Chapter 5
Going to elementary school was a big deal for Kang Xingxing and Zhou Yue. They were so excited that they couldn't sleep all night. They agreed to greet the teacher, be polite, introduce themselves loudly, and tell the teacher that although one of them was surnamed Zhou and the other was surnamed Kang, they were brother and sister and had to sit together. As a result, they were so sleepy that they couldn't open their eyes the next day.
For the first time ever, Zhou Tiancheng gave his two children a ride. He drove his family's Santana to the school, got out of the car, held one child each in the hand, walked through the noisy playground, went up to the second floor, and squeezed through the chaotic students and parents who were like headless flies. He smiled and handed the two children's hands to their homeroom teacher.
"Thank you for your hard work. This is my daughter Zhou Yue and my son Kang Xingxing. I have discussed the specific situation with Principal Dai. I'll trouble you to take care of the brother and sister."
The head teacher was a female teacher in her forties, with a square face and wearing a pair of tortoise-shell-framed glasses. She was very majestic. She had been maintaining order all morning and her face was red from yelling. This time, her face became even redder. Afterwards, Kang Xingxing and Zhou Yue naturally sat in the first row of the classroom and sat at the same table.
First graders are similar to kindergarteners, noisy and hyperactive, crying hysterically and vomiting, and they simply cannot sit still on a chair for more than three minutes.
But Kang Xingxing was probably older, and he was particularly focused and quiet. When the teacher asked him to put his hands behind his back, he would do so. When the teacher taught them to organize things, he would keep his schoolbag and desk pockets clean.
He kept the milk and apples that Dai Yan brought for Zhou Yue with him, and would take them out and give them to her whenever she wanted to eat. There were no textbooks for the first grade, so Zhou Yue's desk pocket was cleaner than her face.
After school at noon, Dai Yan picked them up and took them home for lunch and a nap.
This road is different from the road to the kindergarten. There is a small arch bridge with a thin stream underneath. It is more like a drainage ditch than a stream or a river, winding like a small snake and very turbid. Looking down from the bridge, the water is green, and the bottom is covered with serrated algae. Occasionally, a small fish as thin as a finger pops up, spits out a bubble, and disappears with a flick of its tail. It is far less than the garbage floating on the water.
"Mom! What's that written on it?" Zhou Yue skipped over, pulling her mother's hand and pointing at the words engraved on the bridge. Dai Yan glanced at them and absentmindedly replied, "Bridge of Sighs."
Later, Zhou Yue and Kang Xingxing walked across the bridge again and again. Dai Yan walked behind them, and she walked in front holding Kang Xingxing's hand. She loved to lie on the round bridge pier and look down, waiting for small fish or turtles to emerge, but more often she looked in the mirror.
Girls mature early. She thinks she is pretty, with big eyes, a small mouth, and white skin. How can she look like a chimpanzee?
She glared with disdain at the little black face that suddenly appeared on the water surface. Against her backdrop, it looked like a wild beast, with thick and black eyebrows, even darker than his face. He smiled with his big white teeth bared, like a black cloth with a tear in it.
"What are you looking at? Ugly freak!" Zhou Yue turned her head away arrogantly, but her eyes slanted back at Kang Xingxing.
"Look at Yueyue, she's pretty." Kang Xingxing grinned foolishly, her teeth bared even wider as she carried Zhou Yue down from the bridge pier. "It's dangerous."
That night, Kang Xingxing didn't go to bed early. He turned over, put his hands on his face, and lay on the pillow, looking at Zhou Yue. He was silent for a long time and said, "I'm so ugly." A row of big white teeth showed in the darkness, "But Yueyue is so beautiful, more beautiful than Aunt Dai and Uncle Zhou combined."
"Good to know, Chimpanzee."
"My name is not Chimpanzee, my name is Kang Xingxing, which means Xing in Stars."
"Isn't it the 'ape' in chimpanzee?"
"It's the stars in the sky, the stars with the moon."
"I don't care! It's a chimpanzee!"
Kang Xingxing was silent for a long time. "I can write my own name. I can teach Yueyue how to write it."
"Can you write?" Zhou Yue suddenly became interested.
Kang Xingxing held Zhou Yue's hand outside the quilt and wrote "Xingxing" over and over again on her palm...
The story of "Beauty and the Beast" is deeply rooted in the hearts of first-grade elementary school students, and they soon became interested in the Zhou brothers and sisters.
