white noise

4 photos

When Yi Teng woke up, his vision was pitch black.

He tried his best to open his eyes to recognize a ray of light in front of him. It turned out to be a ray of heat left on the screen after the movie ended.Then, rows of off-white fine Chinese characters began to appear on the dark gray screen, slowly crawling up the screen like ants.

The crooked neck felt sore like it was broken, and Yi Teng felt his head was resting on a hard but warm object.Taking a deep breath to make his mind clearer, he realized that he had been leaning on Liu Rugui's shoulder and had the most peaceful short sleep in the past few months.

The lights in the auditorium turned on quietly with a bang, and Yi Teng sat up straight like a spring.When you are in a daze, the green liquid secreted by the brain during sleep seeps down the inner part of the temples to the corners of the eyes, nasal cavity and mouth.In the end, he felt that even his breath smelled like grass.I opened my sleepy eyes to see the scattered people walking towards the emergency exit under the light, and it seemed that a layer of light green filter was shrouded on the retina.

gone.He stretched his waist and wanted to stand up, but his sleepy legs didn't want to move a little bit.

"Sleep for a while, we can watch another show." Yi Teng didn't turn his head to look at Liu Rugui, but his voice wafted to his ears blatantly, awakening Yi Teng's trance consciousness in an instant.

The light in front of his eyes changed from yellow-green to cold white, and he felt Liu Rugui's hands go around the back of his head, pulling his head closer, comforting him with a certain skill.

This consolation is so fucking annoying.He wanted to break away from this comfort.Ten years ago he would have.

But now, he couldn't make a choice for a while.He knew he was weak.But considering Liu Rugui's seemingly sincere attitude, he wondered if he had become more reasonable.Although, weakness and common sense are two very different positions in ordinary circumstances.

After a few minutes of stalemate, the auditorium was empty, and the cleaner walked to Yi Teng without raising his head to collect the trash on the seats and aisles.

Although the middle-aged auntie, the cleaner, kept her eyes on her work and buried herself in her work.But Yi Teng could feel the corner of her eyes flicking over from time to time, which made him feel like he was on pins and needles.

He lowered his head to avoid Liu Rugui's hand, stood up from the seat, said he was home, and walked out of the auditorium quickly.

"Wait a minute." Liu Rugui's voice came from far to near, and he finally grabbed Yi Teng's hand beside the escalator, "Wait a little longer."

"I've finished watching the movie, so what are you waiting for?" Yi Teng said, trying to shake off Liu Rugui's hand. He wanted to use his peripheral vision to see the reactions of the people around him, but he couldn't turn his eyes away in the end.

Facing his question, Liu Rugui lowered his head, his expression under the brim of the red hat was hidden in the dark gray shadow.

let go.Seeing this, Yi Teng tried to shake off his hand again, but still failed.

Liu Rugui clenched his hand, raised his head and asked with a smile, "You won't be able to sleep when you go back, will you? I have something to show you."

"Let go first." Yi Teng licked his chapped lips and ordered in a low voice.

Liu Rugui didn't let go.He looked directly into Yi Teng's eyes and said, "Promise me first."

You let go first.

Liu Rugui hesitated when he heard the unquestionable voice.But he doesn't seem ready to give up.

"You promise you promised me." He murmured, shaking Yi Teng's arm lightly.

Okay, okay, what are you looking at?Just look at anything.

never mind.Will never come back here anyway.Scars have been uncovered all the time.Weaknesses are seen through.Like a total loser.

The taxi traveled through most of the city and returned to the eastern suburbs.In another factory residential area next to Yi Teng's house, he followed Liu Rugui up the Soviet-style tube building built in the 50s.

How do you live in this kind of place?

When Liu Rugui led him into a two-bedroom apartment with eleven doors and said welcome, Yi Teng couldn't help asking.

Liu Rugui didn't seem to care about this kind of question.In the dimly lit living room, he looked at the street lamps and the white light of the half-moon not far from the window, and after serious thinking, he replied: "The light here is always unexpected."

Eleven doors, I think the light here can make people dizzy.Yi Teng complained in his heart, and went around to look at the furnishings in the room. All kinds of old-looking furniture made the room look more old-fashioned.

I don't understand light or something, but I can see that your business is not doing well and you have no money to buy property.After looking at the second-hand goods in the house, he finally spoke.

Knowing that he was just joking, Liu Rugui took off his hat with a grin.On the corner of the coffee table is a dark brown wood carving in the shape of a fox.Liu Rugui rushed to the elegantly curled tail of the fox Nunuzui, hung the hat on the fox's raised head, and signaled Yi Teng to look into the room on the right.

In that room, Yi Teng saw pictures one after another hanging all over the room like colorful flags.

Schools, streets, hospitals, undemolished bungalows in factory housing estates, shady birch trees lining the streets.The immature faces of elementary school students on the way home from school, and the youth who passed out drunk on the curb at night.

