They went to Ximen together, Zhao Xi went to Xile, Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian went to Wutong.
Obviously, the three of them could chat normally. As soon as Zhao Xi left, Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian walked side by side, and the atmosphere suddenly fell silent.
In the evening, people come and go at the West Campus Gate. No whistle is allowed within the school, only the jingling of debris hanging from the mobile food stalls, the sky is dark and unclear, the lights are sparse, and they have not yet turned into a line.
Sheng Wang's mind was full of the scene he just left the classroom, and he didn't know what to say. And Jiang Tianben doesn't talk much, and it's usually difficult to judge whether he is thinking about something or just too lazy to speak.
But this moment still seemed too quiet.
At a certain moment, Sheng Wang had a vague idea. He seemed to know why Jiang Tian was silent, but he didn't seem to know.
It is said that the young man's mind is the most elusive, his brother is the top among them, and he himself is not too much.
The old lady at the entrance of the alley was walking her grandson, bending over to tease him like a child. Sheng Wang stepped sideways to get out of the way, his shoulders accidentally touched Jiang Tian's chest, and he was helped by the other side.
Jiang Tian's hands are big, but not thick. Sheng Wang could feel the slender fingers pressing against his shoulders, and then withdrew after a while.
He tugged at the schoolbag draped over one shoulder, and waited for the old lady to leave before walking again. Maybe because of the bump, he suddenly wanted to say something to break this inexplicable stalemate. However, before he opened his mouth, he heard Jiang Tian say, "I just heard a little bit outside the classroom."
The topic came up suddenly, and Sheng Wang was stunned.
Jiang Tian looked at the narrow and long alley in front of him, and after a while, his eyes turned to him, like a casual glance: "Do you have a girl you like?"
"No." Sheng Wang almost blurted out.
Maybe he answered too quickly, and Jiang Tian was stunned for a moment.
Sheng Wang seemed to have finally seized the opportunity and said, "I was chatting with Brother Xi just now. He asked casually, and I said it casually. There is no other meaning."
He thought about it and added: "I don't like any girl, there are only a few people in our class."
Jiang Tian looked at him. After a while, he looked back and nodded, but said nothing. It was as if he was just asking casually.
After explaining the words, Sheng Wangxin slowly fell back to the ground. He breathed a sigh of relief until he turned the last corner of the alley and heard voices not far away. He suddenly flashed a question—
Jiang Tian... Why do you ask this
At the moment when this thought flashed by, he glanced at Jiang Tian, but saw Jiang Tian looking straight ahead, his face somehow turned ugly, like disgust and irritability.
The last time I saw him like this was because of Ji Huanyu.
Sheng Wang subconsciously looked forward, and sure enough, he saw the man coming out of Ding Laotou's courtyard. The other party is still well-dressed, but his expression is full of embarrassment.
Old man Ding's hoarse voice came from the door: "Look at how you look, don't you want face? Don't you think it's ugly to drag these things back and forth? You listen to what you say are human words? ? Oh, if you say no, don't, you say yes I don't even recognize you, go as far as you give me!"
This was the first time Sheng Wang saw the old man get really angry, instead of frightening someone with kindness. The old man's physique is not as strong as when he was young, but after all, he has been a soldier before, and his energy is still very strong. He unceremoniously pushed the person out the door, and Ji Huanyu staggered back a few steps.
The old man stuck his head out to close the door, only to see people on this side of the alley. He was stunned for a moment, and quickly gestured to Sheng Wang to tell them to leave quickly, not to join in the fun.
However, Ji Huanyu had already seen them, and he lost face in front of the juniors, and his expression was embarrassed and filled with anger.
He stretched his shoulders, straightened his clothes, and walked towards Jiang Tian.
"You! Don't ask him to say something or not, no one wants to listen to your words! You have to listen earlier, so you need it now?" Old man Ding wanted to talk to him.
Ji Huanyu restrained his temper, and pushed the old man back into the yard indiscriminately, and brought the door to him: "I said, I just want to chat with him, can you go back to the house and rest for a while? This is also the matter between me and Xiao Tian, and it has nothing to do with others."
