Chapter 3 Primer

This is the summer of 1998. July 9. The sky seemed to have been blown by a hurricane all night, and it was so clean that there was not a single cloud.Only the pure pure blue is left, which is insolently rendered above the head.Unintentionally, he opened the blue ink bottle casually. Smudged, inextricably blue. The afternoon sun was as good, or better, than any other typical summer.The heat made everyone lose their desire to talk.When he opened his mouth, there was dry heat, as if he was about to spit out fire.So everyone just stood quietly under the tall camphor tree, frowning, silent. After Fu Xiaosi dragged the car out of the parking shed, he looked at the white light in the sky that seemed to kill people, and considered whether he should go home first, and the English test that just ended almost killed people.The girl behind her kept coughing, and Xiao Si almost couldn't even hear clearly.

"Hey," Lu Zhiang held a can of Coke and touched Fu Xiaosi's arm, the stinging coldness passed from the skin on his arm to his heart quickly and delicately.Fu Xiaosi took the Coke and opened it, raised his head and gulped it down, his Adam's apple was up and down.After soaking some in his hand, he raised his hand and sucked the knuckle of his index finger with his mouth. Lu Zhiang saw his movement from the side, and a strange "forehead oil~" came out of his throat. Fu Xiaosi remembered that when he raised his head and drank Coke three years ago, he didn't feel that his Adam's apple was so abrupt. Now he has graduated from high school and is nineteen years old. unshaven.Fu Xiaosi remembered how he drank a can of Coke three years ago and then left a group of friends in junior high school.Everyone just patted their shoulders without saying goodbye, so we really never met again.

Today, three years later, when everything is happening as it is, the angle of the sun, the smell of the air, and the birds that quickly disappeared into the woods have not changed, only the group of people who are saying goodbye has changed.So, I wonder if it will be like the farewell three years ago, and we will never see each other again? Fu Xiaosi raised his head to look at Lu Zhiang, he said to Lu Zhiang, "Hey, we just graduated like this, right?" Lu Zhiang looked at him, then frowned, and said, "It seems so." A group of birds in the sky suddenly flew over, and the sound of overlapping wings resounded through the sky.

Fu Xiaosi turned his head and said nothing, frowned slightly, and took a big gulp of Coke. There are a lot of people crowded together in front of them, and everyone's face is flushed with the uniqueness of summer. Xiao Si remembers that it was like this when he took graduation photos. Everyone stood in line under the scorching sun, because the sun was so strong that everyone in the photo They all frowned and blushed a little, so Lu Zhiang vividly described it as "like a group photo before going to death", with a tragic expression, he pretended to be invincible and rushed towards the already overwhelmed single-plank bridge.Then I heard the sound of many people plopping into the water, and the water splashed on the face like tears.Tears stained the faces of each of us, but we still couldn't stop rushing forward like crazy.

When the red dot shot by the camera flashed across everyone's eyes one by one, then "clicked", it was frozen, and then a group of people scattered like birds and beasts. Everyone hurried back to the classroom, took out reference books and continued to work on the questions in the dark.After five minutes, I can no longer remember who is standing on the left and right sides of me. This afternoon, many people laughed, many people cried, and then many people were silent.Camphor trees in the school become extraordinarily prosperous every summer.The shade of the trees under the sun will always slowly penetrate into the window like sticky ink, Fu Xiaosi remembers that he and Lu Zhiang fell asleep in the shade of the trees for seemingly endless summers.The red light and heat on the eyelids have not dissipated.

But now he was about to leave suddenly. Fu Xiaosi remembered the words he had read a long time ago: Leaving makes everything easier, and makes everything have a reason to be forgiven again, let's do it all over again. Cheng Qiqi was fighting with some men and women on the steps of the old school gate.She can always get acquainted with a stranger within three minutes, patting each other's shoulders and heads affectionately, as if they have known each other for hundreds of years.This made Fu Xiaosi feel incredible.Because he thinks talking to a stranger is a terrible thing, he would rather do a five-star math problem than meet a stranger.So he often pointed to Cheng Qiqi and said to Lu Zhiang: "She is really amazing, unlike me, since childhood it seems that you are the only friend."

