Jiang Qiaoxi's boss flew to Hong Kong in May to "inspect work." Her ear piercing had been inflamed for a month, but it finally healed. She also stuffed the little red shoes into her suitcase and took them on the plane. She slept all the way and put on makeup when she was about to land. She learned all this from beauty magazines, which was a bit like exam preparation experience.
As soon as she landed at Hong Kong International Airport, Lin Yingtao hid in the bathroom and changed her shoes as soon as possible.
She wore a white dress with tight shoulders and a hem above the knee, revealing her slender knees and calves. There were some small red embroidery on the collar, just for decoration. She wore red high heels, her hair was combed down, and she wore red fan-shaped earrings in her ears. Lin Yingtao's lips were cherry red, and she tried to make herself more beautiful.
She went to meet Jiang Qiaoxi happily.
Jiang Qiaoxi saw her from afar in the airport reception hall. He stared at her and her skirt for more than ten seconds.
When they hugged each other, Jiang Qiaoxi still looked down at her face. He lifted Lin Yingtao's chin with his right index finger and gently touched her red lips with his thumb.
"The one you gave me has expired, so I bought a new one." Lin Yingtao looked up at him. Her already big eyes were lined with eyeliner and her eyelashes were curled, making Jiang Qiaoxi almost not recognize her.
"How did you learn how to put on makeup?" Jiang Qiaoxi said while hugging her while standing on the subway.
Lin Yingtao was hugging him happily at first, but when she heard this, her eyebrows bent down.
"Didn't you buy me the lipstick?"
Jiang Qiaoxi lowered his head and looked at her for a long time, then looked at her calves and the instep that was made thin and white by the red shoes. It was tempting to commit a crime. Maybe Lin Yingtao would slowly discover that she actually had the appearance and charm that could make many men fall for her. She could try to use it, like many girls Jiang Qiaoxi had met during his internship in the past few months, which would make her whole life much easier. But Lin Yingtao was still like a child, clinging to Jiang Qiaoxi greedily, with only him in her heart and eyes. Jiang Qiaoxi held the pull ring of the subway and held her in his arms.
Jiang Qiaoxi longed to regain the freedom of money. This desire became stronger as Lin Yingtao grew up, as he entered the workplace, and as his cousin recovered. Yingtao was completely unaware of this. She carried the Dior bag given to her by her aunt and walked into Jiang Qiaoxi's newly rented house. The door led to a narrow corridor. On the left was a two-square-meter bathroom. The corridor was used as a kitchen with a range hood, induction cooker, washing machine, and refrigerator. The corridor led to a square room with a double bed occupying most of the room. On one side of the bed was a bedside table with three photo frames on it. They were a group photo of Jiang Qiaoxi and his cousin's family, a group photo of Jiang Qiaoxi and Lin Yingtao on Taiping Mountain, and a single photo of Lin Yingtao wearing a cheongsam and holding daffodils and smiling on New Year's Eve.
There is a floor-to-ceiling mirror on the other side of the bed, obviously for girls, and a small wardrobe.
Jiang Qiaoxi brought her suitcase in and closed the door. Seeing Yingtao walking forward, her red heels propping up her feet, her stilettos tapping on his wooden floor, his heart warmed every time she tapped.
Lin Yingtao stood in front of the bed and looked for a while. She saw two pillows and felt very happy. She walked to the window and looked out. She found a pot of evergreen on the windowsill. It was bought by Jiang Qiaoxi in Hong Kong.
"How much is the monthly rent for this house?" she turned around and asked.
Jiang Qiaoxi changed his shoes behind the door, then took out his keys, Octopus card and mobile phone from his pocket and placed them on the dining table at the entrance. He walked in. "A little over ten thousand." He hugged Yingtao's waist from behind.
Cherry's skirt suddenly rose higher. Lin Yingtao leaned against the window, facing the street outside. She suddenly closed her eyes, her body trembling, and leaned forward.
The curtains were quickly drawn.
Although Lin Yingtao had only worn the high heels for less than an hour, her heels were already red. Her skirt was hung in the closet, and she hadn't put on her pajamas yet, so she wrapped herself up temporarily with Jiang Qiaoxi's blanket, exposing her shoulders. She said, "Such a small house of only a dozen square meters costs more than 10,000 yuan. Everything in Hong Kong is so expensive."
Jiang Qiaoxi was taking a shower in the bathroom and asked her through the door how her TOEFL preparation was going.
