Pao looked miserable. When he saw Qin An come over, he merely grunted twice, barely acknowledging him...

"What's wrong?" It was almost dinnertime, and Sun Pao was squatting by the courtyard entrance, brooding. That clearly was not quite normal...

Sun Pao glanced furtively around, then pulled Qin An behind a hedge and hid there with him. "Qin An, I've got hair growing on my dick... What do you think I should do?"

"Pull it out!" Qin An suggested without hesitation...