Zeng Li was admitted to a middle school in the city during the high school entrance exam, which was one level higher than the county high school her teacher had expected for her. However, her parents' marriage was not so smooth. After more than ten years of quarreling, the two finally parted ways unhappily.
The day of the separation happened to be the day after Zeng Li received his high school admission letter, but it was the most difficult and shameful day in Zeng Li's life.
At grandma's house, all the relatives gathered together, seemingly to judge the matter, but in fact it was like they were watching her parents perform. Everything was sorted out one by one, including passbooks, cash, stocks, even electrical appliances, furniture, then Zeng Li, and finally the house. Whenever the discussion got too much to go on, the two families, including the eldest uncle and the second uncle, and even grandma would get involved, each arguing that they had their own reasons.
When Zeng Li was assigned the child, Zeng's mother said immediately, "The daughter is mine." Zeng's father did not say anything this time. He seldom stayed at home to take care of children and did not know much about raising a daughter, so he was unsure.
Grandma Zeng couldn't bear to part with her granddaughter, so she said, "Zeng Li is a child of the Zeng family. If you remarry and find her a stepfather, what will she do?"
"Have you ever raised her? What's wrong with her stepfather? Her biological father doesn't care about her! Have you ever supervised her homework? Have you ever been to a parent-teacher conference?"
"Why didn't I care?" Zeng's father got angry.
So the two started arguing again.
Zeng Li stood in front of the crowd. Some tried to stop the fight, while others looked at her. Their eyes seemed to sigh: This child is so pitiful. Zeng Li had the same dream countless nights, in which she walked on the street or in the crowd for a long time, until many people looked at her and she realized that she had forgotten to put on clothes.
Then, she saw Yu Yi sitting at the outermost edge.
Her younger cousin has a family that is completely different from hers.
He is the last boy in this big family. His youngest sister is ten years older than him and has already married. No matter his sister, brother or cousin, the whole family focuses on him. They are afraid that he will melt if they hold him in their mouths or drop him if they hold him in their hands. Moreover, he is also very competitive. Everyone in the family is happy when they mention him.
What interrupted her thoughts was her uncle's words. He suddenly said to her, "Let Zeng Li choose for himself who you want to follow."
Zeng Li burst into tears, "I... I want both."
Zeng's mother gritted her teeth and said, "No! Either he or I, or I or he."
In the end, Zeng Li followed his mother.
First, Zeng's mother insisted on having custody of her daughter, even without the house. Second, what she said to Yi was the truth. Zeng's mother was worried about her daughter. Although she said that, she would still come back to cook for her. So she thought from the bottom of her heart that maybe it would be better for her to stay with her mother. After Zeng Li entered high school, she chose to live in the school, and Zeng's mother did not object. Finally, Zeng Li left the courtyard, left the small county town, and moved to a school in the city dozens of kilometers away.
Zeng's mother was a very capable person. After the department store closed down, she went to night college to study accounting, and later worked as an accountant in a small factory. She was tall, fair-skinned, and looked young. Although she had a bad temper with Zeng's father, she always greeted him with a smile in public. So, less than a year after the divorce, she remarried. The other party was called Deng Gang, who worked in a bank in the city. His conditions were many times better than Zeng's father's. Deng Gang was a very good person. His wife had passed away and they had no children, so he loved Zeng Li very much. But Zeng Li couldn't accept him so quickly psychologically, so she didn't like to talk to him very much and always called him Uncle Deng.
Apart from daily life, she and her mother had almost no communication other than that. She only occasionally mentioned things about school when she got home. The only person she could talk to was with her classmates at school.
Zeng Li, who was 15 years old, was growing rapidly. Her chest was gradually protruding, her height was increasing rapidly, and her lips were becoming plump. From time to time, boys from higher grades would come to chat with her, but she was very reserved and cautious in front of strangers, except for laughing and joking with the girls in her class and room. Instead, she gave people a cold feeling.
Every night after the lights are turned off in the dormitory, it is time for girls to talk about their innermost thoughts.
Everyone's topic is nothing more than who in the class seems to be having an affair with whom, who definitely likes who, or how handsome a certain boy in the senior year of high school is, or who on the basketball or volleyball team has a new girlfriend.
When the winter vacation came, great-grandmother sent someone to bring a letter saying that she wanted her granddaughter to go back and stay for a few days.
