Chapter 9 — The Bed of Your Own Choosing

"Zhou Yanxuan, you do not have to accept me, but you can't say you like me and consider me someone who can always make mistakes." After she left, I stood at the bus stop for a long time. After hearing the story, Meng Lan only commented with one sentence: "It's worth it." I asked which side was worthy. "You both are worthy. She wants to prove that she's not the type of person you think, you want to prove that sooner or later she will be like that. Love can become an argument in which whoever wins ends up alone." "She advised me to agree."
"I'm not responsible for deciding your feelings." Meng Lan was arranging graduation internship materials. In her third year, she was preparing to go to the provincial newspaper to intern, and rarely went to the printing shop. Before leaving, she gave me the project administration password: "But if you really agree, don't consider other people as error correction exercises. She didn't come to repeat the answer in your heart." A few days later, Shen Nianchu stopped coming to the project office. She handed over her work carefully. The final page outlined the next proposal, which she had prepared so thoroughly that I could not find a single mistake. I went downstairs to the women's dormitory to wait for her. She came back from the library, saw me and stopped for a moment: "Got something?" "Invite me to dinner." "No going." "Drink something then." "No drinking." "Go for a walk?" "Is the school your open house? I still need you to invite me to walk?" I walked beside her: "Then I'll take you back to the dormitory." She didn't kick me out. Going to the small lake, I said: "I want to try." Shen Nianchu didn't stop: "Try what?" "Love me." She turned to me, but she did not look as happy as I expected. "Where are the conditions?" "What conditions?" "Don't you like talking about boundaries the most? Tell me, how many times a week do I get to talk to Gu Cheng, I can't answer the phone after a few hours at night, how much help can I get when he encounters something." She left me at a loss for words. In my previous life, I had indeed set similar boundaries, just not written on paper. I asked her not to meet Gu Cheng alone, not to hold the key for him, not to call to come. Every thing is reasonable, but because we never clearly stated Gu Cheng's position in her life, it all ended up turning into repeated fights. "I don't have a list." I said. "So what do you want?" "Honestly." She looked at me. "If you want to find him, you can tell me. You feel that you must help him, and you can also speak frankly. I may not agree, but I don't want to rely on guesswork." "What about you?" "I don't use past events that haven't happened to question you." She didn't understand this sentence.
but understood my attitude. "Also," I said, "I won't work for Gu Cheng, nor will I ask you to break ties with him because you like me. But if one day you push our matter back for him, I won't pretend it's okay." Shen Nianchu was silent for a long time. "Then you also have to agree with me on one thing." "You say it." "Don't always put yourself in the victim's position. If you're unhappy, say it. Don't keep it on the outside while writing it down inside." I nodded. She still doesn't say yes. I walked her to the dormitory door. Before swiping her card to go in, she suddenly turned her head: "Zhou Yanxuan, are you pursuing someone just for a meal?" "Aren't you going to come?" "I refused once, can't you ask again?" "Tomorrow night?" "I want to eat grilled fish at the restaurant outside the school." "Too expensive." She glared at me. I laughed: "Just kidding. I'll come wait for you at six o'clock." That grilled fish meal cost me one week's overtime salary. Shen Nianchu ate half a meal and it was so spicy that she kept drinking water. I pushed a tissue to her: "If you can't eat spicy, what do you call medium spicy?" "Are you in charge of me?" This sentence is exactly the same as in the previous life. I looked at her red eyes from the sting, suddenly feeling that time was not a straight line. It was like a circle, bringing me back to a familiar table. Only this time, Gu Cheng wasn't sitting among us. I think that's enough.

For the first half of the year, Shen Nianchu and I were in love, and we had almost no serious conflicts. She told me whenever Gu Cheng asked her for help, and she stopped asking me to help her in his place. At first, Gu Cheng said sarcastically a few times, but later when he saw that we weren't breaking up, his attitude became normal. He has a girlfriend at the Academy of Arts, and rarely stays in the dormitory on weekends. One evening at eleven o'clock, Gu Cheng called Shen Nianchu, saying he had a stomach ache, and asked if she had any medicine. She looked at the phone and then at me: "Do you think I should go?" We were comparing books in the project office. "You can go if you want to." She frowned: "There you go again." "I really feel like I can go. Stomach pain is not an emotional dispute, just give me medicine, it's nothing." "Then you come with me." We went to the pharmacy to buy stomach medicine and brought it to Room 406. Gu Cheng curled up on the bed, his face was really not good. Qian Kai went out to play games all night, there was no one in the room to take care of him.