As soon as the sky was getting light, Cheng Ran went out for a run. He ran around the block outside the compound and met a few people from the compound who were out for breakfast. These people were people he knew but rarely interacted with Cheng Ran. When they passed by Cheng Ran, he smiled and nodded at them gently, but these people avoided his gaze. Of course, he didn't know what happened after he left last night, and how it fermented in the compound.
After returning home and having breakfast, Cheng Ran walked out of the corridor with his schoolbag on his back, and met two women and one man, all of whom were his father's colleagues in the company compound. Cheng Ran greeted them based on his impression, "Aunt Zhang, Aunt Liu, Uncle Zhao!"
Among the three, Zhao Pingchuan was the most indifferent and just hummed as a response. Zhang Chunxia smiled and responded to Cheng Ran, "Oh, Cheng Ran, I heard that you have a bad temper. You even had a fight with your head teacher."
"Yeah... With your temper, you might be able to become a general..." Liu Qun folded her arms, smiled in her high heels, praising him in a way that was actually insulting.
Cheng Ran was a little confused, but he understood after a while. Zhao Pingchuan’s son Zhao Ziwei was from the class next door, and he was also close with several people in his class. Zhao Ziwei got the news about what happened between him and Li Zhan. For example, some people in his class told him, “Cheng Ran in your unit… had a fight with Li Zhan. Wow, the situation at that time… blah blah…”
Now... what happened last Friday, let’s not talk about what happened at school today, but this matter has been exposed in the unit.
After all, in this era, the authority of teachers can directly intimidate parents through the school, not to mention the notoriously difficult head teacher Li Zhan of No. 1 Middle School. Even if the teacher hits you in front of you, the teacher's ethics come first, regardless of the teacher's ethics, you have to stand upright.
Zhao Ziwei told Zhao Pingchuan, and Zhao Pingchuan spread the news. With Zhao Pingchuan's gossiping personality, it was probably only a matter of time before this matter spread throughout the compound. The aunties and grandmas in the unit were used to a dull life, and they wished that there was chaos around them every day. Now Cheng Ran might not only have poor grades, but also be regarded as "lawless".
After thinking for a while, Cheng Ran said, "Uncle Zhao, your Zhao Ziwei was hanging out with a group of girls after school on Friday. One of them even held hands and fed each other ice cream!" After saying that, he walked down the apartment building without looking back.
Zhao Pingchuan's surprised voice came from behind, "What...what..." Then two women shouted "Oh my!" at the same time.
Zhao Ziwei usually likes to play with girls, but whether he holds hands with girls or not is not his business. Cheng Ran, who diverted the fire by using his own method, walked on the cement road and headed towards the gate.
At this time, Liu Ying was just driving out of the driveway in her father's Santana. She saw Cheng Ran's profile and suddenly reached out of the window and waved to him, "Cheng Ran!"
Liu Jun was driving fast, and Liu Ying and Cheng Ran passed each other. Liu Ying turned around. She didn't want to call Cheng Ran for anything, but she just felt that if she called out, her heart, which had been suppressed all night, would feel much better.
Cheng Ran looked at Liu Ying's car and scratched his head. If he remembered correctly, Liu Ying had been making faces at him yesterday. Her voice that just disappeared in the wind was a bit abnormal...
Just at this moment, Yang Xia from Unit 1 came down the stairs with a bag in his hand.
Yang Xia glanced at him, then turned her head slightly and walked straight forward. The old man guarding the door was a little surprised today. Yang Xia was usually the first one to go to school in the whole school, but today he was ten minutes late and had the same school time as Cheng Ran.
Yang Xia didn't walk very fast. Based on her understanding of Cheng Ran, she knew that he would catch up with her and say hello and talk to her soon.
The result is...nothing.
When they reached a bend in the road, she glanced back casually... He did not quicken his pace.
Yang Xia stopped and turned around and said, "The next bus is coming soon, do you want to be late?"
Standing side by side with Yang Xia at the edge of the platform, Yang Xia lowered her head and searched for something in her pocket. Cheng Ran noticed that there was a performance costume in her pocket. It seemed that the farewell performance of the third-year literary and artistic performance was coming, and she might go to rehearse today.
