Chapter 2

  Zhou Yueyue said I should take good care of Yan Lang, he's only eight years old and already knows what sanitary napkins are for. At the age of eight, she still innocently thought that sanitary napkins were disposable insoles. I said our family's Yan Lang really can't be compared to someone like you who was still reading "Fei Long Zai Tian" at the age of eight in kindergarten and made sentences like "Chen Fei Long flies in the sky". Zhou Yueyue got angry and kicked me.

  The next day was Saturday, Yan Lang didn't have to go to school or attend supplementary classes, so he stayed at home watching "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai" starring Wu Qilong. Zhou Yueyue came down to find something to eat, rummaged through the kitchen and found a pancake, saying while soaking it: "You just let Langlang watch this movie, aren't you afraid he won't understand?"

  Yan Lang bit into his bread and said, "The plot is still understandable, but what I don't get is that Zhu Ying Tai has been disguising herself as a boy for so long without being discovered by her classmates. Doesn't this mean she originally looked quite like a boy? A girl who looks like a boy yet has so many people liking her, it's really food for thought."

  Zhou Yuezhi said: "Actually, this is a comrade movie. Liang Shanbo originally liked men, but in feudal society, men liking men did not conform to the Five Virtues and Four Beauties and Three Loves. He was under great pressure. Happening to meet Zhu Yingtai, who looked like a man but was actually a woman, satisfied both his desire for men and his desire for the Five Virtues and Four Beauties and Three Loves. He thought it was very suitable, so they got together."

  Yan Lang said: "Alas, it's a pity that Zhu Yingtai often has (opportunities) while Liang Shanbo does not often have."

  "Ah?"

  Yan Lang said: "If there were as many Liang Shanbos as there are Zhu Yingtai, you wouldn't still be waiting to get married at your age."

  Zhou Yue was silent for a moment before trembling and saying: "Song Song, this son of yours must have crossed over from somewhere."

  I stared at Yan Lang in disbelief and said angrily, "You actually know so many idioms!!! Since you know so many idioms, why do you always score less than 80 points on the language exam?"

  Yan Lang said with embarrassment: "Because language exams don't just test idioms."

  Zhou Yueyue thinks Yan Lang is precocious, and judging from Yan Lang's actual situation, this judgment is reasonable.

  Last month on a certain day, while helping Yang Lang pack his school bag, I ended up picking out three love letters from little girls to him and fell into panic.

  When Zhou Yueyue said, how can you be sure that the three love letters were given to him by a little girl and not a little boy, I fell into an extremely great panic.

  Later, I had to skip half a day of class and went to their homeroom teacher's home for a visit, only then did I find out that the three little girls were indeed genuine little girls, and my heart was finally at ease.

  After the home visit, I immediately started preparing for a talk, planning to communicate with Yan Lang on an equal and voluntary basis about the issue of early love. But before my talk had even begun, he loudly declared that in this life, Zheng Mingming, the three-star celebrity of land, sea, and air, would never marry, hastily strangling my talk in its cradle.

  Zhou Yueyue said to Yan Lang, "Zheng Mingming is already 21 this year, three years younger than your mother. You are only eight years old, and you married her. How can your mother bear it?"

  Yan Lang said: "Yang Zhenning is 82 years old, Weng Fan is 28 years old. How can Weng Fan's mother bear it? My mother will bear it too."

  Zhou Yueyue said to me: "Your son's knowledge is really profound."

  Yan Lang's personality is really not like mine at all. Given that he has never been good at writing ancient poems, doesn't like to eat sugar gourds, and never sings "A Laugh in the Cang Hai", we basically overturned the assumption that he was a time-traveler. As a result, Zhou Yueyue thinks that Yan Lang's personality should be entirely inherited from his father.