Black and white, color.four Seasons.

Yi Teng pieced together the photos in front of him, as if he saw the birthplace he hadn't seen for many years, changing and aging little by little.

He was so focused on looking at the photos hanging on the string that he forgot about the owner of the room.

Liu Rugui took a bottle of water from the refrigerator in the kitchen and stuck it on his face.

He woke up suddenly and saw Liu Rugui smiling with nostalgia.

"When I saw you two days ago, I sorted out the photos of these years, thinking about when I have the chance to show you." Liu Rugui took a photo from the folder and held it in front of Yi Teng: "You Look, it snowed heavily in the winter when you left for two days and one night. I remember that I didn’t go to study in the evening that week. After a few nights, the big pine tree at the gate of the community was finally not stretched, and the branches were broken gone."

Yi Teng looked at the old pine tree in the photo that hadn't changed since he was born, half of its branches collapsed under the pressure of heavy snow, like an abandoned Christmas tree.He held his breath to search for Liu Rugui's expression, because he didn't understand why Liu Rugui showed him these things.

At the same time, he also felt that his heart was being beaten persistently by some kind of blunt instrument, which had reached the point where he could not bear it and had no way out.

He pretended to be absent-minded and unscrewed the cap of the mineral water bottle, but while drinking the water, he inadvertently glanced at a photo on the string above.In the old bungalow area, among the dark red brick walls, blue sky and crimson rose bushes, is Shen Yihan wearing a white dress.In Liu Rugui's shots, the deer eyes on the clean plain face seem to make people's heart beat again.

His heart ached for a moment, and fell briefly.

Then he put away the water bottle and said with a smile: "You still like Shen Yihan so much."

Liu Rugui was stunned for a moment, then stretched out his hand to grab the photo, and explained: "Have you seen the yard behind her? It's the haunted house we used to explore when we were young. After taking this group of photos for the magazine, it was demolished." .So I thought, I'll give you a look anyway."

After speaking, he handed the photo to Yi Teng, and added: "Shen Yihan is not the kind of girl you think, she is just used to blowing hair by herself."

Yi Teng didn't take the photo.He understood what Liu Rugui said.Shen Yihan's parents divorced when she was a sophomore in high school. For a while, she felt self-defeating in everything she did, and she was isolated by her classmates.Only Liu Rugui seemed to know nothing, and still treated her equally.Or, at that time, Liu Rugui, who was in a single-parent family, could understand her feelings better?

Yi Teng remembered that the weather had turned cold at that time.After a long tutoring session, he returned to the empty school to retrieve the exercise books he had forgotten in the desk drawer.When he walked to the back door, he heard Liu Rugui and Shen Yihan whispering in the empty classroom.

He stopped subconsciously, only to see Shen Yihan standing awkwardly by the desk with his hands behind his back.Liu Rugui quickly poured the water from the water bottle on her chair, and then wiped off the red stains on the chair with a paper towel.

During this period, the two of them did not speak a word.Liu Rugui gathered the tissues together, put them in the garbage bag hanging beside the desk, and then lent her his coat to tie around his waist.

Yi Teng, who watched this scene, turned his face away, and ran out of the teaching building softly and quickly.But his mind was full of the hand that was swiftly wiping away the red blood.This picture carries warmth in my memory.

It wasn't until many years later that when he was holding a drainage bag filled with blood and secretions flowing from the human body, the subtle touch on the bag that was closest to body temperature triggered this image that had been hidden in his mind for a long time, and he realized that maybe At that time, he had been paying attention to Liu Rugui, but his rationality concealed this cruel fact from him: he fell in love with a boy's unconditional tenderness towards others.But in the past, did he ever want to monopolize this tenderness?

Maybe there was?That may be the closest feeling to love that he has ever held.But when he understood this, it was too late.

So now, he doesn't need these insignificant false memories.

While thinking, he reached into his pocket to get a cigarette, but when he looked up, he saw Liu Rugui placing an old Polaroid photo in front of him.

At the end of the dazzlingly white runway, Yi Teng turned his back on his classmates and audience who came to help, and wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand.

Yi Teng remembered that this was when he participated in the 400-meter race in the district high school sports meeting in his freshman year of high school.

That time, he felt extremely frustrated.Because no matter how hard he ran, he couldn't catch up to No.1.

"Do you remember?" Liu Rugui didn't hand him the photo, but slowed down and carefully observed the photo in his hand, "I like this one the most. It feels like you were very real back then, and you were very close to me."

Yi Teng couldn't recall why Liu Rugui had this photo, and he didn't even remember whether Liu Rugui went to watch the game at that time.He only knew that the loneliness and fragility hidden in his heart at this moment were once again uncovered by the person in front of him.He is distressed and restless, unwilling to admit his weakness.

