Generally, I have to submit my ideological report for the previous month before the tenth of every month.
There are five of us in our department, including me. After graduating from the amateur party school, we were all candidates for training as probationary party members. We were required to write a thought report every month. Chen Ting was there for the first two months, so we handed it over to Chen Ting. He was a teacher in the Youth League Committee.
Now that he is not here, the matter has to be handed over to Teacher Li who occasionally appears in the West District.
I don't know about other schools, but our Youth League Committee, in addition to student affairs, is also responsible for recommending outstanding students to join the Party.
I thought that if I really joined the party, maybe Chen Ting would be my introducer.
Before he went to the training, he would talk to me from time to time to understand my thoughts. He and Secretary Wu of the college probably knew a little about my family situation, so they paid special attention to me.
Even after knowing that I also chose Russian, he made me his class representative.
After the second class in the afternoon, when we came out of the intensive reading class, I happened to meet Secretary Wu, who cared about me so much.
He called out from a distance: "Student Xiao Xue."
I pulled Bai Lin and smiled at him: "Teacher Wu."
The old man doesn't like people calling him secretary or professor, he just likes the word "teacher". So I always think he is like a scholar.
"Are you still keeping up with your studies?" he asked with a smile.
"It's okay." I said ashamedly.
"I didn't see you at the speech contest on December 9 yesterday. I thought you were representing our Foreign Languages College again."
I was happy: "How could that be possible? Our college is full of talented people. It just happened that I got a bargain last year."
While he was talking to me, more and more people came and kept greeting him. I was too embarrassed to say hello so I just said goodbye to him.
Unexpectedly, Secretary Wu stopped me and said, "Xiao Xue, come to my house for dinner when you have time."
Christmas is approaching and the end of the semester is approaching, so everyone is getting busy.
There are 30 people in our class, and only five of them are boys, which is already a lot. So most of the girls have left. Those who are still single are also actively looking for a way out before Christmas.
Even Song Qiqi only returned to the dormitory when the lights were turned off every day. This was too abnormal.
It makes us feel a little weird.
Bai Lin sat on the bed and said, "I just find it strange. How come my classmates turned Christmas into Valentine's Day?"
"Qiqi, why haven't you come back yet? If it's any later, we'll have to climb over the wall."
"Are you in love?" Bai Lin asked.
"I don't know," I said. "I haven't heard her mention it."
At this time, Zhao Xiaotang suddenly said: "I have something about Song Qiqi that I want to discuss with you."
"What?" Bai Lin and I asked in unison.
"I went out last week and came back and saw a man driving Song Qiqi back."
"Oh." I thought of Mu Chenghe's car.
"I didn't take it seriously at first, but when we got off the car, the man held Qiqi's hand," Zhao Xiaotang continued.
"No way!" Bai Lin wailed, "Xiaotang, you actually just remembered to report such important gossip now!"
"Didn't I think it's better to have less trouble than more?" Zhao Xiaotang said lightly, combing her long curly hair.
She has always been this kind of person, not caring about anything, making many friends outside. She doesn't care much about the affairs of classmates and roommates, and she won't go to comfort anyone who cries, which is completely different from Bai Lin's outspokenness.
"Don't say I said that," Zhao Xiaotang added.
However, as soon as Song Qiqi came back, Bai Lin couldn't wait to jump forward, grabbed her neck and said, "Qiqi, you didn't tell us about the good news. How bad!"
"Leniency to those who confess." I smiled.
"What good news?" Song Qiqi asked back.
"What a happy event. Everyone saw it." Bai Lin said loudly, but fortunately this woman did not betray Zhao Xiaotang.
Speaking of happy events, Song Qiqi immediately understood, but contrary to her usual behavior, she denied it flatly: "What happy event? You are seeing things wrong."
Bai Lin laughed and said, "Qiqi, you are so reluctant to speak, which makes us smell the scent of adultery."
