The year after graduation, I met my old high school alumni at an inter-company get-together. After leaving their contact information, in addition to business contacts, they often send messages to each other on holidays. Not long after, she was assigned to an overseas company, and we had a meal together before we left.
Dinner meeting
Chat happily about the anecdotes at school before. Although it is far from that year, we will still laugh at the same time. When it comes to the past, there is not much difference between them.
"However, for three years, the most unforgettable thing was Kurihara, right ... finally, she said.
"I attended the funeral of my classmates when I was studying, and I was very shocked at that time."
"If Kurihara were still alive, he would be twenty-four years old like us ..."
"Just like Naoko Haruki Murakami, when she and Watanabe are both in their twenties, the dead Muyue will always be nineteen ..."
"Every time I think about it, I feel very unreal."
"Do you remember Shang Tong?" She asked me, "About Kurihara."
[ 1]
Before going to school, I found Kurihara by the playground:
"What are you loitering about here?"
"Oh. Tongshanjun. "
"The whole class is short of your expenses for this trip."
"Really?"
Kurihara sat with his hands on the parallel bars, his legs hanging down, and his skirt was pasted on the cake like white oiled paper at will, leaving a little distance between his knees.
So I bowed my head and said to the general ... anyway, it will be handed in soon. "
Kurihara applied strength to her hands, turned her body around the bar and jumped up on the ground. She pulled out her ears: "It is shameful for a man to ask a woman for money."
"Don't talk such nonsense." I frowned. "Remember to pay tomorrow. This is the deadline. "
Kurihara said "hmm" in a brisk tone. It seems that I can't guarantee it. I reluctantly let go of my shoulder and looked back when I turned to push my bike.
Kurihara, who left the stadium fence step by step, seemed to open her jaws on the horizon and devour her in the taste buds of the sunset.
Most of the work is odd jobs and errands. No high school student aged 18 will take this title seriously, including myself. The two girls in the back row quarreled and finally started fighting, which was close to the point of going too far. Even if you know it won't work, you should formally say "please pay attention"
The girl with thick upper and lower eyelashes stared at me, and her nails were painted in her hair: "It's really wordy, it's none of your business." Get carried away? "
"But I think Tong Shanjun is still far from the word' get carried away' ... well, it's completely in two directions."
Later, I heard this in the art classroom in the afternoon. The art teacher asked me to find him a picture book. When I entered the classroom, I found Kurihara sitting in the corner. She dragged a chair to the corner.
"How to hide here ..."
"No." Kurihara rubbed her hair. "I'm going to be a model at the art troupe's activities later."
The obvious teasing also made me have no confidence to continue. I went to the window and just rummaged through things.
Kurihara touched my leg from behind with an upper: "Go out and turn off the lights. It's too dazzling to sleep. "
"Don't you want to be a model? How can others draw when the lights are turned off? " I glanced at her.
Kurihara still smiled at me with his chin up: "Where?"
"It's really troublesome." So, when you walk to the front with the photo album, you still raise your hand and press the switch on the wall.
"Thank you." Kurihara said with a smile in the dark.
So it seems that Kurihara and I are still familiar with each other, even though the boundary between familiarity and unfamiliarity is too vague. There are more than 30 people in the class, and most of them have no intention to talk when they meet, as if there is a considerable distance between them. This is a huge number that makes people tired of approaching.
But occasionally I feel that there is not too far between "seeing Kurihara" and "talking to Kurihara". That number is so small that you can hold it in one hand.
Dusk is always covered with a thin layer of haze, and the gray-yellow wind is blowing on the battlefield where the baseball team finishes training, and two or three girls in the physical education department are holding brooms. Someone is watering the flowerpot at the school gate. There is an overpass and a bus stop outside the school. There are mountains in the distance, and most people's homes are scattered on the streets at the foot of the mountain. There are shrines, barbershops and bookstores, and most of the facades are pitiful.
Before leaving school, I passed the colorful poster column, which contained posters of my study trip. The picture shows the original swamp, and a group of big gray birds who don't know whether it is geese or Peng are shaking their wings like rust spots.
2]
One evening a long time ago, I met Kurihara in the bookstore. The bookstore has two floors, but the area is still small. There are magazines, periodicals and cartoons on the first floor, and literature and professional books on the second floor.
When I walked through the narrow stairs to the second floor, at the end of two rows of bookshelves, someone stood there, his schoolbag on the ground, turning over a book. Look very intently, alternating the center of gravity on your legs from time to time.
I quickly found the dictionary I needed and went back to the first floor. Before long, the man stepped down the wooden stairs sideways.
