Then he brushed off the sand from the edge of the boat, sat down, angrily loosened his tie, and started smoking. What was he thinking? I was sweating profusely, squatting there digging the sand, but I was sure there was something hidden beneath, which is why he wanted me to dig.
“Can’t you dig faster?”
“I’m already digging fast enough, what’s the rush!”
He made me do manual labor and still had so many demands! But he seemed really angry, he put out his cigarette, rolled up his sleeves, snatched the shovel, and started digging himself. I comfortably squatted aside, urging him to dig faster.
It turned out to be a huge Styrofoam box! Qi Yufeng opened the lid, and inside was… water? Floating in the water was a small box.
“They were supposed to be ice.”
“Oh, to ice what?”
He glared at me fiercely, then went to fetch the small box. Uh… did I say something wrong? Why glare at me…
He handed me the box, “Open it.”
I did as instructed and found a melted puddle of ice cream. I looked at Qi Yufeng in confusion; he was also staring at the puddle, “It was an ice cream birthday cake, but look, now it’s nothing.”
“You’ve seen it, you can throw it away.”
“I really deserve this!” He took the box away, cursing in frustration.
To say I wasn’t touched would be a lie; I was so happy. He remembered my birthday, even though I never mentioned it, he intended to celebrate it for me.
“Don’t throw it away!” I ran over and hugged him from behind, “Melted ice cream is still good to eat~”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting diarrhea?”
“What’s the big deal?”
Eating melted ice cream in the summer is pretty normal for me, and I’ve been used to it since I was little; diarrhea? What a joke.
Qi Yufeng had even prepared fireworks! On a midsummer night, with ice cream and fireworks, could there be a lack of joy? I love fireworks, an unexplainable love, the only thing my sister and I both loved growing up.
Remember? The rooftop when we were kids, the backyard of the Yang family, and the little balcony in the French apartment… Do you remember, sister? In the pitch-black night sky, there are still a few stars twinkling faintly, I held up a brightly burning sparkler, and my eyes blurred unknowingly. Look, how beautiful the fireworks are in the night.
Qi Yufeng said that the fireworks here would last until dawn, wonderful, there would be no more endless nights, no more despair.
Qi Yufeng opened an elegant silk box in front of me, and my eyes lit up at the sight of a pearl with a dark, lustrous glow, its surface shimmering with small, sparse diamonds, like stars in the sky, attached with a delicate platinum chain.
