The Healing Sunshine (一厘米的阳光)

Chapter 20.2 - The Goodbye that I Owe You (2)

Slowly, Jì Chengyang sat down. He suddenly really wanted to have a smoke.

In an instant, memories assailed him, surging too fiercely at him. This second, he could even clearly remember that sweltering summer evening in 1997, when, in order to comfort that little girl who, because she had not gotten to see her parents, had sobbed until she was drenched in tears, he had brought her to the cinema in the military compound to watch the representative film of a Hong Kong actor. That empty cinema and the timid look in that little girl's eyes were all recorded in that era in which there had been no romance or love, no flames of war, and even more so, no separations in life and partings by death...

And now, today, ten years had already passed.

Apart from those two people who had personally experienced them, no one understood what each of them had journeyed through in these last ten years and what separated the two of them now.

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The silence of the involved party did not dispel the curiosity of this roomful of good friends of his.

Liu Kaifeng loosened his tie, and with his hand on the arm of Jì Chengyang's chair, he disbelievingly questioned, "If my memory serves me correctly, the girl I photographed at BFSU [Beijing Foreign Studies University] before we went to Iraq, when we were all still in Beijing, was her? Didn't you say she's your girlfriend?"

Amanda laughed. "Tell me, that photograph that you took, was it a side view of the face?"

Liu Kaifeng was puzzled. "You've seen it?"

"I have, on Yang's computer." Amanda stated the answer directly. "It was his desktop picture."

"Girlfriend? Didn't she call you Little Uncle Jì?" The editor-in-chief thought the turn of events in this matter was truly remarkable.

These people were all engaged in the news industry and had seen and experienced many things, but that did not prevent them from concerning themselves with the private life of this man.

Based on their ability as grown adults to sniff things out, they knew with certainty, simply from how Jì Chengyang had been so shocked in that instant the girl pushed open the door that he had stood up, that there must be a good story behind this—an extremely good story.

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Those three were enthusiastically carrying out their discussion, while that veteran journalist in charge of mentoring Jǐ Yi was already in a complete state of astonishment at the truth that everyone together had deduced: Jì Chengyang, the Jì Chengyang who was well known in the field for a long time already, had once had a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with one of the student interns currently working in his team?

Before Jǐ Yi pushed open the door, this conference room of people had been in the midst of discussing the professional ethics of those employed in the news and media industry. But after she left, the topic surprisingly switched amicably to become a special feature story on Jì Chengyang's personal love life.

Only Jì Chengyang did not bother the entire time to pay attention to any of their inquiries. He remained tight-lipped, closely guarding everything that had to do with Jǐ Yi.

Lifting his wrist, he glanced at the time. "I should go now."

Those three people all knew that after his narrow escape with death this time, he had had emergency medical procedures performed on him several times and also undergone a major surgery, and he was currently in a recovery and recuperation period. Hence, they did not try to keep him. With his hand on the table, supporting himself, Jì Chengyang stood and bade goodbye to his old friends.