under the filth

It had been three days since He Xiu saw Tang Cen again and talked to him about Jiang Yan.

Compared with before going to the cemetery that day, Tang Cen's face looked a little haggard, which made He Xiu feel a little worried: "Are you okay? You look very bad."

"It's not a problem, it's just that I haven't slept well these days." Tang Cen smiled and waved his hands. When the 36-year-old smiled, wrinkles began to appear at the corners of his eyes.

As Tang Cen's psychiatrist, He Xiu naturally knew that Tang Cen hadn't had a good rest these two days.Before he came, Tang Cen's attending doctor had already told him everything about the past two days.

He pushed his glasses and asked softly, "Is it because of Jiang Yan?"

"Hmm..." Tang Cen's voice was as faint as a mosquito's, and he slightly raised his head, staring at the tiny dust floating in the air that was looming in the light, his eyes showed nostalgia and yearning.

Tang Cen likes to stay in a dark room very much. He Xiu guessed that it was probably because the darkness can bring him a sense of security, so in Tang Cen's ward, both the curtains and lights would only be opened on the half farthest from him.

He Xiu followed his line of sight to look over, but saw nothing.

The ward fell into silence, Tang Cen stared at the air in a daze, while He Xiu looked at him.

After a long time, maybe only a few minutes, He Xiu couldn't help breaking the silence: "Tang Cen." Seeing Tang Cen turning back to stare at him, he asked, "Do you still remember Jiang Yan more than ten years ago?" What kind of person is it?"

Tang Cen was startled, lowered his head and muttered, "Is it...Jiang Yan more than ten years ago?"

19 years ago, Tang Cen and Jiang Yan, who had just been separated, became tablemates. At that time, Jiang Yan was as smiling as the one in the photo.

Although they have been at the same table for half a year, at least before Tang Cen went abroad, compared with the classmates at the front and back tables, the relationship between the two has always been not close or far.

At first, Tang Cen thought that Jiang Yan was a very strange girl. She never asked Tang Cen or others about their studies, and never invited others to participate in any activities, but she was also a good person. She talked the most to the people around her. One sentence is: "Do you want to fetch water?"

At the beginning, Jiang Yan just helped the roommate at the front desk fetch water, but as time passed, people around her got used to ordering her around.

At first, Tang Cen couldn't bear to ask Jiang Yan to help him all the time, but his recess was always occupied by various things, and the people around him also accepted Jiang Yan's help as a matter of course, so Tang Cen didn't push back in the end. refuse.

Tang Cen watched Jiang Yan carry her own and other people's water bottles through the long corridor to pick up water in the boiling water room at the other end, and holding a pile of water bottles full of boiling water was extremely hot water bottle back to the classroom.

"Tang Cen, what are you looking at?" The girl at the front desk turned around with the exercise book when Jiang Yan went out with the water bottle in her arms. She followed Tang Cen's gaze and turned around, just in time to see Jiang Yan's back.

"Are you looking at Jiang Yan?" The girl covered her laughing face with the workbook, "What's so interesting about that freak?"

Tang Cen looked away calmly, lowered his head and wrote something: "Nothing."

freak.

Yes, before Tang Cen went abroad, like everyone else, he thought Jiang Yan was a freak.

In Tang Cen's memory, Jiang Yan didn't seem to care about anything. Whether her grades were good or bad, her teacher's impression, and her classmates' evaluations seemed to have nothing to do with her.Knowing that she is mediocre, she always smiles heartlessly and treats everyone enthusiastically. Tang Cen, who was once ignorant of it, also silently mocks her and envies her.

But no one is as carefree as it seems on the surface.

Tang Cen originally thought that it would be difficult for him to have any contact with Jiang Yan after he went abroad, but he did not expect that one day Jiang Yan would take the initiative to come to him.

In the seventh month of Tang Cen's study abroad, after he was discharged from the hospital, he and Jiang Yan had a deeper communication.It was also at that time that Tang Cen followed the gap that Jiang Yan showed him on his own initiative, peeled off the surface layer called "freak" and got to know Jiang Yan thoroughly.

"She suddenly sent me a message, typed a long text, and said a lot, but it was nothing more than complaints. I thought it was strange at first, but because it happened to be the third year of high school at that time, I didn't care." Tang Cen didn't remember much about Lu Sheng, but he firmly engraved everything about Jiang Yan and him in his heart.

He Xiu noticed that when Tang Cen mentioned Jiang Yan, he would always hold his wrist and rub it, even if his wrist was red, he would not let go.Tang Cen's posture sitting on the bed looked extraordinarily calm, but He Xiu could see his uneasiness from the slight trembling of his fingertips.

It would take a long time to talk about the past with Jiang Yan. He Xiu was worried that Tang Cen would hurt his wrist, so he stretched out his hand to hold Tang Cen's non-stop rubbing hand, and easily wrapped the bony hand in his palm.

Tang Cen felt the heat coming from He Xiu's palm, and looked at He Xiu in surprise, but He Xiu just patted the back of his hand reassuringly, without letting go: "What happened next?"