Lin Yingtao said: "I've been busy with the exam and haven't done any preparation yet."
Jiang Qiaoxi came out of the bathroom with a towel on his hair. He walked up to Lin Yingtao with broad shoulders, his hands pressed on the bed sheet, and he lowered his head.
"Then all the registration has been in vain?" His eyes were wet, and the look he gave people was quite intimidating.
Lin Yingtao raised her eyes to look at him and stammered, "The exam is in July, there are still two months."
Jiang Qiaoxi pulled the blanket off her and picked her up. Lin Yingtao laughed in panic and clung to Jiang Qiaoxi's neck. Since she was in the third grade of elementary school and her mother taught her to take a bath by herself, Lin Yingtao has not stayed in the bathroom alone with anyone. The door opened a crack, and the hot water poured down. Lin Yingtao's long hair stuck to her back. She leaned in his arms and kissed him for a long time. For the first time, Lin Yingtao felt that she and Jiang Qiaoxi really had a home together. Maybe this was the meaning of the 10,000 yuan rent.
On May 2, the news said that Bin Laden was dead.
Lin Yingtao was frying beaten eggs on the induction cooker, with a plate of chopped tomatoes by Jiang Qiaoxi next to her. Jiang Qiaoxi was sitting at the dining table behind her, busy with his work, and suddenly read her the international news.
Lin Yingtao turned her head and glanced at Jiang Qiaoxi, who was illuminated by the computer screen. As she was cooking, she suddenly remembered many years ago.
"We watched the news at that time, and I was very scared. I wanted to call you," Lin Yingtao said while sitting at the dining table, eating rice. "Yu Qiao told me your home phone number, but I couldn't get through no matter how hard I tried."
Jiang Qiaoxi sat opposite her and looked at her: "What do you want to tell me?"
Lin Yingtao looked at him and said, "I want to tell you that America is very dangerous."
Jiang Qiaoxi continued to eat the dish fried with cherries. Recalling the past, he felt regretful and heartbroken, but also happy and sweet. "I was in the competition class at the time," he picked up the bowl and ate the steamed rice with cherries, "I heard the news on the traffic radio in my dad's car, and I thought of you at the time."
Lin Yingtao asked in a low voice: "What do you miss about me?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "When I miss you, you will definitely open your big eyes, block me with tears in your eyes, and say, don't go to the United States."
Lin Yingtao suddenly laughed.
"How can I have tears in my eyes?"
Jiang Qiaoxi smiled and said, "When you were a child, you cried all day long and acted like a spoiled child with me all the time, and you still said you didn't have it."
Senior Meng Lijun asked Lin Yingtao on QQ whether she went to Hong Kong again during the May Day holiday.
"Le'er, don't be too positive," she said worriedly, "Your boyfriend is excellent, but you keep going to Hong Kong... Men, I tell you, chase him when you can't have him. If you get him too easily, you won't know how to cherish him. You have to know how to keep him hanging."
Is that so? Lin Yingtao was playing with her phone at night and turned to look at Jiang Qiaoxi's sleeping face, but I came here on my own.
She was afraid that her senior would think she had no future and she didn't know how to respond.
The May Day holiday was so short that Lin Yingtao went back to school soon. Jiang Qiaoxi called her every few days, asking about TOEFL and whether there were any boys chasing her in school. "What, 'Beihang handsome guy' or something like that." He suddenly mentioned it.
Lin Yingtao had just installed WeChat and didn't know how to use it. After she finished washing her clothes and wiped her hands, she clicked on the voice message Jiang Qiaoxi had just sent, put it close to her ear, and after listening, she couldn't help but grin at the phone.
She clicked on the first voice message Jiang Qiaoxi sent her: "Cherry, this is Jiang Qiaoxi."
He spoke softly, always with a nonchalant feeling. Lin Yingtao felt that what the seniors said was right, his voice was really nice.
She clicked it again and couldn't help but listen to it again.
Lin Yingtao likes WeChat very much. Whenever she misses him but doesn't want to disturb him at work or can't call him, she opens his old voice messages to listen.
Lin Yingtao said, "Why are you talking about the handsome guy from Beihang University? I beg you to forget it and don't mention it again."
Jiang Qiaoxi asked, "Who is from Beihang University, Yu Qiao?"
Lin Yingtao sent him a line of dots.
"You must not let Yu Qiao know." Lin Yingtao muttered.
"Know what?"
"It's just some handsome guy from Beihang University." Lin Yingtao found it difficult to say.
