Chapter 1 Mirror Opening

"click".Everything turns from dark to bright, the screen flickers, and the picture begins to appear.

This is a faculty dormitory, the most corner building in the century-old school complex, it is located in a remote place, and most of the college sends young teachers to live there.The red bricks and white steps of this house look very beautiful from the outside, and the ivy stretches its charming green vines around the old western-style building. Anyone who passes by can't help but take a second look, but fortunately, he became a teacher, and it was only when he entered that he realized it—— —It turns out that this house has been repaired for a long time, and the inner walls have been mottled, like a tired face that has been touched up countless times.

They are so tired that they don't even have a digital TV, and each room in the dormitory is equipped with an antique cable TV.

"The middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have experienced heavy rains one after another..."

The boy walked past the entrance of the corridor, the sound of TV programs could be heard through the window pane of the reception room, and the old lady on duty used to stop him and yell:

"Hey, little classmate Nong Xiao, don't you know? This is the faculty dormitory, where the teachers live. You, a student, don't always run in there."

But today, the old lady didn't question him, maybe she was in a daze, her eyesight was dim, and she didn't notice his passing by in the dark.

He went straight up to the third floor and knocked on the familiar iron door.

The door opened with a creak, and the woman inside the door poked her head: "Is that you?"

The boy whispered, "Thank you, Teacher."

Although it was late and the boy was an uninvited guest, she was his teacher and the person closest to him in the school. After a brief surprise, the woman still welcomed him into the house.

Make a cup of tea and add ginger slices. It's raining outside. She feels that the boy's body is wet and cold. Hot ginger tea can keep the cold away.

Teacher Xie put the steaming teacup on the tea table in front of him: "When did you come back?"

"I just came back today." The boy stood awkwardly in front of the sofa.

Teacher Xie: "Sit down quickly."

He just sat down, with his hands curled up on his knees, cautious, not touching the teacup.

"Why didn't you tell me in advance when you came back. It's so late, and there is still a bus to school?"

"……Um."

"How are things going at home?"

The boy was silent for a while, lowering his head to pick at the hole in his jeans.

"My mother still wants me to drop out of school..."

Teacher Xie was silent.

Already a college student, the school has no right to comment on whether the student chooses to study or not. She talked to the mother of the boy in front of her and promised to give tuition fee reductions to extremely poor families.

But the mother sharply refused—

"What books do you read? Learn Chinese? Who can't speak Chinese? You guys are cheating money!"

She reasoned with the mother patiently: "The child is very talented. You see, he is already a sophomore. Isn't it a pity to give up halfway? Besides, he will be able to find a job in society after two years of studying. I asked him, he wants to be a teacher in the future. With his grades, it is not a problem to get a teacher qualification. This is a child's dream, and the teacher's job is stable..."

"He can't be a teacher! It's not like you haven't seen his face!"

Mother's words were like a blunt knife slashing down, cutting between the invisible currents.

Teacher Xie was very angry, but she didn't know how to respond.

"I'm going to let him go home to work now! The family has no money! Don't waste time! That face—that face... What can he do after studying! Which school would want such a teacher!"

What kind of face is that?

An incandescent lamp was turned on in Mr. Xie's room. The wattage was low and he looked drowsy, but it still illuminated the boy's face.

Mr. Xie is used to seeing his face, but anyone who sees this face for the first time will gasp--half a yin and yang face, who has suffered from some kind of disease, with bruises and purple spots running from his forehead It covered the neck like a piece of rotten skin.

Shocking, blatantly abnormal.

"ill!"

"Don't get close to him, it might be contagious."

"Hey! Intersex!"

Accompanied by this face and growing up with him, there are constant abuse and ridicule.

Because of his illness, because he was too sick to hide, and so ugly that he didn't know how to dodge, the young man had been blindsided since he was a child.No matter how hard he studies and how gentle he gets along with others, he is still like an evil dragon swimming under the blue sky and broad daylight, without any equal treatment.

Few people, like Mr. Xie, can find that the normal half of his face is very cute and gentle.

He was always enduring everyone's ridicule gently and numbly, and sometimes he smiled in conjunction with it, as if he had really done something wrong.

But what did he do wrong?

Teacher Xie saw in his eyes that he was always the most serious in his studies, he was honest and responsible, and he always did the most work silently in the group.When others bullied him, he always took it with a good temper and didn't talk much.

