Chapter 268: So we knew each other so early?
Why.
Zhao Xiaojing also sighed in her heart. The two of them were inexplicably silent for a while. Zhao Xiaojing thought about it and then spoke.
"Aunt San, you won't be working this afternoon?"
"No, we can just wait until four or five to meet up. There's a new bridge and beach built by the Yangcheng River. I'll take you there this afternoon."
Dong Mei will be retiring in another year. She has been transferred to a relaxed retirement job. There is not much work to do. She can work when she wants to, and report in when she doesn't want to, or simply not go. Everyone turns a blind eye.
Zhao Xiaojing felt slightly relieved, no longer worried about affecting Dong Mei's work. "I see you've cleaned up the guest room. When will Third Uncle be back?"
"Tomorrow night. Every year it's the night before New Year's Eve. The sun rises from the west early in the morning. He comes back and drinks with his friends. It's not certain what time he gets home. Whatever you want." Dong Mei sneered. When she mentioned Zhou Jianye, her face suddenly became much gloomier.
"... Third Aunt, I rarely saw the husband of the landlord in Jiangcheng later on. I wasn't familiar with him and didn't dare to ask." Zhao Xiaojing looked at Dong Mei's face and started talking.
"Oh, it's okay. It's my own fault that I made you worry about me. I'm about to retire anyway. After retirement, I will go to Mingcheng. I will do nothing but keep an eye on Zhou Jianye to see what kind of son he has hidden. After so many years, I don't believe he still can't figure out whether he is dead or alive!" Dong Mei said sarcastically, the corners of her mouth raised slightly, but there was no smile in her eyes.
Zhao Xiaojing looked up at Dong Mei's face and knew that she would never be in a good mood when this matter was mentioned. Instead of waiting for Dong Mei to be in a good mood to tell her, it would be better to tell her a minute earlier so that she could be relieved a minute earlier.
"Third Aunt, I won't hide it from you anymore." Zhao Xiaojing pulled out her phone, swiped a few times, and pulled up a photo. "Although I didn't ask the landlord, I found a photo while browsing blogs online these days. Take a look."
Dong Mei took the phone doubtfully, looked at the photo puzzledly, and was about to ask who it was when her eyes moved upwards and her eyes widened after a moment.
“…” Dong Mei opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something, but her throat seemed to be blocked, and no sound came out for a long time. Her left hand holding the phone began to tremble slightly.
Dong Mei hurriedly stretched out her right hand and tried to pull the screen with it. After several attempts without success, she put the phone on the coffee table beside her and tried hard to control the trembling of her fingers with both hands before she successfully enlarged the photo.
After the photo was enlarged, the three smiling people were particularly conspicuous. Dong Mei stared at it for a long time, then suddenly stood up, pushed open the door of Zhao Xiaojing's bedroom, ran in hurriedly, and frantically searched in the bookcase beside the bed.
Zhao Xiaojing followed him in and stood aside watching Dong Mei pull out several thick photo albums. She squatted on the ground and quickly searched through them one by one. After looking through several albums, she locked onto an album that was already yellowed and had an exaggeratedly curled cover. Dong Mei only flipped through a few pages and pulled out two photos. She hurried back to the living room and compared the photos carefully with her mobile phone.
"Is it really her?" Dong Mei was shocked and angry, and even her lips began to tremble as she muttered.
Zhao Xiaojing, standing aside, also widened her eyes. "This, this is, Third Uncle?"
Dong Mei didn't say anything, but nodded while panting. Zhao Xiaojing looked at the photo again, her heart in turmoil.
The photo Dong Mei was holding was of three young boys and girls who looked very youthful, about seventeen or eighteen years old, arm in arm, standing in front of the Yulu Temple, a former tourist attraction in Yangcheng, with their faces smiling brightly.
There are two men and one woman in the photo. The only girl is the woman outside the third uncle in the mobile phone photo. The two photos seem to be taken several decades apart, but she has hardly changed in these decades, except that her temperament has become much more mature. There are only slight wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and her face is a little sunken, but her expression and smile are exactly the same, making her recognizable at a glance.
As for one of the two boys next to the girl, Zhao Xiaojing really couldn't believe it if Dong Mei didn't nod. At first, she just felt that his eyebrows and eyes were somewhat similar to her third uncle. After looking hard for a while, she was surprised to find that the man with white teeth, red lips, starry eyes, sword-like eyebrows, and a rogue smile seemed to be Zhou Jianye.
It's no wonder that Zhao Xiaojing couldn't confirm it. The current Zhou Jianye and the man in the photo were completely similar, except for some traces of his eyebrows and eyes.
No one would believe that this man with a beer belly, a big bald head, deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that look huge even when he is not smiling, and a mouth full of yellow teeth and a chin caused by years of drinking and eating, would be related to the fair-faced, handsome and cool guy in the photo.
Zhao Xiaojing took a long time to recover from the shocking visual impact, and then began to feel angry belatedly.
Wang Jiandang said at the time that the woman Zhou Jianye had outside was also from Yangcheng, and it seemed that they had known each other for several years. Zhao Xiaojing didn't think too deeply about it.
Now that I’ve seen the photos, I realize that we actually knew each other so many years ago?
The three people in this photo look so young, perhaps they have known each other longer than my third uncle and aunt?
Zhao Xiaojing was so angry that she was fuming. She looked at another photo in Dong Mei's hand. It was a group photo with the words "Graduation Photo of Red Star No. 3 Middle School" written on it. Dong Mei was controlling her trembling hands to count the photos one by one, and then kept turning them to the back, muttering to herself, looking for the name written in sloppy handwriting on the back.
Looking again, the person Dong Mei was pointing at was the woman in the photo. Zhao Xiaojing frowned even deeper and glanced at the faces of the boys standing in the back rows of the photo one by one.
Sure enough, in the middle of the second-to-last row, I saw Zhou Jianye, who looked even younger than in the first photo, and still had a bit of childishness.
So that woman and Zhou Jianye were actually classmates in junior high? Even earlier than I thought?
Zhao Xiaojing looked at Dong Mei with full of questions. Just as she was about to ask, Dong Mei paused while searching for her name.
"Zheng Zihui?" Zhao Xiaojing looked at the name silently, then shifted her gaze to Dong Mei.
Dong Mei's reaction was very strange. She seemed puzzled, but also seemed to have suddenly realized something. She sat there, staring at the photo with a frown. After a while, she looked at her cell phone and hurried into the bedroom again. This time, she took out the entire photo album with the curled edges.
This time, Dong Mei didn't look through the photo album. Instead, she flipped directly to the first page and pointed at the child in the middle of a group photo. "Do they look alike?"
The voice was slightly choked and frightened.
When Zhao Xiaojing saw him, she recognized him at first glance with the reference of his youthful photos. This was Zhou Jianye as a child.
They are said to be children, but they are not that small. Judging from their stature, they are about seven or eight years old. They are standing sideways, with two adults on their left and right, who seem to be their parents.
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