Chapter 296: Joy and Sorrow When Parting ①
After looking at each other for a while, the few people took a taxi to Nie Qiu’s house.
However, they discovered that Nie Qiu was neither at the hospital nor at home. Even Nie Qiu’s mom and dad were not home.
Huang Yan was silent for a moment before saying, “Nie Qiu… she wouldn’t have gone abroad already, would she?”
“I think it’s possible!” Zhang Haiyang nodded. “I checked, and that Phillips Exeter Academy basically starts in August or September. It’s already mid-June. Nie Qiu’s English is very good, but I don’t know if she can adapt there. She’ll definitely need to go over early to adapt.”
“Follow my left hand, my right hand…” Suddenly, Huang Yan’s mobile phone rang. Huang Yan took her mobile phone out of her purse. Her eyes lit up when she saw the name on the mobile phone screen, and she immediately answered, “Nie Qiu, where are you? Did you go abroad?”
“I’m at Zijin Hotel! Didn’t Teacher Yang say that all the classmates from our class are gathering today?” Nie Qiu stood at the doorway of the restaurant, looking around. “I heard Zhao Bao Cui and the others say you went off on your own. Where did you go? Everyone is waiting for you to start eating!”
“Didn’t you go to America?” Huang Yan asked.
“…” Nie Qiu was silent for a moment before saying, “Not that soon.”
“Then wait for us for ten minutes, we’ll take a taxi over.” Huang Yan finished speaking, hung up the phone, and took a deep breath. “Nie Qiu hasn’t gone abroad yet! Nie Qiu is at Zijin Hotel for our gathering, let’s go quickly!”
Huang Yan and Zhang Haiyang didn’t know that Nie Qiu and Li Kai had already broken up. Nie Qiu called Huang Yan but not Li Kai. Huang Yan and Zhang Haiyang didn’t think much of it, but Li Kai felt a bit uncomfortable. Even if they couldn’t be a couple, they were still friends, right? Didn’t Nie Qiu herself say… didn’t she say that if he still liked her when he was twenty, she would still be with him?
Li Kai knew that his thoughts were petty, feeling jealous just because of a phone call, but he couldn’t help but think this way. If Nie Qiu went abroad, would she fall for someone else? Those blonde, blue-eyed, high-nosed, white-skinned people; he heard many girls liked boys like that.
After Li Kai and the others arrived at Zijin Hotel, they found the table where Nie Qiu was sitting and sat down. Teacher Yang had already ordered the food and sat down. He looked around at all the students in the private room.
This was a large private room that had been cleared out. It could originally only fit three large tables. Because they wanted to sit in one private room, the restaurant’s waiter had removed the cabinets and decorative furnishings from the room. The entire private room was filled with five tables, accommodating forty-nine people. The classmates, who were usually laughing and joking, were now silent. They knew that after gathering together this time, they didn’t know when they would be able to gather again.
Perhaps they could still arrange to hang out during this summer vacation, but after this summer vacation, they would be scattered across different schools, meeting different people, but… they would never meet these people again.
Teacher Yang also felt a bit sad. He had seen off generation after generation of students, and he had to face this situation almost every year: graduation, separation. But for the class he taught, the feelings were naturally different, because the class he taught had always been together for three years, and it was different from those he had only taught for a shorter period. He had taught three Class 10s, and every time a Class 10 left campus, he felt reluctance and regret. The reluctance was due to his feelings, and the regret was because he still couldn’t change the destiny of the students in this class, still letting them live their lives according to the rules. However, this Class 10 was different from other Class 10s. Although there was reluctance, there was no regret, because he knew they had been admitted to their ideal schools and would have a life with fewer regrets than other Class 10s.
