Unrequited Love

Luo Zhi hated the train during the day.

If it’s the night car, she can now climb to the upper bunk to sleep or read a novel instead of sitting in the lower bunk to comfort the aunt in front of her with boring words over and over.

Aunt Fu is a slightly fat and fair-skinned woman who is well maintained. Her son looks very much like his mother. He is a delicate and flimsy eighteen-year-old boy. He will smile shyly when he meets outsiders. The child's father was short, thin and dark, with dry and cracked skin and deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Although he rarely laughed, he could see clearly.

Very unlike a family. Luo Zhi thought.

The husband and son were sitting on folding chairs in the aisle, with only Luo Zhi and Aunt Fu on the lower bunk. Aunt Fu grabbed her hand and said while crying. She accompanied her and said something like "Don't worry, the child can go out and wander around, he can't always be at home", "Since there are relatives taking care of me, don't worry about getting used to it soon" etc. No nonsense that the brain needs to process.

The boy is studying hotel management in vocational high school. Now his cousin, who works as a front desk manager in a big hotel near Dongzhimen in Beijing, found him a job there, so the couple sent him to Beijing together. Aunt Fu’s tears have never stopped since she drove. Her husband didn't know whether he was reluctant or was impatient. He refused to persuade her, but stared out the window with a black face. Luo Zhi listened to her chattering for an hour, and said the words upside down in response, finally losing his words.

"This kid just doesn't study well. He thought everything would be fine when he went to a vocational high school. Anyway, we had no way to get him into a key high school. If he goes to a general high school, he might as well go to a vocational high school. Anyway, he can't get into a good university. It’s difficult, it’s better not to study at a third-rate university. You see how good you are, I have told him how many times, there is a talented student in sister Han’s family in our unit..."

Luo Zhi felt that the direction of the conversation was a little out of control, and quickly turned away: "Auntie, you know my mother before, right?"

"Yeah, we were working in the first light bureau together. We were in the same office. As a result, she only stayed for a year and a half... At that time, your father... things really happened at an untimely time."

You mean, it's not time for my father to die? Luo Zhi did not show a strange expression.

"I also blame your mother for the trouble. We all persuaded her at the time that your grandpa won't do anything even if he doesn't retire, so you can bear it for the time being, and check after the limelight, and always give you justice. Yes, but why doesn't she listen."

Luo Zhi still did not speak.

She had an impression of Aunt Fu. Aunt Fu never helped her mother, but she didn't get into trouble either.

Aunt Fu felt a little embarrassed, so she continued: "However, I understand this world. No matter how dark or unreasonable, the old ancestors said that good is good for evil and evil is rewarded. Look, your mother. You will support you in the second half of your life. What a happier person! When we later met in the mould factory cafeteria, she told me about you, which made us all envious."

Luo Zhi smiled bitterly, she was indeed the only main line and hope for her mother's future life.

"Moreover, the chief of the first light game is now our second in command... I heard that someone is going to join hands with him. It is probably after this Spring Festival. Your mother told you, someone will come to look for him. After her, I heard that the batch of obsolete aging equipment during the restructuring of the factory was one of the key evidences. She asked your mother to write the materials. I think it has been turned out for so many years, even his father’s. The nepotism is ignored, which means that the person who wants to punish him must have a background. I guess it will be able to bring him down this time. There must be a scene. You guys should also vent their anger..."

Luo Zhi buzzed his head and looked at Aunt Fu blankly. She had a lot to ask, but she moved her lips without asking, because she didn't want to know anything subconsciously.

Without knowing, there will be no confusion and troubles, no embarrassment.

"...This matter is still confidential. I was also found by the investigation team, but I will tell you that they have said it and cannot leak the news. Anyway, I think it's fast. This is what the old saying goes: It’s not that you don’t report it. The time is not yet."

Aunt Fu was still talking about something, Luo Zhi stood up and took out the water from the bag and drank it silently.

Her mother did not tell her about this.

why?

As always, Beijing Railway Station is overcrowded. Luo Zhi brought Aunt Fu's family of three into the subway station, pointed to the route map and told them how to transfer, and then watched them get on the subway in the opposite direction.

"If you need help, just ask me," she told Aunt Fu's son her mobile phone number. "When it is convenient for you, I can go to Dongzhimen to see you."

After she finished speaking, Aunt Fu's tears began to fall again. No matter how unwilling, the child will have his own way to go.

Luo Zhi let out a sigh of relief when he finally saw the subway disappear into the tunnel of the black hole.

Someone patted her behind.

She looked back and found that Sheng Huainan was leaning on the pillar by the yellow line of the platform and looking at her with a smile.

