Chapter 19 Chapter 18 Fifteen years, the migratory birds finally return

On the evening of August 20, 2005, Pei Shangxuan returned to the old house where he had been away for a long time.Since he moved away, he never came back, and it has been several years in a blink of an eye. Traveling through the criss-crossing alleys, he spent his frivolous and ignorant boyhood here, accompanied by an ugly yellow-haired girl. The memory left here is like a yellowed old photo, frozen in time, and the smiling faces of the people in the photo are also blurred.His pace obviously slowed down, Pei Shangxuan quietly recalled the years with Li Li. He never forgot that during the days when he was deprived of freedom, this girl had to switch cars every month to visit him.She is stubborn and refuses to give up, but she is also a stubborn guy, and she feels ashamed to see her, so she hardens her heart and makes her go for nothing every time.Pei Shangxuan thought that Li Li would give up eventually, but when his parents handed him the reference books she compiled, although he didn't cry, he shed tears in his heart.

This fool, how can I be her friend? At that time, he thought this way, and in the later days, he saw the gap between himself and her more than once, and he actually felt inferior in his heart.He changed his girlfriend so frequently. On the one hand, he owed some sincerity, but on the other hand, it was not his hidden demonstration?Only in the field of love, Li Li can't compare with him. Thinking about it now, Pei Shangxuan can't help but feel that the past was extremely childish and ridiculous. He felt inferior with peace of mind, and believed that Li Li and himself were as different as clouds and mud, but he never really tried to get closer to her.

This time, I will come to you, Li Li. The condensed time began to flow at this moment, and the girl who remained in the years seemed to hear his heartfelt words and smiled.She turned around lightly and deftly, meandering away. He couldn't help following Li Li, turned around the corner and stood there dumbfounded, only a deserted street light in front of him, where was she? After blinking, Pei Shangxuan saw clearly that this alley was where her grandmother's house used to be. In theory, her little uncle should still live here. He prayed in his heart that Li Li's little uncle would never move, otherwise he would not know where to look for her if there were so many people.

Perhaps God heard his appeal, and when he walked to the door, Li Guoqiang just opened the door and came out with a garbage bag.He recognized Pei Shangxuan by the light inside the door, but he couldn't remember the name of his niece's friend. "Hello, little uncle." At the memorial service of Li Li's grandmother and mother, she asked him to call him like this, and Pei Shangxuan still called him like that. "You are Xiaoli's friend, come here, come in and sit in the room." Li Guoqiang warmly greeted him to enter, and quickly walked to the opposite corner to put down the garbage bag.He came back, washed his hands and asked Pei Shangxuan what he wanted to do.

"Little uncle, do you know how to find Li Li?" He seized the time to get straight to the point, "She's turned off, I can't find her." Li Guoqiang flicked the water off his hand, and when he withdrew his hand, wiped it with his vest indiscriminately.Reminiscent of similar incidents that happened to Li Meiqing during her hospitalization, he said nonchalantly, "Is it urgent? This girl likes to travel by herself, maybe she is going on vacation and doesn't want to bother her with company affairs, so she turned off her phone." Pei Shangxuan desperately shook his head to deny his speculation, he couldn't accurately describe to Li Guoqiang the feeling that Li Li's sentence "I don't have the strength to fly back" brought to him.He also hoped that just caring would cause chaos, but after being friends for so many years, he knew that if Li Li hadn't encountered a major accident, it would be absolutely impossible for him to be silent for no reason.

"Little uncle, do you have her stepfather's phone number? I really have something urgent, I must find her." His eagerness made Li Guoqiang nervous, and he hurried back to the bedroom to rummage through the boxes to find Liu Zhixian's phone number. Report a number to Pei Shangxuan. The hand holding the mobile phone trembled slightly, and he entered each number carefully, and finally repeated it twice to make sure there were no mistakes.Li Guoqiang was worried and curious at the same time, and finally couldn't help asking him why he was looking for Li Li. Pei Shangxuan had already turned around and walked towards the door. Hearing Li Guoqiang's question, he turned to face him. "I want to say a word to her," the first half of his sentence was unavoidably disappointing, but it was only to say a word for a long time, but the second half of the sentence immediately made Li Guoqiang smile, and Pei Shangxuan told him, "That sentence is 'forever and I'm together', I don't want to miss her again."

