On September 1st, the sun was so bright that it had a halo. The parents who attended the swearing-in meeting said that this must be a good omen.
The entire playground was cleaned up and looked brand new. The red flags and slogans stood beside the road like two rows of road trees. The faces of the senior three students were full of anxiety and excitement.
Pei Zhuo let Lu Lin straighten his tie, squinting his eyes and smiling: "Do I look good?"
"It looks good." Chief Lu said with a blank expression, "Stop being coquettish, I'm getting out of the car."
When they entered the classroom again, they all changed their demeanor, from a gentle lover to a serious teacher.
Pei Zhuo walked behind Lu Lin, thinking that this story could be regarded as an adult version of Cinderella.
There was one student in the classroom who didn't come, but the other students were full of fighting spirit, occasionally looking out the window to see if the parents had arrived.
Lu Lin glanced at the empty seats in the corner, motioned for Pei Zhuo to settle the situation for himself first, and took out his mobile phone to make a call in the corridor.
"The swearing-in meeting will be held soon." Pei Zhuo looked at the students and smiled kindly: "It's finally this year, are you happy?"
"Happy! I'm even happier after the college entrance examination!"
"Handsome Pei, go surfing with us during summer vacation~~"
Lu Lin hung up the phone and came back, motioning to the leader of the sports committee to take them downstairs: "Don't wait, go to the playground first."
The two teachers stood at the head and tail of the team, and the parents sat in the spectator seats. Some of them looked as if they had bet their fortunes on the Colosseum, eager, nervous and greedy.
Thousands of students stood in one place. First, the leader gave a speech, summarizing the brilliant results of the previous college entrance examination, and then looking forward to another success this year.
Lu Lin delivered a speech as a teacher representative of the grade, and he talked eloquently and personably without script.
Then there are parent representatives and outstanding student representatives.
The wind was strong on the playground, and the red flags with slogans were whistling.
The students were dazzled by the wind and the scorching sun. They blocked the distracting objects with their hands and looked up at the front with smiles on their faces.
After Lu Lin delivered his speech, he also went to the end of the line and stood in the same row as Pei Zhuo.
They wore the same suit and looked handsome in the sun.
Huo Lu stood at the end of the team in class two, smiling and took a group photo of the two of them.
Pei Zhuo generously made a V to the camera, Lu Lin couldn't smile for a while, and pursed his lips with a serious expression.
When it came to the swearing-in session, thousands of students raised their arms and shouted together.
"Do your best and don't regret this life!"
The teachers looked up at the fluttering red flags, as if they were in the drama, and they seemed to be bystanders of the children's youth.
The start of school was followed by a test. After three days in a row, the answers and lectures were given out on the spot. The idle rhythm of the second year of high school was swept away. Teachers and students were racing against time to learn.
However, the empty seat in the classroom has been empty, and the student has not shown up for a long time.
Pei Zhuo had a little impression of this student.
His grades are neither high nor low, and he occasionally falls asleep during class, but he is very good-looking, so he can be regarded as a poor class.
"It seems to be called Zhang Mo?" He mentioned it when sorting out the answer sheet: "Is this kid transferred to another school?"
"No transfer." Lu Lin's tone was complicated: "He hates studying and refuses to come."
"Tired of studying? Just started the third year of high school?" Pei Zhuo didn't expect such a situation, and asked, "Do the parents care about him?"
"The parents of the students have met before. They are people who care about their children and have received higher education." Lu Lin said, "I heard that Zhang Mo locked himself in his room before school started and refused to come to school on a hunger strike."
He sighed, not surprised by this unexpected situation: "Maybe it's too much pressure."
The two parents did ideological work around Zhang Mo for four days, and finally they couldn't help it, so they asked Lu Lin to help.
Pei Zhuo just happened to be assigned by Director Hu to be the deputy head teacher in Class 1 this semester, and he went to the students' home with him.
The boy lives in a nearby school district house, which was planned and bought by his parents long before he was born.
His parents welcomed them in at the gate of the complex full of apology, and their tone of voice was very guilty when they spoke: "We don't know what happened to this child. He was fine before the holiday, but suddenly..."
Lu Lin said clearly, "Is it too much pressure?"
In the third year of senior high school, not only are students stressed and stressed, but parents may need psychological counseling more than students out of self-comparison. Parents may vent their negative emotions on students if they are not aware of it.
"There must be." Zhang Mo's mother looked at her husband angrily, and then defended him in the next second: "We are too anxious. We have been waiting for this battle for twelve years since we were worried about it in the first grade of elementary school. It is inevitable that he will be urged to hurry up."
Lu Lin nodded quickly, walked through the bright and clean living room corridor, and followed their guidance to knock on the student's door.
As soon as you walk in, you can smell the instant noodles.
"He didn't go out during the day, and the spare key at home was also taken away." Zhang Mo's mother whispered, "We didn't dare to open the lock forcibly, for fear that the child would go to extremes."
Lu Lin knocked on the door twice, but there was no movement inside.
He tapped twice more.
The boy said angrily, "I told you I won't go to school, don't make noise!"
"I'm Teacher Lu." Lu Lin said lightly.
There was a panicking sound from inside the door, and something was being grabbed and put away.
"Teacher Lu," the boy said dryly, "I'm not feeling well, you should go back."
"Talk."
