Who is Yao Xin?
That winter, Jiang Yuanzhou and I had an unpleasant conversation.
After the physics competition training ended, I waited for him at the school gate to go home together.
He ran out of the teaching building, his nose tip was red from the cold, but his eyes were surprisingly bright.
"Niannian, today Teacher Li said my problem-solving approach has great potential. If I keep it up, I'll have a good chance of making the provincial team." He rubbed his hands excitedly. "He also said that the Physics Department of Tsinghua University has the best lab in China."
"If I can be admitted to National Tsing Hua University, I will have more opportunities in the future. I can also go abroad for exchange and learn from academic masters around the world."
It's rare for him to chatter like this.
I looked at the light in the boy's eyes and was happy for him.
"Do you want to go abroad in the future?" I asked him.
"Yes," he answered without hesitation. "It would be great if I could go to MIT or Stanford for an exchange program."
"Is Hanchuan not good?" I was a little confused.
I know many people want to go abroad, and my parents always told me that "you can go abroad by going to college in the future."
But in this small town where we were born and raised, with its familiar streets, sycamore trees and beef noodle shops, I sometimes really don’t understand why everyone wants to leave.
Cheng Yuan choked, as if he didn't expect me to ask this.
"It's good...it's just..." He chose his words and slowed down his pace.
The light from the street lamp cast tiny shadows on his eyelashes. "Niannian, have you ever thought about going further? To visit Beijing, Shanghai, or even further afield?"
I kicked the pebbles at my feet and said, "I've thought about it, but it wouldn't be bad to stay in Hanchuan. It's familiar and reassuring."
He was silent for a long time, "People always want to move forward."
As he said this, his eyes looked towards the teaching building in the distance, where the lights in the senior high school classrooms were still on. "I don't want to be trapped in one place my whole life."
"Do you feel like you're trapped if you stay in Hanchuan?" I couldn't help but ask back, feeling a little uncomfortable.
"That's not what I meant. Don't dwell on it."
He sighed, somewhat helplessly, "I just feel that our world shouldn't be limited to Hanchuan. We should have a wider world."
"But I don't think happiness is necessarily far away."
I blinked, trying to lighten the mood. "Just like right now, walking with you like this, I feel good."
He looked at me with a complicated expression, "But Nian Nian, the world is big."
"I know the world is big," I raised my head and looked him straight in the eyes. "What I want to say is that it's good to go out and see the world, but as long as the people I care about are there, it doesn't matter where I go or where I stay."
He didn't say anything else.
At that moment, the cold wind blew into my heart, making me feel a little chilly.
For the first time, I realized that even friends I grew up with might have completely different visions of the future.
The conversation about "the distance" that winter has been buried in my heart like a small thorn.
Perhaps it is because of the uneasiness about separation in my heart that I later became particularly sensitive to changes in people around me.
————
On a weekend afternoon, the sun lazily shines on the desk.
Jiang Yuanzhou and I were doing our homework in my room, each occupying one end of the desk.
I was stuck on an analytic geometry problem and was thinking hard while biting the tip of my pen.
Jiang Yuanzhou just got up to go to the bathroom, and his cell phone was casually thrown on the table with the screen still on.
"Jiang Yuanzhou, where did you put that formula manual?" I asked without raising my head.
"It's in the side pocket of my backpack. You can look for it yourself." His voice came through the door, a little vague.
I picked up his cell phone.
We both know each other's lock screen passwords. We set them together when we were kids and have never changed them.
The screen is unlocked and remains on the calculator interface.
I was about to exit to find the document when a new message preview popped up at the top of the screen.
Yao Xin: "Want to go to the library tomorrow? Do the physics paper together?"
I stared at the unfamiliar name and my heart paused inexplicably.
Yao Xin...
I have never heard Jiang Yuanzhou mention this name.
This is actually not very common. Judging from the tone of this person, he is obviously very familiar with Jiang Yuanzhou, and I have heard the names of some of the classmates in their class who have a good relationship with him.
Just as I was thinking about it, Jiang Yuanzhou came back.
Seeing that I was holding his cell phone, he paused for a moment at the door.
"Don't you know how to do this?" He leaned over to take a look, his tone quite natural, but his movement of reaching out to take back the phone was a little faster than usual.
"Who is Yao Xin?" I asked casually.
He swiped his finger across the screen quickly and the message prompt disappeared.
He lowered his head, avoiding my gaze, and said in a muffled voice, "It's just... a classmate from the competition class."
"I haven't heard you mention this before." I tilted my head to look at him. "Are you two familiar with each other? You even planned to go to the library together."
Jiang Yuanzhou frowned, stuffed his phone back into his pocket, and said impatiently, "We're just ordinary classmates. We happened to study together. I just asked about homework."
His tone was a little hard, different from usual.
I just asked casually, but his reaction made me feel strange.
"I'm just asking, why are you so nervous?" I half-jokingly wanted to ease the sudden tense atmosphere.
"Why am I nervous?" He suddenly raised his voice. "Lin Nian, what's wrong with you? You're so suspicious all the time now. Have you read too much of that messy gossip on the Internet?"
I was stunned by his choking.
From childhood to adulthood, although we often quarreled, he rarely spoke to me in such a sarcastic tone.
"You're overreacting, aren't you? I just asked one more question." I was also a little angry.
He sat down next to me with a sullen face, picked up his pen and continued to do his homework, keeping his lips tightly pursed the whole time and not saying a word.
I didn't take the initiative to speak, and I felt an indescribable sense of frustration in my heart.
For the next half hour, we were all preoccupied with our own thoughts and the previous harmonious atmosphere was gone.
"Forget it. I can't write it. I'm going back."
He threw his schoolbag over his shoulder, turned around and left, leaving me standing there in a daze.
The next day at lunch, he didn't join us for the first time.
Lulu came over with a tray of food and bumped me with her shoulder. "What happened to you two? Did you have a fight?"
I shook my head and ate the rice on my plate, not knowing how to explain this inexplicable cold war. "Nothing, maybe he's been under a lot of pressure from the competition lately and he's in a bad mood."
Lulu looked at me suspiciously and didn't ask any more questions.
In fact, even I don’t understand it. It’s just a piece of news, how could it cause such a commotion?
On the way home, I was alone, and Lulu and Jiang Yuanzhou were left behind for competition training.
As I walked, I flipped through the chat history between me and Jiang Yuanzhou.
One day in September: "What's for breakfast?" "Steamed buns, meat ones."
Last winter vacation: “Was this math problem done by a human?” “Show me a screenshot.”
Earlier: "Your teacher's hairstyle today is amazing" "Hahahaha, he looks like he was struck by lightning"...
It's all meaningless daily chatter, with people talking back and forth, joking around, and having no scruples.
Looking at those words, I can even remember how he laughed and complained, his eyes curved with a bit of cunning.
The corners of his mouth rose unconsciously.
Back then, he was just Jiang Yuanzhou, my best friend who I grew up with, the one I could walk arms around with and in circles on the playground with, and no one would think anything of it.
After much hesitation, I took the initiative to send a message, "What do you want to eat tomorrow morning?"
Time passed by minute by minute, and the screen remained dark.
It wasn't until I was almost at the door that my phone finally vibrated.
Jiang Yuanzhou: "Whatever."
I stared at the period for a long moment, then turned off my phone and shoved it back in my pocket.
The dusk deepened and the wind felt a little cold on my face.
That was the first time I realized that once I took the step from "good friends" to "maybe more than good friends", there would be no going back.
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