Chapter 8: The Summer Wind
“Mo… more than friends?” Shen Zhuying couldn’t help touching the hearing aid on her ear, suspecting it was malfunctioning.
But Fu Sizhuo’s gaze did not waver. He repeated, “Mm, more than friends.”
Shen Zhuying felt as if her brain had been stirred into a pot of porridge.
“You mean… as in friends?” she stammered.
Fu Sizhuo raised a brow, surprised at her interpretation. “We can start as friends, that’s fine too. We’ll go at your pace.”
“Then…” Shen Zhuying looked on the verge of tears, tugging at the car door nonstop.
“Then I’ll just go first.”
Fortunately, this time Fu Sizhuo unlocked the car door.
“No need to feel pressured. I was only asking, I’m not planning to force marriage,” his tone carried a hint of teasing.
“I’m not under pressure, haha.” She forced out a smile uglier than crying.
Fu Sizhuo watched the girl stumble up the stairs, unable to stop himself from reflecting.
Had he been too direct?
It did seem like he’d frightened her.
And in that moment, his thought was simple:
If she had already gone through several blind dates, if she happened to be eager for a relationship or marriage—
Then why couldn’t that person be him?
Shen Zhuying dashed back to her little den without stopping, as if some beast were chasing her.
“Shen Zhuying.” She collapsed onto the carpet, patting her own cheeks.
“Told you not to stay up late all the time.”
“Now look, you’ve overdone it and messed yourself up.”
“Sleep, just sleep. Once you wake up, you won’t have these hallucinations anymore.”
She hurried through washing up and was about to get into bed when she suddenly noticed that familiar black business van still quietly parked downstairs.
She thought for a moment, then turned on the living room light.
Sure enough, within half a minute, the car slowly pulled out of the neighborhood.
That night, Shen Zhuying tossed and turned for a long time. Scenes of meeting him over the past ten years kept circling in her mind, leaving her unable to sleep.
The most immediate consequence of her insomnia was dozing off at the shop the next morning.
And the more direct consequence, she had already mis-wrapped several bouquets of flowers.
Fortunately, they were all regular customers who didn’t blame her. Shen Zhuying was grateful and gave each of them an extra bouquet of lisianthus.
Xiao Chun and Xiao Tao couldn’t bear to watch anymore.
This was way too wasteful.
So they teamed up to drive her into the lounge.
Thus Shen Zhuying sat in a wicker chair, bored, staring at the wind chime swaying outside the window, lazily rocking the swing.
In her mind, Fu Sizhuo’s words kept echoing.
“Shen Zhuying, I want to be more than friends with you.”
Without a doubt, this was an opportunity.
An opportunity for her eight years, no, ten years, of secret love to finally come true.
She didn’t ask herself whether to seize this chance.
Instead, she kept interrogating herself in her heart.
Shen Zhuying, do you still like him?
Shen Zhuying, ten years have passed, do you still like Fu Sizhuo?
Toward the Fu Sizhuo standing in front of you now, completely different from before, do you still feel your heart race?
Shen Zhuying’s thoughts drifted unconsciously with the wind chimes, slowly returning to that midsummer night when she was sixteen.
That day, Shen Zhuying had gone to great lengths to deliver all the pomegranate blossoms in her hands, one by one, to her friends.
By the time she finally returned to Swan Lake, the fireworks concert on stage was already nearing its end.
She squeezed in, panting heavily. “Luckily… luckily I still made it in time for the fireworks show.”
“Why is your brain always full of just the fireworks show??” her deskmate Huang Yixuan scolded, exasperated.
“The school heartthrob is about to come on stage, shouldn’t you at least pay some attention, young lady?”
“My brain still has you in it.” Shen Zhuying cheerfully handed her the last pomegranate blossom in her hands.
“Thank you.” Huang Yixuan’s cheeks flushed red. She accepted it, then couldn’t resist reaching out to rub her little face. “You’re too cute, Shen Zhu Zhu~”
Shen Zhuying was just about to reply when suddenly an earth-shattering scream erupted by her ears, nearly jolting her hearing aid off.
She quickly removed the hearing aid, and in the instant the world fell quiet, she exhaled a breath of relief.
Then she lifted her head—
The cold white stage lights happened to spill over the boy standing at the very center of the stage.
He wore a white shirt, his expression languid, as if nothing mattered to him.
He adjusted the black headset mic, twirled the drumstick once in his hand, and as it landed on the drum—
The boy’s lips curved into a careless smile, a faint dimple flashing in and out of sight.
The confident, unrestrained youthfulness on him was overflowing.
The screams from the crowd must have been deafening; girls in the front rows even waved glow sticks with exaggerated excitement.
Yet Shen Zhuying had taken off her hearing aid. She heard nothing.
The world was quiet.
Until she heard her own heartbeat, chasing after the boy’s powerful, fluid rhythm on the drum, beat after beat, faster and faster.
Oh, so this was what her sister had meant, the feeling of a heart skipping.
This feeling was amazing.
Back then, sixteen-year-old Shen Zhuying gazed up at the boy who shone brilliantly on stage and thought with certainty:
She couldn’t understand why her sister would cry softly at night, whispering that secret love was bitter.
It wasn’t until the performance was almost over that Shen Zhuying finally came back to her senses and put her hearing aid on again.
“Huang Yixuan, what’s his name?” The atmosphere at the venue was so heated then that Shen Zhuying had to lean close to Huang Yixuan’s ear to ask.
There was an entire band on stage, of course, and every single one of them was dazzling.
But at sixteen or seventeen, that tender, restless, on-edge age, Fu Sizhuo seemed to embody the very symbol of what made a young girl’s heart flutter.
So much so that when Shen Zhuying, without adding any embellishing words, simply asked who the “he” on stage was,
Huang Yixuan could answer with certainty.
“Fu Sizhuo. His name is Fu Sizhuo.”
“Fu… Si… Zhuo.” Shen Zhuying lifted her head, and for the first time cautiously spoke the boy’s name aloud. And just then, the spirited boy on stage brought the drum set to a stop.
He leaned toward the microphone, humming the last few lines of the song in a low voice:
“The summer wind, I’ll always remember,
So clearly you said you loved me.
I saw your cool smile,
Yet you had shy moments too.
The summer wind was blowing warm,
Passing through hair, passing by ears,
That summer wind whispered softly with you and me.”
And now, at twenty-six, Shen Zhuying felt as though the summer wind had already blown past.
But she remembered the deafening sound of her heartbeat at sixteen, beat after beat, strong and powerful, echoing again with every meeting she had with him now.
And so she had to admit—
Shen Zhuying picked up her phone, lowered her gaze, and sent Fu Sizhuo a message:
【Muzi Manying】: Fu Sizhuo, are you free? Let’s meet now.
After sending it, Shen Zhuying let out a breath of relief, rocking the swing as she softly hummed the song from that midsummer night.
And so she had to admit—
“The summer wind, I’ll always remember, so clearly saying I love you.”
A few seconds later—
“Dingdong—”
Shen Zhuying lowered her head, her eyes falling on the lit-up phone screen.
【Classmate A】: Alright, I’ll come see you.
