Chapter 23: Away From

Qiao Lan stood at the entrance of the building and watched Uncle Chan walk away before being left alone in the dark for a long time.

In her last life, she lived for twenty years, and since she was a child, she did not know who her parents were and what their surnames were, even her surname was chosen at random. The best person who treated her in her last life was the kind-hearted aunt who sponsored her to high school, and after that she went to university Qiao Lan vowed to remember her for the rest of her life.

But it didn't come in time and she became the Qiao Lan of today, who only cared for this Tan Mo a few more times because she couldn't bear it, but the teenager gave her so much more than that.

Qiao Lan crouched down and buried her cheek in her knee.

The book says that people with AS have a hard time having friendships, and once they do have them, then they become overwhelmed not knowing how to maintain them, so they take the easiest and most brutal way out and just be nice.

But it was good, Qiao Lan breathed a long sigh of relief. For twenty years, no one had reminded her to wear something thick when it snowed, or to bring an umbrella when it snowed, let alone to take her home.

It was a few minutes, maybe ten, before Qiao Lan went back upstairs to the Qiao Family.

It was already past twelve in the morning, and Qiao's mother was the only one in the house who hadn't slept and was applying a face mask. When she saw Qiao Lan enter, she glanced at him and casually chattered, "What time is it?

Looking at Qiao's mother's back as she turned to her room, Qiao Lan felt a return to reality.

Qiao Lan thought that, as a result of her argument with Tang Qin, she might go back to being alienated from everyone at the beginning, but it turned out that this was not the case.

All are fifteen or sixteen years old, and by a large margin of probability, all are not bad by nature.

But perhaps because Tang Qin is not Chen Yaoyang or Song Yao, her weight in the class is not big enough for the rest of the class to alienate Qiao Lan because of her attitude, so no one has changed their attitude towards Qiao Lan except for a few girls who play well with Tang Qin.

Pei Ning and a few other students sitting in front of Qiao Lan on the right side of the class still greet each other and talk to each other as they always do.

With Tan Mo, however, most students still try to stay away as much as possible, but there are a small number of students who are slowly making a difference.

Qiao Lan talks to Tan Mo every day, but Tan Mo doesn't suddenly hit anyone as Tang Qin says, he doesn't even speak loudly, he's not crazy, he doesn't look stupid, and the way he talks to Qiao Lan is not very scary.

But all that, Tan Mo doesn't care.

The only thing he cares about now is Qiao Lan.

Qiao Lan is now competing with Pei Ning, who is at her table, and some other students in front of her, in a memory contest.

I don't know who started it, but they were all boys and girls of about the same age, and they were talking about how they wanted to have a competition. The girls sitting in front of Qiao Lan were the questioners and judges, Qiao Lan, Pei Ning and one other boy.

The question was simple, ten Roman numerals in random order. The girl who asked the question read out a total of fifteen numbers, and the winner was the one who wrote them down correctly, and the bet was even simpler, two lollipops.

Such games are, in Tan Mo's eyes, boring.

He simply doesn't see the point of this time-wasting game.

But Qiao Lan was playing, so Tan Mo put down his book and watched them play.

The girl who gave the question wrote down fifteen random numbers, then covered the slip of paper and coughed twice, "Listen up ah, just read it once, 2, 4, 5, 0...2.8, no continuation first, countdown in ten seconds, ten, nine, eight, seven..."

Qiao Lan took out a pen and had just written three numbers when Pei Ning, who was next to her, suddenly short-circuited and said, "Eh, eh, eh, what's the fifth one?

Qiao Lan pushed the man away and turned around, placing the book on Tan Mo's desk.

I quickly wrote down eight numbers, and when I got to the ninth, I suddenly had some trouble remembering whether it was a seven or an eight.

The girl who gave the question looked at the other boy's writing and laughed, "You're so wrong, countdown la..."

Qiao Lan couldn't think of any more and was about to write down a random number when Tan Mo whispered in a voice that only two people could hear, "846728."

Qiao Lan didn't even think about it and wrote it all down as Tan Mo said.

Tan Mo was dumbfounded, wasn't she afraid that he had misremembered.

The girls in front of us finished their countdown and quickly pulled the slips of paper out of their hands, reading them and laughing, "You got the third number wrong, Pei Ning got three wrong, and Qiao Lan got them all right! I told you that we girls don't have a worse memory than you, look at Qiao Lan's writing..."

"That's Qiao Lan's good memory, not yours..."

The front was up again and Qiao Lan turned to Tan Mo with a grin and a small exclamation, "How come you're so good."

The girl in front of him had dark, bright eyes and looked at him with a heartfelt sigh of relief. He was so used to hearing people call him crazy and stupid that he thought he had long since gotten used to not feeling it, but he still felt a heartfelt joy at hearing the phrase Qiao Lan.

Maybe it's because of the phrase, maybe it's because of this person who said it.