The old man was cursing inside, and Ji Huanyu put the latch on the outside door. He said to Jiang Tian's direction: "I didn't lock it, just hit it, and you'll release it when you're done talking."
Sheng Wang suddenly admired him a little, and he could still maintain his tone in this situation. Although he could hear that he was on the verge of irritability, at least he was calm for now.
If such a person is twenty years younger, he should be quite noticeable in school. He remembered what the old man Ding had said that Jiang Ou and him had known each other in high school, and they have been together since then. After graduating from college, they got married naturally. It seems reasonable that Jiang Ou would like such a person at the beginning.
He and Jiang Tian are father and son, and in those old photos of old man Ding, they have a little resemblance. But actually standing in front of him, Sheng Wang felt that they were different.
Can't tell what the difference is, but it's totally different.
"Let's find a place." Ji Huanyu took out his mobile phone, glanced at the time, and said, "Isn't that over the corner—"
"It's here." Jiang Tian interrupted him impatiently, "If you have anything to say, just say it here."
Ji Huanyu looked at him and sighed, put down the phone and said, "Okay."
He glanced around, this alley was remote enough that no one would come, even more secret than a restaurant, cafe or something.
A dense field in broad daylight.
"Okay. Then—" He nodded again and turned to look at Sheng Wang.
Jiang Tian snorted coldly.
He thought Ji Huanyu was really funny, he came over and said he wanted to talk, and every time he acted like he couldn't be heard by outsiders, why bother? Isn't it contradictory
The sarcasm on his face was too obvious, Ji Huanyu was stabbed by that expression, and suddenly he couldn't go on. There was finally a crack in the calm that he had worked hard to maintain.
He took two steps in front of Jiang Tian, stopped halfway, and couldn't help but say, "Xiao Tian, it's been so many years. Your mother has also found the right person, and I heard that it's actually pretty good now. Okay, better than following me. Why do you keep remembering that?"
Jiang Tian glanced open, as if looking at him one more time would make him irritable: "Are you qualified to mention my mother?"
"No." Ji Huanyu recognized it very quickly. He lowered his eyes, didn't say a word for a long time, and didn't know what to remember when he stared at the ground somewhere. After a long time, he said, "I don't have the right to mention her, so I haven't seen her again until now—"
"You dare to see it." Jiang Tian moved.
Ji Huanyu said quickly: "No, I haven't looked for her, and I have been avoiding her since I returned to China. But Xiaotian, it's really been a long time. Yes, I was a little confused at that time, and I was not happy with anything. I was younger than me. At that time, I thought that the gap was too big, and I was a little... stunned. At that time, you were separated from your mother for a long time. You were young and didn't know much, but at that time it was indeed... "
He thought about his words, not knowing whether it was to justify himself or to be afraid of offending Jiang Tian. After hesitating for a while, he continued: "I don't have much feelings anymore. To tell you the truth, Xiaoou... Your mother has actually been looking at the divorce agreement for a long time. I also have that idea, but I always feel that it is still possible. Just wait, we can live together again. After all, we have known each other since high school, and we have been together for a long time."
He looked at Jiang Tian and said, "You may think I'm a scum from the beginning to the end, and I know why you don't want your mother to know, for fear that she will think that she has fed the dog for more than ten years. Right?"
Jiang Tian did not refute.
He gave a vague wry smile: "Whether you believe it or not, at least I really liked her when I was with her. I didn't think about anything else, but living is not about dating, there are too many things to worry about. There was also a reason for quarreling with your mother at the beginning. In short, there were too many messy things, and I was a little disappointed. I don’t know if you would have that kind of situation. Forget it, nothing, and then want to do something very outrageous. So…”
So hanging out with an irrelevant man in that old room
Jiang Tian often thinks that some people are ridiculous, and even he is ashamed to talk about what he has done. Every time he mentions, he should avoid a third person or stop abruptly. It seems that as long as you don't say it, those things will slowly be overwhelmed and forgotten. It seems that if he wants to reveal it himself, others will forget it.
It seems that other people's feelings and thoughts are nothing, and other people's memories can be erased at will, so others are... not human
Ji Huanyu always emphasizes that you were still young at that time.
