An He didn't say anything, turned around and strode towards the office without looking back.
Na Chen stood on the stairs and looked at his back. After a while, he jumped down the last few steps one by one.
During the parents' meeting, An He was very attractive as he supported himself on the podium and spoke calmly. His short speech was full of personality but not ostentatious. It is good to have a class teacher like him.
"Brother, you haven't left yet?" Xu Jingyao ran over from the side, "Do you have money? I want to buy a bottle of milk tea."
Na Chen took out his wallet from his pocket, took out a 100-yuan note and handed it to her. Xu Jingyao didn't take it: "Five yuan is enough."
Na Chen took out a few hundred-yuan bills and stuffed them directly into her pocket: "New Year's money."
"My mother will scold me if she knows." Xu Jingyao looked at him with a frown.
"Do you really have to let your mother know?" Na Chen said as he walked towards the school gate with his hands in his pockets, "Your teacher An said that you are very outstanding. Don't worry about your grades all the time. That attitude made me think that your grades were at the bottom of the class."
Xu Jingyao smiled, thought about it, took out the money and chased after him to return it, but Na Chen held her hand and said, "Take it, consider it as a deposit with you."
"Why do you keep it here with me?" Xu Jingyao was stunned.
Na Chen held his belly and rubbed it, then turned and walked away quickly: "I'll come and ask you for it when I have an abortion and need to replenish my body."
Xu Jingyao stood there for a long time before whispering to him from behind: "You are crazy!"
When Na Chen walked out of the school gate and approached his car, he saw a boy in school uniform standing there staring at his car in a daze.
He got on the car, and the boy suddenly raised his head. When he saw him, he paused and said, "Is this your car?"
"Well," Na Chen took out the gloves and slowly put them on his hands. After he arranged his fingers one by one, he found that the boy was still standing next to him, so he narrowed his eyes and said, "Come up and I'll take you for a ride?"
The boy stared at him for a long time before saying, "Who are you to Xu Jingyao?"
Na Chen thought about it and raised the corner of his mouth: "Her father."
"What?" The boy's eyes widened.
Na Chen didn't say anything else. He stepped on the accelerator and the car sped away.
There was nothing to do today, so Na Chen made an appointment with the band to rehearse "A Flower on the Prairie".
When the car was about to reach the underground garage of Li Fan's house, the cell phone rang. Na Chen slowed down the car but did not stop. He drove slowly along the roadside.
The phone kept ringing and there seemed to be no sign of stopping. It kept ringing until it automatically cut off.
Na Chen breathed a sigh of relief and was about to speed up when the bell rang again.
He parked the car on the side of the road in annoyance, kicked the curb hard, took out his cell phone from his pocket and looked at it in his hand.
The ringing continued, and he finally picked up the phone when it rang for the fourth time.
"Nachen! Why don't you answer the phone!" My aunt's unhappy voice came from the other end.
"I didn't hear it." Na Chen supported himself on the ground with his legs and lowered his head to pat his pants.
"Your grandma missed you and insisted that you stay at her place for two days, so I asked her to pack her things and go there," my aunt said in a rather melancholy tone, "She hasn't been feeling well lately, so you have to take care of her! Your uncle and I are worried about her, but we can't persuade her..."
"Yeah." Na Chen hung up the phone before his aunt finished speaking.
Worried? Na Chen leaned over to the rearview mirror and smiled at himself in the mirror. Worried about letting the old lady come alone? Worried about talking for a long time without even asking if the old lady had arrived
"The acting is too bad." Na Chen sighed, stopped driving towards Li Fan's house, and turned around.
When Na Chen's car was about a hundred meters away from his building, he saw a few old men and women gathered on the side of the road. He found a parking space nearby and parked his car.
"They don't give me food to eat!" An old lady sat on a bench and slapped her thigh, "You kicked me out, and now I can't even find my way home!"
"Don't worry..." an old lady patted the old lady's shoulder and comforted her.
Na Chen walked up to the old lady and squatted down, patted her hands, and whispered in her ear, "Grandma!"
"Hey!" The old lady smiled happily when she saw him and said to the people around her, "My grandson is here!"
"Are you saying that I won't give you food?" Na Chen helped her up and continued shouting in her ear.
"Ah?" Grandma looked at him in confusion, "I'm not eating. I just finished eating."
"Where's your hearing aid?" Na Chen took grandma's small bag and looked through it helplessly, "Why didn't you wear your hearing aid when you came out?"
"I can hear it! I don't want to wear that. It's uncomfortable and the buzzing noise is so annoying." Grandma walked forward with an unhappy look on her face. When she reached the door of the unit, she turned in skillfully and reached out to press the elevator button.
