Embroidered Pillows and Paper Tigers

Outside the window, the snow fell profusely on the ground, but Li Shi'an's hands were sweaty from the overheated air conditioner in the studio, and he couldn't even hold his pen.

The winter vacation is coming to an end, and the first semester of high school is about to start. I can only come to the studio once a week. The painting in my hand is the last homework of the studio during the winter vacation, but Li Shian is not satisfied with how to change it. After studying it for a long time, I added two more strokes , It looked good at first, but later I felt that it was superfluous.

Annoyed for a while, Li Shi'an threw down his brush and looked around, only to find that everyone in the studio had left.

The door opened with a "squeak", and Lao Yu's head wearing two shiny lenses poked his head in from the door: "I haven't left yet, let me see how the painting is doing."

After speaking, he squeezed into the door and put the packed food on the only table in the classroom, walked around the seven or eight easels and walked behind Li Shi'an.

Lao Yu is a teacher of the training class, graduated from a famous art academy, but in the end he became a studio teacher. Li Shi'an studied painting under him for seven or eight years, and the relationship between the two is very good.

"Accurate...but..."

"But" the two looked at each other, and Li Shi'an knew what Lao Yu was going to say.

Li Shi'an's sketch foundation is very good, but Lao Yu often evaluates him as "accurate". Accuracy is not a word of praise for Lao Yu.

Engaging in art is not science after all, only with personal characteristics can one be recognizable. His requirement for Li Shi'an is to show his talent on a precise basis, but Li Shi'an is always like a computer replica.

His paintings do not have any emotional sustenance and catharsis, with more restraint but insufficient emotion, and it is always difficult to make a breakthrough. Just like himself, he is a good boy who is well-behaved and difficult to stand out.

Seeing that Lao Yu was packing his things to prepare for dinner, and the food was cooling quickly in the cold weather, Li Shi'an flipped over the drawing board and said, "My dad has almost come to pick me up, I'm leaving, let's eat quickly."

Lao Yu didn't seem to be surprised when he heard the words: "Would you like to eat together? I still have chopsticks and bowls here. I'll get you a pair."

These words fully exposed the rough nature of Lao Yu, who eats, drinks, and sleeps in a training classroom. Li Shi'an picked up his backpack and walked out of the classroom, saying as he walked: "As a moral young man, we don't talk to orphans and widows." The old man grabbed the food and left."

"Hey! Painting utensils are not accepted!" Lao Yu stared at Li Shi'an's back and shouted helplessly.

It's not that Li Shi'an dislikes Lao Yu's poor food, but he and his father made an appointment to pick him up at 08:30 tonight.

The snow was getting light, and the cold wind mixed with thin snow particles hit his face. Li Shi'an looked at both sides of the long street. There were only a few pedestrians on the road, and he didn't see his father Li Qishan's car.

He took out the mobile phone in his pocket, flicked it twice, and broadcast it to the one with the note "ATM".

The call was answered quickly, and a slightly drunken voice rang out: "Oh son, dad suddenly has a business meeting and can't leave today, can you take a taxi back first?"

"Drinking again?" The boy frowned childishly, "Don't forget to call the driver for a while, don't worry about me, drink less."

The old father was quite comforting: "I know, do you have enough money?"

"That's enough." Li Shi'an folded his hands and carried the backpack hanging on one shoulder while making a phone call.

Li Qishan is a businessman who often socializes. Like ordinary parents, he has the responsibility of supporting the family and the guilt of not being able to take care of the family at the same time.He had promised to pick up Li Shi'an today, but he didn't want to break out of a meal on the way. He was a little guilty of not being able to pick up his son as promised, and he pretended to be concerned: "Um... have you eaten yet? Why don't you take a taxi? We're going to have dinner today." You know all the uncles."

How could anyone bring his son on a social occasion? Li Shi'an knew that he felt ashamed and dared not hang up the phone first: "Okay, let's entertain you, hang up."

What else to say over there, Li Shi'an had already hung up the phone, he put the phone back in his pocket, rubbed his frozen hands, and walked along the long street to the small noodle shop called Chang Lai, but saw Xiao The shop is closed.

Li Shi'an sighed silently, peeled off a piece of coffee candy and stuffed it into his mouth. There were few cars on the snowy day, so after waiting for a while, he started walking along the road towards home.

His home is in a high-end residential area in D City. The location of the residential area is relatively remote.

There is a quiet beauty in the deserted snowy night. Under the dark blue sky is a snow-covered city, dotted with thousands of lights.

