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Lin Yingtao stood on the podium and introduced herself: "My name is Lin Yingtao!"
She pronounced "tao" with a very serious second tone, trying hard to raise the sound.
Cai Fangyuan, Yu Qiao and Du Shang were laughing below.
The Chinese teacher corrected her again. She was a little helpless. No matter how many times she corrected her, the little girl still couldn't remember: "Ying~Tao, Ying should be stressed, Tao is unstressed. Read it again, Ying~Tao."
Lin Yingtao looked at the teacher and blinked a few times.
"Ying, Tao!" She opened her mouth and read, still trying hard to raise the second tone.
Lin Yingtao didn't care at all about her classmates laughing at her. She just wanted to pronounce her name in the way she liked.
So when her parents asked her if Cherry's full name should be "Lin Qile" from now on, she just took "Lin Cherry" as her nickname.
Lin Yingtao had her hands behind her back as she stood by the screen door. Her parents were squatting in front of her, but she was leaning back a little, her eyes darting back and forth across their faces.
Electrician Lin brought his seven-year-old daughter over to him. He heard her sobbing and asking, "Is it because I didn't read it correctly..."
Mother Lin smiled and said, "Cherry is seven years old now, it's time for her to have a name!"
As the night deepened, Lin Yingtao put on her slippers and walked into the narrow bathroom of the construction site dormitory. She sat in the big red basin where her mother had mixed warm water. Her mother splashed water on her, and she laughed happily, her hair sticking to her cheeks. She said, "Mom, why do I need a big name?"
Mother Lin rolled up her sleeves, endured the back pain from operating the gantry crane at the construction site, and squatted down. The conditions at the construction site were difficult, and she didn't dare to directly pour hot and cold water into the big basin to bathe her daughter. She had to use a small basin to mix the water first. "Full name," she raised her hand and rubbed the foam on her daughter's head, "that's the name Cherry will use outside in the future. The closest people, our family, of course, will still call her by her nickname, so call her Cherry!"
"Cherry" is the name that only the closest people to me, my family, would call me.
Lin Yingtao never told Jiang Qiaoxi what her mother said, but she felt that Jiang Qiaoxi should understand. Jiang Qiaoxi was different from all the children of the same age at the Qunshan construction site. He always looked stable and mature. Jiang Qiaoxi never spoke nonsense or gave random answers. The answers he told her on the blackboard were always correct.
Jiang Qiaoxi also regarded this title as a privilege, tacitly accepting it.
But not everyone who calls her "Lin Yingtao" treats her as well as her parents. Many times, they are even more annoying than those who call her "Lin Qile".
Since kindergarten, Yu Qiao seemed to be the one who understood Lin Yingtao's temper the best. He knew all the ways to make her angry. When she was in the second grade, Lin Yingtao was "tricked" by her class teacher to go to the radio station to read a short story about the return of Hong Kong. The class teacher chose her because she spoke clearly and "Lin Qile was very serious about everything she read."
She went downstairs with the booklet and heard Yu Qiao chatting and laughing with a few boys downstairs.
What makes me laugh is the sentence "I study everything very seriously".
A boy said, Yu Qiao, you can't afford to offend Lin Qile, and after you offend him you still have to coax him.
"When did I ever coax her?" Yu Qiao said in annoyance, feeling extremely disgusted.
Another time during break, Lin Yingtao was coloring Sailor Moon's coloring cards with watercolor pens. She was so focused that watercolor pens of various colors were scattered all over the table.
"There's something wrong with your brain..." a voice suddenly said from behind.
Lin Yingtao turned around and saw that it was the new transfer student Cai Fangyuan, who was probably holding a grudge against her for having been beaten up.
Yu Qiao sat next to Cai Fangyuan, looking down at the newspaper, and now he looked up at Lin Yingtao. Yu Qiao smiled and turned to Cai Fangyuan and said, "You just found out."
Yu Qiao seemed to believe in a principle: It's not that he had never coaxed Lin Yingtao before, but Lin Yingtao was too difficult to coax. Sometimes it was useless to coax her for half a month. The more he coaxed her, the more useless it became. Coaxing her would make him angry, so it would be better to just watch her get angry, which was also quite fun to watch.
When Lin Yingtao was promoted to the third grade, she sat at the same table with Yu Qiao for half a semester. They sat at the same table for eight weeks, quarreled and fought for three weeks, and broke off relations for three weeks. Only two weeks were friendly, because Lin Yingtao was elected as the rotating monitor, and her status was different from before. Even Yu Qiao "had to" give her some courtesy, and for two whole weeks, he didn't fight back when he was beaten or scolded.
