Jiang Qiaoxi sometimes dreams about the weather in high school.
At that time, the sky above his head was always covered with a layer of dead gray. When there were clouds, it was full of dusk, and when there were no clouds, it was empty, without a single ripple. Later, Lin Qile transferred to the school, and Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly realized that the maple leaves in the experimental high school in autumn were red. After the rain, he looked up and found that the sky was clean. Under the skylight, there were birds flying across the sky, and there were long cloud traces, which were airplanes flying past.
At that time, Lin Qile always avoided him. She didn't look at him and tried every way to get around him.
It was as if they had never met.
Liang Hongfei was furious about Lin Qile transferring to Class 18 and being in the same class as Jiang Qiaoxi, but Jiang Qiaoxi made it into the provincial team as he wished and scored 209 points, ranking first in the province.
In November, he will go to winter camp to participate in the national finals.
At this critical moment, even Liang Hongfei was worried and didn't dare to affect his state too much. For the first time, Jiang Qiaoxi actually checked her.
Jiang Qiaoxi no longer liked to be alone in the Little White Building. Whenever he had time, he would go back to Class 18, even if it was just to sit in the last row and sleep.
He woke up, opened his eyes, raised his head with his hair up, and saw Lin Yingtao sitting three or four meters in front of him.
Although from this angle, one can only see the ballpoint pen shaking in her hand, her slender neck above the collar of her school uniform, and a little bit of her cheek, which, when illuminated by the sunlight from the classroom window, reveals a faint golden arc.
Compared to her primary school days, Lin Yingtao has become too fond of studying. She no longer frolics, talks, plays, or gets distracted in class. She takes notes meticulously, looks at the blackboard with wide eyes, and rarely hesitates or gives the wrong answer when the teacher calls on her.
Even after class, when other students were resting or playing, she would sit in her seat and take notes. Her quiet and hardworking attitude was really strange to Jiang Qiaoxi.
Only in some unintentional moments, easily overlooked moments, Lin Yingtao looks like the little girl in the mountains again.
She turned around and talked to Yu Qiao who was sitting in the back row. Cai Fangyuan also came over and sat down. They gathered together and talked about something. Lin Yingtao's big eyes were curved and she was smiling. She looked at Yu Qiao and Cai Fangyuan, her good friends who grew up with her. She was very excited and her hidden "Lin Yingtao" was revealed.
But when she caught a glimpse of Jiang Qiaoxi, the smile on Lin Yingtao's face disappeared.
She turned her head back stiffly, like a squirrel retreating into a tree hole, and began to study seriously again. It seemed that her world did not welcome him. Jiang Qiaoxi just looked at her, as if he would snatch her pine cones.
The teacher was giving a lecture on the blackboard. Jiang Qiaoxi was sitting in the last row. He lowered his head, drooped his eyelashes, and impatiently clenched the pen in his hand.
A breeze blew in, disturbing the stuffy air in the classroom. Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly raised his eyes and looked forward at her.
"Do you want some candy?"
Once, in the old dormitory of the construction site in the mountains, the little girl with a pair of ponytails tried to "seduce" him again and again behind his back.
"Do you listen to tapes?" she asked timidly, then summoned up her courage. "Do you watch Mickey Mouse?"
"Do you want to touch the bunny?"
Whether he was going out to get water after class, doing exercises during break, going to the laboratory, or attending physical education class... Lin Yingtao always kept her distance from him in the crowd.
Jiang Qiaoxi sometimes couldn't understand why this happened.
Even when he was studying in the Little White Building or attending classes in the competition class at night, he would still think of Lin Yingtao from time to time. He wanted to know what she was doing, who she was smiling at and who she was talking to foolishly when she ignored him, where she had lunch and who she was eating with, did she still like to eat those snacks, which she put in her pocket and kept changing one after another, whether she was playing with Yu Qiao downstairs in the afternoon, or strolling with Du Shang, listening to MP3 together, or sitting next to Cai Fangyuan and watching him play games, or staying in Qin Yeyun's class, flipping through those boring magazines.
