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墨書 Inktalez
Qinglan suddenly let go of Liu Xiuzhen and ran towards the bridge as if flying.
“Qinglan, Qinglan, what are you doing?” Liu Xiuzhen shouted loudly while chasing after her.
Qinglan dashed down the bridge, heading straight for the yard and rushing into the house.
Liu Xiuzhen patted her chest, saying, “Mom, you scared me to death.” Her heart was still pounding from the fright.
Qinglan rushed to the door and collided head-on with Qing Shusheng, who was coming out.
“Lanlan, what’s wrong? Why haven’t you gone to school yet?” Seeing Qinglan’s tear-streaked face, Qing Shusheng asked in confusion.
Qinglan ignored Qing Shusheng; at that moment, her beloved father no longer seemed so lovable.
She ran to her room, closed the door, and lay on the bed, sobbing quietly.
Qing Shusheng looked back suspiciously and then walked out of the yard.
He went to fetch the load of firewood. In his haste that morning, he had left it at the bridgehead in the west and hadn’t brought it back yet.
Liu Xiuzhen followed him into the yard.
“What happened to Lanlan? Why did she run back? Didn’t she go to school?” After passing Liu Xiuzhen, Qing Shusheng thought for a moment and turned back to ask her.
“You should ask her! She took that brat's beating for you,” Liu Xiuzhen said through gritted teeth, turning back to glare at Qing Shusheng.
Qing Shusheng had anticipated this kind of response, so he didn’t ask further. He scratched his head and then patted it before lowering his head and walking towards the west side of the village.
That afternoon, Qinglan didn’t go to school; she locked herself in her room and cried all afternoon.
An Shaojie stood still until Shaw Min passed by and asked him what was wrong. Only then did he follow Shaw Min to school.
That afternoon, An Shaojie sat in the classroom as if he were invisible, not hearing a single word of what the teacher was saying.
From then on, Qinglan never waited for An Shaojie to go to school again.
Until the year they graduated from sixth grade.
At that time, Shaw Min had already gone to the town's junior high school and was in the second year, while Jiawei was in the third year.
At the end of June 1994, the sun blazed fiercely, and the flowers and trees along the road drooped under the scorching heat. The crops in the fields looked wilted, and there wasn't a breath of wind.
This was the last day of elementary school graduation.
Qinglan walked under the blazing sun with her excellent graduation report card tucked in her backpack. The bright red embroidered skirt swayed just above her knees like dancing flames.
Although the weather was unbearably hot, it did not affect Qinglan's mood at all. The smile on her face was as vibrant and excited as her sunburned cheeks. Her steps were almost bouncy.
Qinglan was indeed in high spirits because she had been admitted to Town Middle School's Experimental Class with a total score of second in her class.
A few meters behind Qinglan, An Shaojie also had his excellent graduation report card in his backpack. A faint smile of restraint appeared on his face, but his bouncy way of walking revealed his uncontrollable excitement inside.
Yes, he was very excited; he had been admitted to Town Middle School's Experimental Class with a total score of first in his class.
Feeling good, he walked very attentively today, keeping his eyes fixed ahead. In fact, there was nothing ahead of him except for the glaring sun and Qinglan, who bounced like a flame.
So his gaze was actually fixed on Qinglan.
Today his feelings were particularly strange; the person he had always disliked seemed less annoying than before. Because she surprisingly wasn't stupid—much smarter than her foolish mother—and her total score was only a few points lower than his? But he had worked so hard! Yet she seemed to play happily every day and still matched him.
How could her simple mind solve such difficult math problems? It was simply unbelievable!
It was rare for An Shaojie to be in such a good mood. He watched Qinglan's back and found himself studying the magical head of hers.
In the blink of an eye, Qinglan, who was walking ahead of him, suddenly jumped into a small shop by the roadside. When she came out a moment later, she was holding two bottles of water.
Over the past two years, Qinglan had shot up like bamboo shoots after a rain, standing tall and graceful. She wore a red Tujia ethnic skirt, and her once two braided pigtails had transformed into a single thick black braid that hung down in front of her chest. Her skin was fairer than before, and her face had become rounder, yet her long, smiling eyes still held a calmness. Her sharp chin still revealed her mischievous and willful side.
Because Qinglan took some time buying water in the shop, when she came out, An Shaojie was already less than a meter behind her. Qinglan suddenly turned around and smiled at him.