Cai Fangyuan was sitting in the back row and saw it all.
Cai Fangyuan's father, Cai Yue, first came to the Qunshan construction site as a project manager. He became very close to the site's small leader, Team Leader Yu, and the good-natured Electrician Lin.
He gave a Wenquxing to the son of squad leader Yu. In 1997, this thing was very high-end and worth six hundred yuan.
Yu Qiao didn't know how to use this thing. After all, no one knew how to use it, not even Manager Cai. Cai Fangyuan went to his house on Sunday. They sat on the sofa and watched a movie on CCTV-6. It was an American movie about a pilot fighting a terrorist on a plane. Yu Qiao was still fiddling with the Wenquxing in his hand out of boredom. Cai Fangyuan was eating a plate of fried crispy meat given by Aunt Yu. In the bedroom next to him, Yu Qiao's little cousin Yu Jin was crawling around on the bed with a snotty nose.
Someone knocked on the door from outside. Yu Qiao raised his head, took a look, stood up and opened the door. He glanced outside and came back to sit down.
It was Qin Yeyun, the daughter of Uncle Qin who worked in the construction site store.
In the movie, the American pilot forgot to bring the cabin door key, and he quickly said to his girlfriend: "Enter the code and the door will pop open."
"What's the password?" the girlfriend asked puzzledly.
The pilot said tenderly, "Baby, it's your birthday."
Qin Yeyun came in arrogantly, her hair was curled in irregular shapes. Seeing that Yu Qiao was too lazy to pay attention to her, she ignored Yu Qiao too, let alone Cai Fangyuan, and walked into the bedroom to greet Grandma Yu.
Qin Yeyun picked up Yu Jin, who was crawling on the bed, with great effort. She sat on the edge of the bed and forced Yu Jin to stay in her arms and not move. There was snot under Yu Jin's nose. Qin Yeyun seemed to be affectionate with him, but in fact she was disgusted with him. She looked secretly outside.
Yu Jin sat there with his big bright eyes open, looking confused.
Cai Fangyuan was eating the fried pork in his hand and continuing to watch the movie when he heard Yu Qiao suddenly curse.
Cai Fangyuan looked at him.
Yu Qiao continued playing Wenquxing as if nothing had happened.
It was not until the movie was over and Duchamp came over for dinner that Cai Fangyuan discovered that Yu Qiao was still frowning and pressing the Wenquxing finger randomly, as if he was facing some cosmic problem.
"Fuck..." He cursed, pressing the keys as if he was annoyed. "Is it possible to change it only once?"
Cai Fangyuan put the plate down and leaned over to take a look.
Cai Fangyuan lowered his voice and said, "Brother, enter the password first and open it. I will change it for you."
Yu Qiao lowered his eyes and looked at him. That look suddenly made Cai Fangyuan feel that this would be their lifelong friendship.
Yu Qiao pressed the button quickly, turned it on, and handed the machine to him.
Cai Fangyuan's eyes moved even faster, and he was thinking in his mind: 040990, what does this mean
He lowered his head to reset the password. Cai Fangyuan suddenly raised his head and said, "Fuck, Yu Qiaoer!!"
Duchamp was sitting in front of the TV watching Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, when he suddenly turned around and looked at the two of them.
Yu Qiao put on the tattered Wenquxing and casually stuffed it next to the sofa cushion.
Suddenly, the front door of Yu Qiao's house was pushed open from the outside, and Lin Yingtao came in like a bandit entering the city, carrying a bamboo basket that was a little too big for her. "Auntie!" Lin Yingtao walked directly into the kitchen, "I'm here to return your basket!"
Aunt Yu said in the kitchen: "Come here, Cherry, I'll pack you some more, you can take it home and eat it!"
In the fourth grade, Cai Fangyuan sat in the row in front of Yu Qiao. He turned around and looked at Yu Qiao, who was flipping through a newspaper with his head down. He then looked at Jiang Qiaoxi, who was sitting next to Yu Qiao, near the window, studying mathematics with his head down at the English Olympiad textbook.
As soon as the math class was over, Lin Yingtao rushed over almost instantly and occupied an advantageous position in front of her new classmates.
Cai Fangyuan lowered his head, touched the big roll and ate it, and asked Jiang Qiaoxi if he wanted to eat it.
When they met for the first time, each of them introduced themselves to Jiang Qiaoxi.
Lin Yingtao told Jiang Qiaoxi word by word: "My name is Lin Qile, the Qile in 'happy and harmonious'—"
Yu Qiao interrupted her and said to Jiang Qiaoxi, "Her original name was Lin Yingtao. Do you know why?"