Chapter 37: The Umbrella

The drizzle grew heavier, the slanting wind unceasing; though Lin Xiaolu held an umbrella, raindrops still blew onto her from time to time.

Some time passed, and at the school gate, the crowd had already passed its peak.

With only about ten minutes left until the parent-teacher meeting began, most parents had taken their places, even chatting with one another inside the classrooms.

After guiding their parents to the classrooms, the other students made their own choices: some children who usually went out on their own returned home as usual, while others gathered in the library or the gymnasium, waiting for the parent-teacher meeting to end.

The playground and the open ground outside the teaching building were empty; after all, no one would want to get soaked in the rain.

The crowd at the gate grew thinner, leaving only two or three students, like Lin Xiaolu, holding umbrellas and waiting for their parents. Seeing few people, the security guard at the gate stepped out of the guardhouse and, quite dutifully, closed the main gate, leaving only the side entrance for pedestrians to pass through.

Lin Yun still had not arrived.

The rain intensified even more.

Lin Xiaolu took out her phone and checked her previous message records; the reply containing the two words "definitely" stood out so prominently.

She remembered when her mother was still alive.

Anya was a freelancer; her daily schedule was far more flexible than Lin Yun's, so she was always the one who attended the parent-teacher meetings.

Compared to Lin Yun's rigorous approach to time management, Anya was much more casual; arriving just in time or being late was common, and she always managed to brush it off with a joke. If she truly angered Lin Xiaolu, such as once completely getting the time of the parent-teacher meeting wrong, she would buy lots of snacks and toys, then take Lin Xiaolu to an amusement park, waiting until her daughter, under the barrage of sugar-coated bullets, had completely dissolved her dissatisfaction, before asking pitifully: "Little Lulu is the most sensible; will you forgive Mommy?"

"Don't save all your understanding for things like this."

Past memories flashed before her eyes; Lin Xiaolu gazed at the pouring rain and murmured to herself.

She felt she should not care whether Lin Yun fulfilled his promise.

After all, it was just a parent-teacher meeting; for the past two years, no one had come, and she had felt no problem with it.

In fact, if she hadn't told Lin Yun about the parent-teacher meeting today, she would have, as in previous years, honestly explained her family situation to the homeroom teacher and then completely ignored the matter of the meeting, leaving school early to go home.

If she went home early now, she might even catch the afternoon animated program; the new series of magical girl anime must already be up to the tenth episode, right?

Come to think of it, since she truly became a magical girl, she no longer had time to watch anime.

Was it really necessary for her now to care so much about the parent-teacher meeting?

As for that man, she had long been disappointed in him and held no trust in him whatsoever; whether he came or not could not stir any emotional waves within her.

She was standing here now only because she had been the one to bring up the parent-teacher meeting; not coming to see it would seem irresponsible, an act driven by a sense of duty.

Whether he was late or broke his appointment was his business; it could not affect her.

Once the parent-teacher meeting began, if he still hadn't arrived, she would turn and leave. As for the class number, that was just a matter of sending a text message.

Lin Xiaolu thought expressionlessly.

Yet no matter how she thought about it, that figure never appeared at the school gate.

Even when she focused her attention on her phone screen, trying to pass the time by refreshing social media, Lin Xiaolu still felt restless, her gaze occasionally drifting toward the school gate.

The last student remaining there waited for his mother; the edges of their two umbrellas met, and the mother and son under the umbrella chatted and laughed continuously.

Lin Xiaolu stamped her foot; her heel repeatedly struck the ground, kicking up splashes of water and making a "squeak-splash, squeak-splash" sound.

"Could it be that he really isn't coming?"

As soon as she spoke those words, as if to confirm something, a melody suddenly rang out; its tune was pleasant, but under the sound quality of the campus broadcast, it sounded like a thunderclap exploding, pulling Lin Xiaolu back from her thoughts into reality.

This melody was very familiar to the students of Sunset Glow Middle School; it was the class bell.

And on this day, when the schedule had changed, it was the signal that the parent-teacher meeting had begun.

