Chapter 1: Mirror open

"Click." Everything went from dark to light, the screen flickered, and the picture began to unfold.

.

This is a staff dormitory, a hundred years old school buildings in the most nooks and crannies of a building, is located in a remote area, the College is mostly sent to the young crop of young teachers to live. This house looks outside the red brick and white steps is very beautiful, ivy Shu with a thousand charming green vines climbing around the old building, who passed by can not help but look twice, can be fortunate enough to become a teacher, went in and only then realized - it turns out that this Fangshang long years more repair, the interior walls of the walls have been layers of mottled, like a make-up countless times of the tired face.

Tired to the point of lacking even digital television, allotted to every room in the dormitory building is a cable TV that is considered an antique.

"Heavy to heavy rains continue in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River ......"

The teenager walked through the entrance to the building, the sound of a television program filtering through the windowpanes of the communication room, and the old lady on duty used to always stop him to yell:

"Hey, don't you know that this is the staff dormitory? This is the staff dormitory, where the teachers live, so don't run in there all the time as a student."

But to-day the old lady did not cross-examine him; perhaps she was in a daze, and her old eyes were so dim that she did not perceive his passing in the darkness of the night.

He went right up to the third floor and knocked on the familiar iron door.

The door creaked open and the woman in the door probed, "Is that you?"

The teenager whispered, "Thank you, Mr. Teacher."

Despite the lateness and the fact that the teenager was an uninvited guest, she was his teacher and the person in the school with the closest relationship to him, and the woman, after a brief moment of surprise, welcomed him into the house.

Brewing a cup of tea, slicing ginger and adding it in, it was raining outside and she felt wet and cold on the teenager, the hot ginger tea would keep the cold away.

Mr. Xie placed the steaming cup of tea on the tea table in front of him, "When did you get back?"

"Just got back today." The teenager stood in front of the couch in a hasty manner.

Mr. Shea: "Have a seat."

He sat down then, his hands curled in his lap, restrained, not touching the teacup.

"Why didn't you tell me in advance about coming back. It's so late and there's public transportation to school?"

"...... hmmm."

"So how are things being handled at home?"

The teen was quiet for a moment, looking down and picking at the torn hole in his jeans.

"My mom still wants me to drop out of school ......"

Mr. Xie was silent.

Already college students, students choose to read or not, the school has no right to put a beak, she and the teenager in front of the mother has talked, promised to give special hardship families tuition waivers, hoping that the mother can allow the child to finish the hard work of the university.

But that mother pointedly refused--

"Read what? Learn Chinese? Who doesn't speak Chinese? You're just cheating!"

She patiently reasoned with the mother: "The child is very talented, you see, already a sophomore, is not it a pity to give up halfway? What's more, after two more years of study, he can also find a job in society, I asked him, he wants to be a teacher later. With his grades, the examination of a teacher preparation is not a problem, this is the child's dream, the teacher's work and stability ......"

"He can't be a teacher! It's not like you haven't seen his face!"

A mother's words came down like a blunt knife, cutting between invisible currents.

Ms. Xie felt angry, but she didn't know what to respond.

"I'm going to send him home to work now! There's no money at home! Don't waste time! That face - that face ...... reads the book, so what! What school would want a teacher like that!"

What kind of face is that?

There was an incandescent light on in Mr. Xie's room, low wattage and seemingly dim, but it still illuminated the teenager's face.

His face, Mr. Xie has seen very accustomed to, but whoever sees this face for the first time, will draw a breath of cold air - half a face of yin and yang, do not know what disease has been born, blue and purple spots from the forehead has been covered to the neck, like covering a rotting skin.

Strikingly, starkly abnormal.

"Sick!"

"Don't go near him, it might be contagious."

"Hey! Shades!"

Accompanying this face and growing up with him was the abuse and ridicule that followed it.

Because of his illness, because he was so sick that he didn't know how to hide it, so ugly that he didn't know how to hide, the teenager was subjected to a lot of stares from a young age. Even if he studied hard and got along with people gently, he was still like an evil dragon roaming under the blue sky, not getting any equal treatment.

Few people, like Mr. Shea, can detect that the normal half of his face is good-looking and gentle.

He always bore everyone's sneers gently and numbly, sometimes matching them with a smile himself, as if he had really done something wrong.

But what did he do wrong?

Mr. Xie saw in his eyes, he is always the most serious one, honest, in the group always quietly do the most work. When others bullied him, he was always good-natured and didn't say much.

