The pain of sprouting

The summer of 2010 was exceptionally hot.

That year, our bodies began to grow like willow branches in spring, carrying hidden pain and shame.

There was a small hole in the screen window of Aunt Su's kitchen, and a few green-headed flies were buzzing against the glass, but they couldn't fly out.

"Crab!"

There were crabs crawling around in the basin. They held up their big claws and crawled around in the plastic basin, spitting out a few bubbles from time to time.

I squatted beside them and watched them intently. I looked at their clumsy and ferocious appearance and really couldn't connect them with the fragrant, fat and delicious food on the plate.

Once again, I feel infinite admiration for the first person who dares to try something new.

"We bought some seafood today," Aunt Su said, smiling as she pulled me closer as I was about to explore the world in the basin. "Nian Nian loves crabs, right?"

I nodded vigorously and looked at Aunt Su, wearing an apron and squatting beside me, scrubbing crab shells with an old toothbrush.

My legs were numb after squatting for a long time. I stood up by holding my knees. When the blood flowed back, it felt like countless small needles were pricking me.

"Aunt Su, where is Jiang Yuanzhou?"

I turned my head to glance at Jiang Yuanzhou's room, wondering why this guy was so quiet today.

Normally at this time, he would have run out to snatch the TV remote control from me.

"He's staying in his room, acting mysteriously. I don't know what he's tinkering with."

I tiptoed and pushed open Jiang Yuanzhou's door. He was lying on the bed flipping through a comic book. When he heard the door open, he sat up suddenly and hurriedly stuffed the curled-up comic book on his knees under his pillow.

"What are you hiding?"

I crouched over and pretended to grab it.

"Lin Nian! Why didn't you knock on the door?" He hurriedly used his body to block the pillow, his ears turned red, and his voice was hoarse.

"Let me see!" I reached out to grab the pillow.

During the chaotic scramble, our heads bumped into each other with a bang, and the pain made me see stars.

"hiss!"

I backed away, holding my forehead, and accidentally tripped over the strap of my backpack on the ground. I lost my balance and fell backwards.

Jiang Yuanzhou subconsciously reached out to pull me, but his palm happened to press on the spot on my chest that had been aching recently.

“…”

His fingers flicked away as if he had been electrocuted, and his entire face turned red from his ears to his neck.

"...Are you okay?" He turned his face away.

"It's okay." I rubbed my chest as if I didn't care, but in fact it hurt so much that I wanted to cry.

We sat side by side on the edge of the bed, a fist's distance between us, and no one spoke.

The electric fan was creaking, blowing away the faint scent of laundry detergent on his body.

The sunlight filtered in through the gap in the curtains and fell just above his lips.

A layer of soft, bluish fur emerged there.

My heart suddenly skipped a beat, and a strange and unusual feeling quietly spread.

From the kitchen came the sounds of Aunt Su and Mom talking and laughing, and the sizzling sound of crabs being put into the pot, followed by the aroma of stewed crabs in oil.

Jiang Yuanzhou coughed twice and stood up, "Let's go."

He turned his back to me and said in a muffled voice, "Don't you like eating crabs the most?"

The table was filled with aroma. I was concentrating on prying open a plump crab claw when Aunt Su suddenly chuckled.

"Hey, let me tell you a joke. This morning was really weird. Yuanzhou got up before dawn to wash the sheets and didn't even let me watch."

She picked up another crab claw and put it in my bowl, but glanced at Jiang Yuanzhou mischievously, "I thought a child this old still wet the bed. Guess what..."

Jiang Yuanzhou's chopsticks fell to the table with a "bang" and his whole face turned red instantly.

"Mom!" He growled almost through gritted teeth, looking at my mother and me nervously.

"Oh, you're still shy." Aunt Su laughed sullenly.

"Huh? Bed-wetting?"

I burst out laughing, not even bothering to wipe the crab roe from the corner of my mouth. "Jiang Yuanzhou, how old are you? And you're still wetting the bed!"

This is literally the funniest joke I've heard this year.

"Nian Nian, stop talking."

My mother gently touched the back of my hand, with a smile in her eyes that I couldn't understand, "Children grow up and have their own little secrets."

She winked at Aunt Su, and both adults suddenly smiled.

Jiang Yuanzhou's fingers tightly gripped the Coke can, and the aluminum foil made a slight deformation sound.

I curled my lips and bit the crab legs with a crunching sound. "What secret? It's just bedwetting..."

"Stop talking!" Jiang Yuanzhou stood up suddenly, and the chair scraped against the floor with a harsh sound.

"Okay, okay, I won't say anymore."

Aunt Su saw that he was really anxious, so she quickly comforted him and put the largest piece of crab roe into his bowl, saying, "Eat quickly."

But I could clearly see that Aunt Su's mouth corners were still raised, and she was trying to restrain her smile.

Jiang Yuanzhou's chest was heaving violently. He rushed into the room regardless of anything and almost knocked over the green plants in the living room. He didn't leave the room until we left.

I didn’t understand it at that time until the chapter on puberty was discussed in biology class.

When I saw the squiggly curves in the illustrations, I suddenly remembered Jiang Yuanzhou's awkward and embarrassed look that day.

When reading aloud in Chinese class, Jiang Yuanzhou's voice suddenly broke when he read "Guan Guan Ju Jiu". The whole class laughed at him, his ears turned red, and he slammed his textbook to the ground.

When Lu Xingye was playing basketball, he shouted "pass the ball", but the sound turned into a sharp whistle, making the girls on the sidelines laugh.

They began to clear their throats frequently, and their Adam's apples rolled up and down like restless little walnuts, as if there was an invisible fishbone stuck there.

One morning, I felt a hard nub on my chest, like an unripe apricot pressing against my palm.

When I take a shower, there is a strange stinging sensation when hot water runs over me, which reminds me of the feeling of my baby teeth being shaky and connected to my flesh and blood when I was a child.

My mother bought me my first cotton vest. The elastic band left shallow red marks on my back. I turned around in front of the mirror and suddenly felt that the person in the mirror was both familiar and unfamiliar.

The classroom was filled with a faint smell of sweat and the aroma of secretly sprayed toilet water, and the calves under the desks were growing like bamboo shoots after a rain.

Occasionally, boys would find curled-up magazines in the toilet cubicles, and girls would pass around wrinkled physiology and hygiene textbooks. The paragraphs crossed out with highlighters contained tacit secrets.

We began to notice the changes in each other, but pretended not to see them.

That summer, like the steam rising from a steamer, carrying the sweet and fishy taste of seafood and the boy’s secret thoughts, was forever frozen in the memory of 2010.

I suddenly realized that the days when we could share ice cream without restraint have become, along with my lost baby teeth, forever lost in the candy box of my childhood.