An Shaojie, who had just been analyzing her uncontainable proud demeanor, suddenly felt a bit flustered. Her clear gaze lingered on him for a full minute. A minute is short, but for An Shaojie, it felt incredibly long as he became flustered and uncomfortable under her stare. His hands didn’t know where to go; sometimes he pulled on his backpack strap, sometimes they hung down, and other times he crossed them in front of him.
It had been a long time since he walked so closely behind Qinglan, let alone being stared at by her like this.
Ever since two years ago when he hit Qinglan and her mother hit him back, Qinglan stopped waiting for him to go to school. After having breakfast early on her own, she would head to school alone. Even when they occasionally walked together, Qinglan would deliberately quicken her pace to leave him behind or slow down so that she would fall far behind him.
On the way home from school, Qinglan also intentionally avoided walking home together like they used to; she would sit in the classroom for a while or invite other friends from the village to go home with her.
So this time marked the first return to their old routine of walking home one after the other in two years.
As they reached a shaded area under a tree, Qinglan paused slightly. She reached into her backpack and took out another bottle of water, putting it back and taking it out again hesitantly several times. After taking a deep breath and exhaling forcefully to gather her courage, she finally took out that bottle of water, bent down, and placed it in the grass by the roadside.
The grass drooped lazily, making the orange drink bottle stand out prominently.
An Shaojie watched coldly from behind as Qinglan did all this. When he reached the tree, he glanced at the conspicuous orange drink bottle, shrugged his shoulders with a slight cold smile on his lips, and suddenly lifted one foot.
With a loud "smack," reminiscent of the slap he had given Qinglan before, the drink bottle flew through the air in a spin.
After a long while, there was another "bang" as the bottle hit the ground at the riverbank.
At this moment, Qinglan had already turned around to watch him silently as he did all this.
Suddenly, Qinglan turned and ran desperately towards Liu Family Village.
She shouted in her heart, "An Shaojie, you bastard! Lin Sister, where are you? You told me to take good care of him. I'm sorry, but I don't want to listen to you anymore. I don't want to take care of him anymore. I hate him."
Watching the figure running ahead, An Shaojie kicked a stone by the roadside, and the cold smile at the corner of his mouth deepened.
"Truly not someone with a long temperament. If you really cared for me, no matter how much I scolded or hit you, if you had the ability, you would endure it and continue to treat me well! In the end, you couldn't hold back. Hmph! Still want to compare with Lin Mei Mei."
After Qinglan's figure disappeared, An Shaojie's face returned to a lonely and desolate expression.
"Lin Mei Mei, where are you now? What are you doing? If you were here, I wouldn't be lonely."
In these two years, An Shaojie missed Lin Xi very much.
Except for the first year after leaving Liu Family Village when Lin Xi came back two or three times, she hadn't returned at all in the following two years. During the Qingming Festival, only Teacher Lin returned. It was said that Jia Zhilan went to the county town and started working in a factory, making it difficult for her to take leave to come back. Lin Xi had a small exam and was busy studying, so she also didn't come back.
Although every time Teacher Lin returned, she would bring gifts from Lin Xi for Qinglan and An Shaojie, those gifts couldn't alleviate the pain of longing.
After Qinglan ran home, An Shaojie lowered his head, feeling listless as he slowly walked back home.
"What's wrong? Are you sick? Or did you do poorly on your exam?" Bai Cuifen asked as she looked at the sweaty An Shaojie.
"Nothing." Upon entering the room, An Shaojie set down his backpack.
This backpack was made by Lin Xi's mother for An Shaojie; it was a Tujia children's backpack made from various dark-colored cotton fabrics. After school started in September, he would be going to the town for junior high school, and this backpack would no longer be useful. An Shaojie felt a bit reluctant to throw it away.
Besides being reluctant to part with this backpack, An Shaojie was also thinking about other things.
Going to junior high school in town would require accommodation. He wondered if that person would come again to harass his mother while he was away.
In recent years, the rumors about Bai Cuifen and Qing Shusheng in the village have been like a tired dog, barking at strangers before lowering its head and dozing off, only to randomly bark again after a while.
As the rumors circulated more, they became public. Once they were out in the open, people found them uninteresting, only bringing them up for amusement when they were bored.
