The girl in red
A few days ago, Hu Zhou, a college classmate who works in the district government, came to my office to sit down, and during the casual chat, he told me a story about his youth. I thought the story was interesting, so I recorded it after work as a pastime. The following is the original story, recorded in the first person.
After graduating from university, I was assigned to teach at the No. 1 Middle School in the city, and three years later, I participated in the open recruitment examination and was admitted to the district government office to engage in secretarial work. I had talked about two girlfriends before, one was a college classmate, who stayed in the provincial capital after graduation and dumped me. The second is a middle school classmate who stayed in the county after graduation and broke up because he refused to leave the county.
At that time, there were a lot of matchmakers for me, and I was introduced to several girls, but they were only one-sided, either the other party didn't look down on me, or I didn't feel for the other party.
A few years passed, and the family began to urge marriage. In fact, in my opinion, it doesn't matter much if a man is thirty years old and gets married later, plus the agency work was very busy at that time, and he often worked overtime at night to write materials, and he almost didn't even have time to date. Therefore, I am not particularly concerned about falling in love.
But the leader cared about me very much, and he wanted to introduce me to someone, but I politely refused several times.
One day, the leader said to me very seriously, you don't have to work overtime tonight, take you to a friend's house to sit. I said, "It's not right for me to go to your friend's house, I don't know them." The leader said, it's okay, don't you know each other when you go? So, after dinner, we went.
The leader's friend's house is not far from the office, just across the road from the family area of the city procuratorate, in an old building, probably on the second or first floor, I don't remember exactly, but it is certain that it is the right hand side of the stairwell.
The leader came forward and knocked on the door, and it was a beautiful girl who came to open the door. The girl warmly called my leader Uncle Zeng. The leader introduced me to the girl and said, "This is the little beard of our unit, the pen stick, and the one who specializes in writing materials."
The girl and I smiled at each other and said hello.
The girl wore a red niche coat, about twenty-two or three years old, with a slender figure, delicate facial features, big eyes, clear and bright, and a taste of oriental classical beauty.
I saw that her short hair was shoulder-length, and the naturally falling hair faintly covered a small part of her face on the left and right. I don't know why she cut her haircut like this. Young girls in those days generally wore long hair shawls and cut their hair short only after they got married. Maybe she wanted to dress herself up more maturely.
Although she seems a little reserved, she does not lose the enthusiasm of her host in the face of guests.
After welcoming us into the house and making tea, she, just like me, sat quietly on the side, listening to his parents and my leader chatting. The whole time, both of us listened to their elders chatting without interjecting a word. Soon after, we got up and took our leave. The girl walked quickly to the door, opened the door for us, and then changed her shoes and sent us downstairs.
In the meantime, the girl and I didn't say anything except smile to each other when we looked at each other, but her bright eyes and bright red Nizi coat were deeply engraved in my mind.
In the decades since, we have had no intersection. I didn't even know the girl's name, and I didn't know why the leader had taken me to her house at that time.
What I didn't expect was that when we met again decades later, the girl, the girl in red back then, actually recognized me.
When the girl, the girl in red back then, asked me if I remember that we had a relationship thirty years ago, I was so confused that I couldn't remember when we had had a relationship. The girl's face was flushed, and she said that if she didn't remember, forget it, and drove away with her colleague.
When someone says they know you, but you don't know you, it's a particularly embarrassing and impolite thing. I was very upset about that.
In order to find out the truth of the matter, I found a friend from the procuratorate, asked for the girl's mobile phone number, called her, apologized to her, said that I was a blank face, and if there was something offended, I asked her to bear more, and at the same time I told her frankly that I really don't remember when we had dealt with each other.
Girl, the girl in red asked me rhetorically, more than 30 years ago, when we were young boys and girls, did you know Uncle Zeng Moumou, and did you go to the family area of the procuratorate with him?
Listening to her say this, I suddenly realized!
That was the only time I went to the house of a stranger in the prosecutor's office, how could I not remember!
I said to her, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's me who has no eyes, and I didn't recognize you.
Girl, the girl back then said, it's not that you have no eyes, it's me more than 30 years ago, who has eyes and no beads!
