Wise people create opportunities

A few days after her sister's birthday, Zhaoxiao moved out, saying she would stay with relatives. Right now, according to the state of her family, there is no telling when she will be able to return to Yongxuan again anyway. What's more, I don't know when I will see her father again. Her relatives say that she has to think long and hard about everything with them, and they don't know how long it will take. I don't really want Zhaoxiao to move away now, Zhaoxiao left, what will brother find to attract his attention? --First to the disaster area in Sichuan, then Zhaoxiao, what if he keeps feeling empty in his heart, can't he suddenly want to climb Mount Everest one day? --If that's the case, it's good, as long as he'll come back and not leave us forever.

I sat behind Zhaozhao and watched her pack her things while dazed. I didn't bother to ask her if she wanted my help - there was very little to do, and she would have said "no" to me coldly and stiffly.

"You, come over for dinner on weekends." I think I sounded like I was annoyed with someone.

"Got it." But she turned around without a care in the world. Smiling brightly.

"You can remember to take care of yourself and take your medication, right? Aren't you sick?" -- I really didn't mean to scold her, I just didn't think it tasted right until I said it.

Without tiring, she gave me the exact same smile she had just given me, except that, just now, she had turned the left half of her body to turn back; this time, it was the right half that turned: "Well, I know, Mr. Zheng drew a chart of the medicine I have to take every day and told me to put it on the wall wherever I live. He drew that chart so beautifully, do you want to see it?"

"No need." I was very frustrated. I knew that the beautiful picture she was talking about would surely hit me in an inexplicable way. So, don't look at it. You merely appeared at a most opportune time. I thought fiercely in my heart. What's the big deal. If it weren't for the fact that, your family's factory happened to explode after my brother learned about his birth, my brother wouldn't have been so nice to you. That's not possible.

Will my brother be taken away from me? This question is really puzzling, and the most puzzling part is that I can't talk to anyone about it - because, if they don't think my worries are nonsense, they have to understand the premise that I'm referring to my brother's life, of course. This is a secret that must be kept, and even if I explain the premise to others, they may not understand the connection between the two. I also do not know how to express, describe and generalize. Anyway this is the living truth as I saw it - my brother was so desperate to prove that he was not broken that he held on to this child who seemed equally unlucky to him.

No, maybe, maybe I should say, he held on to this child who was less fortunate than he was. Sometimes it seems that older brothers need other people's difficulties and problems - I'm definitely not saying he gloats, it's not that. He's not the aggressive type, he doesn't fight, he doesn't grab, he doesn't like to circle out his own frontier by bringing others down. But he likes to save others, may not need how skilled, but when he looks at his side of the people because he and gain a little strength, he can maintain a consistent calm expression, sure to live. I'll never forget when I leaned on his arm, crying and falling asleep, knowing clearly as sleep descended that he needed this struggling me just as much as I needed him.

He also needed Zhaoge. I was naturally aware that he would not stop loving us all because of his birth, and I was also aware that he had convinced himself that blood had long since become the least important thing at this moment. However, he is still alone. I could only watch and see him smiling like he used to, talking to his sister or mom or dad at the dinner table like he used to, telling his grandmother his last name like he used to - with seemingly never-ending patience. He sped alone across that unseen, lonely wilderness. There was no rival, no obstacle, and the larger the territory was, the more the core belonging to the "self" became like a piece of red charcoal, turning red to ash and gradually cooling. A voice in the darkness said to him: "Look, such a large area, all yours, all yours. Yes, all his, but he hates himself not to become a random wild grass on this field, but only to be its owner.

I can only watch. I can't do anything about it.

"Sister Nan Yin." Zhaoge stretched out his five fingers and waved them in front of my eyes, as if I was possessed.

"What for!" I waved my hand and smacked the back of her hand.

"You're gawking." She smiled, "Teacher Zheng said he'd take me to Mianshan if I got a decent grade on my final exam this semester. Why don't you come along too, okay?"

Mianshan is almost two and a half hours away from Longcheng, if you take the highway. Maybe three hours. I fell asleep in the morning light when I started the trip, so I can't say how long it took on the road. About that short trip, that's the first thing I thought of. In fact, there was nothing interesting about it, just a mountain. But when I woke up, we were spiraling hard up the coiled road, full of pines and cypresses, and Zhaoge opened the car window and the smell of pine needles came in, the mountain sucking the air in and then exhaling the scent of the trees.

My brother parked the car at the foot of the mountain in the newly built visitor parking lot, we climbed up and spent the day strolling around the mountain, as I said, it really is just a mountain, except for these trees I myself forgot why we must have walked so far to get here. Later - later in the day when all memories are incredibly precious to me - I remember the day we were in the mountains and only remember the scent of pine needles. Perhaps, remember Zhaozhao saying, "Here at night, will there be the sound of forest waves?" --The books seem to tell that the forest waves are nothing but a resonance, but Zhaozhao sat infinitely fascinated on a big rock, holding her cheeks and said, "My father said that when the forest waves come, that wave sound like it's ringing inside your own heart."

That was the first time she had ever, so calmly, talked about her dad.

What else do I remember? That day in the mountains, everything seemed fine. It was not too hot or too cold, and when we passed the trees we had to wear jackets that we had not used in the city for a long time. The three of us talked, joked, and ate fresh mushrooms at a small restaurant in the mountains for lunch. It was a peaceful day.

"Why did we come here anyway?" Zhaoge asked. That's actually what I wanted to ask. I thought the two of them had already agreed, so I knowingly did not express any doubt about the purpose of the trip.

My brother smiled helplessly: "You kids nowadays are really uneducated. This is the place where Kaishi Tui died."

