doll city

Oh, it's that guy.

Yan Ge wakes up like a dream.

He studied in Ciling for two years from the first to the second year of junior high school. In the eyes of the teachers, he was a good student with both good character and academic excellence, and even planned to make him the president of the student union.At that time, the tradition of the Ninth Middle School was that before becoming the president of the student union, one should serve as a discipline committee member for a period of time as a reserve.

On Yan Ge's first day as a disciplinary committee member, he stopped several latecomers at the school gate, that is, the school bullies.

At that time, these school bullies were lawless. When they saw that he was a new official, they refused to accept it for a while, so they wanted to block him after school.

That day, at the entrance of Huazhi Alley on Qiangwei Road, five beat one, and he killed them all by himself.

Afterwards, the school bullies said angrily that they wanted to seek revenge from their eldest brother or some other prince.

The next day, Yan Ge blocked a new face at the school gate.

At that time, the man was very arrogant, with dyed yellow hair and shaved eyebrows, as if he had just been in a fight recently, there were band-aids on the corners of his slightly bruised eyes, a lollipop in his mouth, that's all Riding a bicycle and preparing to enter the school gate.

Yan Ge shoveled him down with a shovel, saying that the school prohibits bad boys from visiting outside the school during teaching hours.

The man lay on the ground and said: You don't know me?

Yan Ge: Should I know you?

The man limped to his feet and said, "Okay, I remember you."

At that time, Yan Ge picked up his student ID card. The name of the ID card was very cool, which impressed him deeply...

After recalling a lot, Yan Ge finally found the corresponding face, still unable to believe it.

"But I remember that person should be called Simon Wang Ye—"

Li Ya: "My parents divorced, and then my mother thought that name was too strange, so she changed it for me."

Yan Ge: "One thing to say, it's quite strange after the change."

Li Ya: "My mother is an ethnic minority, and the crows took this name because of their beliefs. Compared with these details, I still want to ask... I wrote you 98 love letters, but you really didn't read any of them. Are you there?"

Yan Ge: "..."

Yan Ge: "You have to know that in a school, when a boy writes a letter to a boy, first of all, it will be regarded as a letter of challenge by default. Secondly, in my personal impression, there is indeed a letter with strange content placed on my seat every day. First, I handed it over to the teacher in charge, but the teacher in charge couldn't understand what it meant, how do you want me to reply."

He can even recite two paragraphs.

For example:

I am sick,

Every night in the dream, there will be a ghostly figure in a white skirt.

The monks in the temple advised me to turn right and register at the psychiatric department of the Central Hospital.

But I went to buy Valium instead.

Another example:

The face of the dean of teaching,

I can't stop your illegal construction in my heart.

... It can be seen that it is a love letter.

"So, you still had the idea of ​​'replying' at that time, didn't you?" Before he could answer, Li Ya laughed, "I'm very happy."

Yan Ge looked at the skirt, then at Li Ya, momentarily at a loss for words, and after a while, slowly clenched his fists.

"Really you?"

Li Ya: "It's me."

Yan Ge: "... Then why didn't you sign your name when you wrote those things?"

"I wrote it, but at the time I thought the signature should be cool, so I specially designed a cursive signature." Li Ya leaned over, "Actually, after I grew up, I read it a little bit, and the only thing I still care about is the 98 love letters. Is there no one in it that you feel moved by?"

Yan Ge lowered his head, and said: "Actually, I once found out that the teacher was about to come and rank the Chinese language scores in the monthly exam. I started to look for the corresponding handwriting from the countdown of the whole school, and wanted to know who it was..."

Li Ya: "Oh? Then you might not be able to find it. I didn't even have time to play truant at that time, so how could I go for the monthly exam."

Yan Ge: "I found the wrong person. I found a girl on the head. I went to her class and asked her to come out. She was very angry and came out angrily..."

Li Ya: "Hmm, then what?"

Yan Ge: "When she saw me, she said yes, she wrote it. If I agree, she will break up with her boyfriend immediately."

Li Ya: "?"

Yan Ge: "Her boyfriend brought someone to block me after school, and I got into a fight. After that, I was invited as a parent for the first time in my life. Two days later, my dad handled the transfer procedures for me."

Li Ya: "..."

14-year-old Yan Ge has tasted the pain of love before he started having love.When he looked at the culprit many years later, there was already a hint of old anger in his eyes: "The cause of everything is because you didn't have a monthly exam, and your name was not on the score sheet at all."

