Chapter 8 Cosmos (7) The great era roared by, and we all...
The bicycle chain fell off and could no longer be ridden, and Lin Xia injured her leg and could no longer walk. He Chuan took off his shirt, simply wiped the blood from her, bandaged her wound, then picked her up and put her on the seat, and he pushed the bicycle away.
"To the clinic."
Lin Xia had almost finished crying and gradually calmed down. When she heard him say this, she hurriedly stopped him:
“No going to the clinic!”
He Chuan turned his head and looked at her in surprise:
"Why?"
Lin Xia lowered her head in embarrassment and whispered:
"I'm scared."
She has been afraid of doctors, hospitals, and even clinics since she was a child. This may be because she has always been weak and sickly, and had to get injections and take medicine at every turn, which caused her to suffer a lot. This led to her having a deep fear of those places. If she felt unwell, she would rather hide it from her parents and endure it herself than go to the hospital.
"You're badly hurt."
Lin Xia said stubbornly: "It's not serious! I'll be fine after I go home and apply some medicine!"
"There's no medicine at home."
"Then go buy it. I don't want to go to the clinic anyway!"
Seeing that He Chuan didn't stop, Lin Xia reached out and squeezed the handbrake anxiously, and the bicycle stopped suddenly.
He Chuan turned around and looked at her, their eyes met. He disagreed, but she insisted.
Finally, he was defeated.
"Okay, not going to the clinic."
Lin Xia burst into laughter. She knew that he would accommodate her. She just knew it.
He sighed and said softly:
"Let go."
Only then did Lin Xia realize that when she squeezed the handbrake, she was also holding his hand on the handlebar. As if it was burned, she quickly let go of her hand, and her face couldn't help but turn red.
He Chuan continued to push the bike and carried her towards home. The sun was very hot and the surroundings were very quiet. The path was bumpy with gravel and sand. Every slight bump on the bike would affect Lin Xia's wound. Blood was still oozing out, soaking through He Chuan's originally snow-white shirt. His arms and knees were burning with pain.
Lin Xia felt a little uneasy. Is it really okay not to go to the clinic?
Suddenly, she heard He Chuan speak:
"Do you know QS?"
Lin Xia was puzzled: "What?"
"QS is a world university ranking. This year, six Chinese universities made the top 100, including three from Hong Kong and three from mainland China. The Chinese University of Hong Kong is ranked on par with Peking University and Tsinghua University. This list is published by an authoritative British organization and may be subjective and commercial, but it at least reflects international attitudes and views on these schools."
"Hong Kong universities are certainly not generally considered good universities by teachers, but they have higher international recognition, more opportunities for international exchange, and many courses are taught entirely in English. These conditions are not available in mainland schools."
He Chuan didn't look back. Only a calm voice came faintly from the front. Perhaps he was afraid that she wouldn't understand, so he explained slowly, word by word.
Lin Xia was a little slow to react and realized that he was answering the question she had just asked him.
He had always spoken concisely and restrainedly. This was the first time she had heard him speak at such length, and it was also the first time she had heard him speak with a light, tried-hard-to-correct accent similar to He Ping's.
After thinking for a while, she asked him:
"So, do you want to go abroad?"
"Um."
He responded.
"I want to go somewhere far away. I want to see what the outside world is like."
Wangchun, a small county-level city in a remote northeastern province, relied on mining and forestry as its main industries. For a long time, there were no McDonald's or Dicos, no Pizza Hut or Starbucks, and no large shopping malls. Its busiest spot was a 500-meter-long pedestrian street, and the tallest building was a 17-story commercial building clad in royal blue glass in the city center. The train station had only two trains a day. Lin Xia was born and raised here. She had been to the provincial capital a few times, each trip requiring a six-hour bus ride or a 12-hour sleeper train. She had never been to Beijing, and had no idea how far Hong Kong was.
She is like this, and so are her classmates and friends. Everything seems so natural.
She had been online and read the news, and knew that there were hundreds of countries on the earth. She was curious about the hustle and bustle of big cities, and vaguely felt that she might leave here one day after being admitted to university. But it was the first time she heard someone say so firmly and clearly that he wanted to go out, go out of the Northeast, go out of the country, and see the vast world outside.
"Why not?"
Explain to those who don't understand?
She asked softly.
He Chuan smiled:
"Because this road is difficult and may not be realized, if you speak out loud about your unfulfilled dreams, others will laugh at you."
Beijing had not yet hosted the Olympic Games that year. China's GDP ranked fourth in the world, but was less than a quarter of that of the United States. Newspaper news was still reporting on poverty and food and clothing. The advanced and developed countries of Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea were far out of reach. Going abroad was not impossible, but it seemed to have nothing to do with them.
The great era is passing by, and we are all ants.
But sparrows also have the ambition of swans, and ants also want to soar into the sky.
I don't need others' understanding or support.
Lin Xia looked at the back of the man pushing the bicycle in front of her. He had taken off his shirt and was only wearing a white vest, revealing his straight shoulders and protruding butterfly bones. He had the thinness, uprightness, stubbornness and persistence unique to young people. He was determined to move forward and would not turn back until he hit a wall.
She suddenly said:
"I heard it."
He Chuan was stunned: "What?"
"I said, I heard your dream."
Lin Xia smiled brightly and innocently,
"It's not just me. The mountains heard it, the trees heard it, the wind heard it, and the clouds heard it too. But we don't laugh at you. We are all witnesses."
She told him word by word:
"He Chuan, your dream will definitely come true."
......
He Chuan was right. There was indeed no medicine for external injuries at home, and there was no pharmacy nearby, but fortunately Aunt Hao next door had some at home.
The two returned home. Lin Xia changed her dirty clothes and simply wiped off the dirt on her body. After He Chuan borrowed some things from Aunt Hao's house, he applied medicine to her.
