Old photo album
Wu Siqi returned home and went into the kitchen to wash the bowls soaking in the sink, then added some foam and rinsed them away. He then used the foam to circle the bottom of the pot, turning it around and around, and then rinsed it away with hot water.
The washed dishes were placed upside down on the drain rack, and water droplets fell onto the stainless steel plate that collected the water, dripping... dripping... very quietly. Wu Siqi supported his hands on the edge of the marble counter, staring at the water droplets that were about to fall from the faucet in a trance.
There were tall trees outside their apartment building, with some sparrows living on them. They chirped and the sound came in through the window and into their ears, making a lot of noise. It even scared the drop of water and made it fall down.
Wu Siqi raised the corner of his eyes and wanted to close the window, but he put his hand down again just as he raised it. It would be nice to have some fun.
She wiped the water off her hands and walked out of the kitchen. Her cell phone rang in the living room. She turned and walked into the room. The little black cat Sheriff was still lying on the windowsill, sleeping soundly with his belly on his back.
Sitting next to it by the window, Wu Siqi gently stroked its fur with his hand. It was soft and delicate. "How can you sleep so much, little lazy cat?"
The patterns of the window grilles hit her cheek, flickering. She counted the days silently in her heart. There were still three days left before she had to send it away.
It doesn't matter, she is used to it. In the journey of life, most people and things come and go, and no one stays.
Mongolia, it seems that the mutton there is very delicious. Wu Siqi remembered that her parents lived there for a period of time when they were young. They were two volunteer teachers from the frontier, who met, fell in love and got married there.
She stood up and walked to the bed, opened the storage cabinet under the bed, which was full of photo albums, and sat cross-legged on the floor.
On the cabinet is a copy of "Our Baby's Today". In addition to her love for collecting wine, her father also loves photography. From childhood to adulthood, he would take a set of photos for her every birthday as a souvenir.
Most of the photo albums were pulled out and scattered all over the floor. Her father, who loved taking photos, had left too many memories, and her mother was very good at storing them. The photos were categorized and framed in various beautiful albums, assembling them into beautifully packaged books of the past.
Wu Siqi: "It should be this one." She opened an album with a small floral cover. Most of the old photos had a date watermark in the lower left corner, "05 11 80". Forty years of light and shadow were enough to turn the photos yellow.
The yellowed photos include snow, meadows, the sky, the silhouette of a young mother teaching on the stage, and a photo of two people getting closer, her hand stroking the two young faces.
She has the beautiful and generous features of her mother, and a tall and thin figure like her father. In this photo of the two of them taken on 11/02/82, her mother's two pigtails are neatly tied, and both of them are wearing clothes with patterns characteristic of the area. Behind them is a yellow mud bungalow, and some vines are climbing on the shelves next to it.
It is a very exotic place. The yellowed lens shows the unique beauty of that place. The mountains, grass, people, and the earth are all alive.
While she was engrossed in watching, the little black cat Sheriff had woken up without her knowing when. He was fiddling with the photo album that she had scattered on the ground, flipping it left and right with his tail raised high, sniffing around.
Afraid that the restless claws would damage the photo, she reached out and grabbed the cat's waist and held it in her arms, "You're not being nice."
As soon as she finished speaking, the cat that had been struggling just now stopped moving, curling up between her legs. She picked up the kitten's uninjured right paw and tapped it on the photo album. "This is my mom, and this is my dad. They look so good together, don't they?"
"Meow."
Wu Siqi: "Yeah, I think they're a good match, a talented man and a beautiful woman. It's just that my dad's hair is a little thin. Sometimes I'm really worried that I'll pass on his baldness gene."
She closed the album and opened another one bound in cowhide with beautiful patterns. The first photo was a half-length portrait of the couple with a red background and a stamp. This photo was originally pasted on their marriage certificate, but she tore it off and put it on the first page of this album.
"Before I was born, my dad loved taking pictures of my mom. These are the photos they started taking after they started dating. People in that era loved freely. So sour."