People who study painting are extremely sensitive to color. Li Shi'an unexpectedly liked this night scene picture written by the weather. He wanted to walk a little longer in this painting, so he gave up the idea of ​​taking a taxi.

On the way home, I passed an open wetland park, and the rich and colorful urban night scene instantly switched to the clear and watery ink painting. The large expanse of soft snow was clean, and Li Shi’an had a whim, thinking that he could use his footprints on the snow to make a picture Painting should be fine.

Just do what he said, he walked on the snow-covered paper with his backpack on his back, every time he took a step, he imagined that he would write a stroke on the drawing paper, and he would think for a long time every time he drew a stroke, but this painting has just been painted not long ago. Li Shi'an noticed a smear of red under the street lamp on a circular terrace at the junction of the park and the road. The smear of red was like the disharmonious strokes in this ink painting, which immediately attracted his attention.

It was a man wearing a red scarf.

When Li Shi'an first found that person, that person had already stopped, took off his bag and threw it into the snowdrift by the side of the road, followed by a scarf and coat.

Didn't he meet some pervert at night and want to run naked?

Li Shi'an stayed there and watched motionlessly, only to see that the man kicked his legs twice, then stretched out his long arms, and raised his toes. Without the cover of the huge coat and scarf, the slender and elegant neck was just like that. Exposure to night wind.

This is... to dance?Just as Li Shi'an was thinking, an unexpected performance began.

The dark night is the stage, and the street light is the exclusive spotlight.

The dance was slow and graceful at the beginning, like a swan with fluttering wings gently moving its toes on the surface of a thin ice lake. With that dance, Li Shi'an seemed to be able to hear the melodious melody of the cello in his ears.

This kind of snowy night, this kind of dance made Li Shi'an feel relaxed inexplicably. He was waiting for a visual feast, but in this relaxation, he unknowingly followed the faster dance rhythm and his nerves tensed up, even with the non-existent The sound of the cello also rushed in my mind.

Under the illumination of the street lamps, the rising fine snow surrounded the dancers like scattered stars, turning on and off with the movements.

Li Shi'an seems to be able to understand this kind of body art naturally. When the dancer starts to spin, he feels that he has fallen into a kind of extreme sadness as he is immersed in the picture in front of him.

He doesn't know how to dance, but he who likes to paint has a natural intuition, and he feels the sadness suppressed in the rotation.

Sorrow keeps expanding with the rotation, expands but does not release, just closes, stuffy in the heart, round after round, over and over again, the emotions in each round and each time are like stacked tides, layer upon layer. Come, slap him, tear him.

The mountain roar and tsunami finally calmed down, and Li Shi'an saw a bird of paradise with immature wings struggling for the last time.

His heart was almost stagnant, and he forgot where he was. He wanted to go forward to break free from the cage for him, but he could only be nailed to the spot, unable to move.

The bird finally hoarse, exhausted, and died on the lake.

The dance was over, and the dancer remained still in the snow with a sad and desperate posture. Li Shi'an felt as if his throat was also being strangled by an unknown force, and he couldn't breathe.

This was a performance with no music and only one audience, but what Li Shi'an felt was an unparalleled shock.

The scene in front of him undoubtedly had a huge impact on Li Shi'an. He was stunned by the scene in front of him, and his heart was pounding.He is still young, and his life is ordinary. He has never had such an experience, as if he has peeked into the heart of others through a dance.

Li Shi'an didn't know what to do on the spot, but when he came back to his senses, the dancer had already wrapped his scarf and looked towards him.

Out of politeness, he felt that he should go up to say hello and praise the other party, but before he could move his feet, a luxury car quietly stopped by the side of the road and honked its horn. Li Shi'an was startled by the horn A jump, and then he saw the dancer pick up the satchel and walk towards the car.

Li Shi'an couldn't see his face clearly because of the huge scarf.

The taillights of the car went out, and it quickly drove out of Li Shi'an's sight. Li Shi'an stood motionless, but he had already deduced a scene of sparks hitting the earth in his mind. He had an urgent desire to write, but his legs seemed to be frozen Can't keep up with the rhythm of the brain.

He didn't know how long he stood there, but suddenly he pulled up his collar to cover his mouth and nose and ran towards home.

There was still some distance on the way home. Li Shi'an kept running. When he was tired, he stopped and supported his knees to catch his breath. The cold air inhaled into his lungs made his lungs hurt. He wiped the sweat on his forehead with his sleeve and ran again. I got up, and when I finally stood in front of the house, my legs and hands were trembling.

