Chapter 73: Chen Jingshen finally, at this moment, accepted the fact that he couldn't find Yu Fan.

Before speaking out, Zhuang Fangqin thought about Chen Jingshen's various reactions to learning about the incident, be it sadness, shock, or panic.

But Chen Jingshen was calm. He sat there without a word until the radio station opened for business, and the intro to "Summer Wind" played on the playground stereo, when Chen Jingshen finally spoke.

"What did he say?"

What was said ......

Zhuang Fangqin's mind instantly recalled that usually diffident and arrogant teenager, hunching his back tiredly, looking down at the ground, and saying to her gently, "Teacher, I can't read anymore."

Zhuang Fangqin did not agree to do it for him at first, and told him to take a break from school and come back to study after the matter was settled. Yu Fan shook his head again and said he would not come back.

Chen Jingshen didn't say anything after listening, just nodded, packed up his things, picked up his school bag and said, "I know. Goodbye teacher."

Zhuang Fangqin stood in the corridor of Class 7 and watched him leave.

School had been over for a while, and there were no more students on the playground track. Chen Jingshen walked towards the school gate with his bag on one shoulder, his shadow dragged by the setting sun, solemn and lonely.

Zhuang Fangqin took off his glasses, and suddenly the tears came out again.

Actually, she didn't finish her sentence.

She wanted to slap Yu Fan at that time. Obviously he'd gotten better, obviously he'd improved, so why was he still being dragged back? But after she stood up, she couldn't help but turn the slap into a hug.

"Does Chen Jingshen know?" She asked.

She clearly felt Yu Fan's shock, probably because he finally realized what she meant by "a thousand difficulties", and the teenager didn't speak again for a long time.

Until the end, she heard a low, choked word.

"Don't say anything, please, Teach."

-

Chen Jingshen went to that dilapidated old neighborhood.

Yu Fan didn't seem to be very keen on people seeing him here, and whenever he'd come in the past, he'd always been yanked inside very sharply.

But today he knocked long and hard on the door, and sat on the steps outside for two hours, and still no one would let him in.

The cell stairs are sound-activated, and for a long time there was only a ghostly cell phone light in the stairwell.

Chen Jingshen sent a message that no one answered, called and no one answered, he made a rule for himself that he would try again at the end of a game of Snake. In two days over the weekend, Yu Fan had already broken his record, barely surpassing it by more than a thousand points.

At the end of another game, Chen Jingshen exited to look at the leaderboards, only to find that the top is his own avatar.

But he hasn't broken Yu Fan's game record yet.

Chen Jingshen sat there stiffly for a long time, until someone came upstairs, the voice-activated lights came on, and Chen Jingshen's figure startled the person. The other party shivered and said, "Damn! What's wrong with you? You're sitting here and not making a sound!"

Chen Jingshen doesn't say anything, just finally willing to move a finger and cut back to WeChat to send a message according to the rules he just laid down.

Can't send it over anymore.

Sitting on the stairs until ten o'clock in the evening, until the cell phone could not hold out without power, Chen Jingshen finally got up from the steps and turned around to leave the neighborhood.

This old street is very small, Chen Jingshen walked through every store, and went to the cool boys, and even went to the cyber cafe on the Royal River, and when he ran through all the places he could, even the barbecue store was ready to close.

Chen Jingshen stood in front of the Internet cafe and made another call, this time even the long "beep" sound is gone. The female voice coldly and politely informed him that his cell phone number, along with his WeChat, had been packed up and thrown into the trash.

Returning home, Chen Jingshen finds the house bright and quiet, like an uninhabited island.

He sent Ji Lianyi a message saying he'd be late, and then his cell phone went dead. Now it seems that Ji Lianyi is still waiting for him.

Ji Lianyi, who should have been pacing repeatedly between her room and the living room earlier, had the door to her room wide open at the moment. She was sitting at her desk with her forehead propped up, her eyes closed as she tiredly talked on the phone.

Chen Jingshen raised his hand to knock on the door--

"Mom, there's no need to contact any more outside schools, let's not let Jingshen transfer to another school for now." Hearing his mother's inquiry on the phone, Ji Lianyi rubbed his eyebrows and said vaguely, "It's nothing. It's just that there was a student who didn't learn well before, and I'm afraid that he'll be affected, and now that that student has been transferred away, the matter is almost solved ......"

Seeing her son standing in the doorway, Ji Lianyi abruptly lost her voice.

-

Ji Lianyi always thought her married life was good and enviable. But the truth slapped her in the face; her marriage was full of deceitful lies and had long been tainted.

