The Outer Chapter: My Story with Tong Chen - The First Date

  After all the hardships and waiting every day, the weekend finally arrived, as if everything in life was waiting for this day to come.

  It was not yet six o'clock in the morning, and I couldn't sleep peacefully anymore. The excitement had started to surge through my heart, so I got out of bed and walked around the house a couple of times amidst other people's snores. Then, I picked up the mop and started mopping the floor to expend my excess energy.

  For this rare behavior since our dormitory was founded, when everyone was woken up by me and looked at the clock with sleepy eyes, they all involuntarily expressed infinite emotion towards my wake-up time and my behavior after waking up. Old Two, lying on his bed with his eyes closed, pointed out incisively that my behavior, which seemed to be diligent labor for the dormitory's environmental improvement, was actually a result of suffering from insomnia and wanting everyone to share this painful feeling with me. This is a feudalistic idea with a strong Jianghu flavor, "sharing difficulties together". Old Two's words stirred up a thousand waves at once, and under his guidance, others regained their clarity as if they had been awakened by a magic potion, starting a round of criticism and condemnation against me, gradually going from bad to worse under Old Two's guidance. As a result, the scene that had long disappeared from the bustling land of China for nearly thirty years began to resurface in our dormitory, and I could only stand at the center of everyone's accusations like a "cow ghost snake god" with a shaved head, silently repenting...

  The clock on the wall has slowly moved its hour hand to approach the number 6, indicating that the moment I have been thinking about day and night is about to enter my life. I have already appeared in front of the mirror in my dormitory for the third time to make further adjustments to my image. This slightly grandiose move also attracted San Baozi and Lao Er to sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the bed, staring at me with wide eyes.

  Lao Er slowly got up from the bed, walked to my side and asked me, "Meeting?" Due to the pressure of the CET-4 exam, Lao Er recently started trying to create an English conversation atmosphere in the dormitory to improve his listening skills, starting with himself. As a result, the dormitory began to be filled with Northeastern-accented English words and grammatically incorrect sentences from time to time, often causing laughter and debate.

  "Yes!" To cooperate with Lao Er and create a healthy English learning atmosphere in the dormitory, I stood in front of the mirror and answered Lao Er in English.

  "Is it important?"

  “yes？”

  "With... with who?" Lao Er thought for half a day and stuttered to me.

  "Secret!" I said with a smile to Lao Er.

  "What's the secret?" Lao Er repeated with a confused expression, then walked to his bookshelf, pulled out a 4th-grade vocabulary handbook and started flipping through it slowly.

  "Secret! Still need to look up the dictionary?" San Baozi lay on the bed with a complacent expression of having scored 65 points in the English college entrance examination, saying to Lao Er who had boasted about his own high score countless times before. Lao Er could only pretend not to hear and continued to quietly flip through the dictionary to cover up the undeniable awkwardness.

  "By the way! Second brother, I asked you to replace the battery for the wall clock yesterday, did you do it?" The eldest who was lying on the bed reading a book suddenly said to the second brother.

  "Oh no!! I forgot!"

  "Hurry up and change! The watch is already half an hour slow!"

  "Are we late? When are we late?" I had just glanced at the time on the wall clock and was leisurely admiring myself in the mirror when suddenly I reflected on how hazardous Boss's words were to me, so I broke out in a cold sweat and anxiously asked him.

  "Yesterday started slow..." As soon as I judged from Lao Da's eyes that I would get a definite answer, I rushed out and ran to the school gate, and on the way, based on the numbers on the watch dial that I hastily scanned when I went out, combined with the time the watch was slow, I came to the astonishing conclusion that I was almost 20 minutes late. At this time, Tong Chen's image of standing in the cold wind, with an angry expression and waiting anxiously, also began to appear in my mind...

  I rushed into a taxi at the school gate, panting and gasping for breath, and told the driver, who looked surprised, the address where Tong Chen and I were supposed to meet, adding "drive faster" as an afterthought.

  Originally, it was just a few words that slipped out of my anxious heart, but they were like a strong stimulant, making the originally shriveled and hunched driver suddenly brighten up, as if he had regained his masculine vigor. He stepped on the gas pedal all the way, and the brakes were useless to him, controlling the speed only by how hard he pressed the accelerator. This journey made me feel for the first time in my life that Harbin's traffic was also so smooth, and at the same time, I felt a thrilling sense of guilt. Later, I paid a bloody price for enjoying this thrill, as the car, which was still driving wildly in the middle of the road, suddenly took a sharp turn towards the trees by the side of the road...

