Silent Realm

Jiang Yile turned her head in surprise. Raindrops kept dripping down her hair and cheeks, making her vision a little blurry.

Gu Nanxiao stood beside her, holding an umbrella in one hand, with the handle firmly in his hand.

His expression remained calm, showing no obvious emotion. Only his dark eyes looked at her in the dim light. His voice was clear, without any ups and downs, but it clearly penetrated the sound of the rain: "Where are you going?"

These two simple words made Jiang Yile unable to react for a moment, and his brain went blank due to the cold and surprise.

She was stunned for a few seconds before she found her voice and said with a trembling voice: "I... go to the bus stop."

"Together."

He spoke concisely, without any unnecessary questions or explanations, and at the same time naturally and unnoticeably tilted most of the umbrella towards her.

This action instantly exposed his right shoulder and half of his arm to the pouring rain, and the dark school uniform fabric immediately developed a dark, rapidly expanding water stain.

He seemed unaware of it.

The two walked into the heavy rain in silence.

The raindrops hit the umbrella madly and densely, making a dull and continuous "bang bang" sound, like thousands of troops running overhead, or like never-ending drumbeats.

The water on the ground was already very deep, and the turbid water was flowing everywhere. Every step would splash cold water, soaking the trouser legs and shoes.

The wind was very strong, changing direction, and blowing from the side with rain. Even with an umbrella, I couldn't be completely immune. My trouser legs and shoes were quickly soaked, bringing a biting chill.

The distance between the two was very close, so close that Jiang Yile could clearly smell the clean and refreshing scent on him, which was a mixture of a light scent of laundry detergent and sunshine.

At this moment, it was tainted with the slight fishy smell of rain and soil, which inexplicably gave people a strange and short-lived sense of stability, diluting some of the coldness and discomfort in the body.

She secretly looked up at him. He was looking straight ahead, his jawline was a little tense, his lips were pursed, and he was concentrating on the muddy and slippery road under his feet, carefully avoiding the waterlogged depressions and washed-up debris.

The arm holding the umbrella was very steady, without any shaking, as if no matter how strong the wind and rain were, he could hold up this small world.

The road to the bus stop is not long, but in such a rainstorm, it seems particularly long, as if there is no end.

The whole world seemed to be submerged, isolated, and slowed down by the rain. Only this small black umbrella, swaying in the wind and rain but standing firm, and the two boys and girls walking side by side under the umbrella, each with their own thoughts and silent.

A subtle air current surged in the small space.

The bus stop was crowded with people hiding from the rain.

Most of the people there were students and nearby residents, and the atmosphere was noisy and filled with dampness, sweat, and an atmosphere of anxiety.

Rainwater continued to flow down from the edge of the platform ceiling, forming curtains of water.

They barely found a foothold on the edge of the platform.

The atmosphere was subtly awkward. Neither of them spoke. There was only the sound of raindrops dripping from the tip of the umbrella, dripping, dripping, dripping, hitting the ground and also hitting their hearts.

"Thanks."

Jiang Yile thanked him again in a low voice, her voice was somewhat drowned out by the surrounding noise and the sound of rain, but she knew he could hear it.

"Um."

Gu Nanxiao looked at the neon lights across the street, which were blurred and distorted by the rain. The lines of his face seemed a little softer than usual and less angular in the dim and humid light.

His response remained brief.

The bus was late.

There were more and more people on the platform, and the sounds of complaints, urging people on the phone, and children crying because of their impatience of waiting mixed together, making people feel upset.

Jiang Yile's stomachache was getting worse, and the cramps were causing cold sweat to form on her forehead.

She subconsciously pressed her hand against her stomach. Her face looked pale under the pale light of the platform, and her lips had lost their color.

"Are you not feeling well?" Gu Nanxiao's gaze had been retracted from a distance and fell on her face. There was still no obvious emotion in his tone, but the question itself, in this situation, was a concern that went beyond his usual behavior.

"It's okay," Jiang Yile forced a smile, not wanting to trouble him, and even less wanting to appear vulnerable. "It's an old problem. My stomach is a little uncomfortable. I'll just go home and take some medicine."

