tall rose

Li Qing.

This name is very familiar, where have I heard it.

Yes, that was before the monthly exam, when the math teacher collected the notebook.

Sister Yi, who is so strict that she rarely praises others, said on the podium at that time: "I admire Li Qing's learning attitude. To be honest, her math foundation is not as good as many of you here. Her grades in the first year of high school are only 90 points. Now, two years later, her math score has stabilized at 110 points, and she may hit 120 points in the college entrance examination."

"I'll ask the class representative to bring this girl's notebook later. You all have a look and see what kind of learning attitude and learning spirit she has."

Then during the class break, Yang Sheng received the notebook handed over by Haoyue, that light blue thick notebook with a very girlish heart.

He only turned over the first page, and that page had the girl's name on it.

But since he is a student in Class [-], there must have been one time in the corridor, playground, campus path or other places where he passed by in the past two years or so.

It would be better if you didn't know the name, no, it might not be okay.

So close, so close to a person, suddenly the holiday ended and disappeared.

In the future, even the chance to pass by is gone.

Haoyue finally closed the thick dictionary, her voice was as soft as a sigh: "There are still 247 days before the college entrance examination."

Oh, yes, sister Yi also said that student Li has great potential and will achieve excellent results in the college entrance examination.

This future is clearly within reach in 247 days.

But now it's gone, nothing.

"Haoyue, I'm a little sad." Yang Sheng murmured.

"So if I knew it earlier, I wouldn't tell you." Haoyue turned her face away, unable to see her expression and expression clearly.

death.

This word is no stranger to Yang Sheng.

"I didn't expect you to recognize him."

Boss Lu brought Yang Sheng back to the house from the rain, wiped his hair carefully with a dry towel, and waited until his violently shaking body calmed down, then got up and went to get him a change of clothes.

Yang Sheng grabbed the soaked towel in a daze, and subconsciously said, "I was nine years old when he left. It's only been a few years. How could I not recognize him?"

There was a cold patter of rain outside the house, even though Boss Lu closed the doors and windows tightly, the sound of rain still relentlessly came in, dampening Yang Sheng's ear canals.

"I was negligent, sorry." Boss Lu found a thick dusty coat from the cabinet, turned around and walked over to hand it to Yang Sheng, "You change your clothes first, I'll go out and see him."

Yang Sheng clutched the towel tightly, "Is he going to die?"

Boss Lu put down his coat, avoiding his scorching gaze, "I forgot, I can turn on a stove for you to bake."

The little sun on the stove lit up beside Yang Sheng. Boss Lu didn't answer his question, he turned the doorknob and went to another room.

The sound insulation effect is not very good, Yang Sheng can hear the suppressed cough.

Thin and haggard, they were scattered on the narrow camp bed by the wall like dry sticks.

This is what the man looks like now.

It's hard to imagine that a few years ago, he could be shackled by this pile of dry wood sticks and smashed to the corner of the room.

Sticks, boiling water, drying racks.

Don't say that he was only eight or nine years old at the time and couldn't remember clearly, but he didn't want to remember clearly, but the scar remained, when he entered the door and collided with Youyou's eyes by the wall.

Just started, a dull pain.

It turned out that the man was still alive, and he hadn't been crushed.

Yang Sheng took off the wet clothes sticking to his skin, and put on Boss Lu's too long woolen coat; his shoes were also soaked in water, so he took them off with a kick, and then carefully moved to the door with bare feet.

The coughing stopped, and the two men inside the door suppressed their voices.

"I regret doing your business." Boss Lu said coldly.

"Stop pretending to be a gentleman there, Lao Xiao, how clean do you think your hands are?" The man laughed hoarsely, like a whimpering bellows.

"But I won't bully children." Boss Lu said, "The look in your son's eyes just now really wanted to strangle you. I have been in contact with him for more than a week, and I have never seen him so angry and lost his temper."

"It must be you, what did you do?"

"Cough, cough, cough." The man started to cough again, "It's just that, drink more alcohol when you're at home, and slap him twice casually."

The sound of "slap" came, and Yang Sheng pressed the doorknob subconsciously. Boss Lu said in a low voice, "Is it such a slap?"

"Okay, okay, you stupid grandson dare to touch me, you can beat me here if you have the ability, and see if you can get the money when the time comes!" The man struggled to roar, but immediately fell silent, babbling and saying I can't speak.

Boss Lu said: "Then I'll drag your body to the police station and tell those police comrades that I was overly self-defense and accidentally killed you. Anyway, you are a fugitive death row prisoner, who cares whether you live or die?"

Yang Sheng unscrewed the door, Boss Lu straightened his sleeves and looked at him.

"Yo, it fits pretty well." Boss Lu smiled, then frowned, "Why are you barefoot?"

Yang Sheng didn't answer him, and walked to the edge of the bed, looking down at the man who was panting like an old dog.

