Chapter 35: Bidding Farewell to the Old and Welcoming the New

"Shoo... pop-pop-pop..."

Di Ye drove the Jinbei Van to his high school, Yuncheng 16th High School, found an empty spot at the school gate, moved down a box of fireworks, selected two of the larger ones, lit them with a lighter, then walked to the side of the van and asked Huang Ya, "Does your mood right now feel like these fireworks in mid-air with nowhere to land?"

Huang Ya didn't get out of the van; she leaned over the window, looked up at the brilliant sparks in the sky, and said, "Am I that fragile?"

"I didn't say you were fragile; I was talking about your mood."

Before his transmigration, Di Ye had experienced the pain of losing his parents and understood the feeling of suddenly having no home, so he said softly, "Do you feel helpless and abandoned, with a hollow feeling in your heart?"

Huang Ya remained silent. Only after the two large fireworks on the ground had finished did she say faintly, "Di Ye, how long do you intend to back me up?"

"Until you don't want me to anymore, or until I can't hold you up anymore."

Huang Ya imagined the scene, her brows relaxed, and she smiled, "By the time you can't hold me up anymore, we'll probably be seventy or eighty years old."

Seeing that her mood seemed to have improved quite a bit, Di Ye continued to guide her with a joke, "Not necessarily. Maybe in a few years you'll be a billionaire, with a waist thicker than a whale's, and you'll be able to crush me just by rolling over. How could I hold you up then?"

"I don't want a waist that thick."

Huang Ya was amused and quickly regained her usual vitality. She got out of the van and, together with Di Ye, set off all the fireworks in the box. After they were finished, she turned her head to look at the gate of Yuncheng 16th High School and said, "Let's come here to set off fireworks every Spring Festival from now on."

"Sure."

Just then, the BB Pager in his pocket beeped. Di Ye took it out, looked at it, and said, "It's 6:30. My dad is urging us to go back to eat and then watch the Spring Festival Gala together."

"Then let's go."

Di Ye collected the debris from the fireworks, put it back into the cardboard box, moved it into the van, and then sat in the driver's seat. Just as he was about to drive, he heard Huang Ya in the passenger seat give a soft "ah." Thinking she had dropped something, he asked, "What's wrong?"

"Di Ye, if you keep backing me up, then I'll definitely have to work for you for free forever. If I work for free forever, how could I possibly become a billionaire?"

"Isn't your reaction time a bit too long?"

Huang Ya ignored the teasing and just asked, "Tell me, do you want me to work for you for free for my whole life?"

Di Ye turned his head and saw Huang Ya looking at him infatuatedly, her eyes like clear lake water, hiding ripples of unspoken shyness. He let go of the car keys and said seriously, "I don't want you to work for me for free for your whole life; I want you to be with me for your whole life."

The ripples in Huang Ya's eyes turned into waves, surging violently, moist and glistening.

Di Ye was an experienced hand; since he had made a promise, he didn't dawdle. He leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, and said, "I'll stamp you first; from now on, you're mine."

Huang Ya was stunned by his straightforward behavior. After a few seconds, she reacted, raised her hand to touch her forehead, and said with a blushing face, "I haven't agreed yet, what right do you have to stamp me?"

Di Ye laughed, pointed to his own forehead, and said cheekily, "Then you stamp me too, and then we'll be even."

Huang Ya bit her lip, hesitated for a moment, then unbuckled her seatbelt, leaned over with most of her body, and gave Di Ye's forehead a dragonfly-touching-water kiss.

"Isn't this a bit too perfunctory?"

"Weren't you the same just now?"

"Don't lock your door when you go to sleep tonight. I'll come find you, and we'll study how to stamp properly."

Although Huang Ya was very familiar with Di Ye and usually joked around without restraint, she was a girl after all. Hearing this, she was very shy, slapped Di Ye, and complained, "How can you be so lecherous!"

"Stamping isn't lecherous; reconciling accounts is lecherous."

"What is reconciling accounts?"

"Reconciling accounts is two people going back and forth to check the details of each other's bodies."

"You're truly filthy, turning a perfectly good professional term into such a mess..."

The two of them played and bickered all the way, and it was around 7 o'clock when they returned home. By the time they finished the New Year's Eve dinner, the Spring Festival Gala had just begun.

The 1995 Spring Festival Gala was known as the ceiling of the gala, with extremely high quality. It not only had classic sketches like "Such Packaging," "Uncle Niu Promoted," and "I'll Say It For You," but also produced over a dozen popular hit songs of different styles, such as "Spicy Girl," "Water of Forgetting Love," "Smiling Face," "Flowers in the Fog," and "A Cloud in the Wind," among others.

Di Yongchang and Zhang Xiuzhi were used to going to bed early and rising early, so they went to wash up and sleep around 10 o'clock. After the door to the master bedroom closed, Di Ye leaned toward Huang Ya, put his arm around her shoulder, and said with a grin, "Let's study the feeling of being a couple first."

