His mother listened and paused for quite a while, then sighed. “Ah, you’re both grown up now. You both have your own ideas. How would I dare to say anything. A few years ago, maybe I’d still have tried to nudge you. But now… let’s just drop it.”

Li Li didn’t understand. “Why could you nudge me a few years ago but not now?”

His mother gave him an exasperated look, then turned back to fuss with her plants, muttering, “You and Manman have been fighting so terribly these past few years. Every time you see each other it’s bickering, and within a few sentences you’re both yelling and hollering. Your father and I have seen enough to know — you two simply cannot live together.”

Li Li gripped his cup and said nothing.

The fighting had indeed been bad these past few years. He understood the reason clearly enough in his own heart. It came down to both of them getting older. Continuing to relate to each other the way they used to was bound to create friction.

——At fifteen, going out to play together with Su Man, he could introduce her as his good friend without any awkwardness. But now that they were in their twenties, introducing her as just a friend raised eyebrows, even inviting hints of something ambiguous.

For example, last time he’d brought her along to dinner with classmates from the Research Institute. He’d introduced Su Man as his friend, and a female senior had teased them both on the spot:

“I’ve seen you eating together a few times now. Just friends? What kind of friends exactly?”

He’d explained: “Ordinary friends.”

At that, Su Man’s expression had gone a little dark.

By the time the dinner ended and they were driving back, she hadn’t said a word the whole way. He’d been sitting in the passenger seat, aware her mood was off, and had tried to ease the atmosphere by joking that she drove like a wild person.

Su Man had erupted on the spot like a lit firecracker and laid into him!

After that, naturally, they’d fought.

After the fight it was fine — they just needed a few days to cool off, then find some excuse to meet up. Something like asking her to drop off some documents, or to drive him somewhere. Su Man would usually agree.

She was tough-mouthed but soft-hearted, and after growing up together all these years, that bond simply couldn’t be severed.

That much, Li Li was absolutely certain of.

Looking back on the bumpy years of their relationship, if the two of them were actually a couple, it would probably look like an endless cycle of breaking up and getting back together.

Sometimes Li Li asked himself: How should he handle this relationship? Should he just acknowledge it and make her his girlfriend?

When he tried to imagine them as a romantic couple, Li Li found it absurd…

They’d been good friends since childhood. How could that just turn into a boyfriend-girlfriend thing? He was only 23 and hadn’t even finished his degree. To be completely honest, he hadn’t even figured out what women as a species were about yet — how could he casually pick one nearby to be his girlfriend?

It was too absurd.

The childhood engagement was even more absurd. What era was this? Who still did childhood engagements? It wasn’t as if they were filming a historical drama!

He had no desire to be stamped with an exclusive brand by a woman at such a young age.

Especially when that woman was a childhood companion he’d known and been close to for twenty years — that called for even more caution. Once a relationship was established, if it ever fell apart later, it wouldn’t just be between the two of them. Both families would be affected.

Li Li sat at the dining table, quietly ruminating over all of this, feeling that he was being incredibly thoughtful and considerate. And Su Man, of course, was the ungrateful one who didn’t know how good she had it.

On the other side of the table, Li Li’s mother had apparently also weighed things at length, and sighed softly: “I just said it wasn’t necessary, but now that I think about it more carefully, arranging a blind date might not be a bad idea after all. It would at least clear up the misunderstanding with the family next door. Because of all this business between you two, I’ve had to tread carefully around Su Man’s mother sometimes — afraid of saying the wrong thing and offending her…”

Li Li froze, staring at his mother in stunned disbelief. “How did it become… no — wait, I’m not dating her, and somehow I’ve offended their family? Do I not have any personal freedom left?!”

—