Birthday wishes on the Waibaidu Bridge
After being promoted to the second grade, Li Li and Pei Shangxuan's tablemate relationship was fixed because they changed to a new class teacher.
Tao Haijuan did not follow the class to the second grade. Although she has many wonderful ideas for managing the class, she only adopts a "doing nothing" attitude towards the students' grades. In such a situation of laissez-faire, except for Li Li who saved a little face by being the first in the grade, none of the other students in the fourth class squeezed into the top 50 in the grade. In 1990, when achievements were the only heroes, Tao Haijuan had to bear the responsibility for ineffective teaching.
Li Fengzhu, who used to teach the graduating class of the third grade, became their head teacher. He looked through the grade sheets and arranged students with good grades and poor students to be at the same table. He hoped that the top students could help improve the grades of the poor students, thereby improving the overall class score.
It's not wrong, but it's too utilitarian - Li Li commented. Pei Shangxuan smiled and tugged at her ponytail, and shouted: "Whatever, anyway, I don't have to change my deskmate every week anyway. After three weeks, who remembers what was said at the end?"
Li Li patted Pei Shangxuan's hand that was abusing her hair, so hard that Pei Shangxuan screamed. While touching the back of Li Li's beaten hand, he muttered how she would be so rude, how could she marry in the future.
"I want you to meddle in your own business." Li Li rolled her eyes, picked up the new English textbook to preview the words, and didn't bother to pay attention to Pei Shangxuan - the words "can't get married" were often on Li Meiqing's lips, and she felt resistant.
When Li Li read the book, Pei Shangxuan felt bored, so he tried every means to attract her attention and chat with him. He couldn't bear the active person in his temper, and he couldn't be as calm as her.
"Li Li, when you're thirty and you still can't get married, I'll marry you reluctantly." He moved his face closer and pushed aside the English book she was blocking in front of her eyes with his hands. For a fourteen-year-old boy, his understanding of the word "marriage" is limited to the dictionary explanation, and the earth-shattering Qiong Yao drama.
She raised her eyes and looked at Pei Shangxuan disdainfully, and said: "If you haven't cheated a wife with this face at the age of thirty, I will forcefully consider you, an idiot." After speaking, Li Li erected the textbook again. .
A joke becomes a gossip in the ears of the troublemakers. Pei Shangxuan is the handsome boy who ranks high in his grade, while Li Li is the best interpretation of the four words "talented but not handsome". It's strange to say that the rumors only say that she has climbed up to Pei Shangxuan, but there is no version that thinks that Pei Shangxuan, who has the lowest grades, is so lucky that she looks at him differently.
Li Li laughed it off, she didn't know when the rumors started to spread, and when she realized that she had become the talk of the girls in every class, even when she went to the bathroom, someone would point her out behind her back.
She told Pei Shangxuan as a joke, and laughed heartlessly, but Pei Shangxuan kept a gloomy face and said nothing.
"Are you unhappy?" She noticed Pei Shangxuan's abnormality, and stopped in front of the newsstand at the entrance of the alley. Pei Shangxuan ignored her and walked straight forward with his head down.
Li Li bought an evening paper and ran after him with the newspaper, "Pei Shangxuan, why are you losing your temper?"
"I didn't." He defended guiltily, a little lacking in confidence.
Ordinary girls usually say "you have" loudly to refute the other party, but Li Li stared at Pei Shangxuan for a long time, nodded and said: "I understand."
Li Li turned around and walked towards her home. With his hands in his trouser pockets, Pei Shangxuan kicked the gravel under his feet and watched her back. Throughout the second grade, it was widely rumored that "Pei Shangxuan likes Li Li", and because of this, he often turned faces with others. He hated being compared to them, for reasons that were unclear.
Uncle Li Guoqiang has a girlfriend, a slender and beautiful girl. He was busy with his love affairs and came back very late every day. Li Meiqing was also dating a divorced man. Usually only grandma and Li Li were relatively silent in the family.
Li Li was doing her homework in the dimly lit kitchen, and the old-fashioned radio was playing Yue opera—Li Li's grandmother was a fan of the opera, and she could hum a few words casually after years of nurturing, which was quite like Yin Guifang's genre. . Objectively speaking, Li Li's singing level is average, and it's lucky that she doesn't lose her tune. Every school chorus competition, she would mix in the crowd and look at Pei Shangxuan who was in high spirits under the spotlight unconvinced. Compared with her, Pei Shangxuan, who narrowly passed the main class, is quite talented in music. He is a member of the school chorus, so he naturally became the class lead singer.
