Chapter 40
The winter night was too cold, and the streets were deserted.
At the prompt of "trick or treat," Jiang Li subconsciously turned his head and saw Guan Nan with a faint smile on her face appear before him.
Jiang Li picked up the red socks, reached inside and scooped out a handful of candy, then stuffed it into her hand.
Looking at the handful of candy in his hand, Guan Nan glanced at his red socks and said incredulously, "Are you really Santa Claus?"
His red socks were jingling and tinkling, as if he were going to deliver gifts to children all over the world; all that was missing was a little deer-drawn carriage.
Jiang Li raised his chin slightly. "Yes, tell me your wish, and Santa Claus will grant it for you."
"Anything is fine?" Guan Nan looked at him expectantly.
Jiang Li: "Anything is fine."
"Jiang Li".
"Um."
Guan Nan smiled, her eyes crinkling, and said in a good mood, "You're so kind."
"......"
"You are the best person I have ever met."
She was truly different from usual. Jiang Li stared at her slightly flushed cheeks, sniffed, and smelled a faint scent of alcohol.
She seemed to be focused and articulate, with no other changes except for blushing.
Jiang Li reached out and grabbed her elbow: "Have you been drinking?"
Guan Nan gestured: "A little bit."
That's because I really can't hold my liquor.
"..." Jiang Li looked at her, then glanced at the red socks, "You're a little dizzy right now, sit down and rest for a bit."
Guan Nan shook her head and said seriously, "I'm not dizzy."
"Even if you're not dizzy, sit for a while." Jiang Li lowered his voice.
The tone was so sweet, like coaxing someone, that it made your ears feel soothed.
Guan Nan touched her ear and grinned foolishly, "Jiang Li, you have such a nice voice."
Jiang Li: "......"
"Jiang Li, are you cold?"
As Jiang Li listened to her talk, she patted her pockets, looking for something but not finding it. She lowered her head, lifted her cotton coat, tore off a hand warmer from inside, and stuck it to Santa's coat.
The yellow SpongeBob SquarePants heat pack is still very hot.
I don't know if it was her body temperature that was hot, or if the heat pack had a longer-lasting effect.
He looked down and saw her stick several more heat packs on him, and finally patted the spots where the heat packs were.
Guan Nan looked up, her expression serious: "You need to wear more clothes. It's too cold, and you'll feel terrible if you catch a cold. You wear so little every day; I heard you coughing yesterday."
“Look,” she said, touching his hand again and muttering, “his hand is still cold.”
He's usually quiet, but after drinking, he becomes unusually talkative.
Jiang Li found it somewhat amusing. "I'm not cold."
"Nonsense," Guan Nan said seriously. "If you don't take care of your health at such a young age, you'll suffer when you're old."
Jiang Li was exasperated by his grandfather's tone: "Who told you all this?"
Upon hearing this, Guan Nan's eyes looked somewhat confused, then became unfocused, as if trying to recall who had told her this. She then frowned and stammered, "Grandma said it."
Jiang Li paused for a moment, then said convincingly, "You're right, I'll wear it tomorrow."
She nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer.
At 00:00, the bell rang precisely.
This means Christmas has arrived, the delayed subway service has stopped, and a new day has begun.
Jiang Li picked up the sock, fished out a small gift box from inside, and handed it to her, saying, "Merry Christmas."
"Thank you." Guan Nan was stunned for a moment, then suddenly smiled, her eyes crinkling, and took out an apple from her pocket, handing it to him as well. "Jiang Li, Merry Christmas."
Seeing this, Jiang Li patted her head and said with a low laugh, "Trick or treat."
Upon hearing this, Guan Nan carefully put the candy into her pocket like a treasure, and then generously scooped out a handful and tossed it to him to choose from.
Jiang Li casually picked one up, tore open the wrapper, and asked suspiciously, "Are you drunk?"
"No." Guan Nan shook his head with a grin.
...Well, I'm drunk.
He was quite sober despite being drunk.
Jiang Li smiled and asked her Christmas wish again.
"I haven't decided yet." Guan Nan thought for a moment, then shook her head.
She has one wish, and only one wish, but only she can fulfill it.
“Then,” Jiang Li paused, “think about it slowly.”
The entire Hecang Garden was quiet and deserted.
At this moment, only a few streetlights were on, and even the grocery stores that usually stayed open until late had closed their doors.
Jiang Li escorted her to Building 26 and watched her walk steadily forward.
As I passed by the pomegranate tree, the dim streetlights revealed its bare, withered branches, still bearing the ripening pomegranates, resembling a lifeless work of art.
Just like that straight, unyielding, lonely, and forlorn figure.
After going upstairs, Guan Nan inserted the key into the lock but didn't open the door. She stared at the small gift box in her hand for two seconds, then turned around and leaned over the stone railing to look down.
He stood under the banyan tree, dressed in a Christmas outfit, his expression inscrutable.
At one point, Guan Nan suddenly began to believe that Santa Claus really existed.
At least, right now, at this very moment.
He truly exists.
In the dead silence, Guan Nan took out her phone from her pocket and made a call. In the howling evening wind, she whispered, "Jiang Li, do you think wishes can be stored?"
At that moment, Jiang Li, holding his phone, looked up and said, "Okay."
As soon as the words were spoken, the two remained silent in the deep night, one above the other.
The phone rang, but neither of them hung up or spoke again.
"Then," Guan Nan spoke again after a long while, asking softly, "how long can it be stored?"
Jiang Li seemed to chuckle, his voice low: "For you, it's permanently effective."
I said goodbye in a daze, and then went inside in a daze.
