Old Friend and Herself (5)

Walking straight down the alley, the branches of the fine-leaved banyan trees on either side intertwined, like longtime neighbors, a kind of unspoken understanding. Various shop signs were hidden in the shade of the trees, but Zhao Shihua could clearly remember each one. They were the usual fast food restaurants in the residential area, tea shops, clothing stores, beauty salons, printing shops, hardware stores, general stores, and even the fruit shops, only seen in autumn and winter, where pomelo piles resembled small mountains. Turning off, he found himself on a busy road, as if suddenly transported from the nostalgic streets of the 1990s into the bustling modern world.

The light ahead turned red, and as she braked, she suddenly realized that the scenery around her hadn't changed much since she was a child. Despite the rapid economic development of recent years, these small shops have managed to survive. Perhaps it's precisely because they're tucked away in corners that they've been able to avoid one storm after another, just like her family's small restaurant.

"Do you recognize this road?" Zhao Shihua gestured forward from the back, finally stopping at the end in front of the right. "Where is that?"

"Where?" Shao Yifu pushed his bicycle forward half a meter to align with her. "Sanhao Primary School?"

"You actually still remember?" Just because someone gets on the wrong bus doesn't mean they're directionally illiterate. Zhao Shihua turned around and looked him straight in the eye. "I really admire you."

"No, actually, it's because I passed by it when I rode here just now." Shao Yifu pointed to the left, then immediately changed to the right. "My hometown is by the river, and I seldom came here before."

"...Let's go!" The car on the motorway roared forward, and Zhao Shihua was startled back to his senses. "Let's go back to the elementary school."

When they were leaving, she lied to Shao Yifu, saying, "I'm taking you to a fun place." It couldn't be called a lie; she just wanted to leave some suspense. Otherwise, the three of them, eating pomelo and chatting, would have talked for who knows how long.

Her mother came back from across the street carrying a sack of grapefruits. Shao Yifu had just eaten one when Zhao Shihua dragged her away. Her mother, displeased, scolded the child for being impolite, but she eventually shoved five or six grapefruits onto the back of Shao Yifu's bicycle before she finally calmed down and agreed to let the customer go.

"Auntie, I have some at home too, so I don't need them." She repeated the polite words more than ten times before reducing the number of grapefruits from a dozen to five or six.

"Oh, you don't know, the pomelo from the shop next door is so delicious and sweet! Take a few back for your family to try!" The middle-aged man's obsession was so strong that even ten cows could not pull him back.

It was rare to see Shao Yifu's helpless side, and Zhao Shihua couldn't help but find it funny. Finally, unable to bear the same drama any longer, she pushed her mother back into the store, saying she was going out for a walk and would be back soon.

After indicating the direction to go, Shao Yifu rode in front of her. The boy still stubbornly carried his black guitar backpack, which he didn't know what it was for, and a few bright yellow pomeloes were wrapped in a net bag on the back seat. It was unclear whether he was going to perform on the street or sell pomeloes. From behind, he looked particularly out of place.

She pedaled hard a few times to catch up with him and asked, "Why are you still carrying your guitar?"

"Play it."

"Where are we going to play?"

"……have no idea."

"It's like a three-year-old who has to carry a teddy bear everywhere he goes. It's so hopelessly childish," Zhao Shihua muttered. He had never expected that his guitar would actually come in handy at school.

"You are not allowed to enter without an ID card or student card to register." The security guard pointed at the spread-out entry registration form with an indifferent look on his face, and then lowered his head to watch the video on his mobile phone.

"You don't have your student ID with you either?"

"My student ID is at my home in Guangzhou..." Shao Yifu scratched his head, saying that he had no choice.

"Uncle, we really are students who used to go to school here. We just want to go in and take a look." Zhao Shihua leaned over from the window and begged.

"That's what everyone says," the security guard said without looking up. "Then let me ask, what class are you from? What's the principal's name?"

"I know! The principal's name is--" Zhao Shihua suddenly fell silent. She only remembered that everyone called the principal "Grandma with Glasses" at that time, and never knew the principal's real name.

"You even forgot the principal's last name? Isn't it 'Yan'?" Shao Yifu asked in a low voice. It seemed that there was a guy next to him whose memory was even more unreliable.