Lin Yun ran through the rain.

The outcome of the battle was no surprise; for one who could slay a pupa alone, defeating a caterpillar was no difficult matter.

It was only because the battle took place on a high-speed train that the continuous changes in space made it difficult for him to end it quickly with silk threads, and rashly activating greater-power moves like Masterpiece could endanger other passengers in the car, so he ultimately had to pick up his basic magic techniques, which he had long grown somewhat rusty in.

Under these circumstances, even though he had resolved the caterpillar as quickly as possible, it was still a few steps slower than usual.

After the light rail tram stopped, perhaps because it was his first battle outside the Bureau of Anomalous Strategy's blockade, there were now quite a few onlookers around after he defeated the remnant beast; driving these people away from the remnant beast took him some more time.

Finally, he contacted Hong Siyu to explain the situation to the Bureau of Anomalous Strategy, dodged the crowds constantly taking photos around him, and flew directly via an aerial route to the vicinity of Sunset Glow Middle School.

As always, he found an alleyway, emerged from it after restoring his proper form, and ran toward his destination.

Because he had set off in a hurry, he had left his umbrella on the tram, so he could only squint and advance in the downpour.

The wound on his face was still oozing blood; this was from being cut by glass shards when he broke the window to jump off the train earlier. Exposed to the rain pouring down, it carried an indescribable stinging pain.

Such pain was nothing to him; what he truly cared about was time: without a doubt, he was already late.

He had already exceeded the start time of the parent-teacher meeting before landing; now it was merely mending the fold after the sheep was lost, selfishly thinking to go as fast as possible.

Yet, deep in his heart, he also knew that Lin Xiaolu might not be there waiting for him.

It was he who had originally insisted on coming to the parent-teacher meeting; Lin Xiaolu might not have been very enthusiastic about it anyway; plus, with the weather so terrible, even if he arrived at the school, it might only be self-satisfaction.

Let it be self-satisfaction, then.

He consoled himself this way, saw the gate of Sunset Glow Middle School in the heavy rain, and once again quickened his pace, passing through the pedestrian walkway on the side.

Standing still at the school gate, he panted heavily, looked around at the flower bed, and futilely searched for the imagined figure. Yet, in the end, he found nothing.

No one was here; naturally, Lin Xiaolu was not here either.

Gazing at the empty flower bed, Lin Yun's heart gradually sank: even though he had prepared himself, when truly facing this scene, he still felt sad.

His panting scattered into the rain, unable to carry away the low spirits in his heart. He did not want to make excuses; failing to keep the appointment on time had become a fact.

Yet, thinking of his daughter's face, thinking of what expression she would show because he had broken his promise, he felt a pang of guilt.

Messed it up again.

Thinking this, he stood there in utter wretchedness, momentarily at a loss. He knew he could still catch the parent-teacher meeting if he entered the teaching building now, but the greatest meaning of this trip had become empty talk.

Shortly after, Lin Yun silently reached out; his wet fingertips touched the phone in his pocket: at the very least, he had to ask where the class was.

— "Why did it turn out like this?"

A somewhat familiar voice suddenly came from behind Lin Yun; his hand froze in mid-air.

Turning around, he saw Lin Xiaolu holding an umbrella, leaning against the pillar beside the main gate, looking at him with a confused expression.

"Little Lulu..." he spoke, only to find his voice somewhat hoarse.

"You're too late; you're ten minutes late."

Lin Xiaolu drooped her eyelids, raised her hand to reveal a glowing phone screen, and the digital clock in the center displayed the time: "It's already four forty."

Lin Yun couldn't answer; he tried to force a smile on his face to express his apology, but his unfamiliar expression management was insufficient to make such a delicate expression, so in the end he could only weirdly twitch the corners of his mouth.

Regarding this series of strange actions by Lin Yun, Lin Xiaolu didn't pay him any mind; instead, she looked at his embarrassed state, pointed at his face which was still seeping blood, and repeated her question: "Why did you end up like this?"

"On the way, the light rail tram encountered a bit of trouble and suddenly stopped running halfway..." Lin Yun explained.

