I was greedy and looked at him with longing eyes.
He put the cup under his nose and sniffed it, then handed it to me.
I took it and swallowed it in one gulp, just as he had described. I suddenly felt a very pure, cool taste on my tongue, and then a burning sensation suddenly broke through the coolness, spreading from the esophagus to the stomach, and then the smell of alcohol rushed to my nose, forcing my tears out.
I frowned, covered my nose with both hands, took a deep breath, and suddenly felt my heart expand violently, and I felt extremely comfortable.
The blood vessels in the limbs become warm.
"Ah! It's so satisfying!" I shouted, "Come again."
Mu Chenghe took the cup back: "No. If you get drunk, I will be in trouble."
I frowned: "Give me a little more."
He held the bottle and shook his head.
"Just a little bit," I pleaded cheekily, and then used my index finger and thumb to measure a faint height.
He laughed: "The entanglement of ice and fire?"
I nodded: "You really haven't drunk it?"
"Yeah. The strongest alcohol I've ever had is beer."
“That’s impossible.” It turns out that even geniuses can be rookies sometimes.
"How about..." he said, "I give it a try?"
"Okay, then you can drink with me. It will be more fun if we're alone." I encouraged him.
Mu Chenghe poured a little wine. It was indeed a small amount of real wine, almost just a thin layer of liquid at the bottom of the cup.
He tilted his head to look at it, then glanced at me.
"I really drank it." That expression looked like a kid who did something bad behind the adults' backs.
"Hmm." I scratched my head.
After he closed his eyes and swallowed it quietly, his originally calm brows suddenly frowned, and then he burst into a violent cough that pierced the night sky.
I patted his back anxiously.
After a while, he calmed down and uttered a very childish sentence:
“It’s really hard to drink.”
In a blink of an eye, the alcohol took effect in his body, and his cheeks turned a light pink. Against this background, his brown eyes looked even more radiant and picturesque.
I stood up, walked to the railing, looked at the river below the dam for a while, mustered up my courage, turned around and said loudly: "Teacher Mu, can you tell me about your story?"
He then stood up and walked towards me: "What's the matter?"
"Anything is fine, from childhood, studying abroad, work, love." I was afraid he would not agree, so I added, "In exchange, you can also ask me."
"What do you want to ask?"
"A lot. For example, when I was a kid, I was very naughty. Every time I made a mistake, my mother would ask me to tell her how many times I was prepared to be hit before she hit me with a feather duster."
He laughed: "Your mother is quite democratic."
"What? That's fake democracy. I said at the beginning: 'Mom, just give it a light spanking.' But I didn't know that not only did it not work, but I was also accused of not fully recognizing my mistakes and received a more severe punishment. In the end, she still has the final say."
"No wonder you are so aware of your mistakes when you make them now. It turns out you were trained this way," he said.
I knew he was referring to the time when Bai Lin and I climbed over the wall.
Then, I realized a problem. I was the one exploring him, but how come he ended up exploring me
I said, "Okay, now it's your turn."
"What do you want to hear?"
In fact, I want to know everything about him, but one can't be too greedy, otherwise you will end up losing everything.
What are you talking about
When you were a kid? Would you feel the same way as I do
Work? Could it be a military secret
In love? Will a pastor’s wife suddenly appear and make me want to commit suicide by the river
So I chose the least sensitive topic: "Let's talk about what happened in Russia. It's much colder there than here, right?"
"Yes. And when I first arrived, I was unfamiliar with the language and could only live on a meager scholarship. Life was very tight. Later, when I got to know the place better, I often helped the Chinese as an interpreter to earn extra money."
"How long did you spend there? Was it all in Moscow?"
“I spent nearly eight years in Moscow, and then more than a year in St. Petersburg,” he said.
“Which city is more beautiful?”
"St. Petersburg is beautiful," he said. "It is near the Arctic Circle, and it is almost not dark all night in the summer months. In the early morning, staring at the blue sky that is as bright as day is a very magical feeling. In some seasons, you can even see the northern lights."
"Northern Lights! Really? Beautiful?" I exclaimed.
“It’s so beautiful. It’s said that seeing the Northern Lights is like seeing the eyes of God.”
"The eyes of God?"
"It's just a legend. From a scientific point of view, it's a magnetic storm between the sun and the earth."
"Scientists are really not romantic." I pouted.
He smiled helplessly.
I was silent for a while, then murmured, "If only it were God's eyes, I would go see it myself and ask God if my dad is doing well in heaven and when he can come back."
After listening to me, he stared at me for a long time and choked up.
"I'm just kidding," I said, waving my hands. "I'm a firm believer in communism."
The sections of highway along the river are the largest fireworks display spots in the city. As time goes by, more and more people set off fireworks by the river. After eleven o'clock, the place can almost be described as a surging crowd.
Many people skipped the last part of the Spring Festival Gala and came out to set off fireworks.
