Chapter 22: Going Home

"If you keep ignoring me, then no one will."

These somewhat petulant words, hidden in the noisy chatter of the surrounding classmates, finally chiseled their way into Tan Mo's heart.

Every day, he is careful to keep his distance, not to drag Qiao Lan into the dark and muddy place he has become, but Qiao Lan walks in on her own.

She was on his side in front of everyone, and she was so miserable that she asked him to talk to her, she asked him to ignore her, but Tan Mo thought that every moment of every day, he wanted to talk to her as much as Pei Ning did, without any fear.

How could he really ignore her.

But he still couldn't understand why she did it, why she could do it.

And what did he have to deserve her.

Tan Mo couldn't figure it out.

He'd always had a need to understand everything, in life and in school, but now, Tan Mo suddenly didn't want to understand.

Is it that important.

Doesn't seem to be either.

He raised his head and met Qiao Lan's gaze, not understanding the smile in Qiao Lan's eyes, but understanding the curve of her lips.

Tan Mo suddenly wanted to smile too, he had never smiled before, but he wanted to give this girl a smile.

But what a smile should look like, Tan Mo didn't know, he didn't need to think at all to smile like a normal person, he needed to look at the smile on the lips of the girl in front of him, and mentally think about which muscles of his face should be moved, and then finally mimic a smile that was a little bit unorthodox.

This parody is very poorly done.

There was no smile in his eyes, and the corners of his eyes didn't rise, only a vaguely recognizable curve at the corner of his lips, which looked odd to others, but Qiao Lan understood it.

She remembered a quote she'd read that for the Asperger's crowd, starting to mimic, that was the first step in getting close to someone.

Qiao Lan's eyes softened, his chin laying on his arm as his gaze fell on the book he had torn, "So now can you tell me what book it is?"

The chatter around them continued, and Tan Mo didn't even need to look up to realize how many people were curiously looking this way.

But Qiao Lan didn't look at them or care about them, she looked at him and asked him what kind of book it was.

Tan Mo closed the book, revealing the cover, then turned the book over to face Qiao Lan, pursed her lips as if she had gone through a difficult mental struggle, and finally said in a voice that could be heard by the people around her.

"Classical Electrodynamics."

Qiao Lan's eyes are suddenly a little sore.

Tan Mo finally spoke, finally spoke to her in front of so many people.

She reached up and pressed her hand to the book and looked up into his eyes, "So can I see it."

This time there was no thinking, Tan Mo nodded instantly.

Qiao Lan opened the table of contents, and flipped through the back, pure English, Qiao Lan English is still very good, bare test to participate in the English sixth grade can be more than a hundred points, but looking at the book in front of me, a sentence to see the past, do not know a whole lot of words.

Too much jargon.

Qiao Lan sighed and re-turned the book back to face Tan Mo squarely, looking at him, "I can't read it," roughly trying to get Tan Mo to talk more, "Can you tell me a little bit about what the book is probably about."

Tan Mo subconsciously about to open his mouth, but the moment he opened his mouth, he suddenly thought of something and put it back.

People with Asperger's have a very distinctive feature, they are passionate about specific things or interests, so when it comes to the part of their story that they are more interested in, they will often go on and on regardless of whether or not the bystanders want to listen to them, not caring about the bystanders' moods at all.

Or perhaps, because they find it amusing, they take it for granted that the next person finds it equally amusing, and they can't read the impatience on the listener's face, so they don't even realize that what they've just said is a noise to the next person.

Once, at the age of ten, he could read definite and indefinite integrals on his own because of his freakishly high IQ, while the rest of the kids were still working out quadratic equations.

He insists on telling the other children what he knows about math, but they don't understand, and Tan Mo, already a bully, is ostracized by his peers when he demonstrates his superior intelligence.

Then his mother admonished him, one at a time, to go home and tell her if he was really interested in something and to stop telling the sidekick about it.

But then his mother died in a car accident, and Tan Mo no longer had anyone who could listen to him, and he didn't tell anyone else, and as he grew older, he came to realize that other people didn't want to listen to him.

However, now that Qiao Lan took the initiative to ask him, Tan Mo's fingers on the book unconsciously tightened, and after a long time he finally spoke, "This is a book by the American physicist Jackson, divided into two volumes, this is the first volume, the first volume is mainly about the traditional electromagnetic theory, including electrostatics, static magnetism, the electromagnetic field over time, Maxwell's system of equations, etc., and the application of Maxwell's system of equations to discuss various macroscopic electromagnetic phenomena... , and applies Maxwell's system of equations to discuss a variety of macroscopic electromagnetic phenomena..."

Qiao Lan admitted that she didn't understand anything, and that the various rankings in the list were all astronomical to her.

But she could hear that Tan Mo had gone from stumbling at first to speaking very fluently later on.

Tan Mo was never expressionless, and the unusually pale face with the long hair covering his eyes added to the weirdness that people always noticed at first, never looking at his features.

It was the first time Qiao Lan had gotten so close to Tan Mo, watching his light brown eyes reveal a different kind of splendor when he talked about his favorite things, and the boy's already exceptional features seemed to come alive for a moment.

Qiao Lan then realized that the teenager's looks, too, were extraordinarily good.

*

That night, Uncle Chen was going to let Tan Mo stay in the car and go to the western restaurant to buy something by himself as he did in the previous days, but Tan Mo said, "I'll go too."