Luo Zhi was stunned, neither saying hello nor smiling. She was still immersed in the news brought by Aunt Fu, and suddenly saw him appear in front of her, with a sense of absurd unreality.

"You hell?" He smiled, his face a little dark.

What surprised Luo Zhi was his voice, which seemed to be a bad cold, so dumb.

The voice made her dazed, somehow it sounded familiar, and the messy memory revealed a thread. She tried to reach out, but couldn't catch it anyway.

Sheng Huainan laughed for a while and felt a little embarrassed to see her not speaking, so he cleared his throat and said: "Last call, you said you would take this train back. I guess it will be Sunday. I happened to be in Chongwen this evening. Do something with the ministers of the student union near the door. When it’s over, stop by to see if you can meet you. I didn’t expect you to come out with someone else. I don’t know if you want people to see me, so I've been following you all the time. Fortunately you sent them away, or I'll follow all the way."

"It's not a big deal to meet classmates at the subway station. They won't be able to see it. You think too much. But thank you." Luo Zhi calmly.

Sheng Huainan stopped smiling. He thought for a while, took her suitcase and said, "Is the bag heavy? I'll help you carry it."

Luo Zhi's lips tightened. She was exhausted on the train during the day, and she had no intention of being at peace with him. She clutched the lever of the suitcase tightly and said, "Sheng Huainan, what are you going to do?"

His hand froze in the air, then slowly dropped.

"I hate you, am I?"

Luo Zhi was taken aback, what the **** did you put in garlic—the suitcase was taken away without saying anything. Sheng Huainan dragged it towards the exit and said as he walked: "There are too many people taking the subway now. Let's take a taxi."

Luo Zhi chased after a few steps, and there were strange eyes from pedestrians around her. She suddenly felt that it would be boring to pull again, so she bowed her head and followed him outside.

The wind in Beijing was much softer than in my hometown. They stopped a taxi for a long time. The wind kept blowing, and she didn't feel cold.

The two people sat in the back row together and were silent in the Hong Kong and Taiwan dialect of the radio DJ. The car shuttles through the night scene of Beijing, and the places it passes are sometimes prosperous and beautiful, sometimes down and out and messy. The city swelled safely in two extremes.

"Later... were you afraid? Didn't you have a nightmare?" Sheng Huainan said in a difficult voice, the feeling of strangeness and familiarity once again swept Luozhi.

The night before, perhaps because he was worried about what happened in the funeral home, he had sent a text message to her, telling her a good dream, but Luo Zhi did not reply.

"Don't be afraid. Thank you for helping me answer the test paper."

"This is the fourth time you said it."

Luo Zhi didn't catch up.

When I arrived at school, the meter had just jumped to 62. Luo Zhi took out her wallet, Sheng Huainan held her hand, said nothing, just glanced at her lightly. So she didn't argue, put the wallet back into her pocket, and took out the hand held by him by the way.

He lowered his head and thought of the Sun God Car in Happy Valley, but still felt pain in my heart.

"By the way, today is Christmas Eve. Have you eaten yet?" Sheng Huainan asked, standing at the door of the dormitory.

"I'm not hungry." Luo Zhi smiled reluctantly, "Thank you for picking me up. You have a cold, are you very sick, right? It's cold outside, go back to the dormitory."

Sheng Huainan stepped forward to stop her: "Luo Zhi, I was too impulsive. I did not think clearly about the cause and effect for the attitude towards you. I apologize first."

When he apologized, he was still so calm and peaceful.

Luo Zhi raised his head and stared clearly into his eyes: "What is the cause and what is the consequence, please make it clear."

"I don't want to say it yet."

"Then you think about it, think clearly about the causes and consequences, and then consider the countermeasures. Before you make the final decision, we will pretend not to know each other. In case you later discover that I was really guilty, but you have eased the relationship with me before. Those who picked up and ate dinner again, slapped me when I regretted it, and pretended that everyone is not very familiar—hehe, take your time to think about it, and I’m not in a hurry. If I don’t understand in this life, I will continue to think about it in the next life."

He opened his eyes in surprise, and his soft eyelashes had a hairy outline under the orange light.

"Okay," he gently let go of her wrist, "let's find a place to talk."

Luo Zhi struggled inwardly, bowed his head and said nothing.

"Will you accompany me to the top of the building to blow the air? Since I took you there that time, I haven't gone to see the overnight scene."

"You really like it there. If you catch a cold, you even blow it out." Luo Zhi smiled. His dumb voice made her a little soft.

"When I study in high school evening, I also like to sit on the windowsill of our administration building and watch the night scene. It's a quirk, but I think these two places are similar..."

Luo Zhi suddenly raised his head.

Something seemed to hit her on the head, and instantly became clear.

"Sheng Huainan, when you were freshman in high school, did you meet someone on the windowsill on the fourth floor of the administrative district?"

