Lin Qile liked to say the three characters "Jiang Qiaoxi". He said them from morning to night, from school to school, from sunrise to moonset, from early autumn to late winter. In a blink of an eye, 1999 was coming to an end. Jiang Qiaoxi was walking towards home. He heard Lin Qile, who had just finished fighting with Yu Qiao, chasing after him and shouting the three characters "Jiang Qiaoxi".
At first Jiang Qiaoxi didn’t understand: What’s so good about shouting these three words
Lin Qile seemed to like it very much.
When she was playing house, she kept mumbling this name to the Poppy Elf. When there was no Poppy Elf, Lin Qile would just mutter this name to the air beside Jiang Qiaoxi.
Lin's father and the uncles and aunts around laughed at her, but Lin Qile didn't feel ashamed. She would say the same thing the next time she saw Jiang Qiaoxi.
Jiang Qiaoxi once discovered by chance that the word "Xi" sounded like a crisp laugh when pronounced by Lin Qile, and even the shape of Lin Qile's mouth when he spoke was a laughing expression.
Every time Lin Qile read this name, it always made people feel that she was smiling. The more she read it, the happier she smiled.
Jiang Qiaoxi walked into Lin the Electrician's house, and he seemed to be the son of this family. Lin the Electrician first praised Jiang Qiaoxi for getting the "four crowns" and then asked him: "Did your father say when to go back to the provincial capital for the holiday?"
Jiang Qiaoxi replied, "No." Lin Qile followed him in and looked at them blankly after hearing this.
Jiang Qiaoxi went to the backyard to feed the rabbits. Through a screen door, he heard the faint sobbing of Lin Qile coming from inside the house.
"Qiaoxi is on winter vacation and will go back to the provincial capital to celebrate the New Year. He will come back when school starts," said Uncle Lin.
"You said the same thing last time..." Lin Qile cried intermittently, his voice sounding very aggrieved, "Chen Minghao, Brother Minghao went to the provincial capital and never came back..."
"Yingtao," Mother Lin whispered to comfort her, "Don't cry, Qiaoxi will hear it. Aren't there other children on the construction site? Yu Qiao and the others haven't left yet."
Lin Qile cried even harder: "Yu Qiao, Yu Qiao will also transfer..."
Electrician Lin said: "When some children transfer out, new ones will come in. Okay, stop crying."
I don't know if Lin Qile was comforted by such a simple sentence, or for some other reason, but she quickly wiped her face and stopped crying. Jiang Qiaoxi helped her feed the rabbit, washed his hands, and sat with her to eat.
After dinner, Lin Qile went to take a nap on the small bed. Jiang Qiaoxi walked into her small bedroom, sat down on the bamboo mat on the aisle beside the bed, and lowered his head to continue working on his Olympiad math problems.
Outside the wardrobe, Electrician Lin and his wife were also asleep.
The bedroom was unusually quiet at noon that day.
There was only the light but persistent friction sound of Jiang Qiaoxi's pen tip on the calculation paper, and the gentle breathing sound of Lin Qile when she fell asleep after crying.
If Lin Qile got up at this time and saw what Jiang Qiaoxi was doing next to her, she would probably think that Jiang Qiaoxi was calculating some complicated problem again. But only Jiang Qiaoxi knew that he was just writing some meaningless numbers.
The heater was very hot. Lin Qile woke up from her nap and went out to drink water wearing her bunny-like cotton slippers. She brought a plate of fruit and sat down next to Jiang Qiaoxi.
"Have you been working on exercises all afternoon?" Lin Qile asked him sleepily, looking at his calculation paper.
"How many points did you get in the final exam?" Jiang Qiaoxi said.
Lin Qile has big eyes, and her eyes turned red after crying, which made people unable to help but look at her eyes.
Lin Qile shook her head, her ponytail rubbing against her shoulders. It was obvious that she had not done well in the exam.
"Then why are you so happy after school?" Jiang Qiaoxi said.
Lin Qile lowered his head and turned over a small bunch of bananas in the fruit plate, changing them from "sitting" bananas to "lying down" bananas.
"You see, this way they won't have sore butts," Lin Qile said to Jiang Qiaoxi.
But Jiang Qiaoxi was still staring at Lin Qile's face.
Lin Qile's first attempt to change the subject failed.
"Du Shang said I was hindering your studies." Lin Qile had to tell the truth. Then he asked, "Shall we go to Cai Fangyuan's house this afternoon to play "Chinese Paladin"?"