And every time Lu Zhiang would laugh twice, and said with the corners of his mouth twisted: "That's because I really can't find another person as good as me." When Lu Zhiang speaks, the corner of his mouth always likes to rise at a special angle, and then there will be a small crease that looks like a scar or a dimple at the corner of his mouth.very special. It's special, but it's also pretty.With the unique sense of sunshine of young boys, it makes people's eyes shine. Fu Xiaosi and Lu Zhiang stood at the edge of the crowd, drinking coke, and occasionally lowered their heads and exchanged a word or two.Cheng Qiqi ran over from a distance, patted Fu Xiaosi, and asked him, "We're going out to play at night, are you going?"

Fu Xiaosi raised his eyelids and asked, "Are you all there?" Cheng Qiqi said that there is such-and-such, such-and-such, such-and-such, and such-and-such and such-and-such. Fu Xiaosi asked: "How do you always know so many inexplicable people?" Cheng Qiqi put his hands on his chest, and said a little weakly: "These inexplicable people are our classmates, and you have studied in the same class with them for tens of thousands of hours." Fu Xiaosi said, "Oh, so Lixia is going?" "Well, go." "Ah, we're going, we're going!" Lu Zhiang stepped in, looked at Cheng Qiqi and said with a smile.

"Okay, I'll call you tonight." Then she went back into the crowd again. Fu Xiaosi looked up at Lu Zhiang, and asked him: "Tell you where I'm going?" Lu Zhiang let out an "ah" and made a backward movement, then looked up again, and said expressionlessly: "Oh, then don't go." Fu Xiaosi opened his mouth and couldn't say anything, his expression was a bit depressed, he froze for a minute and finally said: "Go to hell." When it was almost dusk, there was no one in the school. Those juniors and juniors who were in the first and second grades of senior high school had already been on vacation to watch cartoons at home.The senior three students also left in twos and threes after finishing the last foreign language test.Leaving this time is the grandest and last farewell. Fu Xiaosi can even see the shadows behind them being split suddenly when their feet stepped out of the school gate. .

It is like the soul leaving the body when a person dies, with a trance of sadness and unknown fear. Those shadows seem to still be in the empty campus, wandering, humming the songs they sang in their youth but are now forgotten. Those people finally left, dissipated in every corner of the city with the traces of three years, and will eventually dissipate in every place in China and even in the world. The twilight is all in one. It always gets dark very late in summer, but once it gets dark it gets very fast.Within a minute, they couldn't see each other's faces clearly.In the dark, Lu Zhiang seemed to wave his hand, and the air was full of heat, he said: "If you don't want to starve to death, go eat."