Moreover, that time when An Shaojie threatened to kill someone with a knife further made the previously vague rumors public. Those unfounded rumors that had never been confirmed suddenly became accepted as facts.
The relationship between Liu Xiuzhen and Qing Shusheng evolved from constant bickering to a cold war.
After Liu Dezhou broke his leg, he became less agile than before. Coupled with the complicated relationship between Qing Shusheng, Liu Xiuzhen, and Bai Cuifen that worried him, he felt embarrassed to show his face around the village, so he rarely went out anymore.
No matter how much Liu Dezhou trusted and supported Qing Shusheng, the fact that someone’s son chased him out of Bai Cuifen's house with a knife was something he couldn't explain or clarify.
Liu Dezhou, who seldom went out, had also seen his health decline over the past two years.
Grandma was still in good health. Seeing Qinglan return home drenched in sweat, she hurriedly brewed a large pot of fish mint tea and handed it to Qinglan.
Qinglan took the teapot and gulped down all the tea in one go.
As soon as Qinglan finished drinking, Grandma quickly went to get a towel from the washstand to help wipe the sweat from her forehead and face.
Grandma had bound her feet when she was young and wore handmade embroidered three-inch cloth shoes, so she always walked with a bit of a wobble.
Standing in front of the fan, Qinglan tilted her head slightly back, her face flushed. She let Grandma wipe her face haphazardly while the breeze from the fan blew her bangs around. Just after wiping away the sweat from her forehead, new beads of sweat began to form again.
Looking at Qinglan's sunburned cheeks, Grandma said with concern, "You’ve never walked properly since you were little; you either run, jump, or bounce around. On such a hot day, can't you just walk slowly?"
Grandma wore a blue cloth headscarf and an embroidered blue blouse and skirt. She hunched over slightly, squinting her eyes with a kind smile. Her face was lined with wrinkles that told stories of time passing, and only a few front teeth remained in her mouth. When she smiled with her mouth slightly open, it revealed her bare gums.
Qinglan took her report card out of her backpack and handed it to Grandma saying, "Grandma, look at my report card! I got second place and was admitted to the Experimental Class at the town's middle school." Qinglan waved her report card in front of Grandma proudly.
"Oh! Our Lanlan is so useful, I have to show this to Father. We can't understand it, we can't read," Grandma chuckled.
Qinglan pouted, dissatisfied, and said, "Just because we can't read doesn't mean we can't understand. Our ears aren't deaf." Her pink face was already cooled by the breeze from the fan.
Grandma smirked, "Hehe, of course we understand! Our Lanlan got second place. Today, Grandma will make your favorite Oil Tea Soup and Fragrant Sauce Cake. How does that sound?" Grandma leaned in with a flattering smile under Qinglan's eyelids.
Fragrant Sauce Cake, paired with Oil Tea Soup, was Qinglan's favorite.
The method for making Oil Tea Soup involves frying a suitable amount of tea leaves in cooking oil until they turn a waxy yellow, then adding water to the pot along with natural seasonings like ginger, scallions, garlic, and pepper. Once the water boils, it is ladled into a bowl and topped with pre-fried snacks such as puffed rice, popcorn, tofu cubes, walnuts, peanuts, and soybeans.
Oil Tea Soup is refreshing and thirst-quenching, delicious and flavorful. As the name suggests, Fragrant Sauce Cake is crispy and tasty.
"Mm!" Qinglan lightly closed her eyes and sniffed; she seemed to catch the aroma of Oil Tea Soup and Fragrant Sauce Cake, nodding in agreement.
With Qinglan's approval, Grandma hurriedly wobbled into the kitchen.
"Grandma, where's my Brother?" Qinglan followed Grandma into the kitchen.
"I don't know," Grandma elongated her tone with a hint of helplessness. "Before you came home from school just now, your Father and Mother scolded him for a while. He was in a bad mood and went to play at a classmate's house."
This year, Qinglan Brother Liu Jiawei didn't pass the entrance exam for high school; he didn't want to continue studying.
Qing Shusheng asked him, "If you're not studying now, what can you do?"
Qing Shusheng's expression was not good. This Liu Jiawei was restless and carefree. Back when he took the junior high entrance exam, he barely passed. During his three years in junior high, he didn't study seriously. Every week he would come home asking for money while mingling with mischievous classmates at school, dining out every day and spending money like water.
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