  It has to be said that this is an even more difficult assumption to verify. Because eight years ago, when I was knocked down by a Buick car on the street, I didn't particularly remember who Yang Lang's father was in my belly. Fortunately, both Yang Lang and I had very strong vitality, so this collision only gave me a slight concussion, and he was born prematurely. After leaving the hospital, we were left alone and helpless, and the owner of the Buick car that knocked us down became my adoptive mother and his wet nurse. In the blink of an eye, eight years have passed.

  Last week, the medical school had a free consultation activity, so I went to consult and asked if precocious puberty in children can be treated.

  It's possible that the question I asked was too professional, and none of the five medical students present could answer it immediately. So they decided to hold a seminar to discuss it first, asking me to wait for two hours on the side. I flatly refused this proposal because I was very busy and had to rush to get my bike's tire repaired.

  One of the medical students saw that I was not an easy person to compromise, but as the only guest they had received since sitting there for half a day, I seemed so rare that he couldn't bear to see me disappointed, so he made a decision on his own initiative, deciding to invite his senior fellow apprentice out.

  A medical student pulled out a fake orange mobile phone from his pocket, connected the line and nodded: "Brother, can you come over to help with this customer... It's a public welfare activity organized by the Fever Friends Club under the Urological Diseases Research Association under the Physiology and Hygiene Association under the Student Union... We misjudged the situation, thinking that gonorrhea, syphilis, genital warts and abortion care were more popular, so all the students who came out were experts in these areas. Who knew we fell behind? The girls' sons have already been born, and they come to ask about precocious puberty, but none of us can answer."

  I think he was saying something over there, he stopped for a moment, looked at me with a shy glance, turned around and covered his mouth to say: "Long hair, yes, yes, that hair is as long as Andy Lau's dream lover, it looks pretty good on a girl, I don't know how she ended up having a son. The times are not good, are there still beautiful girls who are virgins these days..."

  Obviously this medical student is not fashionable enough. As early as the end of last century, beautiful virgins were even rarer than beautiful female department heads.

  The medical student repeatedly assured me that his senior's consultation was also free of charge, so I compromised.

  But I didn't expect that this medical student's senior brother is Lin Qiao. If I had known earlier, even if you paid me to come and do this consultation, I wouldn't have been able to do it.

  Lin Qiao sat in front of me, wearing a V-necked black cashmere sweater, her right hand holding a pen and gazing at me calmly, a pair of dark and silent eyes behind her golden glasses.

  I was once particularly infatuated with his eyes.

  I had the following conversation with him.

  He said: "I heard Langlang had nocturnal emission?"

  I said: "Damn it, you think our family's Yan Lang is Superman or something? Your kid is only eight years old and already has nocturnal emissions."

  He raised his glasses: "Didn't they say he matured early?"

  I said: "It's you who is precocious."

  He frowned: "Can't you just talk to me properly?"

  I said: "Mom, you're the one who's being a rascal first."

  He sighed: "What's wrong with Langlang?"

  "Mind your own business."

  The pen in his hand snapped into two pieces with a "pa" sound: "Yan Song, we need to have a good talk."

  "I'm sorry I'm busy, I need to go fix a flat tire."

  Then he turned around and rode his bike, disappearing into the horizon of the playground with a whoosh.

  This made me realize the superiority of bicycles over luxury cars like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi: whether they are punctured or not, as long as there is a steel rim, bicycles can still roll freely.

  I don't know what Lin Qiao wants to talk to me about, but I really have nothing good to talk to him about.

  That year, I was hit by my mom, who is also my adoptive mother's car and got brain damage. Except for the fact that Yan Lang is indeed my son, which cannot be erased, all other things, whether they should be erased or not, were killed, including the very important matter of how much money was left in my wallet before the car accident.

  But things in the world are just so coincidental. At the beginning of last year, my mother's only daughter happened to die in a plane crash. My mother thought I was crazy, and the public security agency in the town couldn't verify my identity for the time being, so she abused her power as the head of the town and pulled some strings to adopt me and Yan Lang together.

