Zhou Lan, a middle-aged woman sitting opposite me, is beautiful and generous, quiet and intellectual, and at first glance is a very cultivated intellectual woman.
She told me her own emotional story, just like our own.
Plain and sad, but especially real.
01
My story starts in college.
Other people's college life is colorful, and I have a particularly monotonous life.
Classrooms, canteens, and dormitories are three points and one line, and they rarely go out with roommates and classmates.
My roommates dance, watch movies, go shopping, and even travel together on weekends;
It's more about being in love, dating, hometown meetings...
I have only the most important and happiest thing to do every day:
That is a person hiding in a mosquito net to read a love letter written by her boyfriend Xin Wei.
In those days, there were very few phones, one in one building, and before mobile phones appeared, we relied on letterhead to talk to each other.
We write letters and receive letters from each other almost every day;
No one in our dorm room, or even in the whole class, had as many letters as I had received.
So much so that later I took the initiative to ask to be a member of the class life committee and took over the task of sending and receiving newspapers and letters.
02
During the four years of college, I seemed to rely on Xin Wei's letter every day to continue my life.
Whenever I go to the mailbox of the class to pick up newspapers and letters, and see the thickest and heaviest of the piles of letters, my heart beats wildly.
In the words of the fashion now, I am the typical love brain.
If I don't receive his letter one day, I will lose my soul one day;
If I haven't received it for two days, I won't be able to eat or sleep;
If I didn't receive it for three days, I would immediately pack my bags and go back to my hometown and rush back to my high school alma mater to find him.
Because Xin Wei was a Chinese teacher in my high school, we were teacher-student love.
I often cried in my dorm room because I didn't receive letters from my lovers as scheduled, and often made my roommates panic.
Four years of college life, I spent almost every day like this, there are only two words in my world----- love.
03
Xin Wei was a high-achieving student in the Chinese Department of the Provincial City Normal College, and I was fascinated by him because he was talented.
He can turn boring language classes into his "personal show" home:
He is knowledgeable about the past and the present, quotes from the scriptures, is radiant, and speaks standard Mandarin with a magnetic voice.
He can make every student in the class fall in love with the subject of Chinese.
It also made me fall in love with him, and it was I who took the initiative to pursue him.
You can see that he liked me at the time, but he was very restrained, after all, he was my teacher.
We didn't formally settle into a relationship until I graduated from high school, and after the summer vacation, it was followed by the test of a long-distance relationship.
Xin Wei's letters are as wonderful as his lectures, and ancient poems and songs are handy;
What's even more rare is that the poems he wrote himself are very charming, and they often make me tear up.
His language is like beautiful prose, warm and affectionate, beautiful and moving, and I am passionate to see it, and I can't wait to fly to his side immediately.
04
At that time, it was popular in colleges to read Qiong Yao's novels, and every female college student had several copies in her hand.
My love is a copy of Qiong Yao's novel: love is pure and flawless, the sky is dark, dead and alive.
It's ridiculous to say now, but in college, my love story was "legendary."
There is no girl who does not envy me, after all, the love in Qiong Yao's novel that does not eat fireworks in the world is really rare in real life.
Girls from other departments even came to our class together to see where I was "sacred."
Listening to my roommate, there were also a few good boys, who originally wanted to chase me, but later heard about my "love story", and they were discouraged.
I heard about this, just smiled, never put it in my heart, did not inquire, I only had Xin Wei in my heart, and others could not enter.
05
Among these boys who pursued me, there was one person who was very special, he was Qin Jianyu, the sports committee member in the class.
He and I are fellow villagers in the same province, tall and handsome, and the polite Xin Wei are completely two types of people.
The girls in the class like to talk about him behind his back and hope to be his girlfriend.
Qin Jianyu is a person who is not good at words, and he will silently do something for me:
For example, before the evening self-study, I hurriedly finished eating to occupy a seat for me;
Physical education class volleyball test, patient sparring, let me pass the pad ball test 100 mark at once;
I bought a direct ticket to the provincial city a week early and accompanied me all the way until I got on the shuttle back to the county;
At the end of each holiday, a large number of local souvenirs from my hometown would be brought to my dormitory, and before I could refuse, my roommates would pounce on it and sweep up the big half.
At this time, I would helplessly say to him, "I'm so sorry! ”
……
Like all girls, I love to enjoy the pampering and care of suitors.
06
Although I could feel Qin Jianyu's affection, I didn't think so.
I could often feel his burning gaze at me, and his melancholy look, but I always avoided it.
I always diverted the conversation or turned and walked away when he was just about to open his mouth.
I was afraid that the words I refused could not be spoken, that he would be misunderstood, and that I would embarrass him if I said them.
It may also be because of this that Qin Jianyu has always had illusions and has always wanted to find an opportunity to confess.
I've also been wondering, in what way would I make him understand that he had no possibility of harming him?
It wasn't until my senior year that I had this opportunity.
Xin Wei just happened to come to the school on a business trip to see me, and the two of us intimately went in and out of the school.
Qin Jianyu was completely dead hearted, but he could see that he was in pain.
He no longer dared to do anything for me and tried to avoid appearing on the same occasion as me.
After graduation, we never contacted each other again.
07
It's been 20 years since I graduated from college in the blink of an eye.