Li Li's eyesight has been declining, and it has developed to the point where her eyes can only be seen clearly when she squints into a line. She told her grandma that she was going to get glasses. The grandma, who was wearing reading glasses, stopped her sewing, looked at her, and said that girls don't look good in glasses.
"I don't look good anymore." Li Li was a little depressed, "I can't listen in class without glasses, and it will be even worse in the future."
Grandma conveyed her request to Li Meiqing, and took the money for glasses from her and handed it to Li Li. Li Li finds it ironic that the estrangement between mother and daughter has reached such a level.
The person who accompanied her to get her glasses fitted was Pei Shangxuan, and the young man volunteered to choose a frame for her. Li Li thought it was his gesture of reconciliation, an apology for the bad break up after school a few days ago.
Pei Shangxuan is very picky, sometimes he said that her head is too big and the round frame is not suitable, and sometimes he said that the frame with thin edge looks more like a nerd, after picking for a long time, he said to her sullenly: "It's a big deal, I will concentrate on taking notes in class , and then lend you a copy."
There was sweetness in Li Li's heart for no reason, like eating honey, sweet enough to make a toothache. Then I shivered again, and I couldn't help frowning into the word "Chuan", "Pei Shangxuan, everyone says you are an idiot, can you copy the notes for me for the rest of my life?"
Although Li Li was speaking out of anger, after saying it, a sense of loss emerged spontaneously. She and Pei Shangxuan were destined to be separated, just like Kaniggia who she fell in love with before the summer vacation, and she couldn't find any news about him after that.
Pei Shangxuan kept silent, pointed to a pair of purple oval frames, and motioned Li Li to try them on.
Li Li's facial features were ordinary, but fortunately her fair skin made up for the shortcomings, and the light silver-purple color matched her complexion very well. Pei Shangxuan finally nodded with satisfaction.
The clerk asked Li Li to go for an optometry, and he waited patiently for her outside. There happened to be a boy from the same class passing by outside the optical shop. Seeing Pei Shangxuan in the shop, he rushed in yelling.
"Pei Shangxuan, what are you doing here?" Zhang Yong, the leader, was in the period of changing his voice, and he didn't know how to restrain his ugly male duck voice, so he shouted at the top of his voice every time.
Why are they here to join in the fun! Pei Shangxuan recalled the rumors circulating in the class, one head and two grown up, "I don't want to go home, I just go shopping." He thought in his heart to take these guys out of the optical shop as soon as possible, so that no one would find himself with Li Li .
"Then let's go to the billiards room? There is a place where junior high school students can go." The man who spoke was a boy named Deng Jianfeng. His grades were the bottom one in his grade, but he was a master when it came to where to play.
"OK, let's go together." Pei Shangxuan agreed without thinking about it, and rushed out of the optical shop first.
After Li Li went to the store after the examination, Pei Shangxuan was not seen. The clerk told Li Li that the picky boy left with some male classmates. Li Li thought of Pei Shangxuan's abnormal behavior a few days ago, and she suddenly realized that it was a very embarrassing thing for Pei Shangxuan to be friends with herself.
Li Li went home alone, the words he said before echoed in his ears
"It's a big deal, I will concentrate on taking notes in class, and then I will borrow it for you to copy."
Sure enough, this was just what Pei Shangxuan said casually, and it couldn't be taken as the truth.
Before getting the glasses, it was still difficult for Li Li to copy blackboard writing in class. Seeing her squinting her eyes trying to read the chalk writing on the blackboard clearly, Pei Shangxuan couldn't help but snatched her notebook to do it for her.
"Let go." She raised her arm and pressed down on her notebook, "I still have to copy notes." She said in a low voice.
"As far as your eyesight is concerned, I think it's better to forget it." Pei Shangxuan grabbed her arm and lifted it effortlessly. With the other hand, he took the notebook away. Pei Shangxuan compared what she wrote with the Chinese teacher's writing on the blackboard.
Li Li bit her pen, and thoughtfully looked at the serious-looking young man—this guy, who obviously cared about others misunderstanding their relationship, sometimes made some intimate behaviors to create more misunderstandings. It made her dumbfounded.
Pei Shangxuan's grades in reading are not very good, but his handwriting is unexpectedly beautiful. Every teacher in the class said that he was not concentrating, if he was willing to put some effort into his studies, he would definitely be in the top ten of his grade. But he just goes in one ear and goes out the other, humbly accepting repeated admonitions.
