Chapter 67 – Happy Birthday

The party ended at 8.30 pm.

The bottle was not finished after all, and Shen Yu wondered for a long time why such an unpleasant drink was loved by so many.

In TV dramas, if the hero is suffering from a love injury, then he will take bottle after bottle of wine and pour it into himself, or inhale cigarette after cigarette into his lungs.

Shen Yu has never been there, so it’s hard to understand what it’s like.

He rarely listens to any songs, and he can’t find any love songs, but the only one he can relate to is the song “Farewell” sung by the class when they graduated from senior year.

Beyond the long pavilion, by the ancient road, the grass is blue ……

For some reason, when we sang this song together during the class meeting that afternoon, Shen Yu suddenly felt a sense of sadness about parting.

Perhaps the stories in the songs and books can only be truly understood once you have experienced them yourself.

“Say so in the group when you get back to the hostel.”

“Say the same when you get home.”

“OK, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye-bye.”

At the entrance of the hotpot restaurant, Shen Yu took Asaba Rika and Zhao Yage apart and strolled towards home.

Asaba Rika’s face is still flushed, and the night breeze is cool and pleasant on her face.

She followed Shen Yu with a smile on her face, clutching the gift in her arms.

“Are you drunk?”

“No, I just blush, but I’m not drunk yet!”

“You’ve been drunk?”

“Neither.”

“So how do you know what it’s like to be drunk?”

Asaba Rika thought about it and said, “If you are drunk, you should be talking nonsense, then you will throw up everywhere and you won’t even have the strength to stand up. I have seen my dad drunk a few times and my mum stayed up all night taking care of him, then he didn’t dare to drink so much.”

Shen Yu nodded and said, “So your dad is an okay drinker.”

“Wine tasting?”

“Just the drunken look.”

Shen Yu said, “When my dad got drunk, he sang a big opera in the house, and when my mother kicked him out, he sang in the yard by himself.”

Asaba Rika was amused and asked, “Does uncle know what he did when he was drunk?”

“Who knows about him.”

Shen Yu continues on.

Sunan is quite beautiful at night, and as a historical and cultural city, there are many small bridges and rivers, all lit up with coloured lights at the moment, and sometimes you can see a boat floating down the river with a few wobbly lanterns hanging from the dock.

At night the temperature dropped considerably and when the wind blew, Rika felt a bit cold, so he sneaked closer to Shen Yu and was particularly warm near him.

Girls are afraid of the cold, and if the room is not heated in winter, their feet will still be cold when they sleep until dawn.

There were many people walking at night, and now that they had just eaten and Shen Yu was not walking too fast, the two walked as if they were on a stroll.

You can feel the friction of the old stone slabs when you step on them, and occasionally there are a few that are loose and creak when you step on them.

Asaba Rika said bitterly, “I feel like I’ve gained weight ……”

Shen Yu then looked back at her. Rika’s body was perfectly proportioned, and although she was only sixteen-five, she looked slim and trim, and because of her particularly thin waist, she had more substance in certain areas than she looked.

“You’re a hundred pounds? That’s fifty kilos.”

“How can that be!”

Asaba Rika rubbed her tummy and said, “I feel like I’ve gained a little bit of weight, I need to start losing it.”

“Running?”

” Shen Yu are you running along?”

Asaba Rika didn’t like running, but when he said so, he was immediately interested again.

“I’m not running with you, you must run extra slow.”

“Hmm.”

The girls are still very concerned about their weight and when they passed by a shopping mall, Asaba Rika dragged Shen Yu in to buy an electronic scale.

It costs more than $200 for such an ordinary gadget, which is enough for Shen Yu to weigh it 200 times in front of the pharmacy.

Nowadays, pharmacies are not conscientious either. Weighing used to be free, but now when you go to weigh yourself, you either charge a dollar or scan the code to follow the public number and complete a browsing task to get a free weighing.

” Shen Yu , how much do you weigh?”

“I’m two hundred pounds.”

“I’ll weigh you when we get home!”

“I’m afraid I’ll step on this little tablet.”

“It’s not that easy to break.”

Asaba Rika is so keen to help Shen Yu with his weighing that he suspects he is like a pig, weighed so that he can sell his meat.

While crossing the street, Asaba Rika was waiting for the traffic lights next to Shen Yu. As the number of pedestrians around her increased, she did not like to be in contact with strangers, so she leaned towards Shen Yu and ended up next to him through her clothes.