He flew away with a hot and sincere heart in his arms.Unfortunately, as Li Li told him, it was too late. She waited silently for him for a long time, and now she was leaving, much longer than that. Li Li was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and needed to be hospitalized for chemotherapy.Drugs can only delay the spread of cancer cells, and the only real cure for leukemia is bone marrow transplantation.The chances of finding a matching bone marrow are extremely slim. She deliberately left her mobile phone at home, so as not to be shaken by the illness and couldn't help but send a message to Pei Shangxuan.Li Li is determined to leave his life without hesitation.He said "love", this is already the best gift for her, she can't let him watch her die.

On the day of hospitalization, Li Li left the hotel room early in the morning and sat in the lobby waiting for Liu Qianren.It was still early before the agreed departure time, she didn't want to just sit around and think wildly, so she left her luggage at the counter and walked outside to the street. Just after eight o'clock, the sun is already very dazzling, and the ground temperature is also rising rapidly.Most of the shops are not yet open for business, only one stationery store is open on the side of the road.She had already passed by, but suddenly remembered something, and turned back again.

After a while, Li Li came out with a diary with a plain cover in his arms.She looked down at the book with the lock in her arms, and silently calculated how much time was left until New Year's Day in 2006. In four months, do you have a chance to hear the New Year's bell?Li Li didn't dare to assume, and walked back to the hotel quickly. There was no sign of Liu Qianren in the lobby. She took back her luggage and sat on the sofa beside her. She bent down and took out a fountain pen from the travel bag, inserted the delicate key into the lock, and opened the diary with a "click".