"..." Tang Cen tried to pull back his hand, but He Xiu held it tightly, so he had no choice but to give up.He Xiu's hand was very warm, and the long-lost feeling of being wrapped in his palm gradually calmed down Tang Cen's panicked heart.

"After a while, she sent another one, saying that she made a mistake. But I have seen it, even if it was unintentional, I can't pry into other people's privacy with peace of mind, so I told her it's okay."

Tang Cen recalled that at that time, he still had prejudice against Jiang Yan.

"She didn't talk anymore that day, and it was already late at night at her side, and I didn't send her any more messages." Tang Cen looked down at his palm, which was covered with chaotic and mottled palm prints, "It turned out that I was separated from her." A few days later, she suddenly asked me if I could talk to her."

Tang Cen looked at He Xiu, the corners of his mouth slightly raised, but his eyes were full of sorrow, without a hint of a smile.

"Doctor He probably couldn't figure out why Jiang Yan came to me. In fact, I didn't understand it at first." The trembling of his hand became more and more serious, so Tang Cen had no choice but to hold He Xiu's hand instead.

Tang Cen thought, maybe when Jiang Yan sent the message that day, she was already prepared to be rejected by him, but she still pressed the send button bravely.

"But then I figured it out," he said.

At that time, Tang Cen was still inexperienced, he never thought that he would be in the same situation as Jiang Yan after half a year.It was only at that time that Tang Cen realized how desperate Jiang Yan was back then and had no choice but to seek help from someone who was neither relative nor relative.

When Jiang Yan sent Tang Cen a message for the second time, Tang Cen had just been discharged from the hospital for a few days.Although the appendicitis operation was not a major operation, Tang Cen could only stay at home to recuperate during his first holiday in the UK.

It was precisely because the door had been closed all the time that when Jiang Yan sent a message, Tang Cen was able to put down what he was doing and reply to her immediately.

Jiang Yan babbled a lot, but it was nothing more than trivial things in life, Tang Cen really had no interest.While flipping through the textbook and previewing the homework that had been left behind, he thought about when he would find an excuse to end this boring conversation, and replied perfunctorily to Jiang Yan.

Aware of Tang Cen's perfunctory, Jiang Yan didn't send another message for a long time.

Just when Tang Cen breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that he had finally got rid of her, Jiang Yan suddenly asked, "Tang Cen, can I call you?"

When Tang Cen saw this message, he involuntarily typed a word of rejection with his fingers, but when he was about to press the send button, his fingers paused in the air.

Tapping the back of the phone with his fingers, Tang Cen hesitated for a while.In the end, he still deleted all the long paragraphs in the editing column, typed the word "OK" again, and then pressed the send button.

Sometimes, life goes to another path in such a difference of thought.

Jiang Yan's call came almost a second after Tang Cen sent a message, and it was a voice call prompted by the chat software.

Tang Cen put down the book in his hand and picked up the phone.

"Tang Cen?" Jiang Yan's voice sounded from the other end. Hearing the soft voice with a slight cry in his memory, Tang Cen couldn't help frowning.

"It's me." He suppressed the impatience in his heart and tried to make his voice gentler, "Jiang Yan? What's wrong with you?"

Tang Cen's "what's the matter" was like a switch, and after a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone, suddenly there was a sobbing sound.Sitting on the bed and listening to Jiang Yan's cry, Tang Cen felt a little irritable for no reason.

The person at the other end didn't speak, but sobbed in a low voice. Listening to that voice, Tang Cen always felt that Jiang Yan was suppressing something.

Jiang Yan was sobbing for a while, and then suddenly opened the conversation: "Tang Cen, do you know? I moved once when I was young. At that time, I didn't have a mobile phone. A good friend left me an address and asked me to write to her. .”

Out of nowhere, Jiang Yan mentioned something about her childhood. Although Tang Cen didn't understand, she listened silently.

"Once I wrote her a letter secretly, and it was the first time. I thought I would put it in the mailbox when I went to school in the afternoon, but I just finished writing and stuffed the envelope into the bookshelf, and my mother came in gone."

Used to seeing Jiang Yan's heartless smile, Tang Cen never thought that one day he would hear her cry.However, Jiang Yan's voice was hoarse from crying, and Tang Cen couldn't hear what she was saying clearly.

"I didn't know what she was going to do, so I watched her look in front of the bookshelf, as if she was looking for something. Then I watched her take out the envelope, take out the letter paper in front of me, and read it Then he pointed to the letter and asked me: 'Why are you writing this? What is the use of writing this?'

"She threw the letter in my face and went out.

"I was in elementary school at that time, and I was still too young. I just thought she seemed angry, so I picked up the letter paper while she was going out, and secretly erased all the words on it with an eraser."

When Tang Cen heard this, a young Jiang Yan seemed to appear in front of him.He watched the letter paper hit Jiang Yan's face, watched her slowly squat down after her mother left, picked up the letter paper, secretly wiped her tears, and wiped away the writing on it with an eraser.

All the nostalgia for her mother was wiped away bit by bit by Jiang Yan along with the letter, and those fantasies about friendship were like rubber scraps, and she dumped them into the trash can with her own hands.