Not local, and no contact for a long time.
Divorced family? Ning Xiaoxiao's first reaction was this.
I heard that children from unhealthy families may be influenced by their parents, and when they grow up, they tend to feel distrustful or anxious about their partners, and some people even tend to have domestic violence.
Just when she was worried, Shen Yan suddenly stood up from her seat, which frightened her. The chopsticks accidentally fell out, hit the bowl with a "ding" sound, and rolled to Shen Yan's table.
The atmosphere froze for a while.
Seeing that she was shrinking back, Shen Yan should have reached out to pick up the chopsticks, but she retracted it. She was afraid that he would suddenly go into a rage.
"The chopsticks fell." After a long while, he smiled as gently as possible, picked up the pair of chopsticks with very light movements, did not hand them back to her directly, but just slowly placed them beside the plate for her. Keeping a suitable distance from start to finish will not make her feel any threat.
"Ah, thank you..." The imagined anger did not appear. Ning Xiaoxiao came back to her senses, and hurriedly thanked her with a smile.
"Sorry, I'll go to the bathroom." Shen Yan was still smiling, her attitude was still gentle. It's just that these two features appeared on a pale face at the same time, and everyone could see it was reluctant, including Qi Jin.
"Shen Yan." Qi Jin's position was against the aisle. If Shen Yan wanted to go out, he had to stand up and give way. But instead of letting go, he grabbed Shen Yan's wrist and frowned.
"When I was putting the ingredients, I accidentally splashed the soup on my hands. I'll go wash it." Shen Yan had a very reasonable reason.
Qi Jin hesitated for a moment, then slowly let go of his hand and moved away without a word to let him pass.
Shen Yan gave him a slight smile, like guilt and gratitude, then politely gestured to Ning Xiaoxiao, then left the table and disappeared into the corner of the corridor.
"I seem to have asked something that shouldn't be asked." Ning Xiaoxiao waited for him to walk away, and winked at Qi Qin across the table.
Qi Jin looked at her with a serious expression and said nothing.
"Senior brother, don't you think he's a bit strange?" Ning Xiaoxiao whispered.
"Xiao Xiao," Qi Jin interrupted her, placing her right hand on the table, in a clenched fist position. His tone was rare and stern, "If you continue, I'm going to be angry."
She has no idea. Originally, he thought that Shen Yan would never be invited to come out to meet for dinner.
Obviously not good at dealing with strangers, but because Ning Xiaoxiao is his relative and friend, Shen Yan hesitated for a while, and finally chose to accept it. "It would be nice if I could meet your friends, it would be even better if I could integrate into your circle of friends," he said at the time, with an optimistic smile on his face.
The head nurse in the hospital, Ms. Pang, once said that people who don't know Shen Yan often think he is indifferent.
At first Qi Jin didn't think he was indifferent, just thought he was taciturn.
However, as the pieces of the puzzle piled up in the hand, the colors on the pattern became warmer and warmer, getting closer to spring every time. Qi Jin couldn't wait to prove it to others, but he underestimated the resistance in reality.
"He's your boyfriend under review, should I ask more questions for you?" Ning Xiaoxiao felt aggrieved.
When Shen Yan answered, although Qi Jin did not express her position, she noticed the surprise in her eyes, and at a glance, she knew that he had heard of it for the first time. After deliberation, she deeply suspected that Qi Jin had been deceived.
"He—" had already passed the review.
Qi Jin opened her mouth halfway and closed it again, and decided not to say this to her, so as not to cause trouble.
"You must not have known his education before, right?" she asked.
"I don't know, that's because I didn't ask." Don't care either. Qi Jin frowned and turned her words back gently.
"You don't know anything about his family, do you?"
"I didn't ask about it in detail."
Ning Xiaoxiao's face was full of worry, and she couldn't help but lower her voice to persuade: "Senior brother, you don't ask anything, you don't know anything, how much do you know about this person? Although you used so many good words to describe him, you would not Could it be that the authorities are fascinated by the romance for a while? I think... He may not be very reliable."
Qi Jin's eyes were cold and she looked at her motionlessly: "You said, why is he unreliable?"
Ning Xiaoxiao curled her lips and said, "He can't even get into the undergraduate program, which shows that his education level is not high. And brother, you graduated from a famous university. Can you two really talk about it together?"
What's more, that person doesn't even like to talk much.
At this moment, Qi Jin suddenly sneered: "A famous university? What can a famous university mean? In terms of education, wasn't that person my classmate back then? What happened?"
result? There is no result at all, only bitter fruit.
