Time passed uneventfully into the New Year. Prior to this, Yu Tu had sent Zhai Liang off, so when he returned home late at night every day, the place seemed even more deserted and cold.
But fortunately, he also had an assignment in January, to go to the desert on a work trip for a month.
It was a field test for a confidential model. Although their research institute was not in charge of the whole design of that model, he and Guan Zai were still involved in some of the important work. Currently it was at the field test stage, which also required someone from their institute to be present.
Yu Tu went back to his hometown before going there.
When his parents saw him back, they were very surprised. "You just came back in October. Why did you come back again?"
In October, once he began his extended leave, he had returned to his hometown. However he had only stayed to the fourth day before his parents started to worry. They felt that his break was too long. Did something happen?
At that time, he still had not made up his mind, so it had been better not to say anything to make his parents also feel worried. In order to prevent them from guessing randomly, he had been forced to pretend to return to work in Shanghai. In fact, he was actually wasting his time playing games all day long, which coincidentally led him running into Qiao Jing Jing.
Mrs Yu looked very well, but this first sentence she spoke at the beginning made Yu Tu feel sad. The time he spent with his parents was really too little.
"I have to go on a work trip right away for a month. I don't know if the signal over there is okay or not, so I came home to just have a look at you first."
Mrs Yu did not ask where he would be going and what he would be doing but just complained, "You should have informed us earlier." She also asked, "The Spring Festival is later this year, so can you come back before the Spring Festival?"
"Yes."
Mr Yu looked at the time and said that he was going to go buy a couple of ready-made dishes, but was scolded by Mrs Yu. "The boy is back but you're only giving him pre-made food to eat. What kind of father are you?"
In the end, Mr Yu went and bought a chicken and fresh fish. When everything was cooked, it was already almost one o'clock. Yu Tu deliberately ate an extra bowl of rice. As expected, his parents looked happy.
After they finished lunch, he chatted with them for a while. Then Yu Tu returned to his room.
His room could not be considered big. It was north facing. He spent his entire youth here. After he was admitted to university, he seldom come back, so the room still looked like it had when he was in senior high school. Most of the books on the bookshelves were the ones he had studied from at that time. All kinds of trophies, from childhood to adulthood, were neatly and tidily exhibited in the cabinet.
He stood lost in thought for a moment, took out a book, and looked over it in front of the bookcase.
Mrs Yu came in to bring him some fruit. She glanced at him and said curiously, "Why are you looking through your senior high school textbook?"
"No, I'm not." Yu Tu was a little ill at ease when he closed the book and put it back on the bookshelf.
In fact, this time coming home, besides to visit his parents, there was also a peculiar emotion stirring in his heart. Recently, he would often inexplicably recall his high school days, over and over again, as if he wanted to dig out from those past memories something that he had overlooked before.
Sadly, there was very, very little.
He knew that this was very mawkish of him, yet he could not control himself. He glossed over it by asking, "Why are my senior high school books still here?"
"I missed them when I was sorting things out."
Yu Tu looked around to inspect the room and asked, "Where is my earliest desktop computer?"
Mrs Yu thought for a while. "You said you won't be using it anymore, plus the machine is old, so I moved it to the bicycle storage area downstairs."
Yu Tu asked her for the storage area key and then went downstairs and moved the desktop computer back up. Mrs Yu brought a cleaning rag to help him wipe the dust. "The computer is from so long ago. Why did you suddenly think to dig it out? I had totally forgotten about it. Otherwise when the old TV set was sold last time, I would have had the people take this away along with it. It takes up space, but it also can't be sold for more than a few dollars."
Yu Tu smiled, "Don't do that."
Then he said, "The monitor can be sold, but keep the main processor."
The computer had not been used for so long. The boot up was extremely slow. Mrs Yu had already left. Yu Tu watched the screen slowly light up. That desktop from so long ago of the infinite starry sky was displayed before his eyes.
He adjusted the settings, connected it to the internet, and then opened QQ.
The QQ on his mobile phone had been logged into all along, so naturally no new messages popped up on the computer. However, this computer still had the old chat history of ten years ago.
He stared at it for a short period of time. Only then did he go look for Qiao Jing Jing's number and click open the chat history.
A string of cute, pink typeface immediately popped up before his eyes.
Exactly the typeface she would use. Yu Tu was not surprised. He could not help but turn the corners of the mouth a little upwards. However, when he started to read the contents of the chat history, the smile started to become bitter.
He really had been too cold and distance at that time.
His replies were always extremely brief and simple, revealing the perfunctoriness in his politeness, so much so that one time, when she asked a very basic question regarding the first cosmic velocity, he even directly suggested that she look it up on Baidu.
Later he simply did not reply to her.
Yet she persisted and diligently kept looking for a topic.
For example —
"I saw in a forum all of you discussing the gap between China and the US in aerospace technology. Is the gap between us and them really so big?"
For example —
"There is a lively discussion in the group. Do you think that humans can really immigrate to Mars?"