After the divorce, Zeng's father was upset because Zeng Li did not choose him at the last critical moment. In fact, he did not want her custody at first, but in the end he turned around and blamed Zeng Li for not knowing filial piety. Zeng's mother also forbade her to have any contact with her father's side of the family. As a result, Zeng Li never saw her grandmother for half a year. With Zeng's mother's consent, Zeng Li was able to return to the small county town again.
At the reunion dinner, the same people were there again, but Zeng's father ignored her and didn't even leave a seat for her to sit next to him. Grandma's side was already crowded with other grandchildren, so there was no room for her.
Just as she was standing there at a loss, Yu Yi came over, holding her arm with one hand and holding a plastic stool with the other, and led her to their table.
He gestured, "Sit here." After that, he placed the stool in his hand at the corner of the table and sat down.
The table where he sat was full of boys or young people of similar age to him. They were of different generations, but everyone was having a great time. When she sat down just now, Zeng Li wanted to greet everyone politely, but there were too many relatives. Some of them hardly moved around, so she just remembered them but couldn't call them. When she finally remembered one, the rest refused to listen and insisted that she call them too.
This made Zeng Li extremely embarrassed.
Yu Yi said, "Xiao Yu'er, why do you care about them? Except for me, the others are all brothers. Besides, why should they call you?" The latter sentence was said by Yu Yi to others, "It's New Year's Day, can they call you for nothing?"
Yu Yi is a mischievous and eloquent person. He can be the protagonist wherever he is. He can attract people's attention at once and can also rescue people in an instant.
The fourth cousin next to him was more aggressive, "Hey, Yu Yi, at most you can just call me and I'll have a drink."
Yu Yi said, "You are taking advantage of me and acting like a good kid. People took the trouble to call you, and you even asked for a drink."
"So what are you going to do?"
"Look at—" Yu Yi stood up, turned around and asked Zeng Li with a smile, "What did you call me?"
Zeng Li didn't understand why he suddenly asked this. Facing a large table of relatives, he didn't dare to call him by his name, so he had to call him honestly, "Little cousin."
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Yu Yi responded, then took out a red envelope from his pocket and handed it to Zeng Li, "Here, this is the New Year's money given to you by your cousin."
After Zeng Li received the red envelope, everyone else suddenly dropped their bowls and chopsticks and rushed towards Yu Yi, calling him "little cousin" one after another. Zeng Li was also amused by this scene.
Later I found out that the red envelope was taken from the scholarship money Yu Yi had saved.
After school started, Zeng Li saw a magazine from her deskmate, on which was written the line she had seen in the TV series "Days in the Clouds" during her second year of junior high school.
—What if I say I love you
—Like a candle lit in a bright room.
She didn't even remember what story the movie was about, but when her eyes came into contact with the words, she thought of Yu Yi and love.
Zeng Li felt like a small sprout had broken through the soil in her heart.
Once this idea sprouted, it began to grow wildly.
He was more outstanding and calm than any other boy of her age. He also understood her better, her fear, her shame, and her panic. Yu Yi was like a beam of bright sunshine, illuminating everything about her.
She has a crush on him.
She looked forward to every meeting with him. The Weaver Girl could see her lover once a year, and she was so lucky to see him twice a year. During the holidays, she would insist on staying at her grandmother's house for some time. If Yu Yi didn't come, she would go to find him. But when she found him, she didn't dare to approach him. She could only watch him secretly from a distance and follow him without letting him find her.
If Yu Yi came to her house for dinner, no matter how others emphasized it, she would never call him cousin again.
After having this secret, she felt that the world had become wider. She could communicate with her classmates and talk about her Yu Yi in the dead of night.
She still called Deng Gang "Uncle Deng", but he was no longer as strange as before. He would bring her souvenirs when he was on a business trip, and would take the initiative to invite her classmates to his home. He would not quarrel with Zeng's mother in front of her, and would not smash dishes or things when he was angry. Even when Zeng's mother was too busy, he would take the initiative to attend the parent-teacher meeting at school, and would smile and say to the head teacher: "My daughter is very much taken care of by the teacher."
Zeng Li felt that he was a really good person and slowly began to accept him in his heart.