"What's wrong?" Jiang Qiaoxi said, "Do you two have any little secrets?"
"What little secret is there?" Lin Yingtao said in annoyance, "My senior sisters used to joke about it. We finally stopped making it, but I don't know why they brought it up again."
"Yu Qiao and I were fine," Lin Yingtao said, "but we almost couldn't even be friends anymore."
"cherry."
"What?"
"Why don't you like Yu Qiao?" Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly asked.
Lin Yingtao's heart skipped a beat.
"What kind of question is that..."
Jiang Qiaoxi's profile picture appeared. It was a black and white photo. Someone took a photo of him wearing a suit and shirt, sitting on a sofa at an internship party. When I clicked on the voice message, it said, "I've always been curious, so I asked today because I remembered it."
Lin Yingtao said: "Are you really asking me, or are you just teasing me?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "If you don't want to answer, just think I'm joking."
"I think... he particularly dislikes me," Lin Yingtao thought for a while and said, "Anyway, when I talk to him about something, I have to be mentally prepared in advance, because I'm sure he'll hit me. Sometimes he's nice, and sometimes he's not nice, and I don't like this."
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "He just likes to joke with you."
Lin Yingtao's tone became serious: "Sometimes it's not a joke. Cai Fangyuan and Du Shang also joke with me, but rarely as excessive as him."
Jiang Qiaoxi was silent for a while: "Actually, Cai Fangyuan sometimes goes too far, but you never really get angry with him."
Lin Yingtao was suddenly confused: "Why are you telling me this?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "Cherry, I feel more and more recently that if I hadn't kept you at that time."
I don’t know if he only said half of it, or only recorded half of it, and there was no more at the end.
Lin Yingtao went to the bathroom to hang the clothes one by one. She dried her hands and took out her cell phone. It was already half an hour later.
She saw a new voice message from Jiang Qiaoxi.
"I didn't mean it," he apologized. Maybe he thought Lin Yingtao was angry. "Maybe you don't believe me, but I was just jealous of him before."
What did Jiang Qiaoxi envy Yu Qiao for? His harmonious parents and happy family? His cheerful personality? Or the fact that he was always surrounded by so many friends
Lin Yingtao stopped talking: "I really want to be by your side right now, to be with you, to hug you for a while... to kiss you again..." She then said: "But I still have to do internship tomorrow..."
There was a smile in Jiang Qiaoxi's voice: "Okay..."
Lin Yingtao picked up the basin and walked to the dormitory. She sighed loudly into her phone: "Oh! I have to take care of the little baby during the day and the big baby at night... Why is Teacher Lin so tired!"
During the summer vacation of her junior year, Lin Yingtao flew to Hong Kong again. Jiang Qiaoxi had already started her summer internship at Morgan Stanley. He would get up next to Lin Yingtao at around five in the morning every day, quickly put on a shirt and suit, and arrive at the company at six. He was basically busy all day, and could only reply to Lin Yingtao's WeChat during lunch at the company, asking if she needed anything to buy for her. When he was lucky, Jiang Qiaoxi would arrive home at around seven in the evening, and even later, at one or two in the morning. Sometimes Lin Yingtao had already fallen asleep, still listening to the TOEFL listening test, and was woken up by his tiredness. They would be intimate for a while, and Lin Yingtao wanted to persuade him to go to bed early because he looked really tired. But Jiang Qiaoxi was reluctant.
This is the price of a monthly salary of 50,000 Hong Kong dollars. Lin Yingtao lay in his arms, and Jiang Qiaoxi fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. She helped him take off his loose tie, and then took off his half-taken shirt. Lin Yingtao got up and helped him hang up his suit, and spread his shirt on the small table and ironed it. When she was interning in the kindergarten, Lin Yingtao had to iron her shirt every day.
Lin Yingtao took the TOEFL test herself. She told Jiang Qiaoxi on WeChat that she thought she did well. On TV, Yao Ming, a famous Chinese basketball player, held a press conference in Shanghai to announce his official retirement. Lin Yingtao stood at the door of a small noodle shop on a street in Hong Kong, watching the TV inside.
She talked about this in the Qunshan Small Restaurant group. Yao Ming was born in 1980 and was only 31 years old.
Dushane said: "How come he retired so soon? I don't think he played for many years?"
Yu Qiao said: "The injury is serious."
Lin Yingtao stood there, looking up at TV.
