When we were young, there were always many things we didn’t understand.
Gradually I understood.
People only believe what they believe.
Even if the truth is right in front of them, they will choose to turn a blind eye.

After the military training, I started looking for a part-time job. I recorded all the money that man had earned in a notebook, accurate to two decimal places. Although I hadn't figured out what to do next, saying goodbye to the past and drawing a line between myself and that man forever was always in my plan.
After hearing that I was looking for a job, Xu Meng'er smiled noncommittally, and for the first time she didn't mock me. Shi Shuxia accompanied me to ask one company after another, helping me to select a job that was as difficult as possible and would not affect my studies. After a day, we were exhausted and finally found a job in a coffee shop. The boss lady was very nice. After knowing that I was a student of A University, she agreed to let me charge by the hour, and asked me to arrange my working time after confirming my class schedule, so that I could maximize my salary.
I still remember that day when Shi Shuxia grabbed the boss's wife's hand and kept thanking her, as if it was not me who found the job, but her who was hungry and could not survive without this job.
The name of the coffee shop is "c'est la vie", which is a French phrase meaning life. The lady boss said that life is like coffee, and everyone has different needs for sweetness, and therefore different perceptions of life. Person A thinks that the bitterness of American coffee is just right, while Person B thinks that the sweetness of caramel macchiato is his own life. She said that she is a person with no aspirations , and her dream is to open such a small shop and taste the different lives of different people.
I asked her, “What does it mean to have aspirations?”
She looked at me in surprise, as if she saw something else through me, and then she slowly replied: "For some people, it may be making a lot of money. After all, money is omnipotent."
I don’t know what kind of story she has experienced, but I really want to tell her that I like her life: opening her own small shop, raising a lazy cat, and staying with her lover forever.
Later , reality slapped me in the face again and again, and I finally understood that such a life seems ordinary but is the most difficult to achieve.
Dreams require hard work to build a bridge. On the road to my dream, the first thing I have to do is to work honestly in the store every day besides studying hard.
If I hadn't met Ren Xiaoqi, I think my life might not have changed so drastically.
Ren Xiaoqi is my high school classmate. I have always kept a photo of the two of us in the compartment of my wallet. She has green hair that looks like "I need to live a decent life", and I have messy, glamorous red hair. The two of us are grinning in the sun, looking like God is the boss and I am second.
When she walked into the store, I was clearing the table. I looked up and was about to say "Welcome" when the red-haired Ren Xiaoqi's eyes lit up. She jumped in front of me in two steps and shouted, "Cun Zhiwei, it's really you. I thought I saw you wrongly. Are you working? Oh my God, what did I see? You are working in such formal clothes. It's unbelievable. Come on, let me take a picture and send it to Juanmao and the others, so that they can see that their big sister has turned over a new leaf."
"Dear customer, this is a coffee shop, please keep quiet." The customers around me cast annoyed glances at me, and I reminded her in a low voice.
She rolled her eyes and sat down: "Okay, okay, I'll listen to you and keep quiet."
"Hello, here is the menu. If you need anything, you can always ring the bell on the table to call me." I put the menu down and wanted to escape from Ren Xiaoqi as quickly as possible. My mind was working at high speed, trying to find a reason to ask the boss for leave and leave.
"Cun Zhiwei, are you pretending not to know me?" Ren Xiaoqi grabbed my wrist and squinted at me. I was too familiar with this look. It was always like this when she was angry and wanted to teach someone a lesson.
I was afraid that she would make a scene in the coffee shop, so I had to coax her quietly, "I'm at work. If you have anything to say, wait until I get off work. You know my family situation. If I lose this job, I'll starve to death."
Half-truths are the easiest to confuse people. Ren Xiaoqi let go of my hand and grinned: "I told you, how could you pretend not to know me? We are good sisters."
The word "good sisters" made me shudder all over. I pretended to be calm on the surface, straightened my back, turned around and walked towards the bar.
I returned to the bar trembling, pale and with my eyes out of focus.