Made up? No more fighting?

A whole bunch of words popped up in Uncle Chen's head in a flash, but he didn't ask any more questions, smiled, took the wheelchair out of the car, and pushed Tan Mo into the western restaurant.

Meng Xue was finally not going to make a fool of himself anymore, and the rest of the restaurant had long gotten used to Tan Mo and Uncle Chen's daily patronage, calling out to Qiao Lan to go over and order when they saw Tan Mo come in.

Looking at Qiao Lan's back as she walked past, the girls couldn't help but sigh.

"Why do you think this Mr. Tan didn't just give Qiao Lan the money?"

"What's the point of that", said another, "Ugh, really, if someone did that to me, even if they were really disabled, but to be able to do that, disabled or not I'd have to have my heart set on it."

"Qiao Lan seems to be only sixteen, alas, other people's sixteen, our sixteen."

"Shut up you, you're twenty-six..."

A few people cackled away as the western dining room was softly lit, the glass speckled with drips.

It's raining with a pattering sound.

Qiao Lan serves up the food one by one, and Tan Mo has a small steak today.

"I'll cut it for you", Tan Mo hesitates for a moment with the knife and fork, then hands it over to Qiao Lan, sitting quietly watching Qiao Lan skillfully cut it in two, then in four.

Uncle Chen, sitting across the table, couldn't help but slow down his eating.

Tan Mo doesn't like to be approached by other people, even Mr. Tan Mo would avoid Mr. Tan every time he comes, but now this little girl named Qiao Lan is standing beside Tan Mo, and her sleeve even brushes against Tan Mo's shoulder from time to time.

But he didn't avoid it, his eyes fixedly stared at Qiao Lan's hands, and only after a long time with a sudden thunderclap outside the window did he look out of the window as if he had been awakened.

"It's raining."

Tan Mo said suddenly.

Uncle Chen also glanced out and subconsciously answered, "Yes", it was raining, "It's raining quite heavily..."

When he turned his head, he realized that Tan Mo wasn't looking at him at all, he was looking up at Qiao Lan who was cutting the steak.

The phrase "it's raining" wasn't directed at him at all, it was said to Qiao Lan.

Uncle Chen :.......

Even Uncle Chen didn't react, not to mention Qiao Lan. The "self-indulgent" Uncle Chen looked at Qiao Lan, who didn't even realize it, and after a little bit of speculation, he said what Tan Mo hadn't finished.

"It's raining, it's raining pretty hard, Miss Qiao how are you going to get back later?"

Qiao Lan was called by a Miss Qiao a jolt, hastily said, "call me Qiao Lan on good", steak finally finished cutting, will knife and fork re-handed to Tan Mo, said, "I off work is still early, that moment should have not down", said and looked at Tan Mo a glance, "you cold is not cold", Tan Mo wearing very thin, "you cold". After saying that, he looked at Tan Mo again, Tan Mo is wearing a very thin, "Are you cold."

Tan Mo took a bite of the knife and fork that Qiao Lan had taken and was still warm from Qiao Lan's fingers, "It's not cold."

What if it's still raining at that moment.

She just got over her cold not even three days ago.

Uncle Chen is more and more surprised.

Something must have happened again today.

After Qiao Lan left, Tan Mo put down his knife and fork, took out his cell phone and looked at it for a long time, "It's going to keep raining tonight."

Uncle Chen thought about it and said, "In that case, I'll send you back first, and if it still rains after that, I'll make another run to send Ms. Qiao back, okay."

Tan Mo looked out the window at the pouring rain and nodded, taking another bite of his steak.

"Good."

After settling the bill as usual, Uncle Chen asked Tan Mo casually as if making small talk as he pushed her out, "Ms. Qiao has to attend classes in the daytime, will working so hard at night affect her studies?"

Qiao Lan smiled, "Senior year wasn't too busy, thankfully."

"And what time is it usually busy?"

"You can get off at eleven."

Uncle Chen nodded cheerfully, Qiao Lan didn't perceive anything and sent the two out of the western restaurant, the young girl standing at the light curved her eyes with a smile and waved her hand just as she did at the end of the school day, "Tan Mo, see you later."

Tan Mo looked back at her, "See you tomorrow."

Outside the window, lightning and thunder, the rain is getting heavier and heavier, not at all like Qiao Lan said that it might be a shower, because of the heavy rain, the customers in the store are much less than usual, Qiao Lan and his group are also idle, Qiao Lan even took the opportunity to read the text that he has to memorize tomorrow.

The rest of the group stood in the doorway, looking out the window at the pouring rain, and began to fret about how they would get back; the buses were gone, and now it was hard to get a cab.

A couple of girls chirped and asked everyone who had umbrellas that were slightly out of the way to walk with.

After eleven o'clock, there are really no customers in the store, we cleaned up and closed the store and walked out, the night rain cold everyone shivered, Meng Xue saw Qiao Lan without an umbrella and wearing a thin school uniform.

He couldn't keep his mouth shut again, "What, you still need to walk back with us..."

As soon as the words fell, the lights of the car hidden in the darkness by the road lit up, the door opened, Uncle Chen walked over with his umbrella open, handed Qiao Lan the other umbrella in his hand and smiled, "Young master asked me to take you home."