  It is said that the daughter who died was named Yan Song, so I was given the name Yan Song. Later, I inquired extensively whether she had any other deceased direct relatives named Yan Lang, and after more than half a year of investigation, nothing came to fruition.

  When I was one year old, my mother thought I should go to school and become a cultured person. So she pulled some strings again and got me into the town central primary school for first grade. But she clearly underestimated my IQ.

  Half a week later, my head teacher burst into tears in her office, saying that she couldn't teach me because I was too smart. My mom was shocked and immediately gave me a second-grade arithmetic problem to do, which I solved instantly. Then she gave me another third-grade one, which I also solved instantly, and so on, until I finished a sixth-grade Olympiad math application problem that required the use of inverse proportion method to solve, my mom was stunned.

  The next day, she carefully combed through her network of relationships, spanning prefecture-level cities and provincial capitals, and found a distant relative in the province who drove for the Provincial Party Secretary, attempting to get me into a national key high school in the provincial capital.

  It's said that the relative was the business partner of my mom's cousin's rival, and his secretary's younger brother. Both my grandma and I thought it was a long shot, but what's scary is that she actually succeeded. So I had to leave one-year-old Xiao Yanlang and this picturesque border town, and go to the provincial capital over 300 kilometers away for further study.

  It was in this provincial capital's national key high school that I met Su Qi and Lin Qiao. Years later, recalling past events still makes me involuntarily blurt out two swear words, damn it was a real fated reunion.

  Madame Curie said that once a woman has children, she always becomes particularly forgetful. So from the age of sixteen, I became as forgetful as all women who have had children.

  Now I've already forgotten how I became good friends with Su Qi back then, but I still remember clearly how I gradually developed feelings for Lin Qiao, just like a clear and transparent stream where the fish inside are motionless, and you can distinguish their colors and species. It's apparent that women with amnesia have terrifying memory. Because they can only remember very few things, so what little they do remember is extremely precious. Unless absolutely necessary, they definitely wouldn't be willing to easily give up these things they've managed to remember with great difficulty.

  My maternal grandmother, who is particularly fond of Qiong Yao's works. When I was sitting in confinement after giving birth, there were no other entertainment activities, so she volunteered to come and read Qiong Yao's novels to me every day. From "The Plum Blossom" to "Green Clouds and Blue Skies" to "A Dream of Red Mansions", she tried to make me believe that every woman is an angel, and as long as you are the female lead, you can achieve happiness regardless of whether you have had children before meeting the male lead; but to become the female lead, you must first become a romantic and artistic young woman who loves walking in the rain.

  At that time, I was only sixteen years old, which is the age when one's personality is most malleable. Moreover, a girl's emotions are always poetic, and I was immediately conquered by these feelings, liberating my individuality and igniting a strong desire to find a stepfather for Xiao Yanlang. However, the small border town where I lived was somewhat impoverished, with only a handful of young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. In less than half a month, I discovered that finding a handsome, Porsche-driving, slightly melancholic stepfather for Xiao Yanlang was extremely difficult to achieve. I fell into a low ebb in life, denying the universe, myself, and all romantic sentiments. Although the scope of this low point was not vast, it lasted for a considerable amount of time.

  Lin Qiao burst into my life during this low ebb.

  Because my mom first committed conservative mistakes and then immediately adventurist mistakes on my educational issues, which made me unable to keep up with the learning pace of a national key high school sophomore for a considerable period of time, dragging down my classmates.

  Although I had such a hard backstage relationship, the head teacher couldn't help but make me repeat a grade. But even repeating a grade couldn't stop my dragging down the class's progress. To avoid the tragedy of being left behind from high school to junior high, my new head teacher after repeating a grade immediately arranged for one of the top students in the class to tutor me.

  This excellent student is Lin Qiao.

  It is said that Lin Qiao is the best-looking boy since the founding of this national key high school. This national key high school has a history of 104 years. His good looks even moved the brother schools, and more than one girl from the brother schools has announced that she is willing to pray for five hundred years in front of the Buddha, asking the Buddha to let her have an affair with Lin Qiao...

