Chapter 5: Sunflowers should be painted facing the sun
Ruan Xingchen likes painting, especially sunflowers.
She had a box of colored crayons, a gift from a nurse in the medical team. She always used them carefully and put them away one by one after she finished drawing, as if they were treasures.
One afternoon, she lay on a wooden box outside the tent, concentrating on painting a golden flower on paper. Mo Xiaohan stood behind her, watching silently.
"Brother Xiaohan, do you want to try it?" She suddenly turned around and handed him the crayon.
Mo Xiaohan's fingers were stiff, and the crayon felt like a dagger in his hand. He stared at the blank paper, hesitant to start writing.
"It's very simple!" She jumped off the wooden box, knelt on the grass, spread out a piece of white paper, and poked a yellow dot on it with a crayon. "First, draw a big circle! Then draw the petals, like this -"
Mo Xiaohan squatted beside her and imitated her, drawing a crooked circle on the paper.
"No, no!" She giggled, her little hand covering the back of his hand, and guided him to draw, "The sunflower should face the direction of the sun."
She whispered, "So the petals should be like this... upwards."
Her fingertips were warm, burning into his skin like sunlight. Mo Xiaohan let her fiddle with his hands, watching a crooked sunflower take shape on the paper.
His first sunflower was crooked, its petals looking like crushed leaves, but Ruan Xingchen treated it like a treasure. He held it up to the sunlight and said, "This is you!"
She pointed at his painting and said with a smile.
Mo Xiaohan frowned: "Ugly."
"They're not ugly!" Ruan Xingchen pouted. "Sunflowers are the most beautiful flowers in the world! They always face the sun and never bow their heads!"
He stared at the crooked sunflower, a strange emotion welling up in his heart. He had never painted anything before. In the slums, he would only use charcoal to carve marks on the wall and calculate how many days he could live.
But at this moment, he drew a flower.
A flower...turning towards the sun.
"Brother Xiaohan, draw another one!" She handed him a new crayon, "Draw me this time!"
Mo Xiaohan held the crayon, hesitated for a moment, and finally drew a small figure with braids on the paper, and wrote "star" crookedly next to it.
Ruan Xingchen opened his eyes wide, then suddenly rushed over and hugged him: "Brother Xiaohan! You wrote it right! You wrote my name correctly!"
Her hug was light, like a feather falling on his shoulder. Mo Xiaohan stiffened, his fingers clenching the crayon.
For the first time, he realized that hugging...didn't hurt.
At night, he secretly hid the painting.
In the tent at the medical camp, everyone else was asleep. Mo Xiaohan curled up in the corner of the bed. In the moonlight, he fished out the crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. On it was the name Ruan Xingchen had taught him to write, and a sunflower he had drawn.
And there is that little "star" in the corner.
He stared at it for a long time, and finally folded it into a small boat and put it together with the other candy paper boats.
Then he raised his hand and pulled the rope around his neck. A pair of silver rings were hanging on it. He touched the slender women's ring.
"Eternal day."
His mother said that she wanted to give this ring to a girl who would light up his life. He originally thought that there was no one in this world who would light up his life.
But now, he has a box of candy paper boats, a sunflower, and a girl who can write his name.
Mo Xiaohan closed his eyes and had a dream without the smell of blood for the first time.
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