Chapter 23 (1)

  The next morning, the sky was overcast with thick clouds. Qin Mo pulled open the curtains and stood there for half a day, admiring the view. He added two umbrellas to my luggage. I kicked off the covers in the middle of the night and woke up with a stuffy nose. He noticed this and furrowed his brow as he added a large package of medicine to my luggage. The labels on these bottles only had English instructions, making it difficult for me to understand how to use them, their dosage, and their functions. When I was eating, he realized the problem and took out paper and pen to translate all the instructions into Chinese. Before we left, he went through each one with me from start to finish, explaining how to take them, and had me repeat it back to him before nodding in satisfaction and heading out to get the car to drive me to the station.

  Sit in the car and fasten your seatbelt. Qin Mo started the car, suddenly stopped and turned his head to ask me: "Do you have contact lens solution?"

  I hastily jumped off the car and turned back to fetch the lotion.

  Hurriedly returning, Qin Mo hugged his hands and leaned against the car door: "Did you bring face wash?" I thought for a moment and nodded, he turned around to open the car door, casually saying: "The countryside should be quite cold, did you also bring gloves?"

  I put away the lotion and went back to get gloves.

  Gloves back, everyone sat in the car, Qin Mo was silent for a while: "Are you sure everything is taken?"

  I nodded: "It's over."

  He turned around and got off the car: "Forget it, I'll check your luggage again and count to see if there's anything you haven't brought."

  "I hastily said: 'Last night I had almost finished packing, really, just a glove was missing and I almost forgot but didn't, don't dawdle, the train is about to leave and we won't make it......'"

  He had already opened his suitcase and casually said: "You have a 9:30 train, what time is it now?"

  I patted my pocket to find my phone and check the time, and suddenly felt a pang of anxiety: "Ah, what's that? I forgot my phone, haha, wait for me for a moment, I'll go back and get it..."

  He raised his head with a hint of a smile: "You didn't bring the travel wash set you bought yesterday, and by the way," he lowered his head and flipped through it casually: "Where's the sanitary napkin?"

  “…………”

  Cold winds blow in gusts. We traversed more than half of the city and finally arrived at the train station before 9 o'clock.

  Zhou Yueyue led Yan Lang to the waiting hall, where I was waiting. Yan Lang's sick leave hadn't ended yet, and he didn't need to return to school immediately. Since learning that I would be going to a mountainous area for volunteer teaching, he had been pestering me to let him come along to experience life. Qin Mo found a doctor to examine him, and the doctor thought that Yan Lang was so full of energy that he could handle trips of various lengths. The doctor also believed that broadening the horizons of young children would be beneficial for their mental growth, and having Yan Lang accompany me on this volunteer teaching trip would have its advantages. Qin Mo neither opposed nor agreed to it. The student union thought that bringing a child along would better demonstrate the humanitarian spirit of the activity, so not only did they not oppose it, but they also waived Yan Lang's transportation fees. Zhou Yueyue believed that this was an opportunity that shouldn't be missed, and if they didn't take advantage of it, the progressive youths in the student union would use public funds to indulge in food and drink. I shared her heroic views on this matter. Yan Lang's persistence had paid off without him spending a single penny, and he felt very happy about it. Zhou Yueyue and I were also delighted, and everyone boarded the train with joyful hearts. Only Qin Mo furrowed his brow slightly, and when the train started moving, he gestured to me with his phone. After some thought, I understood what he meant, took out my phone from my bag, and saw that I had received a new text message: "Remember to charge your phone, don't make me unable to find you."

  The train moved slowly, looking back, even at this quiet speed, it had already gone far away. The sky above C city was always overcast. Qin Mo stood on the platform, and could only see a vague shadow in his memory. It seemed that there was also such a farewell scene, but I imagined for a long time, and felt that such a literary plot, encountering once in a lifetime was already rare, encountering twice was even more difficult to come by. Most likely it was because of watching Taiwanese dramas or Korean dramas before, with similar scenes leaving a deep impression, only the viewing time was too long ago, the impression remained, but the image was gone.

  The train sped away from City C, outside the window, a row of black smoke factories whizzed past before our eyes.

  Yan Lang sat beside me, already drowsy. Yesterday when I sent him to Zhou Yuejue's house, I forgot to bring his scarf. At the station, Qin Mo took off her own scarf and tied it around his neck, but because it was really too long, she had to wrap it around several times. At first glance, his neck looked like an inverted spinning top. Yan Lang gradually fell asleep in the spinning top-like wrapping.

  Zhou Yue sat across from me, completely ignoring me and Yan Lang, her eyes fixed intently on some point.

  I waved my hand in front of her: "You brought a deck of cards, didn't you? Let's play some cards."

  She gently pushed my hand away and continued to stare at a certain place. I followed her line of sight and turned around, seeing two rows behind us, sitting in the slanted back seat was someone with earphones on, intently listening to music, with quite long hair...I turned my head to ask Zhou Yueyue: "Is that a girl or a guy?"

  Zhou Yue looked at me in surprise, raised his finger and hissed: "Can't you see who he is? Cheng Jiayu from the Vanguard faction, and you're still a literature student."

  I suppressed the urge to ask Zhou Yueyue if he knew what avant-garde was, and instead turned my head to secretly take a look at the young man who was gazing out of the window. The train was about to enter the tunnel, and his profile was like a silhouette, with neither the angle nor the clarity being very good. In an instant, the train entered the tunnel, and I whispered to Zhou Yueyue in the darkness: "How did you know that was Cheng Jiayu? Didn't he keep a low profile, rarely appearing in public, not doing book signings or talks, and not posting his own photos on his blog?"

