EFB Chapter 100 Physics
Chapter 100 Physics
Xiao Yunqing leaned against the window, holding the bag of dried persimmons in her arms, staring blankly out the window.
After watching for a while, she turned around and said, "Song Huan, why is the countryside so wonderful?"
"Where is it good?"
"Everywhere is great, the air is fresh, the food is delicious, the people are nice, and my grandparents are even better."
She counted on her fingers, "Look at Grandma, she brought us so many things, she doesn't even want to eat them herself. And Grandpa, he got up early this morning to wash the tricycle so it would be convenient for us to go to the market."
She spoke very earnestly, her eyes shining, as if she were describing a beautiful dream.
Song Huan listened without responding.
He didn't want to shatter this dream.
Of course he knows how good the countryside is.
It was so wonderful that when I was a child, I felt the whole world was only as big as the banyan tree at the entrance of the village; it was so wonderful that I thought the fish in the pond could never be caught; it was so wonderful that I thought the cicadas would keep chirping in the summer forever.
But he also knew what the countryside was like.
It's not the "pastoral idyll" described in books, nor the "picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence" recited in poems.
Grandma gets up before dawn to feed the chickens, and Grandpa spends his whole life bending over and digging in the fields, his calluses thicker than the soles of his shoes.
The son of Aunt Liu dropped out of junior high school to work, and the daughter of Old Zhang from the east end of the village got married at the age of sixteen to a neighboring village. Her dowry consisted of a television set and two quilts.
Xiao Yunqing was unaware of these matters.
The countryside she saw was a countryside of two days: a countryside with market days, a countryside where grandma would stuff snacks into her hands, a countryside where roosters would crow to wake her up.
It's fun, fresh, and smells of earth.
Song Huan didn't want to tell her what the real countryside was like.
"Yes, it's good," he said.
Xiao Yunqing glanced at him, a little puzzled, "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing much."
You don't seem very happy.
"No, I'm just a little tired." He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Xiao Yunqing didn't ask any more questions.
She turned back and continued looking out the window.
Outside the window are fields, mountains, trees, and occasionally a house flashing by.
The house is very old; the white paint on the walls has mostly peeled off, revealing the red bricks underneath.
A person was sitting by the door, their face obscured, head bowed, seemingly picking vegetables.
As the car drove past, the person was left behind, growing smaller and smaller until finally becoming a dot and disappearing at the end of the road.
Song Huan kept her eyes closed, but wasn't asleep.
Something was swirling in my head, like a wheel rolling over a gravel road, making me feel bumpy.
It takes an hour to get from the countryside to the city.
The bus fare is eighteen yuan.
My sixth aunt's son went to work in Guangzhou by bus, which cost a bit more, over a hundred yuan.
He comes back once a year, sometimes once every two years.
Song Huan couldn't remember when she last came back.
All I remember is that my sixth aunt stood at the village entrance and waited for a long time until it got dark before going back.
Zhang Xuejuan also took a bus when she left the village.
Back then, the road wasn't finished yet, and it took more than three hours to drive there, a bumpy ride that felt like your bones were going to fall apart.
After she was released, she never went back to live there again. She would go back for a meal during holidays and then return the same day.
Song Wentao said she had forgotten her roots, but she said I hadn't forgotten my roots, I just didn't want to live that kind of life anymore.
Song Huan didn't understand before, but she does now.
It only takes an hour to get from the countryside to the city.
But for some people, this one-hour drive is a distance they can never cover in their entire lives.
It's not that the road is too far, it's that other things are too heavy.
Like those bags that Grandma handed over, they weren't heavy to carry, but they felt heavy in my heart.
He opened his eyes and looked out the window.
The area outside the window is now the suburbs. The roads have widened, the houses have grown taller, and there are streetlights along the roadside, spaced every few dozen meters, arranged in neat rows.
In the distance, factory chimneys billowed white smoke, drawing a line across the hazy sky.
