TMISIU- chapter 59

The end of the New Year’s Day holiday meant that there would be no other long holidays before the final exams, which would be followed by another ranking and class placement.

Even the students in the grade two Class 1 of Gusu High School were inevitably nervous about the final exams.

Hence, Wei Ying also devoted himself to preparing for the exam.

Nei Huaisang shared an exclusive gossip with Wei Ying, saying that Wen Xu and Jiang Cheng from Class 2 had dropped out of school.

From what his sister-in-law Nei Xiaoting told him, they even got a mark on their records, and it was estimated that it would follow them for the rest of their lives, asking them if they had anything to do with the CAC competition.

Wei Ying only said that he didn’t know, but Nei Huaisang was curious.

He clearly saw Jiang Cheng’s dad come and send something to Wei Ying several times, but in the end, he did not settle with Wei Ying?

Not long after, the final results of the CAC competition came out.

Wei Ying lived up to the expectations and won the first prize in the country, it was the best result after the storm.

He used the prize money to invite his classmates to dinner over the weekend to thank them for their support.

A group of high school students, who were going crazy with revision, had a great time eating and drinking and then spent the night in a karaoke bar.

The boys had no parents or teachers to control them, so they ordered more than 30 bottles of beer alone.

Wei Ying wanted to drink too, but Lan Zhan didn’t allow him to, so he shoved a bottle of peach soda into his hand, causing him to sigh.

The private room was heated well, and the rotating coloured lights have been turned on by someone.

The colorful halo was dazzling.

The restless air mixed with the smell of beer and juice, and the noisy laughter of young people was noisy and vivid.

Wei Ying was in a trance in this noisy scene, remembering that at this time last year he should have been wrapped in an old cotton- padded coat that had no more cotton.

In the corridor outside the dormitory of the ten- person room, a person with a flashlight shook his teeth with a cold, catching up on his homework from Gusu live broadcast class.

The idea that supported him at that time was simple, that was, the moon on the live screen thousands of miles away.

At this moment, he looked at the classmates of Gusu High School who were dancing in front of him, and at the handsome young man beside him.

He was wearing a pair of wireless headphones, looking down at the tablet in his hands amidst the dappled sound, his long fingers writing something on the tablet, as if he was in a library instead of a karaoke bar.

Wei Ying couldn’t help but put his head over, and saw that it was his TOEFL English essay that he was forced to write last night by Lan Zhan.

Next to it were dense red correction notes, the number of words almost catching up with the main text.

“…Teacher Lan, you might as well write me a new one.” Wei Ying said with difficulty.

Lan Zhan was blocked from view by Wei Ying’s head. He raised his hand and cupped Wei Ying’s chin and pushed it a little to the side, continuing to annotate the last sentence, his tone was somewhat serious:

“The model essay has been written, you can refer to it.”

“…?”

As soon as Wei Ying was about to say something, he was suddenly lifted from the sofa to the bar by Nei Huaisang and the class monitor.

There was also a microphone in his hand that had just been shoved by Nei Huaisang, and the others shouted loudly to make him sing, “Sing one! Sing one!”

Wei Ying was in a good mood, and he ordered a song to sing, an old English song, “Fly Me to the Moon”, which he had heard before and liked so much that he wrote it down.

He sang sloppily, relying on the good and simple tune.

No one made funny booze, which made him very satisfied.

Lan Zhan finally stopped looking at the essay. His normally cold face was half hidden in the dim light, his gaze falling on him through the glittering coloured light, focused and soft.

After singing, Wei Ying sat back next to Lan Zhan.

Just as he was about to ask how he was singing, he saw Lan Zhan was still writing on the tablet.

“Teacher Lan, if you correct homework at my party again, I’ll confiscate your tablet.”

Wei Ying feigned an anger and once again went over to look, but saw that on the tablet was not his broken essay, but a new document with a beautiful handwritten English sentence.

“You are all I long for. All I worship and adore.”

It was the words of the song he had just sung, and the next line was…….

Lan Zhan handed the tablet to him. Looking at him from the corner of his eyes, he said casually: “Want to give it to you.”

Wei Ying took the tablet and looked at the English lyrics on it, blushing a little.

After a long night of fussing and sending a group of drunks to their cars, Wei Ying went home with Lan Zhan.

He was still excited, humming the song he sang all the way, and didn’t even stop when he crawled into bed after showering, nestling in Lan Zhan’s arms and taking out his phone to calculate his prize money.

