Chapter 10 chapter eight

Lai Yongmei hid in the university library to study, and Lin Weizhu brought her mobile phone. "You left your phone in the room." Lin Weizhu said. "Oh, thank you." Lai Yongmei put the phone in her backpack. "A man surnamed Ye called you just now, and I said you forgot to bring your phone." "Surnamed Ye?" Lai Yongmei had a surprised look on her face. "Ok." "Did he say anything?" "No. Just say I'll call you later." "What was his voice like?" "It's the chirping voice of an ordinary man. What's the matter? Biao has a new boyfriend?"

"Not at all." "Then who is he?" "I only know one surnamed Ye. However, it shouldn't be him." "Is it an ex-boyfriend?" "It's the little boyfriend who eloped with me in the second year of middle school." "elopement?" "Yes, I once eloped with a boy. At that time, my family thought we were too young and opposed our relationship, so we ran away from home together. However, we only ran away for 29 days." "Did you get taken back by your family?" "I am, he is not." "Why have you never heard of it?"

"Or because I hate him." "Will he call again?" Lai Yongmei looked down at the note and said lightly, "How do you know?" In the middle of the night, she lay on the bed and listened to Xia Xinju's program.A girl who just came back from vacation in France called into the show and said: "When I was 17 or 18 years old, I had a terrible life. I often changed boyfriends, smoked, drank, and spent the night outside. Now I am 26 years old, and I just want to love a man and love myself." "When people grow up, they like simplicity and fear complexity." Xia Xinju said.

The girl said: "That's right. But sometimes I miss the absurdity of my youth." The girl suddenly asked: "Miss Xia, do you believe that a man will wait forever for a woman to come back to him?" Xia Xinju smiled: "I haven't met yet." "Maybe someone is waiting for you." After a long time, Xia Xinju said: "Then, he won't wait forever, there is always a deadline." Lai Yongmei's mobile phone never rang again.It should be him who called a few hours ago, right?He is such a timid person, and he hasn't changed at all. While thinking this way, her phone rang suddenly.

"Sorry to call you so late." The other party said. As soon as she heard the voice, she recognized Ye Weisong. "Aren't you in England? When did you come back?" "I came back the day before yesterday. I'm going to Peking University as an exchange student for a year." Ye Weisong said. "How did you find me?" "I asked my old classmates. I heard that you are at the University of Hong Kong." "Yes, how about you?" "I'm at the University of London." "It's amazing! Do you like life in England?"

"Life over there is miserable." "You are not afraid of boredom, you are afraid of suffering." She teased him. "Do you still hate me?" Lai Yongmei laughed: "It was a long time ago, when everyone was a child." "I've always felt sorry for you." "You didn't apologize to me. I asked you to elope with me. Maybe you just wanted to please me at that time, and you didn't really want to run away from home." "I thought you were talking casually, but I didn't expect you to come to the truth." "Sure enough, it was forced." She said with a smile.

"It can't be said that it was completely forced. At that time, I really liked you." That year, she was thirteen years old, and Ye Weisong was two months older than her.They were in the same class and she sat right in front of him.Outside the school, there are full of holly trees.In summer, the chirping of crickets can often be heard.It was very hot that day, and when walking under the tree, Ye Weisong told her that she could know the temperature by listening to the chirping of crickets. "How come?" "Really?" Then he asked, "Does your watch have a second hand?"

"Yeah." She raised her wrist. He looked at the watch on her wrist and said, "Add five to the number of times the cricket chirps in a bar second and you have the temperature in degrees Celsius." They counted the crickets chirping with bated breath.During those eight seconds, the cricket chirped a total of twenty-six times. "The current temperature is thirty-one degrees Celsius." Ye Weisong said proudly. "How does the cricket know the temperature?" She didn't understand. Ye Weisong raised his eyebrows: "Secret!" "Tell me!" She pulled him.

"There's a chance," he said viciously. From then on, listening to crickets together under the tree after school was their most private time.Crickets are their thermometers. "You are shameless! Why do you read my diary!" Lai Yongmei scolded her mother.Mom peeked at her diary and found out that she and Ye Weisong were in love. Mom gave her a loud slap across the face. When she met Ye Weisong at school that day, she said, "Let's run away from home." Ye Weisong was startled and asked, "Where are you going?" "Anywhere is fine. My mother is going to transfer schools for me, and I won't be able to see you anymore." She cried.

