Xu Xing's mother was very happy when she heard that Zhao Shengyuan's family had a cousin who was helping them with tuition, and when she heard that her daughter had run out of manuscript paper, she rarely didn't ask her to save some money, but generously took two yuan to buy her a new one. This kind of manuscript paper is rough and thin, but it is much cheaper than the formal notebook, and you can buy two copies for one dollar.

In the evening, I brought a new manuscript paper and went to class happily. Zhao Hongru came a few minutes earlier than usual and sat in the living room waiting for them. The weather is getting hotter and hotter, and Zhao Shengyuan has changed from short-sleeved trousers to tank tops and shorts; The clothes on Zhao Hongru's body have never changed, and they are still the same as when he first came, either a short-sleeved white shirt and jeans, or a gray striped T-shirt and khaki cloth pants.

When Zhao Shengyuan and Xu Yu came to the room and sat down, he spread out a black bag he had brought, and inside were two notebooks with frosted covers, which looked as thick as junior high school textbooks.

He put the notebook in front of them and said, "Na, one for Shengyuan, one for Xiaonuo." ”

The promise could not hide the joy in his heart, and he opened the cover gently with a smirk, reluctant to waste paper, and only wrote his name carefully on the back of the cover.

Zhao Shengyuan laughed at her, and also learned her to write the words "Zhao Shengyuan" on the back.

Zhao Shengyuan seemed to feel guilty about her since he laughed at her hands last time, and he was very concerned about her hands, "Promise, your hands are much better, I'll just say, that will definitely work." ”

"That's good." Promise looked at his finger and smiled.

Zhao Hongru also smiled: "It's really much better." ”

After a few idle words, I began to teach English composition.

"When you are in the first year of high school, you will know that high school composition still has to rely on memorization, and your teacher will give you a set of classic sentence patterns, so that you can apply it to the exam after you memorize it...... I don't have any classic sentence patterns for you here, I will give them to you in every class in the future......"

Before Zhao Hongru finished speaking, the lights suddenly dimmed, and the whole room was pitch black. There was a power outage, and Zhao's mother took a candle and a few plastic fans and sent them in, saying that someone was repairing the wires on the road and that the call would come later.

Zhao Hongru continued what he had just said: "I will show you two short stories in English in each class, and you will read them repeatedly, and then make your own article after reading. ”

"There's a power outage, third brother." Zhao Shengyuan squeezed his eyebrows and smiled.

Zhao Hongru glanced at him and said, "Okay, then you don't speak English, so what do you want to do...... Or may I tell you a story? ”

Both students said yes.

He placed the candle in the center of his desk, and the three of them sat around. He began to tell a story that happened in Afghanistan about his illegitimate daughter, Mariam, who had been turned away from her father and had committed suicide when she returned home.

Hearing this, Xu Promise's eyes widened subconsciously, and Zhao Hongru stopped to look at her: "The story has just begun." ”

Because of the proximity, Xu Yu carefully looked at Zhao Hongru's face for the first time, and under the reflection of the candlelight, his eyes looked unusually soft.

Zhao Hongru went on to talk about Mariam being forced to marry an old man and leaving her homeland, about her constant pregnancies and miscarriages, and about her husband's cold reception and abuse. It goes all the way to the appearance of two other young men, Leila and Tariq, to the fact that they have to leave each other during the war, to the news that Tariq is seriously injured by a stranger.

Promise unconsciously held her breath, her thick lashes casting delicate shadows on her eyelids.

She waited for Zhao Hongru's next sentence, the electricity came, and the lights turned on silently, like the scene when the movie theater ended.

"Keep talking." Promise urged.

"Don't tell it, the story is still very long." He smiled, got up and packed his things to go home, "I'll talk about it next time." ”

"When is the next time?" She followed him out and asked.

"When there's a power outage."

Later, until the end of the summer vacation, there was no power outage, and the story really didn't go on.

……

One night in mid-August, Zhao Hongru gave them a lesson on poetry appreciation, and before going out, he told them that this was the last cram school and that he would not come in the future.

Xu Yu and Zhao Shengyuan looked at each other silently, and said with a tacit understanding: "We'll send you out!" ”

Zhao Hongru smiled faintly: "Okay." ”

Most of the time, Zhao Hongru always has no good face for them, and he speaks and acts like an old antique, but he didn't expect that after more than a month, these two little children still have a little dependence on him.

August nights, the night is gentle.

They walked back and forth, three shadows constantly overlapping, separating, overlapping under the streetlights.

Zhao Shengyuan walked in the front, the warm night breeze baked fine beads of sweat on his forehead, and he complained while kicking the small stones on the side of the road: "This ghost weather! ”

The bullfrogs hiding in the grass on either side "hummed" as if in response to his words.

Promise gloated: "Who told you to jump around." ”

Even with such a slow walk, the bus stop arrived quickly. Zhao Hongru stopped and said, "Okay, I'll send you back." ”

"No, no, no, I'm here!" Zhao Shengyuan put on a manly posture and patted his thin chest.

"No, if I lose you later, I can't afford to compensate your parents." They sent him out, and in the end, he insisted on sending them home again.

And just like that, the summer vacation ended in a blink of an eye.

Zhao Hongru went to the university to live his "good life", and Xu Yue and Zhao Shengyuan also started a fresh boarding life, the two of them are not in the same school, they don't see each other on weekdays, and only when they go home on weekends do their homework together.

After a summer of tutoring, Zhao Shengyuan was able to adapt to the high school curriculum faster than most of his classmates, especially English, so his grades were far ahead of the class.

When I came home on the fourth weekend, I saw the notebook with a frosted cover when I was tidying up my desk, and suddenly remembered Zhao Hongru's unfinished story.

She asked Zhao Shengyuan if he knew the name of the story.

Zhao Shengyuan said he didn't know. As time passed, Zhao Shengyuan's curiosity about that story had long since faded. However, he still proposed that it would be better to go to the third brother and ask him to find out.

The promise was promised, and I was both excited and nervous. To get to Zhao Hongru's school, you have to take a bus for nearly two hours, and you have to change trains once in the middle, and you have to spend six yuan round trip.

Promising to pour out six coins from the piggy bank, she told her parents the next day that she and Zhao Shengyuan were going to the city library to borrow books, and then the two took a bus to the gate of Zhao Hongru's school.

Zhao Shengyuan found a public phone booth nearby, and called the mobile phone number left by Zhao Hongru, and it didn't take long for Zhao Hongru to walk towards them from a green path.

"Third brother!" Zhao Shengyuan and Xu Yu shouted one after another.

Zhao Hongru took them to the cafeteria to eat steamed rice with lotus leaves and asked them why they came.

"Third brother, I promise to hear you tell a story."

Zhao Shengyuan was telling the truth, but for some reason, the words came out of his mouth, and the meaning suddenly became ambiguous, and the promised face couldn't help but be hot, and retorted: "Why don't you just listen to me?" ”。

"Of course, I listen too." Zhao Shengyuan smiled, and his eyes narrowed into a slit, like a cunning fox.