If school uniforms are not considered couples' attire, then Olympic commemorative shirts should not be considered either. But Lin Yingtao was led by Jiang Qiaoxi all the way back to the hotel. When passing by a mirror outside the elevator, Lin Yingtao took a quick glance at herself and Jiang Qiaoxi in the mirror.
That scene was deeply engraved in her memory.
Jiang Qiaoxi swiped the room card and opened the door. His ears were still red. He brought Lin Yingtao into the room and then closed the door behind him.
Lin Yingtao was wearing cream-white sneakers, a plaid school skirt that hung down to her knees, and a size S white Olympic commemorative shirt, the same size as Jiang Qiaoxi. Lin Yingtao had narrow shoulders, delicate knees, and her calves were two long, thin pink and white stripes when the light shone on them. She walked into the entrance and looked around inside.
"It's so big." She couldn't help but sigh.
She was still young and had never been to such a hotel suite before. The novelty of this kind of hotel suite would make her forget the tension along the way in an instant. Jiang Qiaoxi stood in the shadow inside the door, looked at her from behind for a while, and put down the books he bought from the foreign language bookstore and the souvenirs for his cousin.
He found a pair of hotel slippers. Lin Yingtao stepped off her white shoes by the wall and put on the hotel slippers that were obviously several sizes too big. Jiang Qiaoxi hugged her for a while, and then she changed again. She walked around the suite.
"Jiang Qiaoxi, why didn't you eat the roast duck you brought back?" she asked from inside.
Her voice has always been pleasant, like a piece of soft candy, and even when she quarrels with others, it doesn't sound noisy. Maybe this is why so many people like to provoke her temper and deliberately quarrel with her.
"I had lunch with you at noon." Jiang Qiaoxi said.
"Oh..." Lin Yingtao lowered her head to look at the roast duck box and didn't notice that Jiang Qiaoxi was getting closer and closer to her. "The roast duck I brought back last night was eaten up by Cai Fangyuan, Yu Qiao and the others. They didn't even leave any donkey rolls for me..." Lin Yingtao raised her head and smiled when she saw him.
Jiang Qiaoxi opened the refrigerator and took out two cans of drinks and two boxes of Haagen-Dazs. He pushed a small coffee table over and moved it to the middle of the sofa. Lin Yingtao bent down and unwrapped the plastic packaging. Lin Yingtao laid out the remaining snacks on the table one by one, very neatly, as if she had inherited her mother's ability. When she lowered her head, the collar of her T-shirt dropped down, revealing her rose gold chain.
Jiang Qiaoxi took the math lecture notes he was reading before leaving the sofa and sat down, just like when he was a child, sitting on Lin Yingtao's bamboo mat and watching her play house, like the kind of man who calmly enjoys the fruits of his wife's hard work but does not do any production.
Lin Yingtao used chopsticks to wrap roast duck rolls. She had seen how her father wrapped it for her mother and how her mother wrapped it for her. After eating a few bites, she also wrapped it for Jiang Qiaoxi. Jiang Qiaoxi was always conscious of eating. After all, he grew up eating the food of Lin Yingtao's family in the mountains. When he ate at home, no one cared whether he liked salty or bland food.
"Do you want to dip it in sugar?" Lin Yingtao looked up and asked.
"Can you cook?" Jiang Qiaoxi looked at her and asked suddenly.
Lin Yingtao shook her head: "I only know how to make scrambled eggs with tomatoes, spicy and sour potato shreds, and stir-fried seasonal vegetables with peppers." She handed him the roast duck rolls she had wrapped, "But I can help my mother."
Jiang Qiaoxi even wanted to pack her up and take her away.
Jiang Qiaoxi took Lin Yingtao's hand and led her to the bedroom. Lin Yingtao had just finished her ice cream, and the sweet taste of vanilla was still on her lips. She sat on the bed in front of Jiang Qiaoxi, with her elbows on her waist, looking very nervous.
Jiang Qiaoxi looked down at her.
He was so tall, he had a heartbreaking face, and even his back looked melancholy, making people want to hug him. No matter what he wanted to do, Lin Yingtao could only wait for death.
"Go inside." Jiang Qiaoxi coaxed her softly and bent down.
Lin Yingtao took off her slippers and sat on the bed.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat down beside the bed, his back to Lin Yingtao. He reached out and moved the pillow, then suddenly lay down.
Lin Yingtao knelt beside him and looked at him hesitantly for a while.
The suite was extremely quiet, and few lights were on. Lin Yingtao quietly lay down beside Jiang Qiaoxi, and she couldn't even hear the adults breathing behind the wardrobe.
"Did you bring your MP3?" Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly said.
"Do you have an MP3 player?" Lin Qile suddenly asked.
The two of them said this together and both laughed.
“I brought it, but it’s full of…” Lin Qile didn’t say anything else and swallowed the words “TOEFL listening”.
Jiang Qiaoxi reached out to the bedside and took out his iPod nano. Under the bedside lamp, he lay on his back and pressed the buttons for a while. It seemed that he finally pressed the music, and he reached out to touch the earphones again.
It was Lin Qile who sat up, walked over him and took out the headphones.
