Chapter 17 3.

3. At the end of the eye exercises, the teaching director announced several announcements on the radio and suddenly said: "Xu Jialiang from Class 3 and 4 of Senior High School, please report to the teaching office." Her voice sounded rigid and orderly, smooth and completely devoid of emotion .This seemed to be the first time she had heard the name of a strange girl named Xu Jialiang. She hesitated for a moment on the pronunciation of the last word but still pronounced the wrong pronunciation confidently.So Sansan staggered and ran in the empty corridor, but inside his chest was a deer bumping around.How long had it been since her name hadn't been read on the radio, written on a blackboard or posted on a bulletin board?Now she was walking in the empty corridor, but she seemed to be heading for the head teacher's office on the second floor of the primary school teaching building. From the window of that office, she could directly see the balcony of the old house on Wanhangdu Road.but why?She did all her homework and her grade book had her dad's signature on it, she didn't skip class or date a guy, her only fault was liking someone who didn't exist.This is a secret that no one else will ever know.

As a result, the torn letter with no postage stamp was spread out in front of Sansan.The letter was not sealed, and it was obviously crumpled by the hands of many people, and even stained with a rough gray-black thumbprint.She opened the letter in confusion, and felt dizzy like a thunderclap.Those crooked and scrawled words written with poor-quality ballpoint pens were too hard, so the letter paper was poked in several places.Holding a thick stack of letter paper in her hand, her first reaction was that the letter from Astro Boy hidden in the drawer was actually pinched in the palm of her hand at this moment.It was as if she had been stripped naked in public, and it was hard to breathe, but she didn't dare to take a second look carefully, as if she was afraid that if she took a second look, her nightmare would come true.

But she soon discovered that this was not a letter from Astro Boy at all, because the words Xu Jialiang were so eye-catching.Astro Boy would only call her Xu Sansan or Sansan, the two of them had never called each other's names like that, as if they didn't remember such a thing at all.But that letter said Xu Jialiang!Liang is simply a typo.She mustered up the courage to read it carefully and found that this terribly poorly written love letter was not addressed to her at all. The strange handwriting and strange signature, and the childish but hot love words in it made her almost cry.She didn't know anyone named Xiao Wu, she never knew this person named Xiao Wu.Disgusting.She wished she could throw the letter out of her hand.

Sansan looked at the dean in horror and disgust, and said, "This is not a letter addressed to me." "We didn't open your letter on purpose. Some classmates picked it up and handed it to me. You don't have to be afraid. If those hooligans caused trouble, you can report it to the school." The dean didn't seem to notice. Listening to what she was saying, her voice was still too smooth to hear the tone.She was sitting on a hard wooden stool wearing a dark red down jacket, clutching a cold enamel tea mug in her hand, her permed and withered hair was clamped by steel wire hairpins and firmly stuck to her scalp.She looked into Sansan's eyes with the usual indifference of the teachers and the calm but flickering eyes of those who are superior, as if she could really see through her heart.

"This is not a letter addressed to me, you made a mistake." Sansan wrung her fingers and muttered to herself repeatedly. But why is she still afraid of the teacher with a stiff smile like a liar?The familiar urgency to urinate suddenly came back when the math teacher took away the test paper, and she could only sway her body from side to side in embarrassment. The dean stopped talking, her sharp eyes drooped behind the thick lenses, and she tapped the glass tabletop rhythmically with her knuckles.It seems that she has a way for all the students who make mistakes but love to lie. She has enough patience to consume them, and the underachievers who are condemned in their hearts are always the ones who flee in the end.Her mean lips were tightly pressed together, but Sansan could almost hear her thinking: "Hmph, is there any use in lying at this point? Why don't you admit that we are wasting our time here? How much time is there?" Precious you kids don't realize it at all."

