"After listening to the tour guide, I learned that Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi were actually two of the Wang and Xie brothers in Wuyi Lane. And Wang Xianzhi was so romantic that he even made up a story about ferrying people."
Su Nianqin added: "It's called Taoye Ferry. But the Wang and Xie in this poem don't refer to these two kings."
"Ah? Who is that?"
"Director Wang."
"Are they all from the same dynasty?"
"Still a relative."
I don’t know if he was in a particularly good mood today, or if he was really interested in what Sang Wuyan said, but Su Nianqin actually spoke to her in a normal tone for the first time.
Sang Wuyan chuckled, "But I don't know Director Wang, so I still think the story of Wang Xianzhi and Tao Ye is interesting."
But Su Nianqin's hand completely stopped between the braille, he raised his head, his eyes fell elsewhere, he didn't know what he was thinking, a little absent-minded. After a long while, he turned his attention back to the book.
The atmosphere returned to silence, as if the previous conversation had never happened. It was almost twelve o'clock, and in order to avoid the peak traffic hours, Sang Wuyan decided to pack up and leave first. When she got downstairs, she looked up at the sky, thought for a moment, and returned to the office on the second floor.
She walked to the small bucket in front of the window, picked up Su Nianqin's umbrella, and put it next to him, "Don't forget to bring your umbrella. It's still raining."
She had put the things there for him, and if she hadn't returned them, he would definitely not have been able to find them.
In less than two weeks at school, Sang Wuyan had become acquainted with Teacher Xiao Wang, who had just been assigned to the school the previous year.
"He is not our teacher here." Xiao Wang said when talking about Su Nianqin.
"ah?"
"Ms. Zheng, who originally taught Braille, is on maternity leave, and Ms. Xu has retired. The school was originally going to hire her back, but she had to go out of town to take care of her grandchildren, so they were short of a Braille teacher. Principal Pei knows Mr. Su very well, so he's the right person to substitute for her. It looks like he'll be substituting for her for more than half a year."
"So what did he do originally? Didn't he teach somewhere else?"
"I don't know." Xiao Wang shook his head, "He never chats with us."
"oh."
"But what can he do with his eyes like that?" Xiao Wang asked back.
Sang Wuyan shrugged, twirling the pen in his hand from time to time, his thoughts drifting elsewhere.
When she was in primary school, she was not tall, and she always stood at the end of the first row in the physical education formation every semester. Whether doing radio gymnastics or physical education class, Huang Xiaoyan always stood next to her. The two little people looked energetic together. Huang Xiaoyan's home happened to be close to hers, and they always agreed to go home together. If she was bullied, Huang Xiaoyan would always stand up for her, so in the later years of primary school, the two were almost inseparable.
One year, she and Huang Xiaoyan would meet a blind brother at the station every time they went home. Although he was blind, it did not affect his attitude towards life at all, because he was very good-looking and had a very friendly expression. From time to time, people who were waiting for the bus with him would come to chat with him, show concern for him, or help him, including Huang Xiaoyan.
Huang Xiaoyan is a typical optimist, very friendly, and can talk to anyone. In fact, Sang Wuyan has always wanted to ask him: "If you are born blind, if someone says blue or red, do you know what it looks like?" She learned about red and green color blindness in biology class, and she knew that some people cannot distinguish red and green, and they look the same.
She has always been curious about how a completely blind person can experience colors.
But Sang Wuyan never dared to. From beginning to end, Sang Wuyan never spoke to him.
When she was little, Sang Wuyan's personality was a little different from now. She was cheerful and fearless at home, but she became listless when she went out. Whenever uncles, aunts, classmates or teachers suddenly asked her something when she was not prepared, her heart would immediately beat rapidly and she would start to stutter.
In the words of Sang's mother, he is not generous or decent at all, nor is he sweet-mouthed. In short, he is not likable.
Huang Xiaoyan, who was in the sixth grade, already had her own philosophy of love - if you like something, you should be brave enough to fight for it. At that time, there were some people in the class who were in love. Everyone was ignorant, and if a girl and a boy played together after class, there would often be rumors.
Sang Wuyan is a little introverted, but not stupid. She can see that Huang Xiaoyan does have other thoughts about the blind brother.
Later, Huang Xiaoyan had to go back to the school for children of the factory where her father worked to attend junior high school. The school was a little far from the city, and Huang Xiaoyan could no longer take her to the station. Only occasionally, Sang Wuyan could still meet the blind brother, and the smile that never changed was still on his face.
After Sang Wuyan arrived at the new school, her mother Sang first heard her constantly complaining about Huang Xiaoyan. It was nothing more than that their group was responsible for sweeping the floor, but a certain boy didn't do it, which made each of them have to bear a lot of the burden, but they didn't dare to tell the teacher.
“If Xiaoyan were here, she would never let this go.” Sang Wuyan said gloomily.
"Then go and tell the teacher." said Mother Sang.
