When the preparation bell rang, three or five boys crowded into a pile at the door, like red blood cells congested in the blood vessels. With a shout, they all fell into the door.
"Tian Zijun, your school uniform!" "Throw it over!" The red scarf fluttered into the air, but was unable to swing down; the tall boy jumped to the podium, picked up the eraser and waved it in front of the blackboard like a knife.
“You’re going to die! Can’t you just wipe it gently?” A girl at the front desk pinched her nose and complained. The boy walked up to the girl with an expressionless face and clapped his hands like a weightlifter clapping talcum powder. The girl lowered her head and sneezed. After sneezing, she turned around and hit the boy.
A man and a woman were moving a stack of books at the front table. The one on the left moved one centimeter to the right, and the one on the right moved two centimeters to the left. In the end, the girl eagerly grabbed the boy's clothes and moved him around.
The bright sunshine shines into the classroom, the breeze lifts the curtains, and the ceiling fan above the head rotates monotonously, as if youth never ends.
Wang Zixu pressed his forehead on the edge of the table and looked down at the floor. The table was filled with books. The top layer was "The Ordinary World", which was spread out and stopped at the section where Sun Shaoping borrowed books from Hao Hongmei. During class, he would secretly take a look.
He has traveled through time. He traveled back in time to when he was seventeen years old. He was still in high school at the time. But he couldn't control his body to move even one centimeter, nor could he make any sound from his vocal cords. He cannot change everything he sees, just as youth cannot be changed.
"Hello." A pleasant voice came from his ear, and Wang Zixu felt a poke under his left rib, "Let."
He raised his head, and a line was pressed against his forehead by the edge of the table. The bright sunshine cast a halo around the girl's body. Under the backlight, every turn of her silhouette was perfectly natural, but her face could not be seen clearly.
“Please, beg me.” Wang Zixu heard his own voice say.
"Do you want to give in?" The girl tried her best to make her voice sound cold, but the natural talent of her voice made her sound like she was acting coquettishly. Her baby-like voice makes people unserious no matter what she says.
“You’ll give me the chance if you answer my question correctly.” Wang Zixu heard himself say.
“Ask.”
“Name three French writers.”
Wang Zixu listened to himself and her talking with interest. At that time, he was young, immature, competitive, and ignorant of girls' thoughts.
“Proust, Camus, Marguerite Duras.”
Wang Zixu saw himself waving his hands: "Not counting! You did it on purpose, right? You deliberately mentioned some writers I haven't read."
The girl said: "You haven't even finished reading "In Search of Lost Time," but you still have the kindness to think about me?"
"What book? "In Search of Lost Time," right? I'll tell you about it after reading it tomorrow."
The girl waved gently: "Go, go, come on."
The prince felt ashamed. At the age of 30, he still has not finished reading this book.
He remembered. The young girl at that time had an amount of reading that was beyond his reach. So far, he can only look at her from a distance, like a dog on earth looking at the moon in the sky.
Wang Zixu stood up. The girl he had just looked up to was now a head shorter than him. The girl who only reached Wang Zixu's chest did not raise her head, she stared at his chest and said: "Quickly give up."
Wang Zixu opened his arms and said, "Go ahead."
Wang Zixu was once again ashamed. I don’t know how I did such hooligan behavior at the time.
The girl was not angry and asked seriously into his chest: "How can I live like this?"
"Why not?" Wang Zixu felt that his face was filled with the energy only a young man can have.
“I’m not a four-dimensional insect.” The girl said.
Then how did you crawl into my heart?
Wang Zixu remembered that he almost blurted out these words at that time.
Many years later, the 30-year-old Wang Zixu, who has written more than 100,000 words of romantic scripts, will only feel that this saucy saying that once made him so proud is just a cheap and earthy love saying. 10% is the fake cleverness that only naive boys have, and the remaining 90% is hormones.
But at that age, his throat hurt from these words and he almost blurted it out. And if he blurted it out, it would cause an uproar and his life would be ruined. The age of 17 is such a shocking age.
