“Ms. Yu, we have contacted Mr. Jiang, and he will come to pick you up soon.” A staff member with a professional smile brought a glass of water to Yu Yao, looking at her with the eyes of a rare species.
Yu Yao took the cup of water, thanked her, and her eyes unconsciously glanced at the wall clock on the opposite wall showing the time—5:31 pm on July 15, 2058.
2058.
She took a sip of water.
On July 15, 2018, her and Jiang Zhonglin’s first anniversary of marriage, she was preparing to cook a meal, but she fell on the way home from shopping. When she got up, she found that the surrounding scenery suddenly became unfamiliar. She still hasn’t realized that she fell forty years later and came directly from 2018 to 2058.
After being stunned for a while, a kind passerby who saw her suddenly appear in the middle of the road took her directly to the Citizen Service Center in this area. After explaining the situation, the staff helped her contact her husband, Jiang Zhonglin, very efficiently, and now they were waiting for him to come and pick her up.
It was like a lost and found case.
“In fact, Ms. Yu, you are the fifth recorded time travel case in recent years.” A young staff member who entertained her gossiped with her, talking about the previous four time travel cases: an old man, a child, a lung cancer patient, and a wheelchair user. These four predecessors together were typical "old, weak, sick, and disabled," and she was the fifth case. No wonder the staff didn’t send her directly to the mental hospital when they heard her talk about time travel before; it turned out that there was a precedent.
Since being sent here, Yu Yao has been sitting in this service center for nearly two hours. Every once in a while, a staff member would come to observe her closely under the pretext of delivering water, as if she were looking at an alien.
After drinking enough water, Yu Yao put down the cup and looked down at the plastic bag at her feet in boredom. Inside were the vegetables she bought at the supermarket: eggs, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, small greens, beans, tofu, duck blood, mushrooms, yams, a large box of cooked food, and two mandarin fish. Because she hadn’t decided what to cook in the evening, she bought a lot of random things and planned to discuss cooking when Jiang Zhonglin came home in the evening.
She was counting the number of peppers in the bag when she suddenly noticed something and looked up.
A man pushed open the door and walked in. In this hot summer, he was wearing a shirt and trousers, a pair of thin-rimmed glasses on his nose, and a large black umbrella in his hand—it was raining outside at some point.
The umbrella dripped water, and the man holding the umbrella stood at the door for a while, then put the umbrella on the shelf by the door and walked towards Yu Yao.
Yu Yao stared at the white on his temples and the lines on his face that represented the passing of time and took a deep breath.
The young Mr. Jiang had indeed become the old Mr. Jiang. Her husband, who had just been married for one year, had become an old man.
Fuck.
“Yu Yao?” He stopped one meter in front of Yu Yao and called her name, looking quite calm. His voice was not as clear and pleasant as it was forty years ago, but it was mellow and had a very kind and gentle tone.
Yu Yao had been sitting here calmly for so long, but at this moment, she couldn’t help but curse in her heart. She didn’t know where the anger suddenly came from.
“It’s me.” Yu Yao stood up and picked up the plastic bag on the ground casually. “Let’s go?”
She saw Jiang Zhonglin stretch out his hand to push his glasses, nod at her, and patiently explain, “Wait for me; I’ll go fill out a form. Your situation is a little different. You need to sign a temporary confidentiality agreement. You will have to come to complete the procedures later. You sit for a while.”
Yu Yao sat back down and thought, with this attitude, is he a grandfather who comes to pick up his granddaughter from kindergarten?
Jiang Zhonglin walked to the service counter, talked with the staff there for a while, filled out some documents, and came back about ten minutes later and said to her, “Let’s go.”
As soon as the door opened, the sound of rain outside suddenly became louder, and Jiang Zhonglin opened his umbrella. His umbrella was big enough to cover both of them. Yu Yao followed him to the roadside, watching the splashes of water when he walked. He walked slowly, and his steps were very steady. Jiang Zhonglin, 65 years old, was not hunched over or deaf, but his hair was white, and the hand holding the umbrella had wrinkles, which belonged to an old man.
The best part of Jiang Zhonglin, 25 years old, was his eyes and his hands, which were long and white and even more beautiful than hers. Now they were gone.
Yu Yao was so anxious that she wanted to say something, but the two of them had already walked to a platform on the roadside. Jiang Zhonglin clicked on the operating panel of the bus stop, and an empty car stopped immediately. He opened the door of the co-pilot and let Yu Yao in, sat in the driver’s seat, and drove out.
Yu Yao shut up and observed the car forty years later. The general appearance has not changed, but many details are different, as if it is driving automatically with a set route. The car has changed, the people have changed, and even the roads and buildings outside have changed.
She saw unfamiliar buildings outside. All the roads and buildings were planned in an orderly manner. It was not the same as the Haishi in her memory, or, in other words, was it still Haishi? It was not until she saw a towering tower in the distance, which was the landmark building of Haishi in the past, that she was sure that it was still in Haishi.
