Chapter 125 I Love You

Due to Li Yan’s inconvenience in revealing who his wife is, the entire DV recording was done by himself, with no one else to help him film. Throughout the process, he was often only heard rather than seen.

Yet, the digital video camera captured his invitations and explanations to passersby. He chose places with crowds like scenic spots entrances, squares, ports, and airports. The targets he selected were not individuals but pairs of lovers and spouses, ranging from young to middle-aged to elderly couples.

Initially, due to communication and trust issues, people suspected him of being a fraud and ignored his requests. Some were perhaps newly dating and feared exposure, suspecting he was a journalist or filming a documentary, and quickly avoided him.

The early parts captured his initial struggles. After achieving success later, crowds began to gather at the same place, and more couples eagerly participated, fulfilling his requests.

Li Yan, after going to several places, summarized his experience: places where ordinary couples shop are rarely successful. The suspicion of strangers and the desire not to be disturbed are factors, but in tourist spots, airports, and ports, where there are many tourists, the effect is different. When traveling, tourists are in better spirits, so the act of taking photos for others or asking others to take photos is common. Li Yan wanted a simple blessing, which they gladly offered.

Communicating with foreigners wasn’t as troublesome because they were quite willing, but finding foreign couples wasn’t as easy as finding Yun Country People. Li Yan’s video collection underwent rough editing but wasn’t overly organized, so Yun Country People and foreigners were mixed together, generally ordered based on filming speed without adjustments.

Watching along, due to time and content considerations, repetitive invitation content was cut out, leaving only the smiles of stranger couples offering blessings, wishing her a happy birthday and the couple happiness. Towards the end, Yurong noticed they often stated where they originally came from, saying, "On behalf of XX people, wishing you a happy birthday and happiness together." The redundancy was remarkably low, with people from all provinces represented!

In other words, there were 99 pairs of Yun Country couples, hailing from various places, with just about three pairs per province! Later on, many offered wishes in their regional dialects, and various minority languages appeared.

Certainly, it couldn’t be coincidence. The only explanation is that Li Yan filmed far more than 99 pairs, only compiling representatives from different provinces, removing excess duplicates. It was the same for foreigners. Although Li Yan mainly communicated in the international language, their narrations included various countries, offering blessings in their own languages.

Zhang Yurong, who understands several languages and knows quite a bit about foreign places, watched on. Though not 99 countries were featured, at least a dozen, or twenty different nationalities expressed blessings in their languages.

...

Upon finishing the home-recorded video, Zhang Yurong remained speechless for a long time.

Seeing the end, she transitioned from excited and moved to surprised and happy, finally settling into a state of calm and peace.

Yue Yao watched alongside, deeply touched and envious. Over the years, Li Yan had never celebrated her birthday so uniquely. She could only secretly hope perhaps he had been less romantic before, wishing he could create a special memory for her someday.

Seeing Li Yan and Yurong both speechless, she figured she shouldn’t be the third wheel.

"Wow... such a thoughtful and ingenious gift, it’s truly momentous and touching! Yurong, you continue your conversation; I’ll head to bed now." Having said that, she slipped out of the audio-visual room.

Left with just the two of them, the atmosphere became somewhat more subdued.

"Well, any comments on... my filming skills?" Li Yan broke the silence. Although not belonging to Edison Chen’s school of selfie filming, he had put his heart into this genuine effort to use real passersby, not paid actors pretending.

Yurong turned to him: "The skills are average... but the thought behind it made me very touched and happy."

Li Yan chuckled: "Being touched and happy is what matters. If you ever want to send me blessings in the same way, you could get more creative, using movie clips for dubbing, including Aliens, Predators, Terminators, Transformers, Na’vi, or anything... haha."

Zhang Yurong ignored his joke and softly asked, "You spent quite some time making this video, filming for a long while?"

"Hehe... Although it took quite some time, most of it was done during my office hours. Rest assured, I only sneaked out after finishing my work duties." Li Yan admitted with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

Yurong smiled gently, not criticizing him for personal matters during work but instead feeling gratified. Previously, when he would efficiently finish work and then vanish, she finally had clarity. She felt a bit ashamed, realizing she had mistakenly thought he was using the time to job hunt or prepare to move elsewhere.