He opened the combination lock and entered the door in a panic. He hurriedly put his bag on the shoe cabinet in the hallway. When he took off his coat, he moved too much and knocked down the vase on the shoe cabinet at the door.

Looking at the broken porcelain on the ground, Li Shi'an rubbed his shoes with no intention of dealing with the crime scene, and ran upstairs to the study room with a "thump thump thump".

After entering the study room, Li Shi'an walked to the easel and sat down. He replaced a piece of paper on the easel that he had drawn halfway through because he was dissatisfied and stopped, and took a pencil.

He calmed down, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, recalling the picture that was frozen in his mind, and then began to draw.

The pencil rustled on the drawing paper, from the line draft to the coloring in one go, he had never drawn so smoothly, and the scene in his mind gradually became a work in his pen.

Li Shi'an actually has a certain talent in painting, but he often has a feeling that when a painting is just finished, he always feels that he will make a fortune in the future by painting, but he can come back after 5 minutes I thought this was a painting of some kind of bullshit?

But today is different, from writing to finishing, every stroke is very satisfied, he has never had such a creative passion, as if the dance of the encounter ignited his exhausted soul, or he He found a resonance in that dance that he didn't know but felt.

It was already late at night after finishing the painting, and Li Shi'an fell asleep before tidying up and going back to his room. The first thing he did when he woke up the next morning was to look at the painting—at least he couldn't find anything wrong with his gaze.

A young man at this age can't hold back things in his heart, and he can't help but want to share with others when he has achieved a little achievement. He has finished his painting in twos and threes, and wants to show it to Lao Yu.

Li Shi'an was still upstairs holding the reel of paintings and saw Li Qishan eating breakfast. Li Qishan runs a paper factory, and he is busy every day. He usually sleeps until noon the next day after socializing and has to go to the factory. Li Shi'an often doesn't see people, so it's the first time that he can see people at home early the next morning after socializing the first night.

"Dad, why are you so early?" Li Shi'an asked as he went downstairs.

"I can't sleep when I'm old." Li Qishan's voice was tired, and he pushed a bag of steamed buns in front of Li Shi'an, "Dad bought your favorite beef buns early in the morning, eat them while they're hot."

Li Shi'an even forgot to eat to paint last night. He was so hungry that his chest was stuck to his back. When he saw that there was something to eat, he immediately grabbed a bun from the food bag and stuffed it into his mouth.

He didn't have a good breakfast this winter vacation, who would have thought that he would be able to enjoy this kind of treatment when school starts soon.The other hand reached for the only cup of soy milk in the bag, but before he could reach it, a slap fell heavily on his paw.

He heard Li Qishan say: "Get milk from the refrigerator!"

Li Shi'an had no choice but to slowly get up and go to the kitchen with the buns in his mouth. When he returned to the dining table with the milk, Li Qishan's eyes fell on the roll on the dining table, and he asked casually: "I came back late last night, are you still drawing?" ?”

"Yeah." Li Shi'an drank the milk with a vague voice, "What time did you come back? I slept in last night and didn't see you."

Li Qishan directly ignored his son's question, just stared at the painting and asked, "What is the painting?"

Last night Li Shian finished painting and forgot about breaking the vase. Li Qishan came back in the middle of the night and was almost stuck in the hospital by broken porcelain. When he went upstairs, he saw that the light in the study room was not turned off. When he went to turn off the light, he actually saw what Li Shian painted. , Li Qishan was so shocked by that painting that he almost woke up from the wine. He didn't sleep all night, and sat in the living room until dawn.

Li Qishan was shocked not because he knew how wonderful the painting was, but because of the figure dancing ballet in the painting.

Li Shi'an's mother, Liang Jing, is a ballet dancer and a dance lunatic. She left their father and son for her own artistic dreams. What is his connection with Li Shi'an?

In soap operas, many husbands and wives are separated, and then one party struggles to drag the older child and the other comes back to recognize the child. Therefore, Li Qishan's knowingly asking the truth brings a trace of uneasiness and anxiety that is hard to detect.

The carefree Li Shi'an of course didn't notice Li Qishan's abnormality, and said while stuffing the buns: "Oh, I came back last night and passed by the Wetland Park and saw a person dancing there, so I drew it on a whim."

Li Qishan carefully insinuated: "It's snowing again in the middle of the night, who went to dance in the Wetland Park?"

Li Shi'an's cheeks bulged like a squirrel and shook his head, but met his father's suspicious gaze.