"You can hear me. I shouted so loudly that the whole neighborhood could hear me," Na Chen stood behind her, "You can't find your home!"
Grandma ignored him. I don’t know whether she heard him or not.
After entering the house, Na Chen tidied up the room reserved for his grandma. When he was making the bed, his grandma came in, picked up a photo frame on the bedside table and started crying.
"Your mother is pitiful," grandma said, holding the photo frame, "You did it on purpose to put her photo here to make me feel uncomfortable."
"You took it out and put it there yourself last time." Na Chen wanted to take the photo frame away. He pulled it twice, but grandma held on to it and refused to let go, so he had to continue making the bed.
“Girl…” Grandma lay on the bed holding the photo frame and wiped her face with the pillowcase.
"Can you not do this?" Nachen's half-laid bed sheet was pressed down by his grandmother and he couldn't pull it out. He leaned on the edge of the bed and looked at his grandmother, "My mother is not dead."
"No one will see me off to the end of my life." Grandma continued to cry.
"Your son will see you off," Na Chen stood up and walked out of the house, taking a cup of honey water, which the old lady loved to drink, "He is very filial, and he is looking forward to seeing you off soon."
"I know." Grandma came out at some point and said behind him.
Na Chen smiled, made the honey and handed it to her, then bent down to look at the old lady's face: "Your ears are sharp from time to time, so you have to be on guard against bad words."
Grandma also stared at him, then lowered her head to drink a sip of honey water, raised her head and said, "You are a man today?"
"Yeah." Na Chen nodded.
There was a text message coming in on his phone, he took it and took a look, Li Fan asked him why he hadn't arrived yet.
He didn't reply, threw his phone on the sofa, and sat down in the chair by the window.
Grandma sat on the sofa and started talking, mainly about her illnesses, various illnesses, some of which were her own, and some borrowed from other old men and women. In short, there was no good place on her body.
In fact, last month, my grandma forgot to take her key and climbed into my uncle's house on the second floor through the window using a ladder. She said that she was seriously ill and it was just her hobby.
Na Chen listened in silence. When grandma talked about her illness, he didn't need to respond, he just listened.
After talking for an unknown amount of time, the topic suddenly changed. Without much transition, they were talking about their uncle. Grandma looked at him and said, "Your uncle has had a hard time."
"Um."
"The salary is so low, your aunt is in poor health, and your brother still has to go to school."
"Um."
"It's so hard. I have to give him some money to support his coffin."
Na Chen didn't say anything. He stood up and went into his room. He took out an envelope from the drawer and pulled out a bundle of money that had not been opened yet.
He put the money in grandma's hand, leaned close to her ear and raised his voice: "Take this money. If there is any more, give it to whoever you want. I will not give the money to your son. The only money I have is my father's death compensation. This money has nothing to do with anyone."
Grandma didn't take the money and looked at him: "You didn't get a share of the money from your father's company?"
"Yeah." Na Chen frowned. He didn't want to mention this person.
"Why!" Grandma shouted.
"Because your daughter is crazy," Na Chen looked at her with a smile on his face, "What if her son is also crazy? Who would leave money to a crazy person?"
Grandma didn't say anything for a long time, then lowered her head and began to cry.
Na Chen turned on the TV, put the remote control next to grandma, then sat back in the chair by the window, looked out the window, put his fingertips to his mouth and bit them.
When the floor clock in the living room pointed to half past six, grandma, who was sitting on the sofa watching TV, said, "I'm going to buy groceries."
"It's too late, let's go out to eat." Na Chen stood up and found that he had bitten his fingertips and his palms were covered in blood. He washed his hands, put on a Band-Aid, and walked to his grandmother and shouted, "Let's go out to eat!"
After taking my grandma to a restaurant outside the community to eat hotpot, she was in a good mood and kept singing opera on the way back. However, because she has been hard of hearing for many years, the tone of her voice was sometimes high and sometimes low. Na Chen couldn't hear the tune after the opera finished a paragraph.
“There’s no need to spend a fortune to be romantic…” Grandma entered the elevator and started singing again.
Na Chen's heart twitched for a moment, and he wanted to say something, but he didn't open his mouth. After the elevator door opened, he took his grandmother's hand, opened the door and walked into the house. His grandmother sang and walked towards the bathroom on stage steps: "The moon moves, the flower shadows are shining, and the beautiful woman is coming..."
After going to the toilet and washing her face, grandma went back to her room to sleep. Her habit of going to bed at 8:30 has not changed for decades.
