There was a "pop" sound.
A snowball hit Xu Lin on the back of the head.
He turned around and looked at the little girl standing on the snowdrift. He immediately held his mouth and pretended to cry.
The girl standing on the snowdrift was wearing a bright red coat and two braids. She was originally looking proud, but when she saw Xu Lin was about to shed tears, she suddenly panicked and hurriedly got out of the snowdrift. I jumped down, but the landing was unstable and I fell down on the ground. Fortunately, there was thick snow below, otherwise I would have lost two front teeth.
Looking at the girl's embarrassed appearance, Xu Lin stopped crying and instead laughed.
Now it was the girl's turn to cry.
When Xu Laosan heard the noise, he walked out of the yard. When he saw the scene in front of him, he immediately walked up and kicked Xu Lin's butt twice.
"You bastard, bullying Niuniu again!"
Xu Lin, who had been kicked twice in the butt, looked at his father with wide eyes, then looked at the little girl with braids, and suddenly cried.
He was clearly the one being bullied, so why did he end up being beaten instead?
How can there be such a truth in the world!
"Little girl, are you okay?" Xu Laosan pulled the little girl up and patted the snow on her knees.
Xiao Niu Niu's name is Wang Zhixia, and she is a neighbor of the Xu family. The relationship between the two families has always been good. Xu Lin's parents may not have a daughter, but they like Xiao Niu Niu very much. As long as there is a conflict between the two children, the one who will be beaten must be Xu Lin.
Speaking of which, Wang Zhixia is two months younger than Xu Lin, but the little girl has a very fierce temper. If there is a conflict with Xu Lin, she will definitely be the winner in the end!
Then, there was another coughing sound in the room, and Xu Laosan's expression suddenly changed, and he quickly left the two children and left in a hurry.
Xu Lin was still wiping tears, but Wang Zhixia felt a little embarrassed.
She walked up to him, stretched out her hand and gently pulled Xu Lin's shoulder.
"Okay, stop crying, it's my fault, why not!"
"Why didn't you tell me when my father was here!" Xu Lin was sober-minded.
Wang Zhixia was not stupid either. He rolled his eyes and said, "What are you talking about! If I said it, wouldn't Uncle Xu think that I am a bad person? I have to make them think that I am well-behaved and sensible!"
"???" Xu Lin's eyes suddenly widened and he couldn't believe that Wang Zhixia could say these words confidently!
"You are a man, how can you shed tears casually!" Wang Zhixia said seriously.
"I...I'm still a child!" Xu Lin said seriously.
"Then you are a boy too!"
Seeing Xu Lin's aggrieved look, Wang Zhixia coaxed him for a long time, but finally had no choice but to reach out and take out a Grasshopper from his clothes.
"You've always wanted it, haven't you? It's given to you! Don't cry!"
Seeing that grasshopper, Xu Lin's eyes went straight! Wang Zhixia's grandfather folded this for her, and Xu Lin has also liked it for a long time.
But when Xu Lin was about to reach out and take it, his movements suddenly froze. He saw the reluctance in Wang Zhixia's eyes, and also remembered that Wang Zhixia's grandfather died suddenly at home not long after he folded the grasshopper. .
He retracted his outstretched hand, slapped the bridge of his nose, and said, "Forget it, forget it! My mother said that boys can't argue with girls... Just keep it to yourself!"
"Oh! Okay then." Wang Zhixia grinned, "Then let's dig a hole!"
"OK!"
The two children held hands and dug a hole in the snow.
Suddenly, Xu Lin asked: "Little girl, my father said that your grandfather went to a place far, far away."
"Well...actually, my grandfather is dead!" Wang Zhixia suddenly said.
"Dead? Death...what is it?"
"That's right, I will never see you again." Wang Zhixia said, "If you go to a very far place, you may be able to come back, but if you die, you will never see me again. You will never see me again." .”
"Then if you die...where will you go?"
"It's in the soil. I heard people say that people eat soil for a lifetime, and soil eats people once."
"Then if you die, you will be eaten by dirt?" Xu Lin's face turned pale.
"Maybe!" Wang Zhixia obviously knew more than Xu Lin, but it was... very limited.
