To my dear Mr. Meng

I rushed into a toilet farther away from the rest area. There was no one in it, and it was so quiet that I could hear the occasional flushing sound from the female room next door.I locked myself in the cubicle, the lock was a little rusty, my hands were shaking, and I pushed it "click click" several times before pushing the latch in.

My heart hit my chest and my ribs hurt, my ears were filled with the sound of surging blood, and there was liquid coming out of my ears. I hurriedly stretched out my hand to touch it, only to realize that it was my illusion.

I have always believed that when people are greatly frightened, their minds are completely blank.I stood in the cubicle for at least 5 minutes, my mind was empty, like pressing the flush toilet tank, until a sound of rapid footsteps came in, and I pushed open the paper door next door with a "bang", and "bang" again I swung it on the ground, and I was suddenly awakened by the sound of the rattling latch.

I'm afraid I'm crazy.

Accompanied by the outrageous singing of the middle-aged man next door, I had a sudden shock.

It was as if hundreds of snakes were drilling through my head, and before I could figure out this weird anomaly, the fatal voice had already moved from far to near.

"Badger?"

"Badger, are you in there?"

"I'm out." The voice trembled a little, like a cat's throat was pinched.

Mr. Meng stood by the stained mirror and looked at my face: "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

I shook my head and walked over to wash my hands.As soon as I turned on the faucet, his hand was on my forehead.

"Why is your face so red? Have a fever?"

As if he didn't feel the temperature, he withdrew his hand and brought his head closer.I reacted, and immediately dodged, and the water in my hand accidentally splashed on his front.

"no!"

He was stunned for a moment, he was probably taken aback by me, but he didn't force it anymore, he just said: "Wash your hands quickly, don't waste water."

An inexplicable guilty conscience filled my heart, and I didn't dare to meet his gaze, so I had to look in the mirror.The mirror was as dirty as an oily puddle, with a piece cracked at one corner, and cobweb-like cracks spreading toward the center.The bleak light in the toilet made Mr. Meng's face a little blue, his eyebrows and eyeballs were abnormally black, not like a living person, but more like a monster who ate people in the middle of the night in the stories told by the old man when he was a child.

I was surprised to find that the profile of Mr. Meng's profile in the mirror seemed to have changed overnight: the childish round lines had disappeared, and his brows were slightly wrinkled, as if he had snatched some air from Uncle Meng's face, but it was not there yet. Great obedience, floating on the surface.

And my flushed face was even more frightening, as if I could see heat steaming from my face, and my eyes were shining like ghosts.

Mr. Meng's eyes caught me in the mirror: "I teased you just now, are you angry? May I apologize to you?"

The cold water made me retrieve my brain, and I concealed it: "I'm not angry."

I could hear my heart beating louder than my footsteps along the way.Looking at Mr. Meng with a guilty conscience, he asked in confusion, "What's wrong?"

I shook my head, and said to him from left to right: "Actually, I know who Guan Ting is good with."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Niu Jun."

Mr. Meng was a little surprised: "How do you know?"

I avoided his gaze and forced myself to think about Guan Ting's affairs: "She always helps Niu Jun to fetch water from the water room, and every time she and I are on duty, Niu Jun will also change with me."

Mr. Meng smiled and said, "You're so smart. She told me today, you just need to know it, don't tell others."

"I'm not going to complain to the teacher, it's so boring."

Mr. Meng suddenly gave me a hand: "Look at the road."

That's when I realized I nearly bumped into the sculpture.

The sculpture is quite tall, with a man and a woman happily embracing each other.The introduction says it celebrates the end of the war.As soon as I looked up, the tall, smiling man was staring straight at me with mean eyes.

By accident, I stopped Mr. Meng: "Meng Qiansheng, I also know a secret, do you want to hear it?"

Mr. Meng thought I wanted to gossip with him, so he asked curiously, "Who else is talking to whom?"

I imitated his previous routine and said, "Come here with your ears."

Mr. Meng smiled as if he had realized something, and finally came over obediently.

I seem to be eager to prove something, but I can't say what to prove, and I don't know who to prove it to.Show it to me?But when I got close to his profile, I felt like my heart was about to roll out from between the two rows of teeth when I opened my mouth.

It's no big deal, we were still sleeping under the same quilt.I console myself.

