Love Affairs in Melbourne-Chapter 113 - 110: Awkward and Affected Was Once

During senior year, Qi Yi and Yan Yan each wrote over two hundred letters to each other, totaling around four to five hundred letters.

After returning to China for four days and subtracting the time spent on the road, there was really only a weekend left, plus attending the wedding of Liu Siyan and Lu Ying. Just organizing these many letters was enough to keep Qi Yi busy.

It was no wonder that Qi Yi wasn’t incessantly asking Yan Yan to meet up today, not only because he was concerned Yan Yan might get tired, but Qi Yi indeed had things to keep him busy.

"How do you code it? Can you automatically calculate the order in which the letters were written? Is it by recognizing the ink or the content?" Yan Yan expressed curiosity about Qi Yi’s method of coding.

"Uh, so high-end? I’ve disappointed you, Xiao Qizi can only manually code.

Although we didn’t write the specific date, occasionally some letters contained specific time clues, or information about the day of the week.

With a little sorting and eliminating the times when we rarely wrote letters during the winter and summer vacations, I could mark the dates of my own letters.

Do you think it’s something that computers could solve?" Qi Yi knew Yan Yan had misunderstood the meaning of coding.

"So that’s how it is, I thought it involved big data, artificial intelligence or something." Yan Yan’s expression did not seem very happy.

"What’s wrong? Did I disappoint you by only knowing how to manually code?" Qi Yi asked Yan Yan.

"Why would I be disappointed by something so touching?

I just feel that manually, finding each individual letter one by one is too tiring.

I remember when I returned the letters to you, they were in a messy order, not organized at all." Yan Yan was worried Qi Yi would exhaust himself.

The more cumbersome the task, the more it tests one’s patience.

When Qi Yi had returned Yan Yan’s letters to her then, they were already neatly organized, but after Yan Yan received them, the order became randomly shuffled again.

Now, as Qi Yi was trying to organize their "past," Yan Yan not only didn’t help but obviously became a burden.

"The letters you wrote to me, I remember the order. I’ll be able to reorganize them quickly.

Moreover, if both sides of the correspondence are available, sorting becomes even easier.

I should be able to finish sorting by tomorrow morning, and then I have to attend a wedding in the afternoon and evening, leaving no time to make electronic copies.

I’ll have the electronic copies ready for you the morning after tomorrow." Even the most complex tasks, once in Qi Yi’s hands, sounded like simple matters.

"I casually flipped through the letters I wrote to you today, the envelopes and stationery were all weird and wonderful, it feels like the form was more important than the content." The stationery Yan Yan used in high school to write to Qi Yi was from Japan and Korea.

It seems that domestically, there was no company particularly notable for its design of stationery and envelopes.

Many tourist spots would release specific envelopes and notepads, but they were all standard, lacking distinctive design.

Design is something that requires depth. In places where copyright starts late, it’s difficult for detailed design to thrive.

For a simple example, Chinese typeface design, even till today, doesn’t have up to five thousand types.

But Japanese typefaces at least already have tens of thousands.

Students studying design rarely don’t use Japanese typefaces.

Many typefaces can be randomly downloaded from the internet.

The fact that typefaces have copyrights may not be widely recognized in China.

Using someone else’s typefaces without payment constitutes piracy.

If it’s for private use, it might be unregulated, but if used commercially after graduation, it could very likely trigger a lawsuit.

China’s largest typeface company, Fang Zheng, sends out at least several tens of thousands of lawyer’s letters each year.

Chinese characters unlike English only have 26 letters, with upper and lower cases together, a set of typefaces only needs 52 designs.

Creating a Chinese font requires designing at least five thousand characters, the cumbersome production combined with rampant piracy makes the industry’s advancement slow.

Even if it’s not due to typefaces, many entrepreneurs need to pay another copyright owner as soon as their company shows signs of improvement.

Microsoft Company sends out tens of thousands of lawyer’s letters each year to Chinese enterprises using pirated Windows systems.