Guan Nan sat on the sofa, cupped her face in her hands, closed her eyes for a while before opening them, her mind still foggy.
That cup of wine felt like it had tossed her into the air and spun her around countless times, making her head spin as if she had been washed repeatedly in the Lingjiang River, and her temples throbbed with pain.
She opened the grill, and as her body temperature gradually warmed up, she squatted in front of the old coffee table and did another set of test papers.
Even after finishing the exam, I still didn't feel sleepy and was unusually energetic.
Guan Nan tidied the table, and finally her gaze fell on the gift box that had been placed there. The box had a Christmas-themed print.
She slowly opened it and saw a card and a snake fruit inside.
The card contained a blessing, written in fairly neat handwriting.
—To my friend
"This is my first time writing a greeting card. I wish you a better year than the last, taking advantage of the Western New Year."
Guan Nan stared at the words on the greeting card, somewhat lost in thought.
The words of blessing seemed to say everything, yet also said nothing at all.
It's as if he knows everything that has happened recently, but he hasn't asked anything or said anything. He's as meticulous and attentive as ever, and he's grasped every measure perfectly.
It won't make people too sensitive, and it basically eliminates the possibility of embarrassment or awkwardness.
Guan Nan had a strange feeling that she had been embarrassed and awkward in front of him many times, but she had never felt inferior because the hurt was no longer compounded by external factors. It was as if she was being silently protected by his restraint.
That night, Guan Nan lay on the coffee table, opened her notebook, and silently crossed out the sentence "I made a friend".
Then, I turned to the next page, held the pen, and wrote down...
— December 23, 2015, cloudy
"I received a Christmas card, and I was very happy."
After a long while, she added another sentence on the next line, her handwriting and demeanor exceptionally neat.
"I think I know what liking something tastes like now."
Like a half-ripe, green-red pomegranate from my memory.
Sweet and astringent.
That night, Guan Nan slept soundly without a dream until dawn.
The next morning, before I even entered the classroom, I saw classmates asking everyone they met, "Have you done the A paper?"
The class was in complete chaos.
The math class representative was besieged, and the English class representative, Chen Mengjie, was besieged as they copied down each problem with lightning speed.
As soon as Guan Nan entered the classroom, she was greeted by several people asking her questions, namely Chen Aimei, Guo Yuhang, Ye Na, and Liu Yang, who was holding an exam paper and staring at her expectantly without saying a word.
"I've written it." Guan Nan put down her schoolbag, unzipped it, and flipped through the test paper.
Chen Aimei is the class representative for Chinese and also a student who competes in essay writing. She is weak in math and struggles to write test papers. There is no time to catch up, so when she approached Guan Nan as if to discuss something, her tone was more like an announcement: "I'll copy first. I can write faster."
"Are you kidding me? It's due after morning self-study, and you're going to copy it first?" Ye Na stood at her seat, wanting to say something harsh to her, but she kept quiet because Guan Nan was there, though her tone was still a bit aggressive.
Chen Aimei and Ye Na didn't get along to begin with. Ye Na used to have a group of girlfriends around her, but now she could only swallow her anger. "Did I even speak to you? Don't flatter yourself, okay?"
Yena mocked her, "I wonder who's being presumptuous."
"Uh..." Guan Nan took out the test paper, her eyelids twitched suddenly, she looked at the blank Math A paper, then at the full Math B paper, and said a little embarrassedly, "Sorry, I remembered it wrong."
Suddenly, everyone's eyes fell on her.
Guan Nan shook the B-book, "I wrote the wrong exam paper, I haven't written A yet."
The group's eyes flickered, lingering for a few seconds on the densely written Part B, before they quickly scattered to find new firefighters.
“It’s over,” Yena said with a look of utter despair. “I thought I could copy your work when I came to school.”
Guan Nan hung up her schoolbag and glanced at her test paper. "Why didn't you do any of that?"
In her memory, Yena was not someone who would neglect her homework.
"Sigh," Yena sighed and started to work on the test paper, looking dejected. "Yesterday was a holiday, and everyone was having so much fun that they forgot about the test paper. Look, those who copied homework were all too busy playing. They didn't even have the heart to write when they got to the classroom, and they didn't even have any ready-made homework to copy."
Hearing her say that, Guan Nan couldn't help but laugh, but when she thought about how she had written the test paper wrong, she couldn't laugh anymore.
Just then, Jiang Li and Yu Shu entered the classroom, and he casually took his water cup to get some water.
When he returned, he saw Guan Nan doing her homework and looked a little surprised.
Guan Nan placed the water glass on the table and thanked him, saying, "Thank you."
"You didn't write it either?" Jiang Li took out the test paper.
Guan Nan scratched his eyes and said honestly, "I forgot to distribute the test papers, so I finished the B paper first."
No sooner had he finished speaking than the bell for morning self-study rang.
Morning self-study is divided into Chinese and English. Fortunately, today's morning self-study is Chinese.
They could recite the texts fluently, which gave them the opportunity to catch up on their math tests. They recited poems and texts while keeping their pens in hand.
The Chinese language teacher turned a blind eye to their behavior.
Unfortunately, the morning self-study period is not long, only 20 minutes from 7:30 to 7:50.
Guan Nan rushed as fast as she could, but in those twenty minutes, she only managed to complete eight multiple-choice questions, three multiple-answer questions, and four fill-in-the-blank questions.
As if working together, Ye Na, who sat behind Yu Shu, wrote down one question, and they exchanged answers.
They finished their exam papers in the meantime. Jiang Li didn't even bother to copy anything, leaving his paper completely blank except for his name.
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