Fu Xiaosi stood up and patted the dust on his pants and said, "Let's go." The streets of Asakawa are always clean, and the city is full of camphor.Fu Xiaosi and Lu Zhiang ate a bowl of beef noodles worth two yuan a bowl at a dilapidated stall on the street, even though they were wearing white T-shirts and coarse trousers worth several hundred yuan.It's a bit of a "starving ghost in gold and silver".This sentence was used by Fu Xiaosi to describe Lu Zhiang, because he was often poor because of his careless use of money.At this time, Fu Xiaosi would point to the expensive clothes on his body and say with a blank expression: "A starving ghost wearing gold and silver." The boss is a young man with a unshaven beard but his youthful face cannot be concealed. He said to Fu Xiaosi and the others: "You two have just finished the college entrance examination?" Lu Zhiang became interested, put one foot on the stool, and asked: "How do you know?" "Yeah, you high school students all have the same expression on their faces, and you can understand it at a glance." "What expression?" "Ah, I can't tell, but you can see it at a glance." The boss laughed. Lu Zhiang put his face in front of Fu Xiaosi, fixed his eyes and asked him: "What expression do I have now?" Fu Xiaosi didn't look up, and replied while eating noodles: "Children with intellectual disabilities insist on the expression when they read "One Hundred Thousand Whys"." Then the two started to fight, and continued to eat noodles after the fight. Xiao Si thinks about it, it seems that he and Lu Zhiang fought almost every day in school, and they fought for six years from the beginning of junior high school to the graduation of high school. On those days when the grass grows and the warbler flies, peach blossoms bloom all over every green hill.Red is rendered on the hillside like melted paint, and the mist diffuses in everyone's pupils. He and Lu Zhiang just stood on the hill and drew paint stroke by stroke on the drawing board and their clean clothes.Then the clothes become as colorful as the drawing board. He and Lu Zhiang always used the cheapest paints worth a few dollars, because Fu Xiaosi's money was used to buy CDs, and Lu Zhiang's money was used to treat MM to drink Coke.Every time the teacher pointed at the paintings handed in by the two people, he was furious. Every time he pointed at Fu Xiaosi's nose and asked him if he couldn't afford the paint, Fu Xiaosi nodded to him innocently and with tears in his eyes. .Fu Xiaosi thought that he must hate him to the point of gnashing his teeth, but there was still nothing he could do. So he listened to the CD every day and walked in the streets of Asakawa, those noisy music took root in him, and those cruel and sweet cries sang dirges every night in his dreams.They say there is always a clean continent in this world, and Xiao Si thinks that one day I will find it. They say there is always a quiet island in this world, Xiao Si thinks I can sleep on it for decades. Lu Zhiang bought a lot of Coke and met many girls, but every time Fu Xiaosi saw him, he still squinted his eyes and rode a bicycle through those tall camphor trees.Just like those lonely male protagonists in youth movies, wearing white shirts, walking through the long and lonely youth time tunnel alone.His back seat is always empty, like the empty shirt on his thin body.He always does not button his school uniform, with his chest exposed to reveal the white shirt inside, and he rampages around the school with a shoulder bag slung across his shoulders. But Fu Xiaosi will always be a clean child in the teacher's eyes.He would put on his black school uniform neatly, even buttoning the top button, with delicate golden cuff buttons on the cuffs, and standing straight when he met the teacher with a backpack on his back.Every time Lu Zhiang saw him, he would laugh so much that he would jump off the bicycle, pointing to Fu Xiaosi while covering his aching stomach and saying, "You beast in clothes".Then Fu Xiaosi and the teacher's faces became ugly at the same time. After the teacher left, Fu Xiaosi would always kick him off the car, knock him down and roll around on the ground before giving up.Anyway, he doesn't care if his clothes get dirty, because his mother will give him new clothes every day so that he can run wild outside like a child who will never grow up. Lu Zhiang always wore loose clothes, but Fu Xiaosi felt that he was still a clean person, but Lu Zhiang said to Fu Xiaosi: "Although you wear white and clean clothes when facing others every day, in my eyes You're just a lazy brat." Fu Xiaosi never thought about right or wrong, so the days hovered over the city so quietly.Little by little, those cities that were so old that the stones began to weather were burned.In the end these flying hours turned into dove-gray feathers