A Certain Someone

They walked towards the west gate together, Zhao Xi was going to Xile, Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian were going outside Wutong.

Obviously the three of them could chat normally, but as soon as Zhao Xi left, Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian were left walking side by side, and the atmosphere suddenly fell silent.

In the evening, the west school gate is crowded with people.Horns are not allowed within the school grounds, only the clinking of sundries hanging from mobile food stalls, the sky is dark and unclear, the lights are sparse, and they have not yet been lit into a line.

Sheng Wang's mind was full of the scene when he just left the classroom, and he didn't know what to say.But Jiang Tian didn't talk much at all, so it was difficult to tell whether he was thinking about something or just lazy to speak.

But this moment still seemed too quiet.

At a certain moment, Sheng Wang had a vague thought.He seemed to know why Jiang Tian was silent, but he didn't seem to know.

It is said that teenagers' minds are the most elusive, his brother is the top among them, and he himself is not far behind.

The old lady at the entrance of the alley was walking her grandson, bending over to tease him like a child.Sheng Wang turned sideways to get out of the way, accidentally touched Jiang Tian's chest with his shoulder, and was supported by the other party.

Jiang Tian has big hands, but not thick.Sheng Wang could feel the slender fingers pressing on his shoulders, and they withdrew after a while.

He tugged at the schoolbag on one shoulder, and waited for the old lady to leave before taking another step.Maybe it was because of a collision, he suddenly wanted to say something to break this inexplicable stalemate.However, before he opened his mouth, he heard Jiang Tian say, "I just heard something outside the classroom."

This topic came up so suddenly, Sheng Wang was stunned.

Jiang Tian looked at the narrow and long alley in front of him, and turned to him after a while, as if casually glanced: "Do you have a girl you like?"

"No." Sheng Wang almost blurted out.

Maybe he answered too quickly, Jiang Tian was also taken aback for a moment.

Sheng Wang seemed to have finally seized the opportunity, and said, "I was chatting with brother Xi just now, and he asked casually, so I just said casually, there is no other meaning."

He thought for a while and added: "I don't like any girl, there are only a few people in our class."

Jiang Tian looked at him.After a while, he looked away and nodded, without saying anything.As if he was just asking casually.

After explaining the suffocated words, Sheng Wangxin slowly fell back to the ground.He just breathed a sigh of relief until he turned the last corner of the alley when he heard voices not far away.He suddenly had a question——

Jiang Tian...why do you ask this?

The moment this thought flashed, he glanced at Jiang Tian, ​​but saw Jiang Tian looking straight ahead, his face somehow became ugly, as if he was disgusted or irritable.

The last time I saw him like this was because of Ji Huanyu.

Sheng Wang looked forward subconsciously, and as expected, he saw the man coming out of old man Ding's courtyard.The other party still looked well-dressed, but his expression was full of embarrassment.

Old man Ding's hoarse voice came from the door: "Look at you, don't you want to save face? Don't you think it's ugly to talk about these things back and forth? Listen to what you say is human. ? Oh, if you say no, then don’t, if you say yes? Everyone revolves around you? Xiao Tim is a person! You are nothing! You don’t come to me, and don’t go to Xiao Tim, we two I don’t even recognize you, so go as far as you can!”

This was the first time Sheng Wang saw the old man really get angry, instead of scaring someone with kindness.The physique of the old man is not as strong as when he was young, but after all, he was a soldier before, so he is still very energetic.He unceremoniously pushed the person out of the door, and Ji Huanyu staggered back a few steps.

The old man poked his head out to close the door, but he saw someone from the side of the alley.He froze for a moment, and quickly gestured to Sheng Wang for them to leave quickly and not join in the fun here.

However, Ji Huanyu had already seen them. He lost face in front of the juniors, and his embarrassment showed a sense of embarrassment and anger.

He stretched his shoulders, straightened his clothes, and then walked towards Jiang Tian.

"You! Don't talk to him about anything. No one wants to listen to your words! If you want to listen to it, you need it now?" Old man Ding still wanted to tease him.

Ji Huanyu restrained his temper, and pushed the old man back into the yard without any explanation, and closed the door for him: "I said, I just want to talk to him, can you go back to the house and rest for a while? Talk about it." This is a matter between me and Xiao Tian, ​​and it has nothing to do with anyone else."

