Chapter 23:

Day0921:18
Before the age of six, Songran had a family.
J Province G City, Nanwu Country Creek Village, half an acre of farmland at the foot of the mountain, and a cottage at the entrance of the village
His mother died young and his father made a living by doing farm work, pulling him up alone. Perhaps it was the widower’s loneliness. His father was always taciturn and he couldn’t stretch his eyebrows. Whenever he had enough money, he would buy cigarettes and wine. He was extremely addicted and didn’t care about him. On the contrary, he didn’t like the other fathers in the village. Beat and scold the child.
At this point, Songran felt that his father loved him.
At that time, he was sensible early, and didn't like to cause trouble like other dolls-either chasing a dog naked or being chased by a dog naked. He borrowed textbooks from his older brothers and sisters at the same Murakami Elementary School. When he was not helping, he would sit on the threshold and read, left-handed Chinese and right-handed maths.
When he was five years old, he could already count from one to a hundred, and then count backwards. The teacher in the village praised him for his talents, saying that if he learned mathematics well in the future, he could do accounting, make payments, and help people manage the accounts. It would be faster than hard farming to get money.
So Songran moved a small stool to the village elementary school and learned to write numbers one by one.
One day later, he heard some gossip from the neighbors, saying that his father planned to leave Xiaxi Village and go to work in the prosperous provincial capital. After a few years, he saved enough money so that he could continue his wife.
He ran to ask his father for confirmation, and his father drew a mouth at the front door and slowly exhaled the choking smoke: "Your mother went early. I can't stay alone for the rest of my life. I always find someone to live with."
Songran asked: "Dad, will you take me away?"
The father didn't speak or look at him. Gu Zi stared at the cigarette and was silent for a long time, then nodded.
So Songran let go, and then had some sad thoughts-he was about to leave this small village. He couldn't take his playmates, the grandma who sells tofu, and the chickens, ducks, pigs and dogs. Although the provincial capital is novel, it is a daunting big world. The wide roads are intricately intertwined. Unlike a small village, one dirt road can lead to hundreds of families. He had to follow his father closely so as not to get lost.
Before leaving, his father filled two whole snakeskin bags with belongings. Songran did what he did, and folded his clothes and pants and stuffed them in. Father took them all out, put them aside, and said, "Don't take them, go to the provincial capital to buy new ones for you."
Songran believed it to be true, and joyfully chose a set of the best looking ones, and gave the rest of the clothes to the friends.
On the morning of his sixth birthday, he followed his father on the green train for the first time.
The train sounded a long whistle, the steam in the boiler boiled, and the mechanical shaft drove several rows of steel wheels to "click, click" to crush the rails-Song Ran grabbed the ticket in his hand and came to a strange city.
T city.
His father told him that this was the provincial capital, and Songran had no doubts.
For the fledgling, there are concrete roads, railway stations, buildings, shopping malls, and cars. It smells of architectural dust that is different from the countryside. The pedestrians on the road wear strange clothes. Of course, it is a brilliant and prosperous "big city."
Get out of the train station and transfer to a minibus. He helped his father drag the dusty snakeskin bag, walked around the others tremblingly, and found two empty seats. When the vehicle started moving, he lay his arms on his head at the window, curiously looking at the bustling flow of people along the way, thinking, starting from today, I will live here.
Every house here is so tall. Is it better to live in a two-story building or a three-story building?
In random thoughts, the car dragged the tail dust all the way to the station, and his father carried the snakeskin bag to get him out of the car, and walked a short distance to a large courtyard.
The courtyard gate is an old-fashioned iron fence with faded red banners hung, and the communication room next to it is empty and no one is there.
Father stood looking at the banner for a while, led him to the western wall, and told him that his father had left an important piece of luggage at the train station and he had to go back and get it immediately.
Songran raised her head and asked, "How long are you going? When will you be back?"
Father looked away unnaturally and said to him: "You wait here, count up from the beginning, and when you finish counting, Dad will come back."
"Know it."
This is not difficult at all.
Songran counts very quickly, and he always finishes it in a short while. His father's time to go back and forth may be enough for him to count several times.
He wanted to help move his luggage to the wall of the courtyard so that his father could free his hands and come and go easily, but his father weirdly refused to let go. He picked up the two heavy snakeskin bags, quickly returned to the bus stop and boarded. The last bus disappeared in the billowing smoke rising from the rear of the car.
Songran was a little flustered for some reason, and quickly sat down and stretched out ten fingers, counting them one by one.
One, two, three, four, five... While counting and comforting yourself, it's okay, and the count is over in the blink of an eye.
Once the count is over, Dad will come back.
Songran didn't know at that time, the numbers are endless.
One hundred can be counted, one thousand can be counted, and one trillion can be counted. He is the only one who is waiting... forever countless.
He wanted his father too much to come back, so he counted faster and faster, and he was exhausted, and he was about to exceed the limit that a six-year-old child could bear.
Buses on the distant platform came and went, passing by one by one, and by another.
