The sky was slightly glowing with gold, and the lights of the homes downstairs had been dimmed, and I was a little uncomfortable sitting in the Italian restaurant in Building X, and then I straightened the tie on my chest to make a good impression in front of the publisher, because if my book was not published, I would not be able to make a living.

A soothing waltz plays in the restaurant, and the mist of the water rises from the central waterfall, making you feel like you're in a fairyland. The yellow light shines on the golden wall, reflecting the extravagance and expensiveness.

My hands were slightly sweaty, and I took a few breaths of air to relieve the tension, but when the air entered my lungs from the nasopharynx, I felt even more uncomfortable because the smell of air did not belong to me.

When I received a message from the publisher that I would be a few minutes late, I looked around and peeked at a world that wasn't mine.

Suddenly, I saw a pair of big embarrassed eyes staring at me. A very well-dressed girl walked in front of me and said to me, "Teacher?"

My mind was suddenly confused, and I didn't know when I would meet someone who was so different from my world.

"Teacher, I'm Magnolia, the student you taught when you were teaching." When she said this, her eyes fell, and then she muttered, "Also, no one has ever cared about me at all."

In an instant, an innocent face was reflected in my mind, the hair was messy, and although there was a little mud on the face, it was embedded in my shocked eyes.

It was one of the students I met when I went to teach in the south after graduating from university, and it seems that his name seems to be Magnolia.

She told me that she was a left-behind child, and her parents took her younger brother out to work, so she lived with her grandparents.

I once asked her,

"Do you miss your parents?"

"I don't want to."

"What's your dream?"

"Part-time job."

The teacher who was teaching at the time shook his head when he heard this answer. But at that moment, I saw a look in Yulan's eyes that she shouldn't have at that age.

"Why do you want to work, Magnolia?" I asked in a whisper as I took her shriveled hand.

"My family only cares about my brother, he has several clothes, but I don't have any clothes." Her voice choked slightly.

"Sometimes I felt a little prickly when I touched the yellowed shirt, but they didn't say they wanted to buy me a new dress. By chance, after I touched Mu Xi's clothes, I realized that the clothes could be so soft, as soft as the hair of the big fat cat in the second dog's house next door..."The more she spoke, the faster she spoke, the tears seemed to be blown down by a gust of wind in her eyes.

I touched her face with my hand, and then slowly straightened her messy hair, "Magnolia, you can also have a dream of becoming a scientist and a writer." ”

Immediately, she pushed my hand away, and then gritted her teeth and said firmly: "I just want to go out to work, and then buy myself such a soft dress......"

"You're the little girl who said she wanted to go out to work?" I asked uncertainly, because I really couldn't connect the person with the beautiful bun and the elaborate makeup I was wearing now with the messy Magnolia in my memory.

She smiled, a smile that traced back to what I remembered and then overlapped. At that moment, I was really convinced that she was Magnolia.

I was about to say a few words to her when a man about 40 years old came up and put his arm around her shoulder and said to her, "Baby, let's go." ”

She was a little embarrassed and seemed to want to say something to me, but when the man next to her changed his face slightly, she had no choice but to leave.

Waiting until evening, I saw the lights under the building, and the lights of various colors paved the vibrant veins of the city, but I was a little scared as I sat at the top of the building.

"It's not my life after all." I said self-deprecatingly.

I slowly left the table to pay for a week's worth of food. Because I knew my publisher wasn't coming, there was no reason and no reason to tell me the reason for this pivotal person.

Just as I was thinking about how I would live next week, I was told by the waiter that my meal had been paid, and the person who paid for it left me a note.

After opening the note, a white magnolia flower came into view, and a phone number was left on it.

Instantly, that innocent smiling face appeared in my mind, and I wondered in my heart what Yulan had experienced and how she became like this.

When I got home in the evening, I added her WeChat, but she never replied to my messages, and she didn't reply to my messages until noon the next day.

"Teacher."

"Mmmm, why did Magnolia show up where you were yesterday?"

Instantly, there was a moment of silence, and when I realized if I had asked something wrong, she replied to my message.

"That guy invited me yesterday."

As I rubbed the keyboard slowly, figuring out how to continue the conversation, she told her about her experience.

I was only 8 years old that year, and my grandfather scolded me all day long, 'Yulan, you dead girl, what are you doing?' Don't feed the pigs yet? ’

In fact, his health has always been bad, but he seems to have inexhaustible power in scolding me.

I responded numbly like a machine. When the thin hand poured a bucket full of pig feed into the pig trough, I heard the pigs cry with joy, and at that moment I wondered if the pigs were happier than I was. ‘

I was 12 years old that year, and my classmates kept talking about "Oh, have you seen Magnolia?" Dirty ...... all day"

Then, looking down at his clothes, he knew that he was powerless to refute at all. Sometimes, I want to rub the black spots off my clothes with my hands, but they just want to be the stains I was born with, and I can't erase them.

So I hate going to school, I hate the strange eyes of my classmates, and I hate the teachers labeling me as a 'left-behind child' again and again.

I like to walk alone on the field and feel the breath of the wind.

When the breeze blows across my face, I imagine myself like Cinderella, dressed in beautiful clothes and beautiful crystal slippers, and quietly waiting for the pumpkin cart to pick me up......

But the ridicule of "hehe~" broke all my illusions I opened my eyes, but the faint sunlight made me feel a little dazzling, and then I quickly lowered my head, not daring to look at those brightly dressed classmates.

"Yulan doesn't know what to put in her head, and she closes her eyes and blows cold wind like a fool every day. Haha~" I can't refute it, I can only clasp my hands and try not to let the tears flow.