Xu Lin stood up and looked into the distance.
The mountains in the distance have been covered with heavy white snow, and the pine and camphor trees all over the mountain are covered by thick snow.
"Is it cold in the mountains?" he said subconsciously.
"It's cold, it's very cold!"
Suddenly, Xu Lin heard his mother's cough coming from the house again.
He suddenly trampled the dug snow hole and shouted loudly: "Don't die! Don't be eaten by the soil, don't be so cold!"
After saying that, he walked into the house angrily.
Wang Zhixia looked at him and said nothing. She just patted the snow on her hands and walked slowly towards her yard.
…
Thousands of households always replace old talismans with new peaches.
A series of firecrackers exploded one after another, and the entire small village was filled with smoke, like a thick layer of fog, slowly rising between the sky and the earth.
Xu Lin covered his ears and stood in the yard, smelling the residual smell of gunpowder.
After this year, Xu Lin is already six years old.
It’s just that this year, the family is missing some of the New Year flavor.
He squatted on the ground, grabbed a handful of snow, rolled it into a snowball, and threw it forward.
At her mother's insistence, Xu Lin walked into the school and followed the other children while reciting ancient Chinese prose.
What's interesting is that the old gentleman who originally reprimanded Xu Laosan because of "his family" actually liked Xu Lin very much.
If not for anything else, just because Xu Lin is smart.
The old man even used the words "well-informed and knowledgeable" to describe Xu Lin. Before the Chinese New Year, the old man came uninvited and specially delivered a handwritten couplet. Before leaving, he even touched Xu Lin. Let him study hard and become a top scholar in the future.
In addition, last year, Xu Lin, who was only five years old, looked at the heavy snow outside in the school and blurted out the sentence "The snow used to be like flowers, but now the flowers are like snow."
Just such a sentence made the old man marvel, and he couldn't wait for Xu Lin to continue reading, but he stared outside blankly, unable to think of anything for a while.
The old man who couldn't get what he asked for could only lament that this was Wen Quxing's sudden inspiration, but Xu Lin's parents were already used to it. Xu Lin had been doing this often since he could speak, often blurting out one or two sentences that they couldn't understand. Weird words, when asked afterward, Xu Lin could not remember anything as if he was talking in a dream.
However, none of this made Xu Lin happy.
He knew that his mother's illness was getting worse.
Especially since last year, my mother has been making a lot of clothes for him, and I am afraid that he can wear them until he is twelve or thirteen years old.
Xu Lin thought a lot, but didn't dare to think about it.
In the past two years, he often followed Xu Laosan up the mountain to collect herbs. The old doctor in the medicine hall was really kind-hearted and knew that the Xu family was in a tight situation, so he taught them what herbs to collect with a wave of his hand.
This relieved some of the burden on the Xu family. Xu Laosan took Xu Lin with him that day and kowtowed to the old man three times.
Xu Laosan reciprocated the favor, and occasionally picked more medicinal materials and asked Xu Lin to deliver them to the old doctor. The last time Xu Lin sent medicine, the old doctor held his hand and was silent for a long time, and finally said "good boy" twice. I bought him a pack of brown sugar and took it home, asking him to remember to boil some brown sugar water for his mother, just like...
Taste the sweetness.
On the second day of the Lunar New Year, my mother suddenly stopped coughing and got up early. She was radiant and made Xu Lin a big pot of dumplings. Then she sat on a chair with a blanket wrapped around her body, stroking Xu Lin. Lin's hand.
"Lin'er, let your father learn to make clothes from now on, don't freeze you..." she said softly.
When the dumplings were out of the pot, she raised the corners of her mouth slightly and said something that the old man couldn't stop praising: "The snow used to be like flowers, but now the flowers are like snow."
She didn't know what was good about it. Maybe even the old gentleman thought it was good. It must be a good poem. In fact, it didn't matter whether it was good or not. After all, it was written by her son.
After thinking about it, I fell asleep.
Never woke up again.
Xu Laosan seemed to have felt something, and he hurried over with a pot and spoon in his hand. With tears in his eyes, he slowly stepped forward, gently tucked the blanket away, turned around and tore off the red couplets on the door.