He thought that his steel-like will was squeezed and deformed under the enormous pressure of reality, and it was almost broken. Fortunately, he did not completely collapse when he pulled out in time.
And when he finally couldn't hold it any longer, he realized that the other party had withdrawn earlier and faster than him.
Of course, he alone can't handle that kind of heavy burden.
"I'm sorry, but you're serious."
The most hurtful thing is undoubtedly that after he took every step seriously, the other party suddenly drew a terminator on the road, dropped such a sentence, and then pushed him back to the starting point. It is like a pot of cold water pouring down on the twelfth lunar month in the cold winter.
He was clearly frostbitten, but he could only pretend to be unrestrained and walk away with a smile on his face.
Over the years, he has been unable to convince himself to step out again, until Shen Yan pulled him past the white line at the starting point.
Ning Xiaoxiao remembered it.
The night when Qi Jin confessed her sexuality to her, she also confessed her unbearable relationship, and the two of them drank all night to drown their sorrows. She cried ten packs of tissues that night, and vomited half her life in her bedroom the next day - precisely because of this, when she found out that Qi Jin had a crush again after many years, she had to be extra cautious and take care of him everywhere check.
Right now, Qi Qin's brows are faintly showing a bit of pain, obviously thinking of the past.
Ning Xiaoxiao regretted her blunder, and hurriedly spoke to comfort him: "Senior brother, that guy is an exception. To be honest, you and that guy are a good match in every way, that is... At that time, you were both too young to bear the public opinion. Today's environment Much looser than before, maybe, maybe he is now…”
"Now, he already has a wife and a son." Qi Jin interrupted in a deep voice, saying word by word, "Okay, I don't want to talk about this person, let alone get back with him. Don't mention him again. "
Conversation stalled.
All I could hear was the gurgling sound of the soup in the hot pot, and the suffocating feeling spread again and again by the surging water vapor, making it difficult to breathe.
Ning Xiaoxiao lowered her head and twisted her crony, her mouth was shrivelled.
Qi Jin calmed down a little, and when she saw the aggrieved expression on her face, her heart softened. He knew that Junior Sister's intention was good, so he sighed softly: "I understand what you think, you are worried about this and that for my own good. However, no matter what Shen Yan's education is, at least he likes and respects his own. Work - it's not my own opinion, it's what the actual results tell me."
Whether it is the previous process of rescuing the cat, or the later return period. Shen Yan's impeccable medical ethics convinced him.
He is engaged in news, and there are many negative reports in the relevant aspects, and I have seen too many.
So he knew how rare a person like Shen Yan was.
"As well as colleagues and volunteers from the Animal Rescue Association, they can all testify to this." With an argument, there must also be an argument. Qi Jin's argument is not just his own.
"Well, even if there is no problem with education and work, his family background seems to be inappropriate." Ning Xiaoxiao was afraid that he would get angry, so he hesitated for a long time, but insisted on expressing his opinion. After all, Qi Jin had suffered a loss before, and she hoped that he could be more cautious, "This is not my own nonsense, but proved by many examples. Children who have problems between their parents may be withdrawn and have a tendency to abuse. Yes... You should have heard some of these examples when you go out for interviews every day, right? Brother, I can see that you like him very much, but you'd better find out and think about it."
Shen Yan himself seems to have said the same - "Think about it carefully, and then reply."
He said he would be patient and wait.
Wait until you say yes.
"I don't know what happened to his parents. I don't know how much he was affected by it." Qi Jin's fist slowly loosened on the table and placed it on the position where Shen Yan had just sat, covering it with his palm. On it, as if to preserve the temperature that hasn't completely dissipated, "The only thing I know is... He has been taking care of me, sharing the chores of life for me. And, not once forced me."
His voice was hoarse and trembling slightly, trying to restrain his emotional ups and downs.
Ning Xiaoxiao's face turned pale as she whispered, "Senior brother..."
Qi Jin sighed, probably realizing that he had lost his temper, and shook his head. After all, the junior sister is a girl, she needs to go down the steps, and she will be embarrassed if she speaks too coldly. So he leveled his tone again: "I know you're saying this for my own good, thank you."
Ning Xiaoxiao only had the courage to look up at him at this time, although the hand twisting the crony did not stop.
"Don't worry," Qi Jin smiled lightly. "Before I started again this time, I had struggled for a long time. However, I don't regret making this decision. I believe in his conduct."
