“We’re so busy at work! Hurry up and sort out these data.” When Huang Yu saw Jiang Youyou back to work, she handed Jiang a pile of documents and said, “Finish the year-end summary in this morning. All information needed has been collected and there is an e-mail in your computer. Check it out.”
Luo Junchang had distributed wedding candies on the desks of the office staff. Wedding candies should also be distributed for engagement. For if one is engaged, he or she has stepped halfway in the grave of marriage. How many corpses of love they had trod on before they fell into this sweet trap-what they thought was the scent previously now became the odor; what they thought was the sweet saliva now turned out to be slobber; before engagement kissing is a required course, now making love is the homework to be handed in. Then like little leopard, one after another, they looked around to see whether there was any prey. When they became skillful in hunting and able to tell the preys easily from their habits and odors, they decided whether they were going to eat the prey or just frolic with them.
Jiang Youyou didn’t log on QQ for quite a few days, and the vegetables she grew in Happy Farm game were all stolen. Actually, in the game the vegetables were to be stolen. You stole mine and I stole yours. The only worry should be that there were no time to play the game.
After gathering in the vegetables, Jiang Youyou began to work. She opened MSN and closed QQ web page.
Pu Yuanhui was calling on her on MSN. He stubbornly insisted on only using MSN. He thought there were too many people, too many system messages and too many groups on QQ. He didn’t like the vegetable planting game, thinking it a waste of time and was only a game for children.
“Are you ok? And where are you?” Jiang Youyou sent a message to him. She missed him so much because they had to separate when they had just got it together.
“I’m at my old dad’s.” Pu Yuanhui was surfing on the Internet at a huge desk. His father was watering flowers on the balcony. His present wife was listening to opera with earplugs on. What a harmonious scene of happiness.
“Are you safe enough? I’m a little worrying about you.”
“Of course. There are soldiers stood guard downstairs. You don’t have to be afraid. There will be someone guarding you secretly. I missed you very much. Are you missing me?” After finishing the sentence Pu Yuanhui felt like he himself was too sappy to say such words. He would feel embarrassed as when he was young although he was a man of a certain age.
“Don’t you feel slightly ashamed to be so sappy?” Jiang Youyou couldn’t help laughing out loud.
“I will come and pick you up in the evening. Everything is going according to plan. It’s high time for me to do something for you. It is rare that my old father promised to help so readily this time, probably he might think I really died. He shed a few tears of sorrow, but to see I’m still alive. He just made the promise for conscience sake.”
“The flowers seem very good.” Pu Yuanhui went up to his father.
Pu Yonglin was taking care of those chrysanthemums. He picked up a pair of scissors to cut all the chrysanthemums on the balcony and put them on the newspaper and said, “Let’s go.”
His wife pulled out the earplug and asked, “Where are you going? Do you need the driver?”
“We’re going to the grave of Yuanhui’s mother. You don’t have to follow. We can drive by ourselves, we don’t need the driver.” Pu Yonglin cast her a look. The previous young imperious and arrogant peahen now became old, with wrinkles all over her face. Even-tempered, she now slowly got to know to regret having done so many wrongs when she was young.
There were a lot of grass on the graveyard. A lonely grave, and a cold winter day. The hazy weather added more desolation and loneliness.
Pu Yonglin knelt down on the ground. He pulled weeds out first, then he stuck the chrysanthemums one by one on the grave. This is the first time he came here to hold a memorial ceremony for her. He wanted to come before, but he dared not. Today, he came aboveboard at last.
“I’m sorry to be late.” He was actually an old man, but wailed like a little child, with tears pouring down the cheeks. “I feel so guilty for you, can you forgive me, please.”
Pu Yuanhui seemed to see his mother’s smiling face, so young, so beautiful, and she loved him so much.
She had waited for his apology for thirty year. She had waited him to come back for thirty years. The betrayed lover would finally feel guilty, one couldn’t escape the destiny all his/her life.
And when he came to make an apology, she had become a pile of soil in the lonely grave.
The old man wept tears of confession to his son for a long time. The years had passed and the youth never came back. He missed her in their best times, the huge burden he carried in his mind for such a long time had now been put behind him at last.
Pu Yuanhui helped him sit on the big stone aside, and fetched some hot water for the old man to drink. Until then he ceased his grief and returned to his normal condition.
“I’ve arranged everything well for tonight. You can just go there. She’s a good girl. Bring her home to see me when you’re free.” Pu Yonglin stood up slowly. “Liu Dadong, Liu Dadong, finally I had something on you!”
“Are you very familiar with him?”
Pu Yonglin knew the face of Liu Dadong in the video clip, even though only he appeared for only a few seconds. In the Cultural Revolution, it was this man with this face who spat at him, hurt him by ordering him standing naked with only one foot in the street in cold winter, burnt so many precious calligraphy and paintings that he had collected and robbed him of a lot of jadeware. His family members, some died, others ran away. But finally when he was redressed, he stunningly found Liu Dadong getting away without punishment, and suddenly became a senior official.
Pu Yonglin said slowly, “Take good care of yourself tonight.”