On my seventeenth birthday, I finally got my wish and went to the cemetery alone.
Thick snow blocked the way up the mountain, and the cold wind rubbed my skin like a knife. It took me a long time to find Pei Zhiming's tombstone.
He was my father, the most familiar stranger who had been out of my life for ten years.
The bunch of white chrysanthemums in my arms were wilted by the wind. I gently shook off the snow on it and placed it under the tombstone.
Looking at the mess in front of the tombstone, I know that no one has visited him for a long time. He is like a meteor flashing across the night sky. He lived for decades, but few people remember him.
Thinking of this, I suddenly felt sorry for him, even though I had resented him vaguely in the ten years since he left me. If he hadn't left so easily, perhaps my life wouldn't have been so miserable in the past ten years.
I loosened the scarf that was covering my face, revealing the lower half of my face.
I am not good-looking, at best I can only be considered pretty, and my mother, Chen Meihua, who thinks she is beautiful, blames Pei Zhiming for all this. And this blame becomes more and more obvious as I grow up. She resents my father, otherwise she would not have never brought me to see him in the ten years since he left.
I reached out and wiped the dust off his photo.
His appearance appeared clearly in front of me, overlapping with the blurry face in my dream, and a hypocritical sourness suddenly rushed into my eyes. I wonder if he also has the urge to cry when he sees me who has grown up at this moment?
At this moment, the broken cell phone in my pocket started to ring. I knew it was Chen Meihua without thinking.
It was a text message urging me to go home and cook. If she hadn't been hungry, she wouldn't have remembered that her daughter, whose birthday was today, hadn't returned home in time after school.
I brushed off the dust on my body, took a last look at Pei Zhiming, and hurried down the mountain.
It was already seven o'clock when I got home.
Without opening the door, I could hear the clattering sound of mahjong in the house. I opened the door with a heavy heart as always, and looked up to see Chen Meihua holding a cigarette and touching the cards. Without waiting for her to look at me, I ran into the kitchen. I turned on the gas, took out the only eggs and tomatoes in the refrigerator, and started to prepare dinner for her.
Every birthday seems to be spent in such neglect, and this year is no exception.
In previous years, it seemed to be a little better, but this year, Chen Meihua didn't care about me at all. But I can understand, after all, it's not easy for her to raise me.
She doesn't have a formal job. She works in a dry cleaning shop in the community during the day. At night, she turns her home into an unprofessional mahjong parlor, bringing a few friends to play mahjong and earn a little money . Sometimes she is lucky and can win a little. But judging from her appearance today, her luck is not good. So, I don't want to mess with her.
I divided the dishes and rice into two portions, and I took my portion and returned to the room silently.
Every time this happens, I would thank her. She also cleared out my room. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even have a place to eat and study in peace.
But this kind of thanks slapped me hard in the face after I finished my meal. She brought four people from somewhere and formed a new mahjong game. Then she pushed open my door, pointed at my nose, and told me to go to the living room to do my homework.
I looked at her in disbelief, anger boiling in my chest.
"It's the same if you go to the living room to write. Hurry up and don't disturb your uncle and aunt playing mahjong." She picked up my book and dragged me to the living room.
I don't know where I got the courage from, but in front of two tables of people playing mahjong, I pushed her away and shouted at her at a volume several times higher than usual: "I can't do my homework here, it's too noisy!"
Perhaps my resistance exceeded her expectations, and she looked at me as if I were a lunatic, a look that became even colder as the crowd gathered around her.
What she hates most is that I contradict her in front of others, and that's what I'm doing now.
"If you can't write, then don't write." She said word by word, and rudely snatched the book from my hand and threw it on the ground.
At this moment, I seemed to hear the sound of my blood flowing backwards because of anger and fear.
In countless lonely nights, I have been wondering whether Chen Meihua is my biological mother, otherwise how could she do such an unreasonable thing to her daughter.
"You can't do this." I slowly picked up the book on the ground, my voice trembling, "I still need to study."
"You want to study? Okay, go out and study, don't interfere with my business." She folded her arms and glared at me, looking more unfamiliar than a stranger.
I knew she would say that. I looked at her quietly for a while, then collapsed like a deflated ball.
Over the years, I have had countless arguments like this, and I have always endured them in silence. I have become numb because I know that I must rely on her to survive.
What a cruel fact. My mother doesn't love me.
I knew everything about this matter after my father Pei Zhiming passed away.
I walked out of the house with scattered books in my arms and a heavy down jacket. Touching my empty pockets, I felt an inexplicable sense of desolation. The last of my money was spent on the fare to the cemetery. I had nowhere to go.
After thinking about it, I finally sat down in the pavilion downstairs in the community. The pavilion was a bit run-down, but someone was very considerate and hung a shaky light bulb on the top of the pavilion. Although the light was not very bright, it allowed me to see the words on the book clearly.
I opened the exercise book with some trembling and started to do the questions absent-mindedly, but my thoughts had already wandered because of the cold.
Maybe it won’t be long before those people disperse, and Chen Meihua might remember me, her daughter who is out there. Thinking of this, I couldn’t help but increase the force of the pencil in my hand, piercing through the paper.
I sighed heavily, unable to bear it any longer, and closed the book in frustration, leaning against the railing in a daze. A light snow suddenly fell in the night sky, accompanied by the thin mist I exhaled, dancing in the dim light.
The lights in the buildings of the community were bright, but none of them were on for me. I covered my eyes with a scarf so that I wouldn't really cry.
I didn’t know which window I heard a faint singing voice coming from, and for a moment, I even thought someone was calling my name.
