He Chengzheng spent his life in a small village in Huaicheng before he turned fifteen. He couldn't remember the name of the village anymore, since he had never been back since he left.

These brief fifteen years also became some of the most pleasant and carefree days in his life.

Every time the adults in the village saw him, they would say that he was an unwanted wild child. Every time they saw him, their eyes would be filled with pity and sympathy, and they would try to see a hint of sadness on his face.

Unfortunately, the villagers were destined to be disappointed.

Although he didn't have his father's company, his mother, maternal grandparents treated him very well, giving him a lot of care and attention. He was very content and rarely even thought about his father.

Life at home was very hard. In the early 1980s, the reform and opening up came into effect, and each household was allocated a few acres of land. The whole family relied on farming for a living, so he experienced the life of a poor person at a very young age. He learned to cook early, knew how to transplant rice seedlings, and knew when to plant rapeseed.

His family used their meager savings to send him to a primary school in the village, saying that education was the best way out. He had heard his grandfather ramble on when he was drunk, saying that his father seemed to be a scholar with a high level of education.

He was smarter than other children in the village from a young age. He could understand the knowledge in the textbook at a glance and was always the top student in his class. People of his age in the village thought he was stupid. He was always engrossed in books and thought he would be better off learning how to farm from his family and going to the mountains to herd cattle with a few people.

At that time, not many people valued reading, and he was an exception, so he didn't get along well with the other children in the village.

When he was in junior high school, he was admitted to the only junior high school in the town, which brought together students from more than a dozen surrounding villages. These were all children from enlightened families who were willing to spend money on education. He was finally able to concentrate on his studies without having to listen to those gossips.

Days went by as usual, and he immersed himself in subjects like mathematics, English, and physics, completely absorbed in them.

Later, he discovered a classmate who also loved reading, and they took turns competing for the top spot in the class.

She was a girl who liked to wear two braids, tied tightly. She usually looked very serious, always with a stern face, like a little old-fashioned person. He remembered the name on the leaderboard that always hovered around his name—Chen Lifang.

Later, somehow, the two started discussing problems together frequently. Sometimes they would argue about how to solve a math problem, and when they couldn't reach a consensus, they would go to the teacher. In the end, the teacher would explain that both solutions were correct.

It has a similar feel to the story of Cheng Men Li Xue (standing in the snow outside Cheng's door).

Because of this incident, the two developed a deeper and more sympathetic revolutionary friendship, which later gradually took on a chemical reaction.

However, in those days, everyone was very innocent and conservative when it came to romantic relationships, and no one was willing to break through that barrier.

He thought the two of them would take the high school entrance exam together, continue arguing over a single question, and then take the college entrance exam together.

Until the spring of his last semester in junior high, a car that looked quite expensive was parked in front of his yard. He still remembers how the spotless car didn't match the dried radishes drying in the yard.

An elderly man, dressed in a neat Zhongshan suit and looking energetic, sat at a table with a missing corner, while his mother, maternal grandparents, and other relatives sat beside him, looking nervous.

The old man said he was his grandson who had been lost for many years.

Only then did he learn his true identity. It turned out that his father was not an ordinary person, but the only son of a wealthy business family in S City. He abandoned the family business and insisted on pursuing scientific research. In the 1970s, he was sent down to the small village where he lived, where he met his mother and gave birth to him.

After giving birth to him, she returned to S City, saying she would come to pick them up after settling down there. However, he later participated in a highly classified scientific research mission and was never heard from again. He then died in a flight accident.

After losing his only son, and with no one to inherit the family business, Mr. He made inquiries and learned that a descendant remained in a small village a thousand miles away, so he rushed over.

Then he was taken back to an unfamiliar home by the grandfather who suddenly appeared, and he learned all sorts of things. Grandpa He was very strict with him, almost to the point of being harsh, and he was not allowed to mention his previous family.

So he never went back to that small place. Grandpa He gave his mother a large sum of money and built a new house. He heard from the family assistant that his mother had remarried and was living a happy life. He seemed to have no regrets.

But deep in my memory, that stubborn face with two braids always comes to mind.

Even if he had mustered the courage to break the ice back then, things probably wouldn't have turned out that way. After all, he could never make his own decisions, and his marriage always had to take into account the interests of his family. He married a woman of equal social standing, had a daughter, and his family business grew bigger and bigger.

Later, he still divorced that woman. A marriage based on mutual benefit was never going to be stable. The woman was unhappy that he was so focused on his career, and the two divorced amicably.

Years later, he was having dinner with some business partners in a city when he encountered that stubborn-looking woman again. Time had left deep marks on her; she no longer seemed to be full of longing for the future as he remembered her, but rather her back was bent by the weight of life.

She has aged considerably, and so has he.

He took the initiative to greet her and then learned that she had not had a good life in recent years. After graduating from junior high school, her family could not afford to support her to continue her studies, so she went to work in a coastal city at a young age. After returning, she hurriedly got married and had children.

Life should have continued peacefully and uneventfully, but then her incompetent husband incurred a large debt and abandoned their children, leaving the entire burden of life on the shoulders of a woman with only a junior high school education.

He knew how cruel society could be to those from the lower classes who had little education.

He doesn't know what he was thinking at the time, but he was bewitched and secretly helped her pay off her debts, and even brought her and her child to City S.

He later recalled his impulsive actions repeatedly, finding them somewhat like the youthful passion he once had.

The stirrings in my heart that had long been buried deep in my memory were rekindled, more intense than they were more than twenty years ago, and with something else added—the sedimentation of time.

He thought it was time for him to be unrestrained this time. He wanted to listen to his heart and to express the secret thoughts he hadn't had time to tell when he was young.