But the beating of the heart scoffed at such poor self-deception.

I smell a faint fragrance.Is it the soap on him, or the laundry detergent on his coat?

Mr. Meng's hair is very black, which makes his ears extremely white. From such a close distance, I can clearly see the purple and blue blood vessels on the pinna of the ear, which are thin, like the small thoughts of someone who is about to move and is ashamed to see others.

"you are an idiot."

From that day on, I seemed to have opened up the two veins of Ren and Du. I saw what I hadn’t seen before, and heard what I hadn’t heard before. It seemed like a dense fog was dissipating in front of my eyes, and the river was wide and the clouds were high.

When he came back from gym class, he would wash his hands first, his palms were so hot; then he would go with me to the boiling water room to get warm water, stand next to him and drink it in small sips, and take another cup back to the classroom.He would also be distracted during class, staring out the window in a daze, and when I reminded him to turn the pages of the book or do the questions, he would smile at me, his eyes clearer and brighter than the crescent moon in September.

Sometimes when I was doing calculations, I raised my head inadvertently, first glanced at the shadow of the teacher, and habitually tossed my eyes to the side, and Mr. Meng’s hand holding the pen accepted my scrutiny frankly.

Those hands have gradually lost the astringency of youth, the joints are elongated, the tendons under the skin are slightly protruding, reflecting the light blue blood vessels, the white ones are mountains, and the green ones are water.

The side at the end has beautiful mountains and clear waters.

It was the same hands in the dream.

This dream made it hard for me to talk about it, and I wanted to be swallowed by the bed, so that I couldn't go to class the next day, and begged my mother to help me take a day of sick leave.

My mother really thought I was sick, but the temperature was normal. I excused that I had a stomachache. She was not too suspicious, and went out in beautiful clothes, saying that I was taking my aunt to a restaurant.

I woke up from the dream in panic, the quilt seemed too tight, the vest and knees were covered with hot and fine sweat, but the most terrible thing was the lump in the trousers, as if it was something that lived in the swamp all year round The wet and slippery creature squirmed shyly inside, but at the same time chewed my internal organs firmly and greedily.

I jumped into the toilet to turn on the water to take a bath, took off my underwear in a hurry, and accidentally touched the sticky wet, cold, like some kind of reptile's poisonous body fluids, and hurriedly flushed it with water.

But that warm, humid and warm feeling remained on the atrium and fingers for a long time, mixed in the sweat, and stuck out from the fingerprints at every turn.

On the third day, I bit the bullet and went to school.

Mr. Meng was sharing a piece of peppermint toffee with the fat man at the front table, and he smiled when he saw me: "What happened to you yesterday? What's wrong with you? Are you alright?"

I used to talk to him so close?

The sweet aroma of mint toffee hit my face, he was so close, I could even count the thick black eyelashes, and the shadow of someone dodging in a hurry was reflected in the eyes covered by the eyelashes.

I stiffened my neck and said, "It's all good. I'm going to pour water."

He pushed me back to the seat, took my cup, and took his own by the way: "I'll pour it for you."

As I said that, the person had already left the classroom, but there was still a heavy mountain on my left shoulder, and I was scratching my heart and liver.

It is said that young people are passionate and young girls are full of spring, but I have not tasted the sweetness of first love at all. Instead, I am frightened. Where it is, the sweat will rush out impatiently, regardless of the three-volt counting, it only cares about its own pleasure.

Chunmeng dreamed that her same-sex child was a child, which is really a terrible thing.

Even though the Internet was not popular at that time, I was still an ignorant kid, but I also began to vaguely realize that I might be an outlier.

I may be gay.

Thinking of this, I woke up suddenly, sweating all over my back.

The classroom was silent, only the voice of the Chinese teacher reading aloud hovered in the closed classroom, like countless birds that could not fly out, hitting the windows again and again in vain, causing the fragile glass to tremble.

Mr. Meng moved his head and asked softly, "Are you uncomfortable?"

I opened my mouth, closed it immediately, and shook my head.I heard my bones creak, thick moss grew in my throat, and a stuffy and fishy smell came up from the depths of my trachea.

What is heterogeneous?Those are monsters.Just like lunatics, rabies, and isolated patients suffering from infectious diseases, people avoid them, shouting excitedly to kill them from thousands of miles away, wishing to drive them all to death and return this world to a pure land.