She tried to stand up straight and hide her discomfort.

Gu Nanxiao frowned and said nothing more, but his gaze lingered for a few seconds on her hand pressing on her stomach and her increasingly pale face. In those deep eyes, a very faint, elusive trace of something seemed to pass through.

After waiting for a few more minutes, the bus still didn't come. The people on the platform became more and more anxious. Some people started trying to hail a taxi, but the ground was slippery due to the rain and taxis were in short supply.

Gu Nanxiao suddenly spoke, his voice not loud, but clear enough to penetrate the surrounding noise: "Let's take a taxi."

"Ah? No, no," Jiang Yile waved his hand quickly. On the one hand, he was being polite because he didn't want to owe anyone a favor, and on the other hand, he was also considering the taxi fare. "The taxi should be here soon, and it's hard to get a taxi on a rainy day..."

She spoke with a hint of uncertain anticipation as she looked in the direction the bus was coming from.

Before she could finish her words, another wave of severe colic came over her, like a knife stabbing her, making her gasp and bend over. Her face turned pale in an instant, cold sweat dripped down, and she could hardly stand.

Gu Nanxiao looked at her painful expression with a frown on his face. Without asking for her opinion, he raised his hand and decisively stopped an empty taxi that was about to leave after dropping off a passenger nearby.

There was an undeniable decisiveness in his movements.

He opened the car door, looked at her, and said with a rare, irrefutable firmness: "Get in the car."

His movements were quick and decisive, without any hesitation, as if he had already made the decision.

Jiang Yile no longer cared about being polite or frugal at this moment. The severe pain in her stomach made it impossible for her to hold on any longer, and she also felt cold and weak.

With almost her last bit of strength, she bent down and crawled into the warm and dry carriage, which was isolated from the cold world outside.

The warm air from the car's air conditioner helped warm her frozen body a little, but it did not relieve the churning in her stomach at all.

Gu Nanxiao quickly put away his umbrella, sat in the back seat, and told the driver an address - the name of Jiang Yile's residential area.

Jiang Yile looked at him in surprise, and even his stomachache seemed to ease for a moment.

She remembered that she had never told him her home address, the address column on the student information form. Could it be that he...

Gu Nanxiao seemed to see through her confusion. He looked at the street scene in front of him, which was constantly being scraped away by the wipers and then blurred. He explained lightly, his voice sounding particularly clear in the small car: "I accidentally saw it when I handed in my student registration form last time."

He has a really good memory.

Jiang Yile thought.

That submission of the form was almost two weeks ago, and the address was just one piece of information among many others, mixed in with the name and ID number.

She murmured "thank you" weakly, then leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, frowned, and tried to endure the unbearable discomfort that came from her stomach.

The physical pain and mental exhaustion left her no time to think about anything else.

Gu Nanxiao looked at the city lights and shadows flying past outside the window, distorted by the rain. The neon lights spread out in the water curtain, forming blurry, dreamy spots of light, like an impressionist oil painting, blurry and unreal.

His profile was reflected in the car window, appearing a little blurry and his expression could not be clearly seen.

However, the corner of his eyes was always paying attention to the pale face of the girl beside him, her brows slightly furrowed as she endured the pain, and her body slightly curled up because of discomfort.

His lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he said nothing. He just turned his gaze back to the window, and his hands on his knees unconsciously closed slightly.

The car drove steadily in the rain and finally stopped at the gate of Jiang Yile's community.

The rain seemed to be lighter than before, but still dense and continuous.

Jiang Yile felt a little better, at least he could stand up straight.

She thanked him again solemnly, her voice still a little weak: "Gu Nanxiao, thank you so much today. Umbrella..."

She looked at the dripping black umbrella in her hand, not knowing what to do with it.

"You take it." He interrupted her, his tone still calm, but with an irresistible tone, "Give it to me tomorrow."

After saying that, he didn't even look at her again. He pushed open the car door and rushed into the fine and cold rain again. His tall figure quickly disappeared at the entrance of a dim, rain-soaked alley next to him. He was so determined that it seemed as if staying for another second would make him feel uncomfortable, and as if he was eager to escape from a situation that was about to get out of control.

