Hello, Old Times Chapter 39

Chapter 39: Good Person

After Yu Zhou Zhou let her grandma know, she ran to Yu Ling Ling’s room, wanting to ask her second uncle to send her to the State No.2 Hospital.

Just as she got to the door of the room, she heard a muffled argument happening inside.

“You always hold me back when I try to educate the kids but you don’t educate them yourself. Every day you’re out drinking with those brothers of yours. I can’t stop you drinking but others drink to discuss business and bring money home . What about you? This child is becoming more and more like your family.  Stubborn to death and thinking about nonsense all day. All she does is read those idle books about love. Do you want to watch her fail to get into university and go down the path of her little aunt!?”

When Yu Zhou Zhou heard the words “little aunt”, she stepped back from the doors and stared at the doorknob with shame and anger. After thinking for a long time, she ran back to her room.

Yu Ting Ting went out to eat with her parents and Yu Zhou Zhou had no other choice. She was in a rush to go to the hospital to see Teacher Gu so she didn’t disturb her granma who was watching television in the living room. Instead, she quietly put on her jacket, took out a hundred dollar bill from the drawer, slid it into the pocket of her pants and sneaked out the door.

Yu Zhou Zhou, who was in a taxi by herself for the first time sat in the back, thinking repeatedly about those robbery and murder cases on the news. She gripped the door handle tightly, ready to jump out the car at any time.

Or…Or maybe this unkind looking taxi driver with a big beard was really a gangster and if she subdued him… then wouldn’t she become like those brave citizens on the newspaper and become a  model of the Young Pioneers and be sent to Normal University Affiliated Middle School?

Yu Zhou Zhou became excited. Gangster uncle, help me out!

She was still daydreaming out the window when a sudden brake made her slam into the back of the co-pilot’s seat.

“We’re here.” The big bearded uncle said.

Yu Zhou Zhou beautiful imagination was smashed into pieces. She straightened herself and sat up then pulled open the car door.

“Little girl, hand over the money!”

Yu Zhou Zhou paused halfway in leaving the car. She tightly covered her pant pocked with a slight nervousness, the hundred dollar bill burning inside.

“I…You…I didn’t bring a lot of money…”

Yu Zhou Zhou and the uncle looked at each other for a few seconds before the uncle burst into laughter.

“You didn’t bring a lot but I don’t want a lot either. Ten dollars, I’ve wiped the extra dollars off. You can’t ride for free, who’s robbing who here?”

Yu Zhou Zhou’s face was burning red and her head seemed to almost give off steam. She handed over the hundred dollar note. The taxi driver checked the authenticity of the note under the small orange light in the car and found her ninety dollars in change.

The random thoughts and false alarms just then allowed Yu Zhou Zhou to escape from her depressed mood from Maths Olympiad. However, as soon as she stepped into the entrance of the State No.2 Hospital, the smell of disinfectant and the pale white light threw her into another state of chaos.

Teacher Gu wasn’t going to make it. It was a simple yet cruel fact.

People’s emotions were like the April days, changing easily. Yu Zhou Zhou had never been in close contact with death but it seemed like a basic instinct of humans that as soon as there is the thought of the word death, the floodgates of tears would open.

Based on the nurse’s directions, she ran up to the fifth floor to the hallway of the intensive care unit.

Even under these circumstances, Yu Zhou Zhou was still thinking wildly. She felt that being like this was being disrespectful to Grandpa Gu but she couldn’t help it. In her mind, a group of doctors in white coats rushed out from the intensive unit and said, we have tried our best, as they took off their masks. The scene then changed into all the students sobbing around the hospital bed while Teacher Gu gave out his last requests slowly and with difficulty, while patting their heads lovingly…

Very soon, Yu Zhou Zhou found out that the TV shows were all lies.

The outside of the intensive care unit was not desolate and quiet, nor was there a tense atmosphere. There wasn’t even a group of students standing together and crying.

There was only Chen An, standing there in a white shirt, as if an angel at the end of time.

“Zhou Zhou? Did you come by yourself?”

Yu Zhou Zhou panted heavily, supporting her knees with her hands. She was too tired to speak and only nodded.

“It’s so late, it’s unsafe. I’ll make a call to your family.” Chen An said as he pulled out a black mobile phone and dialled the number. Yu Zhou Zhou had seen a similar phone in her mum’s hands and had used it to play a snake game before.

“Mhm, don’t worry. She might’ve been too anxious so she ran out herself. Fortunately she didn’t meet any danger. Mhm, mhm, you can rest assured, I’ll send her back. If you’re worried, please call my phone number at any time. Yes, my name is Chen An, my number is 139XXXXXXXX……

 Chen An hung up the phone and rubbed Yu Zhou Zhou head, “You’re not allowed to do this again.”

Yu Zhou Zhou pursed her lips and nodded, “I had no other way.”

Chen An looked at her strangely and thought for a while but didn’t ask any further. He pointed towards the glass door, “Teacher Gu is unconscious, they’re trying to rescue him.”

Yu Zhou Zhou looked inside the glass through tiptoes for a while but couldn’t see anything.

“Why is it just us? What about the others?”

“Who else should there be?” Chen An lowered his head to look at her.

