Attempted first love

"I did not mean that."

The lighter was wrapped around his fingertips, and then he put it in his pocket. Xia Yan leaned back against the back of the chair, seemingly hesitating to speak.

There were only the two of them left in the spacious corridor. Lu Zhouyu leaned against the wall and stopped, his eyes fell on the slogan "Treasure life" on the opposite wall, waiting for him to continue.

"Tonight is too messy." Xia Yan lowered his head and stretched out his palms, "My hands are still shaking."

Lu Zhouyu followed his gaze and trembled with his outstretched fingers. He comforted him, "I'll wake up tomorrow morning, so don't worry too much."

"It's like this when I'm nervous." Xia Yan raised his head and smiled at him, "Sit down and stay with me for a while."

"Stop smoking?"

"No, actually my legs are shaking too, I just said that when I had nothing to say."

Lu Zhouyu glanced at him: "Then what if I say go to smoke? How are you going to go?"

"Help me up, you won't just ignore death."

Lu Zhouyu smiled noncommittally, and sat down again.

There was a space between the two of them, chatting casually, Xia Yan asked some details of the accident, and Lu Zhouyu told him the news from the police station.

Turning around, he changed the topic, "The question from last time..." As if to make himself seem indifferent, he paused halfway through, "Have you thought about it?"

Lu Zhouyu turned to look at him, and said calmly, "You want to know now?"

"It still doesn't work. You can tell it's a refusal just by looking at your expression."

When Lu Zhouyu heard his words, his eyes froze, and then he smiled: "What if it's not rejection."

"You'd better not say that," Xia Yan snapped his fingers, and said in a normal tone, "I will take it seriously."

After a moment of silence, a new child was transferred to a ward not far away, crying intermittently, and many people squeezed in in the corridor.

"Let's go to the rest room." Xia Yan stood up, stretched his limbs, and jumped on the spot twice. "There is a sofa over there."

There are rows of sofa chairs and LCD TVs in the rest room of the hospital. It is already midnight, and there are only a few family members of patients lying on the chairs overnight. The room looks very deserted.

As soon as he sat down, the LCD screen suddenly went dark, and the surroundings were completely dark.

Lu Zhouyu's arm was clenched violently by a cool hand. In two seconds, or less, the movie started and the screen gradually lit up.

That hand quickly withdrew, Xia Yan whispered, "I'm sorry."

Lu Zhouyu looked at the screen and said "it's okay".

The opening song is a folk song in an unidentifiable language. It is long and soothing. The black and white long shot moves slowly amid the sound of the music. A thin young man keeps running forward in the gap between the sky and the earth. The clouds and trees are far away from him. leave behind.

"I might fall asleep soon," Xia Yan leaned his head over and whispered in the second long shot of the movie, "Don't call me if you leave, I'll tell you when Jiang Yan wakes up tomorrow."

For a while, when Lu Zhouyu thought he had fallen asleep, it was as if a cloud floated by his ear, brushing past his ear gently and softly.

"No matter what your answer is," Xia Yan asked softly, "Are we still friends?"

"Shouldn't I ask you?" Lu Zhouyu answered him looking directly at the screen.

"Forget it." Out of the corner of his eye, he probably smiled, and rubbed the back of his head on the back of the sofa chair, adjusting to a comfortable position, "I really fell asleep, this movie is really hypnotic."

In the second half of the movie, the protagonist began to face the camera with a lot of monologues. Lu Zhouyu was slightly short-sighted. They sat in the last row and could not read the subtitles.

He raised his arm and moved the wrist that was just tightly clenched. After Xia Yan let go of his hand, he didn't move, so that he was a little stiff.

In the lounge, people came in one after another, and some people went out. Everyone was in good condition and did not make a sound, as if they were staging another black and white silent film in tacit understanding.

It was the first time that Lu Zhouyu and Xia Yan watched a movie together, and it was also an old black and white movie.At that time, there were far from such complete and comfortable facilities. A canopy bed less than one meter long, a 3.1-inch Sony m4, and a pair of old headphones all looked interesting when combined.

At the end of the evening class that day, Lu Zhouyu forgot to bring the key and leaned against the door of the dormitory waiting for him to come back to open the door.

Seeing him coming from the other end of the corridor, he greeted everyone he met along the way, and stopped to chat with one of them, and walked for 1 minutes in 5 minute.

He has a good personality and good looks, and he gets acquainted with everyone easily and quickly.

It was dark, and the sensor light in front of the door was slow to respond. When Xia Yan was almost at the door, he saw Lu Zhouyu, and ran over with the last few steps.

"Why didn't you call me? Just wait here."

His voice was clear, and the sensor light above his head was awakened. The white plastic lampshade was full of dust and moss, and the light was pitifully thin.You can vaguely see a few streaks of pencil dust on his cheeks, and various paints on his white T-shirt.

"You have to come sooner or later." Lu Zhouyu said.

"Didn't I come running over after you shouted?" Xia Yan twisted open the door and said to him again: "You seem to have dropped something, behind you."

"What?" Lu Zhouyu followed his gaze and looked behind him.

"Nothing! I took a shower first today—" The ending sound disappeared into the loud closing sound of the bathroom door.

After taking a shower, the sound of conversation and footsteps in the corridor gradually subsided, and the two of them went about their own business quietly.

