Qin Yeyun moved to the provincial capital before junior high school started. She said, "Lin Yingtao, you are the happiest little girl I have ever seen."
Is that so? Lin Qile, carrying his schoolbag and wearing the school uniform of Qunshan No. 1 Middle School, took the bus to school. It rained coldly last night, and his parents were not at home because of overtime work. Lin Qile went to the backyard and saw his little white rabbit lying in the rabbit cage. The rabbit's feet twitched slightly, and soon it became motionless.
Lin Qile didn't understand the cause of death, just as she couldn't understand her current life.
She wanted to call her class teacher and ask for a morning off to find a cemetery on the mountain to bury the little rabbit. But the class teacher said that she had never heard of such an incredible reason for asking for leave: "If you always want to skip classes like this, you can go to class B!"
At that time, Lin Qile's understanding of the world was very superficial. She thought "Hey Jude" was a song sung by Stefanie Sun, and she had never heard of Paul McCartney. Her most terrible nightmare was that she was walking on the streets of the provincial capital and couldn't find her friends who had transferred to other schools, or her little rabbit died when she was not taking care of it, turning into a cold and stiff body.
In the past, at Zhongneng Power Plant Primary School, there was a "Little Four" to cover for Lin Qile, and if everyone made mistakes together, there would be no problem. But when she arrived at Qunshan No. 1 Middle School, no one was interested in "making mistakes" anymore. Lin Qile had been making the teacher unhappy since the beginning of the school year, and she was a little unpopular.
Only her deskmate Geng Xiaoqing would often sympathize with her. This girl would always pretend to do the homework while whispering to Lin Qile: "Hurry up and lower your head, the teacher just looked at you!"
After class, Lin Qile no longer wandered around or went to the playground to play with others. She played crossword puzzles from a girls' magazine with her deskmate Geng Xiaoqing and another girl, Dai Lixin.
Dai Lixin is Geng Xiaoqing's "best friend". The two grew up together, lived in the same community, and went to middle school together. "Lin Qile, don't you have any 'best friends'?" Dai Lixin, who is lively and carefree, asked her.
Best friend? Lin Qile answered honestly: "No."
Geng Xiaoqing turned around and told Dai Lixin: "All of Yingtao's former good friends were boys. They all transferred to the provincial capital!"
Dai Lixin heard this and asked in confusion: "All boys?"
This was obviously a very strange thing for them.
Dai Lixin said to Lin Qile: "Then we two will be your 'best friends' from now on!"
Geng Xiaoqing liked to spend the ten minutes between classes telling Lin Qile about the unpleasantness she had with her parents when she left home in the morning. She also pulled Lin Qile aside and asked him to tell her about the things that happened between the boys.
It can be seen that Geng Xiaoqing has rarely come into contact with the species called "boys" since she was a child.
Whether it was Cai Fangyuan, Yu Qiao, or Duchamp - they were obviously just a group of ordinary boys, but when Lin Qile recalled them in a fantastic and random way, it seemed that each of them was gifted and had unique skills.
Especially Yu Qiao, the one whose name comes from "fisherman, woodcutter, farmer and scholar". Lin Qile once said to Geng Xiaoqing: "He said his future wife should have the surname Geng, or the surname Du, so that he can be called Yu Qiao, which is a perfect match-"
Lin Qile turned her head away after realizing what she had said. She stared at Geng Xiaoqing's delicate eyes and soft short hair and said, "Your last name is Geng!"
Geng Xiaoqing nodded vigorously at this time.
"This is the first time I meet a girl with the last name Geng!" Lin Qile said in surprise.
After school that day, Geng Xiaoqing took the bus with her schoolbag and went to the dormitory compound of the Qunshan construction site for a "visit" with Lin Qile.
Except for a small area of tiled houses where people still live, the rest of the compound is like a ruin, and even the street lights have been removed.
Lin Qile ran into the gate without a guard, stood in the middle of the widest road facing the gate, turned around and shouted to Geng Xiaoqing: "This is 'Yuqiao Street'!"
Yuqiao Street, Dushan Street, Cai Fangyuan Street... Lin Qile walked home along the familiar street names. When she arrived in front of her own row of houses, she stepped on the bricks on the ground and whispered, "This is Jiangqiao West Street..."
"What?" Geng Xiaoqing turned her head. It was the first time she heard this name.
When the electrician Lin and his wife saw Geng Xiaoqing, they welcomed her very warmly. Electrician Lin said that it had been a long time since Cherry's children came to play at home.
The two little girls finished their meal together and sat on the bed playing with Barbie dolls. Geng Xiaoqing's mother called the Lin family and asked Geng Xiaoqing to go home early.
Mother Lin packed a bag of jujube flour buns for Geng Xiaoqing and put it in her schoolbag, because Geng Xiaoqing praised them for being sweet and delicious after taking the first bite.
Mother Lin hasn't made date flour buns for anyone for a long time.
