The American Museum of Natural History, located next to New York's Central Park, is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. The museum building, a blend of Roman and Renaissance styles, is majestic and modern.

According to statistics, there are more than 32 million exhibits in the American Museum of Natural History, which are open all year round, including a wide variety of collections such as astronomy, minerals, humans, paleontology and modern biology.

Today, the Natural History Museum is not only a base for popular science education, but also a famous tourist attraction in New York. Usually, people who visit New York City always come to visit Central Park and visit the Natural History Museum at the same time.

In the Akri African Mammal Exhibition Hall on the second floor of the Museum of Natural History, a pair of young Asians are looking at several elephant specimens with great interest.

The young man is about 1.85 meters tall and has a straight figure, as toned and well-proportioned as a long-distance runner. The face is angular, and the eyes are deep, revealing wisdom and calmness. That handsome appearance, unlike the little fresh meat movie actor full of cream, is full of men's masculine beauty.

The girl next to her looks to be more than 1.65 meters tall, wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a plaid plaid shirt on her upper body, a denim vest on the outside, and khaki loose slacks.

In the eyes of others, this should be a pair of lovers in love.

The elephant specimens on display in this exhibition hall are very realistic, and can be said to be lifelike.

The young man was pointing to the elephant's teeth and explaining something to the girl. The girl looked at the young man who was talking with admiration, and smiled sweetly from time to time.

This girl was born extremely beautiful, and when her smile bloomed, she looked even brighter and more moving.

For a while, while they were watching the scenery, they themselves became the scenery in the eyes of other tourists.

The girl is holding the boy's arm in one hand and pointing to a specimen of a baby elephant with the other. The baby elephant has a cute appearance, with a nose curled upwards and an open mouth that seems to be smiling at visitors.

"Jingwei, can you give me a flannel elephant puppet later? I just saw it in the souvenir shop, and it looks as cute as this baby elephant. The girl said to the young man.

Li Jingwei replied casually: "Okay, no problem." ”

He glanced at the beautiful girl next to him and tried to pull his arm out of her hand. Who knows, he just made a move, but he was caught more tightly, and he couldn't help but feel a little helpless.

Yesterday, Li Jingwei was invited by Hiddles, the chair of the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, to give an academic report. The content of the report is about a working paper he recently wrote. The research results presented in this paper were highly praised by the experts attending the meeting, and several experts, including Hiddings, also put forward some valuable suggestions for revision of the paper. This also benefited Li Jingwei very much.

Last night, Li Jingwei struck while the iron was hot in the hotel and further revised and perfected his thesis. Then, I emailed the paper to my supervisor, Evans, hoping to ask for his advice again.

Although Li Jingwei has graduated, he has become a tenured professor. However, he and his mentor Evans have always maintained this habit, that is, when they have new research results with each other, they will send them to each other before submitting them. Since both of them work at MIT, they basically get together every week to discuss some academic issues except for vacations.

This kind of relationship between teacher and friend not only did not fade with Li Jingwei's graduation, but became deeper.

The afternoon before yesterday, Li Jingwei was fascinated by some of the exhibits at the Natural History Museum. So, he decided to take a day to visit again after making an academic report.

What he didn't expect was that he actually met Keiko here.

This girl, Keiko, is from Japan and attends Wesleyan Women's College, not far from MIT. Three years ago, Keiko suddenly took a break from school for unknown reasons.

Through Keiko's introduction, Li Jingwei learned that she had just returned to school two weeks ago and returned to Wesleyan Women's College to continue her studies.

Li Jingwei and Keiko's acquaintance originated three and a half years ago. At the time, Keiko, who was in her second year at Wesleyan Women's College, took an MIT math class across the school. Li Jingwei was in his second year of doctoral studies at the time, and as a teaching assistant to Professor Evans, who taught the course, he was responsible for teaching exercises to students.

Sometimes, when Professor Evans didn't have time to attend classes, Li Jingwei would give a lecture on his behalf. Compared with Professor Evans's rigidity in class, Li Jingwei is more vivid and interesting, and can explain some boring mathematical theorems to students vividly, so he is deeply loved by students.

Keiko's math skills are not very good, but it seems that her family has a good relationship with the school executives. After receiving a hint from the school's top management, Professor Evans specially designated Li Jingwei to be responsible for tutoring Keiko's studies.

Fortunately at first, when Li Jingwei explained the problem to her, Keiko would listen attentively. Later, most of the time, she flashed her big beautiful eyes and kept staring at Li Jingwei, not knowing if she was listening to the lecture or thinking about something else.

This made Li Jingwei very uncomfortable, after all, he was only seventeen or eighteen years old at the time, how could he stand up to a beautiful girl looking at him like this.

