He was alone in the office, with a pile of documents in front of him as he sat there checking things. Shen Shixun wasn't highly educated and only knew a rough outline of the characters. Although he had been quietly studying on his own and had made some progress, it didn't mean he wouldn't encounter setbacks.
He reads things more slowly than most people.
He attended primary school on the grassland, but a few years later, a torrential rainstorm hit the grassland. After the rainstorm, the cattle and sheep suddenly contracted a strange disease and died in large numbers. The entire tribe moved to another place with abundant grassland, and his studies were interrupted.
That year, so many cattle and sheep died that when winter came, the entire tribe, young and old, had to rely on hunting to survive.
What prey can you catch in the freezing cold? If you're lucky, you might catch a yak; if you're unlucky, you might catch a rabbit, or nothing at all, and then you have to turn back.
When everyone is starving, there aren't many kind-hearted people willing to share their food.
He, his mother, and his sister went hungry, so hungry that they couldn't sleep in their tents in the freezing cold.
The younger sister hugged her mother and cried, "Mom, I'm hungry."
Her mother found two beans and told her to chew them and drink more water.
At that time, he thought he was really useless. As the only man in the family, he couldn't even feed his family.
Later, when he returned to his original place, Shen Shixun had grown up and had responsibilities on his shoulders, so he could no longer continue studying.
When Xiang Nanzhi arrived, the man had already heard her footsteps and knew it was her, so he didn't look up.
She cautiously approached, thinking the man hadn't seen her, and walked up to him to startle him. Suddenly, Shen Shixun looked up.
Xiang Nanzhi: ...
She sat down next to him. "What are you looking at? You seem so focused."
The man circled the words he didn't know and asked Xiang Nanzhi. Xiang Nanzhi looked at them and realized that not long ago he had been laughing at her for being uncultured, not even knowing the characters for tsampa. Now it was his turn to be the one to ask.
Xiang Nanzhi deliberately made things difficult for him, saying, "You don't even recognize this person? I thought you were so capable."
"These are words that should be learned in elementary school, right? What have you been doing?"
"Did you sneak peeks at girls while the teacher was teaching you?"
Xiang Nanzhi told him the words he didn't know, and then noticed that he had circled many more. She flipped through the contract and said, "Shen Shixun, are you kidding me? You don't recognize any of these words?"
Xiang Nanzhi subconsciously felt that this man was deliberately making things difficult for her because he didn't even recognize such basic characters. "I'm not going to explain it. Look it up in the dictionary yourself. Just take a picture of it on your phone and search for it."
The man didn't speak. Xiang Nanzhi leaned back on the sofa, took a sip of water, and continued to wait for him to finish reading the contract.
A little while later, she noticed that he was indeed looking up each word one by one.
Xiang Nanzhi then realized something was wrong. She got up and sat up again, walked to the man's side, and saw that his phone was playing the word he didn't know.
Xiang Nanzhi was taken aback. "Shen Shixun, this is a word that even elementary school students can write."
She knew he wasn't very educated, and she felt she wasn't particularly educated either; she had just been eating, drinking, and having fun until graduating from university, and her academic performance was average and unremarkable.
But she didn't know that he was struggling even with a basic elementary school education.
He didn't speak, but calmly said, "You should go back first."
Who knows how long we'll have to wait for him here.
Xiang Nanzhi took the contract from his hand, her gaze towards him becoming inexplicably complicated. "You..."
She had a lot to say, but she didn't want him to think she looked down on him. She didn't mean it that way at all; she just found it incredible that when he taught her pinyin, she thought he was joking with her.
But looking back now, perhaps his knowledge only extended to that extent.
Xiang Nanzhi withdrew her smile and said casually, "I'll teach you. It seems like you're having a lot of trouble learning on your own. I was just joking with you earlier."
How could she lack patience with her man? She simply felt he was doing it on purpose.
But he didn't do it on purpose.
The night before Shen Shixun returned to Saigon, Xiang Nanzhi felt even more sorry for him. She stayed up late with him while he worked on the contract, and in the end, she didn't even know when she fell asleep.
She finished teaching him the words he didn't know, told him he could ask her if he didn't understand anything, and then watched him sit there making marks with his head down...
And then she knew nothing more.
Shen Shixun also had his own pride. For so long, he hadn't told anyone that he often didn't recognize some words. Whenever Xiang Ciyuan and Zhang Yandong threw something at him, he would just turn his back and study it silently on his own.
But contracts are different. The uncommon characters and polyphonic characters used in them have completely different meanings in different contexts.
He is actually considered to have a relatively high level of cultural literacy in his tribe, and he can communicate normally with people in Mandarin.
——
The next morning, Xiang Nanzhi opened his eyes, stretched, and found himself sleeping in his room.
When she woke up in the morning, her mind was always a mess, she felt dazed and confused. She reached around and found no one beside her, so she quickly found her phone and called Shen Shixun.
The number you dialed is currently switched off. Please try again later.
They've left? They've boarded the plane?
She glanced at the time; it was indeed time to board the plane. She hadn't given Gila her wedding gift yet.
Xiang Nanzhi contacted a courier service, the super fast kind, and mailed all the things he had prepared for his family to them, urging them to send them as soon as possible.
The courier agreed and asked for her address. Xiang Nan knew the general area but not the exact location. He then left Shen Shixun and Shen Jila's phone numbers.
I'll definitely call when the time comes; I hope these things will be delivered safely.
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