Lin Qile went to send her classmates home. The two little girls walked on the construction site in the evening, walking on the streets named "Duchamp Street" or "Cai Fangyuan Street" in Lin Qile's kingdom... The workers' club had been abandoned for a long time, the door was closed, and it had not been demolished yet. Lin Qile walked up the weed-covered stairs in her school uniform, her eyes close to the crack of the door, and looked into the dark club for a while.
"Once at a New Year's Eve party, Yu Qiao was singing in the club," Lin Qile turned around and said to Geng Xiaoqing at the bottom of the stairs, "His singing was terrible! He sang randomly on purpose! Du Shang and I secretly unplugged his microphone cable—"
Geng Xiaoqing laughed when he heard it, and his thin shoulders shrugged slightly.
Seeing her so happy, Lin Qile also smiled.
"What song is he singing?" Geng Xiaoqing asked.
“Until the World Ends.”
Geng Xiaoqing said that the person she had a crush on since childhood was "Mitsui Shou".
"Why?" Lin Qile asked.
"Because I dreamed about him," Geng Xiaoqing said, holding the strap of her schoolbag. She looked young and introverted, with a timid look in her eyes, but her words were unusually bold and firm. "I think this is fate."
Lin Qile sent her first "best friend" to the bus stop. It was amazing, Lin Qile thought. When she met Qin Yeyun before, she always wanted to fight, but not with Geng Xiaoqing. Before the bus arrived, Geng Xiaoqing asked, "Is Jiang Qiaoxi also a person's name?"
Lin Qile saw the car coming and waved her hand, fearing that the driver would not notice them. In the darkness, the car lights came over and there was only her own shadow on the roadside.
Dai Lixin said in physical education class that her dream lover is "Dao Ming Si".
The students were forming a large group and running around the playground. Geng Xiaoqing panted to Dai Lixin in the group: "Dao Ming Si is a gangster! His only advantage is that he is rich!"
"How can Daomingsi be called a gangster?" Dai Lixin ran, unconvinced, "He has protected Shancai many times! He loves her wholeheartedly. A man like this gives me the most sense of security!"
After running, Geng Xiaoqing lowered her head to tie her shoelaces, wiped the sweat off her neck, and walked over to Lin Qile and said, "Girls tend to like guys like Daomingsi and Rukawa Kaede—handsome and rich," she muttered, looking down on the superficiality of these people. "But how can there be such guys in the world? Look at Rukawa Kaede, his skin is too white. How can someone who plays basketball every day be so white? It's normal to be like Mitsui!"
Lin Qile stood at the door of the stadium's convenience store, cooling her forehead with a bottle of iced mineral water. She felt a little dizzy from the heat.
Du Shang called from the provincial capital and said that after several small tests, he finally caught up with the learning progress. He was transferred to the key class and was in the same class with Jiang Qiaoxi: "Oh my god, I wonder if half of the girls in our grade like him?"
Lin Qile was holding the receiver, sitting by the radiator and flipping through the magazine "Comic Party". Du Shang was chattering on the phone, saying that he and Jiang Qiaoxi were now in Class 1, Cai Fangyuan was in Class 3, and Yu Qiao was in Class 7, all of them were key classes. Du Shang suddenly took away the phone and turned around to shout, "Yu Qiao! Do you want to talk to Yingtao?"
Dushan made the call from the public telephone booth on their campus. Yu Qiao came over and sounded a little breathless, probably because he was playing basketball during break again.
"Hello?" Yu Qiao picked up the phone and said.
Lin Qile was stunned immediately.
"Lin Yingtao?" Yu Qiao asked.
"Who are you?" Lin Qile couldn't help but ask.
Now it was Yu Qiao's turn to be stunned.
His voice has become much deeper now. His voice change came early, and it sounds strange when I haven't seen him for a while.
Dushan asked outside the phone: "What's wrong?"
Yu Qiao couldn't believe it: "She asked me who I was."
A burst of laughter broke out from behind him, and Lin Qile knew it was that fat guy Cai Fangyuan who was laughing.
Yu Qiao took the microphone back and put it to his ear. He wanted to say, you can't even recognize my voice.
Before he could finish, he heard a very faint sound of deep breathing, a little trembling, coming from the receiver.
Yu Qiao had long been accustomed to hearing Lin Qile crying all day long at the construction site in the mountains.
What he was not used to was that he could hear Lin Qile was enduring it.
"Yu Qiao! Come play ball!" A classmate called him loudly on the playground.
Yu Qiao said to the phone: "You regret it now, you didn't come to the provincial capital when I asked you to."
Lin Qile held back her tears and said, "If I go to the provincial capital, what will happen to my parents?"
Yu Qiao said angrily, "Your parents are not children."
Lin Qile pursed his lips.
She still couldn't bear to leave home, and couldn't bear to leave her parents. Even though there were no people living in the construction site in the mountains, after school, Lin Qile would still walk through the rows of empty dormitories and water the sunflower fields and strawberry fields.
She went to school and went home alone. At school, she talked to two girls, Geng Xiaoqing and Dai Lixin. After school, she stayed at home alone. No friends came to her house to play with her anymore.