Yes, he was really young at that time, so young that he only remembered incoherent fragments of many things later. Just as he recalled that day, he only remembered that the room was filled with smoke, so choked that he could hardly open his eyes. The ground is full of cigarette butts, burnt out, with a little red star. Ji Huanyu was entangled with another man in the lingering smoke.
He had been sick that day, dizzy, and maybe still had a fever. The images aren't even real, like graffiti or wiggling limbs in bad movies.
He may have said something, startling the entangled people, and then there was chaos. He seemed to be thrown away, or maybe someone bumped into him, and then he fell to the ground, perhaps hitting an unextinguished cigarette butt, causing a burning pain in the back of his neck.
In the first year, he always had similar nightmares. Not scary, just waking up with half a glass of water to quell the nausea.
Then the pictures got blurry every year, and all he remembered was the smell of smoke and the nauseating feeling.
Zhao Xi often said that he was a little precocious, maybe. Just like he knew at a young age that Ji Huanyu was an extremely good-natured person who liked to whitewash peace.
It is said that Jiang Ou and Ji Huanyu do not know how to take care of him, but he can tell who is helpless and who is nature.
The care he received was limited, so the one that was bored in his heart counted, so he protected Jiang Ou very much. When he was picked up, Jiang Ou hugged him and cried for a long time, saying that he seemed to be doing something wrong all the time and that he was a little useless.
Because of him, Jiang Ou denied his life for several years. He didn't want her to deny her more than ten years of life because of Ji Huanyu. So he kept hiding.
As long as he hides it, Ji Huanyu will never say it.
So for a long time later, he was disgusted, and at the same time he had to suppress that disgust in front of Jiang Ou, and slowly, there was no urge to explode.
The jar will rust if it stays stuffy for a long time.
For a long time, he rejected all too intimate contact, knowing that it was too much intellectually, but that kind of subconscious thing is really difficult to correct.
Fortunately, there are Zhao Xi and Lin Beiting.
He saw something different from the two friends who were a few years older, and then forced himself to slowly calm down and adapt. Until one day, he can finally separate Ji Huanyu from everyone else, and separate himself from those things.
As the two friends said, not all intimacy represents a kind of feeling, and it is easy to be self-defeating if you don't need a cup of bow and snake shadow.
It actually makes sense. Just like Zhao Xi, Lin Beiting, Gao Tianyang... He has many friends near and far, and no one makes him have any absurd thoughts.
He is different from Ji Huanyu.
…
It was getting darker and darker, and their outlines finally became less clear.
Ji Huanyu explained it for a long time, and finally became restless in the end. He felt that he didn't say anything wrong, but he couldn't shake Jiang Tian's mind. He couldn't help but think of the old man Ding's words - he was locked out of the door, now it's your turn.
He didn't do anything, but was a little exhausted, so he fell silent. No matter how excited, peaceful, anxious or guilty he was, Jiang Tian was always that cold look.
Sheng Wang looked at Ji Huanyu, and in more and more words, he finally got a clue. He remembered those words Zhao Xi said, and Jiang Tian's so-called "shadow". Although Ji Huanyu didn't say anything specific, he guessed it all.
He couldn't help but look at Jiang Tian again. At that moment, he suddenly had an illusion, and felt that Jiang Tian's disgust and irritability were floating in the air, not like the person involved, but more like a bystander.
It seems that he spent many, many years, forcibly separating himself from those messy past events, and then stood as an irrelevant outsider, and today, many years later, he brought him to the other party for himself who was borrowed everywhere. In a word.
He said to Ji Huanyu, "I think you are disgusting."
There were no bright street lights around, but Sheng Wang could see that the man's face was pale, and he was really struck by this sentence.
He stood still, the old man Ding's scolding, Jiang Tian's cold eyes... All kinds of pressure and emotions surged up, and he had the impulse to do something or say something again.
Seeing that he moved, Sheng Wang stood a little in front of Jiang Tian. As if afraid of what he would do, who knew that the other party's eyes swept over the two of them, and then said a word to Jiang Tian.
Ji Huanyu said: "Xiao Tian, do you know? Some things are inherited."