She sat on the edge of the bed, and he sat on a small stool, which was shorter than her, and first disinfected it with a cotton cloth soaked in alcohol.
"It hurts a little, bear with it."
He reminded her.
She nodded.
But the pain did not ease because of the prior mental preparation. The wound, which was already numb, was instantly awakened by the cold liquid. Lin Xia almost cried out in pain.
On the way back, the bleeding had stopped, but after wiping it, it began to seep out again. The blood, mud, alcohol and some tissue fluid mixed together, looking particularly scary. Lin Xia quickly turned her head away, not daring to look any longer.
After treating the knees, it was time to treat the arms, and then apply medicine, which was another torture.
Fortunately, the wound was not deep and did not damage the bones or muscles. It was just a flesh wound, but the area of the abrasion was large, which looked scary.
The two of them were very close. He held her ankle and asked her to stretch her legs over his knees. As he lowered his head to apply medicine, the loose hair on his forehead and his warm breath brushed against her, making her itch. The wound was cold, and the place where their skin met was hot. Lin Xia felt her face getting hotter and hotter. She shuddered and couldn't help but shiver.
Finally, after applying the medicine and wrapping the gauze, He Chuan breathed a sigh of relief and instructed her like a qualified doctor:
"Don't go out for the next few days, and be careful not to get it wet. It should scab over in about a week."
Lin Xia stared at him blankly, not knowing what was going on in her head.
He Chuan saw her dull eyes and red eyes, and couldn't help but reach out and touch her head:
"Does it still hurt?"
"good......"
"Then why are you crying again?"
He Chuan reached out and wiped away the half-dried tears from the corners of her eyes, and laughed.
"You're so old, why are you still so crybaby?"
Lin Xia felt a little embarrassed and quickly retorted, "I'm not crying because of the pain, I'm crying because... because my skirt is torn."
Inadvertently glancing at the skirt she had taken off and thrown aside, Lin Xia couldn't help but exclaim:
"Oh, my skirt!"
He Chuan handed the skirt to her. Lin Xia took it and looked through it carefully. The more she looked, the sadder she became, and she almost shed tears again.
The skirt was made of light gauze and was light in color. After the fall, it was not only covered in blood and mud, but the hem was also torn into a long tear. It was a horrible sight.
"This is what Aunt Wen bought for me from the provincial capital. It's my favorite skirt..." She muttered in a wronged tone.
In He Chuan's eyes, there seemed to be no difference between crying because of the pain of the wound or crying because the skirt was torn.
Sure enough, he is still a child, a willful and conceited child.
He slowed his voice and comforted her: "Don't worry, I'll help you wash it clean, and then ask Aunt Hao to help you mend it. She's very good at needlework, maybe she can fix it."
"Even after it's repaired, there are still traces. It's not as beautiful as before..."
Lin Xia was feeling sad, but when she touched the side pocket of her skirt, her face suddenly turned pale and her whole body froze.
He Chuan was puzzled: "What's wrong?"
"My money, which was in my pocket, is gone...it must have fallen out just now..."
This time Lin Xia really cried.
When she started crying, He Chuan was really helpless and asked her,
"How much? How many? What's the denomination?"
"One, one hundred, that's a new one hundred yuan note..."
"Don't worry, I'll help you find it and I'll definitely find it for you!"
After saying that, He Chuan immediately got up and walked out.
Lin Xia no longer cared about anything else. She fell backwards and lay on the bed, feeling more sad than ever before.
That was a full hundred yuan! A huge sum! It was what her father left her before he left, and she hadn't had time to spend it yet. A spicy noodle was ten cents, an ice cream was fifty cents, a drink was two and a half dollars, a comic book magazine was five yuan... How many delicious and fun things could she buy with a hundred yuan?
She shouldn't have brought the money with her, she shouldn't have gone out today! It was like a house that leaked and it rained all night, she was so unlucky!
She was so sad that she lost consciousness. She didn't know how long she had been in a daze until she heard the door slam. When she opened her eyes again, it was almost dark outside. She realized that she had fallen asleep while crying.
"Xia Xia!"
Lin Xia rubbed her eyes and struggled to sit up. The wound was affected and she gasped in pain again.
He Chuan walked in from outside and said with a smile:
"Found it, look!"
Lin Xia looked at the pink banknote he handed over and couldn't believe her eyes. She exclaimed in surprise:
"Ah! I finally found it! That's great!"
The joy of regaining what she had lost was so great that she felt that her wounds were not so painful anymore. It seemed that God had shown mercy to her.
But when she took the money and looked at it carefully, she found something wrong.
She remembered that the note her father gave her before he left was a worn-out RMB note, but the one in front of her was a brand new one.
This is not hers.
Could it be that someone else had the same misfortune as her, lost a hundred yuan in the same place, and He Chuan happened to pick it up? This was too much of a coincidence, right?
She looked up and was about to tell He Chuan the doubts in her heart when she suddenly found that the young man in front of her was sweating profusely, his clothes were soaked, and he was still smiling at her.
"You won't cry this time, will you?"
He has a very nice smile.
At this moment, Lin Xia suddenly understood.
This wasn't her money, nor was it another unlucky person's money. It was He Chuan's money. He hadn't found anything, so he gave her his own. The bicycle chain had fallen off, and he must have run there and back, afraid that if he was a minute late, she would be sad and upset.
It turned out that it was not God who showed mercy to her, but someone could not bear the tears of a little girl and made up for her.
"Well, don't cry anymore."
Lin Xia lowered her eyes and smiled softly. She said slowly:
"I'll leave this money with you for now. Please keep it safe so I don't lose it again due to carelessness. I'll ask you for it when I want to buy something, okay?"
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