Turning to the first page, she wrote a sentence on the light blue paper for January 1st four months later - I don't like Pei Shangxuan anymore this year! His fingers slid across his name, with a bit of nostalgia and reluctance.She had liked this man for fifteen years, and finally reached the point where she could no longer love him. Goodbye, fool! Li Li smiled lightly, and threw the key into the trash can at the elevator entrance, as if completing a ritual. Her entangled life with Pei Shangxuan is over, and the next thing is her battle alone, he can't help her. After her first chemo, she couldn't eat anything.Liu Qianren boiled chicken soup and forced her to drink it to supplement nutrition and improve immunity, Li Li vomited all over him.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." She quickly picked up the towel and wiped his coat vigorously. "It's okay, my workmanship is too bad, it's normal that you don't want to drink." Liu Qianren grabbed her hand, softly looking for reasons for her unintentional mistake, never mentioning the word "chemotherapy". "It seems that Dad has to take action." Li Li opened her eyes wide and shook her head violently, Liu Zhixian treated her like her own daughter, she really couldn't bear to let him suffer another blow. "No, Qianren, it's enough to have you with me." She showed a sweet smile, but she saw his eyes flushed and turned away. She bowed her head sadly, feeling guilty in her heart.He said he owed her, and was willing to spend all his life to compensate, but after careful calculation, she owed him even more. Liu Qianren went to the hospital to take care of her after get off work, and she carefully put away the fallen hair before he arrived.This man gave up his easy-to-get fame and fortune for her, and she pretended to be positive and optimistic every day to avoid his worries. But throughout the day, Li Li often stared at the sky in a daze.Hearing Liu Qianren talk about Pei Shangxuan asking for her whereabouts several times, she thought she always missed the time with him. When she was healthy, he didn't love her; now that she was dying, she couldn't love him any more. Li Li's love for Pei Shangxuan is like a migratory bird, but this time there is no return date. Li Li's absent-mindedness was inadvertently seen by Liu Qianren, causing deep pain.What she loves is, after all, that worthless man. Pei Shangxuan called Liu Zhixian on the night of August 20th. After calling Li Li's mobile phone and getting no response, his father called Liu Qianren and asked him to tell him exactly where Li Li had gone.Because of this, he had another intersection with the man she had loved for half her life. Their meeting was not pleasant.At that time, Liu Qianren had just settled down with Li Li, and without knowing the result of the examination, he naturally didn't want her to be disturbed too much.On the other hand, he did not dare to tell his father, for fear that the old man would be hit again.As for Pei Shangxuan, he has never had a good impression of this person, so he has no reason to treat him politely.So facing the inquiries from his father and Pei Shangxuan, Liu Qianren blindly evaded and didn't know.His perfunctory attitude made Pei Shangxuan very dissatisfied. If Liu Zhixian hadn't acted as a peacemaker, it would be a matter of time before the two of them started fighting with each other in a tense atmosphere. Liu Qianren couldn't figure out that he would lose to a man with no merits, and couldn't help but wonder what kind of thrilling succession and transition there was between him and her, so that she couldn't bear to part with her.They have been entangled for half their lives in the long years, and the three of them are stuck in the vicious circle of "I love you, you love him, and he loves others", which is inextricably linked. "Do you have to say it?" Li Li listened to the sound of the torrential rain outside the ward, and whispered.She raised her hand to touch her hair, and another strand fell out. He nodded, took it and threw it into the wastebasket. She leaned against the head of the bed, smiled softly, her eyes were tired. "Then you have to be mentally prepared, it will be fifteen long years." She owed him a bet, and she would never live without the name "Pei Shangxuan". She rambled on and talked for a long time, all of which were trivial.The rain outside had stopped, and the water dripped down, which sounded like rain.Liu Qianren held Li Li's hand, he understood why his rival in love was reluctant to let her go.This woman will treat a relationship with a lifetime of loyalty. She longs for warmth, but doesn't understand that she first gave warmth to others. "Why do you love him?" was his final question. Li Li's eyes flicked past him, looking at the blue sky outside the window, looking for the birds passing by the city. "Because, only I can see his kindness to me." Love does turn people into hopeless fools. Liu Qianren took the diary hidden by Li Li to find Pei Shangxuan and beat him up. "She told me your story so that I could give up completely. This is the first time I have met such a stupid woman, and I will never meet again." He glanced at the man who was still in a state of shock with disdain, turned around and left. Pei Shangxuan was bleeding from the corner of his mouth, holding fifteen diaries on his bruised left eye socket, and frantically looking for a locksmith on the street.He couldn't imagine that Li Li had loved him for fifteen years.And what did he give her?It's just that cheap cake and a few matches that are blown out by the river wind. She has been calling him stupid since she was a child, but no one is more stupid than her. Fifteen small keys, revealing the girl's thoughts every year in front of him. "I don't like Pei Shangxuan any more this year!" This wish, from 1992 to 2006, went through a full fifteen springs, summers, autumns and winters, but it still failed to come true. Pei Shangxuan came to the hospital and appeared in front of Li Li's bed.Her hair fell out a lot, and she wore a hat all day long to hide her ugliness.Seeing him, she was startled for a moment, then grinned at him heartlessly and laughed.But just like in the past ten years, he clearly saw that her heart was raining. "Idiot, how did you find this place? This guy Liu Qianren must have betrayed me, right?" His nose was sour, and his eye sockets were constantly irritated by the heat.No, she can no longer change the subject.Pei Shangxuan cleared his throat, and said seriously: "You owe me the bet, I thought of what I want." Li Li put away her faked smile and looked at him quietly, waiting for him to speak. "You want to live by my side to be a hundred years old, isn't that a very long time?" He bent down towards her while stretching out his little finger to wait for her to pull the hook and seal it. She shook her head, a wry smile appeared on the corner of her lips. "Pei Shangxuan, I don't