"Tell me, what did you do after you divorced my mother?" Yang Sheng asked the man.

Boss Lu said quietly from the side: "Gambling, robbery, drug trafficking, reward orders from the Public Security Bureau."

The man's hand clutching the quilt had bruised veins, Yang Sheng turned his face and asked Boss Lu, "Then why did you bring me to see him?"

"To help him fulfill his last wish before he died." Boss Lu thought for a while, but he also sighed and did not hide it. "Then he promised to let me send him to the County Public Security Bureau to receive his share of the reward."

"Originally he said that you wouldn't remember him, so it's enough for me to take you to see him, who knows..."

Who knew that the first time I looked at him, I was like a nightmare on my upper body, and I rushed forward desperately, exerting all my strength.

Want to put him to death.

Then Boss Lu called out: "Yang Sheng!"

Yang Sheng woke up from a nightmare and ran away through the door.

Boss Lu fished him back from the rain again, and now he is in this situation.

"Your name is Yang Sheng now?" The man interrupted and asked suddenly.

Yang Sheng didn't look at him, "You don't even know my name now, how did you let Boss Lu find me?"

"Oh, let me explain this. Your dad, oh no, he gave you a recent photo. I just set up a stall at the gate of your school and guarded you for two days, so I have guarded you."

"It turns out that the cup of milk tea wasn't a gift from an event." Yang Sheng grinned.

"Sorry, I also know how to trick children a little bit." Boss Lu nodded with a guilty expression.

It made it difficult for Yang Sheng to say "If I knew it, I wouldn't have picked up that cup of milk tea".

And his lukewarm attitude naturally made the person on the bed feel embarrassed.

It took a while before Yang Sheng heard the man say in a secretive way: "It's good to have your mother's surname."

Still speechless, Boss Lu looked at the sky outside the window and said, "It's getting late, I'll take you back."

The man turned over, and when Yang Sheng glanced over, he was facing the wall.

"Bon voyage," said the man.

Yang Sheng thought that this sentence was his hallucination.

But in fact, his ears are so sharp that he can eavesdrop on everything through the door.

Boss Lu's car is a simple electric donkey with an umbrella.

It wasn't raining heavily, but the boss still carefully put a blue raincoat on Yang Sheng.

"Come on, which direction is your home?" Boss Lu asked.

Yang Sheng announced the name of the community wearily, then raised his legs and stepped onto the small electric donkey.

"After going back, take a shower, wash your hair, and change into thick clothes. After all, it's winter, and it's not good to be sick." The boss started the small electric donkey, and Xu Xu urged.

"I won't get sick." Yang Sheng said, very shameless.

The wheels rolled out the traces of the waterway, and the sound of the wind was left behind with a rustling.

"Boss, when will you... send him away?" Yang Sheng asked the most crucial question hesitantly, with the smell of earth filling his nostrils.

"Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow." Boss Lu replied, "With his body, it won't last long."

"How much money can I get?" Yang Sheng suddenly smiled.

"Hundreds of thousands. If it's too little, I won't take this job." Boss Lu said frankly, "But I regret it a little now."

"What are you regretting, it's hundreds of thousands!" Yang Sheng said, with some jokes in his tone.

"It feels like I'm taking advantage of you, a kid, to earn black-hearted money." Boss Lu said, "tsk" in displeasure.

"I'm almost 13 years old, not a child." Yang Sheng said.

So from that day on, the tick-tock countdown sounded in Yang Sheng's ears.

The two days when it rained were better, the sound of rain would cover everything.

But after the winter rain stopped, he came out of school and passed Boss Lu's milk tea stand.

Boss Lu stopped him and handed him a cup of full sugar milk tea with strawberries.

After taking a sip, Yang Sheng frowned and said, "It's too sweet, it's too sweet."

Boss Lu took out a crumpled cigarette leisurely, lit it and took a sip leisurely, "Your father... oh, no..."

"Well, my dad." Yang Sheng bit the plastic straw, "What's wrong with him?"

"He didn't make it to the time of execution, and died of illness on the way to the city prison."

The ticking stops and the countdown ends.

Boss Lu handed him a white cube-shaped smartphone with a shattered screen, and it took him a while to open it.

The screen lit up "swipely", without a password, just a photo with a blurred background.

The so-called recent photo of him.

Yang Sheng looked carefully, and finally pieced together a rough human figure from the blurred background color blocks.

Oh, it turned out that there was a parent-teacher meeting that day, and my mother was recuperating at home because she had just given birth. In order to improve the parent-child relationship with him, my uncle took the initiative to invite Ying to come to his parent-teacher meeting.

That color block is the husband in the legal sense of the mother, and the father in the legal sense of Yang Sheng.

I don't know how the man felt when he captured this photo.

"This is the only relic he left behind, so I'll leave it to you." Boss Lu said with relief, "Of course, if you want the bounty, I can give you half of it."