Ning Xiaoxiao finally stopped and pouted: "Okay, as long as you are happy, Senior Brother."
One thing she had to admit - Qi Jin now looks at least in better shape than when she was in the car accident. Although she always believed that Qi Jin had a better choice and a more decent life, it would be useless for bystanders to say anything, the mood of the person involved was the most important thing.
"Then eat hot pot obediently, and don't ask people like checking your household registration." Qi Jin raised her eyebrows and knocked twice on the side of the pot with her chopsticks. Ning Xiaoxiao nodded like pounding garlic.
After convincing the junior sister, Qi Jin glanced in the direction of the bathroom. Still haven't seen Shen Yan come back.
After thinking for a moment, he silently took out his mobile phone, imitating the text messages Shen Yan had written to him before, and sent a similar past: [Come back when you think you can, I will wait for you. 】
Shen Yan didn't see the text message because he couldn't hear the prompt from the text message.
The faucet in front of him has been turned to the maximum, and the sound of water is rapidly washing his hearing, and his ears are buzzing, and he can't tolerate other sounds.
He closed his eyes and couldn't remember the first time he scooped up water with both hands and splashed it two or three times on his face.
The water seeped into his eyes and caused stinging pain, and he couldn't open it. He only felt the water on his face dripping down one after another, and hurriedly rolled down from the tip of his nose when he lowered his head. He had to wash the negativity from his face with water, and let it get swept up by the drain and sink deep, deep into the ground.
This way, you can make a good impression on yourself.
In this way, I can go back to my seat and continue the topics just now.
But the voices in his memory would not stop or let him go. Even if he turned the sound of the water to the loudest, so loud that even the water pipe was shaking slightly, those voices still couldn't resist, stubbornly and cruelly burrowed in.
That was probably the first time he heard his father's voice.
Across the door, in the heart-wrenching cry of the woman outside the door, angrily sounded: "You shouldn't have given birth to him in the first place!"
The woman's cry gradually turned into laughter, poignant and desolate: "Yes! I regret it, I really regret giving birth to him!"
At that time he sat alone in the room, silently holding a pencil to do his homework.
No matter what kind of sound came from outside the door, whether scolding, crying, or breaking things, he just lowered his head, trying to write the exercises assigned by the teacher wholeheartedly, then got into the bed, covered his ears, and was fine. Get some sleep. Just stay up until the next morning and go to school, far away from those voices.
You don't have to be someone's "shouldn't", and you don't have to be someone's "regret".
But no matter how you write the exercises, you can't finish it.
Not because he didn't know how to solve it, but because every time he wrote the answer, something would always wet the pencil's handwriting, making a drop or two smeared together, making it impossible to see clearly. Only to repeat over and over again.
Later, the woman rushed in, dragged him up from the chair, and said sharply, "Let's go! Let's go!"
Up until that moment, he tried desperately to continue, the action was so forceful that the tip of the pencil pierced through the paper, and the person was pulled back severely, the tip of the pen scratched the workbook with a "chap", and rolled to the ground together with the eraser and ruler. ground.
He never turned in the homework that time.
He didn't turn in his homework, he never even went to that school again, and went back to the town where he was born with the woman.
There were people in the town who he should call grandparents, and some relatives he had never met. Those people looked at him the same way a woman looked at him in a rental house back then, and he knew the meaning of this look, closed his mouth, didn't make any sound, and sat quietly in the corner alone.
The houses in the town are connected one by one, and the backyards of the two families are often only separated by a low wall or a hedge.
During the period when he was temporarily staying at his grandparents' house, he would move a stool to read under the wall alone when he was not in school, and sometimes he would meet a neighbor's cat.
The cat is an old cat, old, with a heavy drooping belly, and the color of the fur has lost its luster. It would occasionally walk up and down the wall, or even climb over it, basking lazily on the floor. At that time, he would sit still and watch, afraid that if he moved the cat, he would run away.
But the cat didn't run, and after a long time, it would take the initiative to come and rub his feet.
"Meow meow meow… "
Even talking to him like this, and he would answer back, neither side could understand what they were talking about, but they were able to maintain it. Unlike those who live in the house, you can get along very naturally.
"My name is Shen Yan." He said softly.
"Meow."
"My mother is getting married soon," he told it about the conversation he had heard from his grandparents across the wall, three months after he arrived here. A woman has a successful blind date as a divorced person. The other party doesn't mind that she has an ex-husband, but she just doesn't want her ex-husband's child.
"Meow." The old cat couldn't understand what he said, but just raised his head and scratched it with his paws.