Whenever a car came into the station, Songran jumped up excitedly, craned her neck and raised her feet, eagerly expecting his father to get out of the opened car door. But every time, no father was seen in the dusty crowd. What's more frightening is that when the bus drove away and his excitement cooled down, he would suddenly forget where he counted.
The number is too big, the child's brain is too small, and even a little distraction will make the shadows scattered.
The more I forgot, Songran became more and more anxious, and was unwilling to count from the beginning again and again. He was in a panic, stomping a pair of small feet and wondering what to do. He could only grab the angular stones and try to mark the wall.
It's getting late, and dusk is approaching.
The last train left the platform, there were no more pedestrians around, and the air became silent and cold. Songran couldn't see the marks on the wall anymore. He groped the wall with his frozen fingers, trying to settle the messy numbers in his mind, but it was really too difficult. The more anxious he was, the more he couldn't remember. In the end, the whole figure seemed silly, and he fell into a corner of the wall ignorantly and wept bitterly.
Why can't it be counted?
He used to count so well, and he could count it every time. Why couldn't he count this time?
When he cried, there was movement in the compound. The fence door slowly opened, and a strong light hit him in the darkness, causing his tears to run out of control, and the flood of mountains rushed down like a bank.
The director of the orphanage approached him, bent over to ask about the situation, and wanted to lead him in.
She saw too many children like Songran who were abandoned in the orphanage by their parents under various excuses, and she knew what was going on at a glance. But no matter how she persuaded, Songran just refused to leave the corner, crying that he was about to finish counting and his father was coming back.
The dean saw his temper, so he had to let him stay where he was.
In the middle of the night, the dean came out quietly and took the child who was almost frozen at the root of the wall back. At that time, Songran still had a broken consciousness, but he no longer resisted. He curled up in the arms of the dean's aunt, chanting numbers silently, hot tears overflowed from the corners of his eyes, and flowed down his cheeks.
On February 24, 2001, the second day of his sixth birthday, Songran was adopted by the T City Children’s Welfare Institute.
His obsessive-compulsive disorder also started on this day.
At first, he would sneak out of the orphanage while the uncle janitor was not paying attention, and squatted in the west corner, breaking his fingers. When he was caught and went back, he grabbed the iron fence of the gate and looked at the number of the bus stop where his father had left. Later, he was carefully guarded and locked into a cubicle. But every time the teacher went in to visit, he was always in a fixed posture-facing the wall, his fingers kept scribbling and painting, and Arabic numerals were written magically.
He was immersed in a closed inner world and had no response to the outside world. He did nothing but count.
When a bowl of rice was brought in front of him, he would count the rice one by one.
At that time, the medical concept was still very backward. Children with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder like Songran had the only way to go to a mental hospital. But just as the adults planned to do this, Songran miraculously regained consciousness overnight.
It seemed that danger was sensed in the dark.
He no longer counts all day long, and his beautiful eyes brighten up like morning stars. He smiled at everyone, polite, sensible, and very likable.
In this way, Songran stayed in the orphanage smoothly.
When the teachers and nurses saw that he had recovered, they occasionally joked in good faith, saying that Songran could count five or sixty thousand before he went to elementary school, and he must be a young mathematics genius. Songran smiled at them obediently, then shook his head, and said modestly that he was not so good.
At this time, Naoren always hurts sharply. He must lower his head, bite the roots of his teeth, and exhaust all his strength to endure.
At the age of eight, Songran went to elementary school.
To everyone's expectations, mathematics became his worst class. The numbers printed on the paper were like a nightmare. He couldn't face it directly, and he couldn't even complete the simplest four arithmetic operations. The original mathematical talent came to an abrupt end and was completely abandoned.
But what frightened him the most was not the math class, but the physical education class.
Because before the class, the teacher will ask everyone to stand in a row to report.
With the loud counts, he lost control and fell into a trance. He couldn't help but keep counting, as if his father would appear in a corner of the playground at any time, wearing old winter clothes, carrying a snakeskin bag on his shoulder, and reaching out to him with a smile. Shot, to take him home. He can only get rid of the control of desires and hallucinations by pinching his nails into his palms and forcing himself to think about other things.
Seventeen years have passed, and Songran’s symptoms have repeatedly occurred, sometimes mild and sometimes severe, and have never recovered.
He brushed shoulders with mathematics and failed to become an accountant or cashier, but became an illustrator by chance. He traveled all the way back to Xiangxi Village in Nanwu, where his father was not there, and he never went back. The village has changed its appearance. The old houses in the neighboring houses have been torn down and rebuilt one by one, the young playmates have left, and the old people in memory have passed away. No one remembers that there was a family named Song at the entrance of the village.
Songran is twenty-three years old this year and lives soberly.
He knew that his father would never look back, and he had already left the long-awaited place. He should find someone who knows and loves each other to form his own family. In this family, he will take on the responsibilities of a man, instead of hiding in memory and continuing to play a favored child.
But unreached obsessions are like bone gangrene, and they are still hidden in the disease.
The exhausted figure carrying the snakeskin bag and squeezing into the bus has not faded from his vision so far.