The old man was cursing inside, and Ji Huanyu put the bolt on the outside door.He said to Jiang Tian's direction: "I didn't lock it, just put it on, and you can release it after you finish talking later."

Sheng Wang suddenly admired him a little, and his tone could still maintain this look under such circumstances.Although it could be heard that he was on the verge of agitation, at least he was still calm for now.

If such a person is twenty years younger, he should be quite noticeable in school.He remembered that old man Ding had said that Jiang Ou had known him in high school and had been together ever since, and they got married after graduating from university as a matter of course.It seemed reasonable that Jiang Ou would like such a person back then.

He and Jiang Tian are father and son. In those old photos of old man Ding, they have a bit of resemblance.But standing in front of him, Sheng Wang felt that they were different.

Can't tell what the difference is, but it's quite different.

"Let's find a place." Ji Huanyu took out his phone and glanced at the time, and said, "Is that around the corner—"

"It's right here." Jiang Tian interrupted him impatiently, "If you have anything to say, just say it here."

Looking at him, Ji Huanyu sighed, put down the phone and said, "Okay."

He glanced around, this alley was remote enough that no one would come, it was even more hidden than a restaurant, cafe or other places.

A secret place in broad daylight.

"Okay. Then—" He nodded again, and looked at Sheng Wang in a blink of an eye.

Jiang Tian snorted coldly.

He thought Ji Huanyu was really funny. He came here and said he wanted to chat, but every time he acted like he couldn't let outsiders hear him, why bother?Isn't it contradictory?

The sarcasm on his face was too obvious, Ji Huanyu was stung by that expression, and suddenly couldn't continue.Finally, there was a crack in the calm appearance he had tried so hard to maintain.

He walked two steps in front of Jiang Tian, ​​stopped halfway, and couldn't help but say, "Xiao Tian, ​​it's been so many years. Your mother has already found a suitable person, and I heard that she is doing quite well now." Well, it's better than following me. Why do you keep remembering that?"

Jiang Tian glanced away, as if looking at him even more was irritated: "Are you qualified to mention my mother?"

"No." Ji Huanyu recognized it very quickly. He lowered his eyes and didn't say anything for a long time. He didn't know what to remember after staring at a certain ground.After a long time, he said, "I'm not qualified to mention her, so I haven't seen her again until now—"

"Dare you see." Jiang Tian moved his footsteps.

Ji Huanyu quickly said: "No, I haven't looked for her, and I have been avoiding her since I returned to China. But Xiao Tian, ​​it has really been a long time. Yes, I was a bit messy at that time, and I was unhappy everywhere. I was young There was a big gap in my thinking at the time, and I was a little... dazed. At that time, I had been separated from your mother for a long time, and you were young, so I didn't know much about it, but at that time it was indeed..."

He was choosing his words carefully, not sure if it was to defend himself, or if he was afraid of offending Jiang Tian.He hesitated for a while before continuing: "I don't have much emotion anymore. To tell you the truth, Xiaoou... your mother has actually been reading about the divorce agreement for a long time. If we can wait a little longer, we can live together again. After all, we have known each other since high school, so we have been together so long."

He looked at Jiang Tian and said, "You may think that I'm a scum from the beginning to the end, and I also know why you don't want your mother to know, lest she think that I have fed dogs for more than ten years. Right?"

Jiang Tian didn't refute.

He smiled bitterly: "Believe it or not, at least I really liked her when I was with her. I didn't think about anything else, but life is not about dating, there are too many things to worry about At the beginning, there was also a factor of quarreling with your mother. In short, there were too many messy things, and I was a little depressed. I don’t know if you will have that kind of situation. Sometimes you are under too much pressure, and you will have crazy thoughts. Forget it, it’s okay, and then I want to do something very out of the ordinary. So..."

So hanging out in that old house room with an irrelevant man?

Jiang Tian often thinks that some people are ridiculous, and even he is ashamed to say what he has done. Every time he mentions it, he must either avoid the third person or stop it abruptly.It seems that as long as you don't say it, those things will be slowly overwhelmed and forgotten.It seems that if he wants to reveal the past, others will forget it.

It seems that other people's feelings and thoughts are nothing, and other people's memories can be erased at will, so others...are they not considered human beings?