Yang Sheng didn't care about the reward, he just murmured, "Why didn't he come to see me the day he secretly photographed me?"

"Oh, he dare not, he is the one who carried the case, not to mention there is uncle beside him."

Asking and answering himself, like a crazy neuropathy.

"Yang Sheng." Boss Lu called him.

A shot was fired next to his ear, Yang Sheng slipped his hand, and dropped the already unbearable smartphone to pieces.

"I'm here." Yang Sheng came back to his senses, looked at the boss's worried face, and said with a light smile, "I'm here."

Yang Sheng had a nightmare for a long time.

About bloody, about gunshots.

Since the man was not executed by shooting, why did gunshots echo and blood-like flowers bloom in his grotesque dream?

It may be true that dreams never make sense.

are you asleep?Still not asleep?

He didn't know for sure at the time.

Waking up and falling asleep in a daze every day, going to and from school step by step.

Uncle stays away all day, mother watches over my sister all day long, Xia Zang...he doesn't know what Xia Zang is doing, he and Xia Zang are not in the same school.

It seems that except Boss Lu, no one can share the secret of "death" with him, and Boss Lu can only say, take good care of yourself and don't think too much.

Yang Sheng felt that he was taking good care of himself. He got up on time, ate on time, and went to bed on time. He used hot water at a suitable temperature for bathing.

Then I was scalded to the core.

He went to his mother in a trance, not for comfort, but because of the closeness of blood, he felt that staying with his mother would be more comfortable.

It is absolutely impossible for Yang Sheng to talk about her ex-husband with his mother.

But the mother was busy taking care of the newborn younger sister, so it was especially inappropriate for Yang Sheng to dangle in front of her eyes.

"Oh, go and learn your lessons, you are such an adult, don't you know how to be sensible?"

His mother was chattering in his ear, Yang Sheng only looked down at his younger sister who was sleeping soundly in the cradle.

Such a small ball, let's have a good dream, with short legs kicking and kicking.

Soft, clean and vibrant, with a sweet milky aroma.

The newborn life is extraordinarily lovable.

Unlike the haggard, thin, rotten wood that smells of phlegm and alcohol and tobacco when coughing.

It turns out that the distance between death and new life is so close, yet so far away.

Yang Sheng knew he was sensible, he apologized to his mother, turned around to learn from him, and stopped disturbing too much.

In this world, death is not very important.

Or a premise should be added, compared with the living, death is not valued very much.

So after class, Yang Sheng thought that there was no need for him to feel particularly sad for the girl who only had a neat name in his memory.

He didn't even know her.

But as soon as he saw the answer sheet on Brother Liu's desk that was not taken away by the owner, the familiar name occupied his entire eyeballs, and the sore pain made him dare not blink, and only swept away the English words he handed to Brother Liu. For the test paper, I bowed apologetically to the teacher: "I'm sorry, Teacher Qiao, I'll go back and analyze this paper by myself, I promise I can analyze it well."

Obviously the teacher also kindly asked him to come to the office after class.

"If you want to improve your English, you will not only be in the top [-] of your grade."

He knows, he knows.

But if he doesn't run away now, he will have to cry in front of Brother Liu, like an impolite three-year-old.

So he ran away.

In the distance, at the other end of the corridor, Jiang Yanxu was waving to him and shouting, "Sheng'er, are you done yet?"

Yang Sheng didn't go there, but turned around and got into the nearest staircase, and stumbled down the stairs.

Run, where are you going?

Where can I provide him with a place where he can cry wantonly?

Don't do it, Yang Sheng, because of such a trivial matter, what about it?

It was the same self-deprecating rhetorical question that he had used to guide himself when he turned away from his mother's room a few years ago.

Stumbling, he half-kneeled at the corner of the corridor, and knocked his knee lightly.

Huh, fortunately, I didn't feel any pain from the fall, but I woke up from the fall.

Got up, patted the ashes, the paper was scratched and wrinkled, but it was enough to read the words clearly.

But when he raised his eyes, he exchanged glances with the person who came up from downstairs.

"I just heard the noise, so I came up to have a look." Xia Zang held on to the handrail of the stairs, stood under two steps and smiled at Yang Sheng, "I didn't expect such a coincidence."

Yang Sheng froze in place, his mouth slightly opened, but his throat was blocked by cotton.

Can't make a sound.

Xia Zang stepped up and faced him, "There are very few people passing by this corridor, so I usually come here to memorize English words when I have time."

"Why are your eyes so red? Didn't pass the exam or...well, Yang Sheng, talk to me."

Yang Sheng felt that his body was uncontrollable and walked towards Xia Zang. When he hugged Xia Zang's warm body, a line of warm liquid ran across his face, and the bitterness in his throat instantly melted away, making him call out in a low voice. :"elder brother."

The author has something to say:

It can be considered that this chapter has been drawn out...