Lu Zhinian didn't leave until Tang Mi arrived in the afternoon. Jiang Suchu stood by the window on the second floor and watched Lu Zhinian and Tang Zi leave in the car.
Jiang Suichu asked Tang Mi, "Tangtang, do you know what they are doing?"
Tang Mi shook her head, she didn't know either. She asked Tang Zi on the way here, but he didn't tell her.
Tang Mi looked at Jiang Suichu's new room. The room was very warmly decorated. Jiang Suichu's schoolbag was placed on the desk in front of the window, with the jade Buddha lying beside it.
Tang Mi pointed at the Jade Buddha and asked knowingly: "Sui Sui, does this Jade Buddha belong to Jiang Minghao?"
Men wear Guanyin and women wear Buddha.
Moreover, this jade Buddha is so small that it looks like it is worn by a girl.
Why is he wearing a lady's jade Buddha?
Jiang Suichu looked at the jade Buddha, picked it up carefully, lowered his eyes and thought for a moment, and said, "So be it."
That counts?
Tang Mi was a little confused by this answer, bit her lip and said, "Can I take a look?"
"Okay." Jiang Suchu handed the Jade Buddha to her.
Tang Mi took the jade Buddha and looked at it carefully. The jade was not made of good material, and the impurities inside were clearly visible. Through the light, you can also see a crack in the middle of the Buddha's body, and there are also signs of wear on the surface.
Thinking of last night's scene, Tang Mi looked at Jiang Suichu: "Suisui, is this piece of jade important to you?"
Jiang Suchu was stunned for a moment, and the image of himself holding it tightly underwater flashed through his mind. To this day, she still clearly remembers the feeling of the Buddha statue grabbing her heart.
She nodded slowly and said, "I used to use it as a life-saving straw."
It seemed that as long as she caught it, she would be saved.
Tang Zi briefly told her about Jiang Suichu's fall into the water when he returned home last night. Tang Mi's thick curly eyelashes slowly lowered, and she whispered: "What about... where is Jiang Minghao?"
Is he also very important to you?
Is he your life-saving straw, or...
Tang Mi has always been straightforward, but this was the first time she was so indirect. She didn't dare to ask clearly if she wanted to ask.
Jiang Suichu also noticed something strange about Tang Mi. She turned her head and looked into Tang Mi's eyes. Seeing the dimness in her eyes, she seemed to understand something.
Jiang Suchu looked at him and said with some uncertainty: "Tangtang, do you... like... Jiang Minghao?"
Tang Mi suddenly raised her eyelashes and looked at her, her face a little red.
Now Jiang Suchu was sure that Tang Mi really liked Jiang Minghao.
When she saw that there was no other emotion in Jiang Suichu's eyes except concern, her heart gradually relaxed, then she pursed her lips and blushed, "Is it obvious?"
Jiang Suichu thought of what happened at the resort, thinking that Tang Mi must have liked Jiang Minghao at that time.
Jiang Suchu smiled, poked her red cheek with his index finger, and said, "It's obvious now."
When she heard that Jiang Suchu was laughing at her blushing, Tang Mi covered her face in embarrassment and rolled on Jiang Suchu's bed.
"You haven't answered me yet?" She sat up again, facing Jiang Suichu and asked with a worried face: "Is Jiang Minghao important to you?"
Jiang Suchu understood the meaning of Tang Mi's words. She looked into her eyes and said seriously: "He is very important to me!"
Tang Mi's eyes trembled slightly. When the light in her eyes was about to dim, she heard Jiang Suichu say: "But Tangtang, what I said is more important than what you think you like."
She and Jiang Minghao were like San Mao meeting the little match girl in San Mao's Wanderings. Two homeless people meet in a cold snowstorm. He gave her enough food, and she used the remaining matches to warm their little world.
"Then Jiang Minghao treats you...?" Tang Mi could see how much Jiang Minghao cared about her.
Jiang Suichu looked at Tang Mi, who was a little cautious in front of him, and sighed in his heart: No wonder the lyrics always say that love can make people timid.
Even a beautiful and outstanding person like Tang Mi can have such an unconfident side.
She lowered her eyes and looked at the Jade Buddha in Tang Mi's hand, and said, "Tangtang, do you want to know who owns this Jade Buddha?"
Tang Mi glanced at the jade in her hand, then looked at Jiang Suchu.
Jiang Suchu kept looking at the jade Buddha in her hand, and said bitterly: "This jade Buddha belongs to sister Jiang Minghao."