The prize money for the first place was very generous, there was still a lot left.

Wei Ying said in every detail what he wanted to buy for his family and Lan Zhan, what to buy for his grandfather and grandmother, and what to buy for his teacher Zhou Wanghan…

Lan Zhan embraced Wei Ying with one arm and flipped through the book with the other hand, occasionally responding with a few sounds.

After counting, Wei Ying became quiet suddenly, seeming to be thinking about something.

Seeing Wei Ying’s silence, Lan Zhan looked down at Wei Ying’s phone screen and found that he was staring at the weather in Gusu City in a daze.

It said that the cold wave was coming in the next few days and it was going to be cold and snowy.

He raised his hand and pinched Wei Ying’s earlobe, asking, “What are you thinking about?”

Wei Ying came back to his senses, turned around and sat on Lan Zhan’s lap, saying: “I was thinking about my sister, I don’t know if she really received the things I bought for her last time.”

Last time there was also a cold wave, he bought a bunch of things for keeping warm in winter and sent it to Yu Ziyuan, both for Yu Ziyuan and Wei Yanli.

He didn’t know that Yu Ziyuan was sick at that time.

Lan Zhan knew that Wei Ying was thinking about more than his sister Wei Yanli, he reached out and wrapped his arm around Wei Ying’s waist, brought it a little closer to his arms, and asked tentatively:

“Do you want to go to Hope Hospital?”

The last time he met Wei Zhuliu at the hospital, Wei Zhuliu asked Wei Ying to visit Yu Ziyuan sometime.

Wei Ying never went, but Lan Zhan knew that Wei Ying always had this matter in his heart.

Wei Ying put his forehead against Lan Zhan’s shoulder, his fingers grabbed a piece of Lan Zhan’s pajamas, smothered for a while and said, “I do not want to go see her, I just think that some things may need a closure.”

Lan Zhan wrapped Wei Ying’s fingers holding his pajamas into his palm and said to him, “Go and see.”

No matter how far the road was in the future, there was no need to look back.

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Wei Ying did not let Lan Zhan accompany him the next day.

He went to Hope Hospital alone against the cold wind, bought some fruits like last time, and went straight to Yu Ziyuan’s ward.

Wei Zhuliu was not there, only Yu Ziyuan was in the ward.

Wei Ying barely recognized the woman who had tubes all over her body on the bed.

Her face was so swollen that he couldn’t see what she used to look like.

When she heard the sound of the door, she looked over to the door very slowly, as if it took a lot of effort to recognize who was coming.

Yu Ziyuan’s yellow and swollen face couldn’t make out any expressions. She opened her mouth hard and called out “Wei Ying”

Wei Ying raised his foot and walked towards the hospital bed, without calling any name.

They didn’t really have much to talk about.

Or rather, since he knew the truth, he didn’t talk much to Yu Ziyuan, and Yu Ziyuan had become increasingly silent to him since then.

Only with a pair of eyes full of sadness occasionally look at him, and he was extremely disgusted with this look.

Now he saw a little smile in Yu Ziyuan’s more cloudy eyes as she said, “You came to see me.”

“I came for Wei Yanli.” Wei Ying said with little tone, placing the fruit in his hand on the bedside table.

Yu Ziyuan nodded softly when she heard this, saying: “Wei Yanli is at her grandmother’s house, she wanted to come with me to see you in Gusu City, I didn’t let her come, let her study well at school.”

“I will let her transfer to study here.”

Wei Ying said, Jiang Fengmian promised to help him with this favor and find a good junior high school, and Wei Yanli would transfer in the next semester.

Yu Ziyuan hadn’t spoken for a long time, and when she spoke again, her voice became much lower: “She is blessed to have a brother like you.”

After she finished speaking, she lifted the hand with the needle, pointed to the drawer of the bedside table with some difficulty, and said, “There is a wooden box in the first drawer. Take it out and take a look.”

Wei Ying took out the narrow, palm-length wooden box from the drawer.

The wooden box should be made of leftover bits and pieces; it was rough and old.

He opened the wooden box, and inside was a knot made of red rope. The hands weaving it were obviously a bit clumsy; the knot was not very smooth and beautiful.

Wei Ying stared at the string of peace knots for a few seconds, then suddenly raised his head to look at Yu Ziyuan.

“Your mother, ah, had long and slender hands, and she was so good at drawing, but I don’t know why she was so slow at learning how to knit ropes. I taught her for a long, long time before she finished knitting this string of peace knots.”

