After I went back that night, Liao Xiaofei and I talked about the experience with Qin Yan, and she asked me excitedly: "Do you mean that the one you have in mind won the first prize in national mathematical modeling at the age of fourteen, and at the age of sixteen, he helped his father go to business negotiations and won an eight-figure contract, and he is also so handsome that he is so gentle with you that you swear that he is not the one he will not marry in this life, and he is back?" And he hasn't forgotten about you? He still talks and laughs with you, and he helps you wipe the chocolate on your mouth? ”

I was more excited than she was and said, "yes, yes! What the hell am I going to do, I'm doomed to lose sleep tonight! ”

Liao Xiaofei exhaled and said, "Wait a minute, you calm down first, you sue me, he will help you wipe the chocolate and then what?" ”

I was stunned: "And then? Oh...... Then I felt so embarrassed that I went to the bathroom to wash my face and touch up my makeup by the way, and when the results came out, he was gone. ”

Liao Xiaofei said: "......"

I sighed and said, "But I can't blame him for that, I put on makeup for about an hour." ”

She said, "You made up for an hour?" You're a canvas for your face, it's enough to paint! No, blah blah...... So you mean you didn't even ask for his phone number? Didn't ask him out again? ”

I said, "No, no, but my dad said he was going to ask the family to play golf together in a few days." After a pause, he scratched his head in distress: "What did you say I was wearing that day, pure or mature?" I came back tonight to look around, I don't seem to have any nice clothes, will you go shopping with me tomorrow? Oh yes, I stayed up late a few days ago chasing the new one, and the bags under my eyes and dark circles came out, and you can accompany me to make a face on the weekend, okay? Hey, no, why don't you just go with me then, I almost had a heart attack today, and I swallowed two tablets of Xindean as soon as I got home, I didn't lie to you at all! ”

Liao Xiaofei said speechlessly: "You are a little promising, right?" How can you chase people when you're so seedless? I'd love to go with you, but since the last time I said I loved you to death, your dad looked at me like he was going to push me down the toilet and flush it away. She thought for a while, and suddenly reacted: "Hey, isn't the relationship between your family and Lu Zhaochao's family particularly good, you ask your father to make an appointment with their family, and let Lu Zhaochao accompany you." ”

I said, "Didn't he go to Antarctica with his family to see the penguins, and he's already back?" ”

She said: "I came back a few days ago, and he also posted on Moments, didn't you see it?" ”

I thought about it for a moment and said, "Oh, I think it's too annoying for him to keep posting pictures there, so I'm blocking him." ”

She said with a sigh: "His parents also said that you two are childhood sweethearts, looking forward to you being able to get married one day, are you so kind of a bamboo horse?" ”

I smiled, "Is your heart dripping blood when you say this?" I still remember who cried and cried to me when I was in the sixth grade, I was so jealous of you, I also wanted to play with Lu Zhaochao, but he ignored me~~~"

Liao Xiaofei jumped up suddenly: "Damn, you don't know, my mother had amblyopia at that time!" ”

After hanging up the phone, I dragged Lu Zhaochao out of the blocked list. If my friendship with Lu Zhaochao is counted by time, it is deeper than Liao Xiaofei. Lu Zhaochao and I have been sitting at the same table since preschool, and at that time, he often stabbed me with a pencil and I poked him twice with a triangular ruler, saying that childhood is the period of personality formation, so when we grew up, it didn't develop into a situation where you stabbed me and I inserted it. It's not easy for you to have two knives, and it's even more impossible to talk about friends. Lu's parents have always wanted to match us, and when he was a child, he also let him learn to paint with me, and my deepest impression was that in a sketch class, Lu Zhaochao pointed to a ** statue with a thief's face and asked me: "Li Qiao, I can't figure it out, why do you say that the teacher always only uses the upper body of these people to paint us?" Why can't you just draw their lower body? ”

I sent a message to Lu Zhaochao, then put my phone on the bedside table, and went to get a picture frame on the table. Inside was a picture of me and my mother. My mother was a veritable beauty, when I was a child, my father was so busy with business that he was often away from home, and in the fragments of memory, my mother has always taken care of me. And since she was killed when I was twelve, the outline of the pieces has gradually changed to the appearance of another person. I touched the photo for a long time and said softly, "Mom, did you ask him to come back......"