Jiang Qiaoxi turned over and faced Lin Qile. He put on one of the earphones and pinched the other one and stuffed it into the ear hole under Lin Qile's long hair.
A new female singer who debuted in the millennium is singing a nursery rhyme from a foreign land.
Jiang Qiaoxi looked at Lin Yingtao closely for a while, then closed his eyes again. He seemed to enjoy this moment. He was lost in his own private memories.
Lin Qile lay beside him, her hands on the pillow, her eyes wide open, so close. She reached out and touched Jiang Qiaoxi's forehead with her fingers.
Why is this scar still there? Why hasn’t it faded after all these years
"Cherry," Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly opened his eyes, "Do you want me to leave?"
When Lin Qile was a child, he always said, Jiang Qiaoxi, don’t go to America. Americans are bad. America is dangerous. Don’t go. Don’t transfer schools. Don’t move away. Don’t leave the mountains…
"Haven't you always wanted to go?" Lin Qile said.
"Do you want to go with me?" Jiang Qiaoxi asked her.
Lin Qile was stunned for a moment, and then she said, "I, I don't like America."
"Then do you want to keep me?" Jiang Qiaoxi asked again.
Lin Qile hesitated for a moment, and her lips opened.
"You go..." she said.
Jiang Qiaoxi looked at her and saw the cherry necklace hanging from her neckline, emitting a light that was so dazzling that it was dazzling even for him to see.
"You should do what you want to do." Lin Qile said softly.
Jiang Qiaoxi always remembers that day, it was noon. He was at the construction site in the mountains, watching Uncle Lin Haifeng teaching Lin Yingtao how to ride a bike, and suddenly he loosened the handlebars. He let Lin Yingtao ride freely, letting her be like a bird, a young eagle, releasing her nature, fearless.
That kind of unforgettable envy and jealousy slowly disappeared from Jiang Qiaoxi's heart at some point.
Is it because Cherry is treating him the same way
Jiang Qiaoxi hugged her to his own space, and for a moment, he thought Cherry was crying. He heard Cherry complain: "Why do you only have Stefanie Sun's songs here? I want to listen to Uncle Cohen's songs..."
My father said that when people live, they are like silkworms, snakes, and crabs. When the time comes, they must shed their shells. Only by letting go of some things and forgetting them can we travel light and continue to live a better life.
It rained at night. Lin Qile walked under Jiang Qiaoxi's umbrella, and they left the hotel hand in hand. Tomorrow, Jiang Qiaoxi will start taking classes at Tsinghua University. After the summer vacation, he will go to Hong Kong to prepare for the AP exam in May next year. In May next year, it will almost be before the college entrance examination. Lin Qile realized that she would have fewer and fewer opportunities to see him in the future.
The raindrops on a summer night in Beijing hit the umbrella like scattered beads.
"cherry."
"Um?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said in the rain: "My cousin sponsored me to go to the United States, but I should have a lot of scholarships."
Lin Qile was listening nearby.
It took them at least half an hour to walk from Xueyuan Road to the hotel near Renmin University. But they had a tacit understanding and did not take the bus or taxi, but just walked together.
"So apart from me," Jiang Qiaoxi said, holding up an umbrella, "it shouldn't be a problem to support the whole family."
"Jiang Qiaoxi..." Lin Qile smiled, shook her head at him, and lowered her head again.
He sent her all the way downstairs to the hotel. Before they parted, Lin Qile stood in the light projected from the hotel lobby and kept looking at him.
In an electronics store in Zhongguancun, the TV was on, broadcasting the news from CCTV-2:
“… On the 2nd of this month, Deutsche Industrial Bank announced a profit warning… On the 6th, the American Housing Mortgage Investment Corporation declared bankruptcy, and on the 8th, Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank in the United States, announced the collapse of two of its funds…”
"The US subprime mortgage crisis is sweeping the world."
"Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closed at 2.88% yesterday..."
Jiang Qiaoxi bought a pack of cigarettes at the counter, took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. When he parted with Lin Yingtao, he was still smiling, but now he couldn't hold his smile. A muscle behind his shoulder kept twitching, and the corner of his mouth trembled, and he felt like something was about to fall down.
He really wanted to say, Cherry, please wait for me in China. You don’t have to be in love or have a boyfriend. You just wait for me alone in China for four years, or eight years, or nine years. Wait for me to come back and marry you, wait for me to come back and buy a house.
Jiang Qiaoxi himself felt ashamed. How selfish a person must be to have such thoughts. He suddenly started coughing.
Lin Yingtao stood at the hotel entrance for a while, but did not wait for Jiang Qiaoxi to come back.
The rain was still falling, and Lin Yingtao wanted to go upstairs, but she went down another step. She stretched out her hand and saw the raindrops hitting her palm with a "pop" sound.
She flinched because it still hurt. Soon, her palms were filled with rain.
Mom. Lin Yingtao raised her head and looked at the dark sky above her. She thought, have I grown up
The author has something to say: －－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
Notes to this chapter:
* iPod nano: Apple Computer's fourth-generation MP3 player that combines the features of iPod shuffle and iPod mini, released on September 7, 2005.