"There is a principal named Zeng now, right? I remember that Mr. Zeng, who taught science, was promoted to vice principal after we graduated." Zhao Shihua ignored him and continued to test the security guard.

Finally hearing some decent information, the security guard looked up again, sized them up, and after confirming they didn't look like they were going to cause trouble, he stepped aside and said, "Of course, you can, but you don't have any IDs, so leave your phone here."

“But I still want to take a few photos…”

"Other items are fine too."

So Zhao Shihua and the security guard looked at the guitar on Shao Yifu's back at the same time.

"Hey! No way! No way!" He put his hands behind his back to hold his guitar bag, afraid someone would snatch his treasure. "Can I use a grapefruit?"

"The playground has been replaced with a rubber track? Wasn't the original playground here? How come it became a flower bed?" Shao Yifu started to make a fuss as soon as he entered the door.

"The running track seemed to have been moved during the summer vacation of the third grade. The playground was simply moved there at that time. The school gate was renovated two years ago, and the taller teaching building at the back was also newly built that year." Zhao Shihua explained like a tour guide.

During the three years of long vacation in junior high school, she would occasionally ride her bike back to take a look, slowly digesting these big changes; and compared to herself, the time and space distance between Shao Yifu and Sanhao Primary School was even greater, so he was even more surprised.

"Do you remember one year when school was over, it rained really, really hard? It was so heavy that the playground was flooded and turned into a pond," Shao Yifu said, outlining the flower-shaped flower bed with his fingers. "The teacher brought out benches, linked them together, and made us step on them one by one to leave the school gate."

"They brought in benches? I just remember the old playground flooding easily when it rained, but at most it was ankle-deep. Is it really that dramatic that they need the teachers to bring out benches?" she said, stepping onto the bricks at the edge of the flower bed like they were walking on a balance beam. If the teacher had brought out chairs for them to walk on before, she would probably have thought they were practicing the "plum blossom pole" exercise and happily ran back and forth several times.

"Yeah, because I remember that time when I lost my balance and fell into the water. I cried miserably, but all the classmates around me were laughing."

This sounded quite pitiful, and Zhao Shihua only hoped she hadn't been among the people being laughed at. She turned around and saw Shao Yifu also imitating her as he walked on the stone bricks, even stretching his arms out to the sides to balance his body, as clumsy as a black bear walking on a tightrope.

"What happened next? You didn't catch a cold, did you?"

"I forgot about that, but my mom is a doctor, so I guess she made me some ginger soup when I got home." Shao Yifu waved his hand, indicating that wasn't the point. "Then a classmate helped me up, but I didn't know why I was so angry, I refused to get up. Then the classmate comforted me and said, 'You don't have to do your homework today, how great!' Because my entire schoolbag was soaked in water."

Zhao Shihua couldn't help but laugh. The logic of elementary school students was so strange it was endearing. Even if a hundred bad things happened, they could still find a single seed of happiness. Conversely, there were also elementary school students who, even if a hundred happy things happened, might only remember the single embarrassing moment. Memory, after all, might simply be a matter of choice.

Suddenly she thought of something, jumped down from the bricks, gently poked Shao Yifu's shoulder with her finger, and pushed him down from the edge of the flower bed with ease: "Come on, I'll show you something else."

However, when they arrived at the entrance where the "good stuff" was said to be hidden, they found that the road was blocked.

"Why is it locked?" Zhao Shihua grabbed the iron gate and shook it, crying out like someone imprisoned in a costume drama. But she wasn't trapped inside; she was blocked out: the stairs to the teaching building were locked.

"What exactly do you want me to see?"

"It's not something special," Zhao Shihua said, feeling a little embarrassed. "There's my own work upstairs."

"The first-place martial arts trophy? Or the martial arts leader certificate?"

"No, don't flatter me," Zhao Shihua said, exiting the stairwell and looking up at the corridor above. "But it has something to do with martial arts."

"What are you doing? Do you want to fly up there?"

Zhao Shihua pointed to the upper staircase landing and said, "Every staircase corner has a painting by a student hanging on it. Look, there's an ink painting of lotus flowers hanging here on the first floor, and there's a painting of mine hanging on the third floor."