But Sansan didn't lie.They didn't know that no one in this key middle school was more disgusted and afraid of lying than her.Why is she lying?She's almost out of the nightmare, isn't she?Why don't they believe her, don't believe that she will really get better?Just like this, she stuck to the time of one class, and she stood beside the corner of the table until her calves started to feel sore.The dean just took a sip of tea, spit out the tea leaves from his tongue, and then said slowly and kindly: "I have heard from my classmates. The letter was written by a male student from the vocational school next door. I also know him Every day after school, I will come to the school gate to wait for you, but you have to think about it, this is a key middle school. Next year you will all be admitted to university, if you delay the time like this, your parents’ tuition fees will be for nothing.” She said It seems that she can be tolerant enough, as long as Sansan is willing to admit that all lost lambs can find their way home.But Sansan didn't believe this.They are adults, they are liars, those who teach, those expectations and those reprimands are all lies.They have long forgotten the good times, and they don't know anything at all.

"But this letter was not addressed to me." Sansan could only say this sentence over and over again. At this time, the teaching director suddenly became impatient, raised his head coldly and waved at Sansan mercilessly, saying: "Forget it, forget it, you go back to class first. I will discuss this matter with your homeroom teacher." .” Sansan almost begged, "It's really not for me." But she got up and opened the office door.Sansan could only walk outside.The ear-piercing bell rang for the end of get out of class, and she heard the teaching director behind her say to the others in a sincere tone: "One bowl won't ring and two bowls will jingle, wait and ask her homeroom teacher to call her parents to report the situation." Right." She wanted to cover her ears and escape from this suffocating office as soon as possible, as if she could escape as long as she ran fast enough, as fast as the girl who flew past Yan's house All nightmares.

The letter was actually addressed to Helen, but Helen told someone else a fake name, Sansan's name. When Sansan walked into the classroom and saw Helen's dodgy eyes, she suddenly knew it.Yes, that's how they know each other.Helen deliberately pretended not to see her indifferent and angry eyes, but talked and laughed loudly with the boy behind her, her voice harsh.It was the first time Sansan noticed that when she laughed, she would make a wheezing sound from her nasal cavity, looking stupid and disgusting.She had never hated Helen more than she did now, with her thin, shaggy curls, and with the way she always thought she was being noticed.Sansan had never hated her so much as now, and hated her so much that she wished she would die immediately.But this is her best and only girlfriend!The two of them even agreed to go to the bathroom together, not to mention queuing up for lunch at noon, playing cricket and jumping rubber bands during PE class, and going to the canteen to buy cup noodles soaked in half-hot boiling water. Every day after school, they would make phone calls at home for half an hour to relive the happy and sad events of the day.Now Sansan just sat on the seat sadly, staring at Helen like a small nail.She had never had a girlfriend before, and she had grown up with boys but didn't know how to deal with the bad feelings and the merciless hurt between them.Why didn't Helen tell those little rascals her own name?Why can she do such a dirty thing?Why can she still sit there doing math problems with peace of mind?It wasn’t until after school that Helen sneaked out of the carport, took Sansan’s hand and said, “I didn’t know he could really write letters. I thought he didn’t have the patience to write love letters. He always Just kidding, talk about things you won't do." Sansan didn't speak, she looked for the car keys in her schoolbag.Her schoolbag was always stuffed with things in a mess, and she couldn't get it out even though she heard the bell on the keychain ringing desperately, but it seemed to give her a lifeless excuse not to talk to Helen.

"So if I haven't had my period for a week, could it be that I'm pregnant? I'm terrified, but I can't tell anyone. I don't know how to get pregnant, so I'm really scared to death." Helen was still talking there on her own, her body trembling nervously, "Help me, don't tell the teacher. I'm afraid that if I'm pregnant, they will fire me if they find out. You know my dad's Man, he'd do anything, and he'd kill me if he knew about it." Sansan flipped through her schoolbag irritably, those nagging made her almost collapse.She really wanted to say to Helen, you top students who don’t have to worry about anything, you top students who have grown up in a normal way, you top students who always want to rebel and go out of their way, why can’t you be quiet for a while? Woolen cloth!

