At the end of autumn
The classroom was still bustling during recess, chalk dust swirling in the sunlight. Several girls gathered together, and one of them lowered her voice, speaking with a hint of concern:
"Hey! Have you noticed? Cheng Xiaorui hasn't had his period for almost two months... He's never been like this before. Could something big have happened at home?"
As soon as she finished speaking, a sneer came from the back row.
"He probably died out there!" Zhao Dakun crossed his legs, his shoe ruthlessly stomping on Cheng Xiaorui's clean but long-vacant tabletop. His face was filled with undisguised disgust and gloating. "That poor bastard, who knows where he's rotting in some corner."
"What you said is too rude! You're cursing me!" Another girl retorted with a frown, glancing at his dirty soles with disdain. "Put your feet down quickly, aren't you disgusting?"
"It's not your table, why do you complain--" Zhao Dakun stiffened his neck and only said half of his words.
“Bang—!”
There was a loud bang! Accompanied by the girl's scream, Zhao Dakun and his chair were kicked to the ground with a fierce force, falling awkwardly on his back, and the chair legs scraped a harsh noise on the concrete floor.
He was stunned for a moment, scrambling to his feet. He looked up and met Lu Ziyi's icy eyes. The air around them froze, and all whispers ceased abruptly. The girls in the front row hunched their shoulders in fear, then turned back, pretending to concentrate on their textbooks, even breathing softly.
"Lu, Brother Lu..." The arrogance on Zhao Dakun's face disappeared without a trace, leaving only panic. He hurriedly picked up the chair, frantically wiped the shoe prints on Cheng Xiaorui's desk with his sleeve, and put the table and chair back in place.
Lu Ziyi looked down at him with undisguised disgust on his face, as if he was looking at some dirty garbage.
"You're blocking the way." His voice was low, but every word carried a sense of pressure. "Get out of the way. Don't touch here anymore."
"I...I understand." Zhao Dakun nodded repeatedly, not daring to stay for even half a second. He almost slipped back to his seat along the wall, not daring to breathe.
Zhou Mingxuan, standing by, was so stunned he dropped his comic book and forgot to pick it up. He opened his mouth, but under Lu Ziyi's cold gaze, he swallowed all his questions and surprise and lowered his head silently.
Lu Zi didn't even glance at anyone, as if the thunderbolt strike had just been a casual dust-blowing. He walked to his seat, sat down, and took out his textbook for the next class. His profile was as cold and hard as a sculpture.
An eerie silence descended upon the classroom. The sun shone brightly, yet it seemed unable to penetrate this small area shrouded in an invisible chill. The seat that had been empty for two months remained vacant, yet no one dared to cast a casual comment or a profane glance.
The bell ringing at the end of evening study seemed to break a spell of silence, and the classroom was instantly filled with the shuffling of desks and chairs and the boisterous chatter of voices. Lu Ziyi shoved the books on the table into his backpack, his movements almost swift, a shrouded in a depressing atmosphere that kept strangers away.
Zhao Dakun hesitated for a long time, but still moved closer and spoke cautiously: "Brother Lu...you..." He wanted to ask Lu Ziyi what was wrong with him these days, why he didn't play basketball, why he didn't order takeout with him, and he looked like a powder keg that could explode at any time.
"What?" Lu Ziyi turned his head abruptly, his eyes cold and impatient. Before Zhao Dakun could finish, he retorted, his words as fast as a bullet. "Is there something wrong? If not, don't ask. I'm busy right now."
His voice wasn't too loud, but it carried a sharp, cutting edge that instantly blocked out the surrounding bustle. Zhao Dakun was startled by the sharp sting in his words, swallowing the words that were on the tip of his tongue, and only stammered, "Oh..."
Lu Ziyi stopped looking at him, picked up his schoolbag and threw it over his shoulder, then merged into the crowd surging at the classroom door without looking back. Zhao Dakun looked at his visibly thinner figure, scratched his head, and sighed silently: Brother Lu, it's not that he's busy, he's clearly suffocating.
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On the last day of October, the sycamore tree outside the window became the most faithful calendar.
Starting from the edges, the leaves gradually became stained by the colors of autumn, from green to yellow, and then to a dry ochre. At first, only one or two leaves occasionally fell, but later, a thin layer of leaves covered the windowsill almost every morning. The cleaner complained and swept again and again, but there were always a few stubborn leaves, clinging to the damp and cold windowpane, like the hope he was clinging to and refusing to dissipate.
The days are like sand dripping into an hourglass, silently but accumulating layer by layer.
On the calendar on my mother's bedside table, the numbers were crossed out day by day with a red pen. At first, those red crosses were drawn vigorously and neatly, as if they were a solemn ritual. By October, the handwriting began to become sloppy and superficial, and some days were just randomly dotted with the tip of the pen.
On this day, Cheng Xiaorui wrote down with a pen, "Mom drank half a bowl of porridge more today." When the pen tip paused, a sycamore leaf happened to fall on the windowsill.