So, Li Jingwei proposed to his supervisor Evans that he was in the second year of his Ph.D. and needed more time to do research, hoping that his supervisor could let other doctoral teaching assistants tutor Keiko.

Professor Evans directly rejected him, saying that you are in the second year of Dr. Li Jingweicai, and you have published 6 academic papers in three top international mathematics journals, even if it takes one-tenth of the time of others, you can successfully graduate. You don't need more time to do research, what you need is to make your life more colorful, not to live an ascetic life.

During his second year of Ph.D., Li Jingwei proved the existence of the Erdsch difference problem and solved the problem that has plagued the academic community for more than 80 years. Based on the results of his research at that time, any paper is worthy of the best doctoral dissertation. So, Evans wasn't worried about his graduation at all.

During Li Jingwei's doctoral studies, his supervisor Evans never urged him to do academic research. It's just that every Friday night, Li Jingwei is asked to go to his house for dinner, and talk about Li Jingwei's research after dinner.

Of the six doctoral students that Professor Evans took at the time, only Li Jingwei could enjoy such treatment.

Of course, if they encounter difficult academic problems, the two of them will discuss relevant issues in the research room for days or even weeks, in addition to eating and sleeping.

To some extent, Li Jingwei ignited the second spring of Evans's academic research. The research made by the two people has caused great repercussions in the academic community, and it has also made Evans's academic status in the American mathematics community even more unshakable.

Li Jingwei is also regarded as a rising star in the field of mathematics. Before graduating with a Ph.D., the chair of the mathematics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had repeatedly told Professor Evans that he must find a way to keep Li Jingwei when he graduated.

During his doctoral studies, Li Jingwei was very self-disciplined in his studies and research, and his life was also very regular, neither talking about girlfriends nor participating in various entertainment parties.

This made Professor Evans wonder if his gifted student had suffered any emotional trauma. In his opinion, seventeen or eighteen years old should be the age when boys are most interested in girls, and should be the most enthusiastic about partying. Li Jingwei, on the other hand, is like an old pedant, quietly conducting academic research.

However, fortunately, Li Jingwei is polite and courteous, and gets along well with the teachers and students in the laboratory. As a teaching assistant, he was able to get along well with students who were older than him. Li Jingwei's performance dispelled Evans' doubts.

In fact, Li Jingwei's personality is very easy-going, as the youngest of Evans's doctoral students, he has a calm and practical level that does not match his age.

As the saying goes, men chase women across mountains, and women chase men across the veil.

Because Wesleyan Women's College is not far from MIT, and because students from both schools can take courses from each other, Keiko spends more time at MIT than at her own school after meeting Li Jingwei.

Later, she was very familiar with everyone in Li Jingwei's research room, and would bring some Japanese sushi to everyone from time to time, and soon established a good mass base for herself.

Slowly, everyone took it for granted that Li Jingwei and Keiko were a couple. Li Jingwei himself also accepted such a fact in a daze.

However, this Keiko's identity seems to be somewhat special. Every time she comes to MIT for classes or looks for Li Jingwei, there is a special car to pick her up. There is also a woman in her thirties who often follows Keiko and helps her with some chores.

Once, Li Jingwei went to Keiko's residence as a guest, and felt that there were always people staring around the house. This made him feel uncomfortable, and Keiko didn't seem to want to talk about these things, so Li Jingwei didn't want to ask too much.

However, he always felt that Keiko's identity was not simple, and there always seemed to be something between the two.

Li Jingwei was originally a more casual person, and the estrangement between the two made him feel very involuntary.

As people often say, the farthest distance in the world is when you stand in front of me, but I can't see you clearly.

He didn't want the person he would face in the future to be someone he didn't understand. He has no preconceptions that Keiko is a Japanese, but he feels that he has never been able to enter Keiko's heart.

So, Li Jingwei began to avoid Keiko as much as possible, hoping to slowly distance themselves from each other. He didn't want to escape anything, but he vaguely felt that the two were two parallel lines, infinitely close, but they could never be intertwined.

Soon after, Keiko suddenly took a break from school and returned to China. Before leaving, she told Li Jingwei that she hoped to meet again in this life.

In this way, this relationship, which has not officially begun, has come to an end.

Coincidentally, Keiko is a member of the music club at Wesleyan Women's College. Yesterday, she performed at the Arts Center at Columbia University, and today she is visiting the Natural History Museum.

After seeing Li Jingwei in the Asian exhibition hall of the Natural History Museum, Keiko stuck to him and never separated from him for a moment. Her performance reminded Li Jingwei of the situation when the two were together three years ago.

The flowers bloomed brilliantly that year, but they did not bear happy fruits.