Happy Lunar/Chinese New Year to those who’ll be celebrating. This is the year of the pig, a good year for lazy people like lidge lol
In this chapter, Yu Tu takes a trip down memory lane. The gap between Jing Jing and him has always been big. I am wondering if my old desktop computer is still in the garage but I am too lazy to go & search. Otherwise it might be interesting to read up my old chat history in ICQ lol.
I’ve got the password to download SSB’s SQL database yet I failed to do so after many attempts. It could be because SSB’s domain name has changed. Hence, SSB cannot be restored on the first day of Chinese New Year. I am aiming to sort this out by the Lantern Festival which can be considered as the Chinese equivalent of Valentine’s Day.
Chapter 31 (translated by peanuts and edited by hoju)
Time has passed uneventfully into the New Year. Prior to this, Yu Tu had sent Zhai Liang off, so when he returned home late at night every day, the place seemed even more deserted and cold.
But fortunately, he also had an assignment in January, to go to the desert on a work trip for a month.
It was a field test for a confidential model. Although their research institute was not in charge of the whole design of that model, he and Guan Zai were still involved in some of the important work. Currently it was at the field test stage, which also required someone from their institute to be present.
Yu Tu went back to his hometown before going there.
When the parents saw him back, they were very surprised. “You just came back in October. Why did you come back again?”
In October, once he began his extended leave, he had returned to his hometown. However he had only stayed to the fourth day before his parents started to worry. They felt that his break was too long. Did something happen?
At that time, he still had not made up his mind, so it had been better not to say anything to make his parents also feel worried. In order to prevent them from guessing randomly, he had been forced to pretend to return to work in Shanghai. In fact, he was actually wasting his time playing games all day long, which coincidentally led to running into Qiao Jing Jing.
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Mrs Yu looked very well, but this first sentence she spoke at the beginning made Yu Tu feel sad. The time he spent with his parents was really too little.
“I have to go on a work trip right away for a month. I don’t know if the signal over there is okay or not, so I came home to just have a look at you first.”
Mrs Yu did not ask where he would be going and what he would be doing but just complained, “You should have informed us earlier.” She also asked, “The Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) is later this year, so can you come back before the Spring Festival?”
“Yes.”
Mr Yu looked at the time and said that he was going to go buy a couple of ready-made dishes, but was scolded by Mrs Yu. “The boy is back but you’re only giving him pre-made food to eat. What kind of father are you?”
In the end, Mr Yu went and bought a chicken and fresh fish. When everything was cooked, it was already almost one o’clock. Yu Tu deliberately ate an extra bowl of rice. As expected, his parents looked happy.
After they finished lunch, he chatted with them for a while. Then Yu Tu returned to his room.
His room could not be considered big. It was north facing. He spent his entire youth here. After he was admitted to university, he seldom come back, so the room still looked like it had when he was in senior high school. Most of the books on the bookshelves were the ones he had studied from at that time. All kinds of trophies, from childhood to adulthood, were neatly and tidily exhibited in the cabinet.
He stood lost in thought for a moment, took out a book, and looked over it in front of the bookcase.
Mrs Yu came in to bring him some fruit. She glanced at him and said curiously, “Why are you looking through your senior high school textbook?”
“No, I’m not.” Yu Tu was a little ill at ease when he closed the book and put it back on the bookshelf.
In fact, this time coming home, besides to visit his parents, there was also a peculiar emotion stirring in his heart. Recently, he would often inexplicably recall his high school days, over and over again, as if he wanted to dig out from those past memories something that he had overlooked before.
Sadly, there was very, very little.
He knew that this was very mawkish of him, yet he could not control himself. He glossed over it by asking, “Why are my senior high school books still here?”
“I missed them when I was sorting things out.”
Yu Tu looked around to inspect the room and asked, “Where is my earliest desktop computer?”
Mrs Yu thought for a while. “You said you won’t be using it anymore, plus the machine is old, so I moved it to the bicycle storage area downstairs.”
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
Yu Tu asked her for the storage area key and then went downstairs and moved the desktop computer back up. Mrs Yu brought a cleaning rag to help him wipe the dust. “The computer is from so long ago. Why did you suddenly think to dig it out? I had totally forgotten about it. Otherwise when the old TV set was sold last time, I would have had the people take this away along with it. It takes up space, but it also can’t be sold for more than a few dollars.”
Yu Tu smiled, “Don’t do that.”
Then he said, “The monitor can be sold, but keep the main processor.”
The computer had not been used for so long. The boot up was extremely slow. Mrs Yu had already left. Yu Tu watched the screen slowly light up. That desktop from so long ago of the infinite starry sky was displayed before his eyes.
He adjusted the settings, connected it to the internet, and then opened QQ (instant messaging software. originally OICQ means Oh,I Seek U).
