"click". Everything turned from dark to light, the screen flickered, and the picture began to appear.
.
This is a staff dormitory, the most cramped building in the century-old school complex. It is located in a remote location. Most of the college sends young teachers to live there. From the outside of this house, the red bricks and white steps are very beautiful, and the ivy, with its charming green vines, climbs around the old western-style building. Anyone passing by can't help but take a second glance. But I was fortunate enough to be a teacher. It turns out that this Fang House has been repaired for a long time, and the walls of the inner walls are mottled, like a tired face that has been repaired countless times.
I was so tired that I didn’t even have a digital TV. Allocated to each room in the dormitory building was an antique-grade cable TV.
"The middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have experienced heavy rains one after another..."
The boy walked through the entrance of the corridor, and the sound of the TV program came through the windowpane of the reception room. The old lady on duty always stopped him and shouted:
"Hey, little classmate, don't you know? This is the staff dormitory, where the teachers live. Don't always run inside as a student."
But today, the old lady didn't cross-examine him, maybe she was in a daze, her eyes were dim, and she didn't notice his passing in the dark night.
He went straight to the third floor and knocked on the familiar iron door.
The door creaked open, and the woman inside the door probed: "Is it you?"
The boy whispered, "Thank you, teacher."
Although it was very late and the boy was an uninvited guest, she was his teacher and the person closest to him in the school. After a brief surprise, the woman welcomed him into the room.
Make a cup of tea, cut ginger slices and add them in. It was raining outside. She felt that the boy's body was wet and cold, and hot ginger tea could ward off the cold.
Teacher Xie put the steaming teacup on the tea table in front of him: "When did you come back?"
"Just got back today." The boy stood awkwardly in front of the sofa.
Teacher Xie: "Sit down."
He just sat down, his hands curled on his knees, restrained, not touching the teacup.
"Why didn't you tell me in advance when you came back. It's so late, and there's still a bus to the school?"
"… Ok."
"How are things going at home?"
The boy was silent for a while, and lowered his head to dig the hole in his jeans.
"My mom still wants me to drop out of school..."
Teacher Xie was silent.
She is already a college student, and the school has no right to decide whether to read or not. She talked to the mother of the teenager in front of her and promised to give tuition fee reductions to extremely poor families. She hopes that the mother will allow her child to finish the university that they have been admitted to.
But the mother sharply refused—
"What books to read? Learn Chinese? Who can't speak Chinese? You are cheating!"
She patiently reasoned with the mother: "The child is very talented, you see, he is already a sophomore, isn't it a pity to give up halfway? Besides, after two years of schooling, he can also find a job in the society. I asked him if he wants to be a teacher in the future. With his grades, it is not a problem to be admitted to a teacher's system. This is a child's dream, and the teacher's job is stable... "
"He can't be a teacher! It's not like you didn't see his face!"
Mother's words fell like a blunt knife, slashing between invisible electric currents.
Teacher Xie was very angry, but she didn't know what to respond to.
"I'm going to let him go home to work now! There's no money at home! Don't waste time! That face—that face... After reading, what can I do! What school would want such a teacher!"
What kind of face is that
There was an incandescent lamp running in Teacher Xie's room, the wattage was low, and it looked drowsy, but it still illuminated the boy's face.
Teacher Xie is used to seeing his face, but anyone who sees this face for the first time will take a breath of cold air - half of the yin and yang face, and I don't know what disease he has suffered from, and the bruise and purple marks have been covering the forehead To the neck, like a piece of rotten skin covered.
Shocking, naked/naked is abnormal.
"ill!"
"Don't go near him, it might be contagious."
"Hey! Intersex!"
Along with this face, he grew up with abuse and ridicule.
Because of his illness, because he was so sick that he didn't know how to hide it, and because he was so ugly that he didn't know how to hide, the boy had been scorned since he was a child. No matter how hard he studies and how he gets along with people gently, he is still like an evil dragon wandering in the blue sky and white sun, and he cannot be treated equally.
Few people, like Teacher Xie, can find that the normal half of his face is well-behaved and gentle.
He always bears everyone's ridicule gently and numbly, and sometimes he also smiles with it, as if he really did something wrong.