"They'll soon forget about it, it's all over, please." Think twice, no one will forget this matter, maybe the head teacher's contact number has already been called at home.She believes that everyone will know about this soon. The female students in the lower grades will point and whisper to her when they go to the toilet, and there will be warning notices posted on the bulletin board, even the sports room. The teachers who manage the equipment here will remember her name.How familiar this feeling is, it is nothing more than a reenactment of Wan Hangdulu's childhood, she is that damned hopeless girl who repeats the same mistakes.But how could she say "no" to Helen?She was just afraid of becoming the girl who sat in the last row of the classroom and was ignored again.When the physical education class was divided into pairs to practice, she was left alone and had to throw the ball against the wall alone.The English class rehearsal situational dialogue teacher randomly stuffed her into a group. As a result, the role she played couldn't even get a complete line, and of course she wouldn't get a good score.Her class teacher's comments at the end of the semester always read: I hope that next semester, I can unite my classmates more extensively and make progress together.Now she is used to Helen who is always by her side, even her mother said: "You two are simply wearing the same pair of pants!" In fact, she never knew how to hate someone.She looks cold and heartless, but it's all fake. It's just that it takes some time for those injuries that come out of nowhere to be forgotten, doesn't it?

As soon as I got home, I inserted the key into the keyhole, and the door was opened from the inside. The mother who was walking on slippers slapped Sansan across the face, and her father dragged her away. above the door frame.She bit her lips tightly to prevent those cowardly and disappointing tears from falling out of her eyes, only to hear her father keep saying: "Don't do this, she is already a big child." He scolded in a harsh and hoarse voice: "Make a boyfriend, now that you know you are going to have a boyfriend, you still want to hang out with those wild kids in Yan's house, don't you? Then you go back, you go back to Yan's house!" Three San was pushed and shoved by her, so he could only hold onto the door frame with his fingers, as if as soon as she let go, he would really go back to Yan's house.The voice-activated lights in the corridor dimmed for a while and brightened for a while, the blood on the lips leaked from the gaps between the teeth, and it was salty to lick with the tongue.She hated crying in front of them like she was really the bad girl who made a mistake.Mother clutched her chest and said bitterly: "Look at you, look at your current appearance! What do you want to grow up like a normal girl? How much do you want us to worry about you!" "But that letter was not addressed to me." Sansan murmured to herself. They didn't talk to her all night, but they still fed her food, warmed milk in the microwave, peeled and cut apples into small pieces, and even stuffed a hot water bottle under the covers in case she burned her feet. Don't forget the wrap towel.They still love her.It's just that she hates this love. This love is to tie her up firmly, not to give her freedom, to completely separate her from the past, and to trap her in mist and ashes.Sitting on the toilet and washing her feet with the last bit of hot water in the thermos, and then applying clam oil to her feet, she heard a fierce and low-pitched argument from their room next door.She walked to their door with bare feet, and put her ears on the door panel in fear: "I don't believe her, I don't believe her nonsense at all. That letter was written to her. What about Helen, she made it up." It came out. Why should I believe her? She has been like this since she was a child, and dogs can't change eating shit. Look at the things she did when she was a child." "You are not allowed to mention those things!" Dad suddenly interrupted Mom's words severely in a low voice, "Sleep." The light in their room was violently snapped out.Sansan stood at the door completely dumbfounded.Her knees were stiff and her fingers were numb, and she couldn't move at all. The tears just flowed down her cheeks, down her chin, and onto her bare insteps. Her heart was completely torn into pieces, and it was almost impossible to put it together again. I don't trust her I don't trust her I don't trust her I don't trust her They never believed her, even if she had come out of those nightmares, it was useless.She remembered that there lived a mentally ill person opposite the old house on Wanhangdu Road.He used to be a Chinese teacher in