  Lin Qiao always wore white shirts with black trousers or black shirts with beige trousers. In the seven years since, I've only seen him wear these three colors. At that time, I was a bit out of it and had become particularly simple-minded, not knowing what brands and status were, and even willingly thought that Lin Qiao's family might be relatively poor and couldn't afford to buy him fancy clothes. He helped me with my homework for free, and I was very grateful to him. At lunchtime, I would share some pork from my lunchbox with him, because at the time, I thought that a family that couldn't afford fancy clothes must also not be able to afford pork.

  I still remember the first time I shared pork with Lin Qiao, he widened his eyes and looked incredulous. Afraid of hurting his self-esteem, I pretended to dislike eating pork and said: "This thing is too disgusting to eat, it's a waste if we don't finish it, why don't you help me out? If you don't eat it, it means you look down on me, come on, eat."

  So he had to prove with actual actions that he didn't look down on me, frowning as he finished the pork I handed over to him. I watched with watering mouth as he ate the pork, feeling a sense of satisfaction and elevated sense of life's value after helping someone.

  It wasn't until after graduation from high school that I found out, Lin Qiao's lunchbox had only vegetables and no meat because he was a picky eater. It can be imagined, for three years, in order to show his appreciation for me, he ate so much pork, how painful and uncomfortable it must have been for him.

  In such daily interactions, I don't like Shang Lin Qiao at all, it's simply an impossible task.

  He is so handsome and he can solve all the application questions and geometry problems that I don't know, it's simply a perfect combination of appearance and talent. I deeply admire him.

  One afternoon, as he was explaining a physics problem to me with his head tilted, a beam of sunlight happened to shine on the side of his face through the window. His fingers were slender, and his right index finger joint exerted a slight force, causing my five-yuan Tongxin-brand pen to rotate in circles effortlessly under his thumb. At that moment, I was struck by a romantic thought like those of a young artistic woman.

  It was on that afternoon that I felt my liking for Lin Qiao, after a series of optical reactions, successfully sublimated into love.

  I fell in love with Lin Qiao.

  I decided to write a love letter to Lin Qiao. So that night, I went back and read through the "Century Love Letter Collection" published by Yi Lin Publishing House. This book collects nearly 100 love letters from dozens of European celebrities over the past two centuries, each one striking at people's souls, with great reference value. And the best part is that every letter in this book has Chinese-English bilingual comparison.

  I intuitively feel that directly striking Lin Qiao's soul is useless. As a man, perhaps he prefers to strike women's souls rather than being struck by women's souls. But about this point, I actually can't be completely sure. So I decided to add double insurance, writing an all-English love letter. If he doesn't like my words striking his soul, then as the class monitor and English representative, he will at least appreciate my English level reaching the peak of being able to write a love letter.

  But pretending to be a cultured person is a difficult thing, I had to first dissect and reassemble the Chinese translations of nearly a hundred love letters, and then find the original English text based on this reassembled translation. This work lasted until 4 am.

  I held this hard-won English love letter, lying on the bed with boiling blood, staring wide-eyed until the eastern sky turned white.

  This love letter never reached Lin Qiao's hands. Because before I even stepped into the classroom, Su Qi came running to me with excitement and told me that she had just established a relationship with Lin Qiao, they were boyfriend and girlfriend now.

  Here is the translation:

  "Ah, Su Qi, the third indispensable element in this episode. I've been trying to ignore her existence in my memories, so as to create an illusion that 'I actually spent a lot of time alone with Lin Qiao during high school'. However, the truth is, since I pulled Su Qi into our study group with Lin Qiao, I never spent any more time alone with Lin Qiao again."

  Uh, actually we've also been alone together once before.

  The summer after graduating from high school.

  I got drunk and my head is not clear, I made a big mistake.

  I paid a huge price for this, and that price was really too heavy, so I had no choice but to learn from it.