Pastel Colors

Day0921:18

Before the age of six, Songran had a family.

G City, J Province, Xiaxi Village, Nanwu Township, half an acre of fertile land at the foot of the mountain, and a tiled house at the entrance of the village.

His mother died young, and his father, who made a living by doing farm work, raised him alone.Maybe it's because of the widower's loneliness. My father has always been taciturn, and his eyebrows can't be stretched. Whenever he has spare money, he buys cigarettes and alcohol. He is extremely addicted and doesn't like to talk to him. Beat and scold the child.

Focusing on this, Songran felt that his father loved him.

At that time, he was sensible and didn't like to cause trouble like other dolls-either chasing the dog with his bare buttocks, or being chased by a dog with his bare buttocks.He borrowed textbooks from his brothers and sisters in the same village primary school. When he was not helping out, he would sit on the threshold and read, with his left hand for Chinese and his right hand for mathematics. He thought that he would study hard in the future, earn money and be filial to his father.

At the age of five, he was already able to count from one to a hundred, and back to one.The teachers in the village praised him for his talent, saying that if he learned mathematics in the future, he could be an accountant, a cashier, and help people manage accounts, which would bring in money faster than hard work in farming.

Songran then moved a small stool to the elementary school in the village to take lessons, learning to write numbers stroke by stroke.

One day later, he heard some gossip from a neighbor, saying that his father planned to leave Xiaxi Village and go to work in the bustling provincial capital. After a few years, he could save enough money to continue his wife.

He ran to his father to ask for confirmation, and his father smoked the big front door and slowly exhaled choking smoke: "Your mother left early, I can't be single for the rest of my life, I have to find someone to live with."

Songran asked, "Dad, will you take me away?"

Father didn't speak, didn't look at him, Gu Zi stared at the cigarette butt in silence for a long time, then nodded.

Song Ran felt relieved, and then had some sad thoughts—he was about to leave this small village, and he couldn't take his playmates, grandma who sold tofu, chickens, ducks, pigs, and dogs with him.Although the provincial capital is a novelty, it is a frightening big world. The wide roads are intertwined, unlike in small villages, where a single dirt road can connect hundreds of houses.He had to follow closely behind his father lest he get lost.

Before leaving, my father packed two snakeskin bags full of belongings, and Song Ran followed suit by folding his own clothes and trousers and stuffing them in.Father took them all out, put them aside, and said, "Don't take them away, I'll buy you new ones in the provincial capital."

Song Ran believed it was true, happily chose the best-looking set to change into, and gave the rest of the clothes to the friends.

On the morning of his sixth birthday, he followed his father on the green leather train for the first time.

The train blew its long whistle, the steam in the boiler was boiling, and the mechanical shaft drove several rows of steel wheels to crush the rails——Songran, clutching the ticket in his hand, came to a strange city.

T city.

His father told him that this is the provincial capital, and Songran didn't doubt it at all.

For him, who is just a fledgling, there are cement roads, railway stations, buildings, shopping malls and cars here, with a different smell of construction dust from the countryside, and passers-by wearing strange clothes on the road. Of course, it is a splendid and prosperous "big city".

Get out of the train station and transfer to a minibus.He helped his father drag the dusty snakeskin bag, walked around other people tremblingly, and found two empty seats.As the vehicle started to move, he leaned on the window with his arm resting on his arms, and looked curiously at the bustling people along the way, thinking, from today onwards, I will live here.

Every house here is very tall. Should I live in a two-story building or a three-story building?

Thinking wildly, the car dragged a winding tail dust to the station, and his father took him out of the car with a snakeskin bag on his shoulders. After walking a short distance, he came to a large courtyard.

The courtyard gate is an old-fashioned iron fence, with faded red banners hanging, and the reception room next to it is empty, no one is there.

Father stood looking at the banner for a while, then led him to the west wall, and told him that his father had left an important piece of luggage at the train station, and he had to go back immediately to get it.

Song Ran raised her head and asked, "How long will you be going? When will you come back?"

His father looked away unnaturally, and said to him: "You wait here, count up from the beginning, and when you finish counting, Dad will be back."

"Know it."

It's not difficult at all.

Songran counts very fast, and he always finishes counting in a short while. The time his father takes to go back and forth may be enough for him to count several times.

He wanted to help move the luggage to the courtyard wall so that his father would have both hands free to come and go, but his father was weirdly unwilling to let go, picked up the two heavy snakeskin bags, hurried back to the bus station, and boarded the bus. The nearest train disappeared in the billowing smoke and dust rising from the rear of the car.

Song Ran felt flustered for some reason, so she quickly sat down, stretched out ten fingers, and counted one by one.

One, two, three, four, five... Comfort yourself while counting, it's okay, counting is over in the blink of an eye.

As long as the count is over, Dad will come back.

At that time, Songran didn't know that the number is endless.

One hundred, one thousand, one hundred and one billion can be counted, but what he is waiting for... can never be counted.

He wanted his father back so much, so he counted faster and faster, getting tired beyond hundreds and thousands of times, almost exceeding the limit that a six-year-old child could bear.

On the platform in the distance, the bus came and went, sometimes passing one, sometimes passing another.

