She squatted on the ground, tears flowing uncontrollably, her hands supporting her knees, and she cried so hard that she wanted to curl herself up.
"Cherry..." She heard Jiang Qiaoxi sigh softly.
A pair of hands reached out to her. The fingers were long and smelled of pen ink. The fingers were cold and held her face up. She was crying so hard that she was almost out of breath. Her lips were open and she was shivering. She felt the other person's thumb wipe away the tears falling from her eyes.
Suddenly a shadow came over.
She opened her wet eyelashes, blinked her blurry tearful eyes, and froze.
Jiang Qiaoxi was so close to her, just a moment's touch, she saw his eyelashes so close and heard the sound of his deep breathing.
It's like a baby who is frightened and suddenly forgets to cry.
She squatted there with her eyes open, curled up, in the light from the study room window. She could see tiny dust particles in the air, slowly moving around her and Jiang Qiaoxi along untouchable trajectories.
Lin Yingtao was wearing a nightgown, putting her feet into slippers, and holding the bed sheet with her hands. In the middle of the night, she found that she had dreamed of Jiang Qiaoxi again, which seemed uncontrollable. She lowered her head and bit her lips again, her cheeks burning.
She raised her eyes and looked at the small window in front of her. The leaves of the evergreen tree were facing the moonlight and sticking to the glass, decorating the night of the provincial capital like the mountains many years ago.
Electrician Lin did not sleep in the middle of the night. He turned on the TV with the sound muted and watched a movie called "Before Sunrise" on CCTV-6. Lin Yingtao walked out, rubbed her eyes, and sat next to him.
"Why did you wake up?" asked Electrician Lin.
Lin Yingtao suddenly tilted her head, leaned into her father's arms, and rested her cheek on his shoulder.
"Dad," Lin Yingtao heard herself asking, "When we were in the mountains..."
Electrician Lin supported his daughter from behind.
"Many people say that Jiang Qiaoxi and I are..." She raised her eyes and asked hesitantly, "Are they saying that I am his 'girlfriend'?"
Electrician Lin suddenly laughed.
Lin Yingtao looked up at him: "Do you really know?"
"Cherry," Dad said with a helpless smile, "Listen to what Dad says."
Lin Yingtao looked at him.
"When we were young, we were very small and our ears were small," Dad gestured with his hands, "We could only hear sounds very close to us. You will find that those are often the voices of people who love us."
Lin Yingtao opened her eyes.
"But as we grow older, with cell phones, televisions, and technology becoming more and more advanced," Dad said, "the sounds we can hear are increasing, farther away, and more complex."
Dad said, "Will you be disappointed because you find out that your uncles and aunts have misunderstood you in the past?"
Lin Yingtao shook her head.
"But I can't always be a child," she said.
Electrician Lin looked at her: "Cherry, you are now—"
Lin Yingtao said: "Dad, someone said some very unpleasant things to me."
Electrician Lin was stunned: "Why?"
Lin Yingtao shook her head: "I wanted to pretend that I couldn't hear it, but I found that I would always remember it."
Electrician Lin said: "A person can only say what he understands. Did you do something wrong?"
Lin Yingtao lowered her head and thought for a while. She pinched the lace on the hem of her nightgown. "I did something that others didn't like," she said.
Electrician Lin asked, "Do you regret it?"
Lin Yingtao raised her head, her eyes were bright yet hesitant.
She shook her head.
When Feilinger got up in the morning and went to school with Cen Xiaoman, he was a little embarrassed, but he still repeated what Jiang Qiaoxi had told him.
"I pursued her when we were in the mountains," Jiang Qiaoxi said to Felinger in a very light and calm voice, standing by the back door with his schoolbag on his back. "Something happened, so she came to see me in junior high school, but I have talked it out with her now," Jiang Qiaoxi added, "We are just ordinary classmates now, so don't talk about her anymore."
Felinger still seemed to not understand Jiang Qiaoxi's meaning. However, a math genius like Jiang Qiaoxi had only done exercises and read books since childhood. After knowing each other for so long, he had never had such a long conversation with Felinger.
Who knows what weird things are in a genius's mind all day long.
"When did I say anything about her?" Felinger muttered, "I didn't say anything. It was others who said it."
