Author: Dong Mi
Translator: chiangyushien, Renkun27
Proofreader: KainGuru
There were long pencil lines on the blank canvas.
Those lines were abundantly distributed on the canvas. Whether one would stand near or far, it was impossible to see what the artist of this work of art intended to draw. That was Haiqing"s painting habit. Before the last color was smeared on it, n.o.body would know what kind of realm it was.
The room was quiet. There was no music. There was no dialogue. There was only the sound of Haiqing"s breathing and the “shasha” sound from his pencil. He was so engrossed with it, but he still had to pay attention to the sounds in the living room. There would always be all kinds of cheers coming from his Grandpa when he watched the professional baseball game. This was a good thing for him.
Ding dong.
Haiqing lifted his eyes up, put down his pencil, and walked out of his room with doubts to open the door. Only a few people would visit at this hour. When he looked out through the railing of the old iron gate, he found out that the guest was Pinjun. In a split second, his eyes glimmered with joy.
Pinjun,who understood the situation, walked into the room and raised the handbag by its handle. The familiar greasy fragrance immediately made Haiqing"s stomach grumble loudly.
“Come on, Grandpa. Do you want to eat scallion pancakes?” Pinjun picked up a paper bag and handed it to Grandpa.
Grandpa looked puzzled. He could not understand why when he was in the middle of watching the professional baseball game, there was a stranger in his house who wanted to give him scallop pancakes.
“Who"s this?” Grandpa knitted his eyebrows and asked Haiqing.
“I"m Haiqing"s teacher! You forgot!” Pinjun responded to Grandpa heartily. He did not pay attention to Haiqing"s depressed mood even for a bit. He could understand, “Let"s eat a scallion pancake while it"s still hot!” After he finished talking, he wanted to give the paper bag to Grandpa.
“I won"t eat. Teacher came because Haiqing"s still not smart enough to attend cla.s.s.” Grandpa waved his hand at Pinjun while showing an embarra.s.sed look on his face. “I"m sorry. My son"s like this sometimes. He even forgot to eat.”
Pinjun burst into laughter and told Grandpa who he actually was, then he entered Haiqing"s room, leaving a helpless look on Grandpa"s face.
“He always forgets that I"m his grandson.” Haiqing sighed.
The television"s sound in the living room was turned down a bit. Grandpa understood that Haiqing was going to study and even toned down his cheers.
“It"s okay. I can be his second grandson.” Pinjun consoled him and patiently waited for Haiqing to collect his painting tools to make some free s.p.a.ce on the desk to study.
“Where were we last time?” Pinjun opened his textbooks and searched for traces of the last topic they discussed in a dense array of notes.
“Last time… I think you taught me up until here.” Haiqing"s memory was clearer. After all, he was the one who was attacked by mathematical symbols and formulae.
“Okay. In that case, the next one would be…” Pinjun followed with the next teaching course. Haiqing has always been weak in mathematics. In order to overcome his weakness, and to be sure he could do well on the exams, he decided to study it well. In Pinjun"s structured interpretations and timely insertion of exercise questions, time flew by so fast.
The blank s.p.a.ces in the textbook were filled with many annotations and additional explanations, which were Haiqing"s weak points in terms of calculation and understanding. Pinjun pointed out a certain exercise question. He explained that there was a trap that could easily deceive Haiqing. "First of all, you have to be careful. There was nothing mentioned…" At first, Haiqing focused and carefully listened to him, but he had some kind of feeling that there was something wrong. It struck his senses. His writing was getting slower and slower, then he finally stopped completely.
Right before Pinjun"s puzzled look, Haiqing looked toward the living room. After Haiqing paused for a few seconds, he suddenly shouted, “There"s no sound! This is bad!” He immediately stood up and rushed to the living room. After, Pinjun asked "What"s the matter?" and followed him out, he saw Haiqing turning on the lights in every room in the house and went outside while shouting "Grandpa!" However, there was no familiar and kind voice that answered him back.
During that moment, Pinjun felt a gentle breeze blowing over his arm. He turned around and saw that the gate outside was opened wide.