"Then why were you crying before dinner?" Jiang Qiaoxi said.
Lin Qile's second attempt to change the subject encountered a crisis before it even began.
Lin Qile pulled out a very large iron box from under her crib.
"Jiang Qiaoxi, if you are moving away too," Lin Qile opened the lid of the box and showed Jiang Qiaoxi the contents. She did not cry, "give me something too."
There was nothing else in the box except a bunch of small miscellaneous items and pictures, which looked like junk that no one wanted.
"This Mickey Mouse bookmark was given to me by Brother Chen Minghao," Lin Qile picked up a thin, yellowed, transparent plastic bookmark and showed it to Jiang Qiaoxi.
She searched in the drawer again: "This flower fairy's hair flower was given to me by Sister Zheng Xiaochen. You may know Sister Zheng Xiaochen. She also moved to the provincial capital to go to school..."
Lin Qile has been with his parents since he was a child, wandering between construction sites in different cities. Thermal power plants are springing up all over China, and when a new power plant is completed, all the power construction workers will move away with their families and rush to the next place that needs to be reclaimed.
Lin Qile is used to moving and changing schools. Every time he moves, he always loses a lot of things, not only toys and books, but also children who study with him, neighbors who live nearby...
She and Jiang Qiaoxi had only known each other for half a year, but for Lin Qile, this was long enough. Lin Qile was used to getting to know every stranger with the greatest enthusiasm.
"Will you move away?" she asked.
Jiang Qiaoxi said, “Yes.”
Lin Qile's eyes widened. Maybe she couldn't face it yet: "When are you moving out?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "When I grow up."
Lin Qile was stunned for a moment: "What do you mean?"
Her bedroom was small, less than ten square meters. The two sat side by side on a bamboo mat, and whenever Jiang Qiaoxi said something, Lin Qile could feel a very light air current brushing against her cheek.
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "Didn't you ask me last time what I planned to do in the future?"
Lin Qile nodded.
"I plan to go to the United States in the future," Jiang Qiaoxi told Lin Qile in a tone that did not match his age while sitting in this extremely secluded place, "and then I will never come back."
The United States. Lin Qile was shocked by this word.
She originally thought that Jiang Qiaoxi was talking about moving back to the provincial capital from the small place of Qunshan.
"America..." She was at a loss for a moment, "Is it... the America that bombed our South what... South what?"
"Yes." Jiang Qiaoxi nodded.
Lin Qile stared at Jiang Qiaoxi with her big cherry-like eyes.
"I heard that Americans are all bad," said Lin Qile.
Jiang Qiaoxi smiled.
"What are you laughing at?" Lin Qile said.
"Who isn't bad?" Jiang Qiaoxi said.
Lin Qile was shocked again by Jiang Qiaoxi's words.
Jiang Qiaoxi looked down at the shabby big iron box in Lin Qile's arms. For a moment, he felt that Lin Qile was indeed just a little girl who grew up in a small place and had little knowledge.
Of course she is cute, she has a pair of obedient little white rabbits, her voice is also very nice, and her two ponytails are always swinging back and forth, making people want to see her angry. There are a group of boys around her, but she doesn't seem to know why they like to play with her.
"Whatever you want," Jiang Qiaoxi promised, and said to Lin Qile, "I will definitely give it to you before I leave."
After dinner, all the adults and children in the dormitory of the Qunshan construction site went out for entertainment. Jiang Qiaoxi sat on the steps in front of the workers' club, talking with Yu Qiao and Cai Fangyuan.
Lin Qile was pulled to the lawn by Duchamp to "exchange martial arts" with him.
Lin Qile was always worried. While she was dealing with Duchamp's "Six Meridians Divine Sword" absent-mindedly, she used the street lights on the construction site to look at Jiang Qiaoxi who was sitting on the steps in the distance.
"Duchamp," Lin Qile asked, "Do you know where America is?"
Du Shang was standing in a horse stance, accumulating internal strength in his body, intending to break through Lin Qile's "Left-right Fighting Technique" in one fell swoop. When Lin Qile asked him a question, he lost his concentration and his internal strength dissipated.
“America?” Duchamp said. “Why do you ask that?”
"Do you know?" Lin Qile said.
Duchamp walked over to her and racked his brains to recall the world map he had seen in school: "It seems to be on the opposite side of the earth?"
"Anyway, it's very, very far from us!"
When Jiang Qiaoxi first transferred to the school, he didn't look like an ordinary child. Lin Qile realized this a long time ago, but she still didn't expect that Jiang Qiaoxi's thoughts every day were so different from theirs.
