One Life, One Incarnation, Beautiful Bones

7

Chapter 2.3 - This Life's Previous Incarnation (3)

If it were Hong Xiaoyu in her place, she would merely feel that this thing called "Wu songs[1]", just from hearing the name alone, must certainly be something very elegant and cultured.

However, she knew better. For example, Wu songs mainly were sexually suggestive, amorous poems or songs in elegant language and were for private enjoyment in the bedchambers. So, even though they had appeared approximately the same time as the Classic of Poetry[2], they...... Anyways, in short, they absolutely would never appear in any school textbook.

She coughed lightly and changed the subject. "Those experiments that you do, are they hard work and exhausting?"

"Not bad," he told her. "It depends on the situation. Where I am, there are very few girls who work there."

"Why is that?"

"It is hard work."

If she probed any further, it would become another conversation between a layman and an expert, and she very smartly did not continue asking along this topic.

When they actually started eating the midnight meal, there was not much verbal communication between the two of them, but it did not feel awkward, either.

"To remain silent during dining, to be wordless during slumber." This was her practice since she was young.

Hearing it said this way made it seem as if she was very well-mannered and cultured, but in the eyes of her many relatives, this was very eccentric. For example, during the New Year or other festivities, the adults would arrange to have the teenage children all sit together at a round table off to the side, but amid the loud laughter, only she would wordlessly finish her meal and drink her soup. Then, she would set her bowl and chopsticks back down in their proper place and quietly sit there, waiting for everyone to finish their dinner before she left the table.

In the beginning, people would praise her for behaving sensibly and maturely, but gradually, she became referred to as the "weirdo" by her cousins, and in secret, she had been judged to be a very arrogant little girl.

Back then, she still had not learned to be smooth and discreet.

Later, as she gradually grew older, she constantly needed to adapt to society. For example, in the school cafeteria, she needed to fit in with the all the other girls and chat while eating, or after she started working, during the occasional social dinners, she had to carry out conversation with people.

After so many years, this was the first time she encountered someone with the same habit as her.

And the happiest part about this was, that person was Zhousheng Chen.

During the entire course of the meal, his only additional action was to pick up the wooden chopsticks in the box of cakes and pastries and personally select a piece of drunken crabmeat paste for her before changing back to his own personal chopsticks and continuing to eat. Shi Yi smiled at him, suddenly feeling that this scene was very familiar. Many of those memories were fragmented and scattered already, but his every movement gave her a feeling that she had experienced this before.

Zhousheng Chen drove her back to her community compound but did not ask the chauffeur to drive in. Instead, he got out of the car and walked with her to downstairs of her apartment building and told her, "The next three months, I will be commuting back and forth between Zhenjiang and Shanghai[3]."

"Zhenjiang?"

"Yes, Zhenjiang. Is that odd to you?"

"Well, no. My father's ancestral hometown is Zhenjiang." She gave a little laugh. "Even though I don't go back there often, hearing its name still feels a little close to my heart."