Chapter 76: Albums

At home, Tan Mo continues to read his books every day, occasionally looking at something related to the curriculum - after all, he is the only special student at school who can go to class without listening to lectures and finish school without doing homework.

So winter and summer homework is also not available.

Qiao Lan doesn't get this treatment, and homework still needs to be done.

Even though the high school only gives the seniors a ten-day winter break, there is no ambiguity about the homework, with paper after paper and a lot of dumb assignments that don't require the use of the brain but only the use of the pen.

Qiao Lan is annoyed and speechless when he writes.

Tan Mo comes into the room to find Qiao Lan, who is sitting at his desk, working hard on his homework after studying today's stock market trend.

Qiao Lan is writing about mathematics.

She prefers more flexible assignments in maths, physics and chemistry, although she is more advanced in English and languages.

Tan Mo reached for the pile of papers Qiao Lan had laid out on the table and flipped through them, finding that Language and English and Biology were almost all empty, so Qiao Lan was probably going to put them at the end.

This is in keeping with Qiao Lan's character, just as Qiao Lan always likes to finish his favourite food first and leave the lesser ones for last when eating.

Qiao Lan saw Tan Mo coming and put down her pen. She smiled as she turned her wrist, which was a little sore, and asked Tan Mo, "Finished reading?"

Tan Mo's interest in the stock market has grown since he was introduced to it and he spends more and more time on it every day.

"Yeah," Tan Mo nods, casually explaining the day's stock market movements to Qiao Lan, his eyes falling on Qiao Lan's subconsciously flicking wrist.

After a pause, he said, "I'll write it for you."

"Hmm?"

Qiao Lan lifts his eyes.

"You don't need to write this stuff for your English and language either, so you might as well have more time to memorise your vocabulary and read your books", Tan Mo said, fetching Qiao Lan's English and language papers, which were at the far end of the pile.

"You write what you have in hand first, I'll help you with these."

Qiao Lan paused in her wrist rubbing, looked at Tan Mo and then at the paper in Tan Mo's hand, and wanted to give Tan Mo another big hug and a sincere sigh of relief.

"MoMo you really are an angel."

Tan Mo laughed, "I'm not, I want to be paid for it."

"Whatever the reward," Qiao Lan assured with a smile, "whatever you want, the stars are born to be plucked for you."

"What do I want with stars," Tan Mo said to herself, saying that the stars in the sky were no match for a single you, and held her hand out, a bracelet still tied around her excessively white wrist, which had been worn for a long time with a black bead on a hand-braided bracelet.

"I want a new one," Tan Mo said.

Qiao Lan looked at the bracelet on Tan Mo's hand. She had given Tan Mo a peace knot two years ago and Tan Mo had asked Aunt Chan to change it and weave in an obsidian bead to make the current bracelet.

A new one is indeed needed.

But

Qiao Lan is in a difficult position.

"I don't know how to do it," the girl's pretty brows knitted together, when she first learned the peace knot she found a tutorial on the internet, it took her a few days to knit one that wasn't too ugly, now she had completely forgotten how to knit it, she couldn't even make a peace knot let alone a bracelet.

Tan Mo took the bracelet off her hand, "I don't care about this," and shoved it into Qiao Lan's hand, "I'll take it."

Qiao Lan :""

Tan Mo is funny and cute as hell when she is being deliberately petulant.

Anyway, Tan Mo had already helped her with her homework, freeing up time to find another video to learn from, Qiao Lan put the bracelet away and then took the opportunity to ask, "Then you can go out with me this afternoon to buy coloured ropes, okay?

Of course there is no problem, Tan Mo said to himself, 200% willing.

The two of them went out together in the afternoon. They could find such things as coloured ropes in any gift shop, and with the recent New Year, the mall was full of people, and small gift shops like this one were even more crowded with girls.

Tan Mo has recently grown taller and will soon be touching the 185 ceiling. With her already impressive height, fair complexion and delicate features, Tan Mo attracts a lot of attention when she enters the shop.

In an age where little brothers are more popular than little girls, boys like Tan Mo stand out too much.

But this is the boy who followed an unusually well-behaved girl, and the two of them went to the inside where the coloured ropes were being braided, not being able to hear what was being said, but looking at the movements they were probably choosing colours.

Qiao Lan grabbed Tan Mo's hand and compared the coloured ropes on Tan Mo's hand to see what colour would look best, only to find that each colour looked particularly good against Tan Mo's skin because his skin was so white.

Qiao Lan looked up at Tan Mo and then at the coloured rope, "They're both very pretty, MoMo, which one do you like."

"Like them all," Tan Mo was quick to answer, a few smiles brewing in her light brown eyes, "buy them all."

He added, "You can get more practice by buying more, and there are still plenty of beads left from the last one you bought."

Qiao Lan was happy, "Make up a lot of them and then give a bracelet every New Year's Eve."

Tan Mo also laughs, "I think it's OK."

A bracelet every year is too shabby, Qiao Lan thought, "I'm poor but I'm not that poor, but I still ended up buying a lot of all the colours.

Since we're already here, we might as well browse more. Qiao Lan likes these small shops, and it's nice to look around.

Tan Mo follows behind Qiao Lan, ignoring the crowd of men and women looking this way, and turns her head to see the various hair bands hanging next to the mirror.

Tan Mo suddenly remembered when he was a senior in high school, he came to school on Christmas Day and gave Qiao Lan a small apple jade pendant, Qiao Lan ran out of the auditorium with a deer antler hairband in her hair, shiny and cute.

There are now many hair bows on the wall, rhinestone-encrusted, bow-tied, shiny ones like the ones Qiao Lan wore last time, and even cat ears and rabbit ears.