The faster a company grows, the higher the compensation becomes, because they base claims on the number of computers.

If one proactively purchases an operating system and office copyright before becoming a defendant, the price isn’t prohibitive.

As a defendant, the copyright fees required will be much more than directly purchasing the genuine software.

Of course, sending lawyer’s letters to enterprise users is just the beginning, the behavior of individual users pirating software will gradually be addressed.

A few years ago, paying for music was something individual users found quite incomprehensible.

.........

Yan Yan’s letter paper, specially chosen by her from design to color scheme, always had something special. Occasionally when she ran out of stationery, Yan Yan would write on plain white paper and "draw" on it.

Yan Yan couldn’t accept her letter paper being just plain white with black text.

Qi Yi’s letters, on the other hand, were completely different from Yan Yan’s.

They were on the standard stationery, the only variation being, sometimes the lines were horizontal, and sometimes vertical.

His handwriting was strong and forceful.

Yan Yan’s letters were fancy and pretty, while Qi Yi’s were simply beautiful.

Yan Yan’s letters emphasized "packaging," while Qi Yi’s were purely about "substance."

"After I go back and look carefully, I’ll see if there are any love sketches, short-legged tigers, or squids that I might have missed initially," Qi Yi said after he received Yan Yan’s letters, besides sorting them, the most important thing was to look for traces of love she had shown back then.

"That’s likely to disappoint you. The shy and awkward me back then probably couldn’t manage to express feelings through drawings," Yan Yan asked Qi Yi to lower his expectations a bit.

"Was it only back then that you were shy and awkward?" Qi Yi was really struck by the phrase Yan Yan had just used.

That time Qi Yi went to Melbourne, he was satisfied simply by holding hands, but when Yan Yan went to New York, all they could still do was hold hands, which was unbearable!

The key was that when Yan Yan left, she seemed to leave without a hint of attachment.

Though Qi Yi could understand, his girlfriend was especially adverse to facing farewells.

Still, Qi Yi felt somewhat hurt by it.

"Uh, what should I do? Now that you mention it, I kind of feel like I’m inherently shy and awkward~" Yan Yan looked at Qi Yi, feeling she should bravely accept the truth.

However, seriously speaking, it was only the high school Yan Yan who was shy and awkward.

She used to set many rules for herself and Qi Yi, always pondering what exactly was the difference between liking and admiring.

She loved but dared not admit, thinking that without expectations there wouldn’t be any disappointments.

Back then, Yan Yan was transitioning between being targeted and not becoming a target.

Yan Yan could reach into Qi Yi’s heart but couldn’t face her own.

Lost to her true self, unable to find her identity, lacking sufficient confidence.

But such a Yan Yan had long become a thing of the past.

Being shy and awkward, the present Yan Yan couldn’t really do it anymore.

By ten o’clock at night, Wenzhou City Library had long since closed.

Walking up the stairs to the main entrance, the glass doors were already locked.

Dim lighting, shining through the glass doors, brought a touch of brightness to the night at the library entrance.

The street lamp’s milky yellow light illuminated the road before the library and generously cast a warm glow, gently lighting the library’s front steps.

Yan Yan handed Qi Yi a bag filled with the letters she wrote to him in her sophomore year of high school.

Standing on her tiptoes, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around Qi Yi’s neck.

Qi Yi hesitated for half a second, at most one second.

The bag he had just taken fell straight to the ground.

It was rare for Qi Yi to be unable to think.

At this moment, Qi Yi’s mind was blank.

Their first kiss, perhaps too late, perhaps too raw.

But for two people in love, it was simply an instinct.

It wasn’t about skill, only about the person standing opposite oneself.

Like a frozen frame in a comic, with no nearby street, no library steps.

Just the silhouette of a boy and a girl embracing under the warm glow.

––––––––––

(Haha, was the first kiss of Qi Yi and Yan Yan somewhat unexpected?)

(If you like Xiao Mo’s writing, please support the original.)