Four Degrees

Content Summary: Having A Meal

She walked out with her phone. It was a bit hot and humid, and naturally, the wind was drying.

As soon as she looked up, she saw a conspicuous car parked not far away.

It was different from the car he drove to the school last time. This time it was Miami blue, with a red and black interior, a semi-convertible car. He also equipped it with an anti-roll bar and changed the color. The car logo was added to the seat to meet the selfie needs of the girl sitting in the passenger seat.

There was a girl standing by the car.

He didn’t seem to be afraid of accumulating demerit points1, parked by the no-parking sign on the side of the road. Holding the steering wheel with one hand, the elbow of the other arm rested on the door. Sitting in the driver’s seat wearing sunglasses, he wore a protective sleeve on his left arm, but not on his right arm.

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The sun was very hot.
Although it was very sunny, having driven the convertible, he had to be as impressive as possible. He was talking to the person beside the car, and when he saw Shi Yun, he raised his hand and waved to her.

The gesture of waving caused the girl standing by the car to turn around, and Shi Yun recognized the girl as the girl who suffered the ‘break up’ that day and was squatting opposite the cafeteria while crying.

Wei Congying saw Shi Yun approaching from not far away, and had little patience left for his friend’s ex-girlfriend: “I’m not a matchmaker.”

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When the green light came on, Wei Congying withdrew his peripheral gaze from her, and broke the silence in the car: “I’ll decide the location?”

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Shi Yun had no objection.

It seemed troublesome to change gears at start and stop, but it was very easy for him to drive a car with manual transmission.
He didn’t drive to the large commercial district in the capital, but the quality of the place near the commercial district that he drove to was not low.

Not far away, outside a building with over 30 floors, there hung a screen playing the latest promotional advertisement of a luxury brand’s seasonal products.

While on the road, they hit traffic from the evening rush hour, but the skies of the capital didn’t darken very quickly in June.

After Wei Congying got out of the car, he stood by the car and waited for her. He didn’t make an appointment, so he took her directly to the waiter standing at the door, and told the waiter a name.
The name was not his.

The waiter took them to the second floor.

To a private room which couldn’t be considered big.

The interior decoration was Wong Kar-Wai’s style, it was designed to hide the sound system, and you couldn’t tell where the background music was playing from.

After the prelude was over and the vocals came out, Shi Yun then recognized it for Miriam Yeung’s “A Maiden’s Prayer”.

“Along the way we fell in love on the bus like we were eloping.
We wouldn’t let go of each other however crowded it was.
I pray that there won’t be any hindrance on our way
which could make this happy trip end up sad.
Having passed through two consecutive green lights,
we can still love for few more kilometers,
but we will have to part when the light turns red.
Luck shall determine my fate.
I pray to heaven and earth to have mercy on a pair of lovers.
……”

Just when the song was about to reach its climax, the waiter handed Shi Yun the menu, drawing her attention back to the meal, away from the song. By the time she took the menu, the person opposite had already started flipping through it.

Shi Yun flipped through it for a while, and finally hesitated between two after-dinner desserts, one was fruit and the other was cake.

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The waiter was still standing by and waiting for her. She was embarrassed but couldn’t come to a decision and ordering both would be a waste of food.

Wei Congying had already ordered and from watching her shake her head slightly, then looking at the two types of desserts listed on the two pieces of paper, he could see Shi Yun’s indecisiveness.

He didn’t give her any advice, but he didn’t let her continue to struggle in deciding, Wei Congying thought of the first time he met her, she criticized him for wasting food. He thought for a while and said: “The portion of each dish isn’t much, you can order more.”

So the waiter wrote down both dishes, and walked out of the box with two menus under his arm.

Miriam Yeung’s “A Maiden’s Prayer” had already finished playing without her notice. He was sitting in front of the wall designed with a graffiti collage, and a yellow light shone on the wall.

The yellow-toned light cast his shadow on the wall, but the graffiti was messy and dirty, and the shadow couldn’t be seen clearly.