Li Ya stroked the cause and effect: "So, part of the reason for your transfer is caused by me?"

Yan Ge clenched and loosened his fists, and said with a condensed expression: "End this boring topic, there is no story without intersection. Besides, I have thrown away those love letters when I was in school—"

"Really?" Li Ya knocked on the photo frame with the foreign dress on it, and said, "Mind if I break it open and have a look?"

"What are you going to do?"

When Yan Ge was speaking, Li Ya had already broken the lower part of the picture frame with his hands, and as soon as the wooden strips were detached, the colorful letters fell to the ground.

Yan Ge: "..."

"Sorry, I just saw my signature on the side of the skirt. I was a little curious. I didn't expect you to keep it." As soon as Li Ya picked up one, Yan Ge grabbed the other side tightly to prevent him from opening it. .

Li Ya took advantage of the situation and moved a little closer, holding on to the sunglasses as if trying to capture all the subtle expressions on his face.

"It's not like you said, so I have no impression, so I still care?"

boring.

Yan Ge can completely substitute the characters in his mind, and cover up the state of red ears and dodging eyes at this moment by acting, but it seems that he has lost to him in this way.

"You're too nervous, don't be so harsh on yourself..."

In the narrow Bogu shelf, if there is any big movement, it will knock off the fragments on the ground.Yan Ge didn't move, but the other party approached easily, and deliberately suppressed his voice to the tone that he used to calm his broken spirit that night.

"Or, are you just saying that you don't care?"

Doesn't matter what you say?

Yeah, can't you?

Yan Ge thought in his heart a little angrily.

It's not just that he hasn't been in a relationship. As an adult who claims to be rational and self-controlled, he shouldn't think about romantic things in this environment and at this time, because it's not appropriate.

But...but!How could there be such a person who would trip him up on the edge of the cliff with that annoying and flirtatious tone and invite him to watch the sunset in the ruins together.

It doesn't make any sense at all, it doesn't make any...

"The heartbeat is not steady enough, I can hear it." Li Ya is like an old fox who has succeeded, "You have never been in love, and neither have I. How can there be such a coincidence in the world, why don't we try?"

The shelf behind him swayed, and the small porcelain made a slight collision sound. Yan Ge was silent for a while, took a deep breath and raised his eyes, slapped the yellowed old love letter on his chest, and inserted it into his shirt. collar, raised his chin slightly.

"Do you like me? Which kind?"

"Is it adult-to-adult, or a cat-and-mouse play mentality? Or just boring egos of men?"

"If I died tomorrow, would you drink the poison and go into my grave?"

His eyes are serious, like a windless lake, a slight vibration is enough to form ripples.

Li Ya finally discovered the novelty in Yan Ge - he is by no means a cold love nihilist, the view of emotion he understands is usually related to Shakespeare, full of surrealism about eternity and death Words, he can fall in love like a moth to a flame, but everyone he sees around him will run away if he feels a little burning, which is often unrealistic.

He unfolded a corner of the restricted area of ​​his mind, and watched his reaction full of defense and anticipation.

"You want to scare me off, you should use a more serious rhetoric."

"Oath and death are just the most basic things for living puppets, and it is also for me."

"You asked me if I would die for you like a hero in a play—"

Li Ya was almost close to his ear, and there was a hint of sweetness and tenderness in his words——

"If I say Ido, can I kiss you now?"

He is a crazy composer, and he keeps telling him from various angles: take the initiative, take the initiative, as long as you hit a note, no matter how ridiculous the beginning, he can play a complete song. music.

Yan Ge lowered his eyes, and the slender eyelashes were especially distinct under the dim light.He frowned slightly, finally showing a hint of annoyance that a college student of his age should have.

"You bother me and... shame."

... so cute.

It's like a treasure that has nowhere to escape after unwrapping a gift to the end.

Of course Li Ya would not be polite, while he was still a little dazed, he cupped his face, lowered his head and kissed him.

"Well……"

Yan Ge's eyes widened slightly, and the back of his head rested on the wooden frame. The small porcelain parts swayed around the edge of the wooden frame, fell to the ground with a slap, and rolled into an unknown corner.

The voices of Xiao Yi and Dai Chengze came from a distance, Yan Ge tried to end it several times in a panic, but was caught and entangled for a while.

