Niu Niu is particularly sensitive to numbers and was curious, so he nodded quickly.
Mu Chenghe said slowly: "Let's say twelve, it's easier to understand than eleven." 11 times 11, all four numbers are 1, which can easily confuse people.
"If we want to calculate 12 times 12, you should first think about it in your mind, what is 12 plus 2?" Mu Chenghe asked.
"14." Niu Niu answered.
"Then we multiply 12 and the last digit of 12. What is 2 times 2?"
"4." Niu Niu answered again.
Listening to the serious conversation between the adult and the child, even Xue Tong couldn't help but stop and listen.
"Now it's easy. We just connect 14 and 4 together, and 144 is the answer."
I was standing upright while drawing the cards and listening beside them: "It's so easy, it's impossible." Then I couldn't help but take out my phone to count it, and I didn't expect it to be 144.
Mu Chenghe squinted at me and said, "You need a calculator to verify this, too. Your brain is almost rusty, isn't it?"
"It's your fault that you never taught me." I was not convinced.
"Isn't this something you should have learned in elementary school?" Mu Chenghe teased her.
“My elementary school teacher didn’t teach me that.”
Niu Niu's mother said admiringly: "So Teacher Mu teaches mathematics?" She only knew that Mu Chenghe was a teacher, but had never asked what he did specifically.
Mu Chenghe said to Niu Niu again: "Then follow uncle's method and calculate 11 times 11."
Niu Niu thought for a moment and answered: "121."
"What about 15 times 15?"
"225!" Niu Niu was very excited.
"Smart." Mu Chenghe peeled an orange and shared it with the two children, then said, "But after 19, you have to use a different method. Uncle will teach you next time."
The mahjong game lasted until after ten o'clock. The children's biological clocks told them it was time to go to bed. They could not hold on any longer and almost fell asleep while sitting, so the mahjong game quickly ended.
As soon as the two families left, the house fell silent. Mu Chenghe was washing dishes and tidying up in the kitchen, and I stood on the balcony and called my mother.
Mom asked about her recent situation, and talked a little about her and Uncle Chen's holiday plans. At the end, she asked the same old question: "How long are you two going to put off your relationship?"
"We know it ourselves, why are you worrying about it?" He laughed.
"Men should get married when they are old enough, and women should get married when they are old enough. Why do you make me worry about it for nothing? Is it you who doesn't understand, or is it Xiao Mu who doesn't understand? If he drags his feet, I will have to talk to him alone."
"mom… "
"You two are living together like this, and you don't give me any definite answers. If you have a child one day, you will be the one who suffers..." She started brainwashing me again.
Therefore, no matter how much a mother-in-law likes her son-in-law on the surface, she will stand on the side of her own daughter without hesitation when encountering problems.
As soon as I finished talking to my mother, Mu Chenghe walked out.
"Are you done washing?" I asked.
"Yeah." He hugged me from behind.
Mu Chenghe called her name: "Xue Tong."
"Um."
"Marry me, okay?"
"No." I laughed.
He said with a frustrated look: "You should at least think carefully before rejecting me."
"You ask this every day, why would I need time to think?" I couldn't help but laugh.
"Tonight is so special, you should at least pretend to think about it," he advised her earnestly.
I thought about how he had just mocked me for being stupid, so I said, "Okay, then I'll give you a question to do. If you get it right, I'll think about it once and answer it for you."
"I'm not a human calculator." Mu Chenghe frowned.
"If you don't use your brain often, it will get rusty, Teacher Mu..." I am a petty person who will never let go of any grudge.
"My brain isn't working anymore. I'm old." His brows continued to frown.
"Stop acting cute, be serious." I criticized him.
"Marry me." Mu Chenghe started to act like a spoiled child. "Can I ask you to do it one more time today? I've been begging you for months, and Chen Ting is laughing at me."
"It's only been a few months. I thought it was just my wishful thinking and I felt bad for so long."
"I was wrong."
"If you know your mistakes, you must make amends, so I will also let you taste the feeling of not getting what you want." I was not originally such a lawless person, but now someone pampers me, so the unreasonable side of my nature gradually revealed itself in front of him.
"When I first started class, I should have stood on the blackboard and written: Xue Tong, I love you, marry me."
I couldn't help but laugh.
The wind on the balcony was very cold, so I pulled him back to the sofa in the living room.
He added: "Or when you cheated, I shouldn't have taken your note, I should have picked it up and returned it to you, and then asked you to marry me."
"I didn't cheat!" I get angry when I talk about this. "I didn't cheat. That thing was mine, but I gave it to someone else to copy. I didn't read a single word, and you still wrongly accused me."
"But your motives are not pure."
"How did my motives become impure?" I defended myself. "I was just being prepared, and I repented at the last moment. I knew you hated me from the beginning, so you teased me in front of the whole class, and I..."
I couldn't help but speak faster and faster, pouring out all the grievances I had suffered back then like pouring beans, but I was interrupted halfway through.
Mu Chenghe didn't argue with me at all. He just leaned his face forward, kissed my lips, and stopped me from saying anything else.
After the sweet sucking, Mu Chenghe left my lips, as if he remembered something important, frowned and asked: "Did you use it to cheat on the law exam this afternoon?"
I was originally reluctant to let go of his kiss, but after listening to his question, I pushed him away, straddled his legs, pressed him down on the sofa, and angrily said, "I didn't!"
At this moment, his cell phone suddenly rang.
"If you want to force it, I can also ignore the phone." He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
"Pooh!"
I stood up and let him go.
He walked to the other side of the sofa to answer the phone. The caller was Chen Ting, who said he didn't know where his phone was and couldn't get through, so he asked Mu Chenghe to help him find it.