Xiao Yunqing was still looking out the window, but the view was no longer fields and mountains, but buildings, license plates, and traffic.
Her expression changed slightly, it was hard to pinpoint what it was, she seemed a little disappointed, or perhaps just tired of watching.
"We're almost there," Song Huan said.
"Hmm." She placed the bag of persimmons on her lap and rubbed her fingers against the opening of the bag again.
It was already dark when the bus pulled into the station.
The lights in the station were on, a stark white, reflecting off the ground.
There weren't many people, just a few scattered around. Some were dragging their suitcases out, while others were squatting in the corner waiting for a bus.
Song Huan took the items off the luggage rack—jars, cloth bags, plastic bags, and dried persimmons—and handed them to Xiao Yunqing one by one.
She took it, hugged it to her chest, and it became a Christmas tree covered with bags again.
The two people walked out of the station and stood by the roadside waiting for a taxi.
The streetlights were on, casting long shadows of the two people.
Xiao Yunqing put the bag on the ground and shook her hand.
"It's so heavy," she whispered.
Song Huan glanced at her, "I told you not to take so much, but you didn't listen."
"Grandma gave them to me, and they look delicious." She squatted down and rearranged the bag, putting the jar at the bottom, the cloth bag on top, and the persimmons in the middle, arranging them neatly.
Song Huan glanced at her. "Let's go."
The taxi arrived, and Song Huan stuffed her things into the trunk.
The two got into the car and gave each other their address.
The car started moving, and the lights outside the window receded one by one, red, green, and yellow, stretching out as lines on the car window.
Xiao Yunqing leaned against the window, looking outside.
After watching for a while, I suddenly laughed.
"Song Huan, what do you think Grandma is doing right now?"
Song Huan thought for a moment, "They should be eating."
"What do you want to eat?"
"It's leftovers from lunch, what else can we eat?"
Xiao Yunqing's smile faded slightly, and she remained silent.
When the car arrived at her building, the streetlights were on, casting a dim yellow light on the entrance to the building.
Song Huan took the items out of the trunk and handed them to her one by one.
Jars, cloth bags, peanuts, dried longans, and that bag of persimmon cakes.
Xiao Yunqing stood under the streetlight, carrying a pile of things, her face shining brightly in the light.
She looked at the bags, then at Song Huan, and her mouth moved slightly as she thought that perhaps she really shouldn't have taken so many.
"Let's go up," Song Huan said.
"Why don't you come up and sit for a while?" She glanced upstairs. "My mom should be home."
"No, I have an exam tomorrow." He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, folded it neatly, and handed it over. "Oh, by the way, this is for you."
Xiao Yunqing was stunned for a moment.
She was carrying a jar in her right hand and holding a cloth bag in her left, leaving her with no free hands.
She tucked the jar under her arm, freeing her right hand, and took it.
The strip of paper was small, folded into four sections, with the edges pressed flat.
She unfolded it and looked at it by the light of the street lamp.
The paper was covered with dense writing, including physics formulas and problem-solving steps.
The handwriting was crooked and messy, with several corrections. Arrows were marked next to it, and it said, "In this step, we need to find the resultant force first" and "Pay attention to the direction of friction."
The last line has a box with the answer written inside.
Xiao Yunqing stared at the paper for several seconds.
She remembered that on Saturday morning, while waiting for the bus at the station, she casually asked him if he knew how to solve that physics problem.
That question was the last big one on the test paper that was handed out on Friday, and she couldn't figure it out even after thinking about it all night.
He said he would teach me how to write.
She thought he was just saying it casually and that she would forget about it as soon as she turned her head.
They've been spending the last two days together in the countryside.
They go to the market, work in the fields, cook, and chat, inseparable from morning till night.
He didn't have time to do the problems, and he didn't bring any scratch paper.
When did he write it?
She looked up at him. Song Huan was standing under the streetlight, his hands in his pockets, his face expressionless.