Until an old notebook with a cowhide cover fell out of the picture frame behind them.

"Yange, what fell?"

Xiao Yi seemed to have heard the movement here, approached, and when she turned around a bogu shelf, she was surprised to see envelopes all over the floor, and then looked at Yan Ge who was holding the bogu shelf with one hand and covering her mouth with the other.

"what's wrong?"

"It's nothing."

Li Ya picked up the old cowhide diary in a good mood, flipped through it, took out a piece of old rice paper from the folder inside, unfolded it for a look, and said——

"It seems that hard work is still rewarding. There is a design drawing in here."

Xiao Yi looked at it, and saw that it was a disassembled parts design drawing of a ceramic doll, with many comments sketched on it, and a line of big characters written in block letters on the right side.

""The Play of the Twelve Actors"... what is this?"

……

It took Dai Chengze two full days of research to extract valuable information from the design drawing.

Around the period of the Republic of China, Ciling was an important place for commerce in the sea delta, and a foreign wind permeated every aspect of people's lives. Wearing foreign silk, eating foreign food, and drinking foreign wine had a great impact on Ciling's local industries.

At that time, every major city launched a movement to expel foreign goods, but in Ciling, the then chairman of the chamber of commerce, Mrs. Gu, the Porcelain King, did the opposite. There are twelve exquisite ceramic puppets with Western faces.Another million dollars was spent, and French mechanics and craftsmen were invited to build the corresponding puppet mechanism, so that the twelve ceramic puppets could perform a whole Western opera with the spring driven by water.

Therefore, these twelve ceramic puppets are also called "Twelve Actors".

After the Twelve Actors Theater was completed, Mrs. Gu invited all the foreign businessmen at that time to a banquet. As soon as the Twelve Actors Theater came on stage during the banquet, all foreigners were stunned. Everyone called it a miracle of God.The Gu family used this to prove Ciling's strength in the ceramics industry, and after that, overseas orders poured in like a snowflake.Not only that, under the chain reaction, Ciling's large and small industries were also saved, and the trade surplus was reversed.

The subsequent history, whether it is the county annals or anything else, was lost because of a war in Ciling. The main residence of the Gu family, the once prominent porcelain king, was razed to the ground by bombers, and the "Twelve Actors' Opera" was also lost in history.

"...a ceramic doll?"

Gu Lili had just finished washing her hair, and when Yan Ge was blowing her hair with a hair dryer, he talked about this matter, and asked her a few words if Grandma Gu had mentioned about the Ci Wang family.

Gu Lili thought about it seriously: "No, grandma doesn't like to talk about things about grandpa's house, and the doll... Brother Ge, have you ever seen grandma burn a ceramic doll?"

Yan Ge carefully recalled that Grandma Gu likes to burn some small objects, cats, cats, dogs, birds and small fish are her favorites, but it seems that she has never burned anything in the shape of a human being.

"Could it be that besides Alice and Luca, there are ten other dolls of the same kind?" Xiao Yi's scalp tingles just thinking about it, those two kings of dolls are already terrifying enough, even if there is one more, human beings The camp is completely over.

"It's unlikely." Yan Ge braided Gu Lili's horns and said, "I don't know about Luka's situation, but Alice came to Ciling on tour, and the other dolls of the same batch will either be disassembled If they were sold overseas, or they would not survive the war and be destroyed, the probability of gathering in Ciling at the same time is not high.

Gu Lili handed Yan Ge a small card, and said, "Hey Brother Ge, do you still remember the story grandma told us?"

Yan Ge bit his rubber band and was braiding Gu Lili, when he was reminded, he suddenly remembered what happened when he was a child.

Although Grandma Gu doesn't like to talk about the old stories of her great-grandfather's family, she always likes to tell them some stories.

"Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Swan Lake"...

These stories have one thing in common, they can all be put on the stage of drama.

"Perhaps my grandma watched the Twelve Actors' Opera when she was young, so she was familiar with the repertoire performed by them enough to tell stories to children."

Yan Ge's thoughts suddenly became clear.

"With such a great reputation, there is no reason why Ciling's local county annals should not record such a major event."

Dai Chengze had a flash of inspiration, and said: "We can go to the District Government Local Historical Archives in the Municipal Library to check. There are some original historical materials of the Republic of China. I think... we can try."