"I really don't want to talk about it, and I don't want to listen to your reasoning." The boy is also broken: "I know you are doing it for my own good, and my parents are also doing it for my own good. I don't want to take the college entrance examination or go to school. You don’t want to worry about finding a job, okay?”
Pei Zhuo pulled Lu Lin away a second before he spoke, and his eyes signaled him not to speak yet.
Zhang Mo is in a violent and rebellious state, obviously his family has been chanting all the truth to the point that his ears are numb, and now he is annoyed by everything.
The middle-aged couple next to them looked panic-stricken, and wanted to persuade them dully, but they also shut up when they saw Pei Zhuo's gesture.
The big boy in the room didn't expect that there was a sudden silence outside, and he was hesitantly observing the situation.
Pei Zhuo watched the time and waited for five minutes, then leaned against the door and said calmly, "I'm Teacher Pei."
"... Teacher Pei is here too?!"
"I'm not the kind of person who talks big things." He said slowly, "Come in and sit with you, okay?"
The boy hesitated and said nothing.
"Others won't come in, and won't force you to do anything in front of me."
There was another hurried sound of cleaning up in the room, knocking down several jars one after another.
He opened the door carefully, and felt a bad smell on his body, making him very embarrassed.
"... Teacher Pei." The boy whispered, "My ventilation is not very good."
Zhang Mo's mother opened her mouth to reprimand him, but Lu Lin quickly held her down.
"It's okay, just sit for a while."
Pei Zhuo was indeed smoked when he entered.
The air conditioner in the room has been turned on for four consecutive days, and the bucket of instant noodles that was turned on this morning has not been thrown away until now. The damp and damp in the room makes people uncomfortable.
Although the boy cleaned up impromptuly twice in a row, he just piled up the dirty clothes and hid them under the quilt, and stuffed game consoles, magazines and comics into the bookshelves randomly.
Everywhere was messy and disorderly, as if mold had grown in his heart.
Zhang Mo sat by the bed, his underpants and white T-shirt were stained with oil.
"I'm sorry." He said annoyedly, "I caused you and Mr. Lu trouble."
Pei Zhuo didn't sit down right away, he walked half a circle around his room and saw the group photo on the bookshelf.
The little boy hugged the big dog and smiled very happily.
"So you had a dog."
"That's right." The boy's expression relaxed a little: "I raised a golden retriever when I was young, and it was named Duoduo."
"But when I was in junior high school, my parents said that raising a dog would affect my studies, so they gave it to my grandfather without asking my opinion."
Pei Zhuo listened quietly to his complaints, carefully touching the dog's face with his fingertips through the glass frame.
The stories Zhang Mo told were for him the first, second, and tenth time in his life that he was controlled and suppressed by his parents.
For Pei Zhuo, it was the hundredth or thousandth time.
He has been teaching for several years, and the repeated cases encountered by the parents he has seen are like double images that are disturbed in the water.
The troubles and sorrows of each family are actually similar, but the way of interpretation is different.
Originally, Zhang Mo was just feeling sad about the separation between him and the dog, but before he knew it, he talked about a series of hobbies that his parents had forcibly obliterated during his 12 years of studying, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt breathless in his chest.
But no matter what, being able to talk for a while will also relax a lot, without the feeling of tenseness before.
Pei Zhuo handed him the water glass and finally sat down.
"I also raised a golden retriever."
Zhang Mo was dubious: "Isn't the Dalmatians posted in your Moments?"
"No." Pei Zhuo shook his head: "When I just graduated from university, I raised a little golden retriever."
"It's gluttonous."
"Dogs are gluttonous," muttered the boy, "even socks."
"I can't teach it yet." Pei Zhuo said with a smile: "The one I raised can quietly pick up the ribs on the table, and later learned to unpack the snacks on the coffee table."
"I was reluctant to hit it at first, but it didn't listen to whatever I said."
He lowered his head, his fingers as long as white jade intertwined.
"It has tasted all the snacks at home, soft and hard, but it has never eaten chocolate."
"I stopped it twice, because this matter still scratched its head, and then I hid the chocolate in the cabinet."
Zhang Mo said in a daze, "Dogs can turn over cabinets."
"Yes." Pei Zhuo looked at him with a helpless expression: "When I came home from work one day, I found the bedroom door was opened."
The puppy turned the cabinet all over the floor, opened the box and wrapping paper, and there were chewed gold leaf and chocolate ball residues all over the floor.
"It was just lying there in the debris, barely breathing."
When Pei Zhuo talked about this matter, he didn't mobilize too many emotions, but he still felt sad.
"I... sat with it in the hospital overnight."
Zhang Mo looked up at the photos next to the bookshelf, and murmured, "It's impossible to save them."
"Well, it can't be saved." Pei Zhuo clenched his palm with ten fingers and didn't look at him: "Everyone's life is different."
"No one can bear the consequences of wrong choices for others."
Zhang Mo was stunned, wanting to argue for himself.
Before he could speak, Pei Zhuo got up and walked towards the door, pausing for a few seconds before opening the door.
"I've been confused too, many times."
"But after the confusion and struggle are over, we still have to go the right way."
He closed the door for him and signaled the parents waiting outside to go back to the living room.
The two returned to school after a few words of comfort and did not stay longer.
The next morning, the kid went back to class.
The students didn't know what happened: "Ms. Lu said you were sick? What's wrong with you? May I ask for leave for you in physical education class?"
"No need," the boy rubbed the back of his head, looked at Pei Zhuo with a shameful smile, "It's all right."