Chapter 23: Stay away from

Qiao Lan stood at the entrance of the building, watched Uncle Chen walk away, and stayed in the darkness for a long time.

In her last life, she lived for twenty years, since she was a child, she didn't know who her parents were, even her last name was chosen at random, and the person who treated her the best in her last life was the kind aunt who sponsored her to go to high school, and then she went to college. Qiao Lan swore to remember her kindness for the rest of her life.

However, she didn't have the time, and became Qiao Lan, who only cared for this Tan Mo a few times because she couldn't bear to do so, but what the teenager gave back to her was much too much.

Qiao Lan crouches down and buries her cheek in her lap.

The book says it's hard for people with AS to have friendships, and when they do have them, they're at a loss as to how to maintain them, so they just take the easiest and most brutal way out, and just be nice to you.

But it was good, Qiao Lan breathed a long sigh of relief, for twenty years no one had reminded her to wear a thick coat when it snowed, no one had reminded her to bring an umbrella when it snowed, let alone send her home.

After a few minutes, maybe ten, Qiao Lan went back upstairs to Qiao's family.

It's already past twelve in the morning, and only Qiao's mother is still awake and putting on a face mask, she saw Qiao Lan come in and glanced at her, and casually chattered, "You don't know what time it is, you don't know when to come back, you don't tell me where to go even though you haven't found anyone all day, keep your voice down, your brother just fell asleep."

Watching Qiao's mother turn around and go back to her room, Qiao Lan felt a return to reality.

Qiao Lan thought that because of her fight with Tang Qin, she might go back to being alienated by everyone at the beginning, but then she realized that it didn't seem to be the case.

All of them are fifteen or sixteen years old, and in all probability, none of them are bad by nature.

But maybe it's because Tang Qin is not Chen Yaoyang, nor Song Yao, her weight in the class is not big enough to make the rest of the class alienate Qiao Lan because of her attitude, so except for a few girls who play well with Tang Qin, no one's attitude towards Qiao Lan has changed too much.

Pei Ning and the students sitting in front of and to the right of Qiao Lan continue to greet and talk to each other as usual, and Qiao Lan is particularly good at English and math, so some of her classmates come to ask Qiao Lan questions at the end of class.

Still, with Tan Mo, most students try to stay as far away as possible, yet a small percentage of students are slowly changing.

Qiao Lan talks to Tan Mo every day, but Tan Mo doesn't suddenly hit people like Tang Qin said, he doesn't even talk out loud, he's not crazy, he doesn't look stupid, and he doesn't look scary when he talks to Qiao Lan.

But Tan Mo doesn't care about any of it.

The only thing he cares about now is Qiao Lan.

Qiao Lan is now competing with Pei Ning, who is at the same table, and a few other students in front of her in a memory contest.

I don't know who started it, but they were all about the same age, and they were talking about how they wanted to compete with each other. The girls sitting in front of Qiao Lan were the questioners and judges, Qiao Lan, Pei Ning, and another boy.

The question was simple, ten Roman numerals in random order, the girl who made the question read out a total of fifteen numbers, and the three people who wrote more correctly won, and the bet was even simpler, two lollipops.

He simply doesn't see the point of this time-wasting game.

But Qiao Lan was playing, so Tan Mo put down his book and watched them play.

The girl who made the question wrote down fifteen numbers randomly, then covered the note and coughed twice, "Listen up, just read it once, 2, 4, 5, 0.... ...2.8, not to be renewed first, in the countdown seconds, ten, nine, eight, seven..."

Qiao Lan drew out a pen and just wrote down three numbers, Pei Ning next to him suddenly short-circuited, "Eh eh eh eh what's the fifth one?", and subconsciously glanced towards Qiao Lan.

Qiao Lan pushes the man away and turns around, placing the book on Tan Mo's desk.

I wrote eight numbers quickly, and when I got to the ninth, I suddenly had some trouble remembering whether it was seven or eight.

The girl who made the questions looked at what the other boy had written and laughed, "You're so wrong, countdown la..."

Qiao Lan couldn't think of anything else, and was about to write a random number and make it up, when Tan Mo whispered in a voice only the two of them could hear, "846728."

Qiao Lan wrote down everything Tan Mo said without even thinking about it.

Tan Mo stayed dumbfounded, wasn't she afraid he'd misremember.

The girl in front of her finished her countdown, quickly drew out the slips of paper in the hands of the three of them, and laughed out loud after reading them, "How did you get the third number wrong, Pei Ning got three numbers wrong, eh, Qiao Lan got them all right! I told you that our girls' memory is not worse than yours, look at what Qiao Lan wrote..."

"That's Qiao Lan remembering well not you okay..."

There's another ruckus up front, and Qiao Lan turns to Tan Mo with a grin and a small exclamation, "Why are you so good."

The girl in front of him had very dark and bright eyes, looking at him, sighing from the bottom of his heart, he was used to hearing people say he was crazy and stupid, he thought he had long been used to feeling it, but when he heard this sentence from Qiao Lan, he still felt a heartfelt joy.