Jiang Yile held the black umbrella handle, which still retained the cool warmth of his palm and the smell of rain, mud and earth. He stood there, looking at the direction where he had disappeared, with an indescribable complicated feeling in his heart.

gratitude?

Puzzled?

Or a touch of warmth after being helped?

And the confusion about his behavior of helping and then quickly running away are intertwined.

Rainwater slid down the ribs of the umbrella and formed a small, growing puddle at her feet.

This transfer student, who was so cold and almost inhuman, seemed... not as completely isolated from all warmth and perception as he usually appeared.

Beneath his cold and hard shell, perhaps there is also subtle, imperceptible kindness that belongs to a normal person.

But why is this kindness so restrained and so short-lived?

And why is it that after expression, there is always a faster escape and deeper silence?

She held up the umbrella, which seemed to still carry its power, and slowly walked back to the community.

The pain in her stomach still existed, but the subtle ripples in her heart caused by his actions took a long time to subside.

On this rainy evening, because of the unexpected umbrella and the sudden, pure helping hand from the seemingly indifferent boy, a different trace was left in Jiang Yile's originally peaceful high school memories, one that was different from the usual one, with a little confusion, a touch of warmth and endless reverie.

Jiang Yile pushed open the door, and the warm lights and the aroma of food hit him in the face, instantly dispelling the chill brought in from outside.

"LeLe is back! Oh, why are you so wet? Change your wet clothes quickly!"

Her mother poked her head out of the kitchen and saw that she looked a little disheveled. She immediately came over with concern.

"It's okay, Mom. The rain is too heavy and the umbrella can't cover it."

Jiang Yile avoided the important issue and carefully placed the dripping black umbrella on the umbrella stand at the entrance.

The textured black long-handled umbrella looks particularly out of place in this home entrance filled with cartoon raincoats and folding umbrellas.

She changed into slippers, suppressed the discomfort in her stomach, and wanted to go back to her room to change her wet clothes first.

"Why are you so pale?" The attentive mother noticed something was wrong and touched her forehead. "Your hands are so cold too! Are you feeling sick again?"

"A little bit..." Jiang Yile knew he couldn't hide it, so he admitted it honestly, "But it's okay, I just need to take some medicine and rest."

"The medicine is in the drawer of the coffee table. Go take it quickly, and then drink some hot water." Mom urged, her brows furrowed in worry. "I've told you so many times to be careful. Don't catch a cold, don't starve..."

Jiang Yile obediently found the medicine and took it. The warm water flowed across his throat, temporarily relieving the stomach cramps.

She returned to her room, took off her wet school uniform, put on clean and soft home clothes, and then she felt alive again.

The sound of rain outside the window was still dripping, hitting the glass, as if repeatedly reminding me of what had just happened.

The figure who held up a dry space for her in the heavy rain, the short words "together", the hands that held the umbrella handle steadily but exposed half of their shoulders to the rain... the scenes replayed in her mind frame by frame.

"Le Le, it's time for dinner!" Dad shouted from outside.

At the dinner table, her parents inevitably asked her how she got back.

Jiang Yile hesitated for a moment, then simply said, "I came back in a carpool with a classmate..."

"Classmates? Male or female classmates?" Mom asked casually, picking up a piece of food with chopsticks and putting it in her bowl. "Thanks to them, otherwise you would definitely get sick after coming back from the rain."

"...a male classmate." Jiang Yile lowered his head and ate his food, feeling his cheeks slightly hot. "It's the new transfer student in our class, Gu Nanxiao."

"Oh? Is that the quiet kid from City A that Xiaowei mentioned before?" Mom was a little surprised. "It seems like this kid has a good heart, but is a bit introverted."

"Um."

Jiang Yile responded without saying anything else.

Are you kind-hearted?

Maybe.

But how do we explain his final, almost escaping posture?

After dinner, she took the initiative to clean up the dishes, and then went back to her room on the pretext of reviewing.

The exercises were spread out on the desk, but she was a little absent-minded.

