A 19-year-old boy's love story

The child was thirteen years old when he left home and had just graduated from elementary school.

Like all children in the village, thirteen years old is rightfully an adult.

Although the graduation ceremony to receive the governor's award, the same, leaving the prize to younger siblings, the next day with a small package (inside are two new sets of underwear, a new khaki shorts, is the mother last night specially to Rui Fang to buy. To say it was a prize for graduating with good grades, or, a gift for coming of age, would be fine.) Then I followed my uncle, who was a stranger, down the mountain and took the train to the city as an apprentice.

There was no one to see him off before he left. Dad and mom went to work, dad went into the mine at six o'clock, mom went to the coal wash at seven o'clock, leaving my brother and sister at home, one on my back, a total of four.

The last thing the child said to his siblings before leaving home was: The dictionary should find a piece of paper to wrap it up, otherwise the book cover will soon break, you know?

The dictionary is one of the prizes you just got yesterday, and another is a pen.

The fountain pen he carried with him, pinned to the pocket of his white blouse.

In the years since, the child has had very little opportunity to use the fountain pen. In the first few years, he was up almost every day, early and late, and was called around, scolded and beaten up like a gyroscope every day by the boss, the boss's wife, the boss's mother, the boss's children, and the masters, big and small ...... Of course, there is the work that must be done, as well as, himself to steal time to learn how to control the work machine.

After more than three years, he was promoted to master. Only seventeen years old, but already the real parent of the family, because the family's largest part of the living needs rely on almost his income.

At the age of nineteen, he fell in love, with a girl who studied in the North Second Girls next door to the factory.

The first time he had to write a love letter, he found that the ink barrel of the prefect's pen had long since dried up and was stuck together, unable to absorb water.

He bought a ballpoint pen, spent two nights to type a draft, and then took the letter to the girl.

The girl wrote back, saying she would like to be his friend and complimenting him on his nice handwriting and good letter writing.

The girl didn't know that he had won several essay competitions as well as the first place in the calligraphy competition, and certainly didn't know that when he graduated from elementary school, he won the prefect's award.

However, that year, his right hand was rolled by a punching machine, leaving only one thumb on the palm of his hand.

That day, the impact of the punching machine, as well as the painful screams gathered into a loud noise, as if he also became his life emergency braking sound to fly, after that, as if everything stopped.

After six years of learning the technique, it stopped.

From fifty dollars to fifteen hundred dollars salary, stopped.

After writing 17 love letters, he stopped.

After he was discharged from the hospital, he went back home to the mountains to recuperate.

Bring back a small travel bag, as well as a quilt.

The travel bag contained underwear, as well as several sets of outfits, and a dozen letters from girls to him.

Everything had stopped. Even time seemed to have stopped.

He repeatedly looked at the letters from the girl every day.

My sister asked, "Why don't you write to people anymore?

He said, "I will write again! But not until I learn how to write with my left hand, and when I can write as well as I can with my right. ......"

The girl, perhaps unable to wait for his letter or for other reasons, took the train one day and then walked nearly two hours up the mountain to find him.

The girl's meticulous, wonderful appearance surprised the village mothers to the point that they almost became guests instead, not knowing how to respond except to giggle.

In the kitchen, the mother cooked winter noodle and duck egg soup to invite the girl to eat, the child helped the mother to add coal to the stove, the mother suddenly covered her face and sobbed, saying to the child intermittently: "People are good fortune, let's not harm them.

The child said, "I know!

Before dusk that day, the child accompanied the girl down the mountain to catch a train, and never came back.

People who had met them on the mountain road said that the two walked very slowly, as if they were reluctant to finish the road at once.

The girl went home.

The boy was found four days later, and he ended his nineteen years of life with a vine in the woods a little further from the trail.