The proprietress patted my shoulder and called my name softly over and over again before I came to my senses. My cheek felt itchy, so I raised my hand to touch it. I didn't know when, but tears were streaming down my face.
"Sister Su, I'm sorry, I'll go to the back to calm down." I piled the things in my hands on the table, pushed open the door and hid in the storage room.
I hugged my arms tightly, still shaking uncontrollably. I squatted on the ground, tears streaming down my face, unable to stop.
At a certain moment, I felt like I had fallen into a black hole of time and space. The huge gravity from the center was tearing at me. I struggled desperately, trying to grab a life-saving straw, but the suction force became stronger and stronger, and the moisture in my body was sucked out like mist, covering my whole body. A faint voice in my ear kept shouting back and forth: "Cun Zhiwei, you can't escape, you can't escape, you can't escape..."
"Zhiwei, Zhiwei, Zhiwei, what's wrong with you? It's me, Sister Su, what's wrong with you?"
Sister Su's voice was like a ray of light, breaking through the layers of fog and coming to my side, and the moisture gradually returned to my body. The life-saving straw that I desperately reached out to grab appeared in front of me, and I couldn't wait to grab it. It was like my soul finally returned to my body and I could finally breathe normally. I took a deep breath of the humid air in the storage room, and my chest became calm.
"Have a drink of water, don't be too anxious." Sister Su took a glass of water in a disposable paper cup and handed it to me. "I know there are some things you don't want to talk about, but Zhiwei, things are meant to be solved, not to be avoided."
"Yeah." I nodded heavily.
"I'll take care of the store first. Xiao Chen will be here soon. You can take a rest here first!" Sister Su left the storage room without asking any more questions and closed the door gently.
I sat against the wall, looking up at the small, square window of the storage room. Dust was jumping around in the air without any order, just like me and Ren Xiaoqi back then.
There are two people in this world that I don't want to see the most. One is the man I call dad, and the other is Ren Xiaoqi, my former best friend. One of them is my cause, and the other is my result, but I want to give up everything and start over.
If Ji Suting is a ray of light in my life, then Ren Xiaoqi is a ray of lightning in my life. After a brief moment of light, she led me into endless darkness, making me accustomed to darkness, accustomed to heavy rain, and afraid of sunlight.
What will people do after suffering a series of blows?
What would an underage girl do when her mother committed suicide, her father abandoned her, and she had to live with others, and she had to endure her aunt's endless ridicule and taunting?
As someone said, there are a thousand Hamlets for a thousand readers, and a thousand abandoned girls may have a thousand different ways of living. And because of meeting Ren Xiaoqi, I have my own way of living.
I don't smoke or drink, but I'm not a good girl.
Memories are like a river, deep or shallow. The days with Ren Xiaoqi are like a river of quicksand, where you are deeply stuck in the mud but unable to extricate yourself.
The first time I met Ren Xiaoqi was when we were just in the first year of high school. We were both art students, and both had the worst grades in the class. I didn’t have a father, and she didn’t have a mother. When we had conflicts with others, we would often be scolded: "Someone is an uneducated person who was born without anyone to teach him."
The difference is that I would remain silent when I encountered such abuse, but she would rush up and fight with others. In the end, we were both called to the teacher's office and scolded. If the person who scolded us had excellent academic performance, the teacher would just give them a few symbolic reprimands and send them back. If they were just dragging their feet, they would be punished with two major offenses. This rule was unshakable.
My life has changed dramatically because of my mother's death. When a top student laughed at me, Ren Xiaoqi was about to teach her a lesson, but I rushed over first and pushed the girl to the ground. There was no thrilling fight. After pushing her down, I glared at her fiercely. At first, she kept looking at me, but soon she gave in and said stubbornly, "You dare to touch me?"
When I actually raised my hand, she turned her head away in fear.
I suddenly felt that it was such a great pleasure to have the upper hand. We were all human beings and students. Just because I was a single parent and my mother passed away suddenly, should I be bullied by those whose parents were both alive? I refused to accept it and was unwilling to accept it.