I put the photograph in front of me, closed my eyes, and the first thing that came to mind was the white chrysanthemums and roses that seemed to be invisible in the cemetery ten years ago, the pure and holy white colors, often used to depict heaven, but I still feel that they are more desperate colors than darkness.

I will always remember the funeral ten years ago, when I first came into contact with life and death, and I couldn't figure out why I just went out to a summer camp and came back with a portrait of my mother. I unconsciously listened to every muffled word of mourning from the funeral guests, and in a daze, I went to the funeral farewell until I heard the mourning music and eulogies playing in the auditorium. But I suddenly remembered that my dad told me the night before, he said that your grandfather will come to the funeral tomorrow, he is old and in poor health, and he is very sad when your mother is gone, so you have to control yourself and not cry, don't stimulate him to make him even more sad. And you are the future successor of our Li family, there will be many reporters to take photos tomorrow, you have to maintain a good demeanor and not lose control, and don't let them think that you are not strong at all.

So I endured it until I couldn't bear it anymore, and I told my aunt at home that I was going to go to the bathroom. Going out from the side to the back door of the auditorium, there are countless suffocating white wreaths outside the door. I ran out on my legs, and the long road full of pines and cypresses in the drizzle looked a little ghostly. Later, I fell on a slippery lawn, and I remembered when my mother taught me ancient poetry when I was a child, she said that rainy nights, stars, dew, any scenery actually reflected the poet's mood, but at that time, I looked at the vast rain curtain and didn't seem to be in any mood in my heart, I just felt cold all over.

And then that's when I felt a shadow fall in front of me. I looked up, and there was a man in front of me holding a large black umbrella, I could not see his face, only the edge of the umbrella was covered with a patch of red fruit holly, and the red and green colors were particularly bright under the haze of the sky.

I watched him quietly for a few seconds, he tilted the umbrella a little in my direction, through the vague rain curtain, I slowly saw his facial features, beautiful like the European nobles in the old master paintings, the man asked me without a word: "Little friend, aren't you cold sitting on such a wet grass?" ”

I looked at him in a black and white crisp suit and thought to myself that he was also a guest at our family's funeral, maybe even a journalist, so I gritted my teeth and said, "I'm not cold." ”

He squatted down, I looked into his eyes, and he said, "You're not cold, so why are your eyes red and crying?" ”

When I heard this, I hurriedly denied it: "I didn't cry! I—I just fell and my knee hurts a little, but I didn't cry! ”

He nodded indifferently, and looked down at my leg again: "Then are you still walking, do you want to go back with me?" The rain was getting heavier and heavier. ”

I was a little out of ideas, I lowered my head and buried my face, I was afraid that if he continued to stare at me, he would find that there was more to my face than just rain. But I was really too cold to stand it, and just when I didn't know what to do, he seemed to say "oh" again: "Are you unable to walk?" I can carry you back, but you'll have to help me lift my umbrella. ”

Then I climbed onto his back hand and foot, and as soon as I climbed up, the heat from his body made me exhale, and I clung to him and wrapped my frozen arms around his neck, and I heard him choke softly.

I just held the umbrella and let him carry it all the way back, recalling that when I was a child, my mother often carried me like this, and couldn't help but hum in a low voice, and after a while, I heard the person in front of me say, "Since you hurt so much, why don't you cry?" ”

I was stunned, thought for a moment and asked him, "Do you want to cry when it hurts?" ”

He said as a matter of course: "When a girl is in pain, she should cry." ”

I thought about it again, thought it was a good excuse, and threw myself on his back and cried.

Because of the rain, after returning from the funeral, I burned for a day and a night. After I got better, I heard from my aunt at home that the person who carried me back that day was the son of a friend in my father's business, who had just returned from studying abroad, and his name was Qin Yan.

For a long time after that, I firmly believed that Qin Yan must have been given to me by God to protect me in place of my mother. When I was a child, my mother read me a lot of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, What the Daughter of the Sea, Snow White, Princess Lettuce, etc., and those fairy tales made me believe that when a person is willing to protect you, he must like you.

So, even though the funeral meant the end of a qiē, for me, it was the beginning of a rather long crush.

However, I didn't expect at that time that maybe it was because of this acquaintance that our end was doomed.