Duchamp and his family couldn't call every day. Mom and Dad no longer subscribed to Mickey Mouse, and the pile of children's magazines at home began to turn into Comic Party. Lin Qile read it while eating, while helping her mother watch the washing machine, and after going to bed and turning off the lights, she would lie in bed and read it countless times: she was always happy when reading comics, and her mind was not distracted.
In the corner column of "Comic Party", there were several pages of young readers' self-introductions and postal addresses printed continuously. Lin Qile looked carefully and found that it was the dating column.
Lin Qile quickly got up from the bed, turned on the desk lamp, opened her pencil case, spread out the magazine, and carefully tore off the reader's receipt.
"I am Lin Qile, the super invincible Peter Pan in the universe. I live in the beautiful city of Gunshan," Lin Qile wrote word by word under the lamp, "I want to make friends with children from all over the country and become good friends—"
One month passed quickly. After get off work one day, Lin, an electrician, took the comic magazine that the postman had delivered to his workplace home and placed it on his daughter's desk.
Dai Lixin looked at the comic magazine in surprise during the break: "Lin Qile! It's really you! It's really you!!"
Lin Qile flipped through the letters in her hands in amazement. The address she filled in was the school's class mailbox. She never thought that so many people would write to her.
The person in charge of the class mailbox was the student affairs committee member. The next morning, she brought in more than 40 letters and asked in front of the whole class: "Lin Qile, why are all these letters from you?"
Geng Xiaoqing asked: "Yingtao, there are so many letters, are you going to reply to all of them?"
Dai Lixin also asked: "When will this go back to?"
Lin Qile was opening a letter during the break, and a photo accidentally fell out of it. Lin Qile picked it up and took a look. Dai Lixin, who was standing next to him, blushed: "There are boys sending photos too!"
Lin Qile went home that day with a pile of letters in his schoolbag, each of which was heavy and full of enthusiasm. During dinner, Lin Qile suddenly asked, "Dad, do you know the postal address of the provincial capital headquarters?"
Electrician Lin said, "I know. What's the matter?"
Lin Qile hesitated for a moment and said, "I want to write a letter to Duchamp."
Her mother was holding some pork ribs for her and said, "Why not just call? Isn't writing a letter slower?"
Lin Qile opened his diary, which had several phone numbers written on it, the first one being Jiang Qiaoxi's.
After entering junior high school, she called this number several times intermittently, but only once did she get through, and it was Jiang Qiaoxi's mother who answered.
She said in a hard and cold tone: "Qiaoxi is not at home. He is busy with his studies. Please don't call him."
Then he hung up the phone.
At this moment, Lin Qile called Du Shang and asked, "Do you have the postal address of Jiang Qiaoxi's home?"
Duchamp said, "Why, Cherry... do you want to write to him?"
Lin Qile said: "Let me ask first..."
Dushan said: "If you send it to his house, his mother will see it again."
Lin Qile was stunned: "That's right..."
Dushan racked his brains and thought: "How about... you send it to our class! I'll tell you the address now-"
Lin Qile often recalls a few years ago. She remembers eating ice cream and going to and from school with her best friends. At that time, Jiang Qiaoxi always walked beside her and listened to her quietly.
She wrote under the light:
Jiang Qiaoxi,
I am Lin Qile.
The little rabbit died. Do you still remember it? It was four years old...
As Lin Qile wrote, her vision became blurry, and she could no longer clearly understand what she was writing. She wrote whatever came to her mind, about past memories, her current life, and the phone calls she had made to him over the past two years: "Don't you miss me? Why didn't you ever call me? Cai Fangyuan said that you had become different in the provincial capital. What had you become?"
Lin Qile also wrote that she was flipping through old textbooks at home a few days ago and saw the wrinkled portrait of "Jiang Junlu" that she had drawn in elementary school.
"Do you still remember Jiang Junlu?" Lin Qile put down his pencil, opened his watercolor pencil box, and began to draw a portrait of "Jiang Junlu" on the letter paper.
When she finished drawing, she continued writing in pencil: "If you forget, look at her and she will remember."
She usually wrote her homework in a sloppy way, but she wrote this letter carefully. After Lin Qile finished writing the letter, she still felt that it was not enough, so she used watercolor pens to draw some stars, moons, small petals, Coke cans, black watches, and the head of a little rabbit around the letter paper to embellish all the blank spaces.
It was unknown when Jiang Qiaoxi would receive the letter and when he would reply to her. In the final analysis, Lin Qile did not believe what Cai Fangyuan and the others said: "Jiang Qiaoxi is not very familiar with us now, and we really can't talk to him!"
A week later, after school, Lin Qile was watching "Crazy about Singing" at home out of boredom, when suddenly her phone rang.
Lin Qile picked up the receiver, thinking it was Duchamp.
"Lin Yingtao!" It was a girl's voice. Lin Qile was stunned. It was Qin Yeyun. "Are you crazy? What kind of letter did you write to Jiang Qiaoxi?"