The QQ on his mobile phone had been logged into all along, so naturally no new messages popped up on the computer. However, this computer still had the old chat history of ten years ago.
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
He stared at it for a short period of time. Only then did he go look for Qiao Jing Jing’s number and click open the chat history.
A string of cute, pink typeface immediately popped up before his eyes.
Exactly the typeface she would use. Yu Tu was not surprised. He could not help but turn the corners of the mouth a little upwards. However, when he started to read the contents of the chat history, the smile started to become bitter.
He really had been too cold and distance at that time.
His replies were always extremely brief and simple, revealing the perfunctoriness in his politeness, so much so that one time, when she asked a very basic question regarding the first cosmic velocity (orbital velocity), he even directly suggested that she look it up on Baidu (Chinese search engine like Google).
Later he simply did not reply to her.
Yet she persisted and diligently kept looking for a topic.
For example ——
“I saw in a forum all of you discussing the gap between China and the US in aerospace technology. Is the gap between us and them really so big >_
For example ——
“There is a lively discussion in the group. Do you think that humans can really immigrate to Mars?”
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
Much later, she finally gave up.
<>This belongs to Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
The fingers turned the mouse wheel. He looked at these very few lines of dialogue over and over again. Yu Tu practically wanted to go back and say to himself of more than a decade ago, “How can you be so impatient?”
The mouse wheel turned and scrolled to the bottom again. Suddenly Yu Tu’s gaze fell on the words “in the group” in the last sentence. He remembered that at that time, the aerospace forum had had a group in QQ for aerospace enthusiasts. Could it be she also had been in that group?
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
He immediately found that group and entered Qiao Jing Jing’s QQ number into the search box in the group chat history.
A bunch of hits immediately popped up.
She really had been there.
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
In the group, she used the same pink typeface. At first, she just cautiously chipped in to the discussion. The group consisted of mostly men, and they were very friendly towards this senior high school girl, completely unlike his coldness. Occasionally, a few childish questions from her would still be explained to her in detail by somebody.
Consequently, her chatting in the group grew more and more lively and was not at all like how she chatted with him individually, so cautious and solemn.
Yu Tu slowly browsed through. From time to time, hints of a smile would show on his face, perhaps because of her childishness and liveliness at that time, or perhaps because sometimes she was really a little silly ——It was obvious that group of people had answered her question incorrectly, yet she was still there with tones of admiration.
Soon, the chat history reached the last few pages.
Qiao Jing Jing was saying goodbye to the people in the group.
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
Hand Can Pick Stars: In the future, I won’t be coming here to play.
Vast Universe: What’s wrong? Your parents won’t let you?
Hand Can Pick Stars: No, I want to study hard. O(∩_∩)O When I’ve been admitted into my target university, I’ll come again and look for all of you to play.
Constellation: Which is your target?
Hand Can Pick Stars:……………… Tsinghua.
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Yu Tu couldn't help but feel a bit shocked.
At the time, this had also caused a burst of exclamations in the group.
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Peng Peng: Wow, girl. You can’t judge a person by appearance!
Young Master Evil: Very ambitious.
Hand Can Pick Stars: In fact, I don’t have big aspiration = = But I recently confessed my feeling to a person I like. He seems to find my grades to be too low, so I want to be admitted into the same university as him. Maybe he’ll like me then?
Weaver Girl’s Constellation: Men don’t look at that… Pick Stars, are you not beautiful enough?
Hand Can Pick Stars: I’m very beautiful ah – –
Fish Head: Be low key.
Hand Can Pick Stars: Oh – –
Hand Can Pick Stars: Anyway, after I’ve thought about it over and over again, my only shortcoming is that my grades are not good enough. . . So I intend to work hard.
Hand Can Pick Stars: But in fact, my grades are around the top 200 in the city.
Fork: Top 200 is already pretty good. You’re almost guaranteed to get into one of the key universities.
Hand Can Pick Stars: But every time, he is the top 1 in the entire city.
Fork: … That’s not bad.
Weaver Girl’s Constellation: That is a very big gap.
Hand Can Pick Stars: Ya. Anyway, I’m still not quite focused enough on my studies. If I am a little more serious, I should make some progress.>__<
Hand Can Pick Stars: I think that I can work a little harder O(∩_∩)O
<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation was taken without consent of the translator.
The teenage Qiao Jing Jing had used emoticon that she would not now use anymore to optimistically express her determination that she would try hard this one time.
Whereas the 30-year-old Yu Tu, looking at this record from more than a decade ago, felt his eyes suddenly start to sting.
Suddenly, he was unable to look directly at this chat log, his hand propping his forehead, thoroughly shamed.
Completed:
31 of 37 Chapters
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