My eyes involuntarily drifted to the window. The rain seemed to be stopping, with only sporadic raindrops left.

That alley entrance... He disappeared in that direction.

Does he live over there?

Or did he just happen to pass through there?

Is he wet? Will he catch a cold?

These thoughts inexplicably swirled in my mind.

She shook her head, trying to draw her attention back to the physics formula in front of her, but the tip of her pen moved unconsciously across the draft paper, and in the end she wrote three words - Gu Nanxiao.

Looking at the three slightly sloppy words, Jiang Yile's heart skipped a beat for unknown reason, as if he had done something bad and was discovered. He quickly used a pen to heavily scribble them out until the ink blurred and the original strokes could no longer be seen.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city.

Gu Nanxiao pushed open a heavy, soundproof door and walked into a spacious but unusually deserted living room.

Outside the huge floor-to-ceiling windows is the vague light rising from the sky after the rain, reflecting the interior decoration which is mainly black, white and gray, with a strong sense of design but lacking in the atmosphere of life.

He didn't turn on the light and walked straight to his room. He threw his wet school uniform jacket into the laundry basket.

The chill brought by the icy rain soaking through my clothes seemed to have only just begun to seep into my skin.

He walked to the desk, where besides a laptop and several neatly stacked reference books, there was also a simple photo frame.

In the frame was an old photo of him as a child, snuggling closely with a woman with a gentle smile and eyes and eyebrows that looked somewhat similar to his.

His gaze lingered on the photo for a moment, his fingertips lightly brushing the glass surface of the frame. Beneath the usual coldness in the depths of his eyes, it seemed as if some emotion surged extremely quickly, then quickly subsided, so fast that it was impossible to catch.

The umbrella he impulsively handed out today, and his subsequent almost officious behavior, completely broke the rule he set for himself of not having unnecessary interactions with anyone.

Is it because seeing her pale face and the way she was trying to endure the pain, she looked like a vague shadow in my memory?

Or was it simply because the noisy rainstorm temporarily disrupted the calmness and self-control that he was proud of?

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened them again, his eyes had returned to their usual aloofness and indifference.

He put on his headphones, opened his exercise book, and plunged himself back into the world of logic, formulas, and absolute rationality.

There, there are no sudden rainstorms, no classmates who need help, and no... past events that should not be remembered.

The next day, Saturday.

After the rain, the sky cleared up, the sun was exceptionally bright, and the air was fresh.

When Jiang Yile woke up, his stomachache had basically disappeared, but he still felt a little tired.

She looked at the blue sky outside the window, and her mood couldn't help but relax a little.

Then she remembered the umbrella.

The black long-handled umbrella was now standing quietly on the umbrella stand at the entrance, and the water stains on the umbrella surface had dried up.

I need to return the umbrella to him today.

But how can I pay it back?

Where does he live?

Contact information?

I know nothing about it.

It seems I can only wait until school starts on Monday.

However, things sometimes develop unexpectedly.

In the afternoon, Jiang Yile and Zhou Xiaowei made an appointment to go to a newly opened bookstore nearby to buy some painting supplies and tutorial books.

When the two were selecting colored pencils in the stationery section, Zhou Xiaowei suddenly tugged at Jiang Yile's sleeve and lowered her voice, unable to conceal her excitement:

"LeLe! Look over there! Is that your 'silent top student'?"

Jiang Yile looked in the direction she pointed, and his heartbeat suddenly quickened.

In the reading area by the window of the bookstore, a familiar figure was sitting on a high chair, looking down at a thick book in his hand, which seemed to be an original foreign language book.

The sunlight filtered through the glass window, creating a soft halo around him. His slightly drooping eyelashes cast a faint shadow under his eyes, and his expression was his usual calm.

It’s Gu Nanxiao.

How come he is here?

Moreover, coincidentally, he was wearing a light gray thin sweatshirt today, which made him look less cold and hard than when he usually wore school uniform, and added a bit of youthful cleanliness.

Jiang Yile's heart moved slightly for no reason.

The black umbrella was now lying next to her schoolbag.