  It wasn't long after a violent shock that I felt dizzy and sensed many people surrounding the car, talking loudly. Later, I felt myself being helped down from the car and into a taxi, and then everything went black... Until I felt a strong beam of light shining into my eyes, I gradually regained consciousness and sat up in bed with a start. Looking around at the environment and the two people in front of me, I realized that I was in a hospital, with a bandage wrapped around my head, and feeling a slight pain coming from the back of my head.

  "It seems to be nothing! Just an external injury, let's observe it tonight!" The doctor said to the nurse beside him, then put away the small flashlight he used to shine my eyes and walked out of the door.

  "How long have I been here?" I suddenly remembered the appointment with Tong Chen, and after calming down, I asked the nurse beside me.

  "It's been more than an hour."

  "No! I have to go! Something urgent has come up!" I jumped out of bed and rushed to run outside.

  "Alas! No way! You have to keep observing!" The nurse grabbed my arm and said.

  "No need to watch me, I'm fine! I have an urgent matter, I must go!" I ignored the nurse's words and continued to walk stubbornly towards the door.

  "Then pay the medical bill first before you leave!" The nurse finally said out her enthusiastic retention of my true purpose, so I didn't have much nonsense with the nurse, and hurriedly went to the cashier to pay the money after that, and ran out of the hospital.

  I stood at the hospital entrance, took out my phone and saw that there were 5 missed calls all from Tong Chen. So I hurriedly called her back, but the phone rang only once before being ruthlessly hung up. Tong Chen's action made me realize the severity of the problem, so I hastily got into a taxi and rushed to her and Zhao Lijia's residence. Although it was the same anxious mood, due to the consideration of the car accident earlier, after getting in the car, I deleted the words that should have appeared at the end of what I said to the driver, such as "drive faster", and prayed to God not to happen again "good things come to those who wait" tragedy...

  After arriving at their residence, I started knocking on the door desperately, but the calm reflection from inside seemed to suggest that no one was home, so I took out my phone and dialed Zhao Lijia's number.

  "Hello!" came Zhao Lijia's impatient voice over the phone.

  "Where are you?" I asked anxiously.

  "Playing mahjong in the company dormitory!" came a noisy voice of several girls from the phone, along with the sound of shuffling mahjong tiles, also confirming Zhao Lijia's words.

  "Is Tong Chen with you?" I asked anxiously.

  "Tong Chen? She's at home!" Zhao Lijia replied very certainly.

  "Are you kidding me?! I'm right outside your door now, why isn't anyone answering when I knock?!"

  "What? But she just called me and said she was at home! What are you doing here so late at night?" Zhao Lijia asked strangely after giving me a definite answer.

  "Never mind! Just have fun!" I didn't have time to continue chatting with Zhao Lijia, so I hastily hung up the phone and continued knocking on the door.

  "Tong Chen! I know you're in there! Let me explain why I didn't go...!" I started knocking on the door and shouting loudly, "Our school's watch suddenly slowed down! So I took a taxi to rush over, who knew the car flipped over..."

  "Be quiet! You're being too loud, you'll disturb the neighbors..." Just as I was enthusiastically explaining to Tong Chen in a loud voice, Tong Chen's voice suddenly appeared behind me like a ghost, making me break out in cold sweat in surprise. At the same time, I began to wonder why she always seemed to appear behind me at the most critical moments, and always managed to put me in an extremely embarrassing situation.

  "You... how did you end up here..." I asked in surprise.

  "I've been here for a while... I just went out to buy water... The water at home has been cut off."

  "Oh! So you heard everything I said just now, right!? I don't need to explain then...... I thought you were angry and wouldn't open the door for me!" I said with some embarrassment.

  "You're like this! How can I still be angry? How are you now? Is it serious?" Tong Chen smiled and asked me with concern.

  "Oh! It's fine! Not serious! I...I'll just go back first..." I really wonder if my brain got hit stupid, originally it was a characteristic of mine to be a bit silly, but now in front of Tong Chen I couldn't bring it out, seeing her and not knowing what to say, so I could only hastily bid her farewell and prepare to leave.

  "Wait a minute!" Tong Chen took a step forward, blocking my way. "Your bandage is loose, come inside and I'll help you rewrap it properly!" In my impression, in many TV dramas, the prelude to the male and female leads developing a relationship often involves the female lead dressing the male lead's wounds, so when I heard Tong Chen's words, although on the surface I remained calm, but in my heart I was extremely excited...

  On the way back from Tong Chen's house, I was still basking in the happiness brought by the close contact with Tong Chen, and the tingling sensation when her smooth hands touched my skin made me savor it endlessly. Although the indecent thoughts that flashed through my mind before entering the house did not happen, being face-to-face with Tong Chen at close range and feeling her concern finally made me realize the significance of this car accident, and also made me have more thoughts about Tong Chen...