I took off my scarf and wanted to listen more clearly, and then I found that it was the song "Tears of the North Star". This song is a bit old, and although I rarely listen to pop songs, this old song, which is often played in various small shops, is firmly imprinted in my heart.
I remember the first time I heard this song was because my deskmate forced earplugs into my ears and told me to listen to it, this song was tailor-made for you.
The North Star, Peg Star.
I smiled and then lowered my head to do my homework.
In fact, I am often a little afraid to hear this song. Because I always think of my father, the one who put beautiful expectations into my name, but could not put happiness into my life. The North Star is the star closest to the North Pole in the sky. No matter how cold the weather is, it is always bright. But this bright star, with his departure, can no longer emit any light.
I once had a period of happy years, but it was too short, and before I could fully capture it in my memory, it came to an abrupt end.
At that time, I was not yet six years old. In order to help me grow my hair, Pei Zhiming learned several ways of braiding my hair from his female colleagues, and he would braid my hair in different ways .
At that time, Chen Meihua did not treat me any better because he was alive. The first thing she did when she woke up every day was to put on makeup, and my food, clothing, housing and transportation all depended on my father.
Thinking about it now, it seems that she never loved me, and even gave birth to me reluctantly.
But Pei Zhiming loved her very much. Although his salary was not high, he gave almost all of it to her. She worked in a towel factory as a clerk and lived a carefree life. Pei Zhiming would often take me to the night market and take me to the popsicle factory to buy a lot of cream popsicles at one time. And on my birthday, Chen Meihua would also cook for me in the kitchen.
But all this came to an end after Pei Zhiming killed someone with his wine rack.
I often think darkly that if he simply killed someone, it would be a good thing, at least he would not leave me.
However, reality is always cruel. He left us nothing except expensive compensation. From that moment on, my colorful life suddenly and ruthlessly faded and turned into a black and white world.
The memories after that seemed to have been deliberately erased from my mind and became blurry. I only knew that I had a hard time. Yes, I knew what it felt like to be hard at such a young age, so much so that I was unwilling to say these two words easily in my later life.
Crying and quarreling, endlessly arguing over compensation and house demolition money.
Family members fell out over money, and Chen Meihua suffered a series of blows, becoming more and more hysterical and unreasonable. I seemed to be her only outlet. It was also at that time that I learned that she was adopted, and her adoptive parents had already taken the betrothal gift after she got married and left her alone.
She has nothing but her father and me.
But what right do I have to pity her? In my barren life, there is nothing else except a mother who doesn't love me.
The snow was getting heavier and heavier, and the temperature was so low that I began to shiver all over. Even so, I would rather stay outside. After all, it was more comfortable outside than in the dirty, messy air and noisy mahjong in the house. Maybe I was frozen stupid, I took out the lighter that my deskmate had thrown in my schoolbag. She smoked secretly, and she was afraid of being caught by the teacher, so she always liked to put it in my schoolbag.
I played with a cheap lighter, which became my only source of warmth in this cold night. I curled up into a ball and stretched out my hand to feel the tiny temperature of the flame.
As the firelight flickered, a boy wearing a baseball cap, a black down jacket, and brown boots walked over. He had a bunch of keys hanging around his waist, so that they made a slight jingling sound when he walked. His steps were large and casual, with his hands in his jacket pockets, and he looked uninhibitedly handsome.
I couldn't see his face clearly, but I stubbornly stared at him as he approached.
Long, long later, I often thought of this scene in my dreams at midnight.
Maybe my obsession with him started from this moment, but I never knew it.
"Hey, little match girl." He snapped his fingers at me.
Under the dim light, his delicate and almost perfect facial features exuded a fatal attraction. The moment I saw his face, I seemed to have inhaled a deadly gas. My whole body immediately tensed up in panic, and my heart seemed to be suspended by an invisible rope.
Although he was joking, he didn't mean any harm.
I stared at him blankly, not even noticing the flame burning my hand. Before I could utter an " Ouch", he reached out and knocked the lighter out of my hand.
"Your hand must be burned." He supported the railing with one hand, jumped up and jumped in front of me.
I was stunned by this good-looking boy whom I didn't know. I didn't know how to answer him and just rubbed my aching fingers stupidly.
He picked up the lighter from the ground and handed it over, and a faint smell of tobacco came from his cuffs.
"You smoke?" He chuckled.
"No." My voice was small but firm.
"My name is Lu Mingyu, and I live upstairs from you." He still maintained that friendly smile and reached out to pick up my schoolbag.
I looked at him stupidly, not knowing what he was going to do.
"Come on, let's go to my house for a while. It's quite cold here ."
"Go to your house?" I looked at him with a look that said "I don't know you well".
He shrugged helplessly: "Your family has moved here for so long, you haven't never seen me, right?"
I rolled my eyes and nodded honestly. No matter how good-looking he was, I couldn't just follow him.
Seeing my reaction, he seemed even more helpless, and simply took off his hat, revealing his refreshing short hair. He propped himself up on his knees and said very patiently: "I'm really not a bad person. My family has lived here for many years. If you don't believe me, you can go ask the guard. I saw that it was too cold for you to sit here alone, so I thought you might as well stay at my house for a while. I guess it will take a long time for those people in your house to leave."
After saying this, he stood up and put his hat back on.
My clenched fists suddenly loosened.
"Okay, thank you." I stood up and put the scattered books in my schoolbag.
Just when I was about to put on my backpack, he took the bag again and put it directly on his shoulders.
I looked at his back stupidly and hurriedly followed him.
"What's your name?"
"Pei Jixing."
"North Star?"
"You can understand it that way."
“Haha, interesting.”