middle school. In their words, he is a bit sissy, and he likes to raise his orchid fingers when he speaks.Later, he was hospitalized because of schizophrenia inherited from the family, so the teacher could no longer do it.In fact, he is normal when he is not sick. In the evening, he would open the small window in the pavilion and sing Teresa Teng's "Nanping Evening Bell" inside, and he sang very beautifully.But they always forbade Sansan to talk to him, and threatened her: "Don't talk to that Lanhuafinger, his brain is bad, and he doesn't know when he will have an attack." So Sansan always hides quickly when she sees him. .I met her on the road when I was about to move, and he smiled and insisted on giving her a tape of Teresa Teng.She ran away because she was too afraid to slap the tape on the ground, and she didn't dare to look at his puzzled expression.And now she is just like that poor Lanhuazhi to them, even if she moved away from Yan's house, even if she was admitted to a key junior high school and then a key high school, even if she no longer forged parents' signatures, skipped classes, and lied No longer making friends with male classmates, they are still wary of her, they still feel that she will have another attack at any time.The liar is called that piece of bubble gum stuck to her hair, just follow her follow her.All her efforts were in vain.She thought they would laugh because she finally became a good girl, but in their hearts, she will always be that stubborn girl who was beaten up and cried because of fooling around with Astro Boy in the old house on Wanhangdu Road .When they looked through her schoolbag, they always thought that there would be hidden test papers. They put the New Year’s cards sent to her under the lamp to reveal the handwriting inside. They accidentally talked about what she had just written in her diary at the dinner table. .She hated the sneaking.They never believed her. Sansan shrank into the quilt with her cold bare feet, covered her face with the quilt, but couldn't stop crying no matter what.Finally, the sky outside slowly glowed red, and when she poked her head out, a icy wind came in through the gap in the window, but the tears flowed back into her nostrils and blocked her nose, so she couldn't breathe, so she opened her mouth to pant .Why do you suddenly feel that this feeling is so familiar?I cried until every bit of strength in my bones was exhausted, and I could smell the smell of Suzhou River coming from all directions even though I couldn't breathe.The river seemed to flow through the ceiling, and the sound was deafening.She shivered nervously and woke up.This is obviously not on Wanhangdu Road anymore, why are you still so scared?The tingling sensation in the lungs that only happened in the morning jogging suddenly struck again, as if someone had been soaked in the river and couldn't even grasp a life-saving straw.And it was really a long day, December 23rd, according to geography books, it was the day with the shortest day and the longest night in the year, and it was finally about to rush through after exhausting and stumbling.Her eyes were swollen and soaked with tears all night, and she crept out of the quilt and walked into the patio.The biting wind pierced through the cotton wool trousers and tied them on the knees. It was another misty morning, and the dry sycamore tree stretched its brown branches towards the sky. The tree had been wrapped in straw rope and painted with white paint.I couldn't see the houses across the road that were close at hand, only the street lights that hadn't been extinguished in time flashed fantasy-like light in the mist, and it was as quiet as a dead city buried in volcanic ash.The mother who came out to go to the toilet suddenly opened the door from the inside, and the rotten smell of the room that only in winter came to the face.Mother was disheveled and wearing a woolen sweater, staring at Sansan's unsightly face swollen from crying through the glass and said word by word: "Look what you have done to yourself. Go wash your face." .” How can she justify it?Maybe she really didn't want to go out of those fogs at all. This is the end of 1999. Although there are rumors that the earth is about to explode, no one really cares about it. For seventeen-year-olds, death and aging are simply dreams or things that will never come true. Everyone's New Year's resolution is to have a good grade in the college entrance examination next year.What Sansan worried about every day in that bitingly cold winter was the love letter incident that was never mentioned again.She didn't know when the warning would be posted, or when her name would be spoken again on the radio.However, the dean seemed to