Author: Zhou Gangan
Translation credit: Jia
Chapter 35
Mo
received a mass text message from her class saying that the party in honor of
the teachers was on June 24, the graduation ceremony was on June 25 and the
date of leaving school was on June 26. She suddenly fell into a low mood and
left the workbench to hide in the toilet to call Meng Lu.
‘Meng
Lu, are we really going to graduate?’
‘Dead
head Mo, you still remember me, ha? I thought you would forget us now that you have
a man.’ Meng Lu’s voice was very low, but her swearing power did not diminish.
‘What
are you doing? Your voice is so low?
‘At
the staff mobilization meeting, is a long story. I think I'm in a neurological
company. Have you ask for leave to go back to school?
‘May
be. I haven't asked yet. And you?’
‘I
don't know. This company is weird. If I fail to do that, I’ll miss work. At the
worst to get fired.’
‘But
you said that the company you entered was very good, didn’t you?’
‘Well,
I don't know how to explain it to you. Let's meet again.’
‘Well,
all right, bye-bye.’
‘Bye-bye.’
Hang
up the phone, Mo just was about to open the toilet door. Suddenly she heard a
strange noise outside. The curiosity made her withdraw her hand, which was
openning the door and listen quietly to the sound outside. After a rustling
sound came a conversation between a man and a woman.
Man,
‘Have you on earth told Tie?’
Woman,
‘I dare not. You know his temper.’
When
the woman's voice came out, Mo was shocked. Sister Xiaoqing! So Tie was brother
Tie? And who was this man? Mo put her ears up to listen.
Man,
‘Are we going to go on like this? Have you ever thought about my feelings when
you are so close to him every day?’
Xiao
Qing, ‘I'll tell him. Would you give me a little more time? Come on --’Her
voice became soft and murmuring, and even Mo felt soft, not to mention that
man. Soon the sound of inhalation came from outside, and as one who had been
through the experience, she knew of course what it was.
Mo
almost suffocated in the toilet when they left. Before Mo left, she finally heard
a phrase worth returning the fare - Wukong, come to my place at night.
It
sounded like an inappropriate version of Journey to the West to children, but
Mo guessed the man's identity immediately. When she first entered the company, brother
Tie gave her a list of employees. She stared at the name of Manager Sun and
laughed for a long time. Sun Wukong...
Mo
stayed in the toilet for 20 minutes before going out. As soon as she went out,
she almost ran into brother Tie. Brother Tie told her that he was going to take
Xiaoqing to see her parents in the evening. Mo said a few words to him with a
little guilty perfunctory, and then ran back to her position. She read the plan
while digesting the gossip she just known. Mo’s heart was very nervous. There were
always some movie pictures in her mind. The bad guys always laughed gloomily
and then said, you know too much, and then bang! Good guys were dead. She now knew
that curiosity lilled the cat. She felt really upset to have known too much and
wanted to dig a tree hole and roar.
Mo
went to ask brother Tie for leave. Brother Tie was strict at usual, but he was
very human, who could understand her graduation mood very well. He gave her
four days' leave in one breath, which made Mo try to tell him the adultery she
knew in order to repay his great kindness.
Home
at night, she told Gu Weiyi that she would go back to school for a few days. He
was reluctant but pretended to be reasonable, which made her delightful. What a
lovely boy.
No
kicked the dormitory door and shouted, ‘Your sister’s back. Come out and
welcome me.’
Hu
Niu’s fierce reply came from inside, ‘You’ve lost the key or broken your hands
and feet! If you’ve lost your key, I'll knock your beak off!’
Mo
took out her key and opened the door. The first person she had prepared to see
was Hu Niu's face, which was sorry for the people in Northeast China. She hadn’t
expected to see Wang Shan, who was squatting on the ground, packing her
luggage. With a little strange embarrassment, she nodded and said, ‘You’re back?’
Wang
Shan nodded and smiled, ‘Yes, you're back, too? Come back for a goodbye meal?’
Mo
smiled and, ‘Yes, I'm not going to have lunch, so I'm desperate for a goodbye
meal.’
‘Great
minds think alike.’ Hu Niu jumped out and cut in, ‘If my boyfriend hadn't stop
me, I would not have had dinner last night.’
Meng
Lu poked her head out of bed and said, ‘Situ Mo, come back early in the morning
to disturb people's dreams?’
Mo
looked at her watch. It was more than ten o'clock. She asked, ‘Don't you have
to go to work?’
‘Taken
leave.’ Meng Lu climbed out of bed.
‘Didn’t
you said it's hard to ask?’ Mo asked, puzzled.
Meng
Lu swayed her graceful figure to the balcony, ‘Your sister look so lovely, I
can do everything with the manager.’
Mo
was a little surprised. Meng Lu used to hate people talking about her
appearance. How could she be so self-mocking today? She looked at Hu Niu, who
shrugged her shoulders and gave her a look of ‘Having a hard time these days’.
Mo
followed her to the balcony, leaned against the wall and chatted with Meng Lu,
who was washing her face and brushing her teeth, ‘Why was your company that neuropathic?’
Meng
Lu squeezed a large amount of face cream on her palm and rubbed the foam
vigorously, ‘There are a lot of neurotic women in the company, who were pushing
me out all the time, and doubted that I have illicit sexual relations with the
manager.’
‘Did
the manager harass you?’ Mo questioned.
‘No,
he’s good to me, but it's serious.’
Mo
breathed a sigh of relief, patted her on the shoulder and said, ‘Beauty always
comes at a price.’
Meng
Lu dropped a hand of water and splashed Mo, ‘Get away, no good words.’
Mo
laughed and jumped away, ‘I'll get away right now so that I won't get hurt by
your beauty.’
Meng
Lu squinted and rubbed her face, she couldn't help laughing, ‘You're cheap.’