Kurihara was wearing a black half stocking, a knee-length school uniform skirt, a navy blue coat like a skirt, and her hair hung below her shoulders-it was involuntary from bottom to top. So when my eyes followed this route and finally stopped on her face, I turned away. Because it was a long time ago, I only know that I am a girl in my class, and the others are completely blurred like strangers.
By the time I received my boss's change, Kurihara had already walked out of the shop. Both our bikes are in front of the shop. She was a little ahead and I fell behind, so I rode along the undulating path and stopped behind the white line at the intersection where the car passed.
At this time, Kurihara turned to me and said, "Goodbye, Tongshanjun."
Shouting my name, after the bus left, she rode to the right of the road.
"Goodbye ... Kurihara." After a while, I answered her.
This is the first time I have spoken to Kurihara. The first time I said it, the content was to say goodbye.
[3]
Go up along the intersection where the barber shop is located, and the house behind the mailbox is my home. My mother hung her clothes in the yard. Once I saw clothes and pants that looked like my home scattered on the ground from a distance, and I picked them up all the way back. My mother was watching a series at home, completely unaware that the sudden wind outside swept away her labor.
However, even a slightly confused elder will arrange flowers in Cheng X magazine for a month and hide me in the mattress compartment: I know that if X is replaced by "person", BD will definitely fail ... so the little one put an X here. The act of stealing a book or two. And take it away, knowing that I would find out, but never mentioning it directly, I just looked as if nothing had happened.
After the bicycle stopped in the yard and pushed the door open, my mother came out of the kitchen with a spatula and said, "Eat beef stew today and wash your hands quickly."
A few years ago, parents began to care about and be nervous about certain aspects. They find opportunities to ask me by innuendo what I care about recently and what new hobbies I have, and then they will go around in circles and ask me how my classmates and girls are.
"So, are there any like-minded friends of the opposite sex?" Father took a sip of wine, as if he really didn't care about this topic, and pointed at the TV with chopsticks. "It is this artist who drills people's crotch every time! Funny is funny, but it also makes people feel the need to do so. Oh, yes ... where am I? "
"Nothing." I said, "No."
"Oh, really ... by the way, your study tour is next month?" This officially changed the subject, and my father looked back at the calendar. "There are only a few days left."
"The most important thing is to pay attention to safety." The mother who came up with a bowl of rice sat at the table.
In fact, on the 20th wedding anniversary three months ago, my drunken father told me a complete story about his marriage with his mother-it turned out that my father and mother started to fall in love in high school, and it was in their teens.
In the middle of my father's speech, my mother would interrupt him with a smile and say to me, "Your father was so stupid at that time. Just a thick-skinned boy. "
There are 3 1 person in the class, and there are fewer girls than boys, but even in the already small base, Kurihara is not conspicuous. Sometimes I see her chatting with other girls or having lunch together, but she doesn't feel like a close friend. On her way home, she rode her bike alone. Once or twice, when I was not far from her and decided not to say hello, Kurihara saw me and said, "Oh, Tong Shanjun."
It was summer, and Kurihara was wearing a buttoned school shirt with a navy pleated skirt at the bottom. My face is tanned, but my arms and neck are white.
"Go home?" I asked.
"Yes, but I must go to the post office before that."
"Oh ..."
"hmm."
"Send a letter?"
"No, there's a package to pick up."
"Oh, really."
"Well," Kurihara slowed down as he approached the post office. "So, goodbye, Tongshanjun."
"Well, goodbye."
So I met Kurihara with a garbage bag at school the next day, and just left the back door of the classroom with a dustpan, and there was a new conversation.
"Yesterday, later, did you receive the package?"
"Well, I see."
"Oh ..."
"TongShanJun, you can give me the dustpan. I'm going to take out the garbage anyway. "
"Ah, thank you."
"You're welcome."
In the afternoon, I was left in the office by the head teacher to help her sort out the materials. Kurihara pushed the door and came in. Seeing nothing, she asked me, "Where's the teacher?"
"Class teacher?"
"hmm."
"I don't know, maybe go to the principal's office. Find her something? "
"She came to me." Kurihara smiled. "Forget it, I'll go home first." She motioned to me "please". "Don't tell her I was here."
"Oh, ok."
Kurihara, who had left the office, turned back at this moment: "Oh, yes, this thing." She took out a key and put it on the table. "It was poured out of the dustpan this morning. Probably someone in the class fell to the ground and was accidentally swept away. "
"Ah ..." I'm a little embarrassed. "I'll ask in class tomorrow. Thank you. "
"well. Then I'm leaving. Goodbye. "
The conversation with Kurihara was dry and said nothing. Even though words like "hmm" and "oh" are always used the most, once, day after day, in the summer morning classroom, Kurihara rolled up his shirt sleeves and took an eraser and said to me, "Did the teacher really ask about me?"