"Sister?" Tang Mi was a little surprised. She seemed to have never heard Jiang Suchu and Jiang Minghao mention that he had a sister.
Jiang Suchu nodded and said, "His sister passed away."
Tang Mi was startled and her mind went blank: "How could... he died?"
Jiang Suichu didn't want to talk about Jiang Minghao's family affairs, because they were his scars. However, Tang Mi liked Jiang Minghao, and she told her this because she wanted Tang Mi to think clearly after knowing it.
After all, she and Jiang Minghao were not from the same world.
Jiang Suichu actually didn't know much about Jiang Minghao's family at first. When she was first brought back to Muyang Town, she only knew that no children in the village would play with Jiang Minghao and that everyone was afraid of him. Jiang Suichu was also afraid, because Jiang Minghao always had a cold face and always had injuries on his body.
Later, I stayed in the village for a long time, and gradually learned a little bit from everyone's gossip. Jiang Minghao's father, Jiang Guodong, was well-known in the village as a lazy person. He didn't do anything when he was young and relied on his parents to support him at home every day. No girl from all over the country is willing to marry him. It was not until the age of forty that she married Liu Yun, who suffered from cerebral palsy in the village across the river, through the introduction of a matchmaker.
Liu Yun is actually pretty, but her face is distorted when she speaks and she walks with a limp due to cerebral palsy.
But when rural people marry, they don’t just want a beautiful wife, they also want a healthy one. Because country people make a living by farming, if you marry a disabled person, you will not only lose a labor force, but also have more mouths to eat.
After getting married, they lived a few years of poverty but harmony. Liu Yun also gave birth to a son and a daughter to the Jiang family, Jiang Minghao and Jiang Mingyao.
But the good times didn't last long, as the family's expenses increased due to their two children. Jiang Guodong had no ability to begin with, and the money he earned became increasingly insufficient for his family's expenses. I don't know when, he became obsessed with playing cards and tried to get rich overnight at the card table.
But in this world, there are a few gamblers who can enjoy themselves at the card table for a long time.
As you can imagine, the result was that the family, which was not rich, lost everything and ended up with a huge gambling debt. Jiang Guodong started drinking after losing the bet, and went home drunk all day long. Liu Yun advised him to stop gambling and find a job so that his life would go on smoothly and his children would go to school. But he couldn't listen, and instead punched and kicked her, cursing and saying that it was because he married her with a disability that she was so unlucky.
Every time Jiang Guodong beat Liu Yun, Jiang Mingyao was so frightened that she cried loudly and hid in Liu Yun's arms. Jiang Minghao shook the bench and blocked his mother and sister with stern eyes. But the drunk Jiang Guodong often didn't recognize anyone, and his three mothers were often beaten with bruises and swollen faces.
One time Jiang Guodong was playing cards in the village again, and Liu Yun was afraid that he would go crazy after drinking at night. In the evening, he took Jiang Minghao and Jiang Mingyao back to their parents' house to hide.
That day, it was raining.
Liu Yun did not dare to leave from the beginning of the village, so he took Jiang Minghao and his sister across the river from the west of the village. The river in the village is not deep, and where the water is shallow, you can cross it by putting a few big rocks on it.
Jiang Minghao walked in front with his bare feet in the water, looking for stones for his mother and sister to step on. As he placed the last stone, he saw that the water seemed to become a little turbid. In the distance, he seemed to hear the sound of a gong, and someone shouting: "The dragon is gone, the dragon is gone."
He had a premonition that something was wrong and turned around to remind his mother.
It's too late.
The rolling flood instantly swept Liu Yun and Jiang Mingyao into the water. Jiang Minghao reached out to hold their hands, but only caught his hands full of muddy water.
"mom!"
"Yao Yao!!"
Jiang Minghao ran on the shore chasing the figure in the flood, shouting heartbreakingly. Just as he was about to jump into the river, the gong player grabbed him and pulled him to the shore.
"You don't want your life! Jump into such a big water."
Jiang Minghao's eyes were red and he knelt on the ground crying, "Village chief, please save my mother and Yaoyao. Please save them quickly."
It has been raining for several days recently, and the village chief came down to inspect the area because he was worried about the possibility of flash floods. Unexpectedly, he saw the mother and son crossing the river from a distance. He saw the flood rolling upstream and ran towards them while beating the gong in his hand to tell them to run to higher ground.
However, a flash flood is imminent.