The warmth of Shen Yu’s body was transmitted to her skin, and Asaba Rika could feel her breathing quicken, as if she could hear the thumping of her heart beating in her chest.

I don’t know if it was the flush from the wine or the heat around him, but Asaba Rika’s face flushed red again and Shen Yu looked expressionlessly at the lights across the road as she peeked up at him with impunity.

The light from the street lamp fell on him, and it was the first time Asaba Rika had been so close to him that he could clearly see the outline of his ears and the fine fuzz around the hairline of his neck.

In that moment, it felt as if everyone else in the world had disappeared, and the image was imprinted on her mind like a cinematic film for a long, long time.

Until the green light came on and Shen Yu called out to her, “Let’s go, what are you gawking at?”

It was only then that she bowed her head and hurriedly trotted to follow.

……

When we got home, Asaba Rika put the gifts back in the room and couldn’t wait to get out the electronic scales and weigh them with her bare feet on them.

“468”

A full 03kg heavier than before coming to China!

Is it because the gravity is stronger here? Rika feels like she doesn’t usually eat a lot of things, and only when Shen Yu takes her to identify her way, she eats preserves, duck necks, rice cakes and stinky tofu ……

Asaba Rika was terrified and rushed down, carrying the electronic scale to Shen Yu, who also wanted to weigh how much she weighed.

But Shen Yu could not be found on the first floor, nor on the ground floor, and even Bai Xiaomeng was missing.

” Xiaomeng I, do you know where Shen Yu has gone?”

Xiaomeng I: “He said he went to the roof to look at the stars.”

Asaba Rika then ran to the roof again.

The building is a two-and-a-half storey structure, with only a utility room on the top floor, and the rest is open space, where a few poles have been erected to dry quilts and other things.

Shen Yu is currently sitting cross-legged on the ground with a pair of binoculars in his hand, looking into the night sky.

Bai Xiaomeng jumped to the edge of the fence, three storeys below, but he was not afraid and walked steadily along the edge.

“Didn’t I tell you that tonight the weather said that the visibility on Mars was high and then it just happened to be your birthday, so I remembered.”

Shen Yu is so annoying!

Asaba Rika grunted, he could have said the second half of the sentence without saying it, but he had to say it, he hated it!

She also sat down on her butt next to Shen Yu, hands on her knees, and looked at the night sky in the direction Shen Yu was looking.

The starry sky was bright this evening, with a variety of stars not normally seen popping up, and the deep starry sky looked gorgeous.

“So beautiful!”

” Shen Yu , where is Mars? Is it the brightest one?”

“That one is Sirius, and Mars is in the southern celestial realm, see …… the one that doesn’t flash and is a little reddish in colour is Mars.”

“I saw it!!!”

Asaba Rika took the telescope given to her by Shen Yu and finally saw Mars as well.

After returning the telescope to Shen Yu, she made a birthday wish on the brightest star with her hands clasped together.

“What are you doing?”

“Make a wish, I’ve heard that making a wish with a star can be very spiritual, and if I make a wish with the brightest star, it must have the greatest ability to grant wishes.”

Asaba Rika continued to make wishes with a reverent face, her wishes were a bit too many.

“Sirius is 86 light-years from Earth, a round trip, so even if your wish were to come true, it would be seventeen years from now.”

“Ah, why this!”

Asaba Rika was devastated and asked, “So which star should I wish for?”

“Mars bar, it won’t flash, but at least it’s fast.”

Asaba Rika then went back to making wishes with Mars.

To test Mars’ ability to grant wishes, Asaba Rika makes a wish for a birthday present from Shen Yu, only she mutters in a whisper and speaks in Japanese, so Shen Yu won’t know, and he doesn’t have a birthday present, so it’s too late for him to hear.

If this wish comes true, she’ll be a Martian believer from now on!

After making his wish, Asaba Rika opened his eyes, and at some point, a ceramic panda doll was added to his side.

A small one, just enough to hold in the palm of her hand, she immediately felt a familiarity, wasn’t this the same one she had last ……

Rika holds the panda doll in her palm, the ceramic still warm, and she looks back at Shen Yu –

Only Shen Yu picked up his binoculars again to look at the night sky, his lips moving slightly, pretending to be casual when he was obviously a little nervous.

“Two bucks for it.”

“Happy birthday.”