have forgotten her.During morning exercises, she was walking back and forth on the runway with her water-pressed hair bun and a down jacket buttoned from neck to instep with her hands behind her back. Several times, her eyes flicked past Sansan hesitantly, but she looked like she was not at all. Can't remember how her name came about.At that time, Sansan never thought that the teachers also had a lot of things to do. After school, they would go to the noisy and dirty small vegetable market to buy vegetables. They would hang pork belly on the handlebar of the car. There was an elderly person in their family who was sick. Instead of living in a nursing home, their children graduated from technical schools and couldn’t find a job and could only sit and eat at home. Their menopausal respiratory and heart problems were bad, and their houses were relocated. Maybe they didn’t have so much time to remember those things. Trivial.Only Sansan would remember that every time she saw the dean from a distance in the corridor, she couldn't even breathe, and she wished she could run away immediately. Helen said loudly in the classroom: "My mother has already made an appointment to go to the temple to ring the bell and burn incense on New Year's Eve. It is said that it is very efficacious, and all wishes can come true. But if it comes true, you must go to fulfill the wish. Otherwise it will be bad luck.” The girls next to him chirped.They are the group of girls who like to dress up the most in the class, and they will take out a mirror to squeeze the pimples on their faces secretly under the cover of textbooks during class.Helen, who had always hated them in the past, saying they were petty and vulgar, now walked shoulder to shoulder with them and laughed wildly.Sansan knew that she did it on purpose. She purposely abused herself and made herself crazy in order to attract her attention, make her jealous, and want her to change her mind and talk to her.But Sansan didn't want to talk, she didn't want to talk to Helen, she didn't want to talk to her father, she didn't want to talk to her mother, she didn't want to talk to anyone.After school, she immediately picked up her schoolbag and ran away, afraid of meeting Helen in the carport with other girls, excitedly going to the small commodity store.At home, she hurriedly ate soup and bibimbap on the dinner table, and then hid in the room and never came out again.Mom thought she was reading a book, so she turned the sound of the TV outside very low, and could only feel the flickering of light and shadow.Their tiptoeing made her suddenly feel very sad, because there was only a foreign novel that she could not fully understand before her.She felt that those key universities were really far away from her, as if they were fake and imagined.As for Helen, even without her, she would have plenty of girlfriends, and she would never be lonely. During physical education class, Sansan just silently took out the sweatpants from the drawer and ran to the toilet at the end of the corridor to change.She had repeatedly counted the time, but in the end, she still met Helen on a narrow road. Helen, who was just silent and shivering in the cold and adjusting her sweatpants just now, started talking like a drugged man when she saw Sansan.She said to a girl next to her who was planning to lie about menstruation to avoid long-distance running: "Oh, I hate wearing a bra the most. It feels like I'm being strangled every day. When I first wore it, I wore it every day when I arrived at school. I sneaked into the toilet to take it off, put it back on when I got home, and acted for my mother." Sansan looked at her.When she spoke, her face was flushed, and she deliberately turned her head to the side without looking at Sansan.However, the more excited she was, the more weak and flustered she appeared.Her earlobes were already red, which made Sansan bow her head sadly, squatting hurriedly on the wet tiled floor, pretending to tie her shoelaces, repeatedly tying them until they rushed out of the toilet chirping with irritability and excitement.At this moment, Sansan suddenly saw light reddish brown seeping from the back of Helen's white and red-striped sweatpants that tightly wrapped her buttocks.Although the temperature suddenly dropped by five degrees, Helen always refused to wear cotton wool trousers that would make her legs look bloated, so the small pool of reddish-brown was as dazzling as a blurred watercolor paint, making Sansan's eyesight like sticking plaster Same sticky there.She suddenly felt awkward, as if she was the culprit of the color that was gradually smearing out of control, but Helen was jumping forward without realizing it.Sansan followed