Qiao Fengtian answered Zheng Siqi's call. On the phone, Zheng Siqi asked Qiao Fengtian to take Zaoer to pick up the little five sons and go home first, and he had some personal matters to deal with. Qiao Fengtian held up the receiver, and was secretly scratched by Zao'er, clenched it lightly, nodded and said yes.
At dusk in Linan, Jinji Lake near the Iron Fourth Bureau, the sun is brewing in the dark green still water.
Leaning on the fence, Zheng Siqi finished smoking half a pack of cigarettes left in the car, one by one, turning the unicorn's keychain in the other hand, and when the red mark on his face gradually faded, he didn't want Zao'er to see it. The mark was swollen and hot, as if it was branded, not only pain, but also Zheng Siyi's heartache and forbearance, puzzlement and doubt. Zheng Siqi bought a bottle of iced mineral water and put it on one side, and a drop of melted water dripped down his neck into his collar.
When I was alone, I especially enjoyed blending myself into an empty shot; now I want to stay side by side with Qiao Fengtian, even if I don't speak.
When the phone rang, Zheng Siqi took it out and answered, "Well?"
"Where are you?" Qiao Fengtian asked him with a short breath of anger.
"I wait-"
"I'm asking where you are." Qiao Fengtian interrupted him, "Are you still hiding from me? I don't bring Zaoer, I'll find you, where are you?"
Zheng Siqi paused for a second or two, smiled into the microphone, and looked up at the green crown of a tree surrounded by two people, "I'm on the edge of Jinji Lake."
"Be specific."
"Specific..." Zheng Siqi deliberately teased him, brushing the water droplets on his chin with the back of his hand, "I'm under a very big tree."
"..." Qiao Fengtian sighed silently over there, "it's like an online joke, you ask your girlfriend where she is, and she says something under a cloud."
"I don't have a girlfriend." Zheng Siqi pretended to be dumbfounded at Qiao Fengtian.
"My God." Zheng Siqi couldn't see Qiao Fengtian resting on his forehead, "Is this the point of this sentence? The trees in Jinji Lake are counted by mu. According to you, I have to bring an aerial camera. Looking for you." Qiao Fengtian emphasized, "Tell me well!"
Qiao Fengtian seldom catches his eye with him, cherishes it so much that he doesn't say any serious words, occasionally speaking in such a harsh tone, Zheng Siqi feels vivid, the look of squinting and frowning lightly, whispering a word is right in front of his eyes.
"As soon as Ximen came in, there was a pebble road next to the small pavilion. There were two tables of Go, and I was on the side." Zheng Siqi pushed his glasses and said, "I'll wait for you", but did not say anything.
"Wait for me." Qiao Fengtian cut off the phone.
Qiao Fengtian got off the subway. It was the evening rush hour. The crowd was so crowded that he was suffocating. Sweat soaked irregular marks on his T-shirt. He was on the other side of Jinji Lake, separated from Zheng Siqi by a pool of water. Looking from a distance, Zheng Siqi was far from being as tall as he was looking at him, and under the tall and tall trees, he was just a swipe on the paper.
It was only then that he understood that in the face of such a choice, everyone was insignificant, with varying degrees of hesitation and self-defense, and there was an obvious tendency to bow and bow. It's just that some people gritted their teeth and struggled, some people bowed down and couldn't get up from their knees, and some people just slammed their hands and escaped.
It was too late for Zheng Siqi to whitewash the weakness, so Qiao Fengtian accepted it without authorization. He approached across the arch bridge across the lake, only to see the palm print on his face and a handful of cigarette butts in his hand. The heart was hit by something at once, and the rapid stabbing pain turned into a long dull pain.
"Hey." Qiao Fengtian walked over and patted him on the left shoulder, laughing deliberately and jokingly, "It's the first time I've seen you being beaten. It's a once in a thousand years, so it's quite new."
"It can open your eyes." Zheng Siqi unscrewed the mineral water and took a sip, then nodded, "I will show you the strength of a woman who can carry a patient of more than 160 pounds to the sixth floor."