"Me? I'm not going."
Or maybe she was collecting math homework and a classmate didn't hand it in, so she reported the name to the teacher, and as a result, the classmate didn't look at Sang Wuyan well for a week.
“If Xiaoyan were here, she would definitely vent my anger for me.” Sang Wuyan began to mutter to himself again.
But gradually, Sang Wuyan mentioned Huang Xiaoyan less and less. The two of them went to different schools, so they didn't use the phone much, kept in touch less, and met less often. The friendship they had accumulated over six years seemed to be gradually diluted with the passage of time.
In the end, Sang Wuyan even forgot to ask his mother for pocket money in advance every June to prepare a birthday present for Huang Xiaoyan.
Until one day, Sang Wuyan went to buy shoes with her mother and saw Huang Xiaoyan's mother at the door. Huang's mother looked haggard. When Sang Wuyan called her, she was waiting for the traffic light. It took her a long time to come back to her senses and smile when she saw Sang Wuyan. Maybe she just felt that her face was familiar, but she forgot Sang Wuyan's name.
"Aunt Li, I'm Sang Wuyan, Xiaoyan's elementary school classmate."
"Oh, it grew so tall all of a sudden." Mother Huang nodded and smiled at Mother Sang.
Parents are generally like this, always feeling that their own children are difficult to raise, while other people's children grow up very quickly.
"How is Xiaoyan? I haven't seen her for a long time." Sang Wuyan asked again.
It would have been fine if she hadn't asked. Once she did, Mother Huang didn't answer for a long time, but her eyes turned red.
"Xiaoyan..." She turned her face away, "Xiaoyan is sick." As soon as she finished speaking, tears rolled out.
Huang Xiaoyan has brain cancer.
The diagnosis was made three weeks ago and he has been sent to Beijing for treatment. This time when Huang's mother came back, she borrowed money from everywhere.
After breaking up, Sang Wuyan walked for several meters and couldn't help but look back. He saw Huang's mother hurriedly walking through the crowd, and slowly he couldn't tell whose figure it was.
In the past, Xiaoyan liked to say, "My head hurts."
When Sang Wuyan cried unreasonably at home, she often heard her mother complain to her father, "Your daughter's crying is making my head hurt." So she didn't know what a head hurt felt like, and she couldn't fully understand what brain cancer was.
However, teenagers know that cancer is a fatal disease.
She was very depressed when she got home. She didn't hear the adults calling her to eat several times. Finally, when Sang's father pulled her out to sit at the dining table, he found that Sang Wuyan was already in tears.
The two adults couldn't help but look at each other, and then sighed together.
The next weekend, Sang's father accompanied Sang Wuyan to Huang Xiaoyan's house, where her grandmother was cooking. After Sang Wuyan got a signal from his father, he handed the brown paper envelope to Grandma Huang, exchanged a few words and left.
There was a stack of money in the envelope, which was the salary that Mr. Sang had just withdrawn from the bank.
A year later, Huang Xiaoyan finished her treatment and returned to City B. Sang Wuyan was overjoyed, but the adults all knew that surgery could not save anything, and the cancer cells continued to spread.
Sang Wuyan will always remember the scene of that day.
After school, she went to Huang Xiaoyan's house. Huang's house was on the seventh floor of a building facing the street in the downtown area. Sang Wuyan ran upstairs with her schoolbag on her back, panting, and saw Huang Xiaoyan squatting in front of the honeycomb coal at the door of the house, fanning the fire. The stove went out at noon and had not been lit yet. The whole corridor was filled with choking coal smoke.
Huang Xiaoyan fanned the fire with one hand and covered her nose with the other, choking and crying.
"Xiaoyan!" Sang Wuyan called out.
Huang Xiaoyan heard the voice, turned around, and saw that it was Sang Wuyan, and she chuckled.
At the same time, a middle-aged man poked his head out, holding a baby carefully in his arms. Sang Wuyan had seen this middle-aged man before, he was Huang Xiaoyan's father. As for the baby, she didn't recognize him.
"This is my sister, she is only two months old." Huang Xiaoyan smiled.
Sang Wuyan widened her eyes and asked, "Dear child?" She knew that Huang's father was a factory worker and that he would lose his job if he had more than one child.
"Of course we are kissing. Don't we look alike?" Huang Xiaoyan said.
Sang Wuyan stayed at Huang's house until very late after dinner, and left reluctantly only when his parents came to pick him up. When he walked downstairs, Sang's mother suddenly said, "These parents are too much. The child is not even well, but they have already given birth to a second child!"
Father Sang glanced at the child, then made a look at his wife, signaling her not to continue.
But it was just these words, along with the smiling face in the corridor just now that was accidentally stained with coal dust and was so thin that only skin was left, that were imprinted in Sang Wuyan's memory.
One day several months later, Sang Wuyan received the news of Huang Xiaoyan's death at home.
It was also in such rainy weather.