Chapter 22: Go Home

"If you ignore me again, then no one else will."

This somewhat petulant remark, hidden by the noisy chatter of the surrounding students, finally chiselled heavily into Tan Mo's heart.

Every day, he is careful to maintain this distance, not wanting to draw Qiao Lan into the dark and muddy terrain that he has become, but Qiao Lan walks in on his own.

She stood up for him in front of everyone, and asked him miserably to talk, she asked him to pay attention to her, but Tan Mo thought to himself that every day, every moment, he wanted to talk to her as much as Pei Ning, without any fear.

How could he really ignore her.

Yet he still couldn't understand why she did it, why she could go to such lengths.

And what did he have to offer that was worthy of her.

Tan Mo couldn't figure it out.

He had always had a mindset that he had to understand everything, in life and in his studies, but now Tan Mo suddenly didn't want to.

Does it matter that much.

There doesn't seem to be one.

He looked up and met Qiao Lan's face, not understanding the smile in Qiao Lan's eyes, but the curve of her lips.

Tan Mo suddenly wanted to smile a little too, he had never smiled before, but he wanted to give this girl a smile.

But what a smile should look like, Tan Mo didn't know, he didn't have to think at all like a normal person, he needed to look at the smile on the girl's lips in front of him, mentally think about which facial muscles to move, and finally imitate a somewhat unconventional smile.

This parody is very poorly executed.

There is no smile in his eyes, and the corners of his eyes do not rise, only a vaguely discernible curve in the corners of his lips, which looks odd to others, but Qiao Lan understands it.

She recalled a saying she had read that for people with Asperger's syndrome, starting to imitate is the first step to getting closer to someone.

Qiao Lan's eyes softened, his chin resting on his arm as his gaze fell on the book he had torn, "So now can you tell me what book it is?"

The chatter continued all around, and Tan Mo didn't even have to look up to see how many people were looking over inquisitively.

But Qiao Lan didn't look at them or care about them, she looked at him and asked him what kind of book it was.

Tan Mo closed the book, revealing the cover, then turned the book to face Qiao Lan, pursed his lips, as if after a difficult struggle, he finally said in a voice that could be heard by the people around him.

"Classical Electrodynamics."

Qiao Lan's eyes are suddenly a little sore.

Tan Mo finally spoke, finally spoke to her in front of so many people.

She reached up and pressed her hand on the book and raised her eyes to his, "Then may I see it."

This time there was no thinking, and Tan Mo nodded immediately.

Qiao Lan opened the table of contents, and flipped through the back, pure English, Qiao Lan English is still very good, naked test to take the English level 6 can also exceed 100 to score, but looking at this book in front of me, a sentence to read over, do not know a lot of words.

There is too much jargon.

Qiao Lan sighed and turned the book back to face Tan Mo and looked at him, "I can't read it", probably to let Tan Mo talk more, "Can you tell me what the book is about."

Tan Mo was about to open his mouth, but the moment he did, he suddenly thought of something else and withdrew it.

People with Asperger syndrome have a very distinctive characteristic: they are passionate about a particular thing or interest, so when they talk about something they are more interested in, they will often go on and on regardless of whether the other person is willing to listen or not, not caring about the other person's mood.

Or, because they find it funny, they take it for granted that the other person finds it equally funny, and because they can't see the impatience on the listener's face, they don't realise that what they've just said is a kind of noise to the other person.

Once, at the age of ten, he was able to read and understand definite and indefinite integrals on his own while the rest of the children were still working out quadratic equations because of his incredibly high IQ.

He persistently tries to talk to the other children about the mathematics he knows, but they don't understand him, and Tan Mo, who is already a bully, is rejected by his peers after showing his superior intelligence.

Later his mother admonished him time and again to go home and tell her if something really interested him and not to tell anyone else about it.

But then his mother died in a car accident, and Tan Mo no longer had anyone to listen to him, nor did he tell anyone else, and as he grew older, he came to understand that others did not want to listen to him.

But now Qiao Lan took the initiative to ask him, Tan Mo's fingers on the book unconsciously tightened again, and after a long time he finally spoke, "This is a book by the American physicist Jackson, divided into two books, this is the first book, the first book mainly covers the traditional electromagnetic theory, including electrostatics, static magnetism, time-varying electromagnetic fields, Maxwell's system of equations, etc. , and applies Maxwell's system of equations to discuss various macroscopic electromagnetic phenomena..."

Qiao Lan admitted that she didn't understand anything and that the various rankings were all astronomical to her.

But she could hear Tan Mo stumbling at the beginning and becoming very fluent later on.

Tan Mo was never expressionless, and his unusually pale face with long hair covering his eyes added to the fact that the first thing people always noticed was his strangeness, never looking at his features.

Qiao Lan got so close to Tan Mo for the first time and saw a different look in his light brown eyes as he talked about what he liked.

Qiao Lan now realises that the teenager's looks, too, are extraordinarily good-looking.