He couldn't help but feel a little strange that Li Qishan seldom got to the bottom of messy things. Although he didn't say it clearly on weekdays, he actually complained about his obsession with painting. "It's really strange that today he would ask him "what did he draw" or even "who danced in the park on a snowy day".

He stayed there with stiff cheeks: "Dad, you don't think I'm in love early, do you?"

"Huh?" Li Qishan didn't understand his son's brain circuit for a while, but he quickly realized it and nodded noncommittally.

Li Shi'an thought he guessed it right, sat up straight and justified himself: "The dancer is a man."

"That's good." Li Qishan breathed a sigh of relief calmly, and then showed his usual smile on his tense expression, pointing to Li Shi'an's scroll and said: "The painting is very good, very good! But when do you plan to draw it?" Pay for my vase money?"

Li Shi'an had long forgotten about this matter, and wailed outrightly: "Comrade Li Qishan, are you going to force your son to do child labor?"

Li Qishan said sternly: "You're already sixteen, and you still have the nerve to call yourself a child laborer? You don't want to lose money. As long as you finished the last semester and ranked 64th in your grade, your father's requirements are not high, so let's increase the number of places by 20."

"Twenty?" Li Shi'an almost spat out a mouthful of old blood, feeling that his father really didn't hurt his back when he was standing and talking.

Li Qishan really felt that this request was not too much. Li Shi'an was very smart, and his studies had never been strenuous, so he didn't have too strict requirements, which caused Li Shi'an to never spend his mind on studying.

Li Qishan had an intuition that for Li Shi'an to be promoted to [-], he only needed to listen carefully in class. He stood up and patted Li Shi'an on the shoulder: "Twenty is not too much, young people should put pressure on themselves."

"Dad, grade [-] is not class [-]. There are seven classes in the whole grade. Have you ever thought about how many people you are competing with?" Li Shi'an was heartbroken, and Li Qishan continued to say before the collapse was over: " Knowing that there is competition here shows that you understand your situation very well, you have always been sensible, and I hope this time you will not disappoint Dad."

Li Shi'an stayed where he was, not knowing how to refute.

"Also, you said before that you lived on campus. Dad thought about it. It's time to eat well when you grow tall. What kind of food does the school have, should you go to school?"

This time, Li Shi'an swallowed the steamed stuffed bun in one gulp and yelled, "Dad, don't speak out of your conscience. Can I get some water for washing when I come back?"

Hearing this, Li Qishan was stunned. A large part of the reason why he didn't let Li Shi'an live in the school was because he didn't want the child out of his sight.

In the early years, Li Qishan was not so busy with work, and he came to take care of Li Shian himself, and he was a good cook. Later, when he was busy with work, he hired an aunt who cooked for Li Shian, since Li Shian ate half a worm in a plate of vegetables All the meals were changed to outside.

Due to the lack of supervision, Li Shi’an, a classmate in the growing period, ate all the junk food that his parents hated, such as instant noodles, potato chips, and chocolate. What was surprising was that this person’s bones were strange, and he didn’t gain weight at all after eating so much junk food. The price he paid was that his height was only in the middle of the class. In the second semester of high school, his height was barely over 1.7 meters three, while Li Qishan himself was 185 cm.

Li Qishan sat on the sofa and smoked a cigarette sadly: "Father, try to overcome it, come back to cook for you when you have time, and I said you still have to drink your milk."

Hearing that his old father wanted to come back to cook for himself in his busy schedule, Li Shi'an really had no reason to say no, but he kept complaining in his heart. Li Qishan had put two mountains on him this morning, study and milk.He sighed depressingly and stuffed the last bite of the bun into his mouth: "Report to school today, I'm leaving."

"Take out the garbage at the door." Li Qishan said behind his back.

Li Shi'an lazily went out with a bag of garbage like a discouraged ball. As soon as the door was opened, he ran into a woman who was pressing the combination lock next door with large and small bags of vegetables in her hand.

At first glance, she looks good and is well-dressed. She is by no means the role of an aunt and nanny.

"Dad...Dad!" Li Shi'an called while running back.

"Huh?" Li Qishan was just about to take a nap on the sofa when he heard Li Shi'an roaring and struggling to sit up from the sofa.

"Next door, next door... girl..." Li Shi'an didn't think of words for a while, and stuttered for a while.

Li Qishan hissed: "What the hell?"

"Next door... a woman came!" Li Shi'an said as if he had been frightened.

That was really worse than seeing a ghost, even Li Qishan's expression began to become a little subtle.