"Well, it seems that she forgot to ask you about it, and asked me,' Did you have a chestnut? "Unfortunately, I made a mistake." "
"What do you say?"
"Never been here."
"Oh, thank you." She smiled and raised her right hand. "Hey, this is dust-free chalk, but you can clearly see-"
Follow it once.
Today is tomorrow.
Then maybe next time we will talk about something that has nothing to do with chalk.
Like a longer and longer rope, it goes away slowly. Trivial and plain topics, from one direction to another, I began to feel familiar with Kurihara. There is no distance between seeing her and talking to her. Just like doing a natural thing.
[4]
Recently, I often appear in situations where I want to lie for my friends. When I was in junior high school, my classmates were also assigned to high school. After a few years, their relationship became very iron, and they got together in their spare time on weekdays to "support each other". Including crustily skin of head in front of parents admitted that "aunt, those are really what I left him" into X supplies. Arrange flowers in a certain month: X or "person".
The other man looked at my face like a worm with a hard shell crawling.
However, despite the embarrassment at that time, we got together at night and enjoyed drinking when we didn't smoke. The two men pulled the tab, took a big sip of the drink, and their throats trembled with cold at first but soon warmed up.
"Ah ... at that time, I thought she looked like that, super cute." When friends drink it, they start to pick topics.
"Oh." I shook the aluminum can in my hand, it was half empty, and my head was a little soft.
"The mobile phone desktop has also changed, wait for me ..." My friend said while reaching for his pocket.
"Well, I don't have to look."
The mobile phone shook in front of my eyes: "How? Let's be cute. "
"Not bad."
There are often other people, friends of friends, friends of friends are friends and so on, and four or five faces gather under the eaves. The topic has also become more unscrupulous from time to time. Some girls inside and outside the school are often the object of comments.
"That kind is not cute but a fake fairy."
"You know the boss."
"Who is cute in Class C? The skin is transparent! "
"Jellyfish, still' transparent', idiot." Someone turned around and called me, "Tongshan, are you going shopping?"
"Alas, the wine is almost finished." I stood up and picked up the empty jar.
"Oh, well, bring me a lighter."
"Very good." I rubbed my chin.
On this day, I caught up with the morning surprise quiz and the afternoon disaster prevention rehearsal. I was hit by that guy in a noisy room, and my chin was swollen and it hurt for a long time. A very unpleasant day. So I didn't really know that Kurihara's seat had been empty until the evening, which was not just a coincidence that I left when I looked at it, but a continuous state from morning till night. Kurihara did not come today.
Before leaving school, I passed by the office, and the head teacher leaned out from the inside and called me, "Tongshanjun-"
"What?"
"Arrange a study trip in groups tomorrow, and every five people will volunteer to form a group."
"Oh." I remember, "Isn't there always one more person?" If there are thirty-one people in the class. "
"Well,no." The head teacher shook his head and said, "Kurihara was admitted to the hospital yesterday, so he can't attend." Probably seeing my instant speechless expression, the class teacher added that this was not a serious symptom. And she did return to the previous topic quickly with a casual tone.
I stood in the corridor, facing the playground outside. It's time to take part in extracurricular activities. Baseball teams and track teams and clubs rehearse group dances in the open space. The atmosphere is very lively. Shouting slogans, "Come on" and "Try harder" sounded everywhere, and the energetic voice passed through the playground and could be heard clearly through the glass.
The air that has not been darkened by one's health is still flowing brightly. It's like sand drowning a footprint.
I remember one evening before the end of the summer vacation, Kurihara and I met in front of the store street:
"Does Tongshanjun also know this photographer?" Kurihara, dressed in a gray private service, stopped her bike and asked me, pointing to the posters of individual exhibitions.
"Oh, what? ..... oh ... hmm. " I snorted.
"Really?" She looked at me. "I see."
"Ah ... um ..."
I squinted at the names in the newspaper, which was so strange that I could hardly read them smoothly at once. If you ask me "Do you know this person from Tongshan" another time, maybe I will ask "Who?" The first time. Baseball player? "
But I gave Kurihara a positive answer. When I think about it later, I may feel that I have to explain from the beginning. I just wait for my friends here and stare at the poster just to pass the time. In fact, I don't care what it says at all-such a long paragraph will be boring.
