Chapter 10 Qiao Feng II 3
The wind blowing on his body was cool, and Qiao Feng didn't even bid them farewell before leaving.
Yang Kang was unhappy in his heart, and walked away to the other side of the alley with a cold face. Guo Jing had no choice but to chase after him. Linghu Chong followed beside Qiao Feng, the two people walking silently.
"These two days didn't see Ah Zhu," Linghu Cong said.
Qiao Feng was taken aback and said, "Yes."
"What's wrong?"
After a long silence, Qiao Feng turned his face to Linghu Chong and smiled: "I had a fight with Zhu'er, she seems to have gone back home early after withdrawing from an exam."
"Really?"
"What can't be done?" Qiao Feng lit a cigarette and sat down on the steps beside him. Behind them was the graduate student dormitory building, with the light from the door shining on their backs. Half of Qiao Feng's body was hidden in the darkness, only the brief flashes of fire when he took a drag on his cigarette illuminated his face, which showed no expression.
"Azhu wanted me to stay in school for further study, but I didn't want to. I had signed a three-year contract with the beggar gang and we had been arguing about it for a long time. Last week, we argued so fiercely that she booked a train ticket back home."
"Azhu is afraid you'll be too far away in Suzhou later?"
"Azhu said that in the past, those who went to work outside generally broke up," Qiao Feng said bluntly. "She said if I really wanted to go to the Beggar Gang, then we would be over."
"Big Brother, isn't that just a figure of speech?" Linghu Chong asked somewhat anxiously.
"I know," Chao Feng waved his hand, "but those who went out to work in the past basically all lost contact. I'm not a god, can I go to Bianliang every month?"
"So you've got your graduate program secured."
"It's easy to say," Qiao Feng shook his head, "We can barely make a living with an undergraduate degree, and it's impossible to find a job with a master's degree. Am I going to spend the rest of my life drifting aimlessly?"
"What about you and Ah Zhu?"
"Go take a look, if it's really broken... If she has anything going on, you help out more." Qiao Feng said.
"I..."
"Cut the nonsense," said Zhao Feng, patting Linghu Chong's back. "Things in this world can't be done just because we want them to. That's why you guys are still kids."
"There's still some miscellaneous stuff at my place, I'll send it to your dorm tomorrow when I leave, the old notes and whatnot, you deal with them yourself."
At this point, Qiao Feng was stunned for a moment. Linghu Cong looked at him with confusion.
"Suddenly I remembered someone told me the same thing before," said Qiao Feng. "It really feels like history is repeating itself..."
"You go first," said Qiao Feng, "I'll smoke a cigarette and think if there's anything else that hasn't been taken care of."
After hesitating for a moment, Linghu Cong got up and left. Walking about seven or eight meters away, he turned his head back: "The company you're going to, I've heard of it before, didn't our department's Kang Min go there too?"
Jiao Feng stretched out a hand, but before he could say anything, Linghu Chong had already turned and walked away.
Qiao Feng sat there like a statue until the cigarette burned his fingers. His hand shook, and the ash fluttered in the lamplight as Qiao Feng smiled wryly: "You little scamp."
The wind blew again, and the night wind seemed to walk quietly on the ground, passing by the small shrubs beside the flower bed, rustling the leaves. In the deep night, Qiao Feng felt for the first time that there was such a natural wind sound in the campus of Bian Da, but perhaps it was the last time.
Some things Qiao Feng didn't tell Linghu Chong, the main reason for his quarrel with A'zhu wasn't that Qiao Feng and the Beggar Gang signed a contract, but rather he chose the Beggar Gang over the Shaolin Group. A'zhu knew about Kang Min's story.
Qiao Feng did not intend to deny anything. He knew that the conditions offered by Shaolin might be better, but when he touched the beggar gang's letter, his hand trembled slightly.
Memory is an uncontrollable thing. Qiao Feng had a dream where he heard Kang Min singing in the dormitory building across from him, with foggy mist all around, and after waking up, Qiao Feng spent the entire afternoon lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. Qiao Feng thought that A Zhu was a very good girl, A Zhu was smart, beautiful, and gentle, and Qiao Feng really liked A Zhu... but A Zhu wasn't Kang Min.
When Qiao Feng thought of Kang Min, his heart felt empty, and it was only then that he could roughly understand how deep his feelings were.
Kang Min is already a story - a story, something from the past.
Qiao Feng only felt a sense of time passing when he realized that he would be graduating tomorrow. In the past, after drinking too much on this tree-lined path, Qiao Feng would sometimes have an illusion that Kang Min would suddenly appear behind him and tap his shoulder, and everything would be like before. But from now on, he wouldn't be walking on this road again, so this illusion would also disappear.
Qiao Feng will eventually leave behind all his fantasies, even though he may soon see Kang Min.
"Both of their children should be able to make soy sauce by now?" Qiao Feng said to himself.
A strong acid gas that had been accumulating for two years suddenly burst out from the nasal cavity to the back of the head, meeting the wind, and there was an unbearable sourness in the eye sockets.
In his memory, a girl in black clothes emerged. She jumped up with force and slammed her fist on Qiao Feng's head, saying: "You don't understand anything!"
Then knock again, and then...
Qiao Feng smiled and gently rubbed his seemingly sore head.
The wind kept blowing, and the shadow finally faded away, until there was nothing left in his heart.
"Call A Zhu and apologize." Qiao Feng thought.
The old man guarding the graduate building was flustered. The burly guy outside, like a door god, blocked the entrance of the building and smoked all night.
Qiao Feng is leaving.
Qiao Feng, who had been in the National Politics Department for four years, left as calmly and unremarkably as anyone else. It wasn't that no one wanted to see him off, it was just that he didn't want them to. Qiao Feng's train ticket was booked a day later than everyone else's, and on this extra day, he went around patting the shoulders of all his familiar male and female classmates to bid them farewell at the school gate. When Qiao Feng left, only Guo Jing came to see him off.
As he walked out of the campus gate, Qiao Feng lit a cigarette under the slightly gloomy sky. No longer would the dormitory head disturb him from smoking. It had taken him four whole years to realize that Bin Da was actually a very large and colorful cage, and he had been the big bear trapped inside, indulging in his own pleasure. Now he was completely free.
No one wants to be locked in a cage — the question is, given an endless sky, are you really brave enough to want it?
"Old Peng!" Qiao Feng's head rose up, and he ran in to shake hands with Peng Yingyu in the duty room.
"Hey, aren't you that...that..."
"Qiao Feng." Qiao Feng patted his chest and chuckled, "It was last winter when he led the national policy to help you sweep the snow with those kids."
"What's this? Graduated already?"
"It's over, it's over, graduation is over."
Qiao Feng respectfully offered Old Peng a good Cloud cigarette, picked up that small travel bag and left the duty room.
He patted Guo Jing's shoulder, smiled and left.
In the bustling campus, there is a gap again, but soon new Guo Jing and Yang Kang will come from afar. Guo Jing stands silently at the gate of Bian Da University, thinking about some profound and difficult questions for the first time, and Qiao Feng's back disappears in a taxi not far away.
In the summer of the third year of Jiayou, an old man from Jiangxi named Mo Da added two new strings in front of the gate of Bianjing University and continued to play his "Feng Qiu Huang", with long notes drowned out by the surrounding noise.