Wu Siqi held the cat's paw and told it the stories behind the photos one by one, just like her mother used to hold her in her arms and tell her bedtime stories at night twenty years ago.
From the love of her parents, the photo goes back to when Wu Siqi was just born, in the summer of twenty-nine years ago, on August 24th, the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month.
This photo of her mother holding her in the hospital was the first proof of her coming into this world, followed by her thirty days, sixty days, and one hundred days.
Wu Siqi: "This photo was taken at the city zoo. Judging from the year, I must have been five years old. I had just recovered from a cold and insisted on going to the zoo. They couldn't persuade me and took me anyway. They were afraid I would get sick again, so they wrapped me up like a dumpling."
"It was a school art performance. I was playful at the time, so I joined the school dance club. We did hip-hop dance. The stage makeup back then was so ugly, it made people look like monkey butts. My parents took time off to watch me perform."
Her childhood, adolescence, and then adulthood were filled with love, and the photos stopped in the spring of 2012.
She let out a breath and covered the photo album. The little black cat sheriff was very well behaved and listened carefully to her talk about the sweetness and bitterness in the box of expired chocolates.
Wu Siqi: "Where do you think people go after they die?" she asked the little black cat sheriff, "Meow." It opened its big eyes and tilted its head to look at her.
"How do you know?" Wu Siqi patted the cat's butt to drive it away, put the photo album back into the drawer, patted the dust off her pants, walked out of the bedroom and closed the door.
The clock pointed to 4, it was already afternoon, she opened a can of cat food, picked up her phone that was ringing with messages, and returned to the real world.
It took her half an hour to add important work messages to the memo and mark unimportant messages as read. It took her half an hour to remove the red dots.
Finally she returned to the message bar that was marked as read.
Yi Ning: The hairpin is super cute, thank you Xiaowu.
Yi Ning: [Picture]
Yi Ning: She is a perfect match for me.
The photo is a selfie of her under the shade of a tree. She tilted her head and pointed at the hairpin with her index finger, smiling brightly.
It is easy to scroll up the chat page and reach the end. There are not many messages, many white boxes, and only a few green boxes.
Wu Siqi turned to the ones where she said she was listening to a play.
Yi Ning: Why can't monsters and humans be together? This Fahai is so hateful. They are a match made in heaven, but no one wants to complain about him, an ugly monk.
Yi Ning: It’s not just to repay a favor, it’s because she loves him. How could Xu Xian be so upset?
Yi Ning: You said that after reincarnation, he is no longer the same person? How could Fahai ignore the law of cause and effect and separate them?
Yi Ning: If Xiao Wu was Xu Xian, would you be scared to death by Bai Suzhen's snake appearance?
Wu Siqi clicked on her profile picture, then clicked on the profile settings and turned on the button to add her to the blacklist.
Add to blacklist, you will no longer receive messages from the other party, OK.
She was more accustomed to the cut thread.
Putting the phone aside, Wu Siqi hung the clothes in the washing machine, wiped the dining table again, mopped the floor again, covered the back of the stool with lace cloth, and put all the messy slippers in the entrance into the shoe cabinet.
She washed her hands in the kitchen, but she was too lazy to look for more paper towels when they ran out. Wu Siqi was planning to wipe them on her pants, but then she looked at the cat rolling on the ground licking its fur.
Drops of water from the fingertips dripped onto the floor that had just been mopped.
Why not?
She flicked the water onto the cat, frightening the little black cat Sheriff so much that he rolled over and stood up, calling out in dissatisfaction, "Meow!"
Wu Siqi was happy, her eight teeth showing in her smile. She chased after him and continued to flick out the few remaining water droplets in her hand. She jumped onto the coffee table with her nimble cat body. She followed him and ran to the sofa.
She pounced on the sofa and covered the kitten with her wet hands, pressing it so hard that it meowed. The bad nature of human beings was aroused. It was hard not to bully a little kitten that couldn't resist itself.
He put his face against the cat's belly. The wet fur was a little cold, and the warm smell of the kitten's breath penetrated his nose. Wu Siqi closed his eyes and enjoyed the good mood at the moment.
