Figure◎Ogawa

◎Zeng Guhan Picture◎Ogawa

Before Hong Yanling opened his mouth to call me my childhood nickname, I felt his hesitant but emotional eyes. Do I know this person? My head was full of questions. As an extremely shy introvert with occasional prosopagnosia, I could only pretend to be calm and pretend to look at the items on the supermarket shelves. I even glanced at them when I turned around. My brain searched hard for the relationship between this man and all stages of my life. The possibility of intersection was raised but failed. I don’t know who he is.

Is it a chat? I just swam 2,000 meters at the Municipal Sports Center. I stopped by to do some shopping on my way home. I was completely bare-faced and my hair was very disheveled. I must have been hungry and tired, so I rejected this hypothesis. At the same time, I didn’t know why I felt this way about myself. Feeling ashamed of the insecurities and lack of self-confidence.

Please read on…

“Hippopotamus?” he said, silencing my unnecessary inner theater.

I’m a hippopotamus, although I haven’t heard anyone call me that for a long time. But I really don’t know who he is. A flash of lightning flashed through my mind. Hippopotamus was the name I used to call my country when I was a child. Because my last name was He, and I had hàng-lin as a child and blushed easily, so I didn’t mind having such a typical nickname. But almost all the people I met thirty years ago have disappeared from my life, as if there is an invisible wall of fate preventing me from reuniting with my childhood destiny, or like the weird plot that might appear in a scary and dark science fiction novel: Your childhood was fake and none of your former friends existed.

I’m not sure whether the moment of random thoughts lasted for three seconds or three minutes, and I don’t know whether my expression was stunned, stunned, giggly, or frowning. The man seemed to be testing whether I recognized him, and his expression seemed to be tense with anticipation and fear of admitting his mistake, to the point where he seemed to be risking something important and giving it a try. I looked at his face, the paleness highlighted his neatly trimmed beard, and noticed that his head suddenly shook slightly, an unconscious but not abrupt movement, and his lips pursed in a way that was familiar to me and unique to me. , the girl’s face in the memory suddenly jumped out. I said her name happily but also confused.

“Hong Yanling?”

“I knew you would recognize me!”

“Is it really you? Are you still called by this name?”

“Yes, I’m still hesitating whether to change it. Why are you here? Why are you looking at organic black maca powder? Are you going to buy this for your husband?”

I laughed and admitted to her that I was a little panicked just now because I thought I was being followed by a strange unknown man, and I didn’t even look at what I had taken. We came out of the deserted Lady’s Supermarket to chat at the Douhua shop in the food court. Memories that we thought had disappeared came flooding back, and each other remembered the things we mentioned. At that time, there were fifty people in a class in primary school, and we were all the weird and marginalized people in the class. She would shake her head from time to time, and sometimes she couldn’t help but make a bird-like sound. And I am the ghost who always hides in the corner and often doesn’t talk to anyone all day long and no one will talk to me. At that time, there was a very small boy named Ah Cai, who didn’t seem to be very popular and would sometimes be teased by other classmates. During the cleaning time before the last class every day, the three of us were assigned to sweep the furthest area under the kapok tree. The three of us didn’t have many opinions and didn’t talk much to each other. One day, the class next door deliberately waved rotten kapok and fallen leaves in the ditch at the junction of the sweeping area, making Ah Cai covered with dust. I got angry and picked up Ah Cai’s broom and swept it back too without saying a word. Hong Yanling rushed Go back to class and tell other students that someone is bullying Ah Cai in our class. Although the classmates were usually a bit mean to Ah Cai, they probably felt that Ah Cai was ours and no one should bully him, so all of a sudden they all came. The class next door also went to find someone to build up the momentum. It looked like they were going to start a group fight, but in fact it was just childish kids yelling at each other. Later, when the school bell rang and the animals dispersed, the teacher found out about this and the whole class was made to stand. The class teacher who learned about the situation after class privately praised us for helping Ah Cai vent his anger, but we should not do this again in the future, as girls should do. In fact, we all know that Ah Cai is not afraid of those people at all, and the three of us have developed a friendship that seems to be loyalty.

One time, after the monthly exam, we got out of school early and everyone didn’t know what to do in the afternoon. Ah Cai suggested taking us to his house to eat beancurd. But when we got home, we found that the door was locked and no one was there, so he took us from an aunt’s house next door. Go in, climb up to the fourth floor and borrow their roof to climb over the wall and enter the house from the balcony. At that time, the aunt didn’t know whether to praise or tease Ah Cai for bringing two girls home. He was so lucky. Auntie later treated us to tribute balls, and Ah Cai also gave her a bowl of tofu pudding. The wall on the roof of a whole row of houses can be climbed all the way to the end. The three of us were there to imagine that someone climbed over the wall thinking that there was a house on the other side, but ended up falling into the road. It was horrifying. At that time, Hong Yanling said that her name meant to prolong life, because the fortune teller said that she might not live to marry. But she was actually complaining that there were too many strokes in the word “age”. Every time she finished writing her name in the exam, she felt that someone else had already written the third question. Moreover, Ah Cai’s talent of three strokes made him feel proud. Ah Cai said that this was actually not his home. His father rented a room here. I thought his father was a soldier from another province, but I didn’t ask at that time because he didn’t talk much and I didn’t share anything that day. The bean curd made by Ah Cai’s father is very delicious, and the tribute balls made by Auntie are also delicious.

“Where is Ah Cai now?” I asked, picking up the bowl and drinking the last of the sweet beancurd soup.

“I remember he transferred to another school before graduation, so he wasn’t even in the graduation yearbook,” Hong Yanling said. “But I remember receiving a Christmas card from him once. I made it myself using construction paper.” He added.

“I have one too! Is it a spring made of cross-folded paper strips? When you open the card, Santa’s head will fall out and hang there?” I also thought about it.

“Yes! The spring broke later and I glued it back together!”

The two of us rejoiced in unearthing distant memories together. These things are as vivid as the first time they happened, but they are also as confusing and suspicious of life as recurring dreams. ●

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