The Taming of the Ruffian Hero

Zhu Ziping and Yun Che had met each other during the first year of their music university. Both of them were good-looking and talented young people. They never met or talked to each other before they were romantically in love with each other. They just spontaneously took each other’s hand in a rain of cherry blossom.

Without anyone introducing them to each other, they naturally held each other’s hand when they first met at the university. None of them felt awkward. Before that moment, Zhu Ziping had never taken a man’s hand like this.

They somehow felt as if they had met before and this was a reunion.

They seemed to be predestined to meet each other. After being together for four years, they planned to get married after graduation.

Zhu Ziping took Yun Che home and bashfully introduced him to her parents. Upon seeing the well-dressed and well-spoken young man and all the expensive gifts he bought for them, Zhu Ziping’ foster parents strongly opposed their decision to get married. Later, Zhu Ziping who had never defied her foster parents in the past ran away from her home to find Yun Che, since he had told her, “I and the city where I live are waiting for you to reawaken our hearts.”

Although Zhu Ziping had known that Yun Che was from a well-off family before, the moment she reached his door, she was still surprised. Yun Che’s home was a large manor, and she could see many well-dressed servants working inside it. She looked at the calm face of Yun Che and felt nervous. He had never told her that he was from such a super rich family.

Yun Che trusted Zhu Ziping. He was confident that her love for him would not change because of his background. He knew that she would just treat his parents as her future in-laws and would not get stressed out in front of them.

In the beginning, Yun Che’s parents were impressed by Zhu Ziping’s elegance and beauty. When they asked about her family, Yun Che wanted to stop them, but Zhu Ziping calmly told them everything about her parents and foster parents.

After knowing that, they still treated her nicely, but at night, Yun Che did not come to spend the night with her.

Now that she had run away from her home, Zhu Ziping knew that she had only Yun Che now. She was well aware that it would take his parents a while to accept her, so she waited patiently.

With the servants being around, she did not have any chance to cook, do housework, or do anything else that she was good at. All she wanted to do was to play the piano together with the man she loved on moonlit nights, but Yun Che’s parents never allowed them to stay together at night.

She felt alone, as the manor was large and looked empty at night. Yun Che had once promised her that they would have drunk some wine and played Colorful Clouds Chasing The Moon together on every moonlit night. Zhu Ziping was subtle and Yun Che, passionate. They had deeply impressed lots of people back in their university when playing piano together. None of them expected that everything would end at a moonlit night. On that night, when the rain stopped, Zhu Ziping missed Yun Che too much and sneakingly jumped over the fence between the garden of the hosts and that of the guests. She spotted Yun Che at a bonfire party and saw a sexy girl in his arms.

The next day, Zhu Ziping decided to leave. She had stayed here for a month since Yun Che had promised to persuade his parents to approve of their relationship. Over the past month, they had met for only five times. Every time they met, they could only spend a short period of time together. She thought to herself, “If Yun Che has fallen in love with someone else or found a girl who’s well-matched to him, he won’t ask me to stay here. He still loves me, but he’s in a dilemma now. I can tell that he pretended to smile at me every time we met. Even if we’re really predestined to fall in love with each other, we have to admit that we can’t be together because of these practical problems. Maybe we’re predestined to meet these problems.”

Before her departure, Zhu Ziping left Yun Che a note. She felt as if she had used all the strength in her body to write this note. “If you still want to be together with me, come to meet me at the North Railway Station at noon. Let’s run away.”

Zhu Ziping waited at the railway station from noon to evening. Dark clouds gathered in the sky. She got drenched in the heavy rain and felt completely disappointed. At night, when the rain stopped, it became somewhat windy. She was alone under the bright moon.

She still firmly believed that Yun Che loved her. She was never attracted to wealth or luxurious lifestyle. All she wanted was to live together with Yun Che in a quiet corner of the world. She just wanted to play the piano together with him on every moonlit night. Without Yun Che, she felt that she could not remember a note and there was no music in her world.

When Zhu Ziping returned home, she acted strangely. She turned her cellphone on and off again and again. Sometimes, she played the piano, and sometimes, she pounded the piano angrily. She looked somewhat insane. When she recovered, she learned that her foster mother had passed away because of overwhelming worries and thus regretted what she had done very much. She sent a text message to Yun Che. “Let’s end our relationship now. Thank you for appearing in my life as a wonderful piece of music. It’ll take me my whole life to forget about it. If we can meet each other again without contacting each other beforehand, I’ll take your hands and leave with you again.” After sending that message to Yun Che, she cut off contact with everyone except her bestie.

Zhu Ziping did not know that at that time, Yun Che was locked in a room by her parents. As he was eager to meet her at the railway station, he jumped from the third-floor room and got severely injured. He had lain on a bed in a hospital for three months and in the first few days, he could not move at all. When he was able to pick up his cellphone, he called Zhu Ziping but failed to get through to her. He was in total despair and thus recovered slowly. After leaving the hospital, he ran away from home and traveled to many different places. One day, his friend saw the ad of Ziyun Piano Store and told him this thing. He hurriedly went to the piano store and bought it. During this process, he gradually realized that the ad was specially designed to attract his attention by Zhao Yuan and Zhao Yuan did this to make Lin Wenxi’s wish come true.

When they came back to Ziyun Piano Store together, Yun Che sighed. “We’ve wasted five years.” He tightly held Zhu Ziping’s hand and silently recalled how they had met a few days ago back in the village.

On that day, Yun Che stood at the door of Zhu Ziping’s house, waiting for her. ln the late afternoon, she finally came back with some fresh vegetables that she had just picked from her field and a jar of cherry blossom in hand. They smiled at each other and then naturally held each other’s hands just like what they had done nine years ago, when he had been19 and she, 18.

Nine years had passed. Now she was 28 and he was 29. They did not simply feel delighted or excited when seeing each other. They had complicated feelings which they could hardly express through words. Just like Zhu Ziping had written in that text message, Yun Che appeared in her life again without contacting her beforehand. He held her hands when the sun was setting and the morning glory in the garden changed from light red to dark blue.

Zhu Ziping seemed somewhat bashful. She still looked like a young girl, but Yun Che already had some visible wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He slowly told her all the things that he had been through during the past five years. Tears flowed down Lin Wenxi’s face. He sobbed and asked, “Can you tell me when you knew that you’re in love, Ziping?”

After some thought, Zhu Ziping replied, “I knew it when I discovered that I would feel happy for him and sad for him. And sometimes, the feelings were so complicated that I could not tell whether I was happy or sad.” Lin Wenxi nodded. Zhu Ziping wanted to come close to him to comfort him, but he refused. After that, he quietly left the piano store together with Zhao Yuan.

The piano store was quiet again.