When looking at his shadow, their eyes accidentally met.

When Shi Yun met his gaze, she quickly looked away. However, this action made Wei Congying smile.
At that time, he attributed Shi Yun’s action to “naivete”, and it was a long time later that he realized that he was unbelievably wrong.

Wei Congying started off and talked about his situation. Several generations of his family had been born and raised in the capital, and he “failed his ancestors” by living abroad for several years.

He was twenty-five years old, two years older than Shi Yun, and a Sagittarius.

After learning that Shi Yun was twenty-three years old this year, he calculated the time in his mind. At this age, he was probably busy with his graduation dissertation defense around this time, but she had final exams. He asked, “Postgraduate?”

Shi Yun nodded: “Studying medicine.”

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She has been very smart since she was a child, just like the students in the whole capital who started fighting with bayonets since they were young, she also took various supplementary classes and various interest classes when she was young.

She burned through several apartments in second-tier cities during cram school, but she never spent a penny on tuition.

When others were throwing money into the learning summer camp for “The Five Bronze Saints”, she took the olive branch offered to her by the school and compared which school gave her more scholarships.

The possibility of eating well with unfamiliar people was basically zero. But he had a good sense of propriety, and when the dishes were served, he stopped talking.

Silence at this time, was relaxing rather than awkward.

The sterilized hot towel handed over by the waiter when entering the room had cooled, and was placed unevenly on a white porcelain plate.

Shi Yun ate the food in small bites; the food was very good.

At least, it suited Shi Yun’s taste. Each dish did not have an overwhelming aroma, but after it entered her mouth, her taste buds lit up.

The lack of aroma was made up for by the taste.

Shi Yun lowered her eyes, and most of her gaze was filled by the table. The person opposite her, helped the waiter move the plates from time to time, and the sleeve on his left arm was eye-catching.

This was especially so, since he only wore one protective sleeve, which meant it was certainly not for sun protection.

The sleeve was all black, without any pattern on it, only a line of white English words, which was probably the brand’s logo.

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Wei Congying saw her eyes fall on his sleeve from time to time, and he took a look himself. He explained: “There is a scar on my arm.”

As he spoke, Wei Congying recalled that she told him she was studying medicine, so he took off the sleeve and smiled. Looking at her, he asked, “Do you want to see?”

As he spoke, he stretched out his arm, and Shi Yun could smell the perfume on his body.
A woody aroma with a hint of smoky pine in the aftertaste. There was a bit of sweetness, which misled the sense of smell, so that one would ignore the coldness created by the sweetness.

There was a scar about seven centimeters long on his arm.

The scar was located on the inner forearm.

Shi Yun looked at the scar on his arm, holding his wrist with a cold hand, and observed it closely.

There was a big difference between the temperature of her fingertips and the temperature of his arm.
This caused the touch of her fingertips to be particularly noticeable on his arm.

The wound was sutured with staples. She looked at the scar left on the arm, which might have been due to a physical problem. The wound recovered very well, and the scar was also light, much better than many centipede types with hypertrophic scars.

“Anything wrong?”
“At the beginning of the year, I broke the bone here by accident and had an operation.” Wei Congying retracted his arm and put on the sleeve that had been pushed down to his wrist.

In the second half of the dinner, he began talking a little too much. Either consciously or unintentionally, he mentioned the scene of meeting her for the first time.

The way to get someone to like you was to make her realize that you had helped her. When he could have, he didn’t take advantage of her, gave her space, and set his first impression as one in the good people camp.
It was like executing tactics, one after another.

He was not in a hurry to reel in the net and check the catch, but reminded the waiter that the after-meal dessert could be served.

The dinner ended around seven o’clock.
It was completely dark outside, and there was a breeze but it still felt stuffy.

When walking to the parking lot, they walked past a Japanese cuisine store where a staff member wearing a Kumamon doll costume handed out leaflets to passers-by.

