"Really? I don't know how to answer what you said, but I still hope you..."
He Tianran hesitated as he spoke. He lowered his head, as if contemplating how to say the next words. Wen Liang looked at him, his heart suddenly throbbing for some unknown reason.
He was silent for about a minute, but these sixty seconds seemed so long to the two of them that they spanned a lifetime.
Finally, He Tianran raised his head and smiled cheerfully: "But I still hope that you can find your own happiness."
The night wind blew slowly, carrying the indescribable feelings between the two of them to the boundless sea.
Wen Liang was stunned for a moment, and then she laughed. The laughter lingered between the two of them. It was not sharp, but very gentle. She laughed heartily, but she still couldn't feel happy.
These forced smiles and ear-piercing laughter made He Tianran feel a dull pain somewhere in his body. He sighed and said in a hoarse voice:
"Cry if you want."
Wen Liang shook his head stubbornly and sat back next to him.
"Crying? Why should I cry? You are not that important..."
Although the girl said this, there was a slight nasal sound in her nose, and her eyes were shining and trembling slightly.
He Tianran knew that Wen Liang had always been strong and rarely showed the appearance of a little daughter. She was like a wealthy flower in the eyes of others. People expected her to be more gorgeous than the others, not a drizzle. The pear blossoms are delicate.
However, no matter how much others fantasize about her, she is still just a living girl with her own joys, sorrows and sorrows.
At this moment, Wen Liang felt her vision darken. It turned out that He Tianran had covered her head with his navy blue military cap. He pulled down the brim of the hat to cover her eyes.
There is no one else now, but precisely because there is no one else, He Tianran knows that he is the only one who doesn't want to see her sad look.
"You said...we are almost a hundred years old together, how can we still be wronged for a little love?"
In the quiet night, He Tianran felt the evening breeze blowing from the seaside, and he joked happily.
"Who has been wronged? And how did you calculate it?! How come our total is only one hundred?" Wen Liang couldn't help but press the hat with both hands. He couldn't see her expression clearly, and could only hear the muffled questioning sounds coming from her mouth.
"Look, you and I were both thirty before we traveled through time, and now we're both eighteen. Thirty plus eighteen then multiplied by two, isn't it almost a hundred..."
"I didn't. You're talking nonsense. I'm only eighteen years old now! You're almost fifty! Uncle!"
The girl who was rewarded by He Tianran's precise thunder step was anxious, annoyed, shameful and irritable. It seems that even though she accepted the memory of the future, her temperament has not changed. Perhaps, her "warm and cool" personality, That's how it is.
He Tianran, who still looked like a boy on the surface, sneered, and deliberately said in a low voice like coaxing a child: "Okay, okay, I'm fifty years old and I'm an uncle, okay?"
"...That's pretty much it." Wen Liang muttered.
The two of them were speechless for a while, listening to the sound of the tide of the sea.
"He Tianran..."
"Um?"
"What does it feel like to be in love with Cao Aiqing? Is it... that you are different when you are with her than when you are with me? Will you be happier? Happier?"
"This...can't compare."
"Really? Is it different because she is your favorite person?"
He Tianran smiled bitterly and considered his answer: "That's not what I meant, I meant... it seems like... we have never really been together, so... we can't say there is anything different."
"Then have you ever liked me?"
"I liked it, I liked it very much."
"I mean...all of He Tianran, including...the world before the time travel, before the young you appeared."
"..."
The tangled emotions and misplaced time and space between the two made He Tianran's face show a trace of sadness. He was silent for a long time without responding. Wen Liang waited for a moment, and finally added cautiously:
"I, I just want to know if all my efforts to help you were in vain..."
Finally, the boy spit out this sentence:
"...Everything I did for you was just to get revenge on you."
After hearing this, Wen Liang gently took off the hat on his head and put it in his arms, revealing his original appearance.
"Yeah...I know."
She murmured and nodded. She was not surprised by this answer. She seemed to have been prepared for it. She slowly asked the next words:
"So...if there was no time travel between us, you wouldn't like me, right?"