Originally, this was a very common joke, and the word "adultery" was often on our lips. Unexpectedly, Song Qiqi's face turned pale when she heard it: "What are you talking about?" Then she picked up her pajamas and went to the bathroom to change clothes.
Bai Lin wanted to ask more, but I stopped her and she shook her head at me.
After she went into the bathroom, the three of us looked at each other.
I whispered, "Something's not right." Although Song Qiqi is usually gentle, he is not a stingy person at all.
Bai Lin said, "I feel the same way."
Zhao Xiaotang raised his hands: "Just pretend I didn't say anything."
The atmosphere in the dormitory that night was not very good. Before lights out, Bai Lin and I tried to joke with each other, hoping to liven up the atmosphere among the four of us. But Zhao Xiaotang did not cooperate at all, and was only interested in applying facial masks and surfing the Internet as usual.
Song Qiqi said nothing and was as quiet as usual.
I don’t know if the spring of our dormitory has arrived inexplicably in such a dead of winter.
At the same time, a man named Liu Qi appeared in my university life with an extremely enthusiastic attitude.
In fact, when he greeted me in the library, I didn't remember who he was, and I was too embarrassed to ask him, "Classmate, do I know you?" I just laughed it off while trying to search for this person in my mind. I guess in the end, he didn't know that I didn't even think I knew him.
I often encounter this kind of thing when answering the phone. Someone calls me from an unfamiliar number, doesn't introduce himself, and then says goodbye. I don't even know who the person is talking to on the phone.
The next day, when I went to the third canteen to get food, and the chef shook the spoon until there were only a few grains of rice left, I suddenly remembered that the mysterious man yesterday was Liu Qi who picked up Bai Lin's meal card.
Mu Chenghe's class is still the same.
The weather was getting colder and colder, and everyone was eager to shorten the break time and finish class early, and immediately return to bed. He also strung his classes together and let school end ten minutes early.
There was less than a month left before the winter break. Many elective courses were preparing for exams, including Russian. So, after he finished teaching this semester, he asked me to go to his office after class to get the review materials, and then see if the students were willing to print them out.
He said: "Eighty percent of the exam content is on the review questions, so let's review them carefully."
I glared: "Eighty points for just these two papers?"
He smiled and nodded.
I said happily: "Long live the teacher!"
"Don't print it out and use it to cheat," he added.
“… How could that be?” I lowered my head in embarrassment. This person really brought up things that were not relevant to the topic.
At this time, there were very few people.
He and I went downstairs, and we happened to meet a classmate. She seemed to have forgotten something and went back to the classroom to get it. When she saw Mu Chenghe, she nodded and greeted him, then quickly climbed up the stairs.
The snow was still falling, and I opened my umbrella, hesitating whether to share it with him.
Just then, a car came around the corner. He pulled my arm and forced me onto the sidewalk, and the tip of my open umbrella accidentally scraped his face.
He was stunned, stopped, blinked, and looked a little strange.
"What's wrong? Did you poke your eye?" I asked nervously.
He lowered his head and rubbed his eyelids with his fingers, then looked up at me, blinked again, and said, "It seems that the contact lens fell out."
"Ah!" I said, "Stop rubbing it, let me see."
Then I put away my umbrella, stood on tiptoe, and observed his red eyes.
"What about the other side?"
"Still," he said.
"Then don't move. Help me hold my things." After I said that, I gave him the umbrella and the book in my hand. Then I bent down and looked for the fallen lens on the ground with the faint light of my mobile phone.
"Forget it," he said. "It's hard to find."
"Don't underestimate me. I have a keen eye. I can easily find the rhinestones on the hairpin when they fell to the ground." I said, squatting on the ground, taking off my fluffy gloves, and searching carefully on the ground covered with snow with my bare fingers.
I didn't dare lift my foot, for fear of stepping on it.
Snowflakes fell one by one, landing on my hair and shoulders, and then suddenly stopped.