them in line, listened to the gym teacher's old-fashioned and nagging lectures, but she still couldn't take her eyes off the pool of blood that no one else could notice.It wasn't until the physical education teacher blew the whistle and the girls complained that they were running in a loose line to the track, Sansan squeezed forward desperately, squeezed to the side of Helen, and said to her in the most nonchalant and indifferent tone: " Hey, you can't run anymore, you're on your period." Unexpectedly, Helen suddenly stopped laughing, covered her waist with her hands and kept shouting, "No, no, no, I laughed so hard that I couldn't straighten up." The physical education teacher ran over from behind and shouted imposingly: "What are you two doing here?" Helen said very loudly: "Report to the teacher, I'm on my period!" The physical education teacher who was always shouting at the girls was so embarrassed that he didn't know what to say for a while, so he turned his head and took out a copper whistle from his pocket, pretending to blow it seriously and vigorously to the team that had already run away. stand up. Helen laughed and sobbed.She squatted on the ground and covered her stomach with her hands and cried.At the beginning, Sansan just made a very small purring sound restrainedly, and later when Sansan also knelt down to try to pull her up, Helen hugged her.She had never been hugged so tightly by a girl before, and her thin bones were so painful from the bump.She didn't know what to say.She doesn't know how to comfort people.She won't hug. She just said with a stiff body and a small and short voice: "Don't cry, don't cry." "I thought I was pregnant, I thought you wouldn't talk to me anymore. Xu Jialiang, I really want to die." They always talk about death easily, because to them, death is really something unreal like a mirage, a fake, and a more imaginary imagination than entering a key university through the college entrance examination.But why those tears suddenly gushed out from the memory?Why does the body gradually become soft, gradually becoming like, like a real girl?Sansan pulled Helen up from the ground.She seems to remember that Helen cried to the PE teacher and said to the physical education teacher: "Teacher, I want to ask for leave. I am suffering from menstrual pain." towel.The sweatpants pockets were bulging with sanitary napkins.She gallops past the girls who gather to dance rubber bands and play badminton, as if harboring a hot secret.When Sansan passed the sanitary napkin in along the crack of the toilet partition, the cold war between the two of them ended.It was the time for class, and there was no one in the toilet, the floor that had just been mopped smelled of disinfectant, the distant noise of the playground came from outside the window, and even the air was clean and damp.They chatted one after another, as if the unpleasant incident had suddenly become a blank memory. "Which person is Xiao Wu at the school gate?" Sansan lay on the half-open window and watched the long-distance running test team on the playground. "Of course the most handsome one! Stupid." Helen laughed, and then they both laughed. "Actually, he's not as bad as they say. He's going to be a chef in the future, and he'll have his own western restaurant in the future. But if my dad finds out about this kind of thing, he'll be dead. Sigh." She She was sweet and confused when she spoke, and the crazy power had made her dizzy and exhausted, "But I really didn't expect him to write to me." "So how far have you grown?" "We just kissed." Helen was a little shy and proud when she said it, twisting Sansan's arm. At that time, they really thought that if they kissed, they would get pregnant.From Sansan's point of view, even kissing is already too outrageous and excessive, and it is even more obscene because of the exchange of saliva.What does it feel like to kiss?Are their lips soft and wet and warm?She had almost forgotten the kiss on Astro Boy's cheek in the children's playground as night fell, but it must be different.And this is a secret, because it has been buried for too long, so even the person concerned has almost forgotten it, and it has almost disappeared together with the entire memory related to Yan's house on Wanhangdu Road. She remembered that a few days before the entrance exam, Astro Boy said to a boy in the vegetable market: "Do you know that Xu Jialiang is my girlfriend?" Kissed my cheek." He pointed to his right cheek.But no one would believe him at all, no one would believe that Sansan was so bold as to kiss Astro Boy's face, that was really shameless.So Astro Boy angrily pulled Sansan who was walking behind and questioned: "Do you think you kissed me? Tell