As usual, Lu Zhouyu took out his m4 and sat on the bedside to watch a movie. He was concentrating on it, with earphones plugged into both ears, and he didn't raise his head until he felt a wave of moisture approaching him.

Xia Yan's hair was still not dry, and the ends of his hair were curled up one by one, and he gave him an embarrassed smile, "What are you looking at?"

Lu Zhouyu showed him the screen, "Four Hundred Blows."

"What a strange name, is it a war movie?"

"No," Lu Zhouyu took off an earphone and explained, "A French proverb says that a naughty child needs to be beaten four hundred times before he can become a healthy and obedient child."

"Ah? Domestic violence!" He immediately moved closer.

Lu Zhouyu gave him an earphone and asked, "Look?"

"Is it okay?" Xia Yan took the earphones and sat on the bed with a smile, "Thank you so much."

Lu Zhouyu moved in to make room for him, "Do you want to start over?"

"No, no, just tell me what happened earlier."

"A child, skipping class to do bad things."

"Oh... that's why his parents beat him?"

"may be."

The black-and-white images and the lengthy French, everything made it difficult for Xia Yan to concentrate. He moved unsteadily, and the iron frame bed made a "squeak" sound, and he sat up straight again and continued to watch. When the little boy skipped class again, he finally got interested in chatting.

"I also skipped classes when I was a child. In fact, I didn't know what to do when I escaped, so I just wandered outside."

The laughter of the two children in the film was transmitted to their ears through the headphone cable.

Xia Yan continued: "The more unlucky thing is that my dad just happened to catch him one time. He is usually in the test base, so he was discovered after he went to pick me up once in a while."

"Beating?" Lu Zhouyu asked.

"No...he punished me for washing the test tubes. He has a laboratory with thousands of test tubes, all covered in dust. I washed them there for a day and a night."

Lu Zhouyu smiled after hearing this, but did not comment.

"Actually, I have a shadow of that laboratory, he knows it and still..." Xia Yan said halfway, and then asked: "Did you skip class when you were young?"

"Escape."

"Have you ever been punished?" He looked excited, ready to exchange the tragic shadow of his childhood.

"No." Lu Zhouyu said, "They don't care about me."

"I'm so envious of you." Xia Yan sighed.

Lu Zhouyu said "um", stopped talking, and continued watching the movie.

Towards the end, he realized that the people around him hadn't moved for a long time. When he turned his head, Xia Yan's head and neck were almost bent at a right angle, and he fell asleep leaning on his own shoulder.

The right face was squeezed and deformed, half buried in the T-shirt, half exposed. Lu Zhouyu poked it with his finger and pressed a hole. He still didn't wake up, and his head and shoulders sank at the same time.

Worried that his neck would break, Lu Zhouyu shook his shoulder with his hand, "Go to sleep."

"Huh?" Xia Yan murmured, and stood up, not knowing who he was asking: "I fell asleep?"

"Yeah, sleepwalking."

"Oh, then I'll continue to sleep, you go to bed quickly." After speaking, he rubbed his body down and closed his eyes after touching the pillow.

Hearing what he said, Lu Zhouyu couldn't help laughing for a while, stretched out his index finger to open his eyelids: "Look where you are."

That layer of eyelids fluttered up and down like cicada wings, and finally unfolded, and looked around: "Why am I in your bed?" After a pause, he continued: "Ah, watching a movie... Is it over? Is it okay in the end? Is it the end?"

"Yes," Lu Zhouyu said, "Go to sleep."

He sat up slowly, stepped up the stairs with one foot, and the sole of the other foot was stuck on the edge of the bed frame. The blood gushed down and condensed into a soft red mass on the heel. .

With a press and a lift, he disappeared from Lu Zhouyu's sight.

The eyes went dark, and amidst the main character's long speeches, the movie ended.

Lu Zhouyu was a little curious, did Xia Yan sleep in a strange sleeping position with his face on his shoulders again, but the screen didn't light up again, and he couldn't see anything.

In the dark, he thought of many episodes that he would not usually recall, such as the "Four Hundred Strikes". Ten years later, he still remembered the final ending. The little boy ran away from his family and everything, and ran towards the sea.

At that time, in Lu Zhouyu's opinion, that was indeed a rare and good ending. He thought that he was far away from his parents on the mountain, and to some extent reached a high spiritual resonance with that movie.

It's just that he didn't know at the time that even if he fled to the sea, he couldn't get real freedom.

"Who turned off the light?" Xia Yan jerked violently, and asked in a panic when he woke up.

"The movie is over." Lu Zhouyu pressed his arm.

"too dark……"

"Let's go then."

Lu Zhouyu put his palms around his wrists, stood up, and groped out in the dark.

"Where are you going?" Xia Yan shook his arm, but did not break free, "Wait a minute."

Lu Zhouyu waited for him to turn on the flashlight of his mobile phone and shine it on his feet, and they walked out under the cold white weak light.Meet a haggard middle-aged woman at the door, and rub shoulders with many sad, tired faces along the way.

It wasn't until the entrance of the hospital that Xia Yan came back to his senses, looked at the empty street, "Where are you going?"

"Go back to sleep." Lu Zhouyu said.

"My home is too far away, I'm in the hospital today..."

"Go to my house."