Tan Mo stares at a fluffy pink and white rabbit ear hairband for a long time, and Qiao Lan is about to pay for her purchase when she turns around and sees Tan Mo standing next to the mirror staring at something on the wall.

When I walked over to Qiao Lan, it was a rare moment of silence, full of incredibly girly hair bands.

And Tan Mo is definitely staring at the girliest of them all.

"MoMo ?"

Qiao Lan tries to call out to Tan Mo, who turns his head and stares at Qiao Lan for a long time before suddenly reaching out and taking down the rabbit ears hairband hanging on the wall.

Qiao Lan's long, beautiful hair was draped over the arrow like a splash of ink, and the pink and white rabbit ears were worn by Tan Mo in Qiao Lan's hair.

Tan Mo didn't stop there, he reached out and took off the mask covering Qiao Lan's face, revealing the girl's delicate features, her head raised, her black eyes wet as she looked at Tan Mo, and with the plush hairband, she made Qiao Lan's otherwise unusually bright and delicate features look very cute.

Tan Mo is satisfied.

"Go on, go and pay."

Qiao Lan, who was forced to wear rabbit ears :""

Tan Mo like the tone?

Tan Mo like this cute?

Oh yeah, Tan Mo liked Song Yao in the original book, and Song Yao is just the right kind of cute.

But she's not cute looking at all.

Qiao Lan's heart was a little sweet yet a little sour as she followed Tan Mo to the checkout counter. Many of the girls who had just looked at Tan Mo's side finally saw Qiao Lan and were stunned once again.

When Qiao Lan and Tan Mo left, the girls at the checkout counter wondered how good the couple looked.

On the way home, Qiao Lan noticed that Tan Mo was in a particularly good mood.

Qiao Lan touched the hairband on her head and thought about downloading a few beautiful pictures of popular girls from her phone, some of them royal and some of them cute and innocent.

When the picture is saved, turn to Tan Mo and ask him which one he thinks looks better.

Tan Mo scanned it and shook his head, "None of it looks good."

Qiao Lan: "Must you choose one?"

Tan Mo could only take Qiao Lan's phone and re-flick through it, finally pointing one out to Qiao Lan, "This one."

Her eyes resemble Qiao Lan's somewhat.

Qiao Lan stares at the actress on her mobile phone, her eyes up and extremely provocative, her ink hair and snowy skin gorgeous.

It doesn't go with cute and innocent at all.

Qiao Lan: ????

That's not right.

Qiao Lan turned off the pictures, but couldn't figure out what to do, so he turned on the video and looked for instructions on how to braid a bracelet.

By the time we got home, Tan Mo was helping Qiao Lan with her English and language homework, and Qiao Lan had a pile of coloured ropes and a small box of obsidian beads and started to learn how to make bracelets.

But when I remembered that Tan Mo's bracelet had been altered by Aunt Chan, I jumped out of bed and ran to Aunt Chan's room.

Aunt Chan is sitting on the edge of the bed with her old-fashioned glasses on, not knowing what to look at.

When Aunt Chan saw Qiao Lan enter, she beckoned her to come over.

Qiao Lan can immediately tell that this is what Tan Mo looked like as a child.

This album documents Tan Mo's journey from childhood to the end, from just being born and finally stopping at Tan Mo's fifteenth year, the year Tan Mo's mother died.

"All these photos were put in by our wife herself", says Aunt Chan, cautiously stroking the album.

Turn to the first page of the album, and on that page to the fifth, you can see two other people, excluding Tan Mo.

Qiao Lan has seen Tan Father a few times and recognises him as he was when he was young, next to a beautiful woman with delicate features and a gentle demeanour.

"This is MoMo's mum, isn't it?" said Qiao Lan, "MoMo looks so much like her aunt."

Tan Mo's features were already very delicate, and now when you look at the photo, you can see exactly who he looks like, except for his nose, which looks more like Tan Father, and his eyebrows, which look like Tan Mo's mother.

Aunt Chan looks at Tan Mo's mother in the photo and can't hide the kindness in her eyes, "Yes, this was just a year after Yan Ning graduated from university."

Tan Mother is a 22-year-old college graduate, a good-looking woman with high education and a good family background, who is undoubtedly the match of many good men.

I heard that Tan Father was Tan Mother's schoolmate, a handsome man from a modest but brilliant family. Aunt Chan said that Tan Mother had been in love with him since she was in college. She was a bold girl and went after him when she felt like it, but Tan Father never said yes and for some reason, they got married quickly.

The marriage was quick and so was the birth of Tan Mo, and everyone thought they were in love, even Aunt Chan.

Just when everyone thinks things are going well, Tan Father gets together with his young secretary.

If you ask Tan Father whether he really liked that little secretary, Tan Father himself doesn't know. When he thinks of his late Tan Mother, Tan Father feels that he misses her much more than his now married wife.

Sometimes he wonders why he cheated in the first place. He actually loved his wife, but he cheated anyway.

The most unexpected thing was that Tan Mother, a gentle woman like him, did not give him the slightest chance to repent and cheating was a death sentence.

So after the age of three, Tan Mo's father is no longer pictured.

There are a few sporadic pictures of Tan Mo with Tan Mother, and finally, when Tan Mo turned fifteen, there are no pictures, only a blank album.

But Aunt Chan took the album and flipped back two pages, and Qiao Lan's heart snapped when she looked down.

After two blank pages, another photo appeared in the album with only one person in it.

Not Tan Mother and not Tan Mo.

It was taken at an unknown date, Qiao Lan.