Yan Yan - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 – Moonlight

Su Yan was stunned at first, and after being in a daze for a few seconds, she ran towards the floor-to-ceiling window like a gust of wind, opened the window, and leaned out her upper body, looking downstairs.

 ‘Xie Yu is actually here.’ Her eyes were full of shock, and she couldn’t utter a single word.

Then Xie Yu’s voice suddenly came from the phone. “Be careful; don’t fall.”

Xie Yu was standing next to a lush flowerbed, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt with a light blue denim jacket and black slacks. When he saw her, he raised a hand, waved at her twice, and signalled her to come down.

Su Yan subconsciously went downstairs in a daze. “You…why are you here?”

“Because I miss you.” Xie Yu looked at the girl.

Xie Yu looked very handsome in the bright moonlight, and Su Yan felt a little shy after seeing him, then pursed her lips and smiled. “It’s almost midnight.”

Xie Yu didn’t care. “So what’s the matter? I can meet my wife whenever I want.”

Su Yan was a little bit annoyed. “Who is your wife?”

Xie Yu raised the corners of his lips and smiled. “What do you think?”

“I’m still not your wife,” Su Yan said shyly.

However, suddenly Su Yan’s expression stiffened, and she ran back to her room without giving Xie Yu a chance to speak. Then she quickly closed the window and pulled the curtain, blocking herself from Xie Yu’s sight, and said through the phone, “You quickly go. My mother said that the bride and groom could not meet the day before the wedding. Otherwise, it will be unlucky!”

Her hometown was a small village, and there were many rules to follow when getting married. Even if they settled in Donfu now, her parents still respected old traditions, and she also listened to her parents.

However, people in the city did not care about those traditional beliefs, so Xie Yu didn’t take it seriously at all and deliberately teased her. “What should I do? I have seen you just now, and you have seen me, too.”

Su Yan: “…”

Xie Yu sighed softly. “It’s already unlucky anyway. Why don’t you let me take a second look?”

“You, you, you are really…” Su Yan was so angry that she ran out of words and finally ordered angrily, “You hurry up, pēi, pēi, pēi!”

Her grandmother often said that even three “Pēi” couldn’t stop auspicious things from going out. She was convinced.

[TL Notes: Chinese people use “Pēi” to express disagreement.]

Xie Yu was amused. After listening to her words, he could not help but think about the first day they met.

It was the second year of junior high school, and before the math class, the head teacher walked into the classroom with a strange girl in the school uniform. The girl was good-looking, and her figure was tall and slender, but the school uniform fell out of place when she wore it.

Students in his school wore Western-style school uniforms. Boys wore white shirts with black suit pants, and girls wore white shirts and black pleated skirts.

That girl’s thick and long hair was placed in a low ponytail with a red headband on her head. She was wearing a pair of handmade cloth shoes. So she looked like a village girl who was not suitable for their modern school uniform.

Her demeanour seemed to be submissive. Since she entered the class, she didn’t dare to look up and kept pulling the hem of her skirt with both hands, trying to pull the short skirt down as if she couldn’t stand showing her legs.

She was like a little white rabbit in the countryside who broke into the bustling big city, panicked, disturbed, and at a loss.

Students in the class whispered and even laughed in low voices.

“Hehehe… where are you from?” 

“The village girl…”

 “Look at her shoes, haha. Too dirty.”

 “Can you still see this kind of local girl in the 21st century?”

The girl also knew that everyone was laughing at her, and she gradually blushed and buried her head lower.

The head teacher patted the podium hard, interrupted the classmates’ whispering discussion, and then asked her to come on stage to introduce herself.

She hesitated for a while and walked to the centre of the podium. “Hello everyone! My name is Su Yan.”

After she spoke, the entire class burst into laughter because her Mandarin was so funny, and even the class teacher couldn’t stop laughing.

Tears filled Su Yan’s eyes, and she closed her mouth tightly, buried her head even lower, and stood awkwardly on the podium.

The headteacher told her to sit beside Xie Yu. Xie Yu was the class monitor at that time. So, before Su Yan entered the class, the headteacher discussed the matter about Su Yan with him privately and told him to take care of the new transfer student without letting anyone bully her.

Before he saw Su Yan, he thought the headteacher was making a big fuss in vain. But when he saw Su Yan, he finally understood the reason. She didn’t fit into their school at all.

After the headteacher arranged the seats, Su Yan flew down from the podium like a bird released from a cage and ran to Xie Yu’s side with her school bag on her back. 

Before leaving, the headteacher gave him a trusting look and entrusted him with an important task. “Xie Yu, you have to take good care of the new classmate.” 

In an instant, the whole class gave him a sympathetic look, and he became completely speechless.

Not long after the headteacher went out, the math teacher walked into the class and started his lecture. When the teacher was lecturing, the fat man sitting in front of Xie Yu threw a paper ball at him. “Brother, hahaha…?”

 ‘Shut up!’ Xie Yu directly raised his leg and kicked the fat man.

After throwing the note into the table drawer, he sighed, turned his face reluctantly, and glanced at the village girl beside him.

Su Yan was sitting upright with her arms folded, listening to the math teacher without moving, with a serious and focused look, like a big white goose with a straight neck. She didn’t even look at Xie Yu.

He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘She looks rustic.’ But after looking at her for a while, Xie Yu found that she was good-looking. 

Su Yan sat next to a window, and she was covered with golden sunlight, which dazzled him. However, in the blink of an eye, a piece of chalk slammed into his head.

“Xie Yu, what are you doing? Why are you staring at others? Do you want to be a hooligan? The math teacher’s voice echoed in the classroom.

“….”

In a second, the whole class exploded with laughter.

Su Yan blushed and glared at him fiercely.