"Hmm." Yang Xia took out a crumpled paper ball from his pocket, stretched out his arm, opened his palm and placed it in front of Cheng Ran, looking away, "Here you go."
"What is that?" Cheng Ran took it and looked at Yang Xia suspiciously without opening the paper ball. "Could there be leftover peach pits hidden inside? Can you please stop playing such childish tricks?"
"Be serious!" Yang Xia bit her lower lip.
It didn't look like a trap. Cheng Ran opened the paper with pink lines on the back. It was a page torn from a notebook. On it was a poem: "Like a sad look, I love autumn. On foggy and quiet days, I often walk into the woods..."
He looked up, wondering, "Is this... the poem by Sun Jichao?"
"Throw it away." Yang Xia said softly, "You can do whatever you want with it."
In the morning light, the girl handed me a crumpled poem and asked me to throw it into the trash can.
Cheng Ran looked at her for a long while, "Don't you have hands yourself?"
Yang Xia: “…”
This Cheng Ran really makes people want to beat him up.
"This poem is good. If you don't want it, just give it to me." Cheng Ran folded the fragrant paper and put it back in his pocket.
In Yang Xia's eyes, her things were even more precious.
Yang Xia said softly, "Yu Xiao published the poem you wrote yesterday. Compared to that, this one can really be thrown into the trash can."
My poems...
I see.
All the abnormalities this morning finally connected at this point.
Cheng Ran shook his head, "The poem you're talking about... wasn't written by me."
"Liu Ying's mother read that poem herself, and she clearly stated that she had never seen any poet write that poem before. So you mean that Zhang Lin, with his experience, couldn't tell the depth of that kind of work?"
Yang Xia tilted her head and looked at Cheng Ran, as if she wanted to see through him, as if she had found a beautiful box and opened it with great joy, but then she was unwilling to find that the inside was still her plain, shabby music box.
Cheng Ran laughed dumbly, "You don't think Liu Ying's mother has read all the poems in the world? Even those that have not been published yet? Some poems are obviously very good, but they were born at the wrong time and never came out."
Yang Xia still did not give up, "Then where did you see this poem?"
"He wrote it at my cousin's house." In order to avoid tedious explanations, I might as well just make another excuse.
The expectations in Yang Xia's heart were gradually dissipating. She believed in Cheng Ran because she knew that Cheng Ran had a remarkable uncle who seemed to be the deputy director of the Municipal Public Security Bureau and had once been a combat hero. If it was really him, then it would explain the mood of the poem. As a frontline soldier, he had witnessed the sacrifice and departure of his comrades in the fight against criminals, so the poem's respect for freedom and death, as well as the origin of "fearlessness" came from it, and she felt that this was most likely the fact.
The Cheng Ran she knew could not write such a poem. How could his character achieve the fearlessness of life and death described in the poem? It would be better in the next life. She knew that she was influenced by the fluent English conversation between Cheng Ran and Jiang Hongshao, and she also had expectations for a while, thinking that Cheng Ran really wrote that poem.
It turned out that what Cheng Ran said was very likely true. He had just read that page of the English dictionary before coming here, and he brought back a newspaper for practicing calligraphy from his cousin's house. Yu Xiao mistakenly thought it was written by him and took it away, and read it out at the party.
So, when a tide comes, when you think the person next to you is the surprising gold sand washed out by the waves, it turns out that it is just an illusion created by light and shadow, and he is really just an ordinary stone.
Cheng Ran saw something burning and flickering in Yang Xia's eyes, and then it went out.
The wobbly No. 47 bus arrived.
"Get in the car." Yang Xia got in the car without looking back.
A girl from the same class on the bus stopped Yang Xia and started chatting with her enthusiastically. Yang Xia was several seats away from Cheng Ran. She was wearing a white shirt, elastic cotton pants and white and red striped Warrior shoes. When she stood there, it seemed that all the boys on the bus were attracted by her slender swan-like neck.
But the swan never looked at Cheng Ran the whole time.
Many people asked if I could write faster, and some even threatened to kill me... You all know my speed. Three to four thousand words a day is my limit. Sometimes when I'm writing, I have to write even slower because of repeated considerations.
So I can only bow to everyone and try my best...