covering every human skeleton. Those bodies that are jointed towards the lonely sky, shimmering like glass under the cover of these times. Like a vague, unborn legend. Most of the time, Fu Xiaosi thought that he and Lu Zhiang just laughed silently in Asakawa like two ruffians who depended on each other, and then cried pretentiously, living day after day noisily.For so many years, he thinks he is used to wandering in this city with Lu Zhiang, looking at countless beautiful girls, looking at countless strange stop signs, walking along countless strange curved mountain roads and then walking towards more unknown worlds.The luxuriant camphor grows in their annual rings to become a witness of growing day by day.He and Lu Zhiang grew up slowly from thirteen to nineteen.Those days that recur every time it rains really become memories.Sometimes Fu Xiaosi looks at the photos and gets lost in ecstasy. Their hair grew short, their clothes became old and new, and they stood on the ground crying and laughing.The big sun still rises in this city every day, making their shadows longer and shorter. So the years just ran over slices of life one after another. Before he finished his meal, Cheng Qiqi's call came, Lu Zhiang held the phone for a while, "hmmmmhhhhhhhhhh", then hung up the phone.He sat on the stool and turned up and down like a primary school student. He said to Fu Xiaosi: "Eat quickly, they are waiting for us in the kokok on Xia Street." Fu Xiaosi frowned, and said, "Why is it such a messy place again?" Then he stood up and said, "Let's go." Lu Zhiang took out his wallet and paid the bill. When I left, the sky was completely dark, and some dark red clouds in the sky were floating low, being swept by the wind and moving towards the darkened sky above, like heaven was on fire. When Li Xia saw Fu Xiaosi and Lu Zhiang coming in, he immediately ran over. Fu Xiaosi pointed to the group of people who were with Li Xia just now, and asked, "All of them?" Lixia shook his head: "I don't know him either, it seems to be Qiqi's friend." Fu Xiaosi nodded and said, "Oh, that's not surprising. She has a lot of friends, and she probably even knows Bjork, and asked her to help. Did you do well in the English test?" It was difficult for Lixia to accept why this person who was usually as cold as a hard ice brick in the refrigerator suddenly lost his mind and told a bad joke, so she couldn't help kicking Fu Xiaosi and said: "No It's funny, and I forgot to tell you about the contract we just signed, discussing the college entrance examination and going to striptease in the hallway." Fu Xiaosi opened his mouth, but the words disappeared inexplicably when he reached his mouth, and finally hummed "Your figure is not good" as the ending.But Li Xia didn't hear it. Li Xia looked at Fu Xiaosi in front of him, drinking green tea from a paper cup, frowning as he watched the koke subtitles on the TV screen changing from white to blue, vaguely felt that there was a layer of white light on his face, which made His chiseled face was extraordinarily quiet and gentle.She thought of how she looked when she saw Fu Xiaosi for the first time three years ago. She had a delicate and childlike face, with a frosty expression that was not stained by the world. When looking at people, her eyes would never be able to disperse. The thick fog, speaking at a slow pace, seems to be indifferent to everything.And three years later, the young man now seems to have a man's outline, his soft face seems to be a little sharper, and the line of his chin cuts obliquely into his ears and temples.She felt a little embarrassed about her kick just now, "It seems too intimate?" Fortunately, Fu Xiaosi never cared about her.But Lu Zhiang was different, Li Xia thought, if he kicked him once, he would kick himself twice. That day Cheng Qiqi kept singing with the microphone, and then she just sat in front of the jukebox and stayed there, just finished singing one song with the microphone and clicked on the next one.Lu Zhiang kept yelling that he couldn't stand this Maiba.Li Xia joked that it looks like she is going to be a singer in the future. Lixia looked at Qiqi with some envy in her heart. Qiqi sings very well. It seems that Qiqi is good at everything, including studying. Almost all the students in the school are her friends. Parents love and take care of her. He is good at painting, and he is also beautiful, in short, he is a perfect person. Everyone seemed to be releasing their repressed emotions to their heart's content. As soon as the beer was opened, the room was full of bubbles, and when another bottle was opened, someone fell to the ground with a plop.A group of people jumped up and down crazy out of shape.So-and-so grabbed the microphone and shouted "I am Tomato", and then someone lying on the ground answered, "Hi, nice to meet you, I am