bookrebus Chapter 757 Hot Tea
Chapter 757 Hot Tea
Chen Xubai suddenly grabbed her wrist, and his warm breath brushed her ears: "Qiqi, I like you, since you gave me half of your eraser when you were seven years old." The autumn rain soaked the school uniform, and Wang Qiqi remembered the warmth of Lu Chenzhou's palm. The kiss came without warning, and Chen Xubai's lips tasted sweet like orange candy, but she pushed him away. The boy stumbled and hit the electric pole, and the sound of the umbrella ribs "clicking" and breaking was like some kind of heartbreaking chord. On a weekend with red maple leaves, Wang Qiqi walked into the archive room under the guidance of Lu Chenzhou. In her mother's graduation photo, a girl with pigtails stood next to a boy in a white shirt, and their shadows were entangled under the maple tree. Lu Chenzhou pointed to the corner of the photo: "Look, your grandfather was the principal back then." The yellowed disciplinary documents fell, and Wang Qiqi's fingers trembled when she picked them up. The record of 1998 reads: "Lu Chenzhou and Wang Wanqing from Class 2 (1997) of Senior High School fell in love prematurely and were ordered to drop out of school." The maple leaves outside the window swirled and fell on the documents, like coagulated blood. When Chen Xubai found her on the basketball court, Wang Qiqi was staring at her phone in a daze. The text message from Lu Chenzhou flickered on the screen: "I'll take you to see someone tomorrow." The boy's sweat dripped on the back of her hand, with a burning salty taste: "Come with me to the back mountain, now." The maple forest in the twilight was like a burning sea. Chen Xubai pulled open the collar of his school uniform, revealing the old scar on his collarbone: "When you were ten years old, you were chased by wild dogs, and I stood in front of you." His eyes were amazingly bright, "What Lu Chenzhou can give you, I can give you." Wang Qiqi stepped on a dead branch when she stepped back, and Chen Xubai reached out and put his arm around her waist. The boy's heartbeat came through his shirt, mixed with the scent of maple. A car horn sounded in the distance, and Lu Chenzhou's black car stopped at the side of the mountain road. Chen Xubai suddenly kissed her, and she tasted rust on the tip of her tongue. Someone had bitten her lip. The smell of disinfectant in the hospital stung her nose. Lu Chenzhou supported the old man in the wheelchair. The gray-haired principal's cloudy eyes suddenly lit up: "Wanqing..." Wang Qiqi watched the old man's trembling hands touch her face, and the photo frame slipped from Lu Chenzhou's hands. In the family photo in , the man in a suit was holding a baby in his arms - his eyebrows and eyes were seven points similar to Chen Xubai. "I broke up the couple and separated your parents." The old man coughed violently, knocking his knuckles on the wheelchair armrest, "Xubai is your half-brother." Wang Qiqi heard Lu Chenzhou's rapid breathing. Chen Xubai appeared at the door of the ward without knowing when, and the maple leaf specimen in his hand broke into red snow. There was drizzle on the rooftop late at night, and Wang Qiqi hugged her arms tightly. Lu Chenzhou took off his suit and draped it over her shoulders, his body temperature still warm. "Your mother asked me to take care of you before she died." His fingers brushed the corner of her eyes, "But Xubai's matter..." Footsteps came from behind, Chen Xubai was soaked, holding an iron box in his arms. When he opened it, the yellowed letter fell, it was a love letter his mother wrote to his father twenty years ago. "My father asked me to give it to you before he died." The boy's voice was hoarse, "He said sorry to Aunt Wanqing." Wang Qiqi squatted down to pick up the letter, and the rain mixed with tears hit the paper. Chen Xubai's hand covered the back of her hand, Lu Chenzhou took a half step back, and the suit slipped off her shoulders. In the distance, the roar of a train came, carrying the secrets of seventeen years to the dawn. The maple forest was looming in the morning mist, and Wang Qiqi stood on the platform holding two tickets. There was a maple leaf sticker on Chen Xubai's suitcase, and Lu Chenzhou handed him a thermos cup filled with hot tea. The train whistle tore through the sky, the boy and the man reached out at the same time, but she turned and walked in another direction. The platform glass reflected three figures, which gradually blurred into cracks under the moonlight. Wang Qiqi reached for the maple leaf specimen in her pocket, and found her mother's last words between the leaf veins: "Love should not be a cage for trapped animals." The morning mist spread over the rails, and a new journey quietly began in the mist.