When I looked up, I saw Mu Chenghe holding the umbrella for me, so I smiled at him and continued looking.
"How strong are your eyesight?" I asked while I was busy.
"Six hundred on the left, five hundred and fifty on the right."
"The degree is so high. Both of my eyes are 5.0. You must be envious."
"Yeah, I'm quite envious." He said cooperatively.
Then, I stood up, picked up the small transparent plastic sheet, handed it to him, and said with a grin, "Look, didn't you find it?"
Although my five fingers were frozen red, I didn't care at all and even put on the look of a smug winner.
He was stunned for a moment, lowered his head and looked at my hand, then slowly moved his gaze upwards, finally falling on my face, and finally he couldn't help but smile: "You are really a child." Even his eyes softened when he spoke, as if there was a warmth that penetrated the ice and snow in this cold winter night.
I pouted and protested, "I'm not a child. I'm twenty-one."
It was a very strange feeling. I always hoped that I would never grow up. But when I heard Mu Chenghe say that I was a child again, I felt uncomfortable and couldn't wait to join the ranks of adults.
The next day, I was using the toilet in the bathroom cubicle. Just as I was about to flush the toilet, I heard someone outside saying while washing his hands, "Xue Tong from your class."
I was stunned.
"What?" another girl B answered.
"I took Russian class with her, and I saw her going downstairs alone with our Russian teacher. It was pretty weird. I saw it several times," said Girl A.
"She..." B said two words, feeling like he was left wanting more.
"I heard that Secretary Wu wanted to keep her in the college for internship next semester. It's really enviable."
Because we have to take the English Level 8 exam in our senior year, the college moved our internship time forward from the fourth year to the second half of the third year. Therefore, everyone is looking for a place.
"That's normal. Many teachers like her, there's nothing we can do about it."
"Why?"
"Forget it. It's not nice to say bad things about someone behind their back. And she's not annoying."
Girl A became interested: "Tell me, does your family have a background?"
"That's not the case."
"Why?"
"Because of her father."
"Her father?"
When I heard people talking about my dad, I flushed the toilet, pushed the door open and walked out. They were both startled when they saw me. I walked to the mirror and washed my hands as if nothing had happened, then said, "My dad wasn't a big shot, he was just a taxi driver, and he died while doing something righteous."
I turned off the faucet and couldn't find a place to wipe my hands, so I wiped them casually on my jeans and walked out of the bathroom.
My father passed away when I was a senior in high school.
They said that the robbers had robbed money at the bank counter, killed two bank security guards, changed cars and got into his taxi, and forced him to leave the city at knifepoint. At that time, my father lied to them and said he was taking a shortcut, but he actually took a detour to the nearest police station.
As soon as my father saw the police car outside the police station, he shouted "Police", and then the people in the car stabbed him to death.
This process was broadcast again and again on the news broadcasts of the provincial and municipal TV stations, accompanied by the tearful descriptions of the people at the scene, the personal memories of the police on duty, and the shocking pools of blood on the car and on the ground.
Later, many leaders came to our home to visit us.
His ashes were placed in the Martyrs' Cemetery in our city and he became a martyr.
I couldn't accept this fact at all.
My father is fat and he drives a taxi with someone else. Since he has to buy groceries and cook for me and my mother at home all year round, he always drives at night and takes a short nap during the day before getting up to cook.
He has a good temper, but he can't stand seeing me being bullied, otherwise he will be angrier than anyone else. But he is a very timid person, even some inevitable small frictions upstairs and downstairs, he is unwilling to argue and offend others, and always plays the role of peacemaker with a smile.
It is completely different from my mother's decisiveness.
So it is hard to imagine that one day he would become a hero who fought tenaciously against criminals.
When my grandfather heard the news that my father had died in the hospital due to ineffective medical treatment, the old man suddenly suffered a heart attack, choked and became a vegetable.
On the same day, the two men who loved me the most in the world could no longer love me.