Cen Xiaoman remained silent and walked with her head down.
"Have you talked to Aunt Liang?" she asked.
"She did," Felinger said in confusion, "Aunt Liang just said 'hmm' and didn't have any other reaction. I feel like she knew it a long time ago."
Cen Xiaoman asked: "Know what?"
Felinger said, "You know... Jiang Qiaoxi pursued that girl?" Felinger still didn't quite believe it, "I didn't hear it wrong, Jiang Qiaoxi said it himself..."
"No wonder," Felinger said, "I always thought that the woman came to our junior high school to look for Jiang Qiaoxi, but she had nothing to do with Jiang Qiaoxi. I don't know why Aunt Liang didn't let Jiang Qiaoxi go out during that time and didn't allow him to do anything... I still think Jiang Qiaoxi is innocent."
Lin Yingtao was sitting on the bus going to school, quietly listening to songs on her mp3 player. Du Shang was using his schoolbag to cushion his homework at first, and when he finally finished, he took off Lin Yingtao's right earphone and put it directly into his own ear.
Lin Yingtao quickly cut off the song in the mp3.
She cut off the song "03_It's Dark".
Du Shang frowned and looked at her in confusion: "…Why was the singer just now a man?"
Lin Yingtao took back the headphones: "It's not a man, you are hard of hearing."
Du Shang insisted on taking Lin Yingtao's MP3: "No, let me listen to the song again—"
"I won't let you listen to it..." Lin Yingtao took back both headphones, "Your dad has bought you a new MP3 player, you can listen to your own from now on."
Duchamp looked very sullen: "I... I don't want his stuff."
Lin Yingtao was unwilling to do so either: "Duchamp, there are differences between men and women. You can't always listen to MP3s with me in the future."
There was a moment of silence in the car, and suddenly Cai Fangyuan and Yu Qiao in the front seat turned around. Cai Fangyuan bit his pancake and sneered at Yu Qiao, "Lin Yingtao knows the difference between men and women..."
Jiang Qiaoxi left the Little White Building that morning, and he heard the sounds of morning reading coming from the classrooms. He went upstairs with math problems, holding a fountain pen in his hand, shaking it back and forth.
What I miss is the wet, melting hot marshmallow-like touch not long ago.
The cousin sent a text message asking Jiang Qiaoxi whether he had received the postcard he sent from Macau.
The tourist photo of the Mazu Temple was sandwiched between Jiang Qiaoxi’s mathematics lecture notes.
“Qiaoxi, you’re going to be in the national finals soon,” my cousin asked in a text message. “Have you talked to your parents?”
Jiang Qiaoxi replied: "Not yet."
My cousin asked, "Are you not going to let them know?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said, "Let's talk about it after the exam."
My cousin asked, "Have you reconciled with that little sister Lin?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "She is no longer angry."
My cousin asked, "Does she still like you?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "I didn't ask."
My cousin asked, “Why don’t you ask?”
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "What's the use of asking?"
My cousin said, "You are only this age, why are you always so pessimistic?"
My cousin said, "Qiaoxi, you haven't been to Hong Kong for many years. Your parents won't let you travel. Is there any place you want to go? Whether it's in China or abroad, I will sponsor you to go after you finish the exam."
Jiang Qiaoxi said, "Okay."
My cousin said, "We are almost at the finish line, you need to work harder."
Lin Yingtao turned back to chat with Yu Qiao during the break. The front-page photo of the sports newspaper Yu Qiao was reading today was Yao Ming, the super scoring champion of the Houston Rockets, a 26-year-old center from Shanghai, China.
Cai Fangyuan and a group of other boys gathered around and made a bet with Yu Qiao. Lin Yingtao listened for a while before she understood that Shandong Luneng won the Chinese Super League championship in August this year, and the FA Cup final was coming up in a few days, so the boys were betting on whether Shandong Luneng could win the double championship again.
Yu Qiao said he still bets that Luneng can’t win this year: “It’s no big deal.”
Cai Fangyuan and the people next to him chatted about the past, talking about when they were in primary school in 1999, which was the most unlucky year in Yu Qiao's life: "There were only two bets in total, and he lost both of them."
Lin Yingtao seemed to be listening to them talking, but her eyes unconsciously passed through the crowd and glanced at the back row.