One is black and the other is white. Kang Xingxing is taller, stronger and more rugged than his peers, like a little black bear. In comparison, Zhou Yue is just a little white rabbit.
The little white rabbit loves to talk and laugh, chirping and not afraid of anything. She is forgetful, but in fact, she is generous and will share anything delicious and fun with others. Kang Xingxing is always by her side, following her wherever she goes, silently, holding everything of hers: her schoolbag, her water cup, her coat... She is like a mobile clothes rack.
But the main reason why the Zhou brothers and sisters were being remembered was Zhou Yue. When the male students in the senior grades saw Zhou Yue's white round face with eyes as clear as gemstones and thick, black and shiny pigtails, they felt that they saw a ray of hope in their boring lives.
They ran down from the third and fourth floors, blocked the classroom door, covered their mouths and yelled: "Zhou Yue! Someone is looking for Zhou Yue!" When Zhou Yue came out with a confused look on her face, a few bad boys suddenly stretched out their legs to trip her, grabbed her braids and lifted her up when she fell, holding her in their hands as if she were a chicken and laughing wildly.
"Let go, let me go!" Zhou Yue was most afraid of pain. She covered her pulled scalp and cried heart-wrenchingly. Through her tearful eyes, she saw a shadow suddenly flash over. When she looked clearly, the boy who pulled her braids was already lying on the ground with his face covered. The rest of them, who were clapping and laughing just now, were now standing there in a daze, with wooden faces, and subconsciously huddled together like frightened birds.
No one was more surprised than Zhou Yue. The dull, wooden Kang Xingxing always smiled with his eyelashes drooping when she scolded him. He rubbed the wrinkles of his clothes helplessly. His chubby hands looked soft, like a small bag of grease, but now his fists were clenched tightly, his dark skin was wrinkled pale, and his eyelashes were also drooping, but there was no smile on his face, let alone fear. He stared at the big child crying on the ground with an expressionless face. His whole body was tense, even the air around him was tense.
The incident was later settled in the hospital, and the boy who was beaten had five stitches at the corner of his eye.
The child inside the clinic was howling like a ghost, and the child's mother outside the clinic was howling like a ghost.
The Zhou family was represented by Zhou Tiancheng, so he didn't say anything. He just sat on an iron chair in the hospital corridor, cleaning his ears with a medical cotton swab, listening to the woman crying and cursing at the top of her lungs without saying a word, completely concentrating.
"No one in the Zhou family is a good person!"
The woman's face was covered in tears and snot, her voice was hoarse as a broken gong, she had no strength to cry or shout, she held on to her last breath and beat her chest and stamped her feet, like a mad mute. This amused Zhou Tiancheng. He broke a cotton swab and scraped the ear canal with his little finger, laughing as he scraped:
"Fei Fei's mom, please save some energy. The child is injured like this, and you will have to explain to his father when you get home. Don't use up all your energy now, or you won't have the energy to get beaten later."
"You still have the nerve to say that! If it weren't for your son, would Feifei be injured like this?"
Feifei's mother poked Zhou Tiancheng's nose with her trembling hand, and there was no sound, only panting. Zhou Tiancheng put his hands on the back of the chair and smiled, not even trying to dodge.
No matter how powerful a woman is, she is still a woman after all. She didn't dare to really poke him, so she had to make up for it by saying something harsh: "Look, I'll let the child's father take care of your whole family!"
"Look at you, we're all neighbors, so who doesn't know who?" Zhou Tiancheng said with an even more shameless smile. His dimples appeared when he smiled, and he looked morbidly insane. "If Dapeng really had the guts to pick on outsiders, he wouldn't be beating his wife behind closed doors all day long, don't you think?"
"You!" Feifei's mother felt a poke in her sore spot, and immediately a mouthful of blood blocked her chest. No woman is born a shrew. It's all the unpleasant things in her daily life, coupled with a husband who beats people when he's drunk, that drive her to this point. Zhou Tiancheng is bad because of his vicious mind. With just a few words, every word pierces the heart. How can a paper tiger like Feifei's mother bear it? She immediately fell to the ground, kicking her legs and crying loudly, "Come on! Come and see! What kind of world is this? Beating people is justified! I only have this one son. How can I live if anything happens to him!"