them!" She couldn't remember if she really slapped him at that time, if If there is, it must be just a slap that slipped across the skin weakly.How afraid she was of being heard by Lin Yueyuan!Even if all of them don't believe her, they still know it's true, as if she is always being pushed farther and farther away from Lin by those invisible hands, and in the end she can't even remember his face .She really couldn't remember his face, but she remembered Astro Boy's angry and wide-eyed expression, so fierce and sad.She muttered endlessly: "I didn't, I didn't kiss you, I didn't, I didn't..." And he shouted hysterically in a hoarse voice: "Xu Sansan, why don't you tell them the truth? Why do you want to cheating?" But you know, I'm a hopeless liar! Later, the turmoil gradually came to an end without a problem, because there was a final exam and a unified examination in the district, no one talked about the letter, even the parents kept silent, but if it was six o'clock every day. If he didn't come home, Dad would put on a thick windbreaker and stand in the limelight at the intersection, smoking and waiting.Every time Sansan rode home against the wind after attending cram school, he would feel so sad that he would cry when he saw the hunched black figure and the half-lit cigarette sparks from a distance.He didn't speak when he saw her coming back, but just stubbed out the cigarette butt, and sometimes patted her hat, and the two of them shrank their heads and pushed their bicycles back home silently in the overwhelming wind under the two buildings. One day, the English cram school procrastinated. By the time I walked out of the teaching building after class, it was already completely dark outside.When Sansan was wearing woolen gloves and pushing the bicycle outside, she saw that all the neon lights outside were on.She anxiously rode her bicycle across the playground, and suddenly saw No. 9 in front of the bulletin board at the gate, holding a bowl of mixed paste and brushing on the blackboard.She immediately stopped the car and walked over.It turned out that there would never be any notice of warning and punishment. Everyone had forgotten that only she was still worried about it.Under No. 9's arm was a large roll of red paper. The list of winners of the city's math competition had already come down. Helen and the math representative of the next class came back with a second prize and a third prize respectively.The name is written with a brush on red paper sprinkled with gold powder.Sansan didn't know why she stopped and walked towards No. 9.She watched him turn around and silently lowered his hands, his Adam's apple rolled and made half a vague syllable.The street lamp was smashed by someone, and she couldn't see his face clearly from a distance of one meter, but she reached out to take the enamel bowl full of paste, touched his cold and dry fingers, and helped him remove the enamel bowl. Smooth out the paper posted on the blackboard.The sticky paste has been frozen cold, and the poor-quality ink that has not dried out still exudes a familiar smell.They both took a few steps back at the same time. Number 9 said, "It seems to be crooked." The wet ink on Helen's name dripped down to form a big exclamation mark. "Do you want to rewrite one?" He rubbed his hands, and the hot breath he exhaled had condensed into a cloud of white mist in the air. He smiled faintly at Sansan, this was the first time Sansan spoke to him after the incident, but she was completely unprepared.He thought she was shivering from the cold, but in fact, it was just because she was so close to him, all the blood rushed to her brain, and she didn't know what to say, she just stood beside him like this, and kept smoothing the pain. The uneven paste on the paper was clumsy and stiff. "But you should never give up." No. 9 said suddenly when Sansan picked up her schoolbag, patted the dust, bowed and pushed the bicycle away. She pretended not to hear, because she had no idea what he was trying to say or how to answer, but her heart almost stopped beating.She seemed to have summoned up a lot of courage all of a sudden. This was a feeling of her body being filled like never before.He spoke very seriously, with his back bent, and he seemed very nervous.She never dared to take a closer look at his face, the light wheat-colored nervous face with pimples, because it looked like a dream through the increasingly dark night.She just wanted to drag her schoolbag and run away quickly.Maybe they should have been the same kind of people, but she knew it was all useless.Oh, she thought sadly, no matter what she or they tried, it was all to no avail. From that day on, Sansan really never spoke to Number 9 again.