Day 09 21:18
Before the age of six, Songran had a family.
G City, J Province, Nanwu Countryside Village, with half an mu of fertile land at the foot of the mountain, and a tile house at the entrance of the village.
His mother died young, and his father raised him alone by farming for a living. Perhaps because of the loneliness of the widower, my father has always been reticent, and his brows can't be stretched. Whenever he has spare money, he buys cigarettes and alcohol. He is extremely addicted to him and doesn't like to pay attention to him. On the contrary, he is not like other fathers in the village. scolding children.
At this point, Songran felt that his father loved him.
He was very sensible back then, and he didn't like to cause trouble like other dolls - either chasing dogs with his ass naked, or being chased by dogs with his naked ass. He borrowed teaching materials from his brothers and sisters from the same village primary school. When he was not helping, he would sit on the threshold and read, Chinese with his left hand and mathematics with his right.
At the age of five, he was able to count from one to one hundred and back to one. The teachers in the village praised him for his talent, saying that if he has mastered mathematics in the future, he will be able to be an accountant, cashier, and help people manage accounts.
So Song Ran moved a small bench to the elementary school in the village to take a lesson, and learned to write numbers stroke by stroke.
One day later, he heard some gossip from the neighbors, saying that his father planned to leave Xiaxi Village and go to work in the prosperous provincial capital.
He ran to his father to verify, and his father opened the front door and slowly exhaled choking smoke: "Your mother left early, I can't be alone for the rest of my life, I always have to find someone to live with."
Song Ran asked, "Dad, will you take me away?"
Father didn't speak, didn't look at him, Gu Zi stared at the cigarette butt for a long time in silence, then nodded.
Song Ran was relieved, and then he had some sad thoughts - he was about to leave this small village, and he couldn't take his playmates, the grandma who sold tofu, or the chickens, ducks, pigs and dogs. Although the provincial capital is novel, it is a daunting big world. The wide roads are intertwined, unlike small villages, where a single dirt road can lead to hundreds of families. He had to stay close behind his father, lest he get lost.
Before leaving, his father packed two snakeskin bags with belongings. Song Ran followed suit and folded his clothes and trousers and stuffed them in. Father took them all out, put them aside, and said, "Don't bring them, I'll buy you a new one in the provincial capital."
Song Ran believed it to be true, and happily chose the best-looking set to put on, and gave the rest of the clothes to the friends.
On the morning of his sixth birthday, he followed his father on the green train for the first time.
The train blew its long whistle, the steam in the boiler rolled, and the mechanical shaft drove several rows of steel wheels to "click" the rails - Song Ran clutched the ticket in her hand and came to a strange city.
T city.
His father told him that this was the provincial capital, and Song Ran had no doubts.
For him, who was just starting out, there are concrete roads, railway stations, buildings, shopping malls and cars, and the smell of building dust is different from that in the countryside. The pedestrians on the road wear novel and strange clothes. Of course, it is a brilliant and prosperous "big city".
Go out of the train station and transfer to a minibus. He helped his father drag the dusty snakeskin bag, walked around others tremblingly, and found two empty seats. When the vehicle started, he leaned against the window with his pillow arms on his back, looking curiously at the bustling people along the way, thinking, from today, I will be living here.
All the houses here are so tall. Is it better to live in a two-story building or a three-story building
In his wild thoughts, the car dragged its tail all the way to the station, and his father took him out of the car with a snakeskin bag, walked a short distance, and came to a large courtyard.
The gate of the courtyard was an old-fashioned iron fence with faded red banners, and the reception room beside it was empty and no one was there.
Father stood looking at the banner for a while, led him to the west wall, and told him that Dad had left an important piece of luggage at the train station and had to go back immediately to get it.
Song Ran raised her head and asked, "How long will you be going? When will you be back?"
Father looked away unnaturally and said to him, "You wait here, count up from the beginning, and when you're done, Dad will come back."
"Know it."
It's not difficult at all.
Song Ran counted very fast, and he always finished the count in no time. The time his father went back and forth might be enough for him to count several times.
He wanted to help move the luggage to the courtyard wall, so that his father would free up his hands and make it easier to come and go, but his father strangely refused to let go. He picked up the two heavy snakeskin bags, hurried back to the bus stop, and boarded the The most recent train vanished in the billowing smoke from the rear of the car.
Song Ran felt a little flustered for some reason, so he quickly sat down, stretched out ten fingers, and counted them one by one.
One, two, three, four, five… Counting and comforting myself, it’s alright, it’s over in the blink of an eye.
As long as the count is over, Dad will be back.
At that time, Songran didn't know that the numbers were endless.
Counting a hundred, counting a thousand, and counting 1,100,000,000,000, but he is the only one waiting... never ending.
He wanted his father to come back too much, so he counted faster and faster, getting tired from hundreds to thousands, almost exceeding the limit that a six-year-old child could bear.
On the platform in the distance, the bus came and went, sometimes passing one, sometimes another.
Whenever a car came in, Song Ran jumped up excitedly, craned his neck and stood on tiptoe, eagerly waiting for his father to get out of the open car door. But every time, there was no father figure in the dusty crowd. What's more frightening is that when the bus drives away and his excitement cools down, he suddenly forgets where he counts.