Shao Yifu cupped his hands into two circles, circling his eyes like binoculars, but with his nearsighted eyes, he probably couldn't even see where the stairs were. "What did you draw? Mulan or Kung Fu Panda?"

"I drew a girl in a red dress practicing swordplay," Zhao Shihua said. She lifted her right leg, pointed her toes, and simultaneously raised her left arm, extending her right hand diagonally behind her. "That was the pose I drew, and then the art teacher praised me for the flowing texture of the dress. I remember it was a struggle to follow the pose from a photo, and the wrinkles on the dress were just random additions."

Shao Yifu clapped his hands in laughter. Zhao Shihua put on a serious face and added, "There's a sequel. It just so happened that the school was holding a 'beautify the campus' event, and they picked some paintings to decorate the staircases and corridors. I happened to be chosen. Each painting had to have a title. I remember I wrote something like 'The Lady in Red,' but the Chinese teacher changed it to 'Hearing the Cock Crow and Rising to Dance.' But I can't draw a rooster, so the art teacher personally added one for me..."

"The art teacher even gave you a free rooster, hahaha!" Shao Yifu wiped his eyes and took a deep breath, "I'm not laughing anymore."

"Speaking of the art teacher..." Zhao Shihua originally wanted to say, "It was in her class that I accidentally splashed water on you," but suddenly stopped.

A sense of absurdity and wonder washed over her as she felt like she had returned to square one. She was at a loss for words as to how to describe the feeling of being on a time machine. Finally, she shook her head softly, "Never mind. It's nothing."

A breeze blew down the corridor, bringing a slight chill. Meanwhile, the setting sun shone down the corridor, inch by inch, bringing a warm glow. The two of them stood blankly in the open space outside the teaching building, looking up at the place where the past was hidden, their own reflections reflected in their eyes.

"Then you know what? I fell on the stairs we just went to and crushed the cake."

"Cake?" Zhao Shihua took a moment to remember the name blunder. "I once jumped down four steps on that staircase and broke my chin."

"If we become celebrities in the future, will this place become 'the place where Shao Yifu broke his cake' and 'the place where Zhao Shihua hit his chin'?"

"Psycho," Zhao Shihua cursed, but a smile spread across his face. He pointed to the seven or eight-meter square flag-raising platform at the end of the corridor, which was used as a performance stage every June 1st Children's Day. "That's where 'Zhao Shihua did a somersault and ended up throwing his shoe at the principal.'"

"You don't mind now?"

"What's there to mind? It's quite funny now that I think about it." Zhao Shihua suddenly raised his palm to a centimeter in front of Shao Yifu's nose and stopped. "Just imagine, a shoe flew towards me with a whoosh. The principal's wife must have been scared to death."

"Oh my god!" He took a step back and pushed her hand away. "I was scared too, okay?!"

Zhao Shihua giggled. It seemed like she hadn't laughed so easily in a long time, as if she had inadvertently taken off a hard but heavy armor.

"Let's go walk around the playground again."

"OK."

The campus that seemed so huge when they were young now seems to be just a small world with a playground and a few buildings. However, they wandered around in it for more than an hour without realizing it.

The girl and boy return to their original starting point, freed from the confines of their memories and vanquished their childhood nightmares. Their small figures, sometimes timid and sometimes proud, gradually lengthen over time, becoming courageous and free.

"How much homework have you done?" Zhao Shihua asked casually as he kicked off his footrest.

"Could you please not ruin the mood?" Shao Yifu stood on tiptoe, his precious guitar on his back. "Wasn't it nice to just reminisce about our childhood?"

"…Friendly reminder: school starts in a week."

"If you don't finish your homework at the last minute, it won't feel like a vacation!" Shao Yifu mounted his bicycle and loudly proclaimed his theory about poor students. "I'm going this way."

"I'm going the other way," Zhao Shihua turned his bike around. "See you next semester then."

"Well, see you in the new semester!" Shao Yifu raised his hand high towards himself, smiling brightly, "Happy New Year!"

Yes, it was a new year. It was the tenth year since they had known each other. The future was still long, and the story had just begun.

And the past is no longer important.

(End of full text)