Before he could reach the river, he saw Liu Yun and Jiang Mingyao being swept into the water by the flood.
Soon, the sound of gongs attracted many people in the village.
Village chief: "Quick! Quick!, save people!"
The villagers looked at the rolling and roaring torrents, and they did not dare to step forward.
Someone held an umbrella and said, "Village chief, the water is so big that people can no longer see how to save them."
"yes."
"I'm afraid this is a very bad situation."
"It's not certain whether the body will be found."
Sparse sounds came from the crowd. Jiang Minghao knelt on the ground, and the rain fell harder and harder on his face. He kowtowed to them and begged them with tears.
"Uncle Guohong and Uncle Zhiyuan, please save my mother and sister."
"Grandpa Zhang and Brother Xiao Nan, please save them."
He knelt in the mud, with mud on his pants and forehead. He cried and begged them over and over again.
The village chief looked at him, took off the bamboo hat and put it on his head, "Child, get up."
"Village Chief." Jiang Minghao looked at him with scarlet eyes, trying to find some hope from him.
The village chief rolled his Adam's apple with difficulty, and then shouted to the crowd: "Look downstream along the shore for me!"
What if, what if they were blocked by a tree or a rock.
However, there are not so many miracles in life.
The next day, the bodies of Liu Yun and Jiang Mingyao were found downstream. When they were salvaged, Liu Yun was completely unrecognizable, but Jiang Mingyao had no injuries except for being swollen by blisters. Because Liu Yun had been holding Jiang Mingyao tightly to his chest, even the salvage people could not break her hand away.
No one knows how much strength and perseverance it took for a person with polio to hold Jiang Mingyao tightly in the raging flood and not let go.
When Jiang Minghao looked at the bodies of his mother and sister, his eyes were so hollow that there was no trace of life. He knelt beside them quietly, neither crying nor speaking. It wasn't until the Taoist priest invited by the village took care of the coffin that his eyes became disturbed.
"Sir." He didn't sleep all night, and his voice was so hoarse that he could hardly speak.
"Can I keep my sister's pendant?"
Jiang Mingyao has a jade Buddha hanging around her neck, which she has carried with her since she was born.
The Taoist priest took the piece of jade Buddha from Jiang Mingyao's neck, handed it to him, and said, "You value your life, so deal with it calmly."
The day Liu Yun's mother and daughter were buried was also a rainy day, and the pattering rain wet the brand new grave. Jiang Minghao knelt in the rain without an umbrella.
The rain flowed down his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth, making him feel slightly bitter.
"You don't deserve to stand here." He looked at Jiang Guodong beside him with eyes that were cold and almost hostile.
Jiang Guodong was silent and said nothing.
Jiang Minghao twitched the corner of his mouth coldly and said mockingly: "Don't try to use your regret at the moment to reduce the sin in your heart."
"You will be punished!"
Jiang Minghao stood up, and when passing Jiang Guodong, he stopped and gritted his teeth in his ear: "And I will watch you go to hell!"
Since then, Jiang Minghao has become cold and violent. Jiang Guodong also completely turned into a bad person, drinking all day long.
Their home has become a place that people in the village avoid.
On the day Jiang Suchu was rescued by Jiang Minghao, he left before she could thank him. When she went to his house, she only saw a drunk Jiang Guodong sleeping on the floor of the main room.
Later, her grandma told her about Jiang Minghao's sister, and she found him at the graves of Liu Yun and Jiang Mingyao.
He sat in front of the grave, with his legs bent and his head buried in his legs.
Jiang Suchu walked over and wanted to ask if he was okay. As soon as he got closer, he raised his head and looked over.
It was already very late that day, and there was still the last trace of sunset on the horizon. There was water in his eyes when he looked up.
He is crying.
Jiang Suichu paused, feeling that Jiang Minghao at this moment was nothing like Jiang Mingjie and Jiang Mingzhu said.
She walked over, followed his example and sat on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with him.
She didn't speak, just looked at the horizon and stayed with him quietly.
After a long time, when the last light in the sky disappeared and the surroundings were dark, she slowly spoke.
"Jiang Minghao."
"Um."
"What's your...sister's name?"
"Jiang Mingyao."
"Then her nickname is Yaoyao?"
"Um."
"sounds so good,"
"Um."
"Jiang Minghao."
"I will be your sister from now on."
The only sound in the fields at night is the sound of wind blowing.
After a long time, Jiang Suchu heard his trembling and choked voice: "Okay."