After lying down long enough, she propped herself up and got off the sofa. The busy day of leisure was coming to an end and it was almost dark.
She cooked herself some egg noodles, peeled an apple, ate and drank enough, and took a bath. Then Wu Siqi lay on the sofa and browsed her mobile phone. The little black cat Sheriff licked the fur on its paws and played with it beside her.
Her phone was filled with random entertainment news, such as which celebrities were in love or cheating, and what scandals had occurred on variety shows. After scrolling for a while, a local news bulletin caught her attention. It was a letter to parents, informing them that many children had gone missing in the city. Parents were asked to pay attention to their children's movements to prevent them from getting lost.
Below this message were all missing person notices. Wu Siqi flipped through them and found that most of them were missing in the district. In a second- or third-tier city like this, this was big news. No wonder Sister Jin had to leave early to pick up her children recently. In the past, when she didn't have time to pick them up, she would let the children go home by themselves.
Tired of lying in one position, Wu Siqi turned over again. The little black cat Sheriff followed her and nestled in her legs again, resting his head on her lower abdomen, his paws under his head, and squinting his eyes.
Turn off your boring phone. All you see are meaningless entertainment topics. Go back to your room and go to sleep!
The alarm clock rang as planned. Wu Siqi struggled to get up, brushed his teeth with half-open eyes, changed into professional clothes with half-open eyes, filled the two cat food bowls, touched the lucky kitten's head, and went out to work.
It was still the same carriage that looked like a can of sardines, the same office building that looked like a tombstone, and the same workstation that was piled with documents, no different from usual.
Wu Siqi turned his phone on and off, smiling to himself, thinking that it was just another day that was no different.
Their team has taken on a new project from the company, planning an opening ceremony for the newly renovated city children's amusement park. Today they will meet with the client to discuss the needs and finalize the initial plan.
She didn't have much time to let her thoughts wander. She muted her phone, put it in her trouser pocket, and walked into the meeting room with her notebook.
The meeting was very long. This project was huge, with an investment of millions of dollars. The company arranged two groups to undertake it. Group A was responsible for communication, and Group B was responsible for execution.
Sitting at the back of the conference room, she didn't take many notes. She wrote down the time and place, then scribbled with a pen. Zhang Li, the leader of Group A, was arguing with the person in charge of the amusement park, while Wu Siqi, the leader of Group B, was drawing a cat's head in his notebook with a serious face.
Sister Jin was also bored and twirling her pen. Seeing her taking notes seriously, she came over to take a look. She was coloring a cat's head. She tapped Wu Siqi's arm with the tip of her pen and whispered, "Team Leader Wu, we're in a meeting."
Wu Siqi whispered back, "Yeah," and continued coloring. "It seems like they won't be able to decide until the afternoon. What are you having for lunch today?"
"I brought some food," Sister Jin said, holding the pen in her hand and pretending to be serious. "I think we'll have to argue for two days on this initial project. Zhang Li is known for being a strong person, and working with her on this project has been a hassle for the past month or two."
Wu Siqi nodded and said, "We just need to do our own thing, it's fine."
The meeting lasted until noon and was to continue in the afternoon. According to convention, Party B had to treat everyone to a meal, so Zhang Li took the lead and took Party A and his group to a private restaurant in the next building. As the leader of Group B, she also had to go with them.
When I went downstairs, I met Xu Tingting who was coming back from the convenience store with her new colleagues. She came up to me in the same lively manner and said, "Teacher, do you want to go eat?" as if nothing had happened.
Wu Siqi pointed at the group of people walking in front and said, "It's the project dinner. Work hard, Team Leader Xu. Let's go."
Xu Tingting smiled and said, "Come on, teacher."
Catching up with the main group, Zhang Li was in the front, and Wu Siqi was at the back. She took out her cell phone, turned it on, and it was 12:37. There were push notifications from several entertainment apps hanging in front of her, and nothing else, so she turned it off again.
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