Jiang Qiaoxi always felt that a thief had taken away all his things.
It was he who went to the small dining table of the Lin family to eat every day, eating the dishes picked out for him by everyone in the Lin family. It was he who was stuck to and from school by Lin Yingtao every day, dragging her around everywhere. It was he who, behind the big wardrobe, in the small mosquito net, listened to Lin Yingtao holding the little elf, laughing, or choking, telling him those whispers that seemed to never end.
During the break, people were like chess pieces, standing in their respective positions. Jiang Qiaoxi was tall, so he always stood at the end. He looked forward and looked down at the back of Lin Yingtao's head from a distance.
So many people looked at Jiang Qiaoxi, he always attracted attention. But she didn't care about him.
Jiang Qiaoxi seemed to be having a nightmare.
Lin Yingtao opened her eyes. She secretly looked at him for a while in his arms. Seeing his slightly frowned brows in his dream, he seemed very unhappy and aggrieved. It was rare to see Jiang Qiaoxi like this. The bed was so narrow, Lin Yingtao thought as she lay on her side. The wall of the rented house was cold, and it rubbed against her back, making her shiver. Lin Yingtao was wearing a nightgown. She leaned over and gently kissed Jiang Qiaoxi on the face.
Jiang Qiaoxi's eyelashes were so long that they cast a shadow, adding a bit of childishness to his face. At first he lay there, numb and motionless.
He opened his eyes and looked at Lin Yingtao's cheek for a long time.
So many things were taken away from Jiang Qiaoxi that he was always worried and buried the worry deep in his heart.
God is not fair to every child. Some are born to gain, while others have to spend their whole lives to make up for, retain, and heal. Jiang Qiaoxi is not a happy person. His persistence in Hong Kong over the years is nothing more than trying to retain his cousin. Who would persist for the sake of pain
Jiang Qiaoxi looked at Lin Yingtao's cheek again. How did she appear
Could it be that God was afraid that he couldn't hold on any longer
Lin Yingtao sat on the cushion and tried hard to twist Jiang Qiaoxi's old black water cup with Eisenhower's quotations printed on it. It was particularly difficult to unscrew it. She had to bend down and hold it every time, and exert a lot of strength to twist it.
“Why is your cup always so tight…” she complained and poured out hot water to drink.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat on the bed, slowly took a new T-shirt, put his hand in it, and pulled the collar over his head. He lowered his eyes to look at her. Since high school, Lin Yingtao always carried a group of people's water cups to get water, and Jiang Qiaoxi didn't like that.
Everyone else’s cup was easy to open, except Jiang Qiaoxi’s, which was unusually unfriendly. Every time, Lin Yingtao had to put down everything else in her hands so that she could concentrate on dealing with his.
Of course, she has to be willing to do so.
The two of them got on the bus and went to the hospital together to see their cousin. Jiang Qiaoxi sat outside, his arm resting on the back of the front seat. He half-lay down and turned his head to look at Lin Yingtao who was sitting inside.
She smiled with her lips pursed, looking out the window intently. After a while she turned back. Her ears turned red and she lowered her eyes under Jiang Qiaoxi's gaze.
In high school, they took the bus together only a few times after school. Yu Qiao and Du Shang sat in the front, and Jiang Qiaoxi and she sat in the back.
Many students on the bus were wearing the school uniforms of the Experimental High School. Jiang Qiaoxi also looked at her in public. Lin Yingtao was so shy that she lowered her head several times while sitting inside. She was afraid of being seen by other students.
But I clearly didn't do anything. Jiang Qiaoxi thought at that time. He couldn't do anything, but he still felt extremely happy.
It was the same now. Although he went to the hospital to visit his cousin who had been ill in bed for a long time, Jiang Qiaoxi felt a lot more relaxed when he looked at Cherry's face.
The author has something to say: I will stop writing these two chapters from Jiang Qiaoxi's perspective. I will add to them and make revisions later.