"It's okay, teacher, I'm already very happy that you can chat with me. I was in the village before, and people would walk around when they saw me. No one has ever listened to me as attentively as you. "

"The classmates are also very good, at least they didn't hit me with a brick."

He spoke very peacefully, but his head was always bowed, his shoulders were bent, and he had been burdened with heavy insults for a long time, which made his spine deformed and bent.

She later said to him: "After the evening self-study, as long as you want, you can come to me for private tutoring. If there is anything you don't understand, if you need my help, just ask."

He smiled embarrassingly, half of his normal face flushed with embarrassment.

She has known him for the past two years, and she is used to him hunchbacked slightly, knocking on the door of her dormitory, bringing her thesis, essays, and even poems he wrote himself, and asking her for advice.

These days, many people like to scold their mothers, but few people like to write poetry.

He wrote persistently.

The classmates laughed at him, he was ugly and wrote ugly things, it was so sour, even more sour than your rotten grape face.

He smiled and wrote again honestly.

But now, he doesn't even have this power.

Teacher Xie thought about what happened before, sighed in his heart, and looked at the boy in front of him with pity.

The boy said: "I am here this time to say goodbye to the teacher. I will be leaving tomorrow."

"go back home?"

"...Well, that's it."

The boy paused: "Teacher, if my illness is not on the face, but in a place where others can't see, everyone will be kinder to me. That would be great."

Teacher Xie's eyes finally couldn't help turning red. At this point, she had done everything she could. Unfortunately, she was not his family after all. She couldn't make the final decision, nor could she save him.The boy's family was getting more and more cramped day by day, and his mother regretted letting the boy go out to study. After all, there was still a healthy second son in the family who just went to middle school. When the sick one was called back, the healthy child could go out.

She felt that what she did was not wrong. As a mother, she had to weigh the family situation, and she was fair.

"You...you put me here last time, and asked me to read for you, I haven't completely finished revising—"

Teacher Xie felt that he was about to burst into tears, so he changed the subject hastily.

"But I read it very carefully before. Would you like to go through the formalities for leaving school later, and wait for me to approve all of them..."

"No." He smiled and shook his head, "I'm going to leave as soon as the day breaks."

She was so remorseful, why did she always feel that there was still time?

Why not stay up all night?

And why, go shopping, chatting, and holding that long and meaningless meeting?

Here is a student's dream that is about to be broken, and a heart that is about to stop beating. As his last teacher, she cannot present a bouquet of flowers to his dream as farewell.

"Sorry……"

"It's all right," he said, "but I ended up writing a poem, can I give it to you?"

She nodded hurriedly.

He showed her from his schoolbag, the paper was so thin that it seemed weightless in his hand.

She read it word by word. It was a very lingering love poem, hot and enthusiastic, but cautious. She had read many love poems written by masters.From the ancients' "when to lean on the false cover, dry the tears with double photos." to today's "my eyes are better because you are in my eyes", but at this moment, it seems that it is not as good as the page that the young man held out.

He didn't say anything, as if saying it was also a lack of rhythm.

The young man is a poet, and he knows that without poetry, love with disparity in status will only be embarrassing.

"It's a souvenir for you."

Both the ugly face and the normal face are written with tenderness.

"Sorry, teacher, I really can't afford any presents for you."

"There's nothing better than this." She turned her back, choked with sobs, "You, you eat something, I'll find you refreshments."

Controlling his emotions by rummaging through boxes and cabinets, Teacher Xie took a can of butter cookies and put them on the coffee table.

The boy thanked him politely, and under Teacher Xie's gaze, he finally touched the teacup cautiously, but withdrew his hand and said softly, "It's so hot."

She touched it: "how come? It's warm."

But he went back and added some cold water.

The boy drank it bit by bit with his favorite biscuit.

After eating and drinking, the night is still long.

He said: "Teacher, can I read a book with you for a while?"

"of course can."

The young man laughed again, a little helpless: "I'm going to leave, and I still trouble you so much in the end."

"It's okay, you can stay for a while... By the way, after you go back, give me another address, and I will send you a copy of all the good books I read. You are so smart, even if you study by yourself... Where will it go?" Teacher Xie could only chat for comfort, "If you need any help, you can find me on WeChat."