Xie Yu was suffocated and speechless, and he didn’t even know what expression to put on. ‘Is the old man blind? What hooligan?’ He thought angrily.

The math teacher patted the desk hard, and the class instantly returned to silence. When the teacher turned around and continued to lecture on the whiteboard, some students listened, while others were still looking at Xie Yu and Su Yan.

The fat man sitting in front again threw a ball of paper on his desk, and the words on it were as cheap as before. “Brother, I got it.”

‘You…’

Xie Yu was too lazy to bother about the fat man, so he threw the paper ball into the drawer and began to listen to the teacher. The teacher quickly explained the lesson and told them to do the exercises. Xie Yu quickly finished the classroom practice, and then he had nothing to do.

Being bored, he turned his face and glanced at Su Yan beside him again, and he found that she was staring at the exercise book with her brows furrowed in a daze.

‘She can’t do it. Didn’t she listen to the teacher seriously just now? Why can’t she do it? Is the question difficult? Or…..is she dumb?’ He thought.

He didn’t want to care about her at first, but suddenly he thought of the task assigned by the head teacher, gritted his teeth, and asked in a low voice reluctantly, “Can you do the question?”

Su Yan clenched the black signature pen in her hand tightly and bit her lower lip tightly. She didn’t understand what the teacher said just now, even though she tried hard to listen. ‘When I was in my hometown before, the teacher had never taught us such a difficult thing.’

“Do you need me to teach you?” He tried his best to use a friendly tone, but Su Yan replied without looking up.

“No!”

Xie Yu gave her a strange look.

“You don’t need to teach me! I know.” Su Yan got annoyed.

“…”

For the first time in his life, Xie Yu was rejected by a girl, and she was a village girl, which felt quite strange. But he also felt that her rejection came not only from her hostility towards him but also from her low self-esteem because she didn’t want to be laughed at again. 

‘Really, it’s rude and stupid.’

He didn’t intend to continue to make a fool of himself, but her sensitive, inferior, and stubborn appearance, like a small piece of grass swaying in the wind, easily softened his heart.

With a sigh, he picked up the pen again, carefully and neatly wrote down the problem-solving process, then tore the page and pushed it silently in front of her.

Su Yan stunned for a moment, then turned her face to look at him, and her big, watery eyes were full of surprise.

He ignored her, secretly took out his mobile phone from his desk pocket, sent group messages, and made an appointment with someone to play basketball.

Next was gym class, so as soon as the bell rang, he quickly bounced off the stool to go out. Just as he was about to go, the girl next to him suddenly put a piece of paper on his desk.

‘Thank You.”

Her handwriting was neat and beautiful. He didn’t expect her letters to be so beautiful.

“Hey, Xie Yu, what are you doing? Let’s go.” Suddenly a roar came from the door, reminding him about the basketball game, so he put down the paper and went out.

“Aren’t you going home yet?” A gentle and delicate voice came from the phone, interrupting Xie Yu’s memories.

Ten years had passed, and she had changed a lot. Not only had she lost the rustic look on her body, but her tone and voice had become more confident.

“Immediately.” He stared at her window upstairs and asked, “Do you really want me to go?”

“Well yes.” He said but never hung up the phone.

Su Yan waited for a while, then asked helplessly, “Why haven’t you gone home yet?”

Xie Yu told the truth. “I’m afraid you’ll run away.”

Obviously, it was a happy event, but he worried that it was a beautiful dream.

Su Yan was helpless. “We are getting married tomorrow. Where else can I go?”

“Yes,” Xie Yu said with a smile. “Then you just wait at home and wait for me to marry you tomorrow.”

“I know!” After that, she told him to pay attention to safety on the way home and then hung up the phone.

“He saw you yesterday. Why can’t he wait until tomorrow? As for coming here at night? It’s greasy and crooked!” Yao Anan, who had witnessed the entire scene, asked Su Yan annoyingly.

Su Yan sighed. “I don’t want to meet him today, and my mother won’t let me meet him the day before the wedding; it’s not auspicious.” As she was about to walk into the house, she suddenly caught a glimpse of red, so she looked down and saw it was the two copies of ‘Double Happiness’.

[TL Notes: The double happiness symbol “囍” (pronounced shuāngxǐ, 双喜) in Chinese is comprised of 喜喜 – two copies of the Chinese character 喜 (pronounced xǐ), which means joy and happiness. It’s commonly used as a Chinese wedding symbol to represent double the joy and happiness for the newlyweds as they begin their marriage.]

She quickly looked at the curtain and found out that the two copies of Double Happiness that had been sticking to the top had disappeared.

‘Why did it all fall to the ground?‘ Su Yan began to worry.

Su Yan’s heart suddenly felt a sense of unease, like a hunting bird feeling the storm. Am I thinking too much? Must be. I’m thinking too much.

She tried hard to calm down her emotions, bent down, picked up the two copies of Double Happiness from the ground, and posted them on the curtain again. However, she didn’t know if it was because the red paper was too brittle or because she used too much force when one of the Double Happiness suddenly broke from the middle and fell down.

Su Yan’s face turned pale, and she looked at the words “Happy”, which were cut in half, at a loss, and her ominous premonition became stronger and stronger.

Yao Anan noticed something and asked, “What’s the matter with you?”

Su Yan pursed her lips uneasily, panicking like a frightened bird: “I…I accidentally broke Double Happiness.”

Yao Anan saw the broken piece of paper, and she was stunned for a moment, and then she immediately began to comfort her good sister: “Oh, isn’t it just a piece of paper? Why do you think so much? Just change a new one and stick it on it!”

Su Yan nodded. Nodding, trying to keep himself calm: “Um…”

End of Chapter 3

Have a nice day!