We walked slowly among the crowd. The roar of firecrackers and fireworks was so loud that we had to almost shout to hear it.
When we passed a sales point, he asked me, "Do you want to set off firecrackers and fireworks?"
I shook my head.
Fireworks and firecrackers are extremely expensive at this time. Merchants are doing business with the mentality of "close for a year, make a living for a year after opening". Buy one and sell two for a pair.
I never join in this kind of fun.
When I thought about it this way, I realized that I am also an unromantic person.
"I thought kids liked this kind of thing."
I stood at attention, turned to face him, and reiterated, "I'm not a child."
As I was talking, someone bumped into me from behind. I stumbled and fell towards him. Mu Chenghe reached out and held me in his arms.
A female voice behind me quickly apologized: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
The man next to her complained: "I told you to stop making trouble, but you just wouldn't listen."
I waved my hands and said, "It's okay, I was careless." I was also wrong. It would not be good to cause a couple to quarrel during the New Year.
"Professor Mu." The strange man recognized Mu Chenghe when he saw him next to me.
Mu Chenghe looked up when he heard the voice and smiled slightly: "It turns out to be Mr. Li." As he spoke, his left hand gently let go of me.
The two shook hands, said Happy New Year to each other, and then said goodbye. The other party did not introduce his female companion, and Mu Chenghe did not introduce me either.
After we parted, I stopped and looked back at the two people a few steps away. The man gave me the feeling that he was extremely arrogant, completely different from Mu Chenghe.
After thinking about this, I was a little disdainful: "Who is that?"
"We have a research project, which was funded by that gentleman."
"What about the one next to it?"
"I don't know him. He should be his wife."
"How could he be so cruel to his wife?"
Mu Chenghe also turned around and followed my gaze, saying calmly: "Sometimes the surface phenomenon is different from the inner essence."
"How do you know it's different?"
"By observing."
"observe?"
I studied the receding figures for a moment, then asked suspiciously, "Is there something wrong with his legs?"
"Yeah. The last time he came to school, I saw him in a wheelchair."
"You accompany your wife to set off fireworks even though your legs and feet are so inconvenient."
“It shows that some people’s inner selves are different from what we see.”
I smiled, and suddenly understood. After a while, I said, "You say, when we gossip about others, are they also gossiping about us?"
"What gossip are we talking about? We are clearly discussing the intrinsic connection between love and appearance in a very serious manner." When he said this, his face was extremely serious, with a completely kind and harmless expression.
I'm afraid only people like him can gossip about others behind their backs and still feel so righteous.
I almost forgot that he was still the Mu Chenghe who had driven me crazy many times and almost made me want to kill him with a knife.
In the last few minutes before the bell rang, we finally arrived at the Binjiang Square. The square faces the confluence of the North and South Rivers, and a small part of it is suspended in the air, so standing on the edge holding the railing and looking down at the turbulent river rushing eastward, you will suddenly feel like you are on a boat.
In a corner of the square, there is a huge clock tower, and many people are looking forward to the countdown to the New Year.
This is when the sound of firecrackers is the loudest, and the gorgeous fireworks are so dense that people dare not even look up to avoid getting the ashes in their eyes.
When I saw the fireworks flying into the sky, I suddenly remembered the question I asked Peng Yu: "Teacher Mu."
"Hmm?" When he answered me, his eyes were still elsewhere.
"Plane flies into the sky based on some law, so..."
“Bernoulli,” he said.
"So when the plane does a flip, the up and down directions of the wings are different, so why doesn't it fall down?"
I looked in the direction he was looking, and saw a little boy holding incense and lighting fireworks. He seemed to be very timid, and before the fuse was even lit, he turned around and ran into his mother's arms, making the adults laugh.
"Why are you suddenly interested in airplanes?" He raised the corners of his mouth, asked with a smile, and his eyes moved to my face.
My face flushed instantly, and I coughed deliberately. To hide my embarrassment, I hurriedly explained, "Because... because I talked to Peng Yu about this problem last time, and I thought if I figured it out, I could show off in front of him next time and restore my dignity as a teacher."
My eyes became more and more determined as I spoke, and finally I even believed that it was really because of Peng Yu that I was interested in airplanes. So as the saying goes, to make the enemy believe, you must first believe it yourself.
"Really?" he said casually, "You guys are still talking about this?"
"Um."
Uh... it's a bit profound.
"You mean that flip, which we call a roll, does it mean a 360-degree turn vertically?"
"Yes, yes, yes." I was glad that he understood what I meant.
"What you want to ask is why the plane doesn't fall down when it flies inverted? Inverted flying means the pilot's feet are up and his head is down."
"Binggo, absolutely right." The one who knows me best is Teacher Mu.
"In fact, there are many reasons why airplanes can take off, and not all of them can be explained by Bernoulli's principle."
"What's the reason?"