Every moment afterward, she told herself that it was all right, that it was all right, that even though she had lost her marriage, she still had a perfect son who was well-behaved, well-behaved, and got good grades. But right now, her perfect son stood straight in front of her and told her in the same calm tone that he usually used to say, "I'm going to school:

"I'm gay."

Ji Lianyi, who was desperately trying to hide this matter, was hit over the head by this sentence, and it took a few minutes before he found his voice: "No, no ...... you're not, you're just being brought up, he's the one who threatened you, he admitted it himself... ...His kind of child lacks family education since childhood, that's why he formed that kind of twisted and perverted sexual orientation, you don't ......"

"He's normal, it's me who's twisted and perverted."

"No! No!" Ji Lianyi threw the cup she had just bought a few days ago to the ground, smashing it into pieces, and screamed hysterically at Chen Jingshen, "It's him! It's him! You're normal, how can you be gay! Are you still afraid of him? But he's gone ah, you don't have to be like this anymore ......"

"I wrote him a confession letter and chased him for half a semester, and I brought him home the same time you came back-"

Slap! A crisp slap interrupted Chen Jingshen's words.

He had his face to the side and didn't feel the pain. He said, "He kept rejecting me, he said he wasn't gay. But I wouldn't leave him alone, I ......"

Before he could finish his sentence, Ji Lianyi put her hands over his mouth, her nails sinking into the flesh of his cheeks, and she shook her head expressionlessly, "No, those are your adolescent delusions, you're a normal person, Jingshen, you used to be very obedient and well-behaved, why ah, why in the world... ..."

Chen Jingshen grabbed her wrist and moved away.

"Because pervert or normal, I'm a human being." Chen Jingshen states with his eyes downcast, "Not a dog you keep."

Ji Lianyi was stunned in place, she couldn't use her strength, she could only watch as Chen Jingshen picked up the bag on the ground and turned toward his room.

Before going upstairs, Chen Jingshen turned around and asked, "Do you know where he went?"

Ji Lianyi, still facing the wooden door to her room, murmured, "Jingshen, you're not gay."

Chen Jingshen turned around and went upstairs.

The next morning, Chen Jingshen found the downstairs quiet and silent. He pushed open the door and saw Ji Lianyi sitting on the sofa, looking like she hadn't slept all night, and the table was full of medicine boxes.

The psychological situation was so bad that Ji Lianyi was quickly admitted to the hospital, where Chen Jingshen stayed for two days until his grandmother arranged for several chaperones to take turns watching him so that he could continue to go to school on a regular basis.

The day Chen Jingshen arrived at the school, several people squatted at the entrance of the first class and immediately rushed up as soon as they saw him.

"School Master, do you know that Yu Fan dropped out of school?" Zhu Xu asked anxiously.

"His WeChat group is retired, his friends deleted, and his phone number is fucking blacked out for me! How about you? Can you get through on the phone?" Zuo Kuan asked.

Chen Jingshen shook his head.

"Then do you know where he went?" Wang Luan asked with reddened eyes, "He didn't tell me anything."

"I don't know."

"Damn it, I've said that even we don't know, the schoolteacher definitely doesn't know either, and you guys still have to come up and ask." Zuo Kuan thought for a moment, "Why don't we ask your homeroom teacher? She must know!"

"I've asked and she won't say." Wang Luan said.

"Ask again, go!"

The three boys went downstairs like the wind, leaving only Zhang Xianjing, who had been silent, still standing in the same place.

Chen Jingshen was just about to enter the classroom when she suddenly heard her mute voice ask, "School bully, are you and Yu Fan in the same ......"

The bell interrupted her. Zhang Xianjing closed her mouth, suddenly a little glad she didn't finish her question.

"Uh-huh." The ringing stopped and she heard Chen Jingshen say.

-

Ji Lianyi's condition is worse than last time. Chen Jingshen visits her in the hospital every weekend, even though Ji Lianyi doesn't want to talk to him.

Except for weekends, he went to the old neighborhood every day after school. After a long time, almost everyone in the building has seen him.

On this day he stopped, as always, in front of the old black wooden door and raised his hand just to knock.

"Brother, did you come to see your brother?" A little girl asked him as she sat on the steps of the stairwell, her hands squeezing the shoulder strap of her school bag.

"Uh-huh. Have you seen him?" Chen Jingshen asked.

The little girl shook her head and said, "Brother moved away oh with that big bad guy."

The little girl thought it was strange.