At that time, my grandmother poked my mother's shoulder and cried bitterly, saying, "It's all because of you, woman, that our family is broken up. You are a jinx. You have been my wife for 20 years, but you couldn't give birth to a grandson, and you even took my son's life. You think you are a police officer, a hero, and you are better than him in every way. You have always looked down on him and always said that my son is useless and not a man. If you hadn't provoked him for so many years, would he have been so stupid?"
When I woke up in the morning, Bai Lin poked me and said, "What did you dream about last night? I heard you mumbling in your sleep in the middle of the night."
"Really?" I washed my face.
"Really. And it's definitely not memorizing words." She said seriously.
When I was in my sophomore year, I was going to take the CET-4 exam, which drove us crazy. I tend to talk in my sleep when I’m stressed out. It’s said that all the English words I memorized that day were in my sleep…
"You're not crying, are you?"
I tilted my head and thought seriously: "I seemed to have dreamed that you and Senior Brother Li were getting married, and at the wedding you even forced the bouquet on me."
Bai Lin glared at me and said viciously, "You're looking for a fight, aren't you?"
As the exams got closer, more and more people went to the library to study, and the atmosphere was tense and depressing. I read a few pages of the extensive reading textbook and began to feel sleepy, so I took out my diary and wrote.
I used to think that I was definitely different from other people in the world, and that I probably had abilities that others didn’t have. For example, I was smarter than others, and maybe I had a special talent that hadn’t been discovered yet, or I might be destined to save the earth. I even thought that one day I might be spotted by alien creatures like Princess Kaguya in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.
These strange thoughts made me firmly believe that I was so different, until I met Mu Chenghe.
His appearance made me realize that I am just an ordinary human being and he is the only one.
My outlook on life and sense of self-worth were shattered.
It is said that if we see a car, then people with high IQ will see the working principle of the engine inside the car. So I wonder if he is calculating how fast the saliva molecules from my mouth fly to his face every second when I talk to him.
Sigh... Unconsciously, I was thinking about Mu Chenghe again.
I took out my cell phone, bit the tip of a pen, and thought for a long time but couldn't find an excuse to text him.
Bai Lin glanced at me and said mysteriously, "Girl, you are in love for the first time."
"Pah, pah, pah."
Before the last two Russian classes of this period, Chen Ting and Mu Chenghe unexpectedly appeared at the bottom of the fourth teaching building at the same time.
Bai Lin and I were a little surprised to see them, and said in unison: "Teacher Chen, you're back?"
"Yeah." Chen Ting smiled gently, "Did you guys mess with Teacher Mu?"
I glanced at Mu Chenghe and said guiltily, "How dare I? He is much more fierce than you."
In the end, it was Mu Chenghe who came to class.
He walked up to the podium, talked about the exam precautions, and then said: "This is my last class for you students."
Everyone was stunned, and then they began to understand that he didn't mean winter vacation, but that he would no longer substitute for us, and then they became noisy.
Fellow villager Xiao Bai, with tears in his eyes, pulled up Bai Lin's sleeve and wiped away his tears.
Bai Lin said unhappily: "Why are you so sad? Don't you still have Chen Ting? Didn't you think Chen Ting was great before?"
Fellow villager Xiao Bai said sadly, "But ever since I saw our Chenghe, I have lost interest in your teacher Chen. No wonder Confucius said: It is difficult to go from extravagance to frugality. So this is the truth."
"Nonsense," Bai Lin looked down on her, "Do you think I've never studied Chinese just because I'm in the Foreign Languages Department? This is clearly a famous quote by Ouyang Xiu."
"It's Confucius."
"It's Ouyang Xiu."
The two people each insisted on their own opinion and neither of them gave in.
I held my forehead with my hand and said, "It's not Confucius or Ouyang Xiu, it's Sima Guang. Try to keep your mouth shut when you go out in the future, and people won't know that you are uneducated."