Yu Ziyuan looked at the peace knot in Wei Ying’s hand, and seemed to be lost in memory:

“The first time I saw her, I thought how could there be such a good-looking person, with eyes always containing water and speaking warmly and softly.”

“She came to my door and asked me if she could stay at my house. I saw that she was pregnant with a child, thinking that I was also pregnant with a child and the two of us could be companions so I agreed to her. She didn’t worry at all. She gave a large sum of money as soon as she moved in, and didn’t want to think about if I lied to her.”

“At that time, the other daughter-in-laws in the village envied me, saying that I was so lucky to have met a nobleman from a big city. I thought so too. I have been in Lotus Pillar Bay all my life and I have never seen anything in the world. Your mother is the most powerful person I know. I don’t even dare to think of the word friend, but she really regards me as a friend…”

Wei Ying heard the word “friend” and his breathe was stagnant, he couldn’t listen anymore, and asked the question he most wanted to ask in a cold voice:

“She treated you as a friend, why would you do that?”

She trusted you so much, but you left behind the child she gave her life in exchange for, and handed your own child to her relatives.

Yu Ziyuan fell silent, slowly moving her eyes away from the string of peace knots, looking out of focus at the IV drip hanging on the head of the bed.

She lowered her voice and continued weakly:

“I didn’t study much. Your mother had a lot of things I don’t understand. Sometimes I didn’t understand what she said or painted. The only thing I could understand about her is her love for you.”

“She gave you a good name, drew you a picture, wrote a letter, and said that she would take you to many places in the future and teach you how to draw. At that time I suddenly thought, what can I give my children? I’ve never thought about this kind of problem before. Our children were all born and raised in the village and didn’t study much. They grew up just like me, got married, gave birth to children, and went on like this one generation after another…”

“Your mother let me know that as a parent, I still have to consider so much for the children… I wonder if I have to leave something for my child, but that day they said my child was weak and would not live long at all. I am not willing, ah. How can I be willing, I have not even thought about what to give him in the future…”

“Maybe it’s this point of reluctance. That day your father and the others came to Lotus Pillar Bay to pick up the mother and the son. I gave them my child. At that time, I thought, this was the only thing I could give him, and the red string I made myself…”

“Is that your thing?” Wei Ying interrupted the questioning. He felt that there was no need to listen further.

There was no hidden feeling he had imagined.

Everything was just a selfish use of the so-called motherly love, giving the fate of others as a gift to her children.

He got up from the chair, wanted to turn around and leave when he saw Yu Ziyuan struggling to stretch out her hand to him and her voice was completely weakened:

“Wei Ying, I’m sorry, I stole what your mother gave you. I know you hate me and won’t forgive me. I’m going to go to hell soon, and I won’t be able to see your mother even after I die. If you go to see her in the future, can you help me tell her that I’m sorry…”

Wei Ying looked indifferently at the hand with the needle that stretched towards him.

There were countless times when he longed for that hand to hold his hand to pick him up and take him home from school, just like she held Wei Yanli.

He did not move, and asked indifferently: “You know I won’t forgive you, so why do you expect forgiveness from my mother?”

Yu Ziyuan’s hand gradually dropped, her eyes half closed, and her lips moved as if to say something, but no one could hear it clearly except for herself.

Wei Ying looked down at the woman on the hospital bed, the “mother” he once looked forward to being loved by her, but later hated and loathed.

He finally did not say any more sharp words, only leaving a sentence: “You get well, Wei Yanli is still waiting for you at home.”

Then, clutching the string of peace knots, he turned and walked out of the ward.

He originally wanted to ask Yu Ziyuan why he did not treat him a little better out of guilt over the years, but there was no point in asking.

He came to see Yu Ziyuan’s side, only to break the “mother-son fate” of the past ten years.

From then on, they had no relationship anymore.

Wei Ying walked out of the tall building of the inpatient department.

It was about ten in the morning, the last sunny day before the cold wave, and the sun was shining from the southeast.

He raised his hand to cover his eyes, the green light was on on the street outside the hospital, and he followed the crowd to the other side of the street.

The cold wave in Gusu City came raging.

The weather forecast said there would be heavy snow tomorrow, but in fact it started to fall in the middle of the night.

Overnight, the whole city was covered with heavy snow, only waiting for people to wake up and sigh with surprise.

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