"I have no idea."
He Tianran felt disappointed. This was not a pretentious answer. He habitually analyzed his heart and said:
"To be honest, when I think about the fact that I have hated you for thirteen years and even made my future miserable, I don't know what the difference is between this extreme emotion and love.
When I was in high school, I regarded Ai Qing as my muse, but I confessed my love to you under your teasing. From then on, I couldn't get up and couldn't hold my head up. But if you look at it from another perspective, if I fall in love with you so easily, does that mean that I am not very religious in my love?
When I saw Ai Qing being bullied, I pushed Guo Huai out. I wanted to save her, but I didn't have the guts to appear in front of her with the face that had been ridiculed by the whole school.
From then on, I seemed to be deliberately punishing myself. The more I hated you, the more I liked her, until in the end, just getting closer to her and saying a word seemed to blaspheme her glory.
Guo Huai didn't understand her, but he loved her enough. I helped him along the way and became friends with him because he was so much like me before I was teased by you.
Seeing them finally come together, I feel a little relieved in my heart. I have felt inferior and fantasized countless times, if I didn't exist, would I be able to be with my goddess?
Wen Liang, you asked me if I would like you if you had not traveled through time. I really don’t know this question.
In another timeline, the relationship between us was full of malice from the moment we met. This is a twisted emotion. It is full of bullying, deception, and resentment from beginning to end. and discrimination. You think, can the feelings we have born from these words be called 'love'?
So...heh, let's put it this way, I, as a client, feel that the things you did for me later, even if you regard them as salvation or redemption, I feel...not worth it. "
Wen Liang listened to what he said quietly, her eyes soft.
"Naturally... from the moment I met you, I knew you couldn't be a bad person."
He Tianran said: "The worst thing is that good people are not considered good."
Wen Liang shook his head: "No, look, you are sure that you lied to me and made me fall in love with you. You want to use me and take revenge on me, but every time you can hurt me, you never really do it. once.
In fact, now that I think about it, when Zhang Zhifan used the navy to hack me, he was even more ruthless than you. All you had to do was add a handful of firewood and tell me what happened back then, and you could put me in a position of irreparable danger, but you didn't.
Your life is unsatisfactory. I have tried to help you many times, but you have refused. You don’t want to use my money and you don’t want to owe me any favors. You think this will make me feel even more guilty, but I know that these embarrassments are not just an act. Yes, I also understand your stubbornness, so I am very sure that if you keep doing this, you will never be able to harm me.
However, I don’t want you to always be like this. I hope you can succeed quickly. When you climb out of the mud of life, when you are no longer confined to that period of hatred, maybe you will see clearly that I am right. Your true love. "
These words made He Tianran dumbfounded. After a while, he looked at her and said, "Sometimes I don't know whether to call you smart or stupid..."
Wen Liang smiled, "Is it that important? Look at you, you have always talked about revenge, but now you still show your thoughts side by side with me? I have always known what you are thinking about me, you Not a bad person, because how can there be a bad person who hurts others in the same way as he hurts himself?
I don't regard you as a bad person, nor do I regard you as a good person. There is no such clear line between good and bad in the world, so the so-called 'worth it' is not whether what I do to you is worth it, but whether it is worth it or not. I have always regarded you as a person worthy of love. "
"So, the young me... was born?" He Tianran continued.
"Of course, you can please the little girl now, and I trained you well." Wen Liang replied with a smile.
"Hey……"
The old boy was full of emotions. He grabbed a handful of sand, threw it into the sea, and asked: "I have worked hard to stay alone for thirteen years. In order to get revenge, you got me involved, so in the end, who of us wins?"
Wen Liang bent his legs and held his chin with his hand: "If you answered that you love me just now, then I won."
"Okay, are you waiting for me here?" He Tianran shouted exaggeratedly.
"So I said 'if'... In fact, whether it is time travel or reincarnation, it seems that I have achieved my wish and lived a new life, but I always feel that God has given us the greatest punishment. "
He Tianran was speechless. He understood the meaning of Wen Liang's words.