The road back to my seat was very short, just a few steps away, and I was baptized by the gazes of the whole class, as well as the praise of Ren Xiaoqi. As soon as I sat down, she jumped to my side, put her arm around my shoulders, and said with a sisterly look: "Cun Zhiwei, I didn't expect you to be so domineering. You know, I was scared when I saw the look in your eyes just now. I was afraid that you would lose control and ruin that girl. I was just thinking about how to intervene, and you came back. You were able to control yourself. I admire you."
I rolled my eyes and said, "You are a person who likes to watch the fun and make trouble. How could you possibly step forward to stop the fight? If you don't step forward to kick them twice, you're helping me."
"Tsk tsk, how can you say we are good sisters!" She laughed and her evasive eyes told me that that was what she thought.
I always thought that my friendship with Ren Xiaoqi started that afternoon when I suddenly outburst, but later, after we were both bruised and battered, we realized that some feelings are not as simple as you imagined.
The morning after Ren Xiaoqi and I formed a "revolutionary" friendship, I cut off my long hair that I had kept for many years. When Tony, the hair director, cut my hair, I cried my heart out. Perhaps I cried so beautifully that he couldn't control himself and cut my hair into a dog-bitten style. In order to live up to his title of hair director and before I cried even harder, he decided to make amends and used his eloquence to persuade me to dye my hair a color that suits me at a super low discount of 10%.
Dyeing hair is a long process. I was tired from crying, so I fell into a deep sleep for a few naps. When I opened my eyes, I saw a "monster" in the mirror with red and swollen eyes, pale face, and short red hair like a chicken coop. It looked like the red-haired monster in "Journey to the West" that I saw on TV every summer vacation.
On one side, teacher Tony was looking at his masterpiece proudly, waiting for me to praise him. On the other side, Ren Xiaoqi came out with short green hair that made her look even more like a monster than mine. We looked at each other, staring at each other for a long time, and burst into laughter.
Afterwards, Ren Xiaoqi went home and rummaged through the drawers for a long time. She found a Polaroid camera whose film might have expired, and took a few pictures with "click, click". Then she found two pictures that showed the most gums, put one in my wallet and the other in her own pocket. She gave our group a very speechless name - Pure and Beautiful Girls.
I said, "This name doesn't seem to fit our image."
She said: "In fact, I originally wanted to name our group Red and Green are a Shit Match, but you definitely didn't like this name, so I changed it."
She said she first wanted to? When was it?
I looked at her suspiciously. She knew she couldn't hide it anymore, so she told me everything about how she and Teacher Tony conspired to blur the mirror while I was sleeping and how she turned my originally smooth hair into the current short red hair. She said that this way we would look more like sisters.
After that, she spent a long time trying to convince me to accept the name "Red and Green". I rejected her again and again. She said dejectedly that she would be one of the "pure and beautiful girls" from now on.
We started to show off our hair on campus with a hair color that would attract 100% attention. If I was a little hesitant to be unrestrained before, this hair color completely released my long-suppressed nature, and I went further and further down the path of being a little gangster. The only thing I insisted on was not smoking or drinking, because that was what my grandmother hated the most.
Later, our homeroom teacher talked to us, the grade director asked us to call our parents, and the principal threatened to expel us from school, but none of these stopped us from continuing to "move forward". Every day I shouted on campus like a middle school girl: "I don't smoke or drink, but I'm not a good girl."
Those who had bullied us in the past and wanted to bully us in the future all became quiet. Occasionally, they would curse us in a low voice in groups of three or five, but when I passed by them, they would all keep quiet at the same time, fearing that they would anger me.
What kind of feeling is this? Very refreshing, very satisfying , and yet... very lonely.
Everyone around me started to become distant. The girl who used to have a good relationship with me also drew a line between me and her after saying, "How could you become like this?" I only have one friend in my life, Ren Xiaoqi, and it was she who accompanied me through the most difficult three years with her outspokenness.