I know this feeling all too well.

My aunt, Uncle Xiao Lin, and the distant aunt who eloped with a wild man, came back with a big belly, and gave birth to a prematurely deformed daughter——I saw her fight with my mother when I was a child, and she talked all about my age. Very clear swearing; her husband was also pushed to the ground by several of my uncles and beaten, and the neighbors crowded around the perimeter, applauding loudly at the right time.

My mother's slightly swollen face suddenly appeared in front of my eyes.If she knew I was gay—

She will definitely kill me.

My body recalled the experience of playing truant from school with Mr. Meng one step ahead of my brain. My back, buttocks and the back of my thighs were all burning with severe pain, like a piece of meat on the stake. The sebum is rolled up, nourishing and oily.

Mr. Meng pushed his cup over: "Do you want some hot water?"

He turned half of his face sideways, smiled at me, and poked his fingers through the gap between the two desks, as if he wanted to grab my hand, but because of the distance, he only touched my elbow in the end.

"Detour home at night?"

I think about the days when my mom was hysterical because my dad was having an affair, and I stayed at school until dark almost every day just to miss dinner time.If my dad didn't come back to eat, she would explode without warning and sweep all the food on the table to the floor.I had to dodge, dodge the boiling soup and splashing china, and yell to force her to calm down.

In fact, my dissuasion turned a deaf ear to her. She stopped because she had nothing to drop, or she accidentally hurt herself.But I still follow the advice and give myself some psychological comfort.

Sometimes she got so angry that she pinched my arm bruised, pushed me next to the phone, and forced me to call my dad.

But he will never return, I can only dial over and over again, and wait until my mother has no strength to cry and loosens the restraint on me, and then I can quietly go back to the room.

When I grew up a little bit, I also heard that some children are naturally smart, and they can mediate with ease between parents who are at war at a young age.I think I belong to the rather useless kind, and I just hide away.So whenever I finished my homework at school and found it was too early, I hung upside down on the parallel bars by the playground, like a spider waiting for dark, waiting for the sun to go down above my head.

On the evening of the sixth day I spent alone in the upside-down world, I saw Mr. Meng coming over with his schoolbag on his shoulders and knelt down in front of me.

"Whose badger is hiding here?"

"Why don't you come home with me these days?"

"I don't want to go home," I said.

I heard my vocal cords vibrate weirdly from standing on my head, like a belching toad.

Mr. Meng reached out and gently pinched my nose: "Why?"

I had to open my mouth and make a duck quack when I breathed: "My dad has other women out there."

Mr. Meng's smile froze on his lips.The setting sun just fell on his eyelashes, and the thick black ends were condensed with a little light gold, which was as soft as the night that slowly merged into the sky.

My tears almost rolled out, so I sniffed loudly and grabbed his hand away from my nose.

"Will you look down on me?"

"What does this have to do with you?" He also took mine. "I will never look down on you."

"I'm coming down."

The blood in my head was so congested that I was already starting to feel dizzy.

He supported my back with one hand and pulled me with the other. I fell headfirst from the parallel bars and crashed into his arms. His voice faded away.

"Do you want to take a detour home? Let's walk by the river and see egrets."

The way home from high school does not pass by the river, so we made a special detour.The river is not wide, and the banks are full of willow trees.In spring, big catkins blow all over our heads, the evening wind hits our faces straight, and the wet smell of the river is as fresh as a refreshing kiss.

Mr. Meng is very good at telling jokes, we laughed all the way.But he always lost bets with me, saying he would carry me, because I laughed at his thin arms and legs.

The heart is twisted into a mess in the stomach and intestines, but it is really embarrassing to pretend to be calm on the face.Being in love secretly is really hard work, I swear I will never like anyone secretly again.

Let's forget it this time.

I hung on his back carefully, deliberately lowered my body, and let him half-drag and half-back.Mr. Meng was so hung up that he couldn't breathe. He threw his upper body forward, and the panic of momentary weightlessness made me jump off his back with a grunt, almost falling to the ground.

Mr. Meng succeeded in laughing.

The river water under the setting sun is red and bright, like a galloping silk and satin, the two shadows on the bank were cast so long, they left us without looking back, and went straight to the night after many years.