The car stopped in a community. There were three-story buildings in the community, and each household had a small yard. The greening in the community was well done, with towering trees on both sides of the road, and almost every household had flowers and plants planted in the yard.
“We’re here; this is it.” Jiang Zhonglin, who had not spoken on the way, took her to one of the houses.
Yu Yao watched the empty car drive away by itself and then turned her head to look at the house in front of her. Jiang Zhonglin walked to the door, and the door opened automatically with a click.
After they got married, they lived in 502, Building 2, Huatian Community, Guangnan Road, not here. She doesn’t know when he moved here.
Walking into the house, Yu Yao looked at the shoe rack, then looked at the clothes hook at the door, and slowly exhaled. There were only the male owner’s things, and there were no women’s or children’s things, so Jiang Zhonglin should be without a partner at home now. Yu Yao was thinking all the way, if she saw an old lady when she entered the door, should she call her sister or grandma, or should she fight first?
To be honest, she didn’t have a good temper, and she was really worried that she would beat the old man if she was unhappy and break Jiang Zhonglin’s old bones.
“Sit down and rest first; I’ll go get you some water.” Jiang Zhonglin brought her slippers to change and greeted her very friendly and politely.
Yu Yao put herself in the role of the old man and thought about it. His mood facing her now is likely to be similar to that of a distant relative who has not been in contact for a long time. He has to entertain him, but he can’t get close to him, and he is also a little embarrassed. Indeed, their previous relationship was too awkward considering the current situation.
Yu Yao was so upset that she was about to fly away. If it were before, she would have just dragged him to the sofa to "have a chat". But at this moment, she rationally felt that she had no reason to lose her temper. After all, they couldn’t control the matter of time travel. Jiang Zhonglin didn’t do anything wrong. For him, after forty years, this distant attitude was normal.
But for Yu Yao, this morning, when Jiang Zhonglin got up, he blushed and said awkwardly that he would come back early in the evening. The look in his eyes when he looked at her was as clear, bright, and soft as water. But now? Except for the first glance, the old man next to her didn’t even look at her.
Seeing that he was about to move forward, Yu Yao called him with a sigh. Jiang Zhonglin turned around, and Yu Yao handed him the plastic bag in her hand, looked at him, and said, “You said you wanted to eat mandarin fish this morning, so I bought two.”
Jiang Zhonglin was stunned for a moment, as if he was a little dazed by this sentence. The calmness along the way finally peeled off a corner at this moment. But he quickly turned his head, lowered his head to take off his glasses, wiped them, put them back on, and then reached out to take the plastic bag handed over by Yu Yao. “Oh, okay.” He smiled, still a very gentle and polite smile.
Yu Yao couldn’t help it. She stepped forward and slapped the old man on the buttocks, which scared him. He leaned on the cabinet next to him to stabilize his body. Yu Yao felt a little better. He walked into the house with slippers and found the sofa and lay down directly.
Jiang Zhonglin stood there for a while with the plastic bag, then walked in, first took a look at the living room, and saw that Yu Yao was lying on the sofa in the living room naturally, then went to the kitchen to put down the plastic bag in his hand.
After a while, he brought a glass of water and placed it in front of Yu Yao. Yu Yao had drunk enough water before and didn’t want to move at first, but when she saw Jiang Zhonglin wipe his hands and sit on the sofa opposite him, staring at the cup in silence, she still got up and took a sip of water.
It was sweet with honey. The two of them had lived together for more than a year, and it was Yu Yao’s habit to drink water with honey. Jiang Zhonglin didn’t like to drink tea or any beverages and usually only drank plain water. He was so young and didn’t know what was wrong with him. She didn’t know if this problem still existed.
“You...” Yu Yao looked at the old man opposite her and said a word hesitantly, but she didn’t know what to say next. Maybe she had too many questions and didn’t know what to ask first. She scratched her hair irritably, lay back on the sofa, and kicked a pillow on the sofa.
Jiang Zhonglin, who was sitting opposite her, had the same good temper as when he was young, or even better than when he was young. Seeing this, he said, “I’m the only one at home, so you can stay here first. There is a special social assistance agreement for your situation. I’ll take you to get your ID and buy daily necessities tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry, don’t be anxious, take your time, you’ll get used to it.” The old man comforted her in a gentle tone, without mentioning his own affairs in the past forty years or asking her anything.
Yu Yao sat up jokingly, frowned, and asked, “Are you treating me like your granddaughter?”
Jiang Zhonglin blinked, looked at her steadily, sighed, and said helplessly, “I’m over sixty; I can almost be your grandfather.”
When he was young, he was full of bookish air, with a good temper, and never got angry with anyone. At this moment, he was even more like a wise and generous old man, looking at her with a bit of insight, a bit of nostalgia, and a bit of regret, as if he had seen her heart clearly.
*****
What should I do if my lover became an old man after traveling to fourty years later? Chapter List:
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