In the past 20 years, I have rarely attended large class reunions.
This time, the class reunion was particularly crowded, except for those who had passed away and their classmates abroad, all of whom participated.
Qin Jianyu also came, and this was the first time I met him after 20 years of graduation.
He didn't change much, he was in good shape, not fat, not the grease of a middle-aged man.
When people reach middle age and recall the hazy love affair of that year, everyone can't help but make fun of each other.
Someone mentioned "Outside the Window" and my love story from college.
I didn't say anything, just red circles of my eyes and diverged from the topic.
The housemates joked with Me and Qin Jianyu, talking about his crush and mentioning the farce that the food he brought me was always swept away by them.
Qin Jianyu smiled sheepishly and did not refute it.
For the first time, I looked at Qin Jianyu seriously and closely, and found that his smile was very warm and sincere.
It is strange to say that in the same window for 4 years, I have never felt this way, even if he was next to me at that time:
On the playground, on the library, on the car... The word "the end of the world" popped into my head.
08
The next afternoon, arranging a re-visit to Qingxiling, the male classmates who love spoofs deliberately let the male and female classmates who had a crush or ambiguous relationship be combined together.
The female classmate hid in the mountain, the male classmate looked for it, and the pair that was found led down the hill and could not be found was finally punished.
Qin Jianyu and I were naturally grouped together, and I hid behind the pine trees halfway up the mountainside, watching Qin Jianyu circle around my eyes like a headless fly, almost laughing.
As the sky gradually darkened, Qin Jianyu shouted my name in a panicked voice, "Zhou Lan, where are you?" You hurry up and come out, I'd rather be punished. ”
The anxiety and panic made me both touched and amused, it seemed that no one had been so attentive and cared about themselves for a long time, and I was suddenly a little sad.
I was thinking wildly, forgetting to hide myself, the skirt was lifted by the evening wind, and Qin Jianyu suddenly dragged me.
I saw that his face was full of sweat and his eyes were full of worry, and I suddenly forgot the sadness and couldn't laugh.
When I went down the mountain, I felt Qin Jianyu holding my hand very hard, as if I would never let go again for the rest of my life.
At that moment, Qin Jianyu's previous kindness to me surged into my heart bit by bit, and a warm current spread from my hands throughout my body, and I hadn't felt such a feeling for many years.
09
At the foot of the mountain, it was completely dark, and the students had arrived, and they were missing both.
Watching Qin Jianyu take my hand and walk down the mountain, everyone suddenly didn't squeak, probably because the expression and state of our two scared them.
Everyone's expression is very complicated, touched, confused, envious, sad... Perhaps everyone is reminded of their own pure and persistent youth.
The evening show was to go to the KTV to sing karaoke, and I sang the theme song of the TV series "Jinghua Smoke And Clouds".
"If love returns to the past, the flowers that were missed, is it still as beautiful as ever?" If love still has to go on, can you and I, who hold hands, hold hands, can we hold the temperature of love? ......”
The male classmate coaxed Qin Jianyu to push him in front of me and held our hands together, and I felt his hands warm and powerful.
It seemed that he had also stuffed a piece of paper into me, and my heart suddenly beat wildly.
After singing the song, sit in the corner, open the piece of paper and look at it, a ticket, directly to the provincial city.
My heart was hot, and my eyes were moist, but fortunately, the KTV lights were dim and no one noticed.
10
When I got home, it was already 11:30 at night.
Walking into the neighborhood, I looked up at my own window, which was a black hole hole again, and no one turned on a bright and warm lamp waiting for me to come back.
Entering the house and opening the refrigerator, which was still the leftover dish I had eaten when I left, I picked up a loaf of bread and took a bite;
Looking at the thermos again, the water does not have a little heat, and it is also burned when leaving.
I really doubt whether Xin Wei has returned to this home after he left? Hit his phone, no one answered.
I was tired and hungry, I fell on the bed and didn't want to move, my thoughts went back to the college days, remembering the happy times of the past, and the excitement of receiving Xin Wei's love letters from Xin Wei, who was still a lover at the time, every day.
At that time, he was still a teacher in school, and every letter was beautiful and poetic, like a beautiful lyrical prose, and I had to read every sentence on it several times.
However, since his marriage, Xin Wei has slowly risen from an ordinary teacher to a grade teaching and research team leader, a director of academic affairs, a principal, and now a deputy director of the Education Bureau.
As his official position rose higher and higher, Xin Wei returned home later and later, and after the child lived in the school, he simply did not return all night; once in a while, he was also drunk and unconscious, and fell asleep.
Don't talk about love letters, sometimes for a few days I can't even say a word, my daily life is like tonight, alone in an empty room, as if I have become accustomed to it, but I can't sleep tonight anyway.
11
I was thinking about it and dizzy, the phone rang, didn't I have a boost of energy, did Xin Wei know that I was going to come back tonight and call to greet him?
Open the phone and there is a message: "Are you sleeping?" "The number is not familiar, look again, the payment: Qin Jianyu."
My heart was hot, and I couldn't help but laugh out loud, this person really is, so late has not slept?
The phone rang again, or the message, "I don't mean anything else, just to see if you are safe to get home, and wish you a warm, happy dream!" ”
I sat up, holding my phone, tears falling on my chest...
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