Chapter Seventeen We Met Before

  The next second, his hand was less than a centimeter away from that beautiful and charming chest.

  That hand suddenly swooped down like a swallow skimming water, its five fingers closing in with lightning speed.

  That annoying buzzing sound suddenly disappeared, the world returned to silence, Hong Jun made a great effort to twist his tightly clenched right hand, that small, despicable life was extinguished in an instant, and a dirty ** flowed out from between his fingers.

  "You haven't even moved, and you dare to have such wild thoughts? You're dead for nothing." He cursed the fly fiercely. After washing his hands in the bathroom, its mangled corpse was flushed down the drain. "Even if I had touched it, you still can't touch it once, don't even think about it." He spat into the drain.

  "Hmm." Rui Xin suddenly furrowed her brow in her sleep, twisted her body, and a pained expression appeared on her face as she let out a moan.

  Hong Jun hurried over and gently stroked Rui Xin's face, "Xin Er, Xin Er, what's wrong?"

  Ruixin woke up from a deep sleep and pressed her hands tightly on her lower abdomen: "My stomach hurts."

  "What to do? What to do?" Hong Jun was at a loss, he had never encountered a woman's menstrual pain before and didn't know how to handle it. "Should I go call a doctor for you?"

  "Wait," Rui Xin called out to Hong Jun, who was getting up and about to leave the door. "I'll just have some brown sugar water." She then got out of bed to go make the brown sugar water.

  "Go lie down, I'll take care of this." Hong Jun pressed Rui Xin back onto the bed, his eyes scanning quickly before spotting the red sugar on the coffee table. He walked over, scooped a few spoons into a bowl, then filled it with hot water. Blowing gently on the rising steam, he handed it to Rui Xin.

  Rui Xin reached out to take it, but Hong Jun stopped him: "No, it's hot, I'll hold it, you drink."

  Perhaps it was the scalding hot red sugar water that took effect, or perhaps Hong Jun's warmth had dissolved the illness, or maybe Rui Xin was afraid of worrying Hong Jun, but after a few mouthfuls of the red sugar water, Rui Xin's eyebrows relaxed and a smile reappeared on his face: "Thank you, it doesn't hurt anymore."

  "You're an office clerk, why do you still have to work at night?" Hong Jun suddenly realized that he knew too little about Rui Xin. For so many days, he had forgotten to ask Rui Xin what specific work she was responsible for in the office, and it turned out that she needed to work at night.

  "Can office clerks not work night shifts? Our factory is a big one, with over 2,000 employees. To ensure normal production operations, the factory requires all departments and teams to have someone on duty at all times, day and night. According to the factory's rules, our office must also work in three shifts. Moreover, the factory prohibits sleeping on the job at night; if anyone is caught sleeping, they will be fired immediately. The main task of the office at night is to check on people, inspect whether workers are sleeping on the job, and do some simple coordination work." Rui Xin said, "You're really careless, you still don't know what my specific job is after all these days." She pointed her right index finger at his forehead, "I think you might have even forgotten to ask one thing."

  "I've forgotten to ask something? What was it?" Hong Jun was a bit dazed, he thought carefully, but still couldn't remember what he had forgotten to ask Rui Xin.

  "Fool, have you ever asked me where I'm from? Do you know about my family situation?" Rui Xin smiled again.

  "Ah." Hong Jun patted his forehead, "Indeed, I've been bewildered by you for this period of time and forgot everything."

  "Hehe."

  "Alright, Xīn'ér, tell me then." Hóng Jūn shook Ruì Xīn's shoulder.

  Rui Xin's eyes rolled 360 degrees and she giggled: "I won't tell you."

  "No way, if it's like this, in the future when we get married and others ask me where my wife is from, I won't know. When they ask if your family has any other relatives, I won't know either. Isn't that embarrassing?"

  "Go, who is your wife."

  "It's not now, but isn't it just a matter of time? Isn't this all just low-hanging fruit?"

  "You're the one who's easy prey, you scoundrel."

  ……

  Enough of the laughter, Rui Xin leaned against the headboard, looking at Hong Jun sitting beside her, and slowly spoke out about her own life: "My life has been quite bumpy."

  "Bumpy?"

  "They say that since ancient times, beautiful women have short lives. Heaven is fair to everyone, it won't create a perfect person. It gave me this good-looking face, but didn't give me a complete family and love." Rui Xin sighed, the smoke ring turned red. Hong Jun reluctantly held her in his arms.

  "My hometown is Dalian." Rui Xin continued.

  "Dalian? We're fellow townspeople! I'm from Dandong, we're very close!" Hong Jun exclaimed.

  "Haven't you seen my ID? How did you just find out I'm from Dalian?" Rui Xin asked, tilting her head.

  "This," Hong Jun smiled awkwardly, "I was too busy admiring your beauty at the time, how could I have remembered so much."

  Rui Xin scratched his nose: "You big pervert."