"It's okay, teacher, I'm already happy that you're talking to me. When I used to be in the village, people would walk around me when they saw me, and no one ever listened to me so intently as you did for a few words."

"The students were all nice too, at least they didn't hit me with a brick."

He spoke calmly, but his head was always bowed and his shoulders hunched, his spine having grown misshapen and bent by the long hours of carrying heavy insults.

She later told him, "You can come to me for individual tutoring after evening study whenever you want, and if there's anything you don't understand and need my help, just ask."

He grinned in embarrassment, his half-normal face showing some embarrassed red.

She had known him for the past two years and was used to him, slightly hunched over, knocking on her dormitory door and bringing her his own well-written essays, prose, and even poetry for her guidance.

These days a lot of people like to swear, but very few like to write poetry anymore.

Instead, he writes obsessively.

His classmates laughed at him, ugly writing ugly things, sour, more sour than your rotten grape cheeks.

He smiled and honestly wrote again.

But now, he doesn't even have that power anymore.

Mr. Xie sighed in his heart as he thought about what had happened before and looked at the boy in front of him with pity.

The teenager said, "I came here this time to say goodbye to my teacher. I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Back home?"

"...... Well, sort of."

The teenager paused, "Teacher, if my illness wasn't on my face, but where people couldn't see it, people would be kinder to me. That would be so nice."

Xie teacher's eyes finally could not help but red, things have come to this point, what efforts have been done, but unfortunately she is not his family, she can not make the final decision, but also can not save him. The teenager's family situation day by day, the mother regret let the child out to study, the family, after all, there is a able-bodied second son, only to study in middle school, the sick one called back, can be replaced by a sound child to go out.

She didn't think she was doing anything wrong, and as a mother who also had to weigh the family's circumstances, she was being fair.

"I haven't quite finished rewriting the paper you ...... last put in my place and asked me to read for you--"

Mr. Shea felt like he was on the verge of peddling tears and changed the subject hastily.

"But I'm reading ahead very carefully, do you want to do your leaving formalities later to go, when I've approved them all ......"

"No." He smiled and shook his head, "I'm leaving at first light."

She was remorseful. Why did she always think there was still time?

Why don't you stay up one night?

And why, for that matter, go shopping, gossip, and have that long, pointless meeting?

Here is a student's dream that is about to be shattered, and a heart that is about to stop beating, and she, as his last teacher, can't offer him a bouquet of flowers to say goodbye to his dream.

"Sorry ......"

"That's okay." He said, "But I wrote a poem at the end, can I give it to you?"

She was busy nodding her head.

He then took it out of his book bag and showed it to her, the pages were so thin that they seemed weightless in his hands.

She read it word for word, a very loving love poem, hot and passionate, but careful, she had seen many masters wrote about love. From the ancient "When will I lean on the false front, the tears in my eyes dry up." To today's "my eyes look better, because I have you in my eyes", but at this moment, seems to be less than the teenager held out this page.

He didn't break anything, as if saying it would be a lack of rhyme.

The young man is a poet, and knows that when poetry is lost, love in a position of disparity is nothing but embarrassment.

"It's a memento for you."

Tenderness is written on both ugly and normal faces.

"I'm sorry, teacher, I just can't afford to buy any gifts for you."

"Nothing better." She turned her back and suppressed a choked sob, "You, you eat something, and I'll get you some refreshments."

Taking the opportunity to rummage through the box and get her emotions under control, Ms. Shea took a can of butter cookies and put them on the coffee table.

The teenager politely thanked him, and under Mr. Xie's watchful eye, he finally carefully touched the teacup, only to retract his hand and softly, "It's hot."

She touched it, "How? Warm."

But still, he went back to add some cold water.

The teenager drank it bit by bit over his favorite cookie.

After eating and drinking, the night is still long.

He said, "Teacher, can I read here with you a little longer?"

"Sure."

The teenager laughed again, a little helplessly, "It's all going away, and it ends up bothering you so much."

"It's all right, you can stay for a while longer ...... By the way, when you go back, give me another address, I will send you a copy of all the good books I see. You are so smart, in fact, even if you learn ...... on your own, it won't be bad." Mr. Xie can only chat as a comfort, "If there is any need to help, you can find me on WeChat."

The teenager looked at her, "Thanks."

There was a pause.

"If everyone was like you, then maybe ......"