When he is idle and bored, Li Li will try to persuade him to be a student who "study hard and make progress every day" instead of thinking about eating, drinking and having fun all day long. Pei Shangxuan raised his eyebrows and ruffled her hair, saying that Li Li's tone was like his mother's.
Li Li's eyes widened, jumped up and grabbed Pei Shangxuan's neck fiercely, scolding him repeatedly as "hateful".
The whole class watched with their eyes, saying that the two of them had nothing to do with each other. Even Chen Qian, the most honest girl in the class, shook her head and said she didn't believe it.
It was a coincidence that they met at the entrance of the alley before, but I don't know when it became a deliberate waiting. Every day they go to school together and walk for ten minutes. If he doesn't go out to play after school, he will go home with Li Li.
Young men and women in this period are sensitive, and everyone is like wearing a microscope, magnifying clues infinitely. Li Li and Pei Shangxuan are a pair that everyone can't understand.
Pei Shangxuan returned the notebook to Li Li, with an expression on his face that was obviously asking for credit, "I said I would copy the notes for you, did I lie?"
"I can get the glasses in two days, so I don't need to bother you anymore." Li Li thanked lightly, turned her head and stopped talking to him.
"When? I'll accompany you." On the day he accompanied her to get her glasses fitted, he left before saying goodbye in a hurry, feeling a little sorry.
"Is the degree deep?" Seeing Li Li ignoring him, Pei Shangxuan lay half of his body on the desk, forcing his face with regular features to come under her nose.
"Are you angry?" Pei Shangxuan remembered that Li Li liked to bite his lips when he was angry, as if the bloody pain could divert the anger in his heart. He called the behavior "self-abuse" and tried repeatedly to stop her from abusing him.
Li Li is a stubborn girl who is difficult to persuade. He sometimes even thought she was deliberately uncooperative, as if to vent by hurting a part of his body.
Li Li loosened her teeth suddenly, and looked at him calmly, "I'm not angry, you're not capable of making me unhappy." She raised her head, smiling brilliantly.
Pei Shangxuan instantly felt a blur in front of his eyes—Li Li was indeed not a beautiful girl, she was a bit ugly at first glance, but after getting used to her facial features, she could occasionally find touching moments. Like now, this is a cheerful smiling face that will make people's irritated mood swept away. After many years, Pei Shangxuan finally understood that Li Li, who was smiling like this, had only dark clouds in her heart—Li Li was a cheerful pessimist, a complex of contradictions.
Pei Shangxuan didn't know Li Li, even though the girl had been by his side for fifteen long years.
Finally, he asked her: "Is it because I am too familiar with you that I can't read your mind?"
She showed the smile he had been familiar with for fifteen years, and replied calmly: "Because you don't love me."
Pei Shangxuan and Li Li left the school one after the other, and he was waiting for her at the entrance of the optical shop.
"Hey, you walk like a tortoise." The two walked out of the classroom at about the same time, but he waited for her for a quarter of an hour. For the impatient Pei Shangxuan, these fifteen minutes are simply longer than fifteen centuries.
Li Li rolled her eyes silently, and couldn't help complaining in her heart: Isn't it because you are worried about being discovered by other students and embarrassing you? I really don't know good people! Having said that, why does this guy have to accompany me to pick up the glasses
The clerk took out the finished glasses from the paper bag, opened the frame and asked her to try them on. Li Li reached out to take it and put it on, the thin metal frame hooked the left and right ears, and there was a slight pressure on the bridge of the nose.
"Dizziness." She followed the clerk's instructions to look at the floor, and suddenly felt dizzy.
"No way, could it be that the optometry is not accurate?" Pei Shangxuan turned Li Li's face so that she was facing him. He wanted to be the first to see her wearing glasses, and it was just as he imagined—not very good-looking.
The clerk was a fat middle-aged woman. After hearing Pei Shangxuan's accusation, she quickly defended: "It's normal to feel uncomfortable wearing glasses at first."
The man with black pupils behind the lenses stared at him calmly, Li Li said calmly: "OK, you don't like my glasses, do you? I don't know why, I wear glasses on my own. It's not relative, it's not your turn to be picky." She raised her round chin slightly, and her tone was a little provocative.
Pei Shangxuan was tongue-tied, he was always inferior to Li Li in terms of eloquence, and every time he was refuted by her speech, he was rendered speechless. When Pei Shangxuan was sulking, Zhang Yong and Deng Jianfeng ran into the store bluffing.
"Pei Shangxuan, you and Li Li are indeed dating!"
Pei Shangxuan stared angrily, curled his beautiful thin lips, and said contemptuously: "I don't like ugly monsters." He was angry and misunderstood, so he couldn't choose what to say.
