Chapter 12
When we set up the tent, the sun was right on top of the mountain, and the rays slanted down, casting a dull golden glow on the grass.
The children shouted, ran, and chased each other, and their voices, high and low, floated in the mountains.
Zou Ping had already set up the first tent. The poles were perfectly curved, the guy ropes securely tied, the grass padded with moisture-proof mats, and stakes driven into the four corners, with the angles and orientations perfectly balanced. She squatted down to secure the last stake. When she looked up, a lock of hair fell from her forehead. She brushed it back behind her ear with her fingertips.
"...Have you practiced secretly?" Mai Sheng stood behind her, with a hint of disbelief in his voice.
He originally wanted to show off his skills.
As soon as I pulled out the manual, I saw she had already pitched one tent and had the other half of its frame erected. Her movements were quick, even graceful.
"I've participated in outdoor clubs before and played with them," Zou Ping said calmly. "I built it by myself. Once I got used to it, it became easy."
She doesn't like to explain too much.
In fact, she hadn't been interested in the outdoors at all. She just wanted a place where she wouldn't have to listen to arguments or be out of the spotlight, even if it was just a corner of the campsite.
Mai Sheng was silent for a moment, then lowered his head to help pull a guy rope. His technique was not very skillful, and the knot was tied loosely.
Zou Ping took a look and said nothing. She just tied it again silently after he turned around.
"Oh, it's time to set up the tent!" A male voice with a slight breath came in, and then a man wearing a quick-drying shirt and carrying a small bag came over, with sweat on his face.
"I'm late. Something happened at home this morning, so I missed the bus." He explained as he walked, his attitude not being abrupt. "I'm Shao Yiming, teacher. Zou Ping, you should have seen my name in the group."
"Hello." Zou Ping stood up and nodded slightly. "It just so happens that we are short of people here. If you know how to set up a tent--"
"As for me..." Shao Yiming smiled and scratched his head. "Although they arranged for me to lead the team, the last time I came to camp was when I was in junior high school. So..."
So, he actually didn't know how to set up a tent, but he felt a little embarrassed that he was late and couldn't help.
"Then go and accompany the kids." Zou Ping's eyes turned to the children climbing a tree not far away. "Keep an eye on them, don't let anything get into trouble."
"Okay." Shao Yiming agreed immediately and walked towards the group of children. He took the branch that a boy had just picked and said, "Hey, you can't eat this—"
As he spoke, he walked away, blended into the group of children, and quickly became familiar with several boys.
Mai Sheng watched from the side for a while and chuckled softly, "He's quite talkative."
Zou Ping didn't respond, but just tightened the rope buckle of the last tent, her hands moving slowly and steadily.
When the tents were all completed, the children had almost finished playing. Several girls sat on a piece of grass with small pillows in their arms, discussing whether they should tell ghost stories together later.
Shao Yiming came over with a bag of corn and meat skewers in his hands, which looked like he had just bought them from nearby.
"I'm treating everyone tonight and we're having an open-air barbecue," he said. "It's cold out here in the mountains at night, so eat something hot to warm you up."
"Barbecue?" Zou Ping raised her eyes.
"I'll do it. I was the barbecue team leader during the company's team building event." He said with a smile, "Mai Sheng, do you want to lend a hand?"
Mai Sheng raised his eyebrows and was about to agree.
"Okay." Mai Sheng raised his eyebrows and agreed.
Originally, he had planned to wait until the tents were set up and then offer to buy everyone something to eat. Zou Ping had been busy all afternoon, and he wanted to find a suitable opportunity to let her relax and show off a bit.
But now, the rhythm has been interrupted.
Shao Yiming has already started asking some older boys to build the stove, move tables, and distribute ingredients. Everything is lively and bustling.
"Should I assign some sketching assignments?" Zou Ping looked at the children sitting on the grass, then glanced at the sky and said to Mai Sheng beside him.
"You are a teacher and you ask me this?" Mai Sheng smiled, his tone relaxed, but his eyes seemed to glance at the side of her face inadvertently.
He paused, then added slowly, "Or... you're not very good at controlling the rhythm, and you're not always that capable. Do you need someone to help you out and guide you?"
The tone sounded gentle and harmless, but there was a hint of provocation hidden in the ending, like an invisible hook, quietly swung out from the gap between the words, trying to draw out some kind of response from her.
But Zou Ping didn't catch it.
She just frowned slightly, as if she didn't understand the twists and turns in his words, and as if she didn't intend to respond to that meaning.
"I just think they're having a lot of fun," she said. "It's a bit of a letdown to ask people to sketch now."
Mai Sheng glanced at her, and something indistinguishable flashed briefly in his eyes.
"You are a very Buddhist teacher." He said with a smile.
Zou Ping didn't respond to him, but just glanced at the grass from a distance.
Several children were piling dry leaves on the grass, talking about "summoning a canyon monster." One child was writing and drawing on a small drawing board, saying it was the "Advent Spell."
It was a silly scene, but also kind of touching.
She suddenly thought of Tang Yuchuan.
He didn't often talk about himself, but she remembered one time when he was sitting on the sofa flipping through a book when a yellowed sketch accidentally slipped out of the folder and fell to the floor.