Whenever a car came into the station, Song Ran jumped up excitedly, stretched his neck and stood on tiptoe, hoping that his father would come out of the opened car door.But every time, the father was nowhere to be seen in the dusty crowd.What was even more frightening was that when the bus drove away and the excitement cooled down, he would suddenly forget where he had counted.

The number is too big, and the child's brain is too small. If you distract yourself for a moment, the shadow will be scattered and you can't catch it.

The more times he forgot, Song Ran became more and more anxious, and he was unwilling to count from the beginning again and again.He was so flustered that he stomped his little feet and didn't know what to do. He could only grab the angular stones and try to draw marks on the wall.

It was getting late, dusk was approaching.

The last train left the platform, there were no more pedestrians around, and the air became silent and cold.Song Ran couldn't see the marks on the wall anymore, he groped the wall with his frozen fingers, trying to settle the messy numbers in his mind, but it was really too difficult.The more anxious he was, the more he couldn't remember. In the end, the whole person seemed to be stupid, and he fell to the corner of the wall in a daze, crying bitterly.

Why can't I count them all?

In the past, he was so good at counting that he could finish it every time, so why couldn't he finish it this time?

As soon as he cried, there was movement in the courtyard.The gate of the fence opened slowly, and a beam of strong light hit him in the darkness, causing him to cry out of control, and the torrent gushed down like a bank.

The director of the orphanage approached him, bent down to ask about the situation, and wanted to lead him in.

She has seen too many children like Songran who were abandoned by their parents in the orphanage under various excuses, and she can understand what's going on at a glance.But no matter how she persuaded, Songran just clung to the corner of the wall and refused to leave, crying and shouting that he was about to finish counting and that his father was coming back.

The dean saw that he had a stubborn temper, so he had no choice but to let him stay where he was.

In the middle of the night that night, the headmaster came out quietly and took the child back who was almost frozen at the base of the wall.At that time, Songran still had a broken consciousness, but he no longer resisted.He curled up in the arms of the dean's aunt, silently recited the numbers, hot tears overflowed the corners of his eyes and trickled down his cheeks.

On February 2001, 2, the day after her sixth birthday, Song Ran was adopted by the T City Children's Welfare Institute.

His obsessive-compulsive disorder also began to attack from this day.

At first, he would sneak out of the orphanage while the janitor was not paying attention, squat in the west corner and snap his fingers.Later, when he was arrested and returned, he leaned on the iron fence of the gate, looked at the bus stop where his father had left, and counted.Later, he was kept under strict surveillance and locked in a cubicle.But every time the teacher went in to visit, he would always maintain a fixed posture - facing the wall, scribbling and drawing with his fingers, and writing Arabic numerals like a bewilderment.

He is immersed in a closed inner world, unresponsive to the outside world, and does nothing but count.

When a bowl of rice was served in front of him, he would count the rice one by one and eat it.

At that time, the concept of medical treatment was still very backward. Children with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder like Songran had no choice but to be sent to a mental hospital.But just when the adults were planning to do so, Songran miraculously regained his sobriety overnight.

It was as if he sensed danger in the dark.

He no longer counts all day long, and his beautiful eyes are also brightened, shining like morning stars.He smiles at everyone, is polite, sensible, and extremely likable.

In this way, Song Ran successfully stayed in the orphanage.

When the teachers and nurses saw that he had recovered, they would occasionally joke in good faith, saying that Songran could count [-] to [-] before elementary school, and he must be a young math genius in the future.Song Ran smiled obediently at them, shook her head again, and said modestly that she was not that powerful.

At this time, Naoren would always feel a sharp pain. He had to lower his head, grit his teeth, and endure it with all his strength.

At the age of eight, Song Ran went to primary school.

To everyone's surprise, math became his worst subject.The numbers printed on paper were like a nightmare. He couldn't face it directly, and he couldn't even complete the simplest four arithmetic operations. The original mathematical talent stopped abruptly and was completely abandoned.

But what scares him the most is not math class, but physical education class.

Because before class, the teacher will ask everyone to stand in a row and report the number.

As soon as the loud and clear counting sound came, he fell into a trance out of control, and couldn't help counting, as if his father would appear in a corner of the playground at any time, wearing an old winter coat, carrying a snakeskin bag on his shoulder, and stretched out to him with a smile. Make a move to take him home.Only by digging his nails into the flesh of his palms and forcing himself to think about other things can he escape the grip of desire and hallucinations.

Seventeen years have passed, and Songran's symptoms have recurred, sometimes mild and sometimes severe, and he has never recovered.

He passed by mathematics and failed to become an accountant or cashier, but became an illustrator by chance.He traveled thousands of miles back to Xiaxi Village, Nanwu Country. His father was not there, and he never went back.The village has already changed its appearance drastically. The old houses in the neighbors were demolished and rebuilt one by one. The childhood playmates left, and the old people in memory passed away. No one still remembers that there was a family named Song at the entrance of the village.

Songran is 23 years old this year and lives a very sober life.

He understood that his father would not look back, and he had already left the place he had been waiting for for a long time.He should find someone who knows and loves each other and form a family of his own.In this family, he will take on the responsibilities of a man, instead of hiding in memory and continuing to play a spoiled child.

But the unfulfilled obsession is like a gangrene, still firmly hidden in the disease.

The tired figure who squeezed into the bus carrying a snakeskin bag has not faded from his sight so far.