"They said they were going to send me to my dad... As for whether or not it's up to him." He repeated what he heard dully, and finally smiled at the old cat, "I may not see you in the future. already."
"Meow." The old cat leaned down and stuck to the floor. And he took advantage of the trend to gently stroke the fur on its back with his hands.
On the day a woman is married, the house is empty.
Everyone went out to watch the ceremony, and he was the only one left in the backyard, also spending a whole day face-to-face with the cat.
When he was hungry, he went to the refrigerator to find the leftovers, heated them in the microwave, slowly ate them under the wall with a bowl, and distributed some to the cat.
"Your mother is married."
"We're taking you to your father's side."
Grandpa and grandma said these words to him right after the wedding. Although he already knew it.
They packed what little things he had into a duffel bag, put him on a bus returning to the city, told the driver that someone would pick him up after the stop, turned around and left without looking at it .
He spent hours in the car without a word, returning to the city he had been away from for months. At the terminal station, the passengers on the bus had already got off the bus, and the whole carriage was empty, so he walked down slowly, dragged the bag from the rack with great difficulty, and stared at the bustling station in a daze.
He didn't know where he was going.
Surrounded by strangers, unfamiliar scenery, messy words twittering in my ears, bringing a sense of dizziness.
Maybe it's because I didn't eat on the road and I felt dizzy.
But he didn't have much money on him, and he didn't know how long he could support it after spending it. Dedicated to saving money, he did not dare to buy food at the station, so he could only hold his duffel bag drowsily, and sat alone in the waiting hall for two hours.
Then he realized that maybe he waited three hours, four hours, five hours or more and no one would come.
Because... he is Shen Yan.
"Shen Yan."
When he thought so, someone called the name.
Not the man he should call his father, but an old man.
The old man slowly walked out of the gray crowd, and everything around seemed to have a bit of color, jumping gently in his eyes. He trembled and straightened up unconsciously, but the old man still smiled kindly: "Are you Shen Yan? You look a lot like your father when he was a child."
He clutched the shoulder strap of the duffel bag tightly, didn't speak for a while, just nodded.
The old man sighed deeply: "Your father can't come."
He still nodded. This was to be expected, because the man said he shouldn't be born, and naturally he shouldn't be accepted.
The old man slowly bent down in front of him and touched his head, with a bit of bitterness in his smile: "But you can follow me—Shen Yan, I'm your grandfather."
It was not until this moment that the voice in his head suddenly calmed down, and was gradually drowned out by the intense sound of running water, returning to reality.
"Huh..."
Shen Yan panted in a low voice, frowned, and gently wiped the water droplets off her face with both hands, finally getting a moment's relief. He turned off the faucet, the sound of water stopped abruptly, and everything in the bathroom was silent.
"Thank you, Grandpa," he said hoarsely.
Thank you grandpa for pulling yourself back from the past to the present.
Because life can only go forward and not backward. In front of him are the people he is destined to meet and the feelings he is destined to pay.
Shen Yan raised his head, his face in the glass mirror was pale, but his eyes had regained his composure. After drying his face, he could go out after tidying up. Just as he found a tissue to remove the water stains, he took out his mobile phone to check the time, only to realize that Qi Jin had sent a text message before, and he hurriedly opened it to read.
- Come back when you think you can, I'll wait for you.
Shen Yan's heart warmed when she saw the last three words, and her lips slowly curved upwards involuntarily.
Don't make him wait too long.
Shen Yan hurriedly wiped her face, tidied up her collar and sleeves, and left the bathroom. When he returned to the table, Ning Xiaoxiao saw him before Qi Qin, and his expression was stunned, but he was not as careful as before he left, and could greet him more normally.
It seemed that Qi Jin should have said something to her while he was away.
"It's so slow, I've eaten up your share." Qi Jin turned his head slightly and met his gaze, showing no difference from his usual attitude, and took him away halfway.
"Sorry for keeping you waiting." Shen Yan put his hand on his shoulder and apologized in a low voice.
Qi Jin's gaze stayed on his face for a long time, as if looking for confirmation. Shen Yan looked back at each other silently, without any dodge. After Qi Jin finished reading, he suddenly laughed twice, reached out and patted the back of his hand lightly, as if to comfort him: "I lied to you, hurry up and eat."
Shen Yan responded naturally: "Well."
The hand on Qi Jin's shoulder has not been put down for a long time, and Qi Jin left the palm behind the hand that had patted him, and held it firmly.