Yeah, who else should there be? Teacher Gu didn’t have any children. His lover had passed away from breast cancer many years ago. The Children’s Palace was his spiritual sustenance and he had no other family.

“Where are the other members? And the teachers from the Children’s Palace?”

“Some teachers from the orchestra came. They’ve just gone to the buy some clothes nearby, they haven’t come back yet.”

“Buy clothes?”

“A shroud.”

“A…vet?*”

*[The words sound similar]

Chen An smiled, “It’s the clothes that a person has to wear after passing away. It’s used to attend a funeral, to attend…their own funeral.”

Teacher Gu was still being rescued but his shroud had already been bought.

“It has to be immediately put on after death, otherwise the body will become very stiff after cooling down and it’ll be very difficult to try to put it on.”

Chen An’s voice was very calm and without any emotion. He still carried a light smile but without a sliver of warmth. Yu Zhou Zhou looked at the unfamiliar Chen An and was a bit flustered. “You’re…very familiar…with this process?”

“Oh,” Chen An’s thoughts seemed to be interrupted. He recovered quickly and nodded towards Yu Zhou Zhou, “When my grandpa passed away, it was me who helped him put on the shroud.”

Yu Zhou Zhou felt very sad but she didn’t know what to say so she stared at the door and asked, “Why didn’t any of the other students come?”

“Why should they come?” Chen Yu quietly looked at her.

“Shouldn’t they come? It’s so…desolate,” Yu Zhou Zhou tried to use a term she had only used in her literacy homework, “it’s so desolate like this.”

“Yeah, indeed. The more people who come to see him off the better, the warmer the better, the more touching the better.” Chen An’s tone was somewhat mocking, even with a hint of anger but Yu Zhou Zhou’s intuition told her that he wasn’t directing it towards her.

Chen An’s gaze had long passed through the corridor to a certain area that Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t understand.

“However, no matter how warm and touching it is, it doesn’t have anything to do with the deceased. Those are all for show for the living. There’s no difference whether there’s two or two hundred people standing in front of the intensive care unit. He can’t see it and wouldn’t feel sad either.”

Chen An paused and half knelt to look into Yu Zhou Zhou’s eyes, “The one sad, actually is you. And it’s just you.”

This kind of Chen An was really scary yet really pitiful. Yu Zhou Zhou felt that her brain had already stopped working. She wasn’t able to understand Chen An’s words – yet it seemed that she could understand it.

“Then why did you call me over?” She asked timidly.

“Because you truly like Teacher Yu. Teacher Yu also likes you too.”

“Don’t the others like Teacher Gu?”

Chen Yu smiled unclearly. He held Yu Zhou Zhou affectionately and asked, “Zhou Zhou, what kind of person do you think Teacher Gu is?”

“Teacher Gu is a good person.” Yu Zhou Zhou sincerely said out each word.

“Then what kind of person is a good person?”

Yu Zhou Zhou paused. Chen An’s smile seemed very distant and elusive.

“In this world, whoever treats you well is a good person and whoever treats you badly is a bad person,” Chen An tapped her head, “It’s that simple.”

“No!” Yu Zhou Zhou was a little angry. She didn’t like this type of Chen An.

 “Good people are all very kind and very…fair. They won’t look down on people and won’t be biased. Plus…” She scrambled inside to try and define the good person in her mind. In the middle of the night, in the empty corridor, she argued in vain with a big brother who smiled indifferently.

“Teacher Gu is kind to and fair to you. He won’t look down on you let alone be biased – no, he is biased but he’s biased to you so he’s a good person. However, what if I told you that Teacher Gu is just like those teachers you’ve complained to me about. He also accepts gifts and to those children who aren’t talented, he won’t stop them from coming to the Children’s Palace to chase their dreams. He’ll even boast about them to coax their parents. In terms of the arrangement of the seating in the orchestra, he’s also unfair and biased. A lot of people don’t like him. To others, Teacher Gu is a bad person.”

Yu Zhou Zhou stood there quietly. She didn’t shout that he was a liar nor run away in tears. She seriously thought about Chen An’s words and thought back to the attitude of the other orchestra members towards Teacher Gu. She lowered her head and quickly made her own judgement.

After a long time, she stubbornly raised her head, “He’s a good person to me which is enough.”

Chen An smiled, “It seems that you’re able to understand.”

Yu Zhou Zhou still anticipated the pure black and white, good and evil in the cartoons and her imagination but in that moment, she learnt to use a different method to comfort herself, a different method to look at this ‘exciting yet cruel’ world.

In her eyes, no matter how cruel, cold and selfish a person was, they’ll actually show their love and warmth to a particular person but it was just that, that person wasn’t her. It was just like how in the class, Teacher Yu was a responsible and gentle good teacher in the eyes of a lot students – even if was an illusion, there was no reason to break it.

“Chen An, do you think Teacher Gu is a good person?”

Chen An turned his head and gently patted her shoulder. “He’s very good towards me,” he said.

However, Chen An had always been a quiet observer standing on the periphery of right and wrong.

This time, he also pulled Yu Zhou Zhou on the spectators’ stand.

Even though, Yu Zhou Zhou never knew why he reached a hand out to her.