Chapter 11 Bitter Summer: He said they didn't know each other.
After chatting with Zhao Yixiao, Shen Qingli returned to her seat in the audience. More than an hour later, the performance on stage finally came to an end.
After the performance, the first-year high school students left in order, and then school was over.
Shen Qingyun and the others had finished class early, so she stood at the door waiting for Shen Qingli.
Seeing her come out, she called out to her, "Ali, let's go home."
"Okay." She greeted Chen Chaoxi beside her and then followed Shen Qingyun.
-
They walked toward the school gate. On the way, Shen Qingyun casually asked her about her performance at the party that evening and whether she had a good time.
"It was alright, everyone performed quite well." She knew that Shen Qingyun's question was not what it seemed, but she didn't want to bring up Zhao Yixiao and Luo Yiqiu's performance, because she thought that no matter what she said, Shen Qingyun probably wouldn't be very happy.
"Is that so..." Seeing her lack of interest, Shen Qingyun lowered her eyelids and did not ask any further questions.
-
They both returned home in silence, each harboring their own unspeakable secrets.
Back in her room, Shen Qingli took out her homework from her schoolbag and was about to start writing when her mother suddenly knocked on the door and came in: "Qingli."
Upon hearing the voice, she instinctively wanted to run away, but was forced to turn around and force a smile as she asked, "What's wrong, Mom... Mom?"
When Chen's mother met her gaze, she looked away as if she had been burned, not daring to look into her eyes.
She held a box in her hand, hesitated, and placed it in front of her, her tone stiff but gentle: "I heard from Xiaoyun that it's inconvenient for you not to have a cell phone, so Mom... bought you one. You can take it with you from now on, and your dad, mom, and sister can call you to contact you."
As soon as she finished speaking, Shen Qingli was clearly taken aback by the brand-new packaging box that was pushed in front of her. She had never expected that her mother would buy her a new phone, so she didn't know how to react for a moment.
Seeing that she didn't react, Chen's mother assumed that she didn't like it, and suddenly became flustered: "If you don't like this brand, I'll return it and have Xiaoyun take you to the mall to buy it this weekend..."
"No need, I like it very much. Thank you, Mom." She suppressed the bitterness in her heart, interrupted her, and looked up at her with a smile.
"That's good. Then take it apart and turn it on yourself. If you don't know how to use it, ask your sister. Mom won't disturb you while you do your homework." Seeing the genuine smile on her face, Chen's mother finally felt relieved. After she finished speaking, she closed the bedroom door and left.
Now Shen Qingli was alone in the room again. She stared blankly at the things on the table, feeling a mix of emotions, a mix of happiness and sadness.
She thought that if she were Shen Qingyun, she would probably hug her mother happily upon receiving this gift. Unfortunately, she wasn't, so she could only show her panic in the face of this gift. Her first reaction was that she dared not accept such an expensive gift, even knowing that it was given to her by her own mother.
She couldn't accept it openly, nor could she act affectionately; she could only whisper "thank you" like a wooden doll.
Since Shen Qingyun's illness last time, her mother has been treating her badly, as if to apologize. In recent weeks, she has been very concerned about her, including this phone. Although she doesn't say it, Shen Qingli knows that this is her way of apologizing.
Parents often find it difficult to say "I'm sorry" to their children, as if saying it would damage their authority. Therefore, they can only try to make amends in other ways.
She knew all this, which is why her emotions became more and more complicated. She knew how Shen's mother and Shen Qingyun usually got along. Even if they had a quarrel, they would never buy her things to please her like Shen's mother did. As the closest mother and daughter by blood, they were always very careful with each other.
This is perhaps the most frustrating thing. She sighed, opened the box in front of her, and took out a brand new button phone.
After fumbling around for a while, she figured out almost all the functions on the phone. She entered her grandparents' phone numbers into her contacts from memory, so that she wouldn't have to keep borrowing her parents' phones to call back home when she missed them.
Just in case, she also saved the contact information that Shen Qingyun had given her to her family. After organizing the basic information on her phone, she suddenly remembered something.
She got up, took a metal key from her schoolbag, and opened the hidden cabinet behind her desk. Inside the cabinet lay two empty items.
A high school math workbook and a black diary. These were things she brought from her grandparents' house. The metal lock was given to her by Shen Qingyun.
On her first day there, she was told that if there was anything important that her parents couldn't see, she should lock it away somewhere they didn't know about, otherwise her mother would definitely find it. Sure enough, apart from a hidden compartment that was hard to spot, her mother searched through everything in her room under the pretext of cleaning.
Thinking about it, she looked at the two items in the cabinet and sighed again without realizing it. In fact, the things that should have been locked up with this diary were long gone.
But she forgot... what she was looking for was no longer here.
Thinking of this, she hesitated as she looked at the cabinet in front of her, but finally took out the diary.
Turning to the first page, a line of text was prominently written at the very top of the notebook.
"I hate this rainy summer." The date was three months ago, the date she first arrived at this home.
Upon seeing that line, she paused in her flipping through the diary. In truth, she didn't enjoy writing a diary; it was just that her junior high Chinese teacher forced them to submit one every week as a way to practice their writing skills, which was how she developed the habit. But her diary was just like this one, a casual and emotionless record of her current feelings.