He ignored the picture and turned to look around at the other pictures hanging around the room.His eyes circled around, and his eyes fell back on the cigarette case in his hand. He pulled out a cigarette and put it in the corner of his mouth. He narrowed his eyes and asked, "Are you going to publish a book with so many photos? Ten years of loneliness in state-owned enterprises, Is this genre popular now?".

Liu Rugui smiled without saying a word, in fact, he had already denied it.His eyes were unusually frank, he stared at the corner of Yi Teng's mouth, hesitated for a moment, and said, "Smoking is prohibited in my studio."

This was the first time in the past two days that Liu Rugui had explicitly said no to Yi Teng.Yi Teng stared at him for a long time, then lowered the corners of his mouth, let out a laugh from his nose, and lit the cigarette with a click.

"Studio?" Yi Teng asked rhetorically, looking around the room again, "Your studio is used to pile up these worthless past?"

Liu Rugui shook his head, clamped the photo in his hand to the hanging rope again, and said, "It's not worthless."

Um.Yi Teng responded perfunctorily and raised his head, using the lit cigarette butt between his fingers to burn the photos hanging above his head.

"Hey, what are you doing!" Liu Rugui was taken aback by his actions, and hurried over to grab the cigarette from his hand.

Yi Teng put the hand holding the cigarette behind his back, put the other hand on his shoulder, raised his eyebrows and asked, "I want to ask what are you doing? You are a big man, dressed like a kid Got it. Is it interesting to live in this dying place and let other people dictate? You like to see me humiliated so much? Is it to get revenge on me? If it really makes you happy, let you let me go, okay, I Let me tell you, three years ago..."

As if he couldn't control his mouth, Yi Teng squeezed out a series of words from his half-asleep consciousness.But halfway through the speech, Liu Rugui suddenly covered Yi Teng's mouth with his hand.His eyes were full of sadness, and he begged, "Stop talking, I know you don't really think so."

Yi Teng couldn't open his mouth.The familiar smell of ink and sweat on Liu Rugui's palm made him even more anxious.He pushed Liu Rugui away, walked to the window, extinguished the cigarette butt in his hand, and threw it into the darkness downstairs.

You know shit.Throwing these words into the air, he closed the window with a bang, turned around and walked out of the room.

Seeing that he was about to leave, Liu Rugui rushed up, grabbed his arm tightly, put his other hand on his shoulder, then his waist, and finally hugged him tightly from behind, whispering: "I know. I know you have been working hard, no matter what you do, I will..."

"What on earth are you going to do?" Yi Teng interrupted the words coming from behind, desperately trying to break Liu Rugui's arm.

Liu Rugui tightened her arms, shook her head and said, "Teacher Yi has not had an easy life these years. Is it not a punishment to die alone? Forget about the things in the past that have nothing to do with us."

After hearing this, Yi Teng stopped struggling, sighed weakly, and said in a low voice: "You should be the one to forget, right? What does this place have to do with me now? This place has nothing to do with me."

Liu Rugui fell silent.Yi Teng could hear his breathing rising and falling for a long time, and then he heard Liu Rugui say: "Then why did you come back?"

Facing this question, Yi Teng knew that he was about to give an answer that was not an answer at all, but he had no other reason, so he could only answer in the end: "Because my father died."

Liu Rugui hugged him tightly again without saying a word.His fingers groped for Yi Teng's left hand, gently touching and stroking the scar on the little finger.

Yi Teng withdrew his left hand reflexively.Everything in front of him seemed absurd.He licked his dry lips and commanded, let go.

Liu Rugui didn't relax, and said in a low voice: "Yesterday, I just found out about Mr. Yi. I was very sad to hear the news... I can't explain why. But I thought again, this way I will I can see you now. Am I still special to you? When I saw you yesterday, I realized that I am not...Ten years ago, should I beg you not to go?"

Ten years ago, they were just little kids who couldn't make a choice.Liu Rugui's idea is tantamount to idiot's dream.Listening to Liu Rugui's words, Yi Teng felt that Liu Rugui's hot and humid tears seemed to fall on the scar in his heart that had never healed, causing pain.On the helpless memory, he can only suppress and fill it with anger.

Yi Teng broke free from Liu Rugui's arm, turned around and announced, "You're begging me for a fart, as if we can be our own masters. Could it be that we were right ten years ago?"

Regardless of his reaction, Liu Rugui tried to pull him back to his side, pleading: "You know it's not our fault. It's not because I didn't leave here because I didn't want to..."

screw you.Yi Teng shook off his hand and hurried towards the entrance.

"Yi Teng, it's great to have you back." Standing at the open front door, he heard Liu Rugui say this behind him.His footsteps stopped by the door frame, his brain circuit was broken for a moment, and he finally left Liu Rugui's studio.