She had clearly said that the eldest brother of this household had moved out, so why did this brother knock on the door after hearing that?

The little girl glanced down the stairs, "Brother, didn't your girlfriend's sister come with you?"

Chen Jingshen said, "What girlfriend sister."

"Just a girlfriend!"

"No."

"Huh? That brother clearly said you did!"

Chen Jingshen's hand on the door paused in mid-air and turned his head to ask, "What did he say?"

"He said ......," the little girl thought, and suddenly her eyes widened in an "oh".

"He said you're already someone's boyfriend!"

Isn't that right? That's what it says, isn't it? The little girl tilted her head for half a second before she was sure.

Not getting an answer, she looked down, "So brother, what the hell ...... are you brother? What's wrong with you?"

Chen Jingshen had been straining himself very hard this whole time. He numbly turned around at home, school and his old neighborhood, passing a long time at three points, as if he was doing some kind of task, and as soon as the days were long enough to accumulate to a certain number of times, the door would be ready for him to knock on it.

For a moment, that blurry number of times seemed to suddenly become clear. And while the number of times he had done the quest had long since far exceeded that number, the door in front of him remained silent and still.

The sound-activated lights went out and the hallway fell into a dark, brief, cold silence.

Chen Jingshen finally accepted the fact that he couldn't find Yu Fan at this moment.

He stood there in silence, raising his hand to shield his eyes, his palm rolling.

-

A school or class is rarely different because someone leaves.

Teenage emotions come and go quickly, coupled with the heavy coursework of senior year, a period of time passed, and most of the senior class 7 got used to Yu Fan's absence.

Only the guys in the back row, with their anger at Yu Fan for leaving without saying goodbye, cursed loudly as they hid in the restroom and smoked cigarettes.

They also swore during the party drinking that whether Yu Fan would come back or not, they would be strangers from then on and would never say a word to him.

Then they were pressed forward step by step by the heavy atmosphere of the college entrance exams, tormented and clumsy attempts to learn a little more, and gradually stopped mentioning this person.

Only Yu Fan's desk was always there, along with the one next to him. Wang Luan would consciously move two more desks and chairs during each exam, and then silently move them back after the exam.

That little discussion group in WeChat has been silent for a while and is active again. Two figures are missing from the conversation, one has withdrawn from the group and the other is not talking.

Wang Luan once joked that he felt that Chen Jingshen had never been in his class at all, a feeling that was exacerbated when Yu Fan dropped out.

Obviously still in a school, a WeChat group, but they rarely meet or talk to Chen Jingshen again, Monday's podium has not appeared his figure, only to know that he is still the first time the test.

Even the news of Chen Jingshen's enrollment in Jiangcheng University, everyone just praised a few words of bullishness in private, and didn't mention a word about it in the group.

Occasionally, when we take a look at the school building, everyone thinks he seems to have changed, but they can't tell what has changed.

But it's normal to think about it.

In this boring and tedious senior career, even Zhang Xianjing no longer dye hair, lazy to get those fancy nails, all day dragged the tired face lying on the desk to memorize the text.

As winter turns to spring, Wang Luan and Zuo Kuan set up an inter-class study group, with whoever does better in the exams being the father for a month. The two of them are staggered to be each other's sons, and father-son antagonisms are staged over and over again.

It was another hot summer until the final end of my senior year, the day of my senior pictures.

Zhang Xianjing the night before to various groups reproduced a lot of old-fashioned rules about graduation, what in the school uniform to write their names, with the closest to the heart of the second button of the school uniform to the favorite person to confess, tearing up the book ...... in the class group in the stoic for many years Zhuang Fangqin finally came out of the bubbles, said who dares to Tearing up books, she will tear up whoever.

That's what I said, but the law is not against the people. The next day, everyone still took their graduation photos in the midst of confetti, and on the right side of the last row of the seventh class of senior high school, Wang Luan specially vacated the seat beside him, which belonged to him and his brother's romance.

At the end of the school day, Zhang Xianjing went back to his classroom to get a glass of water in his school uniform, which was signed by all the members of his class.

She finished the water in the cup in one gulp, picked up the marker again, and wrote casually on a space purposely left empty by her clothes: Yu Fan. Chen Jingshen.

She re-tied her ponytail, grabbed all her things and got up to leave. Before she left, she ghosted over to the seat that had been empty for almost a year.

Then a slight startle ensued.

A beam of morning light tilted into the classroom.

Into the empty desk lay a clean, crisp white button.

They are tucked into a corner of the campus, alone and quiet.