1994 should be a year of heavy memory for the people of City B, on the first day of the new year, an explosion occurred in a fireworks factory less than 40 kilometers away from the city, and the news fever has not yet dropped, a man-made fire broke out in a commercial building on Center Street, and the smoke billowed out in the evening and burned half of the sky. And when the midsummer came, adults and children were all looking forward to the summer vacation, it rained heavily, and the waters around City B were approaching the warning line again and again, but the city has not made progress in the drainage project in the past two years, and many places have been flooded.

During that time, the whole country paid special attention to the heavy rain in City B, and City B Satellite TV had to broadcast the progress of water control and drainage and sewage removal projects in the two river basins every day, but for the people of City B, the dark clouds hanging over the city were certainly a big worry, but the people in the small city had ordinary troubles every day, natural disasters and man-made disasters, compared with their livelihoods, it seemed that the latter had a greater impact on them.

The English teacher, who has a particularly good temper, has been very annoying lately, but her annoyance is happiness. Her wedding anniversary is approaching, and her husband, who teaches at the same school, is going to take her out on vacation, and she is worried about where to spend this wonderful vacation. The closer you get to the holiday, the greater the annoyance, but the day before the holiday, this annoyance disappears.

The exam papers were sent out, the final summary and assessment comments were completed, and the summer vacation homework was also assigned. The English teacher looked around the classroom in a tangled way, and finally locked her eyes on me. For the last remaining unclaimed transcript, the wise English teacher decided like this.

"He Xi, An Jiashu's transcript and summer vacation homework will be bothered to bring him to him, and the teacher will go back to his hometown tomorrow."

In elementary school, we sat in a single row, there was no same table, and all the teachers seemed to have the best relationship between the front and back desks, but in fact, Mr. An didn't come to class a few times a week, he sat in front of me, and when he came, he was lying on the seat to make up his homework, and I saw the back of his head much more often than his face, and he didn't say a few words.

So I started to worry about it.

Although it is a matter of being entrusted with loyalty, it is still quite embarrassing to suddenly visit a fellow student who is not familiar with him. Jiang Li also began to worry with me, because I asked him to go with me, and he couldn't think of a way to refuse me for a while.

Later, I often thought that if I hadn't promised the English teacher to go to Mr. An's house this time, or if I hadn't chosen that day, would I have intersected with Mr. An so much now? So if I follow the same life script, which direction will Mr. An be in now, and what will I be?

To be honest, it seems to be the only time I saw Mr. An cry, at least the only time I saw him cry so sadly. And in my young memory, it was the first time I saw someone cry like that.

The people around me are happy, even if my father is in trouble at work, he will just stay in the study to deal with work, in front of us, he never shows his depressed emotions. Although my mother was strict, she was very patient with me and Jiang Li's education, and even if we made any mistakes, she would teach them carefully. Uncle Yao and Yun Niang get up very early every day, I walk in the garden in the early morning, they are chatting in the yard, one is thinking about today's recipe, the other is thinking about what flowers or vegetables to plant in the yard, they are busy inside and outside the house every day, and they seem to be so happy and satisfied.

If Jiang Li's rebellion in adolescence and the breakdown of his father's and mother's marriage made me fall from the clouds of happiness to the cruel reality, then meeting Mr. An is the first time that I, a princess who has always had no worries about food and clothing, came to the suffering people.

It was a rainy day, and I remember it was a busy afternoon, and the location was the nearest hospital to Tongya Bend, Qingfang, City B. Two hours ago, Jiang Li and I set off from home with the driver, Lao Ma, and an hour later we drove Mr. An and Grandma An all the way to this hospital.

The corridor was noisy, and the front of each department and room was full of people waiting with white lists, among which one or two white-clad nurses occasionally walked by, and the sound of the number could be heard clearly from inside the door to the door.

Lao Ma accompanied Mr. An to his grandmother's inpatient surgery, I didn't know why I was a little nervous in that environment and air, I clenched the armrest of the sofa in my hand, and my eyes turned to Jiang Li, who was standing against the wall at that time.

Thirteen-year-old Jiang Li, who is close to an adult, looks very much like his father, with sword eyebrows and starry eyes, handsome and white, but his temper and personality are not as cute as his skin, proud, dragging, and smelly. He is neither like his father nor his mother, nor is he likely to be like me, it is simply a genetic mutation.

"Why wouldn't they help him?" I asked him in a low voice.

An Jiashu was so pitiful, he was still a child, crying on the side of the road and begging those who passed by to take him and Grandma An to the hospital, but they would not stop to help.

Jiang Li looked at me silently, he knew that I might be frightened, as an older brother, he could only keep running my hair.

"Because none of them have that obligation." He answered me.

"Why?"

"No one likes to get themselves in trouble."

Are Mr. Ann and Grandma Ann troublesome? As the youngest and ignorant, I don't understand, but Jiang Li has been smarter than me since he was a child, and what he said must be reasonable. I don't know if other people really think that, but I know that Jiang Li must not have thought that way when he said this, otherwise he wouldn't have helped Mr. An and his grandmother.

I know that Jiang Li has always been a warm-hearted and kind child, although he seems much more aloof on the surface. Many times, as the person closest to him, I don't understand his mind either. He was more precocious than his peers, with a bright head and a clear mind, and the difference between him and me was only seven or eight years old. And in his life, it seems that the people who make him most entangled, complain, and guilty are my mother and me.