Maybe it's because of the phrase, maybe it's because of this person who said it.

Tan Mo clearly remembers how much suffering she had to endure every day at school before she met Qiao Lan, but now her days at school don't seem to be so difficult anymore.

It was the state in which he was most comfortable outside of solitude.

On the weekend, Tan Mo didn't go to a Western restaurant, he found a great book and devoted all of two days to it.

On Sunday evening, Tan Mo's father came to see Tan Mo in his busy schedule.

Tan Mo does not live with Tan's father.

Tan Mo's parents divorced before he could even remember, and after the age of seven, as he slowly got older, his mother finally realized that he was different from other children and took him to the United States for treatment.

It was seven years.

In Tan Mo's memory, he never had the concept of a father, for his father, Tan Mo did not have any memories or feelings. After his mother had an accident and was taken over by Tan Mo's father, Tan Mo couldn't stand the noise of Tan Mo's new family, so he went to Tan Mo's father and told him, without any emotion, that he didn't want to live with them.

Then there was no consent from Tan's father, he just informed Tan's father, and then after that he lived with Auntie Uncle Chen Chen who used to take care of him and his mother all the time.

Tan Tan's father comes to visit him occasionally.

He remembers that last week Tan Mo suddenly stopped going to school, and had wanted to talk to Tan Mo, but realized that it was all his show, Tan Mo barely spoke, and the few times she did speak, it was the most useless crap.

Tan Mo could only ask his assistant to call a psychiatrist and inquire about the doctor's attitude before he came back to Tan Mo.

He used to think that Tan Mo was autistic and xenophobic, so he made him go to school and reach out to his peers and people, until he spoke to a doctor who advised him not to do so, and that's when Tan Mo's father rushed to Tan Mo.

Father Tan recalled the psychiatrist's words and felt something in his heart.

He surveys Tan Mo's cold face and asks him how he's been, lately, this week.

Tan Mo looked up at him and spoke from her heart, "Very good."

Father Tan was a little skeptical because Tan Mo's face without a trace of expression didn't have the slightest thing to do with being very nice.

He did not know that his son suffered from a condition called Asperger's, that he had difficulty receiving feelings and expressing emotions, and he just assumed that Tan Mo had a common form of autism and recalled the doctor's words.

Autistic children, because they resist the outside world and resist trouble, sometimes lie to avoid trouble.

Tan Mo father looked at Tan Mo for a long time, after a long time he sighed, "At first it was me who didn't think clearly and forced you to go to school, dad now slowly understand and know that you don't like to go to school, if you don't want to go then don't go."

Tan Mo some puzzled look at Tan father, he clearly said very good, why Tan father as if he did not hear.

So he repeated, "I said I'm fine and I want to go to school."

He preferred going to school and watching the girl sitting in front of him smile back every now and then than sitting here with Tan Tan's father and saying these things.

Not wanting to say anything more to Tan Mo, Tan Mo pushed his wheelchair back to his room.

It's Sunday, and we'll see Qiao Lan again tomorrow.

The next day he came to school as usual, pushed his wheelchair into the classroom, but froze in place when he saw that Qiao Lan, who was supposed to sit in front of him, had been replaced by another girl.

His seat was still there, but the person sitting in front of him, was no longer there.

Once a week, the seats are rotated. A week ago, Qiao Lan was in front of him, but a week has passed, and Qiao Lan has changed to another seat.

She sat in the penultimate row of the second group, not far from Tan Mo's position, but for a moment, Tan Mo was in a state of infinite panic.

The new front desk mate, opened the window as far as it would go, the cold wind poured in through the window and Tan Mo's hard face grew paler and paler.

In front of him lay the book he had found so interesting yesterday, but now he couldn't read a word of it.

He couldn't help but look in Qiao Lan's direction over and over again. He could see her listening to the lesson, writing with her head down, but he couldn't see her hair, couldn't see her dark smiling eyes that she often turned around and lay in front of him.

Turns out Qiao Lan doesn't always sit in front of him, and next week, and the week after that, he's going to sit even farther away from him.

Campus life, which had felt so good a moment before, reverted to its original form in an instant, and was even more unbearable to him than it had been.

He turned his head stiffly and looked over again, Pei Ning was holding a pen and writing while telling Qiao Lan something.

Roughly, they were talking about physics problems.

When he sat behind Qiao Lan, he would ask Pei Ning physics questions from time to time.

In fact, he could do those questions, he wouldn't have to think for a long time like Pei Ning, he could tell Qiao Lan the correct answer in a very short time.

But now, he couldn't even hear what topic they were talking about.

Tan Mo used to hate Pei Ning, because Pei Ning could just turn his head and see the side of Qiao Lan's face, and he could just move and touch her arm, but no matter how much he had hated her before, it was not as unbearable as this moment.

Because not only can Pei Ning just talk to her, but now she can follow her and change to another position.

And he, on the other hand, is only getting further and further away.

He stared at Pei Ning's back, and for the first time, a strong, directional thought came to him.

He wants to sit in that seat.

The one where you turn your head and see Qiao Lan.