Moonlight Crack (Continued)
The green train swayed over the rails, and Wang Qiqi pressed her forehead against the cold window. The maple forest outside the window gradually shrank into a red dot, like a drop of blood on rice paper. She took out her mother's letter, the wrinkles were still stained with last night's rain, and the words "Love should not be a cage for trapped beasts" were repeatedly rubbed, and the ink was blurred. When Chen Xubai chased to the platform, the train was spewing white mist. He clutched the maple leaf specimen that had not been sent out, watching Wang Qiqi's back blur into a faint outline behind the glass window. Lu Chenzhou stood behind him, the hem of his windbreaker lifted by the wind, and the thermos in his hand was still steaming. "She went to the south city to find her grandmother." The man's voice was mixed with the whistle, "That's Aunt Wanqing's hometown." The rain in the south city is more lingering than in the north. Wang Qiqi rented a loft in the old city, and when she opened the window, she could see pedestrians holding oil-paper umbrellas on the bluestone road. Grandma was wearing round-framed reading glasses and pasting lanterns, bamboo strips flying between her fingers: "Your mother also loved to hide here when she was a child. She said the attic was like a conch that could tell stories." At the bottom of the camphorwood box in the attic was her mother's diary. Dry maple leaves were sandwiched between the yellowed pages. Wang Qiqi turned to the page of 1998, and the handwriting was wrinkled by tears: "The day Ah Chen dropped out of school, I waited under the maple tree all night. My father said he went abroad, but I didn't believe it..." At this time, the phone vibrated. It was a photo sent by an unfamiliar number. In the photo, Lu Chenzhou stood in the depths of the maple forest, with a few red leaves falling on the shoulders of his suit. He looked down at the maple leaf specimen in his palm - it was the one that Chen Xubai had broken. The text message was only a short line: "Xubai went to the construction site to move bricks, and said he wanted to save money to go to the south city." In the evening when the autumn rain turned cool, Wang Qiqi ran into Lu Chenzhou at the door of the lantern shop. The man had lost weight, his beard was green, and he was holding a thermos bucket in his hand: "Grandma said you have a bad stomach." He opened the lid and found a red date and white fungus soup, with a sweet fragrance mixed with the sweet osmanthus fragrance. They sat on the doorstep and watched the lanterns in the twilight light up one after another, like stars falling into the world. "I did go abroad that year." Lu Chenzhou stirred the soup, "but I wrote to Wanqing every month, but all the letters were returned. Later I found out that it was your grandfather..." His voice paused, and a train whistle sounded in the distance, startling the sparrows under the eaves. On the day Chen Xubai appeared, it was freezing rain in the south city. He stood at the door of the attic covered in mud and water, with half a maple leaf bookmark sticking out of his work clothes pocket. "I looked for lantern shops." The boy's eyelashes were frozen with ice, and he took out an oil paper bag from his arms, "Your favorite sweet-scented osmanthus cake, fell on the road and broke a little." In the attic, grandma silently added a set of bowls and chopsticks. Chen Xubai wolfed down the hot soup, and Lu Chenzhou's hand holding the tissue hung in the air. Wang Qiqi looked at the two similar faces in the hot air, and suddenly remembered the words in her mother's diary: "Love should not be a shackle, but a monsoon that helps migratory birds find their way home." Late at night, Wang Qiqi walked to the river alone.