They spoke there. The window sill on the fourth floor that she liked but later occupied by him and Ye Zhanyan.

They actually spoke there.

Revisiting the old place of high school and Sheng Huainan's cold happened at the same time, the memory fragments in Luo Zhi's mind suddenly spliced ​​together, pieced together a past that she had ignored.

On the eve of the first mid-term exam in the first grade of high school, during the evening self-study class, Luo Zhi slipped to the administrative area because of the upset of the review, and strolled along the window in the long corridor. She would often pass several pairs of lovers in the dark, walk around quietly, draw an arc, and walk back to the window.

At that time, she wondered endlessly, if the trajectory of continuous avoidance in this road was drawn, would it be like the dull waves in children's drawings?

When she finally reached a relatively quiet window, she jumped up and sat, resting half of her body on the cool and comfortable glass. At the end of October, there was heavy fog in the north, and the corridors of the administrative districts were pitch black. Only the faint light from the business district outside the window illuminates the thin layer of water vapor on the glass. She dictated the equations with her fingertips.

But the coefficients are not evenly matched anyway. She was annoyed, erased, changed another piece and continued to write, then erased...in a short while half of the window was full.

A soft laugh came from the side.

She was taken aback and turned her head. On the other side of the huge window sill stood a tall boy. The light was too dim. He turned his back to the window and couldn't see his face.

"Excuse me," the boy's voice was hoarse, as if he had a bad cold, "I just wanted to say... the molecular formula of your hydrogen sulfide is wrong..."

Luo Zhi was dumb, changed his face quickly, and smiled gratefully, forgetting that the other party would definitely not be able to see clearly.

"My chemistry is not good," she said with a smile, "just thinking that hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs, so I added an O."

The boy's laughter was thick, mixed with a cough, and he seemed very sick.

"May I borrow half of your window sill? I like to stand on a high place to watch the night view, but there are too many couples nearby, and there is no quiet place."

She readily agreed.

In silence, they watched the dazzling bead chain of car lights on the viaduct in the distance, until the noise of a couple not far away grew louder and louder.

Her face burned, and the boy cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"High school students are just so amazing." He said to ease the embarrassment.

"What's so strange," she laughed, "I already had a relationship in the upper grades of elementary school."

"What do kids know?"

"Understood!" She suddenly became interested, "In fact, self-righteous love between children is interesting."

Sheng Huainan's eyes were confused at first, but as Luo Zhi told them, they suddenly brightened, and then went dark again.

"It's you." There was a trace of regret that Luo Zhi couldn't understand in his tone.

"It turned out that it was you who recommended "The Fairy Tale of Time" to me twice in a row."

At that time, Luo Zhi suddenly had a crazy idea, wanting to tell the story of the emperor he had met at the wedding when he was a child to this stranger in the dark who had never met before—for so many years, no one has shouldered the weight of her memories. , Sometimes she just really wants to find a tree hole and put everything in it safely, even if it is out of season.

However, she was still timid after all. She thought about it, suppressed the sudden impulse, and said softly: "Have you ever watched a cartoon called "The Fairy Tale of Time"?"

The boy seemed to scratch the back of his head: "Disney?"

"No," Luo Zhi said while turning to his side, "There is a plot like this: the fifth-grade little heroine was intercepted by a boy who had a crush on her on the way from school. Both are embarrassed, the boy is red. I thought about it for a long time and didn't know how to confess. Then suddenly I asked the girl a strange question for some reason."

"what?"

"Sunny, cloudy, rainy, which one do you prefer."

The boy coughed violently: "It's raining."

"...I didn't ask you." Luo Zhi kicked the window sill embarrassedly.

The boy coughed more violently, I don't know if he was shy.

"Anyway..." Luo Zhi continued, "The girl thought about it for a while, it's cloudy. The boy was very happy and smiled brightly and said, "Me too-then turned around and ran away."

"It's over?"

"It's over."

"It's very romantic."

"Huh?" Luo Zhi puzzled.

The boy smiled: "The so-called romance is that there is no future."

Suddenly they were silent together. There was only the sound of breathing in the silence, and the distance between the two ends of the window sill began to be filled with ambiguity.

Luo Zhi's heart beat wildly for no reason. She said in a flustered manner: "I'm back to work."

The boy's voice seemed to be stuffed in a kettle: "You...then...bye."

She ran too fast, and the people behind shouted something, disturbed by the sound of her own footsteps. She couldn't hear clearly, and the lingering sound echoed in the empty corridor, like the sound of waves lasting a long time.

"What did you ask me in the end?" Luo Zhi raised his head.

Sheng Huainan looked at the street lamp in the distance with a gentle expression.

"I asked, what is your name."