"Then when shall we leave?" "Leave at school tomorrow." At night, Lai Yongmei quietly packed her things.She stayed up all night, sitting by the window, dreaming of a free and sweet new life.The next morning, she met Ye Weisong at the station. In the first week of their departure, they wandered around during the day and slept in the park at night, and the hundreds of dollars they had on them were quickly spent. That night, they leaned wearily on a park bench. "Let's go home," Ye Weisong said. "How can we go back now! Let's go find a job!" Suddenly, she asked him, "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" "It's crickets." She smiled at him. He looked up at the top of a nearby tree, where the crickets were coming from. Leaning happily in his arms, she asked him, "What time is it now?" The next day, they found a job delivering flowers at a flower shop. "Since we have money, we don't need to go to the park anymore." Lai Yongmei said excitedly. "Where are you going?" “There are many hotels in Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui.” "It's complicated there." "But the rent is cheap." They rented a small room in a hotel in Chungking Mansions.The residents there are of all races, and they are all people who come to Hong Kong to find work, and the air is often filled with an unpleasant smell of sweat. In order to save money, Lai Yongmei and Ye Weisong eat beans in tomato sauce and white bread almost every day.They cuddled in bed that hot night. "Do you love me?" she asked. "Love," he said. "Will you love until the day?" "I don't know either." He said while eating beans in tomato sauce. "Is there no deadline?" "No." She leaned her head on his shoulder and said longingly: "In the future, when we have money, we will also open a flower shop." "Do you like flower shops?" "With my own flower shop, I can sleep in the shop at night and wake up in the fragrance of flowers." She resisted the salty smell outside with full of longing. "When are we going home?" Ye Weisong asked suddenly. She became angry: "Who said you want to go home? If you want to go, go by yourself." Then one day, they woke up in the morning, scraped together, the two of them only had a few dollars, and there were three days before the payday, and the cans and bread were all gone. "Go and buy some food and come back," she told Ye Weisong. "What would you like to eat?" "As long as it's not eggplant in tomato sauce." "Okay, I'll go out and have a look." Ye Weisong went out with all their money.He went for a long time, and she waited for him hungry.In the evening, she began to suspect, he had run home. In the middle of the night, someone knocked on the door.She jumped out of bed to open the door, and outside stood her emaciated father and tearful mother.Ye Weisong went home and betrayed her. Later, Ye Weisong's family sent him to board in England, leaving her alone, and became the laughing stock of her classmates at school.She hated him to death. She asked Ye Weisong to meet at Konditorei.This is a German cake shop she recently discovered, and it has really delicious plum cakes.She walked through the turbulent streets, fantasized about the reunion thousands of times, and finally came to Konditorei.Ye Weisong sat there, his appearance didn't change at all, but he seemed to have grown bigger all of a sudden, a little strange. "You have become more beautiful." Ye Weisong said. Lai Yongmei smiled and said, "Of course! Otherwise, why grow up?" "Your mouth is still as sharp as ever." "When are you leaving for Beijing?" "I'll be leaving in two days. My family immigrated to the UK a few years ago. I could fly directly to Beijing, but I really want to come back and see you." "Your mouth is still as sweet as before." Lai Yongmei said while eating plum cake. "Are you still mad at me?" "I did hate you then. You shouldn't have left without a word and all the money. You know what? I've been waiting for you in the hotel, almost starving. Didn't expect you to be like that." "I didn't plan to go home. That day, I took the money to buy food. You said you didn't want to eat tomato sauce and beans, but I didn't have enough money to buy anything else. There was a huge crowd, and I walked farther and farther away. Far away, I suddenly felt relieved, so I walked home like this. Because I was afraid that something would happen to you alone, so I notified your parents." "While I was starving, you were enjoying the abundance of food at home, weren't you?" she teased him. Ye Weisong smiled embarrassedly. "Thanks to you, I no longer eat cannonballs in tomato sauce. I have eaten them for more than twenty days in a row. Curriculum beans in tomato sauce is my nightmare." "I used to eat peas in tomato sauce too in England." "Of course! It's your savior, it set