Huang Ya had never been in a relationship and wasn't used to intimate contact; her body suddenly became stiff, and she whispered a reminder, "Your parents will see us."

"What does it matter if they see us?"

Infected by Di Ye's indifferent attitude, Huang Ya gradually relaxed. After tossing and turning for a while, she chose the most comfortable position and curled up in his arms to continue watching the Spring Festival Gala.

Di Ye had watched the highlights of the 1995 Spring Festival Gala many times before his transmigration and no longer felt any novelty, so while playing with Huang Ya's hair, he recounted the matter of arranging for Huang Zongshan to go to Guangdong Province to purchase optical discs.

"Your younger brother is no pushover. If he keeps hanging out with unsavory people at Radio Factory No. 3, he'll end up in prison sooner or later. So I'm having him make a few trips to Guangdong Province to see the world and realize how big it is. If he can be tempered, it'll count as an explanation to your father."

"Can Xiao Shan do it?"

"I see that although he's sturdy, he doesn't blindly rely on his fighting skills, and his mind is quite clear. It shouldn't be a problem. Besides, he's not going alone; Bi Wanxi and Xu Chaobo are there to help look after him."

"Then let him try. What about Xiao Hai?"

"Huang Zonghai is only in his first year of high school, no need to rush to arrange things. Besides, his character is cowardly, and he's lazy and hates work; he can't do big things, nor can he do bad things. If he can't get into college in the future, just open a small shop or a small restaurant for him, and he can live a stable life."

"That's fine too."

"If your mother comes to bother you in the future, you know what to do, right?"

"I know, one of three choices: call the police, let Xiao Shan handle it, or let you handle it. Anyway, I'll just treat her like a stranger."

"Smart."

The two snuggled together, chatting and watching the gala, waiting until the New Year's bell rang at 12 o'clock. Di Ye stood up from the sofa and said, "Stop watching, let's go to sleep, we have to get up early tomorrow."

Huang Ya was still enjoying it and didn't move from the sofa, saying, "You go wash up, I'll watch a little longer."

After Di Ye went to the bathroom to wash up, he came out and found Huang Ya missing. Both his own bedroom door and the door to Lao Wu's place across the hall were open, so he walked over.

Lao Wu's family had returned to the countryside for the New Year a few days ago, and only Huang Ya was living in the guest bedroom. Di Ye pushed the door open and saw her applying makeup in front of the mirror, trying to cover up a few faint scratch marks on her face.

"Don't worry, they're just very light marks. My mom applied ointment for you, and they'll be fine in a couple of days."

"Oh my, how did you get here so fast?"

Huang Ya put down the mirror, stood straight like a soldier with her petite frame, and said with a blushing face, "Didn't you want to study how to stamp? Come on."

Upon hearing this, Di Ye felt like a big bad wolf seeing a little white rabbit. He stepped forward, wrapped his arms around Huang Ya, lowered his head, and gave her a romantic, wet kiss in the style of *Gone with the Wind*.

"Mmm... mmm... how can you stamp like this? The status isn't equal, it's unfair."

"Then should I find you a stool?"

"No, you sit down and let me study how to stamp from above."

The next day at breakfast, seeing that Di Ye and Huang Ya had dark circles under their eyes and hadn't slept well, Zhang Xiuzhi asked, "What time did you two watch the Spring Festival Gala until last night?"

Both of them had guilty consciences and answered simultaneously, but they had absolutely no rapport; one said 12 o'clock, and the other said 1 o'clock.

Di Ye felt helpless and had to put his talent for making up lies to use, saying, "When we saw it was 12 o'clock, Huang Ya suddenly remembered there was a problem with the VCD Player accounts, so she asked me to help her reconcile them. It took a whole hour, and we only went to sleep at 1 o'clock."

Di Yongchang believed it to be true and asked with concern, "There weren't any problems with the accounts, were there?"

"No problems, the total was correct; there were just a few minor errors in the details, but it was fine once they were corrected."

Since Bi Wanxi and the others needed the Jinbei Van to go to Guangdong Province, after finishing breakfast, Di Ye took Huang Ya to work at the Chenghuang Temple and returned the vehicle while he was at it.

On the way, Huang Ya complained, "Why did you have to pick an excuse about reconciling accounts?"

"What's wrong with reconciling accounts?"

"We clearly didn't reconcile any accounts last night!"

Di Ye was used to being a smooth talker and often forgot the jokes he made, but he paused for a moment, remembered the metaphor he had blurted out on the way home last night, and couldn't help but laugh, saying, "We'll have to reconcile accounts sooner or later; why don't we study that tonight in addition to stamping?"

"Stamping is fine, but reconciling accounts is not."

"Why?"

"Don't forget that you have a girlfriend."

"Don't forget that I'm still a playboy."