Na Chen sat on the sofa, tilted his head back, rested his head on the backrest, closed his eyes, and continued to sing in a very low voice: "Tonight, the debt of lovesickness is over, and a pair of lovers are full of love..."
When he was a child, his mother would sit by his bed and sing softly before going to bed. He had never heard bedtime stories, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, or cradle songs. His mother only sang, either sad or happy, in a low voice. It was beautiful to hear, but not warm.
Na Chen returned to his room, without turning on the light, and sat motionless in the darkness, looking at an old photo hanging on the wall.
He didn't know how long he sat there, but his chin felt a little itchy. He raised his hand to scratch it and found that there were water droplets hanging on his chin.
Are you crying
Na Chen smiled, lay down on the bed and buried his face in the pillow, took out his cell phone and sent a text message to Li Fan, saying that they would rehearse at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon.
Li Fan quickly replied, "I am a flower on the grassland, just beginning to show my beauty, and a boy fell in love with me. Can I really sing this lyric?"
Na Chen laughed at the text message for a long time. Just don't let your wife hear it.
Having grandma living at home didn’t have much impact on Nachen. She usually watched TV, went for a walk downstairs, and cleaned the house.
The only thing that Na Chen couldn't stand was that his grandma got up early in the morning. She would get up at four or five o'clock and start cleaning up. She was hard of hearing, and the noise she made was almost like looting. Na Chen's sleep quality was always very poor. He would fall asleep at two or three o'clock, and be woken up by her at four or five o'clock. He would feel his heart beating a little irregularly while lying in bed.
When he arrived at Li Fan's garage in the afternoon, he sat down and leaned against the wall, wanting to sleep. He was very sleepy.
But when the rehearsal started, he became energetic. Not only him, but all the members of the band were also energetic.
As soon as Li Fan opened his mouth, people started laughing. When he sang "A flower on the grassland is as beautiful as the clouds", David played several wrong notes on the guitar. In the end, he squatted on the ground and laughed at the ground, and the only sound that could be heard was the hoarse sound of his breathing.
"Ah," Li Fan was quite helpless, "Actually, this song is quite suitable for Xiao Chenchen to sing. With a flick of his hair and a stretch of his long legs, he would ride on his horse to take me to my new home..."
"No, the uncles and aunts will be shocked when they hear this girl's smokey voice," Yan Yi said with a smile, leaning against the wall, "She'll be exposed as soon as she opens her mouth."
"Hurry up," Na Chen turned the drumstick in his hand a few times and beat out a series of drum beats, "Li Fan, hurry up and get excited. I'm excited too."
"What are you excited about?" Li Fan looked at him.
Na Chen turned his head sideways, shrugged his shoulders and threw him a wink: "I get excited when I think of grandpa and aunt."
"You're just acting crazy!" Li Fan clicked his tongue.
After the winter vacation, An He stayed in the house almost every day without going out. The weather was getting colder and colder, and he wanted to drive if the distance was more than 200 meters.
But he still had to go out. He drew a line on the calendar with his finger. If he didn't go to help his mother clean up the house, his mother would have to spend the New Year watching over a kitchen full of fast food boxes.
When An He went out, he took a few shopping cards with him, intending to take his mother to the shopping mall or supermarket. Sometimes he really worried that his mother would sit like that every day and eventually become unable to walk.
When he arrived downstairs at home, the car park was full. An He turned around twice and only found a very small parking space. With his skills of using a fly swatter to swipe the door card, it was a bit difficult to squeeze in.
Whenever this happened, he would regret buying the big 7 and would buy a smaller car that could be easily put anywhere. With such a big car, he was usually the only one in the car. In the past year, the only passenger in his car was Na Chen.
Thinking of Na Chen, he remembered how Na Chen leaned against the wall in the last row of the classroom on the day of the parents' meeting. He tapped his fingers lightly on the steering wheel twice, unable to describe the feeling.
When I walked to the door of my house, I still heard the familiar sound of mahjong. The only change was that there were two large black garbage bags at the door.
An He leaned over and bent down to take a look. They were all the lunch boxes that were originally piled up in the kitchen, as well as some messy garbage.
An He was a little surprised. It seemed that he had cleaned up the house
Just as I was about to use the key to open the door, it opened and someone came out carrying a garbage bag.
It was a young girl, whom An He had never seen before. He was stunned holding the key. Could it be that she hadn't been home for two months and walked into the wrong floor? Or were all her mom's mahjong friends so young
The girl was also stunned when she saw him, and she put down the garbage bag a little embarrassedly and stepped aside: "You are Aunt Peng's son, right?"