When the nurse came to change the IV bottle, she casually said, "It's getting cold, you need to close the windows at night."
He looked up and found that the half golden tree outside the window had withered away without him noticing.
On the first Monday of November, Chen Zihan changed out of his school uniform for a thick sweater. He ran into the ward, puffing out white air and pulling out a bowl of still-hot sugar-roasted chestnuts from his pocket. "I saw these on the street. I remember you loved them."
As Cheng Xiaorui peeled chestnuts, he noticed his mother's hands were even colder than they had been the previous week. One morning in mid-January, Cheng Xiaorui woke up from the cold. The radiator was beginning to heat up, and a thin mist formed on the windows. As he wiped his mother's body, he noticed her shoulder blades, like wings about to break.
The doctor spoke gently during his ward rounds: "It's the beginning of winter, so please keep warm."
The coats he brought changed from thin knitwear to thick fleece sweaters, and finally to a half-worn cotton jacket. When accompanying his mother at night, he would gently tuck his mother's exposed hands back under the quilt and wrap himself tighter. The morning dew turned to frost, and the moisture on the window grew thicker, drawing a smile, but it faded slower and slower.
Zhou Yuan called again. He didn't mention the convenience store incident again. He simply lowered his voice and asked, "Xiao Rui, do you have enough money?" He leaned against the cold wall, listening to the cacophony on the other end of the line. He opened his mouth but managed only three words: "Yes, it's enough."
On the last weekend of November, the first moderate rain fell. Raindrops pattered against the window, and the hospital room felt exceptionally chilly. His mother's sleep was growing longer and longer, and her words when awake were becoming less and less. He sat in a chair beside the bed, watching the drips of liquid from the IV tube, almost hearing the sound of time passing.
Until one morning, he was awakened by the overly bright sunlight outside the window and found a thin layer of white frost on the windows of the cars parked downstairs. He exhaled a puff of white air and suddenly realized that November had passed.
Autumn is completely over.
On the first day of December, a cold snap swept across the city. Cheng Xiaorui, as usual, stayed by his mother's side in the hospital ward. The gray sky outside the window and the lingering smell of disinfectant blended into a depressing atmosphere. He had long lost track of the date, remembering only that the doctor had said last week, "The situation isn't optimistic."
At three o'clock in the afternoon, the ward door was gently pushed open. Chen Zihan walked in, shivering, his nose slightly red from the cold. In his hands, he carefully held a small paper box tied with a light blue ribbon.
"Xiao Rui," he put the cardboard box on the bedside table and took out a simple photo album from his backpack, "Today is the first day of December. I heard there will be the first snow. Eat something sweet and look at this. Maybe you'll feel better."
Cheng Xiaorui took the album blankly, his fingertips touching the cold cover. When he opened the first page, his breathing suddenly stopped.
It was a photo of him and his mother, taken on the balcony of their old home when he was five years old. His mother, wearing the floral dress his father had given her, held him high in the air, the sunlight shone on their radiant smiles. He had long forgotten the photo existed.
He trembled as he turned back: his mother squatting down to tie his shoelaces on his seventh birthday, the mother and son hugging each other tightly when he won the speech contest championship at the age of ten, and his mother's serious silhouette as she picked out a new schoolbag for him at the market when he was thirteen...
Each photo is meticulously labeled with a date and a brief caption. These moments forgotten by time, these memories that his mother never mentioned but carefully treasured, are now quietly collected and sorted by another person and presented to him again.
Cheng Xiaorui's vision blurred completely, and scalding tears splashed onto the album cover. He hurriedly wiped them with his sleeve, but the more he wiped, the wetter they became. Weeks of suppressed sadness, fear, and endless longing for past warmth finally burst forth.
Chen Zihan quietly opened the paper box, revealing a delicate matcha cake. He didn't dissuade her, but silently handed over the tissue, then cut off a small piece of cake, placed it on a plate, and pushed it to Cheng Xiaorui's side.
At that moment, a beautifully wrapped gift box was quietly placed on the bench outside the ward. Inside was a set of imported nutritional supplements and the latest smartphone, which Lu Ziyi had instructed the housekeeper to prepare. He remembered that Cheng Xiaorui's phone screen had been broken for several months.
Through the glass window on the door, he could see Cheng Xiaorui sobbing over the photo album, and Chen Zihan quietly accompanying him. Lu Ziyi stood in the shadows of the corridor, watching the gift he had carefully prepared lying on the bench, and finally turned and left.
The moment the elevator door closed, he heard a long-suppressed cry coming from the ward. He had rarely heard Cheng Xiaorui cry so deeply from the depths of his soul.
What Chen Zihan brought to Cheng Xiaorui was not just a photo album, but the entire world he was about to lose. Lu Zi also finally realized that some things can't be bought back no matter how much money is spent, such as those cherished memories, such as the cold and rainy night when he chose to turn around and leave, as if he had lost the right to stay close.
Outside the window, the first snowflake of this winter falls quietly.
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