She picked it up. It was a quick sketch, a simple portrait composition, but beautifully executed. The face was only half drawn, the lines clean, the shading precise, like a hand used to drawing.
She asked him, "Did you draw this?"
Tang Yuchuan didn't look up: "I've painted a little before."
"You stopped painting later?"
“Then I felt it was boring.”
He spoke casually, but she could tell from his tone that he didn't want anyone to ask any more questions.
She didn't ask any more questions. He later tore up the painting and stuffed it into the trash can, his movements so smooth that it seemed as if he was throwing away the entire "ability to draw" thing.
But she remembered that sketch, its lines like quiet bones, drawn as if the artist knew the man very well, as if understanding and determining something. She guessed it might be a story from his past, or it might be nothing at all.
Now she stood among the children, watching them scribbling on paper with all kinds of colors, the sunlight shining through the leaves, dancing on the ground bit by bit. She suddenly wanted to know -
If he were here, what would he paint? An old tree, wildflowers, or someone? Real, imaginary, or chaotic?
This kind of thought always makes people feel complicated. The more detailed it is, the more difficult it is to calm down. She gently closed her eyes and tried to imagine letting it go quietly from her mind.
Mai Sheng was saying something, but she didn't hear it clearly. When she came to her senses, she saw him take two steps forward, bend down to pick up a dead branch on the grass, and turn around to greet her.
"How about I go and gather them for you, and you stay here to arrange the tasks?"
His tone was gentle and considerate, as if it was a matter of course, but also with a sense of "I can help you, so you should let me help you."
Zou Ping was silent for a moment and shook his head.
"Don't rush to call them." She said softly, "They are painting right now. Even though it's not what we arranged, they are still painting."
Mai Sheng was startled and looked down at the group of children.
Several children gathered in a circle, some using colored pencils to paint on dead leaves, others attempting to draw "meadow elves," their drawings distorted but with great joy. This free and chaotic creativity was completely different from the "sketching" in the classroom.
“Sometimes we interfere too much and end up interrupting them,” Zou Ping said softly. “I was like that when I was a kid. There were a lot of things I wanted to remember, but as soon as the teacher started talking, I felt like I didn’t want to draw anymore.”
She paused, took a deep breath, and smiled again, as if saying to herself, "Maybe this is rebellion."
Mai Sheng looked at her. That smile was not perfunctory, but some kind of irrepressible gentle emotion rising slowly from the bottom of his heart, and then she suppressed it herself.
She wasn't a particularly enthusiastic teacher, and she wasn't even very good at coaxing people, but she had a way of making people quiet down, as if she could hear what everyone was thinking, so she wasn't in a hurry to interrupt.
Mai Sheng suddenly stopped talking.
Zou Ping didn't notice the ignored part of her words.
Another picture appeared in her mind——
If Tang Yuchuan was here, he would probably sit farther away and watch the children making noise in silence.
When she turned around to look at him, he didn't say anything, but just raised a glass of water in his hand and waved it at her.
It wasn't about calling her over, it was about reminding her—"You're thirsty."
Such simple details always touch her heart gently when she is off guard.
"Teacher Zou, Teacher Zou!"
A little girl ran over, holding a sketchpad in her hand. "I drew a mushroom fairy. Do you think it looks like a human?"
Zou Ping took the sketchpad, looked at it for two seconds, and nodded: "It looks like it, and it's a slightly bald kind of immortal."
The little girl jumped for joy and ran away.
Mai Sheng, standing behind her, suddenly said, "You only seem truly happy when you're with them."
Zou Ping turned her head, the smile in her eyes still not completely gone: "Hmm?"
"I'm not kidding." Mai Sheng said seriously, "When you talk to me, you're always a little...absent-minded, but when they call you, you seem to light up."
"Maybe it's because no adults were willing to listen to me when I was a child." She thought for a moment and said, "So I think we should take what children say more seriously."
Mai Sheng said "hmm" and did not continue the topic.
She turned to look at the microphone, her eyes apologetic. "I was a little distracted when I was talking just now. It's not because what you said isn't as important as the children, but because I tend to get distracted easily and my thoughts tend to jump... I'm really sorry."
Mai Sheng looked down at his watch, then glanced at the sky.
"You have to help me with something later."
"What's up?"
"Barbecue," he said. "Since Mr. Shao brought it up, I can't lose too badly."
"What's there to argue about? You guys are all so childish."
"I'm not trying to compete." Mai Sheng said with a smile, "I just want to show off my decent skills in front of you."
Zou Ping didn't respond, but just looked up at him.
A thought suddenly came to her mind, and she suddenly wanted to know if Tang Yuchuan had eaten well today. He had hardly eaten at home recently and rarely went into the kitchen. A few days ago, she accidentally glanced at the bottle of stomach medicine on the table and found that half of it was gone.
She lowered her head, not wanting the thought to wander too far.
Mai Sheng was still excitedly talking about how to make the sauce and how to match the ingredients.
She listened intermittently, but her eyes unconsciously drifted towards the children. The wind blew across the grass, bringing with it the fragrance of fine green grass.
She secretly decided that she must send a message to Tang Yuchuan when she returned home tonight, not asking anything else, just asking if he had eaten well.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