"Do I need to be good at Mathematical Olympiad to go to the United States?" Lin Qile asked.
Jiang Qiaoxi shook his head.
Lin Qile asked: "Then why do you study so hard?"
Jiang Qiaoxi seemed a little helpless. He said to Lin Qile, "I have to learn."
Lin Qile sat next to him for a while and asked again: "Does it cost a lot of money to go to the United States?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "My cousin's family will pay for it."
Lin Qile asked: "Uncle Jiang, don't you know?"
Jiang Qiaoxi raised his eyes and looked at her: "Don't let him know."
Lin Qile's mind was not working that fast. She couldn't understand why some parents were unwilling to educate their children but would never let their children leave their side.
Jiang Qiaoxi was still sitting in Lin Qile's little room, doing his math Olympiad problems. Lin Qile brought bananas and Coke from outside, and sat back next to Jiang Qiaoxi, holding her Poppy Elf.
As soon as Poppy Elf turned on the switch, he screamed and called Lin Qile: "Mom! Mom!"
Jiang Qiaoxi looked up and saw Lin Qile pressing another switch. Poppy the Elf asked Jiang Qiaoxi, "What's your name?"
Lin Qile waited to listen, but Jiang Qiaoxi didn't speak.
Lin Qile answered for him: "Jiang Qiaoxi!"
Poppy the Elf screamed and recorded Lin Qile's voice: "Jiang Qiaoxi! Jiang Qiaoxi!"
Lin Qile chuckled. Jiang Qiaoxi smiled disdainfully: "It's really ugly."
At this time, Father Lin pushed the door open and saw the two children having fun. He said, "Qiaoxi, your father is here, please come out for a moment."
Jiang Qiaoxi just smiled a little, but it disappeared again. Lin Qile sat there, looked up and saw Jiang Qiaoxi put down the book in his hand and walked out of the bedroom.
Jiang Qiaoxi's mother Liang Hongfei said on the phone that she had already enrolled Qiaoxi in a cram school in the provincial capital. She would leave from Qunshan City tonight and would be able to catch the first class tomorrow morning. "Your parents are not in the provincial capital, so it's okay for you to go to a cram school by yourself, right? Your former classmate Feilinger invited you to stay at his house, so you should go."
Lin Qile held the little Bobby Elf in her arms and watched as her parents suddenly walked into the bedroom and picked up the half-finished Olympiad math problems of Jiang Qiaoxi and the Olympiad math textbooks sent from Hong Kong.
"What for?" she asked.
Electrician Lin said, "Cherry, Qiaoxi will be leaving soon. Please help him pack up his books. See which books are his."
Jiang Qiaoxi went home first. He took out his clothes and packed his luggage with the help of the driver. When he came out, it was already dark. Only some light came from under the eaves. Jiang Qiaoxi put on his square schoolbag and saw Lin Qile standing in front of him, still holding the Poppy Elf.
Jiang Qiaoxi said to her, "I'll go first." He walked past Lin Qile and followed the driver towards the car parked at the intersection at the end of a row of brick houses.
Manager Jiang Zheng had to stay at the Qunshan construction site to continue working. He looked at his youngest son's back as he left, licked his lips, and did not see him off.
It was Lin Qile who caught up with him: "Jiang Qiaoxi!"
Jiang Qiaoxi walked to the car, unloaded his schoolbag and put it in the car. Standing outside the car door, looking forward and backward, he could see the road of the Qunshan construction site, where the elderly and children, some chatting and some playing games, were all happily spending the night.
Jiang Qiaoxi took the Poppy Pokémon from Lin Qile's arms and reached out to press the switch.
"Jiang Qiaoxi! Jiang Qiaoxi!"
Although the name of this Bobby Elf is "elf", it only has simple recording and playback functions. In short, the three words "Jiang Qiaoxi" it made were not spoken by it, but just recorded Lin Qile's voice at the time and did a simple digital processing.
"I took it." Jiang Qiaoxi said, holding the elf in his hand.
Lin Qile was stunned: "Ah?"
When Lin Qile came to his senses, Jiang Qiaoxi had already got into the car, holding the elf that called Lin Qile "Mom", and left the construction site in the mountains.
The second year arrived. After Lin Qile got up, he first looked at his room for a while, and then looked at the empty cushion at the head of the bed.
"There's no such thing as the end of the world, Cai Fangyuan is a liar." Lin Qile said angrily while brushing his teeth.