He saw himself getting out of the way, and the girl raised her head and glanced at him doubtfully, as if she was wondering why he let her go so easily today, without saying a few flirty words like usual, her dark eyelashes fluttering like a butterfly flapping its wings.
She entered sideways, and the closest distance to Wang Zixu’s body was no more than one centimeter. This posture was close to a hug, but the two never had any physical contact. Most of the clothes touched together.
In the entire history since he knew her, he had never touched her with his body. At that time, she was almost his goddess, untouchable, inviolable, and unblasphemous. Just like the Yangshao people carefully take care of their pottery.
The 17-year-old Wang Zixu sat down and remained silent. He felt a little discouraged at this moment, so he was secretly amused at this naive young man.
Not long after the girl sat down, she was called out again: "Chen Qingluo, the teacher wants to see you for something."
"Oh."
Wang Zixu did not embarrass her this time and let her go quietly.
But at this time, the 30-year-old Wang Zixu, who was hiding in his body, how much he hoped to stop her!
On this day, the teacher talked to Chen Qingluo about participating in the "Sprout" literary competition, and then she won the award. Then, her parents arranged for her to transfer to a more important high school, and then she was recommended to Yan University.
He knew that from this moment on, their lives would take different paths, like two straight lines that never intersect, heading in their respective directions.
When some of the most important passes and choices in life happen, people often think they are just an ordinary day in life. The ignorant prince didn't understand the pain of separation and didn't even say goodbye to her properly. It was many years later that this relationship became a memory, but I was still confused at the time.
Yes. In fact, Wang Zixu and Chen Qingluo didn't have much in common. They just went to school together for a year and worked as deskmates for half a month. Wang Zixu was just a passerby in her life, but she made Wang Zixu unforgettable throughout his life.
After she left, he frantically searched for books by various authors in the library, as if he wanted to follow in Chen Qingluo's footsteps. He read voraciously and soon took over the throne of Chinese language first left by her.
Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", Marguerite Duras's "The Lover" translated by Wang Daoqian, Camus's "The Stranger"... He read the names mentioned by these girls one by one.
These writers will also bring him more writers. Proust brought him James Joyce, Wang Daoqian brought him Moudan, Camus brought him Sartre...
And more writers brought more writers: Tolstoy brought him Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Faulkner, Hemingway, and then he had Neruda, Marquez, Borges, Llosa.
Lu Xun brought him Dazai Osamu, Oe Kenzaburo and Kawabata Yasunari, and then brought him Murakami Haruki, who brought him Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler...
The books he read were like branches, spreading, growing, intertwining with each other, gradually flourishing, blossoming and bearing fruit.
But the last sight of that summer afternoon was the last time he and Chen Qingluo met. She left Xihe, and he never saw her again.
“Hey, Lao Wang, what’s wrong?” Xie Cong pushed Wang Zixu and asked him to return to this moment.
“Ah, no.” Wang Zixu shook his head, “Why do I have her contact information?”
Love."
Wang Zixu shook his head: "That's nonsense."
Next to him, Lin Feng stretched his head and asked, "Which Chen Qingluo are you talking about?"
Xie Cong smiled: "Yes, Ning Chunyan and Chen Qingluo, these two are talented girls from Xihe, but only people in Xihe call them Xihe Shuangbi. It is estimated that few people know that they are from the same place."
Lin Feng turned around and asked in surprise: "You two went to school together?"
Wang Zixu simply nodded: "Yes."
"They even sat at the same table!" Xie Cong said with a smile, "Chen Qingluo originally sat at the same table with me, but then changed seats and sat at the same table with him. I was so angry at the time."
Wang Zixu drank water and said nothing.
He had no impression of what Xie Cong said.
Compared to Chen Qingluo, everything else when he was 17 seemed so unimportant.
Some names are definitely magical. Others will never know that just a name can allow him to travel back to the afternoon 13 years ago.
“Is Chen Qingluo as beautiful as in the photo?” someone asked.
“It’s even prettier than that.” Xie Cong said.