"Well, hello." An He responded and walked into the living room. The room was full of people, and the air was filled with a mixture of cigarette smoke and a strange smell from not opening the windows for ventilation for a long time.
My mother was playing cards while eating sunflower seeds. When she saw him come in, she shouted, "Hey, we were just talking about you, and you're back!"
An He couldn't tell who was who in the room. He had seen some of the faces several times before, and had no impression of some of them. He nodded to them, walked around to his mother, leaned in close and whispered, "Why do you let the guests clean up the room?"
"Who?" Mom looked up at the girl and said with a smile, "Hey, that's not a guest, that's my goddaughter, Zhao Yan, your aunt Zhang's daughter. I snatched her away from her when she just came back from college during the holidays."
Zhao Yan? An He looked at the pretty girl standing by the door and almost wanted to say that Aunt Zhang never listened to crosstalk.
"If you don't come home, my daughter will clean up the house for me," my mother held a card and slapped it in the middle of the table, "Two-tube!"
"It's okay, there's nothing to clean up. It will be done in a few minutes." Zhao Yan said with a smile, his voice quite crisp.
"By the way, Yanyan, didn't you say that no one helped you carry the groceries? Why don't you ask your brother Anhe to go shopping with you?" Aunt Zhang next to her said, "Anhe, you drove back, right?"
"Yes, let An He accompany her." Mom added.
"No need," Zhao Yan shook his hand, "Brother just came in, don't run out."
"Hey, just run away. What's the big deal? Young men and women can have something to talk about when they go shopping together," said a middle-aged man at the table whom An He had seen several times but could not remember his name. "Go ahead."
Before An He could say anything, everyone in the room said, "Go, go, go."
An He was very unhappy. He either didn't want to go shopping with them or was annoyed by these people. But he still walked to the door and said to Zhao Yan, "Let's go. Where are you going to buy things?"
Zhao Yan followed him out the door, rubbing his hands in embarrassment: "I'm sorry, brother, it's really not necessary. My mom kept urging me to buy New Year's goods, and I just said that there was no one to help carry them..."
"It's okay, I'll help you carry it." An He said.
There is a big supermarket just a few blocks away from my home. Because it is surrounded by residential areas, it is quite lively before the festival. It is crowded with people, adults and children alike, shouting and making noise.
When An He walked out of the parking lot, he heard loud music, probably because there was an event in the small square next to it.
"Something... Street... Year..." Zhao Yan looked over there and read the words on the red banner hanging in the small square.
"New Year's Cultural Performance," An He read to her, "Are you nearsighted?"
"Well," Zhao Yan covered his mouth with his scarf and smiled, looking over there, "My nose is too flat to hold glasses, and my eyes are too small to fit in contact lenses."
"Do you want to go and take a look?" Anhe pointed to the small square.
"Okay, I'd like to join in the fun."
The parties and performances on the streets are basically all performed by middle-aged women. They just put their usual square dance on the stage and count it as a program. Occasionally, there will be a group of children, and the men who occasionally appear are all old men.
The cultural performances in the small square were of the same model. The stage was well-built and there was a lady who was much younger than the aunt announcing the show.
An He and Zhao Yan squeezed to the side of the stage. There were few people there, but while they could see the stage, they could also see the messy backstage behind the backdrop. The middle-aged women were huddled together and applying makeup on their faces.
The first few programs were quite lively, with a yangko band of middle-aged ladies, a drum and bugle corps of middle-aged ladies, a chorus of children, and a few elderly amateur singers coming on stage to sing a section of Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy.
The speaker was too close to them. An He's eyeballs were shaken by the speaker, which was more than one meter tall and looked quite professional but was actually a bit broken. He was just about to tell Zhao Yan that they should go shopping first when several middle-aged women dressed in street dance style suddenly stood up from behind the background board.
An old lady shouted loudly, "Our band is here!" There was obvious pride in her voice.
There was a band? An He turned his head and looked, and a pickup truck drove to the "backstage".
After the car door opened, several people jumped out of the car.
After An He saw the first person who jumped down, he howled in his heart, No way!
Li Fan? Birdman
He stared at the car door. Although the lights were dim when he went to Yege with Na Chen that day, he still recognized several people as members of the band.
When the last person got off the bus, An He saw the familiar long legs and leather boots and whispered, "Fuck."
Na Chen's long black hair was blown by the wind, and a few strands of hair floated on his face. Half of his face was covered by sunglasses, and only his fiery red lips could be seen.
An He simply couldn't describe the feeling of seeing Na Chen during the street auntie's performance.