  "I'm a big pervert? I really didn't notice that I was a big pervert, but since you said it, if I don't show off my perversion a bit, wouldn't that be unjust? Then let me show you." Hong Jun raised his hand, making a gesture to grab towards Rui Xin's chest, Rui Xin smiled and pulled his hand onto her own waist. Hong Jun was just joking around, so he gave up.

  Rui Xin looked at Hong Jun, let out a long sigh and said: "As soon as I was born, my mother died from a difficult labor. My father left with my 18-year-old sister when I was 15 to work elsewhere and never came back. In the past decade, I've spent a lot of effort searching for them but couldn't find any trace. Nobody knows what happened to them; they just vanished into thin air."

  Rui Xin's eyes became moist again.

  "Are they missing? Haven't they come back yet? Didn't you report it to the police?" Hong Jun asked.

  "My dad and sister had never been on a long trip before. That time, they heard from a relative that it was easy to make money in the south, so they took my sister, who had dropped out of school, and went to the south by train. Before leaving, they told me they were going to Zhejiang and said they would write to me every few days to let me know they were safe. But half a year has passed since they left, and there's been no news from them at all. I tried to contact our relatives who work in Zhejiang, but none of them have seen them either. I got anxious, so I reported it to the police."

  "How?"

  "The police were quite worried, they investigated for more than a week, but still couldn't find any clues. In the end, they could only declare her missing, and until now, my dad and sister have had no news." Ruixin said, tears finally falling down. Hongjun patted her back to comfort her.

  "Since then, with the support of the government and fellow villagers, I worked while studying, later enrolled in Binhai University, and stayed in this city after graduation."

  "What? You graduated from Coastal University?" Hong Jun looked at Rui Xin as if he was looking at a rare animal.

  Rui Xin touched her face, confirming it was still smooth, and scolded: "What's wrong with you, always startling me like that? I thought I had acne on my face!" As she spoke, she remembered Ah Yun's face, fortunately that thing wasn't contagious, otherwise...

  "There must be no acne on your face, I mean, are you really a graduate of Bin Hai University?" asked Hong Jun.

  "Enna."

  "Which year are you from? Which department?"

  "What's wrong? I'm from the Economics College, class of '03, majoring in Business Administration."

  Bang! Hong Jun slapped himself again, 03 session, School of Economics, and he was in the same school, same session, same college as her. For four years in university, he hadn't even noticed that there was such a stunning beauty in his own college. Were his eyes on the soles of his feet or were they covered with mud? He started scolding himself.

  "We're schoolmates," Rui Xin smiled, "Didn't you know until now?"

  "I, I, I really didn't notice that for four years in college, there was such a beautiful girl by my side. I've gone blind."

  "No, it's not your fault. For four years in college, all the teachers and students didn't know that there was a beautiful girl beside them." Rui Xin said seriously, making Hong Jun feel even more like he was being ridiculed.

  "It's my fault, can't I just reflect on it? Four years in the same school and I didn't even notice that Xīn'ér was right next to me. I'm wrong, no, I'm guilty, please deal with me." Hóng Jūn spoke with a smooth tone, and Ruì Xīn burst out laughing.

  "In fact, we have met before," Rui Xin said. "It's just that at that time, you wouldn't have noticed me at all."

  "Have we met?" Hong Jun shook his head, making sure Rui Xin wasn't joking. "Impossible, if I had met you before, I would have remembered a beauty like you? Unless I was lying in the gutter drinking sewage at the time."

  Rui Xin stopped smiling: "Really, we've met before. It's not that you ignored me, but because at that time, I only had a nodding acquaintance with you, how could you remember?"

  Hong Jun's heart skipped a beat as he suddenly remembered, he had met Rui Xin before, in his own dream that day. The girl standing on the right side of him was indeed Rui Xin.

  Actually, he had realized this a long time ago, but his heart had always resisted the idea of thinking about it. He didn't want to see that such a beautiful and gentle girl wasn't the same kind as him or had ulterior motives towards him. He would rather continue to think like a naive child, that Rui Xin was a flesh-and-blood person just like him, because she deeply loved him, and he also deeply loved her. He didn't want anything to destroy this love, not even the fact that they were from different worlds, nor could the separation of yin and yang destroy his love for her.

  He never mentioned that he had seen her in his dreams before meeting her in person. It wasn't that he couldn't mention it, but rather that he didn't want to. He didn't even want to think about it. He thought that the matter was too complicated and serious to be simply a case of having seen Rui Xin in his dreams.

  But now Rui Xin brought up "we've met before", and he couldn't help but think of that matter.

  His lips moved silently for a moment, and in the end he didn't say "Yes, we really have met, it was in my dream. It was before I saw you in person, and at that time your appearance in the dream was exactly the same as when I later saw you in person." He felt that the conditions were not ripe, and there was no need to narrate so many touching stories, about himself and Ruxin, and the entanglement of their lips. As long as they truly loved each other, why couldn't Pu Songling's ghosts and fox spirits be together? Moreover, Ruxin wasn't necessarily some kind of supernatural being that could block true love. Nothing could. Even if the end of the world came, he would still want to hold hands with Ruxin and walk together into the distance.