Or maybe, where I can't explain it, it's to affirm Kurihara's words. When I look at her, it's like an unconscious natural behavior. I nodded my head.
"You know him, too?" I asked.
"hmm." Kurihara said, "I like his subjects."
"Really ..." I vainly considered a reply that was as unobtrusive as possible. "I feel the same way ... I really want to have a look when I have time ..."
Kurihara turned to stare at me, and his eyes gave me an unusually guilty smile at the end.
I didn't come here to say goodbye that time. Kurihara was waiting for the special price of the supermarket opposite at 6 o'clock, but I didn't wait for my friend.
Say something ordinary. Just after it rained in the evening, the air became steaming again. There are scattered leaves on the umbrella in Kurihara's hand, and he talks to me while picking it up.
Even in memory, every scene is still vivid.
After buying beer and snacks from the convenience store, I walked all the way with a plastic bag in my hand, covered in frost grass and moonlight. Halfway through, I stopped, turned on my cell phone and rummaged through rows and rows.
There is really no phone number of Kurihara.
This is my relationship with her.
I can't even make up my mind to go to the hospital once.
It is nothing more than talking in an ordinary way when facing each other, repeating trivial and plain content over and over again.
No more contact.
Between Kurihara and me-
A small relationship that can be held with one hand.
And such a relationship, only when you hear the word "cute", can you emerge like Kurihara.
On a wet evening, Kurihara, wearing a gray T-shirt, was like a cup of accumulated rain, talking to me while picking up the leaves on the umbrella surface.
I think it's cute.
[5]
After school this day, at the request of the class teacher, I finally sent my class notes in recent days to the hospital.
But not in the ward, I just walked into the atrium and met Kurihara. I don't wear a hospital gown, so I look a little pale. Hands in pockets, curled up on a bench reading.
When I walked past, Li noticed the falling shadow and looked up and gave a cry of surprise.
"What the hell?" I said.
I don't know. Kurihara smiled.
"Not serious?"
"hmm." Kurihara turned to one side. "Sit down?"
"Oh, oh ..." I put my bag on the ground and opened the lid. "The teacher asked me to send you handouts."
"Thank you." Kurihara took something and rummaged it, then concluded: "Tongshanjun, your handwriting is not bad-"
I immediately put the book back in a conditioned way.
"I'm praising." Kurihara smiled and bent his eyes.
"Hey, who told you to watch these?"
"Well, don't say this. Give it to me. "
"We will start the day after tomorrow ..."
"Oh, really."
"It's a pity not to go."
"Not bad." Kurihara straightened his back until he leaned back slightly. "It's not so regrettable."
"Don't shut up."
"Really." Kurihara turned to look at me. "I have other places I want to go more."
"Where?"
Kurihara stared at my eyes, paused for two seconds and smiled. "No, I'm talking nonsense."
"..." I'm not sure whether what she said is true or not, so I can only keep hesitating. "What?"
"Where does Tongshanjun usually fall in love with?" Kurihara bowed his head and turned over the lecture notes, as if asking a topic casually.
"... ask me what I'm doing. "
"no?"
"... well, there is a place I liked to go when I was a child. In retrospect, I said, "There is a place above the shrine where trams pass by at the foot of the mountain-in fact, it has been reported by TV stations before, of course, it is a small local TV station ..."
"hmm." Kurihara nodded and motioned for me to continue.
"this is what I liked to play when I was a child ... it's not right to say' play' ... but I used to stay on the bridge with several playmates at that time and watch the tram pass by. Because at that time, the driver in the cab saw us and waved to us every time, and we shouted' Thanks' to him ... "When I said this, I felt that the content was too naive and stopped. "It's all stupid things I did in primary school."
Kurihara smiled: "But I feel very good."
"... if you want to see it ... anyway, it only takes more than twenty minutes by bike. "
"Really?"
"hmm."
"Then go and have a look."
Kurihara has been taking me to the hospital gate. Symmetrical pines and cypresses were planted on both sides. She stood up with a handout under her arm and showed that she was wearing a long winter coat, covering her knees all the time.
I rode down the slope in front of the hospital. The car tire bounced badly when it hit the uneven road. Turn the corner and you can see the flat land in the distance. In winter, rice fields are layers of pale yellow.
-Then let's have a look.
-Let's take a look at it later.
[6]
I think I really like Kurihara.
When, where and how-these are not clear. Children like candy. If summer comes, they should go to the seaside. They are more interested in baseball than football ... and they all like it purely and truly for no reason.
But I like Kurihara. On them, I can't tell the place, like the pulse beside my wrist, which keeps beating, weak but clear.