He lowered his head and said no more.

The most abundant thing in her dormitory was books, and since he was ugly and sickly naked and the center of attention every time he went to the library, she invited him to come to the faculty dormitory and lent him her collection of books to read.

The teenager thus read all night within the faculty dormitory, as if to bring all these words back to his homeland by this one night.

It was rare for him to be this egotistical; once upon a time he wouldn't have stayed too late, always worried that he'd disturb his teacher's normal routine. But today was an exception.

Ms. Xie didn't blame him for this last capriciousness, it's just that she stayed up with him until the latter part of the night, and she did get a little sleepy, unconsciously ambling off to sleep.

In a haze, she heard the teenager suddenly add to her, "Thank you, Mr. Teacher."

She answered him vaguely.

"There's one more thing I want to apologize for."

"Before the class theft ...... those students always lost things, how can I not find out, causing you to be criticized. Those things, I actually took them."

She was dazed and startled and wanted to wake up, but her body was too tired and heavy to get up again.

The teenager said slightly sadly, "But I didn't ask for those things, I didn't ask for a penny. They laughed at me like this, and I actually had resentment in my heart ...... I threw all their bags into the haystack, and later burned them all clean. At that time they suspected to me, but you asked did not even come to ask me, and opened the door for me. In fact it was really I who did the deed without fault."

"I don't have the courage to admit that I've only ever been a normal person, or even a good person, in the eyes of one person."

"That man is you."

"Teacher, I'm vain aren't I? ...... But if even you are disappointed in me, I don't know what to do. You're the only recognition I've ever gotten in my life."

His voice grew softer towards the end.

The eyes, however, were clear, almost transparent, as if they were relieved.

"-The most regrettable thing I have done is this ...... thank you teacher, I am really sorry. My illness seems to have moved from my face to my heart. If there is a next life, I really want to be a normal person ...... I don't want to be so sick that I don't even have the qualification to love."

"Thank you, Ms. ......."

The wind blew in the window and blew the pages on the table like beckoning streamers.

And then, all was quiet again.

The tea on the table is cold.

Mr. Xie woke up early the next morning to find that he had slept at his desk all night, the house was clean, the teenager was a well-mannered person, but on this day he didn't wait to say goodbye to his teacher before packing up and leaving.

Inevitably a little distracted, she got up and made her way sleepily to the living room.

Looking down toward the coffee table--

But the whole person like a head drenched pot of ice water, violently shocked wide-eyed!

The tea she poured for the teenager yesterday had frozen, but ...... but ......

The room temperature was clearly 27 or 28 degrees!

How? How?

She searched the room with wide ebony eyes, and more and more traces kept her heart cold - the butter cookies in the tin box, which she'd clearly watched the teen eat yesterday, but now it seemed that not a single piece was missing. The water in the teacup was frozen into ice cubes, but it hadn't gone down without it either, and finally - the

In the end, that page of subtle love poems, the contents of which are still resting in the bottom of her heart, he presented her with a piece of paper as a farewell.

And the paper is gone.

Or maybe there never was that page ......

She was almost trembling when her cell phone vibrated with a ding, making her jump up and grab it, but it was a spam message. She breathed a sigh of relief, but as if waking up from a dream, she thought of something, and quickly dialed the number of the teenager.

Doh. Doh. Doh.

The heartbeat fluttered with the mechanical sounds.

"Hello?"

Passed.

The person who answered the phone had the familiar voice of a middle-aged woman, gruff, but at this point with some sobbing. She exchanged a few words of conversation with the teenager's mother on the other end of the line.

The heart falls hard into a black hole that you can't see into and falls down.

She heard--

"......"

"It's you guys! It's you guys again! I haven't even come to look for you guys yet! You guys came here first!"

The woman was accusing, what was said in front of Ms. Xie can no longer remember, her mind is almost blank, only to hear the last mournful cry as if it were a stick: "He's dead! He's dead!"

Blood flows like ice.

Dead?

"It's all because of your compulsion! He and I had a fight and ran out and it was storming outside and the police said that there was a section of cable exposed there ......"

Mr. Shea's ears perked up.

Amidst the fierce abuse and wailing, she could only barely hear two more words, like ghosts and phantoms, like goodbyes that don't belong in this world.

The woman's mournful voice broke on the other end of the phone:

"Still looking for what? What else?!"

--

"Yesterday was already the seventh day of his life!!!"