Pei Shangxuan's words aroused Li Li's deep inferiority complex, she looked at him with deep eyes.
Li Li can make herself a smart girl, but she can't make herself beautiful. She pretended not to care, but Li Li couldn't restrain the envy in her heart when she saw those beautiful girls who could attract attention wherever they went. She thought more than once that if wisdom and beauty could be exchanged, she would rather be a beautiful stupid girl.
The store was instantly quiet, and the air seemed to be stagnant. After Pei Shangxuan yelled out hurtful words, he regretted secretly. There are thousands of words, why did he choose this one sentence
Deng Jianfeng realized that the atmosphere was not right, he exchanged winks with Zhang Yong, bowed his head and slipped away.
Pei Shangxuan moved his lips to apologize to Li Li, but was frightened into silence by her distant and indifferent eyes.
Li Li calmly picked out the mirror case and glasses cloth, put the glasses with adjusted frame spacing into the mirror case, thanked the clerk and left. From the beginning to the end, she never looked at Pei Shangxuan again.
Pei Shangxuan felt uncomfortable, and followed Li Li step by step with his head drooping. Li Li still ignored him and walked home alone.
Pei Shangxuan walked around the alley of Li Li's house three times, but couldn't summon up the courage to knock on the door to apologize. Why should I apologize? She was the one who scolded me for being nosy first! The fourteen-year-old boy defended his unintentional slip of the tongue in his heart, and immediately became righteous again.
"Li Li, you are still a cheapskate!" He made a face in front of the girl's house, yelled and ran away.
Lai
Li stood in the courtyard, listening to Pei Shangxuan's yelling outside the door, expressionless.
Li Li wanted to know what it was like to like someone, would she feel sad because the other person belittled herself? In the silent late night, she listened to the ancient wall clock slowly passing by the footsteps of time, feeling desolate.
The woman Li Guoqiang likes is Yan Liming, and he takes her and Li Li to eat Little Shaoxing Three Yellow Chicken. In the past, the little uncle would give Li Li the chicken wings, but now the chopsticks are turned to another person.
Biting her chopsticks, Li Li felt that the taste of the chicken had changed, especially when she saw the woman who was very likely to be her aunt smiling like a flower, Li Li felt a little bit more lost.
Li Guoqiang sent Yan Liming home first, and walked along North Sichuan Road in late autumn, holding Li Li's hand. Li Li raised her head and looked at the side of her little uncle, her mind was full of ups and downs - the days of watching the World Cup in the middle of the night a few months ago seemed to have passed for a long, long time, and the images began to gradually blur.
"Uncle, do you like Aunt Yan very much?"
"Um."
"You two, will you get married?" She wondered why this irrelevant woman would compete with her for her little uncle's favor
Li Guoqiang smiled, bent down and patted Li Li's head, "Xiao Li, are you angry because you didn't eat chicken wings?"
Li Li rolled her eyes, "I'm not as naive as a three-year-old child, why are you angry about this kind of thing?"
"Xiao Li, it will be difficult for a girl with a bad mouth to marry in the future." Li Guoqiang said pretending to be worried. Li Li broke away from his hand, and asked suspiciously: "Uncle, since you were young, you have said that I can't get married. What kind of girl is likable?"
Li Guoqiang laughed loudly, and kept saying, "My little Li has finally grown up and wants to get married." Li Li rolled his eyes several times but didn't stop him from talking nonsense, and finally couldn't bear it. Uncle punches.
"Little uncle, I'm not yet fourteen, you are encouraging me to fall in love early."
Li Guoqiang stopped his smile, knelt down to look at her, his playful expression faded, and he said seriously to his niece: "Li Li, don't waste your feelings and time on someone who can't possibly like you, understand?"
Li Li nodded with a vague understanding, then shook her head again.
"How do I know that person can't possibly like me?"
"Silly girl, when you meet her, you will naturally understand."
Fifteen years later, the 29-year-old Li Li thought that her first teacher was very irresponsible, so she was defeated.
December 5, 1990, Wednesday, Li Li's fourteenth birthday.
Grandma specially made a big bowl full of boiled egg vermicelli soup for her breakfast. Li Guoqiang, who was on the morning shift, handed her a birthday present before leaving the house—a scented ballpoint pen that is popular nowadays.
"Little uncle, I love you!" Almost all the girls in the class have one, and she also wants one. She can smell the fragrance while writing homework and taking notes.
"You are hypocritical!" Li Guoqiang squeezed Li Li's round face hard, causing her to scream in pain.