"Then you have an internal injury, right?" Qiao Fengtian leaned over and smiled.
"When you didn't come, I was holding the tree and vomited blood." Zheng Siqi turned his head, stared at Qiao Fengtian's nose and pointed to his face, "What are you thinking?"
Qiao Fengtian raised his hand and pressed it on his face, "It hurts to death."
"anything else?"
"I think it's good to be able to hurt you." Qiao Fengtian didn't let go, but touched his face up and down.
Zheng Siqi couldn't help but raise the corner of his mouth, "Also."
"And... I think if I kiss you, will you feel better?" Qiao Fengtian tilted his head.
"Then try it."
The sun was setting in the west, and the sky turned from pale red to dark blue. Qiao Fengtian held onto the fence, tiptoed to blow on Zheng Siqi's face, and kissed again.
——
After going around Jinji Lake and leaving the park, Zheng Siqi and Qiao Fengtian did not crowd the subway anymore, but chose to take the late bus. This train has a short thread and few passengers, and the air-conditioning is extremely inefficient. You have to cover it with a towel to sit comfortably.
In the evening, the bus lights up when the bus arrives at the station. The carriage is dark blue and there are two or three passengers. Zheng Siqi and Qiao Fengtian sat side by side in the double seat in the back row, with Zheng Siqi leaning back and sticking to the window. Since he entered Lida to teach, he seldom took the bus.
"I actually like to take the night bus alone." The bus swayed forward, Zheng Siqi suddenly turned his head and asked Qiao Fengtian, "Since high school, if I don't have a destination, I can take the whole journey for a dollar. I don't want to come down."
"Listen... It's quite romantic." Qiao Fengtian put his hand on the back of the front seat, put his face on his hand and looked sideways at him, "but it's too petty, and it doesn't look like your style of painting."
"Then what style of painting do I have?" Zheng Siqi listened to the joy, "Immediately by the desert smoke and the sword?"
"That's not right, it's too rough." Qiao Fengtian shook his head, pinched his chin and thought for a while, "Actually... You should be a gentle scum?"
Zheng Siqi reached out and poked at the center of his eyebrows, "You're getting more courageous."
Qiao Fengtian deliberately pretended to bite his finger.
"I was very tired when I went back to the third year of high school. It was a desperate shot. I put all my energy in the paper and the sea of questions in school. When I got out of the self-study bag and stood up, my mind was blank and my legs were soft. The soul was hibernating at that time. My brain controls me to read and study mechanically, and I don’t know why, but I just don’t want to be mediocre all the way to the end.”
Zheng Siqi told a story, and even though he used a very written metaphor in his words, Qiao Fengtian didn't feel any change.
"I was tired when I got home. I had to continue writing papers that I couldn't finish. At that time, I only had to sit on the evening bus to go home. I could do nothing, think about nothing, listen to songs and watch the night scene outside the window, or just Lean back in the chair and close your eyes for a while."
Zheng Siqi turned his head out of the window, "At that time, about the city of Linan, I made some unrealistic imaginations on the bus. Zhang Ailing said that the street lights are the moon in the underworld floating in the bottomless gutter. I can't think of a better one. , I just think of the railway tracks in Linan, I think those are the blood vessels of the city's meridians, bringing fresh and obsolete things back and forth every day. I think the factory chimneys and cooling towers in Linan are the city's old and hard to heal scar."
Qiao Fengtian admired his ability to remember things more than ten years ago so clearly, and was impressed by his sensibility at that time. He was imaginative, "If you write an essay for the college entrance examination on the bus, you must get a perfect score, right?"
"My second college entrance examination, Chinese writing is a half-proposition." Zheng Siqi turned his head back again, and followed Qiao Fengtian's style, put his hand on the front seat, his face on the back of his hand, and the place where he was hit with a stick was still aching. , "Let's write about snow, which is a very relevant but difficult topic."
