Zhou Xiaoxia and the rest were envious looking at Wen Xuehui’s new cell phone. However, they understood, as ordinary students, they could not afford it.
“By the way, Xuehui, are you a thing with Li Ronghui now?” Zhou Xiaoxia asked suddenly. “I overheard at the library today that he confessed to you, is it true?”
Wen Xuehui’s face twitched.
“Nah, those are just rumors. Her focus right now is her studies. Relationships can wait till after graduation, right Xuehui?” Jiang Yao came to Wen Xuehui’s rescue.
Zhou Xiaoxia did not realize the change in Wen Xuehui’s facial expression. She playfully pushed Jiang Yao and said, “Come on, you are married! You do not know how we singles feel! Let us say we get a partner when we are eighteen years old, our freshman year in school. If everything is fine when we graduate, the time is perfect for marriage. We are wasting our time in college if we do not get ourselves a boyfriend!”
Lin Qiaoyu and Li Yi got in on the conversation after hearing Jiang Yao’s marital status being mentioned. “Say, we are all friends from the same dorm, when are you going to let us meet your husband, Jiang Yao? We want to know what kind of guy he is to not be able to wait to get his hands on you!”
“Go on, tease me all you like! I will return the favor when you all get married!” Jiang Yao chuckled. Giving Wen Xuehui a pat on her shoulders, she continued, “It’s getting late, get some rest soon.”
Jiang Yao managed to speak to Wen Xuehui alone after the rest went out to the balcony to do their laundry and chat, reassuring her to not feel sad over an undeserving guy.
The girls took a long time to finally settle down. Lying down on her bed, Jiang Yao could not help but send Lu Xingzhi a text message.
She had never felt this way, how much one could yearn for another. Even though he was away, memories of him were there.
Jiang Yao sent Lu Xingzhi a text message asking if he had already slept.
She remembered hearing him say how disciplined he was in his platoon. There was a regular pattern of waking up at five in the morning and going to sleep at ten at night.
It was already a little over ten now, he might have already gone to bed.
Five minutes later, Jiang Yao’s phone buzzed. It was a text message containing two pictures.
The images were blurry, but she could recognize them being photographs of a room.
The room was quite empty. The bed was well made, with a blanket folded neatly into a square tofu shape. Lu Xingzhi’s jacket could be seen on the chair next to the bed. She assumed they were pictures of his room in the platoon.
Confused as to what this meant, she received another text message immediately after. It contained a few simple sentences, but Jiang Yao could not stop her face from turning bright red after reading it.
‘Dear, without you here, I feel cold, empty and alone. I can only imagine you being next to me, and how we embrace each other to sleep. Sent by, Darling.’
Jiang Yao was sure that Lu Xingzhi intended to tease her using these cheesy words.
However, she genuinely felt the longing for her by Lu Xingzhi. She missed him too. The times they spent together were short, but wonderful.
A brief thought later, she replied to the text message.
‘Twelve more days till we can see each other again.’
Just as quickly, he replied.
‘I am waiting for you.’
Squeezing her cell phone tightly, she could feel the butterflies in her stomach. How dare he!
Expressing everything he could not say in person through text messages, she saw a different side of him, shown only to her.