Many things don't seem to have much meaning when they happen now, but once you look back after a long time, you will understand that this arrangement naturally has its own reason. And it's only now that I'm looking back to understand a little bit more.

In my upbringing, my parents, grandparents, aunts, Yun Niang, and everyone else did their best to build me a carefree and flawless world, where everything was what I saw. Only Jiang Li, he will open a gap in this world, bluntly, and even cruelly relay the real situation to me, whether it is what he sees or what he experienced, even if I didn't understand it very well at the time.

When we were very young, he prepared. As I grew older and more sensible, he became more and more deliberately distant and cold to me, perhaps expecting that this would be the end of the day, even though he decided to abandon me in the first place.

Mr. An, who has the same meaning as Jiang Li in my life, but is completely different, his world itself is the opposite of my world from the beginning. But unlike Jiang Li, Mr. An is sunny and upward, he works hard to grow, and whitewashes the injustice and suffering that the world has given him, so it is even more distressing.

Mr. Ann pushed me away twice, I remember it very clearly, but I can't blame him.

Mr. An was very quiet when he cried, he crossed his arms, squatted at the door of the operating room in a protective posture, buried his head, basically you can't hear his crying voice, and you can't see his tears. He cried like this not at all like a frightened little beast, the little beast at least had strength and aggressiveness, but apart from a small whimper, there was only boundless pathos left in his body.

He really scared me like that. I remembered the way he sat in the car with his grandmother in his arms. His arms were so thin that he didn't even have the strength to lift his grandmother's shoulders, and there was pain and pleading in his voice, and overwhelming despair trapped him. At that time, we didn't know that my grandmother's body had run out of oil, and even if she was sent to the hospital, it would be too late, and in the end we just bought a little time for her.

When I was a child, I was often sick and had to take medicine and injections frequently, but I rarely came to the hospital, and my father always invited a doctor to come to his home. I was also scared when I got the injection, but my father would gently rub my hand, Jiang Li wanted me not to be afraid, he asked the nurse to also put a needle on the back of his hand, and then I cried and cried and cried so that it didn't hurt.

It's not terrible to be sick at all, your family is with you when you're sick, they will spoil you more than before, and when you're sick, it means you can go wherever you want, and you can have whatever you want. But Grandma Ann is so sick and pitiful, really, when I think of that scene, I think An Jiashu and Grandma are so fucking miserable!

Lao Ma is a very emotional person, he suffered a lot when he was young, and he is the most pitiful of Mr. An among the three of us. I saw the look in his eyes and knew he wanted me to go and get up with Mr. Laan.

Isn't it numb to squat for so long? Aren't you tired from crying for so long? Isn't it uncomfortable to get your clothes so wet?

I squatted down in front of Mr. An and told him not to cry, but as soon as my hand touched his arm, he pushed him away.

To be honest, he used all his strength to push this one, and I felt really painful when my butt and elbow landed. Jiang Li ran over immediately when he saw it, and he stared at Mr. An viciously, but Mr. An stared at me viciously. He was a bit of a little beast at this time, but I became his prey.

When we were together, I often think about that day, and I wonder if part of this term, called fate, is deeply and eternally entangled. For the first time in my life, I have seen the despair of a boy, as an outsider, I saw him experience eternal loss, and then used another identity to grow up with him, and spent the second half of my life to pay him happiness in the second half of his life, cherish him, and protect him, not only because I love him, but I also feel sorry for him.

"Why did you push me away then?"

Then I asked him if I wanted to find an answer, but I didn't know what that answer was.

No matter how I thought about it, if I was the only person who reached out in his despair at that time, why he would look at me with such hateful eyes later, and even push away the warmth I wanted to give him. I think if the same thing happened now, Mr. An would definitely bury me in my arms and cry bitterly.

Mr. An was momentarily confused after listening to my question. He hadn't thought about those painful days for years.

"He Xi, do you know." He seems to have figured out the wording, it's a hard question for him, but he has to be honest. "When a man has been lonely and desperate for too long, the first person to open the window to him is unfortunate, because he will hate her, how come you come so late. Later he climbed up that window, and he would hate her again, how could you just open one window and go again. ”

I listened to him quietly, and I was so angry that I wanted to pinch him. He has grown in everything in the past few years, and he doesn't know how many times stronger than he used to be thin, but why can't he lie just by learning it?

At this time, even if he lied to me, I wouldn't be so angry.

"So, these seven years, did you do it on purpose?"

Mr. Ann held my hand, and his eyes were already red.

I think I must have been angry at the time, and people can do everything in anger. I don't care how pitiful Mr. An's expression is now, I just feel that the air around me is sparkling, and Mr. An is now a detonator in my eyes.

I shoved him away and pushed him to the ground, just like he had done the first time he had pushed me.

"An Jiashu, your uncle!"

It was the most intense and longest fight we've had in a long time, and the next day I packed my bags and went with my colleagues to southern Africa to photograph our desert lions. Now that I think about it, sometimes I really admire Mr. An's ability to provoke me, we only got married at that time, and it was only a few days before he was so angry that he wanted to go berserk to Kagellagdi. When I said it, it was also a few bitter tears.