For three whole years, she and Yu Yi spent no more than ten days together, except for tutoring. However, every meeting, every conversation, every smile, was deeply engraved in her mind, and she spent the remaining six months savoring it.
She adored this boy so humbly, wanting to cling to him like a speck of dust, but not daring to show any sign of it. She tried hard to get close to him, but it was too difficult.
During the winter break of her senior year in high school, her father came to the city to visit her. He bought her a lot of things and then told her that he had remarried and her new mother was pregnant.
After Zeng's mother found out about this, she pointed at Zeng Li's nose and said, "You're going to have a younger brother. Your father wants you to stop spoiling their new life." So Zeng Li was no longer allowed to go to her grandmother's house. She didn't see Yu Yi during that Spring Festival. Later, she learned that Yu Yi didn't go back to his hometown either. He was about to graduate and was doing an internship in a hospital in Beijing. Maybe he would continue to study.
When she filled out her college entrance exam application, she didn't ask to go to the same school as him, she just wanted to go to Beijing and breathe the same blue sky with him. But Zeng's mother said to her: "Dream as big as you can. Be realistic, it would be good if you can get an undergraduate degree in the provincial capital." That night, Zeng Li was taking a bath in the bathroom, crying while taking a bath. She loved to cry since she was a child, but she had never been so sad and desperate, so desperate that she couldn't hold back her tears and cried out loudly, but fortunately the sound was covered by the sound of the bath water.
Yes, she was too stupid to catch up with him.
Suddenly one day, Zeng Li discovered that she had lost Yu Yi.
Zeng Li went to City A to study at university. At the end of the year, my grandmother passed away. They grew further and further apart, and even their semi-annual meetings were no longer possible.
Later, he finally met his fourth cousin, who said to Zeng Li, "Don't you know? Yu Yi went to study in the United States."
"Where is America?" Zeng Li asked, holding him tightly.
The fourth cousin thought for a moment and said, "It seems to be Bentley University. It's a long name."
She found the city in a book and measured it with her finger on the map. It was on the other side of the earth, at the farthest end.
During the summer vacation, Wu Ying ran away from home for love, which shocked her. While she admired Wu Ying's courage, she began to reflect on herself.
By chance, she read a novel in the library - "Letter from an Unknown Woman" by Stefan Zweig. After reading it to the end, she sat in front of the library window with tears streaming down her face. She was surrounded by classmates and teachers, and people were walking around, but she just sat there, ignoring the gazes of the people around her for the first time, and let her tears flow.
Back in the dormitory, she sat alone at the desk and wrote a letter to Yu Yi. The letter was very long, and all the thoughts and love, all the little things and emotions of a young girl were turned into words on the letter. Several times during the letter, her tears fell and blurred the handwriting on the letter paper, but she still couldn't help crying and couldn't help but continue writing. When signing the letter, she wrote the name Carol, which was a name Yu Yi knew.
There was no return address on the envelope, only the recipient's name "Yu Yi" and the vague address of "University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine".
It seemed that she was waiting for the judgment of fate. If he couldn't receive it, then let it remain a secret forever.
The moment the letter was sent, she suddenly snatched it back, read it again and again, and finally couldn't help but open the envelope and left her mobile phone number at the end.
A week has passed…
Two weeks have passed...
A month has passed...
Three months have passed...
No response.
One night near the Chinese New Year, her cell phone suddenly received a call from a strange number. The next moment, as if she had a premonition of something, her heart suddenly started beating violently, and then she pressed the answer button.
"Hello—" She couldn't control her voice from trembling.
"Are you Carol? I'm Yu Yi's roommate." A male voice came from the receiver.
"I am." She finally uttered these two words with red eyes.
"Yu Yi has returned home because of an emergency at home."
"My letter..." Zeng Li was embarrassed. He must have seen her letter, but...
"I can't explain it to you specifically. I haven't been able to contact Yu Yi just now. If you need to find him urgently, I can call you." said the other party.
"Thank you." She hurriedly found a pen and paper and wrote down what he said. At the end, she suddenly asked, "Can I ask your name?"
"Ai Jingchu." he replied.
That was the first time Zeng Li knew Ai Jingchu.
His voice was steady and moist, with a unique texture, mixed with lightness and distance, but it suddenly filled her world with color.
It's like the sound of nature, unforgettable.