Tears are the condensation of a living being's sorrow. When the sorrow in the body reaches a certain concentration, it condenses into tears and flows out from the window of the soul.
A gentle hug is like a desiccant for the soul, capable of absorbing those sad emotions.
When the girl in front of him shed tears again, a pair of warm arms pulled her into a hug. She leaned into Chen Bing's arms as well, just like when she was a child and had been wronged, she would throw herself into her mother's arms for comfort.
"I understand, I understand how you feel, that feeling of not being able to make amends after saying something hurtful." Chen Bing placed one hand on Liu Xiaoxiao's head, gently combing her hair as she slowly spoke in a gentle voice.
“I have a friend whose family ran a breakfast shop next to the school when he was a child. When he was in elementary school, his mother would wake him up at three or four in the morning every day and take him to the shop at the school.”
When he was in first and second grade, he didn't understand anything. He would just sit on a stool in the corner of the shop, holding the pancakes his mother made, eating them while watching his mother work hard to make the pancakes and pour the oil...
His mother would occasionally wipe the sweat from her brow with a towel draped over her shoulder, then turn back to look at him gently. He would smile back and glance at his mother, then lower his head to take another bite of his flatbread.
Although those days were tough, he felt very happy.
But when he entered fourth or fifth grade, his mindset gradually changed. A nameless shame began to creep into his heart and take over his thoughts. The one or two hours he spent in the store each day were the most unbearable time for him.
He was constantly worried that a classmate he knew would walk into the store, see him in the corner of the room, and look at him with a strange smile, even if it was just his imagination. To deal with this, he tried many methods, such as running out of the store early before the school gates opened to wait at the entrance. He would also pretend to have a stomachache and squat in the small toilet behind the store for a long time.
The thing he was most afraid to do was to go up and help his mother when she was busy, because he was afraid that others would find out that his mother sold breakfast. He was especially afraid that someone would come to the shop and say that his mother's pancakes were not good, or that they had something bad in them, especially when such questions came from his classmates.
Whenever that happened, he would lower his head deeply, say nothing, and just play with his fingers in shame. He would not stand firmly behind his mother when she apologized, but would just watch silently like an observer until they left, and then he would leave in fear.
Sometimes, his mother would ask him why he ran out of the store to wait outside when it was so cold. He would only say, "I think the school gates will open soon."
After that, Mom stopped talking, just gave a simple reply, and went back to her work. Actually, he was lying to Mom; he simply felt ashamed and didn't want to stay in the shop anymore.
He willingly left his mother's warm little shop, bathed in warm yellow light, and went out into the cold wind, all for the sake of his strange sense of pride.
Back then, he naively thought his mother didn't know his thoughts. He naively thought his mother was foolish. He hated parent-teacher conferences because then his classmates and teachers would know that the well-known, sallow-faced woman selling breakfast pancakes near the school gate was his mother…
As Chen Bing recounted the story, the girl's sobs gradually faded from the room. She was still sobbing intermittently, but she was clearly engrossed in the tale Chen Bing was telling.
"As he grew older, one day in sixth grade, he could no longer bear his vanity, so he told his mother, 'Buy me a bicycle, so I can sleep in a little longer and ride my bike to school at six or seven o'clock!'"
His mother agreed and from then on, she would leave him money for breakfast every day before leaving. He was very happy at the time because it meant that he would no longer have to eat his mother's breakfast, which he had grown tired of for nearly ten years.
That weariness was like the weariness he felt for his mother's face, sallow from cooking fumes. However, at the time, he only thought about no longer having to endure that torment of his pride, neglecting the unseen complex emotions his mother was experiencing…
At the time, he only thought of his mother as a rough-spoken, shrewish, and haggard woman, forgetting that she had once been a gentle and beautiful young woman. She only became that way for the sake of life and her children.
At this point, Chen Bing stopped speaking and began to intently stroke Liu Xiaoxiao's hair.
"And then? Did Mom die?" Seeing that Chen Bing didn't continue, Liu Xiaoxiao looked up and asked him with red eyes and snotty nose.
"Later..." Chen Bing gently pressed Liu Xiaoxiao's head, letting her bury her face in his arms again, and then continued to tell the story, "Later, when my friend went to junior high school, high school, and college, he gradually became more sensible. He was often ashamed of his thoughts back then, but he was also always ashamed to say out loud what he felt back then."
Thinking about it carefully, it's actually quite funny. As a child, he was too ashamed to speak up, and now that he's grown up, he's still too ashamed to speak up. So when will he finally be brave?
At this point, Chen Bing lowered her head with a complicated look and asked Liu Xiaoxiao, "What do you think happened next?"
"He never said those words out loud, and then his mother got sick and died."
"Why is it so sad and realistic?" Chen Bing thought Liu Xiaoxiao would give a happy ending, but she didn't expect her to come up with such an ending based on her own experience.
"Because happy endings are all lies; reality is sadness and regret."
So you're such a genuine kid, completely different from Shang Yunmiao.
After listening to Liu Xiaoxiao's answer, Chen Bing remained silent for a while before continuing to speak.
"Later, my friend made a wish upon a shooting star, hoping to return to his childhood, to that breakfast shop with its soft yellow lights, and to rewrite his mother's past sadness with his own actions."
"He succeeded?"
"Well, it's halfway there. After my friend went back, he felt that working at the breakfast shop was too hard, so he made 1.8 million yuan in the stock market to help support his family. From then on, his family lived a happy life. He even wrote a book about what happened, but many people criticized him for making money in the stock market at the age of three, saying it was too unscientific."
Unexpectedly, Liu Xiaoxiao couldn't help but laugh at the comedic ending, but she quickly composed herself and asked, "So, what is the real ending?"
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