"It's so noisy!" The bleary-eyed Li Meiqing walked out of the front living room where she was sleeping, and went to wash in front of the sink. Li Guoqiang waved his hand and slipped out of the house, Li Li hurriedly lowered his head to eat breakfast, planning to make a quick decision and go to school after eating, so as not to annoy Li Meiqing.
"Why are you eating so fast, rushing to reincarnate?" Li Meiqing sat down at the Eight Immortals table after washing, glanced at the boiled egg vermicelli soup in her bowl, and raised her eyebrows that slanted into her temples, "I said, Mom, After so many years of birthday, you don’t come up with something new? It’s no wonder that you don’t get tired of it after eating it for more than ten years.”
Li Li quickly swallowed the half of the fan biting in her mouth, raised her head and said happily: "Mom, do you remember that today is my birthday?"
"How could it be possible to forget that you were born with painstaking efforts fourteen years ago, and I almost died of pain." Li Meiqing brushed the broken hair covering her daughter's cheeks behind her ears, and looked carefully, "Look horizontally and vertically Look, you don't even look any better."
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Even though she was said to be ugly, Li Li was still very happy, it was rare for her mother to talk so much to herself.
Li Meiqing put down her hands, ate breakfast on her own, and said casually, "I'm getting married, and you're going to have a new father soon."
Li Li turned to look at grandma, the old man was also surprised. Li Li always knew that her mother was dating people, and she was mentally prepared to have a new father, but it was hard to avoid being surprised when she first heard it.
"Come back early after class, and I'll take you to have dinner with Uncle Liu." Li Meiqing glanced at her daughter who was still in a daze, and said in a vicious voice: "Don't make me look so stupid for dinner tonight—shame on me Now."
Li Li has been in a trance all day, today is her fourteenth birthday, and she is going to have a new father.
As the tablemate, Pei Shangxuan naturally discovered Li Li's abnormality. The helpless thing is that they are in the delicate cold war period, and Li Li ignores him like air—since he shouted "I don't like ugly monsters" last time in the optician's shop, she refuses to interact with him again.
He waited for her at the entrance of the alley, waiting for no one to be seen. When he rushed into the classroom a minute before morning self-study, he found that Li Li had already sat in his seat. He blamed her with a playful smile for almost causing him to be late, she didn't even lift her eyelids, turned around and handed the homework book to the person behind to copy. The obvious gesture of refusal made Pei Shangxuan discouraged—he has been a figure in the limelight since he entered middle school, when did he receive such neglect? So he also became stubborn, and got angry with her to see who would bow his head first.
The rumors gradually subsided, Pei Shangxuan thought that he didn't have to sulk because others forced them into a couple, but his mood became even more depressed. A boy of this age is most disgusted by others saying that he likes so-and-so, and feels shameful, as if liking someone is a shameful thing. He not only disliked this, but also faintly disliked Li Li. The boy's thinking is very simple: Li Li is a good friend and a buddy, but he can't be a girlfriend. He likes pretty girls, like most people.
After school, Pei Shangxuan, who was going to play billiards with Zhang Yong and the others, saw Li Li laying lifelessly on the desk, he hesitated to put down his schoolbag and asked. He was ready to be rejected, but unexpectedly got her answer.
"Mom wants to take me and her marriage partner to dinner." Li Li's face was pressed against her arms, and her voice became hoarse after being suppressed, "Today is my birthday."
Pei Shangxuan grabbed Li Li's shoulders to make her look up, and Pei Shangxuan's young and beautiful face jumped into her eyes - with an excited expression.
"Li Li, come with me." Pei Shangxuan took out her schoolbag from Li Li's desk, hurriedly stuffed the pencil case and books into it, and continued to say while tidying up, "I'll take you to a place, I promise It can make you feel better."
Li Li looked at the beaming young man, and automatically ignored his hurtful words earlier—it was always difficult for Li Li to be really angry with Pei Shangxuan.
Pei Shangxuan took Li Li to the Bund. Standing on the world-famous Waibaidu Bridge, he jumped into the dark Huangpu River and shouted: "Li Li, happy birthday!"
The ferry on the Huangpu River docked, and the buzzing siren sounded from a distance, which seemed to echo Pei Shangxuan's blessings from afar.
Li Li raised her hand to make a trumpet shape around her mouth, and shouted towards the surging river with all her strength: "Thank you, Pei Shangxuan!"
At the age of fourteen, she thought, maybe this is what it feels like to like someone: I want to be with him very much, and I will never be separated for the rest of my life.