"I wrote this when I got up this morning," he said, as if he could read her mind. "You're still sleeping, and I have nothing to do."
Xiao Yunqing lowered her head and glanced at the paper again.
The handwriting is really ugly, even uglier than usual.
In several places where the corrections were made, the ink had smudged, as if the hand was shaking while writing.
A line of text was crossed out halfway through writing, and a note next to it said "This is not right," so it was rewritten.
She suddenly remembered that when she woke up in the morning, the blankets on the floor were neatly folded and the pillows were put back in the closet.
She thought he just got up early.
It turns out he got up early to do practice problems for himself.
She folded the paper strips again, slowly, aligning the edges and pressing them flat.
Fold it back to its original size and stuff it into your pocket.
"Okay," she said casually, "I'm going up now."
She bent down, scooped the jar up from under her arm, hugged it tightly, and turned to walk towards the building entrance.
He took two steps, then stopped.
"Song Huan".
"Um?"
"Go home early." She didn't turn around; her voice came from ahead, muffled.
"it is good."
She walked quickly into the building.
The jar wobbled in her arms, but she steadied herself and continued walking.
The stairwell light came on, voice-activated, a stark white light leaking from the door.
Song Huan stood downstairs, watching the door close.
The lights came on one floor at a time, from the first floor to the third floor, and then from the third floor to the fourth floor.
The lights on the fourth floor came on, paused for a moment, and then went out.
He turned and walked home.
The streetlights illuminated the road clearly, spaced a few meters apart. The shadows stretched out from under my feet, trailing behind me, growing longer and longer until I reached the next streetlight, where they receded and stretched out again.
He remembered something.
In their previous lives, although they were in the same high school, it wasn't No. 1 High School, but Jiangcheng No. 4 High School.
At that time, Xiao Yunqing was also very good at humanities.
My Chinese essays were often read aloud by the teacher as model essays, my English test scores were never below 130, and I also did well in history and politics.
Before the classes were separated, Song Huan and Xiao Yunqing were in the same class, so she naturally knew these things and thought that Xiao Yunqing was a humanities genius, after all, her grades were far ahead of others in the Fourth Middle School at that time.
When she had to choose her major in her second year of high school, everyone thought she would choose humanities.
Her mother, Xu Wan, thought so too, and even went to the head teacher of the humanities-focused class to make a request.
As a result, she chose science.
Song Huan was in the science class, Class 9 at the time.
She chose science and was assigned to a regular science class, but it was class six.
The two classes are on different floors, and we occasionally bump into each other at the stairwell during breaks.
She would nod when she saw him, and he would nod back, and then they would walk past.
He didn't know why she chose science.
I asked her once, and she said, "Science majors have good job prospects."
He felt the reason was sufficient and didn't ask any further questions.
Later he thought that perhaps there was more to it than that.
But he generally doesn't dwell on things he can't figure out.
Later, she was admitted to a university in Beijing, where she studied science and engineering.
Later, she went to the United States to pursue her master's and doctoral degrees and stayed there.
He occasionally saw her messages in the classmate group. Some said she was in Silicon Valley, some said she was at a research institute in Beijing, some said she got married, and some said she went to Antarctica.
The news kept circulating, and it was impossible to tell which one was true.
He saw the messages while sitting in his rented room, replied with an "Oh," and then locked the screen.
At that time, the two had lost contact for more than ten years.
The feelings of their youth have long been washed away by time; Song Huan only needs to know that Xiao Yunqing is doing well.
Song Huan couldn't bring herself to add Xiao Yunqing's contact information, just to ask, "Are you there, old classmate?"
After all, unrequited love is like the dried sweet potatoes that grandma used to make.
It takes a lot of time to dry, it's sweet when you eat it, but the taste lingers in your mouth after you finish eating it, so you can't tell if it's sweet or bitter.
I imagine that when the two of them mention their childhood crushes, they'll just laugh it off as easily as adults!