Jiang Qiaoxi was sitting in the last row, texting with his head down. He suddenly raised his eyes and looked at Lin Yingtao.
From such a distance, he looked at her and smiled.
Lin Yingtao also pursed her lips unconsciously. It wasn't a big deal. She didn't want to appear too happy just because someone looked at her.
At around ten o'clock at night, Jiang Qiaoxi sent a text message to Lin Yingtao, saying that he was at home and couldn't call: "What are you doing?"
Lin Yingtao replied, "I'm sorting out the photos I took at the construction site in the mountains."
Jiang Qiaoxi said, "I kept a few pictures, do you want to see them?"
Lin Yingtao closed her father's photo album, lay down on the bed, kicked off her slippers, and looked down at the screen of her mobile phone.
Soon, Jiang Qiaoxi sent MMS photos, twelve in a row.
Most of them were landscape photos, showing the construction site in the mountains many years ago before it was demolished and before Jiang Qiaoxi moved away. In one of the photos, Lin Yingtao saw a little girl who looked only ten years old, wearing a flowery dress and laughing carefreely at the camera, her eyes only slits left.
She stood among her friends, with two ponytails, a red hairpin in her hair and a red rope around her neck. She was a small cherry amber, a perfect childhood.
Lin Yingtao's typing has slowed down.
"I was as tall as Cai Fangyuan and Duchamp at that time."
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "You are taller now."
Lin Yingtao said, "You boys grow taller. I used to think that Yu Qiao was so tall that he would stop growing when he grows up and would definitely be shorter than me."
Lin Yingtao thought Jiang Qiaoxi would reply to her soon, just like she was looking forward to his text messages.
But she waited for one minute, three minutes... more than ten minutes passed, and she didn't get a response.
The smile that he had finally managed to put on his face gradually disappeared.
New news from Jiang Qiaoxi:
[Someone just came in. You must have fallen asleep, Cherry.]
"Are they your parents?"
"You're still awake?"
"Jiang Qiaoxi, I suddenly remembered that you once said you wanted to go to the United States."
"Um."
"Do you still want to go now?"
“It’s not something you want to do or not.”
"You loved saying that when you were little."
"How do you say it?"
"I asked you before, is Hong Kong fun? You said, it's not a matter of whether it's fun or not."
Jiang Qiaoxi replied: "I can't remember it clearly."
Lin Yingtao said: "I remember it clearly."
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "Then I am very lucky."
Lin Yingtao was on the bus to school early in the morning. Cai Fangyuan was sitting next to her, yawning and playing a simple Snake game on his phone.
Yu Qiao got on the bus and saw him: "Isn't it your turn today? Why don't you go earlier?"
Cai Fangyuan said: "Then who? Jiang Qiaoxi did it for me."
Lin Yingtao was sitting next to him and suddenly turned to look at him.
"What are you doing? No way." Cai Fangyuan also glanced at her.
Lin Yingtao said: "Why don't you go on your own duty?"
"I told him that I couldn't get up in the morning. He helped me this time, and I'll help him next time." Cai Fangyuan said confidently.
Lin Yingtao tilted her head to drink the milk.
"Are you unhappy?" Cai Fangyuan said.
Lin Yingtao let go of the straw: "I used to say that Jiang Qiaoxi has changed since he went to the provincial capital. He doesn't recognize me anymore. I'm still doing my duty for you even though he doesn't recognize me."
Hearing her tone, Cai Fangyuan burst out laughing.
"As for this guy," Cai Fangyuan put down his phone, thought for a moment, and said, "I think he might not change every time he comes to the provincial capital."
"He is..." Cai Fangyuan said, meeting Lin Yingtao's big eyes. He paused, then said, "Hey, I won't tell you!"
The author has something to say: Everyone said it was too obscure, so I added two sentences.
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Notes to this chapter:
＊Before Sunrise: A romantic film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. It was released in the United States on January 27, 1995.
*At 19:35 on the evening of August 27, 2006, Shandong Luneng defeated Beijing Guoan 1-0 at home and won the Chinese Super League championship of that season 6 rounds ahead of schedule, a record.
＊Father Lin's words about hearing distance are quoted from an episode of the American TV series "Community". That part touched me deeply, and I really hope Cherry can hear it.