The relationship between the two of them, even if it transcends the constraints of time and space, will be missed at the most critical node, and thus it will not be able to achieve fruition.
This seemed to be destiny. He had never done anything he had promised; and she had never gotten what she had been pursuing.
It is said that beautiful days will meet unexpectedly, but the fate between the two is always missed by fate, between self-wandering and loss.
God is indeed the shrewdest businessman. Every moment of romantic love and every second of heartbeat that the two of them have experienced will turn into four words in the end called "the world is impermanent".
In this timeline, God gave them the beginning of a beautiful story.
The young He Tianran once thought that Wen Liang would be the most indispensable person in his life. The girl was like the key character who often appeared in TV series and movies and was of great significance to the protagonist.
She will stay with him and watch him grow, and then they will experience it together, composing a love story that is cliche but still desirable.
However, as the story came to an abrupt end, He Tianran understood that in his own life, he had poured so much emotional warmth into it, and it turned out that it was just a prequel to the story.
Is this punishment?
This is life.
Wen Liang didn't want to continue this topic. She was always aware of He Tianran's ability to change the topic, so she asked again:
"What's the reason for your appearance? And how can I help you?"
He Tianran smiled and said: "You will know, but this time, don't help me, let me solve it myself."
Wen Liang was slightly surprised and said, "You don't need my help?"
Perhaps because this sentence was a little sensitive, she added later to Aiai: "Didn't you say that... you have something to do with me?"
"You don't have to help me if you have anything to do with it, just be yourself." He Tianran ordered, then suddenly paused, half-seriously joking, and then said: "Hey~ you didn't return the favor just now. Let’s face it, I, He Tianran, will never accept your help.”
Wen Liang laughed dumbly: "You... you are really... as stubborn as a donkey in some aspects."
"I can't change it. It's my nature. Whether it's the young me or the me now... Can you give me some time now? I... I want to talk to myself..."
He Tianran looked at the sea and changed the topic.
Wen Liang looked hesitant, as if she had not finished saying some words, because she was not sure whether the phrase "the days are long" was appropriate for them.
But in the end, the girl nodded and stood up.
"I understand...then we...see you tomorrow?"
He Tianran said happily: "We are on this island now, and I can't escape."
"See you tomorrow?"
Wen Liang ignored his joking and asked again seriously.
"See you tomorrow."
He Tianran suppressed his smile this time and responded seriously again.
After getting a satisfactory answer, Wen Liang slowly turned around and left.
Maybe she had forgotten it, or maybe it was on purpose. She still held He Tianran's military cap in her hand.
"Hey, you still call me stubborn."
He Tianran looked at her slowly disappearing slender back and murmured to himself.
In his ears, the sound of the ocean waves surged back and forth, but he felt calm inside.
"Why didn't you say anything just now?" He Tianran asked and answered himself: "Is what I said actually what you wanted to say?"
"..."
"Or is it that you don't know how to deal with yourself now that you know Wen Liang's current condition?"
Not hearing the response from his heart, He Tianran said no more. He just sat alone on the beach, as if thinking about something quietly.
"It's hard for you to speak to her. I thought you would be more positive."
After a long time, he heard this sentence.
"I've never liked to reveal too much to Wen Liang. This is the way I've always gotten along with her."
"Is it because I don't like it, or because I'm not good at it? I didn't expect you to show her the fact that you showed up so bluntly."
"Do you think I will pretend to be you and lie to her again?" He Tianran made it clear what he was hesitating to say in his heart.
"...If this is really the case, then I will stop you."
"Please, my name is also 'He Tianran', so I will only do what He Tianran should do."
"I do not understand."
"It's not that you don't understand, you just don't dare to do it, such as 'I won't lie to her in this life', and I am just helping myself fulfill the promise I made."
"Is this what you want to do?"
"This is what we want to do."
After the young man He Tianran said this, he also laughed.
"Now your attitude has changed instantly, hasn't it? Between the bravery you had when you met me in the future and the compromise of emotional choices now, which one of us is more like 'He Tianran'?"
(End of chapter)