But what did he do wrong
Teacher Xie can see that he is always the most serious one in studying, honest, and he always does the most work silently in the group. When others bully him, he always suffers with a good temper and doesn't talk much.
"It's alright, teacher, I'm already very happy that you can chat with me. I used to be in the village, people would walk around when they saw me, and no one had ever listened to me as intently as you did. "
"The classmates are also very good, at least they didn't hit me with bricks."
He speaks peacefully, but his head is always lowered, his shoulders are hunched, and the long-term burden of heavy insults has made his spine deformed and bent.
She later said to him: "After the evening self-study, as long as you want, you can come to me for private tutoring. If you don't understand anything and need my help, just ask."
He smiled embarrassedly, half of his normal face showing some embarrassed red.
She had known him for the past two years, and was used to him knocking on her dormitory door with his back slightly hunched over, bringing her his own essays, essays, and even poetry, and asking her for advice.
Many people like to curse mothers these days, but very few people like to write poems.
He insisted on writing.
The classmates laughed at him, ugly and ugly writing ugly things, sour, more sour than your rotten grapes.
He smiled and wrote again honestly.
But now, he doesn't even have that power.
Teacher Xie thought about what happened before, sighed in his heart, and looked at the boy in front of him with pity.
The boy said, "I'm here this time to say goodbye to the teacher. I'm leaving tomorrow."
"go back home?"
"… Well, that's it."
The teenager paused: "Teacher, if my disease is not on my face, but in a place where others can't see it, everyone will be kinder to me. That would be great."
Teacher Xie's eyes finally couldn't help reddening. At this stage, she has done all her efforts. Unfortunately, she is not his family after all, she can't make the final decision, and she can't save him. The boy's family situation was cramped day by day, and his mother regretted letting the child come out to study. After all, there was a healthy second son in the family who was only in middle school. When the sick one was called back, he could go out with a healthy child.
She felt that what she did was not wrong. As a mother, she also had to weigh her family's circumstances. She was fair.
"You... the paper you put with me last time and asked me to read it for you, I haven't finished editing it yet—"
Teacher Xie felt that she was about to hold back her tears and changed the subject hastily.
"But I read it very carefully before, do you want to go through the school leaving formalities later, and wait for me to approve them all..."
"No." He smiled and shook his head, "I'll be leaving at dawn."
She was very regretful, why did she always feel that she still had time
Why not stay up all night
And why, go shopping, chat, and hold that long and meaningless meeting
Here is a student's dream that is about to be broken, and a heart that is about to stop. As his last teacher, she can't give his dream a bouquet of flowers to say goodbye.
"Sorry… "
"It's okay," he said, "but I wrote a poem at the end, can I give it to you?"
She nodded hurriedly.
He took it out of his schoolbag and showed it to her. The paper was so thin that it seemed weightless in his hands.
She read it word by word. It was a very sweet love poem. It was hot and warm, but cautious. She had seen many love poems written by masters. From the ancients' "When do I lean on a false guise, and my eyes dry with tears." to today's "My eyes are better because I have you in my eyes", but at this moment, it seems that it is not as good as the page held by the teenager.
He didn't say anything, as if to say it was a lack of rhythm.
The young man is a poet, knowing that the poetic quality is lost, and the love of disparity in status is only embarrassing.
"It's a souvenir for you."
Both the ugly face and the normal face are written with tenderness.
"I'm sorry, teacher, I really can't afford any present for you."
"There's nothing better than this." She turned her back, choked up, "you, you eat something, I'll go get you some refreshments."
Controlling his emotions by rummaging through the boxes, Teacher Xie took a jar of butter cookies and put them on the coffee table.
The young man thanked him politely, and under Teacher Xie's gaze, he finally touched the teacup carefully, but withdrew his hand and said softly, "It's so hot."
She touched it: "how could it be? Warm."
But still gave him some cold water to go back.
The boy drank little by little with his favorite biscuits.
After eating and drinking, the night is still long.
He said, "Teacher, can I read a book with you for a while?"
"sure."
The young man laughed again, a little helpless: "I have to leave, and I have troubled you so much in the end."
"It's okay, you can stay for a while... By the way, after you go back, give me another address, and I will send you a copy of all the good books I see. You are so smart, even if you study by yourself... It's not bad. Where did you go?" Teacher Xie could only talk for comfort, "If you need any help, you can find me on WeChat."