have that much time." She spread out her palms to show him, "My lifeline is only so long, I can't be with you anymore." There is a faint scar on the palm of her hand, which cuts off the life line, love line and career line.He remembered the origin of this scar and everything about her in fifteen years. Pei Shangxuan bent down, took out fifteen diaries from the backpack she brought with her, and solemnly stacked them one by one on her bedside table.Li Li glanced at it, and found that the locks for storing secrets had been unlocked, and her face changed slightly. It turned out that her worries were no longer hidden in front of him. He picked up the top one: a rustic pink cover, with Winnie the Pooh smiling naively.This diary obviously belongs to the last century, and the text left on the first page must be crafted and square like a square. He read out her wish with a smile, quickly turned to the last page before she blushed and prepared to defend, and read aloud: "On December 31, 1992, Li Li and I were promoted this year. She is in the third grade of junior high school. She likes Camus. This is the second person she said she likes after she told me that she likes Caniggia two years ago. I carved an Aquarius golden holy cloth for her, but I didn’t see it later. She took it out, maybe she threw it away? In autumn, she accompanied me to see the migratory birds, and she asked me if I could recognize my favorite bird this time, I don’t know.” She looked at him in disbelief, reached for the second diary, and while frantically putting on her glasses, she couldn't wait to turn to the last page. "December 31, 1993, I lost my freedom. I haven't seen that ugly girl Li Li for a long time, and I miss her a little bit. But I have no face to see her. She must know why I was imprisoned." Come in, what will she think, does she think that I am a bad person like everyone else?" The next book, "December 31, 1994, another year has passed, Li Lituo's parents brought me some books. She misses me all the time and has visited several times , but I don't know what to say when I see her. Why does she have to be friends with someone like me?" The next one is, "December 31, 1995, Li Li was admitted to the University of Foreign Languages. Compared with her, I am really not a student, and I even failed the exam in the cram school... Her eyes were blurred, and she couldn't see the words in the diary clearly. She had to take off her glasses and wipe her tears with a tissue, and she couldn't bear to put down the notebook. It never occurred to her that he still remembered everything that happened in these years.Even if he never loved her as deeply as she did, it was enough to prove that she was the most special person in his life. "Can you give me a chance to record what we have experienced together on the last day of every year from now on?" He once again stretched out his little finger and waited for her to stamp it. Li Li slowly raised her hand, and stretched out her little finger to hook him.With tears in her eyes, she nodded solemnly and said "yes". On November 8, 2005, the sun was shining brightly.Pei Shangxuan accompanied Li Li to bask in the sun in the garden. She wore a pink woolen hat, and she was content to show it to others everywhere.Pei Shangxuan felt very ashamed, because this hat was the result of learning how to knit with his mother. "Speaking of which, in the first year of junior high school, it seems that you girls' manual labor class is knitting, right?" He recalled the past and shouted as if he had discovered a new world. "Yes." Li Li dangled happily with both feet in the air. "What's the problem?" "The question is, can you knit?" He put his arms around her shoulders affectionately, "If you can, knit a 'Love Brand' sweater for me, okay?" She bit her lip and chuckled: "What can I do?" Pei Shangxuan sighed in frustration, and said with a playful smile: "You still have seventy-one years to learn slowly, and I'll wait to wear it." "You have so much confidence in me?" She thought for a while, and decided not to tell him about her poor grades in handicrafts in junior high school.There was only one exam she almost failed in her life, and that was the handicraft class.At that time, the whole class believed that she was smart and capable, and no one had the courage to look through her student handbook. After all, seeing a page full of scores above 90 is not a big thrill.Only this tablemate almost discovered her secret, but luckily she stopped it in time. He leaned over, touched her lips lightly with his thin lips, and said with a serious expression: "It's not a matter of confidence. To be Pei Shangxuan's wife, one must know how to knit sweaters." The domineering tone was taken for granted. It's like the boy who told her grandly on the bank of Huangpu River to "be brave in the future". Shocked by the word "wife", Li Li was stunned.Before she could recover, Pei Shangxuan stretched out his open palm in front of him, and an elegant and simple diamond ring lay quietly in his palm. "Marry me, Li Li." He got up and left his seat, knelt down on one knee, and stared eagerly at her face.A couple sitting on the bench opposite noticed his actions and whispered in this direction. The sun shines on the body, and the warm weather always makes people drowsy.Many years ago, he was her deskmate, dozing off without any scruples under the warm sunshine.Many years have passed, they bid farewell to their youth, but they seem to have returned to the original point. She shook her head, looking at the ring in his palm with nostalgic eyes. "I can't..." Before he finished speaking, his arms hooked her neck and pulled her towards him. "Next year's World Cup, should we make a bet?" He asked with a smile as his foreheads touched. "I bet on Germany, do you still support Argentina?" "Yeah." In this life, she can no longer like the second team, the second person. "Remember the bet, Li Li." Pei Shangxuan looked at her, word by word: "In the next life, I will fall in love with you first." Every word was about love, and she couldn't refuse.It took her fifteen years to like him, longer than half her life. She stretched out her fingers and watched him put the ring on her left middle finger and slowly push it to the end.Pei Shangxuan sat back beside Li Li and hugged her vigorously.The fallen leaves are covered in golden yellow, and it is the season of migratory birds once a year. Li Li looked at the sky, there were flocks of birds flying to the south.She nudged him and motioned him to look up at the sky. "If we have a chance, let's go see the migratory birds again." She was a little tired, leaning on his shoulder and half closing her eyes, whispering almost in a whisper. The sky leaves no trace, but the birds have already flown by. "Okay." Pei Shangxuan made a promise. It is a promise, the promise for return. Fifteen years later, the returning migratory birds brought back happiness.