Tan Mo remembers clearly how much he had to endure every day at school before he met Qiao Lan, but now his days at school don't seem to be so difficult anymore.

This is the state in which he is most comfortable outside of solitude.

At the weekend, Tan Mo didn't go to the Western restaurant, he found a great book and devoted all of his two days to it.

On Sunday evening, Tan Father came to see Tan Mo in the middle of his busy schedule.

Tan Mo does not live with Tan Father.

Tan Mo's parents divorced before he could remember, and as he grew older after the age of seven, his mother finally noticed that he was different from other children and took him to the United States for treatment.

It was a seven-year stay.

Tan Mo has little memory or affection for his father, and when he is taken over by Tan Father, he cannot stand the noise of Tan Father's new family, and he finds Tan Father and tells him in words without a trace of affection that he does not want to live with them.

So he lived with Uncle Chan Aunt Chan, who had always looked after him and his mother.

Tan Father comes to see him occasionally.

He recalls that last week Tan Mo suddenly didn't want to go to school anymore. He wanted to talk to Tan Mo, but found that it was a monologue for him, Tan Mo hardly spoke and the few times he did, it was the most useless nonsense.

Tan Father had to ask his assistant to call a psychiatrist and ask about the doctor's attitude before he came back to Tan Mo.

He used to think Tan Mo was autistic and xenophobic, so he told him to go to school, to reach out to his peers, to meet people, until he spoke to a doctor who advised him not to do so, and Tan Father rushed to Tan Mo.

Tan Father thought about the psychiatrist's words and felt a little bad.

He surveyed Tan Mo's cold face and asked him how he had been, lately, and how his week had been.

Tan Mo looked up at him and spoke from the heart, "Very well."

Tan Father was a little suspicious, because Tan Mo's face, without a single expression, had nothing to do with being nice.

He did not know that his son had a condition called Asperger syndrome, that he had difficulty receiving feelings and expressing emotions, and that Tan Mo was just plain autistic, recalling the doctor's words.

Children with autism, because they resist the outside world and resist trouble, sometimes lie to avoid trouble.

Tan Father looked at Tan Mo for a long time and sighed after a long time, "I was the one who didn't think clearly and forced you to go to school in the first place, Dad is now slowly getting to know you and knows that you don't like going to school, so if you don't want to go then don't go."

Tan Mo gave Tan Father a somewhat puzzled look. He had clearly said it was very good, so why did Tan Father act as if he had not heard it?

So he repeated, "I said I was fine and I wanted to go to school."

He prefers going to school and watching the girl sitting in front of him smile back every now and then than sitting here with Tan Father and talking about it.

Not wanting to say anything more to Tan Father, Tan Mo pushed his wheelchair back to his room.

It's Sunday, so we'll see Qiao Lan again tomorrow.

The next day he arrived at school as usual, pushed his wheelchair into the classroom, but froze in his tracks when he saw Qiao Lan, who was supposed to sit in front of him, replaced by another girl.

His seat is still there, but the person sitting in front of him, is not there anymore.

Qiao Lan was in front of him a week ago, but by the end of the week, Qiao Lan had moved to a different seat.

She sat in the second to last row of the second group, not far from Tan Mo's seat, but for a moment, Tan Mo was in a state of endless panic.

Tan Mo's face grew paler and paler as the new student at the front table opened the window as far as it would go and the cold air poured in through it.

In front of him was the book he had found so interesting yesterday, but now he couldn't read a word of it.

He couldn't help but look in Qiao Lan's direction over and over again. He could see her listening to the lesson, writing with her head down, but he couldn't see her hair, couldn't see the dark, smiling eyes that she often turned around and lay in front of him.

It turns out that Qiao Lan doesn't always sit in front of him, and next week, and the week after that, he'll be sitting further away from him.

One moment it felt like good school life, and in an instant it was back to the way it was, even more unbearable for him than before.

He turned his head stiffly and looked over again, where Pei Ning was writing with a pen and talking to Qiao Lan about something.

Roughly speaking, it was a physics problem.

While sitting behind Qiao Lan, Qiao Lan would ask Pei Ning physics questions from time to time.

In fact, he knew those questions too, and he didn't have to think for as long as Pei Ning did to come up with the answer, he could tell Qiao Lan the correct answer in no time.

But now, he couldn't even hear what they were saying on the subject.

Tan Mo used to hate Pei Ning because he could turn his head and see the side of Qiao Lan's face, and he could touch her arm at the drop of a hat, but no matter what he had done before, it was never more unbearable than in this moment.

Because not only can Pei Ning talk to her as much as she wants, but now she can follow her to another position.

He, on the other hand, only gets further and further away.

He stares dead on at Pei Ning's back, and for the first time, a strong, directional thought occurs to him.

He wanted to sit in that seat.

The one where you can turn your head and see Qiao Lan.