"Remnant Beast?" Lin Xiaolu's single sentence left him speechless.

"Ahem, no."

He didn't want Lin Xiaolu to realize that he and Senior Cuique had been in the same place at that time, so he coughed a couple of times somewhat stiffly: "Remnant Beasts are such dangerous existences; why would you think in that direction?"

"Because the Luoming Line was attacked by a Remnant Beast; it was... said on the news." Lin Xiaolu paused in her speech, then pointed at her phone, "You came on this light rail tram, right?"

"No, I fell off a bicycle on the way."

Lin Yun tried to appear as if nothing was wrong: "The tram stopped running, so I could only scan a bicycle from the roadside."

"Stop with the lame lies," Lin Xiaolu said in a muffled voice.

The stiff smile squeezed out by the man before her gradually overlapped with the playful smile of her mother, whom she remembered occasionally being late.

When she had run away from home in the past, he had gone to a classmate's house; that haggard, exhausted state was already the most wretched image in her memory. And today he looked even more awkward: not only was his usually neat formal wear completely soaked, but his usually neatly combed hair also stuck to his forehead like a pot lid, and the small wounds on his face were particularly wretched.

Seeing the man who usually looked like a workplace elite turned into this, Lin Xiaolu felt she should want to laugh, but for some reason, she only felt a bit of a stinging nose now. Because she suddenly realized that adults, in many ways, are not as composed on the surface as they appear.

Gazing at this man whom she knew so well yet felt distant from, she felt for the first time that his rigid, silent shell had cracked slightly, and she glimpsed something more real within it.

It was something she had earnestly longed for in the past, yet something she had never imagined now. She seemed to truly understand him a little because of this.

So her heart relaxed, she smoothed her furrowed brows, and raised her arm:

"Catch it."

She handed the umbrella in her hand over to him.

"Hm?"

Lin Yun was slightly stunned, staring blankly at the umbrella Lin Xiaolu was handing over, and hesitated before taking it: "Does this mean..."

"I've been standing at the school gate holding it for half an hour."

Lin Xiaolu turned her face away, avoiding Lin Yun's gaze: "Hold it for me; I'm tired of holding it."

She handed over the umbrella just like that, naturally standing beside Lin Yun and ducking under the umbrella. She stretched her aching arm and shook her sleeve, which was soaked with rainwater.

After a moment, seeing that Lin Yun still hadn't moved, she looked up somewhat dissatisfied: "What are you still standing here for? Aren't we going to the parent-teacher meeting?"

"The parent-teacher meeting, yes, the parent-teacher meeting."

In that instant, Lin Yun felt as if a warm current had washed into his heart, joyful and somewhat gratified. He gripped the umbrella tightly and followed Lin Xiaolu as they stepped toward the teaching building.

Father and daughter, holding one umbrella together, strolled through the rain toward the classroom.

The black umbrella swayed slightly in the downpour, maintaining the small space it sheltered, and slowly disappeared into the curtain of rain.

Thunder rumbled in the sky, and rain fell in gusts in the wind.

The waterlogged road surface rippled with waves; a snail was submerged in a puddle, its slow speed preventing it from escaping, so it could only weakly retreat into its shell, waiting for death soon to come.

Just then, under the eaves nearby, a hand reached out, gently plucked the snail from the water, and placed it on the ground beside.

Having finished this, the owner of the hand stepped back a few paces, returning to a place where they would not get rained on.

Xia Liang squatted there alone.

A somewhat gratified smile hung on her face as she quietly watched Lin Xiaolu and Lin Yun disappear in the distance, but once the figures were gone, a touch of loneliness appeared on her face again.

Dully watching the snail extend its antennae from its shell again and slowly crawl, she inexplicably recalled the night she pretended to run away from home and stayed at Lin Xiaolu's house.

Or rather, the night she initiated a conversation but, after listening to Lin Xiaolu's confession, spoke a sentence out of emotion.

It was a sentence that was spoken but dared not be raised in volume, for fear of exposing her true feelings:

"Really... I'm so envious of you."