--

That night, Uncle Chan was about to leave Tan Mo in the car, as he had been for the past few days, and go to the Western restaurant to get something for himself, when Tan Mo said, "I'm going too."

Reconciliation? No more fights?

A whole bunch of words popped into Uncle Chan's head in a flash, but without asking any more questions, he smiled, took the wheelchair out of the car and pushed Tan Mo into the western restaurant.

Meng Xue finally stopped making a fool of herself, and the rest of the restaurant was used to Tan Mo and Uncle Chan's daily patronage, calling out to Qiao Lan to order as soon as Tan Mo entered.

Watching Qiao Lan's back as she walks past, a few of the girls sigh.

"Why do you think this Mr. Tan didn't just give Qiao Lan the money?"

"What's the point of that", said another, "Ugh, really, if someone did that to me, even if they were really disabled, but to be able to do that, disabled or not I'd have to be heartbroken."

"Qiao Lan seems to be only sixteen, alas, other people's sixteen, our sixteen."

"Shut up you, you're twenty-six..."

A few people burst into laughter, and the western restaurant was softly lit, with water dripping from the glass in flecks.

The sound of rain.

Qiao Lan serves up the dishes one by one, and Tan Mo's order today is a small steak.

"I'll cut it for you", Tan Mo hesitates for a moment with his knife and fork before handing it to Qiao Lan, who sits quietly watching as he expertly cuts it in two and then in four.

Uncle Chan, sitting across the table, slows down his food.

Tan Mo doesn't like to be approached by others, even Mr. Tan would avoid Tan Mo whenever he comes, but now this little girl called Qiao Lan is standing next to Tan Mo, and her sleeve even brushes against Tan Mo's shoulder every now and then.

But he didn't duck, his gaze fixed on Qiao Lan's hands, and only after a long time did he look out of the window with a sudden thunderclap, as if he had been awakened.

"It's raining."

Tan Mo suddenly said.

Uncle Chan also glanced out and subconsciously answered, "Yeah", it was raining, "It's raining pretty hard..."

When he turned his head, he found that Tan Mo wasn't even looking at him, he was looking up at Qiao Lan who was cutting a steak.

The words "It's raining" were not addressed to him, but to Qiao Lan.

Uncle Chan :......

Even Uncle Chan didn't react, let alone Qiao Lan. The "self-absorbed" Uncle Chan looked at Qiao Lan, who didn't even realize it, and after a little guessing, he said what Tan Mo hadn't finished.

"It's raining, it's raining hard, Qiao's second sister, how will you get back later?"

Qiao Lan was startled by the call of Qiao's second sister and hurriedly said, "Just call me Qiao Lan", he finally finished the steak and handed the knife and fork back to Tan Mo, saying, "I'm still early from work, it should be late by then. ", and looked at Tan Mo, who was dressed very thinly, "Are you cold?"

Tan Mo took the knife and fork that Qiao Lan had taken and which was still warm from Qiao Lan's fingers, and took a silent bite, "It's not cold."

What if it was still raining at that moment.

She had just recovered from a cold not yet three days old.

Uncle Chan is amazed.

Something must have happened again today.

After Qiao Lan left, Tan Mo put down his knife and fork and took out his phone for a long time, "It's going to keep raining tonight."

Uncle Chan thought about it and said, "Well, I'll take you home first, and if it rains again after that, I'll make another trip to take Qiao's second sister home, okay?"

Tan Mo looked out of the window at the downpour, nodded and took another bite of his steak.

"Good."

As usual, Uncle Chan asked, as if chatting with Tan Mo as he pushed her out, "Qiao's second sister has to attend classes during the day, so she works so hard at night, will it affect her studies?"

Qiao Lan smiled, "Senior year wasn't too busy, it was fine."

"And what time does it usually get busy?"

"You'll be off at eleven."

Uncle Chan nodded cheerfully, Qiao Lan didn't notice anything and walked the two out of the restaurant, the young girl standing at the light had a smile in her eyes and waved her hand just like she did at the end of the school day, " Tan Mo , bye."

Tan Mo glanced back at her, "See you tomorrow."

Outside the window, lightning flashed and the rain became heavier, not at all like Qiao Lan's suggestion that it might be a shower.

The rest of the group stood in the doorway, looking out of the window at the downpour, and began to worry about how to get back; the bus was gone and a taxi was now hard to get.

Several girls chattered and asked who had an umbrella and who could walk together if they were slightly in the way.

After eleven o'clock, there were no more customers in the shop, so they closed the shop and came out. The night rain made everyone shiver, and Meng Xue saw Qiao Lan without an umbrella and wearing a thin school uniform.

The mouth couldn't be closed again, "Why, you still need to walk back with us..."

As soon as the words left his mouth, the lights of a car hidden in the darkness at the side of the road came on, the door opened and Uncle Chan walked over with his umbrella open, handing Qiao Lan another umbrella in his hand and smiling, "The young master asked me to take you home."