Chapter 3 Your name is written like this
In the following days, Mo Xiaohan's world was completely turned upside down, and the tent in the medical camp became a shelter he had never imagined.
Every morning, the gentle humming would always wake him up on time. Ruan Xingchen always liked to tiptoe beside the bed and call him in the broken local language: "Brother Xiaohan, the sun is shining on your butt!"
At first, he wasn't used to being addressed like that, and even found it ridiculous. In the slums, no one would call him "brother," only "bastard," "scumbag," or simply kick him.
But Ruan Xingchen seemed to accept this title. Every time he called him, his eyes curved into crescents, as if it was the most natural thing.
Ruan Xingchen speaks Chinese much more fluently than the local language, but she still stubbornly tries to communicate with him in the halting local language.
"Brother Xiaohan, can you write your own name?" She blurted out word by word, her little hands gesturing clumsily in the air.
Mo Xiaohan stared at her for a few seconds, then picked up a branch with an expressionless face and drew a crooked symbol on the mud - that was the mark that the casino thugs had once carved on his back with a knife, and it was said that it was written casually by his father.
Ruan Xingchen frowned and shook his head vigorously: "No, no!"
She grabbed the branch, knelt on the ground, and carefully wrote three words, stroke by stroke: "Mo, Xiao, Han."
Her handwriting was crooked, like a child who had just learned to write, but Mo Xiaohan was stunned. It was the first time he knew that his name could be written so tenderly.
"This is your name." She pointed at the words on the ground and then pointed at him, "Mo, Xiao, Han." She read slowly, as if she was afraid he would not remember it.
Mo Xiaohan stared at the complex Chinese characters, his throat tightening.
"Your name is so nice." Ruan Xingchen said with a smile, swinging his legs. "Just like the general in the story!"
Mo Xiaohan pursed his lips and said nothing. He stretched out his fingers and carefully touched the three words, as if afraid they would break.
"You, write." She put the branch into his hand.
Mo Xiaohan's fingers stiffened instantly, the branch in his palm like a strange weapon. He tried to imitate her handwriting, but the words he wrote were like earthworms crawling, crooked and ugly.
Ruan Xingchen clapped his hands and laughed: "Yes! That's it!"
She leaned closer to him, gently holding his wrist with her small hand, and led him to rewrite the strokes one by one, "horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling..."
Her palms were warm, and her fingertips were stained with fine sawdust that had come from somewhere. Mo Xiaohan could smell the faint scent of soapberries on her hair, mixed with a hint of candy sweetness.
His hands were steady. In the slums, any unsteady hand would have been chopped off long ago, but now, held by her, his fingertips trembled uncontrollably.
That afternoon, they squatted in the mud and wrote his name countless times. Until the setting sun passed over the top of the tent, Mo Xiaohan finally managed to write a recognizable "Mo".
Ruan Xingchen jumped up with joy, ran to the tent, dug out some crumpled papers, and stuffed them into his hands: "Practice! I'll check tomorrow!"
He looked down at the papers and saw that they were blank pages she had torn out from her medical record book, with the red cross symbol printed on the back.
A strange feeling suddenly arose in Mo Xiaohan's heart, as if something had quietly taken root in his rotten life.
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