A leaflet was handed over to Shi Yun.

She took the leaflet without reading it, nor did she directly throw it into the trash can not far away.

Wei Congying saw this, and asked, “If you want to eat, we can come here to eat next time. You finished your exams, so you should have plenty of time, right?”

Because of his words, Shi Yun turned her face, raised her head and looked to the person beside her.

When he said those words, he was looking at her.

Their eyes met.

Wei Congying found that the unexplained emotions in her eyes were very complicated. Like a fish biting the hook and trying to struggle, or a lamb that had been exhausted by the trap and choose to give up.

When he started to suspect that she didn’t have a ‘Scheherazade complex’, she seemed to bite the bait: “Sure.”

–

His car was a good means of transportation at night.

The wind hit the front fender and broke. It scattered around, blowing Shi Yun’s hair.
Even if she raised his hand and pinned all her hair behind her ears, within a second it would be caught by the wind and fly into the air.
The moonlight mixed with the orange street lights shone in the city.

Shi Yun simply tied her hair with the rubber band on her wrist and ignored the fluttering short hairs and fluttering cuffs.

Wei Zongying’s car was a manual transmission.

All his cars were manual transmission, as only manual transmissions could exhibit the greatest charm of the car.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Shi Yun’s small movements of managing her hair, slowly slowed down, and adjusted the gear several times. After the speed of the car dropped to the speed that allowed the roof to be closed while driving, he closed the roof and diverted some of his attention to turning on the air conditioner.

Her hair was no longer fluttering, her sleeves were resting, and even the Japanese cuisine leaflet she was holding in her hand was quiet.

The road back to the Jiangling Campus of Capital University was the road that passed the East Ring elevated road. The shopping mall under the elevated road looked almost completed from the outside. She could slightly count as one who watched the shopping mall turn from barren land to what it was now.

When he arrived outside the dormitory area, Shi Yun told him that he could pull over and park. He stepped on the brake lightly, but he didn’t stop the car completely: “You want to buy something outside?”

Shi Yun understood that he wanted to send her to the dormitory building. She didn’t say anything else, but showed him the way: “Then drive straight ahead… just go the same way as when you came last time.”

From the start, Shi Yun’s major was one of the last ones in the school to finish exams. Students of many other majors had already gone home for the summer vacation.

There used to be quite a few people strolling around, but now there were not many left.

According to memory, Wei Congying drove the car to the place where he met Shi Yun at school last time. The person in the passenger seat looked to the side, out the car window, fiddling with the Japanese cuisine flyer in her hand.

Just about to reach their destination, Shi Yun turned her head: “Which department is your ex-girlfriend from?”

Wei Congying was taken aback for a moment, but soon realized that who he was thinking of in his head was not the same person Shi Yun was talking about.

He explained: “That’s my childhood friend’s girlfriend.”

Breaking up for your childhood friend?

The credibility of this statement doesn’t seem to be very high.

After waiting for the car to stop, Shi Yun stretched out a hand to unfasten her seat belt, and joked a little eccentrically: “Your business is quite extensive.”

Wei Congying pretended not to understand, and smiled: “Happy to help others.”

Shi Yun thought of the last time he sent her drunken self to the police station, and agreed: “I have the right to speak on this, and I agree.”

What responded to Shi Yun was his laughter.

The author has something to say.
“Along the way we fell in love on the bus like we were eloping.
We wouldn’t let go of each other however crowded it was.
I pray that there won’t be any hindrance on our way
which could make this happy trip end up sad.
Having passed through two consecutive green lights,
we can still love for few more kilometers,
but we will have to part when the light turns red.
Luck shall determine my fate.
I pray to heaven and earth to have mercy on a pair of lovers.
……”
—— Miriam Yeung “A Maiden’s Prayer”

Translator Note:

Merry Christmas! Wishing everyone a lovely holiday and good health!

I’m a day late in posting again. Sorry! I got sick halfway through the week and lost track of time.