You're My Belated Happiness - Chapter 1 Part 1

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.

Hello all,

We've deciding on translating a story called 你是迟来的欢喜 (Ni Shi Chi Lai De Huanxi) or You're My Belated Happiness.

We hope you enjoy. And thank you to the people who gave us recommendations to translate.

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You’re My Belated Happiness

Chapter 1 Part 1

Hang City’s weather in March could be cold one day and hot the next. It could even turn into a different season the very next day.

Ruan Yu picked a sunny day to go back to her family’s old house.

She had gotten news that the family’s old house was going to be demolished soon. A nostalgic person couldn’t stand to hear news like this. She decided to go have a last look at the house since she hadn’t been doing anything lately.

The Ruan family's old house was built in the fringe of Su City. All of the houses in the neighborhood were built in a similar style, with mint green colored outer walls and three stories high with a triangle garret on top.

Ruan had moved away from here after she graduated from high school and hadn’t been back in almost 8 years.

The empty house had been cleaned not too long ago, it wasn’t dusty but the air had a stale smell. After she unlocked the door, she walked up to the attic. Some of her old stuff from her days as a student were kept in the attic.

The stairs squeaked as she made her way up. After she pulled open the curtains in the attic, golden sunlight flooded into the room and she could see tiny dust particles floating in the air.

She briefly tidied up the place and moved a vintage wooden crate out. Ruan Yu sat down on the floor cross legged. As soon as she opened the crate, her cell phone rang.

She put an earbud into her ear and answered the phone while checking the stuff inside the crate.

A female voice came through from the earbud: “Miss Ruan, when you answered this call, it means that up till 1 pm, March 19th you haven’t handed over the outline of your new novel to your ex-editor. In addition, it has been a whole 11 months since you completed your last novel, to the day.”

Ruan Yu chuckled: “You’re an ex already, why are you still pushing for it so harshly like a debt collector?”

“Please, debtor, correct your attitude towards this matter.”

Ruan Yu looked up to the ceiling and sighed: “Miss Shen, Miss Ruan remembers that she told you that she would give the outline to you by the end of March.”

“Then, may I ask whether you’ve decided on the theme?”

Ruan Yu, dejected, sniffled before answering: “No.”

The lady on the other side grew irritated: “It’s been 11 months, Ruan Yu, you can give birth to a child and finish the postpartum confinement month in that time! You’re a full-time writer, do you want to become completely irrelevant?”

Ruan Yu began to flip through her diary and perfunctorily said: “When an author doesn’t have her muse, writing can be harder than giving birth to a child.”

“You shut yourself up at home everyday, who’s going to give you your muse? The thing about writing……”

As Shen Mingying rambled on, Ruan Yu stopped responding. Her eyes landed on one of the pages of her diary and her whole body froze on the spot.

The timeworn paper looked slightly yellow under the sunlight. The words written on the page: “May 11th, sunny. Today I saw Xu Huaisong three times. The first time, I was taking English test sheets to the office and saw him and some other boys from his class in time out in the hallway, being lectured. The dean was so mean……”

“The second time, I passed by the school's arts classrooms and found him squatting in the nearby bushes feeding cat food to a stray cat. So he likes cats too, so nice.”

“The third time, I went to PE and saw him running by himself around the sports field. He looks so nice without the glasses. No wonder there were girls who delivered water to him. I also bought water, but I didn’t have the courage to give it to him. If my dad knows that the person I have a crush on is a student in his class, then Xu Huaisong would be in big trouble! Oh, on the other hand, he might not want to be with me anyway……”

Ruan Yu was quiet for too long and Shen Mingying thought something might have happened to her. She asked Ruan Yu where she was.

Ruan Yu answered: “Back at our old house.” After saying so, her eyes, still fixed on that page, gradually brightened up: “Mingying, I got it.”

“Got what? You have a theme for your story?”

“Right, the setting will be at a school and the theme is a secret crush. How’s that?”

The other end of the line grew dead quiet, then very suddenly she said: “Wake up! Those whining and groaning stories about lost loves in their teenage years have long gone out of fashion. There’s no money to make at all!”

Ruan Yu took a look at the diary: “But…… do you still remember Xu Huaisong?”

Shen Mingying overlooked the sudden change of subject and asked: “Who’s that?”

“The one in our high school, from room 10.”

“Oh…… you mean that tall and slender guy who didn’t talk much, who you had a crush on? It can’t be that you’ve met him over in Su City?”

Xu Huaisong was indeed from Su City. His grandmother’s house was in the neighborhood. But as far as Ruan Yu knew, he had left the city even earlier than she did and no one from her high school had heard any news of him for many years.

She closed her diary and laughed: “How can that happen, you think life is like a novel?” After thinking it over, she continued: “Let’s not talk about it now. I’ll give you the outline of the story in a few days. I’ll hang up now.”

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.