The boy looked at her: "Thank you."

Paused.

"If everyone was like you, then maybe..."

He lowered his head and didn't say any more.

The most in her dormitory are books, because he is ugly, sick and naked, and he is the focus every time he goes to the library, so she invites him to the staff dormitory and lends him her books to read.

In this way, the boy read the books all night in the staff dormitory, as if relying on this night, he brought all these words back to his hometown.

He seldom has such a self. In the past, he would not stay too late, always worrying that he would disturb the teacher's normal work and rest.But today is an exception.

Teacher Xie didn't blame him for his last willfulness, it's just that she stayed with him until the middle of the night, and she was really sleepy, so she fell asleep at her desk unconsciously.

Dimly, she heard the boy say to her suddenly: "Thank you, Teacher."

She answered him vaguely.

"One more thing, I want to apologize to you."

"Before the class was stolen... Those students always lost things, and they couldn't find them anyway, which caused you to be criticized. Those things were actually taken by me."

She wanted to wake up in a daze, but she was too tired and couldn't get up again.

The boy said sadly: "But I didn't ask for those things, I didn't ask for a penny. They laughed at me like this, and I actually felt resentful in my heart... I threw all their bags into the haystack, Then they burned it all up. At that time, they suspected me, but you didn’t even ask me, so you just excused me. In fact, the person who did this is indeed my fault.”

"I don't have the courage to admit that I've only ever been a normal person, or even a good person, in the eyes of one person."

"That person is you."

"Teacher, am I vain? ... But if even you are disappointed in me, I don't know what to do. You are the only recognition I have received in my life."

When he finished speaking, his voice became softer and softer.

His eyes were clear, almost transparent, and he felt relieved.

"—The thing I regret the most is this... Teacher Xie, I'm really sorry. My illness seems to have transferred from my face to my heart. If there is a next life, I really want to be one Normal people... I don't want to be so sick that I don't even have the qualifications for love."

"Thank you teacher..."

A gust of wind blew in through the window, blowing the papers on the table flying like banners calling for souls.

Then, everything returned to quiet.

The tea on the table is cold.

When Teacher Xie woke up the next morning, he found that he had slept at the desk all night. The room was very clean. The boy was a very polite person, but this day he packed up his things and left without waiting to say goodbye to the teacher.

Unavoidably feeling a little stuck, she got up and walked to the living room with sleepy eyes.

Looking down at the coffee table——

But the whole person seemed to be drenched in a basin of ice water, and his eyes widened suddenly!

The tea she poured for the boy yesterday had already turned into ice, but...but...

The room temperature is obviously 27 octaves!

how come?how come?

She stared at Wu Zhuzi and searched in the house. More and more traces kept her heart cold—the butter cookies in the tin box. She obviously watched the boy eat them yesterday, but now it seems that there is no one. No less.The water in the teacup froze into ice cubes, but it was not lacking, and finally——

In the end, the content of that page of implicit love poems was still in her heart, and he gave her a piece of paper as farewell.

The paper was gone.

Or rather, there was never that page...

She was almost trembling, when there was a sudden "ding", the phone vibrated, making her jump up in shock, and snatched it away, it turned out to be spam.She breathed a sigh of relief, but thought of something like waking up from a dream, so she quickly called the boy.

beep.beep.beep.

The heartbeat vibrates with the mechanical sound.

"Hey?"

pass.

The person who answered the phone was the familiar voice of a middle-aged woman, rough, but at this time there was a bit of crying.She exchanged a few words with the boy's mother on the phone.

The heart fell into a black hole that could not be seen, and fell down.

She hears—

"..."

"It's you! It's you again!! I haven't come to find you yet! You should call here first!"

The woman was complaining, but she couldn't remember what Teacher Xie said earlier. Her mind was almost blank, and she only heard the final scream, which was like a scream: "He's dead! He's dead!"

Blood flowed like ice.

died?

"It's all your deception!! He quarreled with me and ran out. It was raining heavily outside. The police said that there was a section of cable exposed..."

Teacher Xie's ears were buzzing.

In the fierce cursing and crying, she could barely hear a few words, like a ghost like a ghost, like a farewell that doesn't belong to the world.

On the other end of the phone, the woman said in a mournful voice:

"What are you looking for? What are you looking for?!"

-

"Yesterday was already his first seven!!!"