I was 18 years old that day, and I finally mustered up the courage to say to my grandfather, "Grandpa, I don't study anymore, I'm going to work in Guangzhou." After hearing this, the grandmother wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and said.

"Yulan, listen to grandma, go to school quickly."

"If I don't go, I won't go. Why do you want to go to school and be looked at strangely by others, or let others know that I am a left-behind child, and let them think that I have a psychological problem, or ......" At that moment, I burst out the anger I had accumulated over the years to the people who loved me the most.

Grandma was crying silently, holding on to the somewhat dilapidated chair with one hand and then placing the other hand on her chest. The mouth was still indistinct and shouted "Magnolia, my Magnolia~"

Seeing this, Grandpa slowly put down the crutches in his hand and sighed. Then he led me into his room.

He took the yellowed envelope from the cupboard and handed it to me.

I opened the envelope and looked at it, and there were pieces of change one after another, 5 yuan, 10 yuan...... I don't know how long I was let go by my grandfather, but I know that the smell of mold and rot made me want to gag.

Soon after, I went to Guangzhou with my relatives from the next village.

After arriving in Guangzhou, I realized that there are such beautiful places in the world, people wear beautiful clothes, and the houses are so high that I can't see the top when I look up, and I can't count the number of cars.

"Didi~" When I walked to the middle of the road, I suddenly came to my senses. I hurried to the side of the road and saw beautiful clothes in the window by the roadside. I put my hand on the glass, and the cold feeling made me sure that I was in Guangzhou at the moment.

At that time, I thought I would live happily ever after in this city.

But at night, my relatives led me all the way down and down, and I was a little scared as I walked. I saw naked men smoking cigarettes and playing poker, and women busy and yelling from time to time......

The rental room was slightly damp, and the smell of rotten bed boards made me a little uncomfortable. At that moment, I realized that such a beautiful place in Guangzhou would also have places where the sun could not shine, so dark that it even made people feel a little scared.

In Guangzhou, I worked in the factory every day, day and night, and even when I slept, the roar of machinery echoed in my ears.

A month later, I got my first paycheck. Then, I went to buy the beautiful clothes that I had in mind.

When my hand touched the clothes, the softness was exactly the same as I remembered.

I got dressed and walked around in the mirror in the store. The self in the mirror is overflowing with happiness. The faint white light shone on my clothes, and I seemed to feel a different kind of brilliance on my own body.

Suddenly, I saw a beautiful dress outside the window of the tall building next door, quietly draped over the model's body, and it was no less beautiful in the hot sun.

The inferiority complex in my bones suddenly came through, and I felt that it was laughing at me, laughing at me like an ugly duckling.

At that moment, I had another dream, I was going to wear clothes in the window of a tall building.

Life in the factory is hard, and the boss occasionally lowers the salary. When I received that paltry salary, I realized how far away I was from my dream.

So I took a shortcut, betrayed my youth, sold my soul.

Now that I'm 22 years old, I smile as man after man takes me up tall buildings and dresses me up one beautiful dress after another. Because I finally put on the dress that was as good as it was in the sun.

I looked at myself in the mirror, wearing delicate makeup and slender heels. It seems that I am completely different from the memory of myself, I am no longer the rural girl who is called a left-behind child, and at this moment I am standing in a place that countless people yearn for but cannot reach.

But in the sunlight, I saw a beautiful butterfly perched quietly outside the window, and the wings that were closed proved that it was still alive.

Teacher, you know what? I don't know why, but I started to miss the magnolia flowers in my hometown, and I started to miss the magnolia in my old days.

I didn't know how to comfort her, only silence. But in the silence, it seemed that the crying on the other end of the phone came to my ears.

Teacher, do you say that I am particularly cheap, when countless cups of cold water were splashed on my face, and I was scolded as a slut by countless people, my heart was empty. After that, he was able to walk into countless different luxury stores with different people.

"Magnolia, I don't know what to say, but remember to follow your heart."

If I had known what had happened, I would not have said it.

A month later, when the news of Magnolia's suicide by jumping into a lake reached my ears, I was pondering how to write a popular article that would cater to the publisher and the market, so as to ease my barren life.

The police came to me and said that Yulan had left me a letter before her death, and that innocent smiling face appeared in my mind in an instant. I eagerly opened the envelope to see what Magnolia had written.

teacher

When you read this letter, may I have reached the other side of heaven.

Tonight, I walked in the lakeside park. When I saw the pristine plants in the lakeside park, I seemed to smell magnolias.

The light shone on the surface of the lake, giving off a sparkling light. Walking by the lake, I took a handful of clear lake water to wash off the makeup on my face. That's when I realized that I hadn't shown my true face for a long time.

I curled up in a ball and sat quietly, looking at the sky.

Suddenly, I felt a mist in front of me, and I seemed to see a pure magnolia flower appear in the middle of the lake, and she waved her white petals as if to say to me, "Come, come, wash your soul." ”

At that moment, your words came to my mind: "Follow the heart." ”

In the end, I decided to go to the magnolia flower in my heart with a pious pilgrimage.

Pick up the pen: Magnolia

After reading this letter, I burst into tears, because this flower-like woman chose to die at the age of this flowering season, but I turned around and thought about it, maybe for Yulan, this is also a relief.

Then I shredded all the manuscripts of articles that I had carefully conceived to cater to publishers and markets.

"We can't change the world, but at least we don't let the world change us."

I looked up at the sky and seemed to see the face in the depths of my memory and the blazing magnolia flower, but then I crouched on the ground and cried, because the blazing magnolia flower eventually failed.