The news of the press conference was over, and the next piece of news came on. A movie about a youth campus love story will be released next month, and the male singer who was confirmed to sing the theme song "Those Years" was being interviewed. Lin Yingtao looked for a while and found that the singer was born in 1990, only one month older than her.
Recently, Lin Yingtao has been increasingly aware of one thing: in the past, what she saw on TV and in magazines were always the elders of her generation, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. She is used to thinking "I am still young" and she is always a child in front of the world.
And now, more and more people of the same age are appearing in front of the public media.
It seems that the generation born in the 1990s has begun to take over the world from the previous generation bit by bit.
When Yu Qiao went abroad, he said he would stay there for two years and might not come back. But when he was about to enter his senior year, he came back.
Lin Yingtao was cooking in Jiang Qiaoxi's small apartment. Jiang Qiaoxi said he would come back early today. He asked for leave from his supervisor, saying that his girlfriend was leaving soon and he had to get off work on time, have dinner with her, and then go out to see a movie. The supervisor admired Jiang Qiaoxi and let him go back.
Lin Yingtao finished cooking and left the vegetables in the pot to keep them warm. She lowered her head and opened her phone, intending to see what time Jiang Qiaoxi would be home, but she found that Jiang Qiaoxi and Yu Qiao were chatting in the WeChat group.
Yu Qiao said that he would return to China and take the civil aviation license exam. "As a family, we can't go abroad."
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "Why didn't you go to the Air Force?"
Yu Qiao said: "My family was unwilling at that time."
Yu Qiao asked again: "I heard from Cai Fangyuan that you were interning at a large investment bank in Hong Kong?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "Yes."
Yu Qiao said, "You make a lot of money, right?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "Busy."
Lin Yingtao said: "Where have you been? Jiang Qiaoxi"
Yu Qiao said, "Lin Yingtao, what are you doing?"
Lin Yingtao said, "I'm cooking! I waited for a long time and you're here chatting."
Jiang Qiaoxi said, "Go downstairs, we'll be there soon."
Yu Qiao said: "You can cook now? Take a picture and see!"
Lin Yingtao: [Picture]
Lin Yingtao: [Picture]
Lin Yingtao: [Picture]
Duchamp: [thumbs up][thumbs up][thumbs up]
Yu Qiao said, "What's so black about this?"
Cai Fangyuan asked, "What are you frying, eggplant? Lin Yingtao, how much soy sauce did you put in?"
When Jiang Qiaoxi walked in, he saw Lin Yingtao rolling her eyes at her phone, but she didn't look really angry. She replied, "It's delicious. If you don't believe me, ask Jiang Qiaoxi!"
Jiang Qiaoxi: [thumbs-up]
Cai Fangyuan said, "Jiang Qiaoxi, aren't you still downstairs?"
Yu Qiao said: "Jiang Qiaoxi, it's not easy for brothers."
Jiang Qiaoxi sat in the last row of the cinema, watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 with Lin Yingtao, the last episode of the entire series. Lin Yingtao drank her drink with tears in her eyes, watching the grown-up Harry send his children to Platform 9 3/4 and board the train to Hogwarts. Lin Yingtao's hand was on the handrail. She turned her head and saw Jiang Qiaoxi still wearing the shirt he wore for his internship at an investment bank. Jiang Qiaoxi also lowered his eyes to look at her. Although he still had the scar on his forehead, he was no longer the unrecognizable person he looked like on the camper's card for the Mathematical Olympiad Winter Camp.
Lin Yingtao looked at him like this, and the movie came to an end. She groped for his face in the dark. Lin Yingtao turned away and stopped watching Harry's magical world. She kissed him in Jiang Qiaoxi's arms, kissing the real magic in her life.
The scar will slowly heal and won't hurt anymore.
The author has something to say: －－－－－－－－－－－－－
Notes to this chapter:
*On May 1, 2011 (May 2, Beijing time), US President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was killed by the US military.
* WeChat: A free application launched by Tencent on January 21, 2011 that provides instant messaging services for smart terminals. On May 10, 2011, WeChat released version 2.0, which added a voice intercom function, which led to a significant increase in WeChat's user base for the first time.
*At 2:00 p.m. on July 20, 2011, Yao Ming officially announced his retirement at a press conference, ending his 13-year professional career.
*Hu Xia: A Chinese singer born on March 1, 1990. In 2011, he sang the theme song "Those Years" for the movie "You Are the Apple of My Eye".
＊"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Part 2 was directed by David Yates and starred Daniel Radcliffe and others. It was released on July 15, 2011.