The number is too large, and the child's brain is too small. A little distraction will cause the shadows to disappear.
The more times he forgot, Song Ran became more and more anxious, and he was unwilling to count from the beginning again and again. He panicked to death, stomping his little feet and not knowing what to do, he could only grab the angular stone and try to scribble marks on the wall.
It was getting late, and dusk was approaching.
The last train left the platform, there were no more pedestrians around, and the air became quiet and cold. Song Ran couldn't see the markings on the wall. He groped for the wall with his frozen fingers, trying to settle the messy numbers in his mind, but it was really difficult. The more anxious he was, the less he could remember. In the end, the whole figure seemed to be stupid, and he fell into the corner in a daze, crying bitterly.
Why can't we count
In the past, he clearly counted so well, and he could count it every time, so why couldn't he count it this time
As soon as he cried, there was movement in the courtyard. The gate of the fence opened slowly, and a strong light hit him in the darkness, stabbed him to tears out of control, and the mountain torrents poured down.
The head of the orphanage approached him, bent over to ask about the situation, and wanted to lead him in.
She saw too many children like Songran who were abandoned by their parents in the orphanage under various excuses, and she could see what was going on at a glance. But no matter how she tried to persuade her, Song Ran was clinging to the corner and refusing to leave, crying and shouting that he was about to finish counting and that his father was coming back.
Seeing his stubborn temper, the dean had to let him stay where he was.
In the middle of the night, the dean quietly came out and carried the child who was almost frozen to the wall back. At that time, Song Ran still had a bit of broken consciousness, but he no longer resisted. He curled up in the dean's aunt's arms, reading the numbers silently in his mouth, hot tears overflowing from the corners of his eyes and running down his cheeks.
On February 24, 2001, the second day of her sixth birthday, Song Ran was adopted by the T City Children's Welfare Institute.
His obsessive-compulsive disorder also started on this day.
At first, he would sneak out of the orphanage while the janitor wasn't paying attention, crouching in the west corner and snapping his fingers. After being arrested, he clawed at the iron fence of the gate and counted the bus stop where his father left. Later, he was placed under strict guard and locked in a cubicle. But every time the teacher went in to visit, he was always in a fixed posture - facing the wall, his fingers kept scribbling and drawing, and he wrote Arabic numerals like magic.
He was immersed in a closed inner world, unresponsive to the outside world, doing nothing but counting.
When a bowl of rice is brought in front of him, he has to count the rice grain by grain and eat it.
At that time, the concept of medical treatment was still very backward. Children with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder like Songran could only be sent to a mental hospital. But just as the adults planned to do so, Songran miraculously regained consciousness overnight.
It was as if he sensed danger.
He no longer counted all day long, and his beautiful eyes brightened like morning stars. He smiled at everyone, polite, sensible, and especially likable.
In this way, Song Ran successfully stayed in the orphanage.
When the teachers and nurses saw that he had recovered, they would occasionally joke with good intentions, saying that Songran could count fifty or sixty thousand before she even went to primary school, and she must be a math genius in the future. Song Ran smiled at them obediently, shook his head again, and said modestly that he was not that good.
At this time, Naoren will always have a sharp pain, he must lower his head, grit his teeth, and use all his strength to endure.
At the age of eight, Songran went to primary school.
To everyone's surprise, mathematics became his worst grade. The numbers printed on the paper were like a nightmare. He couldn't face it, and he couldn't even complete the simplest four arithmetic operations. The original mathematical talent came to an abrupt end and was completely wasted.
But what frightened him the most was not the math class, but the physical education class.
Because before class, the teacher will ask everyone to stand in a row to report the number.
With the loud and clear count, he lost control and fell into a trance. He couldn't help but keep counting, as if his father would appear in a corner of the playground at any time, wearing an old winter coat and carrying a snakeskin bag on his shoulders, smiling and reaching out to him. Go ahead and take him home. Only by pinching his fingernails into his palms and forcing himself to think about other things can he escape the grip of desire and hallucinations.
Seventeen years have passed, and Songran's illness has recurred, sometimes mild, sometimes severe, and has never recovered.
He stumbled across mathematics and failed to become an accountant or cashier, but by chance became an illustrator. He traveled all the way back to Xiaxi Village, Nanwu Countryside. His father was not there and he never went back. The village has long since changed its appearance. The old houses of the neighbors have been demolished and rebuilt one by one. The childhood playmates have left, the old people in memory have passed away, and no one can remember that there was a family named Song at the entrance of the village.
Song Ran is twenty-three years old this year, and she lives very clearly.
He understood that his father would not look back, and he had already left the place he had been waiting for for a long time. He should find someone who knows and loves each other and start a family of his own. In this family, he will take on the man's responsibilities and not be able to hide in memory and continue to play a pampered child.
But the unfulfilled obsession is like a gangrene attached to the bone, and it is still firmly hidden in the disease.
The tired figure who squeezed onto the bus carrying a snakeskin bag had not yet faded from his sight.