Kai Zitui was another unlucky man who lived more than two thousand years ago. He and his king, Chong Er, were chased and fled into the wilderness. (Why were people called such strange names back then? What were their parents thinking? Or, in those long-ago and reckless times, could everyone give themselves names when they grew up?) To be precise, Chong Er was not yet a king, but just a prince who was unlucky in the court struggle. He cut off the flesh of his own leg and cooked it for Chong Er to eat. Chong Er happily ate it, and I don't know if he remembered to ask Jiezitui to share it. Later, when Chong Er became the Duke of Jin, Jie Zi Pui went into hiding in the mountains and did not want to get involved in any power-related struggles. But Chong Er would not allow him to want nothing, so the lack-lustre king used a method that he would only use when hunting rabbits. He had his soldiers surround Mount Mian and set fire to it, thinking that Kai Zi Tui would surely be forced out by this fire. Of course, it is said that the person who came up with this solution for the king was originally the villain - you see, at that time, even the villains were so innocent. The fire burned for three days, right here on the mountain that took us in. After three days, the fire was extinguished and they found the body of Kai Zi Tui.

So, people began to celebrate the "Cold Food Festival", that is - in this holiday not to build fire, only eat cold food, to remind: if not for the three days and nights of fire, Kai Zitui, a noble man would still be alive.

The ancients were really logically confused. I looked at the pines and cypresses and thought pleasantly. But they left us this mountain full of greenery after all. I sighed, it was unimaginable that people in those days might be more naive than trees. But I didn't expect it, but Zhaozhao smiled incomparably sadly as she asked, "Teacher Zheng, do you think that if it was the two of us who were being chased at that time, which one of us would have cut the flesh from our own legs first?"

"It would have to be me." My brother said easily, "You're a girl."

"Forget it, that was two thousand years ago, did people back then know how to give in to girls?" Zhaoge snapped a fragile branch, "It must be me."

"You two are boring as hell." I laugh incredulously, "But, Zhaoge, why must it be you?"

"Because, I know that if it was me who took the meat to him, he would have asked me where it came from anyway. If he had taken it to me, I might not have thought that much about it when I was starving." Her eyelashes dropped, and at the moment her silhouette really looked like a mountain spirit.

"Hey, so even if you cut the meat and gave it to someone, you still want people to know what you did for him in your heart, right?" I mocked her.

"Teacher Zheng, do you think that when Kai Zi Tui cut the meat for Chong Er, he wanted that person to know in his heart?" Zhaoge looked expectantly into her brother's eyes. Her brother smiled and made a gesture of surrender, "I lost, I can't answer."

"So yeah, the one who cuts the meat has to be me." She firmly clutched her knees, "If it's me, then you'll definitely know what I've done; if you're the one to cut the flesh, chances are no one will even know what you've done except yourself. You won't tell me. That won't do - can't have you doing that much for me when I don't know."

"Wait a minute, you don't even know anymore, you have absolutely no idea what he did, so how can you stop him from doing something without you knowing? Your logic in that statement above is wrong." I actually argued with her - I vaguely felt a little uneasy, but couldn't say why.

"Zheng Nanyin, a woman with a brain full of glue saying the word 'logic' is the scariest thing of all." My brother bent his finger and flicked my forehead.

Then a gust of wind blew over and we all heard Lin Tao who was gentle like wood, regal and turned one's soul into a wind chime.

"Teacher Zheng, I want to ask you a question." When Zhaoge got serious, that look simply could not allow anyone to refuse.

"Ask away." It seemed that brother had long been used to similar scenes.

"Can you tell me what pi is?" She didn't look like she was joking at all.

"Is there any mistake!" I laughed happily, "Isn't it just pi? 3.1415926 ......"

"Yes, I know, π, it's 3.1415926 or something, but what exactly is that?" Zhaoge faced my mocking face unyieldingly, "I also know that it's needed to calculate the circumference of a circle, but why? From the sixth grade, I was asking everyone why this is, but everyone said the same thing as you, and I know what you said, but, but what exactly is that thing!"

"What you want to know is actually what it means, right?" Brother smiled.

Zhaoge nodded his head vigorously, exaggerating like a cartoon.

"Look," brother picked up a branch and drew a non-existent circle on the hard stone, "there are countless circles in this world, big ones, small ones, no matter how huge or how small, you cut this circle off, turn it into a straight line and divide it by the length of its diameter, the ratio It will always be 3.1415926, and there is no end to the cycle after the decimal point. Imagine a number that never ends, but all the circles in the world exist only because of it. So, π, is eternity."

"So it's eternity." Zhaoge sighed contentedly.

When we came down from Mianshan Mountain, the summer in Longcheng really came.

I seemed to be back in the playground of my elementary school days, with the gym teacher standing on the podium with a loudspeaker telling us all to keep an arm's length away. I was where I am now, standing slightly awkwardly in my childhood position, counting from front to back, fifth row, I was so tall, but those elementary school classmates in front of and behind me didn't feel the least bit out of place - I knew it was a dream. But maybe it was just one of those mundane cloudy mornings where the 22-year-old Zheng Nanyin was supposed to be, and they didn't ask where the seven-year-old Zheng Nanyin had gone, and they didn't care why this sudden big guy just appeared in the line - yes, they didn't care, and that was my deepest impression of "childhood". "That's what I remember most about my "childhood. They didn't care about the things that upset me, they didn't care about the fear and shyness of others, and they didn't even care about their own fear and shyness. When the bell rang, they would rush like a tidal wave to any corner of the playground that the adults could not even imagine, but the swingers did not care at all about the murder on the seesaw, and those who argued under the shade of the trees over the winner of the sandbag game had long forgotten that they had just been dragged out of the classroom by the teacher's red scarf in humiliation, like an animal. Therefore, the childhood Zheng Nanyin knew that she could not fight them.