The teenager looked at her: "Thank you."
Paused.
"If everyone was like you, then maybe..."
He lowered his head and said nothing.
Most of the books in her dormitory are books. Because of his ugly appearance and morbid nudity, he is the focus every time he goes to the library, so she invites him to the staff dormitory and lends him his books to read.
The teenager just spent a whole night in the staff dormitory reading books, as if he had to rely on this night to bring all these words back to his hometown.
He rarely had such self-confidence. In the past, he would not stay too late, always worried that he would disturb the teacher's normal work and rest. But today is an exception.
Teacher Xie didn't blame him for his last willfulness, but she stayed up until the middle of the night with him, and she was indeed a little sleepy, and fell asleep at the desk unconsciously.
In the haze, she heard the boy suddenly say to her, "Mr. Xie."
She answered him vaguely.
"One more thing, I want to apologize to you."
"Theft in the class before... Those students always lost things, and they couldn't find them. They caused you to be criticized. Those things were actually taken by me."
She was dazed and startled, but she was too tired to get up again.
The teenager said sadly: "But I didn't want those things, I didn't want a penny. They laughed at me like that, and I actually have resentment in my heart... I threw their bags into the haystack, and later They were all burned again. At that time, they suspected me, but you didn't ask me, so they excused me. In fact, it was me who did this."
"I don't have the courage to admit that I've only been a normal person, or even a good person, in the eyes of one person."
"That person is you."
"Teacher, I'm vain, aren't I?... But if even you are disappointed in me, I don't know what to do. You are the only recognition I have in my life."
He said the end, his voice getting lower and lower.
His eyes were clear, almost transparent, and relieved.
"—The thing I regret the most is this... Teacher Xie, I'm really sorry. My illness seems to have been transferred from my face to my heart. If I have a next life, I really want to be a normal person. …I don’t want to be so sick that I don’t even qualify for love.”
"Thank you, teacher..."
A gust of wind blew through the window, and the pages of paper on the table were blown away, like a soul-calling streamer.
Then, everything returned to quiet.
The tea on the table is cold.
When Teacher Xie woke up the next morning, he found that he had slept in front of the desk all night. The house was clean and the boy was a very polite person, but he packed up and left without waiting to say goodbye to the teacher.
Inevitably, she got up and came to the living room with sleepy eyes.
Looking down at the coffee table -
But the whole person is like a bucket of ice water, and his eyes are suddenly shocked!
The tea she poured for the boy yesterday turned into ice, but... but...
The room temperature is obviously twenty-seven or eight degrees!
how come? how come
She stared at the black beads and searched in the house. More and more traces made her heart cold. The butter cookies in the tin box, she obviously watched the teenager eat them yesterday, but now it seems that there is not a single one. few. The water in the teacup froze into ice cubes, but it wasn't missing, and finally—
In the end, the content of that page of implicit love poems was still in her heart, and he gave her a piece of paper to say goodbye.
The paper is gone.
In other words, there was never that page...
She almost shuddered, and suddenly there was a "ding" sound, and the phone vibrated, making her jump up and grab it, it was spam. She breathed a sigh of relief, but she thought of something as if she had just woken up from a dream, so she quickly dialed the boy's phone.
beep. beep. beep.
Heart beats with mechanical sounds.
"Hey?"
pass.
The person who answered the phone was a familiar middle-aged woman's voice, rough, but with a bit of a cry at this time. She exchanged a few words with the mother of the boy on the phone.
The heart fell into a black hole that could not be seen, and fell.
she heard-
"… "
"It's you! It's you again!! I haven't had time to find you yet! You should call first!"
The woman was complaining. She couldn't remember what Teacher Xie said earlier. Her mind was almost blank, and she only heard the last shrill cry: "He's dead! Dead!"
Bleeding like ice.
died
"It's all bewitched by you!! He quarreled with me and ran out. It was raining heavily outside. The police said there was a cable exposed there..."
Teacher Xie buzzed in his ears.
In the fierce abuse and mourning, she could only barely hear a few words, like a ghost like a ghost, if it does not belong to the world's farewell.
The woman was on the other end of the phone, her ear pierced with a mournful voice:
"What else are you looking for? What are you looking for?!"
—
"Yesterday was his first seven!!!"