  Zhou Yue suddenly interrupted me, saying: "You can't believe the wisdom and power of the media, but you can't not believe in the wisdom and power of the people of Tianya. Last time on Tianya, there was a post about a handsome male writer, I don't know which oil dish flower burst out Cheng Jiamu's photo, because it was really stunning, so I remembered it, he's really handsome, a bit like young Fujimori Motofumi."

  Zhou Yue continued to lament the handsome men. In fact, just looking at that poorly cut silhouette from earlier, Cheng Jiamu didn't necessarily look outstanding, but after going through batch after batch of beautiful female writers' abuse, the common people had generally adopted a more tolerant attitude towards writers' appearances.

  I recall reading a book by Jia Wood last year, which was about a talented and cool girl who loved painting. The girl had a childhood sweetheart, a boy with whom she spent her days studying and doing homework in a seaside town. Everyone longed for the gentle breeze of quality education to blow into this small town, but amidst all the anticipation, they only received the devastating news of the 3+1 comprehensive exam. The girl's parents carefully studied the pattern of the college entrance exams over the past two years and her grades, and felt that she could only take the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts exam. So, they specially invited a private tutor to teach her painting. The private tutor was the son of her mother's friend, a young painter. The girl followed the teacher to learn painting, and parted ways with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend got closer and closer to another girl, even promising to attend the same university together. The girl couldn't bear it, was deeply hurt, and in order to shift her attention, she desperately painted, and in the process of desperately following the teacher's guidance, she developed ambiguous feelings for him. But this was bound to be a dead-end affair, and the girl couldn't accept that she had immoral thoughts about her teacher, so she suppressed herself. Her boyfriend soon realized that he didn't want to attend the same university as the other girl after all, and returned to the girl's side, hoping to get her forgiveness. In order to prevent herself from straying further down an immoral path, the girl tried to reaccept her boyfriend, but couldn't get past this hurdle, and the two broke up and got back together repeatedly. The teacher remained just a teacher, yet was also a thorn between the two of them. Finally, one day, the teacher left the small town, and the girl saw him off, hesitating in her heart, but not saying anything to stop him. The cool girl who loved painting and her boyfriend returned to their peaceful days as before, even secretly tasting forbidden fruit and having a child together. They were worried yet excited, and it seemed that the shadow of the young painter had disappeared from between them. Just then, news came from across the ocean that he had died in an accident. The next day, the girl also went missing. Her boyfriend thought this was a premeditated disappearance, that she still couldn't forget her teacher who had never expressed his love for her. But three days later, the police arrived at their home, bringing news of the girl's death by murder. The story ended abruptly here, and no one knew whom the girl loved in her final moments - her boyfriend or her former teacher.

  The book is called "Red Skirt Girl", it's his new book from last year, released very low-key, almost no hype or promotion. The writing style has changed from the past cold and sharp tone to a more sentimental and gentle one. On the cover page, there are two handwritten words: "To my deceased girl in heaven". For a long time, I couldn't forget this story, I didn't understand how high school students could be so passionate, but thinking back to my own high school days, it seemed even more intense than others, so I won't say anything else. Zhou Yueyue and I read this book at the same time, she was mainly puzzled by why the female protagonist thought her love for the teacher was not proper, her opinion is: "It's just family education, what's improper about it? If two people have feelings for each other, then it's proper, true love conquers all. If a marriage has no feelings between two people, you keep a mistress and I raise a young lover, then it's also proper... true love... conquers all."

  The author has something to say: I came up today with a guilty conscience, flipped through the comments from previous readers, and couldn't help but break out in cold sweat. Uh, I can say that from the beginning, this article was actually supposed to be slower-paced, now it's just that the cycle is a bit longer, but each chapter has a lot of content, fist clenched. Uh, except for today's chapter, that is... today's chapter seems to have a bit less content, haha... mainly because I've had a big project on my hands recently, and I've been working on it non-stop, overtime until late at night, no time to write articles, today's chapter was also written last night in a rush after a sudden burst of energy, originally planned to wait until tomorrow to return home from the trip and then hurry up with another 2,000 words to make up for the 5,000-word quota before posting it online, but seeing such passionate comments, I think I'll just post this first...

  Some friends asked if I was in contact with the publisher, so I didn't update. In fact, this article has been signed long ago. I remember that I mentioned it in "Author's Words" a while back, and the deadline is at the end of May. However... now it seems that this great goal cannot be achieved after all.

  Ah, I see. Because I'm slower and can't help but give you a negative score, my fellow students, I can understand your frustration. However, after being deducted two-thirds of the points by JJ's red card, whether the points for Two Lives Flower rise or not is actually meaningless... Even if you gave me a negative score to motivate me, I still couldn't speed up, mainly because I have the heart but lack the strength... This novel will stop updating at 1.25 million words, leaving 250,000 words behind, so it's actually not possible to update much more. To the enthusiastic girls who helped me with recommendations, please be cautious; and to my fellow students who accompanied me through these extremely difficult six months without any complaints and supported me, thank you very much!

  Besides, I saw some people talking about the piracy issue of San Sheng again. To those students who think my expression of opposition to piracy is not correct, thank you for your guidance. For the next book, I'm thinking of not signing with a publisher, but with a pirate instead...