you free." Ye Weisong chuckled. "It's a good thing you betrayed me, otherwise, I wouldn't be as happy as I am now. If we didn't go home, maybe we got married very early, then had children, and now we are busy raising children, running around for life every day, and have no more dreams And freedom. I don't want that life. I should thank you." "real?" "Well. You don't want such a life, do you?" "However, sometimes I miss those days when I was young and ridiculous." "Do you have a girlfriend now?" "Yes, in England. What about you? Have a boyfriend?" "There are two." "two?" "Isn't it ridiculous?" "Why are there two?" Lai Yongmei smiled: "Maybe it was too serious when I was young, so now I have to be absurd." "Do they know of each other's existence?" "Of course not. If they knew, one of them would leave me." "Is it possible to love two people equally? How do you do it?" "Do you want to ask me for advice?" "Oh, I'm very specific." "Really? That's my loss." "When will you come to Beijing. I'll take you to play." "How do you calculate Fahrenheit?" she asked suddenly. "Fahrenheit?" He was confused. "You only taught me to calculate the temperature in Celsius by the chirping of crickets, not in Fahrenheit." Ye Weisong smiled brightly: "Add forty to the cricket's chirping within fifteen seconds, and that's the temperature in Fahrenheit." "Are you still not going to tell me the secret of the cricket thermometer?" "Some things are not fun to put it bluntly." "Could it be that you were transformed from a cricket? Otherwise, how could you have such magic power?" He grinned: "Just to give you a hint, all living things, including crickets, including people, are governed by chemical reactions." She said discouragedly: "Is this also a reminder?" "Did you know that crickets can tell the temperature?" At night, on the bed, she played with Guan Zhengzhi's lock of naturally curly hair and said, "But I won't tell you why." "Is the little boyfriend who eloped with you handsome?" "Not handsome, how could I elope with him?" "Did you do anything?" "I didn't know what to do at the time. As soon as he touched me, I screamed and scared him to death." "Why are you screaming?" "Scared! I wanted to try it. It turned out that two people were sweating profusely and confronted each other on the bed." Guan Zhengzhi giggled. "why are you laughing?" "He probably ran home for that reason." "Run away because you can't have sex with me?" "Because the gap between fantasy and reality is too far away, I feel depressed, so I go home." "Are boys like this?" "Maybe a little ashamed." "If I had been with him then, I wouldn't have known you. Such a life might be a curse." She got up from the bed and said, "I'm starving, do you have anything to eat?" "Didn't you come back with plum cake?" Guan Zhengzhi said. "Have you got peas in tomato sauce?" "Honey beans in tomato sauce? I don't think there are any. Do you like to eat?" "I'll go shopping." She stood up and put on her jeans. "I'll go buy it." "No. You don't know which one I like to eat." Lai Yongmei walked around the convenience store, and the beans in tomato sauce happened to be sold out. She went to one convenience store after another.As he walked further and further away, he suddenly understood Ye Weisong's feelings.Between love and freedom, she chose freedom without hesitation.She walked alone on the bustling street, gradually drifting away, and she felt relaxed. When she came home, Mom was surfing the Internet and Dad was cooking in the kitchen. "Yongmei, why didn't you say anything when you came back?" Mom asked. "I walked back without knowing it." She handed the beans in tomato sauce to her father and said, "Dad, please, I want to eat beans in tomato sauce." "Didn't you never eat beans in tomato sauce?" Dad asked. "However, I really want to eat today." During dinner, Guan Zhengzhi called. "Where are you?" he asked nervously. "Dinner at home," she said lightly. "At home? Didn't you say to buy chicken beans in tomato sauce? I'm still worried about you." "I'm eating beans in tomato sauce." She said with a smile. Lai Yongmei happily ate curium beans with tomato sauce in the bowl.People's immunity to a food may have reasons for happiness or sadness.She knew that whether it was today or in the future, if she ate chicken beans in tomato sauce again, the taste of electricity would not be the same as it was back then. At night, she leans against the bed and listens to Channel A.She remembered the story of the young and ridiculous girl.She sometimes misses the days when she ran away.She and Ye Weisong cuddled together in the dark hotel, so poor that they could only eat beans in tomato sauce and white bread every day, but they still longed for a happy world.That was the most absurd earnestness when I was young.