In that composition more than ten years ago, Zheng Siqi understood the snowflakes in the sky as an encouragement to all things. Encourage people to say that this world is actually worthy of God's washing, and it is worthy of extending the old to the new; if you can get up early and stand by the window to watch the snow, it means that you are still in good health. You just need to wait quietly for the snow to stop and melt, and you just need to have the hope that everything will germinate and bloom.
Zheng Siqi suddenly laughed embarrassedly, and pushed down his glasses, "I look back now, and there is a sense of compassion and superiority in my composition. It's like when I experienced something at a young age, I felt like I was about to break through my life. The true meaning of it is to go old-fashioned and persuade people who have a bad life to say, "You're cowardly or not, what's wrong with you? It's too naive."
As Wilde said, nothing is more evil than superficiality. The real fools, like those used by the gods for fun or to make fun of, are those who have no self-knowledge.
"A lot of people should think that they have a story, that they are different from others, and that others don't understand their pain at all."
Zheng Siqi looked from between Qiao Fengtian's eyebrows, to the tip of his nose, and then to his chin, "But we can see from a comparison, when we were the same age, how could I have your pain? I can still freely choose and dominate, how can I have it? You have to be sad."
Qiao Fengtian held back his laughter, wanting to say whether you suddenly want Lu Yu to have an appointment or an artistic life, what are you doing so serious and sensational all of a sudden.
"Fengtian." Zheng Siqi spoke first, "You are amazing."
Qiao Fengtian was startled.
"How much obstacles will be in the future, how much time will it take, how much I should put down and be humble, I will recognize how selfish and unreasonable others think I am." Zheng Siqi said, "As long as you stay by my side all the time."
Zheng Siqi told Zheng Siyi in the kitchen in the afternoon that he had given everything he could give to his close relatives, such as a stable job, a high social status, a real estate car, a healthy physique, a marriage without quarrels and interference, and well-behaved children.
It was very difficult to revise and revise the test of myself as a child and a father to a high score, but because the subjective answer of the last question was written too out of bounds, I had to be deducted without even the score of the test, which is too unfair. objective.
"He's the thing I've wanted the most to this day, no matter what, I can't let it go. Sometimes what you think is good is actually not good at all, isn't it?"
Zheng Siyi didn't speak for a long while, then turned to wipe the table top and stove, rinsed the chopping board under the sink and set it aside to dry, and then rubbed three or two rags and spread it to dry.
"What do you want me to say?"
Zheng Siyi propped up the book pool and said, "What do you want me to say when you say this? I put a knife on my neck and force you to stay away from him, or wait for you to fight. What about the knife around my neck forcing me to agree with you two? You don't call me asking for my opinion, you call it a notification."
"If you want to ask me what I think, then I'll tell you Si Qi, I don't agree, I definitely disagree." Zheng Siyi paused, "but I can only do so until I disagree. You are not a child, your nephew I'm going to college, no matter how much we break the bones and connect the tendons, I'm just your sister, not your mother, our lives are staggered, and I can't really boss you around."
"I used to force you to push hard, think about it is wrong." Zheng Siyi spread out her palm and glanced at it, and sighed, "I want to let it go and say less, maybe you are still a normal person now. "
Qiao Fengtian looked at Zheng Siqi's eyes with a gleam of water, and suddenly panicked, blinked his eyes and reacted for a while, then leaned over.
"you-"
"My sister was abandoned. I told her today that sometimes what you think is good is actually not good at all. I did it on purpose, and she understood it. She didn't speak for a while..."
As the bus moved forward, Qiao Fengtian touched his face as if he was at a loss.
"Actually, I don't have to be so completely right? I can be a little more roundabout. But, but I wanted her to understand, and I found that the result of my loyalty to myself was to hurt her. To be honest, I actually don't regret it that much. Zheng Siqi pushed down his glasses, "but I'm sad."
The night scene of Linan is much different from that seen more than ten years ago. At first, there were few pedestrians, just like in the early morning. Now there are many beautiful intentions, mottled light and shadow, and feasting lights, covering the broken walls and ruins on the other side of life.