At
noon, after careful discussion, the group decided not to eat and waited for
dinner. For four years, the school only invited them to have this meal. Of
course, they would make their school lose all the capital invested.
The
school offered them a buffet, the 134 dormitory, who had been hungry for the
whole afternoon, got crazy as soon as they entered, and soon their tables were
full of food. They were having a good meal when the instructor and some teachers
appeared and ordered that they could not eat now, and should wait quietly for
the leaders to come. Mo ignored them and kept eating, and the instructor happened
to pass by their table and criticized them severely, ‘I said stop eating?’
Mo
raised her head from the food and blinked her innocent big eyes, ‘Why can't we
eat it?’
‘Waiting
for the leader.’
She
went on to pretend to be innocent, ‘You said it would begain at six, but it's
half past six. We're hungry.’
The
instructor gave her a glance of indignation and then left.
As
soon as the instructor left, Meng Lu clapped her shoulder and said, ‘Mo, I
never knew you were so brave and promising.’
Mo
waved her hand as if she hadn’t killed people for a long time. In fact, the
reason why she dared to answer back mainly because she was low-key during four
years of univerisity and hardly participated in any activities, the instructor
should not know her. Originally, she had thought that her surname might make
her the first person to be remembered in the class. Later, she found that there
were surnames of ‘Shangguan’, ‘Men’, ‘Sheep’ in her class. Therefore, there
existed no problem of surname that had been bothering her during her learning
career.
It
took another half an hour for the leaders to arrive one after another and begin
to deliver speeches. It seemed to be endless. The people on the stage talked delightly,
while the people off the stage listened with no expression. Especially, they
were not allowed to take food when the leader delivered his speech, so they had
to eat sparingly the remaining food on the table.
It
was not easy to wait until the speech was over and the toast was done and everyone
began to eat. At first, they calmly talked about their promising future and
contacts when they were free. Then suddenly, a boy who was a cheap drunk, and just
lost his love became drunk and mad. Everyone began to cry, make noise, kiss,
hug and take photos.
Mo
suddenly choked when facing the familiar rotten faces of her dormitory. Before
she had time to cry, Meng Lu suddenly burst out crying, ‘Can't we ever see each
other again?’
Hu
Niu and Wang Shan followed to cry, ‘You are in the same city with Mo, bu we
both went home, and we’re unable to see you again in the future...’
Four
people were crying, and suddenly the monitor clapped their tearful eyes.
The
next trip was to sing in the KTV all night. Just then, Gu Weiyi called Mo,
stressed for five minutes that she was not allowed to drink, and then said that
he would help her move luggage the day after tomorrow, and then hung up. Meng
Lu, who was listening to the phone next to her, gave a rather well-judged comment,
‘You are really unlike a couple, but like father and daughter.’
Mo
felt curious, ‘How do couples make phone calls?’
Meng
Lu laughed sickly, ‘Like my honey, who will call me baby, and then say I love
you every time.’
Mo
give her a nausea expression, which could also make people sick and death, and
then move to drag Hu Niu, who was always in charge of the microphone, to chat.
Hu
Niu, who was dragged away from the microphone, looked at her singing
classmates, shaking the dice and begging for Mo, ‘Let me go and sing.’
‘No,
you have been singing for an hour with Meng Lu, at least let others touch the
microphone, or they’ll hate our dormitory.’
While
negotiating, Wang Shan came in drunkenly from another box and shouted, ‘Situ Mo,
Situ Mo.’
Mo
held her up and said, ‘Why, I'm here.’
Wang
Shan patted her head like patting a dog, ‘Mo, Fu Pei likes you very much.’
‘You're
drunk.’
‘Mo,
help me... say to Fu Pei... tell him he's a wretch, and yes... so...sorry.’
Mo,
Hu Niu and Meng Lu took a look at each other. People would say good words when
they were drunk.
Later
on, they had a very depraved time. Wang Shan lay on Mo’s thigh crying and fell
asleep. The three of them worked together and rolled dice, drinking down a wave
of boys. When they checked out the next day, few of the whole class were awake,
of course one of them was Mo. Fortunately, she was awake. Otherwise, she would
not be able to receive the check-in call of Gu Weiyi early in the morning, and
she would surely be scolded to death.
Back
in the dormitory, everyone tumble into bed. It was not until over two o'clock
in the afternoon, when the monitor knocked on the door to ask them to attend
the graduation ceremony, so they got up and went to the auditorium to sit in a
muddle. Mo found herself wearing Hu Niu’s slippers to attend the graduation
ceremony. At first, she was happy to see the slippers on her feet, but as the
ceremony progressed, the school song sounded, and the familiar music made her burst
into a surge of emotion, and she swore her graduation oath. Then she really
felt that her university was really over.
After
returning from the graduation ceremony, everyone was busy packing their
luggage. When Mo was tidying up her things, she turned out the Notice of
Admission and the Handbook of Enrollment for Freshmen. It was like a passing
day.
The
next morning, Hu Niu ran away. Everyone hugged her sleepily and went back to
sleep. In the afternoon, Gu Weiyi came to pick her up in a van. After embracing
Meng Lu and Wang Shan, she finally took a look at the messy dormitory and got in
the van and left.
Sitting
in the van and looking back at the familiar scenery, she picked up her phone
and called Hu Niu. Before she opened her mouth, she burst into tears. Hu Niu
was such a good-for-nothing that when she heard the cry, she began to howl,
making Mo had to hang up the phone, looking out of the window and crying
quietly.
Gu Weiyi reached over and took her hand. The finger passed through her finger and fastened tightly. His eyes were fixed on the front and he drove steadily. The road ahead seemed to be long and uncertain. If he could keep holding on like this, she won't be afraid any more.
Thank you for the update!
ReplyDelete