Ji Huanyu always emphasizes that you were still young at that time.

Yes, he was really young at that time, so young that many things were only incoherent fragments when he remembered them later.Just like when he recalled that day, he only remembered that the room was filled with smoke, choking him so much that he could hardly keep his eyes open.There are cigarette butts everywhere on the ground, burned out, with a little red star.Ji Huanyu was entangled with another man in the lingering smoke.

He had been ill that day, dizzy, and perhaps still had a fever.The images weren't even real, like graffiti or flailing limbs from bad movies.

He may have said something, which surprised the pestering people, and then there was chaos.He seemed to be thrown away, or maybe someone bumped into him, and then he fell to the ground, possibly crushed by an unextinguished cigarette, with a burning pain in the back of his neck.

In the first year, he always had similar nightmares.It's not scary, it's just that after waking up, I have to drink half a glass of water to suppress the nausea.

Later, those images became blurred every year, and he only remembered the smell of cigarettes and that disgusting feeling.

Zhao Xi often said that he was a bit precocious, maybe he was.It's like he knew at a young age that Ji Huanyu was an extremely face-saving person who liked to whitewash the peace.

It is said that Jiang Ou and Ji Huanyu are the same, and they don't know how to take care of him, but he can tell who is helpless and who is natural.

The care he received was limited, so the kind of stuffiness in his heart could count, so he was very protective of Jiang Ou.When he was picked up, Jiang Ou hugged him and cried for a long time, saying that he seemed to have been doing wrong things all the time, that he was a bit useless.

Because of him, Jiang Ou denied his life for several years.He didn't want her to deny his life of more than ten years because of Ji Huanyu.So he has been hiding it.

As long as he kept it a secret, Ji Huanyu would never tell.

So for a long time afterwards, while loathing him, he had to suppress that loathing in front of Jiang Ou, and gradually, he no longer had the urge to explode.

If the jar is stuffy for a long time, it will rust.

For a long time, he rejected all too intimate contact, and intellectually knew that too much was too much, but that subconscious thing was really hard to correct.

Fortunately, there are Zhao Xi and Lin Beiting.

He saw something different from those two friends who were a few years older, and then forced himself to calm down and adapt slowly.Until one day, he was finally able to separate Ji Huanyu from everyone else, and also separate himself from those things.

Just like what those two friends said, not all intimacy represents a kind of relationship, and it is easy to be self-defeating if you don't use cups and bows.

It actually makes sense.It's like he has Zhao Xi, Lin Beiting, Gao Tianyang around him... There are many friends who are far or near, and no one makes him have any absurd thoughts.

He is different from Ji Huanyu.

……

As the sky grew darker, their outlines finally became less distinct.

Ji Huanyu explained for a long time, and finally became anxious at last.He felt that he had said nothing wrong, but he couldn't shake Jiang Tian's mind.He couldn't help but think of Old Man Ding's words—he was shut out at the beginning, now it's your turn.

He didn't do anything, but he was a little exhausted, so he slowly fell silent.And no matter how excited, peaceful, anxious, or guilty he was, Jiang Tian always had that cold look.

Sheng Wang looked at Ji Huanyu, and amidst more and more words, he finally got a clue.He thought of what Zhao Xi said, and Jiang Tian's so-called "shadow".Although Ji Huanyu didn't say anything specific, he guessed it all.

He couldn't help looking at Jiang Tian again. At that moment, he suddenly had an illusion that Jiang Tian's disgust and irritability were floating in the air, not like a party involved, but more like a bystander.

It was as if he spent many, many years forcibly separating himself from the messy past, and then stood up as an irrelevant outsider, and today, many years later, brought him back to the other party for himself who was borrowed everywhere in the past. In a word.

He said to Ji Huanyu, "I think you're disgusting."

There weren't any bright street lights around, but Sheng Wang could see that the man's face was pale, and he was really touched by these words.

He stood still, old man Ding's scolding, Jiang Tian's cold stare... all kinds of pressure and emotions surged up, and he had the original impulse again, wanting to do something or say something.

Seeing him move, Sheng Wang made up his mind to stand in front of Jiang Tian.As if he was afraid that he would do something, who knows that the other party glanced at the two of them, and then said something to Jiang Tian.

Ji Huanyu said: "Xiao Tian, ​​do you know? Some things are inherited."