Chapter 12 Two Different Worlds
I had always been a thorn in Xia Lin's eye.
She liked to mock my clothes and my family situation.
The summer I worked at a milk tea shop, Xia Lin wrote a letter reporting me for being under eighteen.
When I helped Grandma with the stall, she called urban management. "Qin Song, reporting unlicensed vendors is everyone's duty. Who knows if your family's pancakes will give people a stomachache?"
The Zhou Su she liked was my deskmate.
The teacher had put first and second in the grade together, supposedly for healthy competition. At first, Zhou Su and I would argue ourselves red over how to solve a single problem.
Until one time we ran into each other on the bus. It was crowded that day. I got shoved straight into his arms.
Zhou Su was tall. I only reached his chest. When he looked down, the mint smell of his shampoo hit my nose.
My breath caught. In the jolt, I grabbed Zhou Su's collar on instinct.
Snickers came from classmates not far away. I was afraid this awkward scene would be seen. My whole face burned.
Zhou Su calmly took off his cap and set it on my head. He laughed low by my ear. "So Qin Song, you get scared too."
A teenager's ambiguity was the hardest thing to hide, and the most fragile.
After I had my accident, Xia Lin came the most often.
She seemed terrified I might stand up again. Only after my third round of joint surgery failed did she tell me, looking like she could finally rest easy. "Zhou Su got into Peking University. I'll go to Beijing too. We'll be close. Convenient to take care of each other."
"Qin Song, Zhou Su will definitely like me. He will."
No matter what she said, I only stared at the trees outside the window.
That was the only thing I, as I was then, could still do on my own.
Through four years of university, whenever Zhou Su had a break he would come see me, massage me, talk about the world outside.
The boyish greenness had faded. He had become high-spirited, even more handsome and dazzling.
We had been comrades walking side by side. Now we had completely become people of two different worlds.
In the tenth year of my paralysis, I received Zhou Su's invitation.
He was finally going to marry Xia Lin.