Cucumber." Everyone was tired after singing until twelve o'clock, so they scattered like birds and beasts.Qi Qi, Li Xia, Xiao Si and Lu Zhiang remained.The four looked around, not knowing where to go, and finally decided to walk casually. The night in Asakawa is quiet, without excessive neon lights and noisy crowds.Most people here will go to bed after eleven o'clock, so four people walking on the street can't even see a ghost. Walk to the park in the middle of the street and sit down.Fu Xiaosi and Lu Zhiang lay on the deck chairs in the park with their heads up, Li Xia sat on the chair next to them, Qi Qi was a little tired, so she lay on her lap to sleep. The summer night came with a characteristic humidity and sultry heat, the street lamps shone brightly above the head, emitting some humming strings out of thin air, which lingered in my ears for a long time. Lots of bugs flying around.Li Xia rubbed his eyes and felt that he was also a little sleepy.The conversation between Fu Xiaosi and Lu Zhiang gradually became unclear, and his consciousness slowly slipped towards the chaotic nightmare. Lixia vaguely felt Fu Xiaosi approaching, and asked in a low voice, "Did you apply for the Central Academy of Fine Arts in the end? I haven't had time to ask you." In his nose was the smell of clean washing powder from Fu Xiaosi's T-shirt when he approached. Fu Xiaosi's voice was hypnotic, deep and trance-like. She nodded, then realized right away that it was too dark for him to see her nodding.So he immediately said, "Yeah." It is neither light nor heavy. "If the university was still together, well," he paused, then continued, "I'd be happy." Li Xia felt that his heartbeat suddenly missed a beat.The scene when I decided to fill in the same university with Fu Xiaosi suddenly resurfaced, which made me feel nervous and terrified.It's just that she was very surprised why Lu Zhiang didn't speak all the time.According to the previous situation, Lu Zhiang must have inserted a lot of words at this time.Li Xia turned his head, in the dim light, he could still see Lu Zhiang lying there, his eyes were bright, blinking two or three times.A shadow under the street lamp cast on his face, making his face hidden in the darkness, leaving only the glimmer of light in his eyes. Li Xia asked: "Lu Zhiang, what about you?" Lu Zhiang paused for like two or three seconds, and then spit out two words: "Shanghai." Lixia nodded and said, "Well, that's pretty good, we're in the same city as Qiqi." "Get lost." Fu Xiaosi's voice raised a little, Li Xia could hear some anger in Fu Xiaosi's words.She was a little confused, she didn't know whether the word "roll" was scolding herself or Lu Zhiang. Lu Zhiang sat up, coughed, and said: "Well, Lixia, actually I passed the Shanghai Finance test, but I don't need to go to that school to study, I just need the qualifications of that university, and I can get into the Sino-Japanese exchange base class set up by the University of Finance and Economics. Then go straight to Japan." "Ah, I haven't heard you say that before." "Well, I only told Xiao Si today." Everyone seemed to be asleep. The temperature began to drop at three o'clock in the morning, and the sweltering summer heat dissipated. Large groups of slightly chilly water vapor permeated and shrouded the garden in the middle of the street.I have heard some legends before. It is said that after midnight and before dawn, there will be many such wandering ghosts at all crossroads and street gardens. They condense in groups into mist, milky white, floating low in the air . Thinking of this, Li Xia felt a little cold, but fortunately, Qi Qi's face was leaning on her lap, and there was some slight warmth.Then Lixia seemed to fall asleep too.In the trance, someone put a coat on himself, but he was too tired to open his eyes to see. But Lixia is still familiar with the smell of washing powder on the clothes. Like a dream, everything went back to three years ago in a trance.It was the first time I came to Asakawa, and when I got out of the station, I was frightened by the camphor trees covering the whole city. At that time, the sun was as dazzling as it is now.Half of the entire Asakawa is shrouded in the dark green shadow of midsummer, and half of it is illuminated by the sun, showing a flood of white light. In the dream, many people were smiling, and their faces were full of bright happiness. In the midsummer of 1995. Daylight swept across the city like a tsunami. Dark green shadows are rendered on the surface of the city like ink drops falling on rice paper.Boys' white shirts and girls' blue headbands, tall bicycles and small backpacks, dirty footballs and clean handkerchiefs, these young figures are like fish swimming in the deep sea, slowly floating and shuttling through the whole over the city. It's midsummer.Those rich aromas.