"You know whether you were right to hit someone or not."
Zhou Tiancheng flicked the cotton swab away, lowered his crossed legs, sat up straight, and approached the woman. He put away his smile and said seriously, "Xingxing is a sensible and humble child. He wouldn't fight back even if you beat him to death. Unless you touched my daughter. Since you did, you deserve to be punished. I, Zhou Tiancheng, don't have any other skills, but I can still afford this medical expense. Don't worry, at most Feifei will have to come to the hospital a few more times and get a few more stitches, and she'll naturally learn her lesson."
"How dare you! I'll call the police!" The woman sitting on the ground lunged forward, threatening to bite him. Zhou Tiancheng leaned back deftly, raised his chin, and chuckled, "Go ahead, report it now, and see if they'll do anything about it."
The woman lost her voice, the paper tiger was completely torn into pieces, she sat on the ground and cried with her teeth gritted.
"Oh, that's enough," Zhou Tiancheng frowned slightly, "It's no big deal, just sit here..." He smiled frivolously, his eyes drifting down. Seeing her blush and cover her collar, his smile became more vicious, "Don't wear purple at your age, it's disgusting."
"And," he stood up and stretched, fanning his nose with his hand, "female comrades, brush your teeth frequently, otherwise your mouth will look like a blown toilet." After saying that, he staggered to the corner of the wall. The two children stood there with their heads down. Kang Xingxing held Zhou Yue's hand and protected her behind him.
"Lift your head!" Zhou Tiancheng raised his hand and slapped Kang Xingxing on the back of the head, rubbing it. "A man can only bow his head to the woman he loves. If I see you bow your head again, I will beat you every time I see you do so."
Kang Xingxing raised her face and looked blankly at Zhou Tiancheng. That was his nominal father. They kept the same secret. He had always stubbornly called him Uncle Zhou. He was not a good man and seldom spoke, but at this moment, his eyelashes bathed in the sunlight were so gentle that it was heartbreaking.
"Okay, let's go." But Zhou Tiancheng rarely had moments like this, and he quickly resumed his nonchalant tone. The midday sun was blazing brightly, piercing through the window and causing him to frown. His pale face was filled with gloomy impatience. He put on his sunglasses and strode towards the stairs at the end of the corridor. "What's the name of the peach cake your mother wants to eat?"
"Old Walnut Crisps." Kang Xingxing led Zhou Yue and followed Zhou Tiancheng like little followers, taking two steps at a time and jogging to keep up with his pace.
"Where?"
"At the back of the market, next to the roast goose stall."
"Um."
Zhou Tiancheng responded without saying anything else. He walked from the third floor to the first floor, walked out of the hospital, got into the Santana, and rolled down the window. The autumn wind was scorching hot. He took the soda and threw it to the two kids in the back seat. He unscrewed a bottle and drank half of it in one gulp. He put the bottle down, put his hands on the steering wheel, and suddenly spat, "Don't you think your mother is a troublemaker? Which peach cake tastes different?" He pouted and shook his head, imitating Dai Yan's cunning look, "I want to eat that one!"
The two little ones in the back row were each drinking a bottle of orange soda. They were giggling at his vivid performance and completely forgot the fear and worry they had felt since morning, as if a gloomy rainy day had finally cleared up.
The car windows were open all the way. The leaves of the ginkgo trees in the north had turned golden in autumn. The wheels pressed on the asphalt road, and the dead leaves made a slight crackling sound. The fragrance of autumn chrysanthemums filled the air. Kang Xingxing and Zhou Yue lay by the open car windows, letting the breeze blow on their faces.
As the car passed the Bridge of Sighs, even the canal under the bridge was shimmering, rippling with thousands of stars.
"You can enjoy the breeze, but don't stretch your hands out." Zhou Tiancheng deliberately put on a fierce face.
"Yessir!" Clear children's voices rang out at the same time, accompanied by hahaha laughter. Zhou Yue covered her mouth and laughed, her swollen eyes curved into crescents. Kang Xingxing was worried that she was frightened in the morning and her hair still hurt. Now that she smiled, he also smiled with his big white teeth bared. When Zhou Yue's soda was finished, he stuffed his bottle into her hand and watched her tilt her little neck and gulp it down with a smile.
Zhou Tiancheng wore sunglasses and glanced at the two children in the rearview mirror from time to time, with a smile on his face.
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