Mu Chenghe was good-tempered. After working for a long time, he finally found Chen Ting's mobile phone in the crack of the sofa.
I had some insomnia at night.
It was long past midnight, but people were still setting off fireworks outside the window from time to time, sparsely. The curtains in the bedroom were drawn, blocking out the colorful fireworks, but a very faint light still shone in.
I opened my eyes and looked at the lights that flickered from time to time, but I didn't dare move for fear of disturbing Mu Chenghe's sleep.
Out of professional ethics, he rarely mentioned his research. It was only a few days ago when I saw the news that the aircraft had been frequently tested recently. He was probably too busy to eat or sleep. This time he took a special leave and rushed back from the experimental base in another place to spend the New Year with me. He arrived late last night, but he kept me busy for half the night after taking a shower. He got up early today, so he must be too tired.
I suddenly wanted to turn around and look at his sleeping face.
However, his hands had been on my waist since we went to bed, gently holding me, so he seemed to notice even the slightest movement from me.
I only heard Mu Chenghe calling her softly from behind: "Tongtong?" His voice was clear.
I turned to look at him and asked in surprise, "You've been awake all this time?"
Mu Chenghe hummed: "I thought you were asleep."
"Why can't you sleep?" I asked him.
He was silent for a moment, then replied, "I remember what you said."
"What?"
"You said I made you feel bad for a long time because you thought you were being wishful thinking."
His voice was a little low, and in the dim light it sounded a bit depressed and self-blaming, but it made my heart feel as if someone had breathed a breath on it, making it so soft.
I couldn't help but reach out and stroke his face with my fingers: "If I knew you would still be mine in the end, I wouldn't be afraid no matter how hard it was."
He grabbed my hand, kissed the palm, and suddenly asked softly: "Did you cry on the way back from Starbucks that time?"
I was slightly stunned, and it took me two seconds to react. I shook my head stubbornly: "Not at that time."
Mu Chenghe stretched out his arms and let me rest my head in his arms, closing the distance between us: "Do you know that when you said goodbye to me that day, I thought I would never have you again in my life."
He paused, and said sadly, "But you were so young and still in school, I would have ruined you."
Seeing this, I snuggled into the blanket in his arms: "I know, I know."
"I'm scared, too."
"Will I eat you?"
“I’m afraid that kids aren’t serious about their relationship.”
"Xue Tong." He stroked my hair.
"Um?"
"I followed you in my car later," he said.
"Why are you following me?" I asked, leaning on his chest.
"I was afraid you would cry."
"It was me who took the initiative to break up with you that day, so why would I cry?" I said in a muffled voice.
"That's good."
After a while, I asked, "What would you do if you saw me crying at that time?"
Mu Chenghe hesitated for a moment, then answered seriously: "Take you to elope."
After hearing this answer, I rested my face on his chest and chuckled. After laughing for a while, I bit him and said, "You are a liar and a smooth talker. Who did you learn this from?"
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, we drove to City B to visit our two mothers.
I've had my driver's license for more than two months, but I haven't driven on a highway yet. It was originally agreed that I would drive this time, and Mu Chenghe would sit in the passenger seat to practice with me, but after I had driven for a while, he turned pale and insisted that I stop at a service area and switch seats with me, and even said that if I was alone, I would not be allowed to drive even in the city, and he would take away all the car keys.
I muttered unhappily, "Everyone goes through this. I'm just a novice on the road. You can't look down on me like that. I've been doing pretty well. Nothing went wrong for two months. The senior sister I was learning from at the same driving school was always praised by the instructor, but last week she nearly drove her car into a pond in the countryside..."
Before I could finish my words, he glared at me fiercely with a frown on his face.
This was the first time he saw me driving, and he was probably frightened by my “green and careless” driving skills.
After staying in City B for two days, we returned to City A to rest.
On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, we took a plane to Russia.
Russia has a land area as large as Pluto.
This was a trip that had been booked a long time ago. I hadn't had much hope because he was so busy before, but I didn't expect Mu Chenghe to actually squeeze out a vacation.
It was my first time on an airplane. I was so excited that I kept studying the small table in front of me and the small screen embedded in the back of the front seat.
After a while, the radio announced in English and Russian that the cabin door would be closed in a few minutes for takeoff, and I hurried to study the wing outside the window.
A fat and kind-hearted Russian man sitting next to us couldn't help laughing when he saw me like this.
He turned his head, walked around Mu Chenghe in the middle, and asked me in broken Chinese if I was going to travel to Russia.
I nodded and replied in Russian: "Да."
When he heard the Russian I spoke, a flash of surprise flashed across his face, and then he spoke a long Russian to me through Mu Chenghe. He spoke very fast, with a heavy throat and nasal sound, and I was immediately confused.
When he finished speaking and looked at me with a smile, I, who only speaks a little Russian, was completely confused.
I looked to Mu Chenghe for help.
Mu Chenghe translated, "He asked where you learned Russian because he rarely sees young people who can speak Russian."
I am very familiar with the sentence pattern of "I have studied Russian for xxx years in xxx school". I have used it to make many sentences when I was studying a second foreign language in college. So when I was about to answer him in Russian happily, Mu Chenghe glanced at me and said, "Don't say you learned Russian from me. It's embarrassing." His tone was full of warning.
I just ignored his tyranny and continued to answer the uncle's questions as if I was reciting a book.
Then, with his eyes shining, the uncle responded with a longer speech.
I was dumbfounded and had no choice but to seek help from the handsome simultaneous interpreter sitting in the middle again.