Since it's for her own eyes anyway, she thought, she doesn't need to write a full page like she would for a teacher.
The first page was filled with a jumble of negative emotions. She glanced at it casually and turned to the second page. Suddenly, several flashes of lightning appeared outside the window, followed by a deafening clap of thunder. The window in front of her opened a little, and a downpour began without warning. Raindrops pounded into the room, and a few even landed on her diary. A rain stain spread across a sentence on the second page. Her eyes darkened, and as if to cover something up, she hurriedly turned to the next page.
...
Starting from a certain page, the content on the paper began to become densely packed, forming a stark contrast to the sparse content of the previous few pages. As she read through the lines, she was surprised to find that what she had recorded back then were all good feelings.
Looking at the girl's heart pounding with excitement, she couldn't help but smile. But soon, she suddenly remembered the mysterious question Luo Yiqiu had asked her a few days ago.
"Qingli, did you know Lin Xiaqing before?"
It was a question that was both expected and somewhat unexpected. She could see that beneath Luo Yiqiu's carefree exterior lay an extraordinary level of keen observation, but she really hadn't anticipated that she would ask so directly. As a result, she couldn't help but pause for a few seconds in surprise.
Shen Qingli didn't answer immediately, but instead asked her, "Why did you suddenly ask this?"
“Oh, I just had a feeling that you two seemed to know each other when you were on the playground last time, but when I asked Lin Xiaqing, he said he didn’t know you. But I still feel a bit strange, so I thought I’d ask you.” Luo Yiqiu always trusted her first instinct. She knew that asking Lin Xiaqing again probably wouldn’t get her any answers, so she simply came to ask Shen Qingli instead.
"He said... he doesn't know me?" Shen Qingli immediately grasped the key point Luo Yiqiu was making, and her expression froze for a moment after hearing those words.
"Yes, so do you know him?" Luo Yiqiu didn't notice anything amiss and continued to ask.
"..."
Faced with her barely concealed curiosity, Shen Qingli lowered her head. She suddenly laughed, though it was unclear who she was laughing at. She had too many questions, but Lin Xiaqing's statement of not recognizing her made her heart ache uncontrollably, causing her great discomfort.
After a long while, she bit her lip hard, trying to keep herself from losing her composure, and then gave the same answer as Lin Xiaqing in a stiff tone: "I don't know her."
"Okay..." After hearing what she said, Luo Yiqiu had no choice but to nod. She began to doubt her usually accurate intuition.
Shen Qingli stared at her, lost in thought. After a long, long time, she finally calmed herself down and asked casually, "You...were you in the same school as Lin Xiaqing?"
"You two seem to have a pretty good relationship." As if worried that her question was a bit deliberate, she deliberately added a sentence to make amends.
"No, that's not it. I think he went to junior high school in another place before, so we weren't very close. It's just that his dad and my dad have a good relationship, and sometimes I'll go to their house for a meal or something."
Because it was she who brought up the question about Lin Xiaqing first, Shen Qingli didn't notice anything amiss when she asked Shen Qingli's follow-up question.
Hearing the other party say that only confirmed that the two of them did not know each other.
Hearing her say that, Shen Qingli nodded casually. She had actually asked a question that she already knew the answer to from the beginning, but she also learned something else from that answer. Thinking about this, she felt completely powerless.
She felt like her left and right hemispheres were fighting each other. Some of the information she learned from Luo Yiqiu and the things she knew herself seemed to exist in two parallel universes, and she was starting to lose her sense of direction.
Shen Qingli closed her eyes and sighed, letting Luo Yiqiu pull her back to the classroom.
Along the way, Luo Yiqiu seemed unwilling to give up and continued to press, "Qingli, you really don't know Lin Xiaqing? Don't lie to me."
...
Thinking of this, she looked up at the protruding hidden cabinet, and at the very bottom of the cabinet was an exercise book, but the cover of the book did not have her own name on it.
Instead, it consists of two different words.
Xia Qing.
She stared blankly in the direction of the cabinet, but didn't have the courage to pick up anything inside.
In a sense, she did not lie to Luo Yiqiu; the person she knew was not named Lin Xiaqing.
As the wind and rain outside the window grew stronger, raindrops kept hitting her hands. The icy touch brought her back to her senses. She stood up, intending to close the window, but suddenly a gust of wind and rain rose outside, and it seemed as if an unseen hand was constantly turning the pages of the diary on her desk.
Fate seemed to be guiding everything. She stopped what she was doing and found that the diary had stopped again on the page she had been deliberately avoiding. She had nowhere to escape.
The raindrop fell on the diary, staining the ink black; from a distance, it looked more like a tear.
The handwriting was so wet that it became blurry and illegible, yet she remembered the contents of this page better than anyone else.
That was the beginning of everything.
July 10, 2012, early summer, torrential rain.
I ran into someone I didn't like.
...
A note from the author:
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Let's start revealing the secrets~ The limited edition story of the two's past is here ovo
The following plot is from a previously saved draft. Because it's about their past, it needs a major revision. I'm taking a short break; updates will be on Thursday. [Please][Please][Please]
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