Flying Ash - Chap 20

In the early morning, Yi Hui finished watering the flowers and set up the easel in the yard. As soon as he sat down, he sneezed unexpectedly.
Jiang Yimang came out with her school bag on her back: “Have you caught a cold again? It seems to be cooler today, so you should go back to the house to paint.”

Yi Hui rubbed his nose: “No, just an itchy nose.”

“It means someone far away misses you.” Jiang Yimang said with a smile, “The more you sneeze, the more strongly the person thinks of you.”

After she said that, Yi Hui sneezed twice more.

This body was not in good health. As a precaution, Yi Hui soaked a pack of Banlangen. The granules were sweet and bitter, so he drank it down in three gulps and hurriedly took a piece of sugar and stuffed it in his mouth. The bitterness disappeared, leaving only the sweetness he liked.

Jiang Xuemei went to work and Jiang Yimang went to school. The house was a little deserted. Yi Hui drafted the lines for the painting, mixed the colours and was just about to put down his brush when his mobile phone rang.

Tang Wenxi got straight to the point: “Did you call me last night?”
Yi Hui put the brush down and covered the palette: “En, someone else picked it up.”

“Oh, oh, it was a friend, we had dinner together last night and went back in his car, but I fell asleep in the car.”

Yi Hui actually knew who the man answered the phone was. Seeing that Tang Wenxi didn’t want to say anything, he didn’t ask and changed the subject: “I painted halfway through yesterday. I remembered that I had seen a certain kind of paint in the capital before. You can buy it near the Academy of Fine Arts.”

Tang Wenxi knew what he wanted to ask halfway through: “Let me buy it and send it to you, ok? It’s no problem, tell me the brand and color number, and I will buy it later.”

Yi Hui thanked him, but still felt that it was too troublesome: “I went to the capital in a hurry last time, otherwise I would have bought it myself.”

Speaking of that, Tang Wenxi was angry: “Wow, you were more than in a hurry last time. Someone just went to the painting exhibition site and didn’t even come to play with me, took their painting and ran away while I was thinking what we’d be eating for lunch. Tell me, doesn’t your conscience hurt?”

Yi Hui raised his hand and touched the position of his heart: “It doesn’t seem to hurt…”

“Pff-” Tang Wenxi laughed out loud, “You didn’t really touch your heart, did you?”

Yi Hui put down his hand slyly: “I’m really sorry about the last time, I wanted to go home as soon as I got the painting, but when I got to the airport, I remembered that I didn’t look for you…”
“Stop talking, stop talking,” Tang Wenxi seemed to be almost unable to bear it. “The more you talk, the more I realize that I have no place in your heart, not even in a small corner… Lowly me wants to cry.”

If he had heard it before, Yi Hui would have thought that he was really going to cry. But after a while, he adapted to the ability of a normal human brain to process information and learned to distinguish which words were jokes, so he didn’t panic.

For example, now he curled his eyes in a smile and said to the phone: “Then come, cry in my arms.”

Tang Wenxi didn’t have time to come over.

He was studying in graduate school and his teacher was very strict. He often pointed at his paintings and said, “My three-year-old grandson can draw better than this.” It made Tang Wenxi very depressed. He complained to Yi Hui many times thinking that this strange old man was clearly praising one and stomping on the other, using his paintings as a way to exalt his young grandson’s artistic

Whenever he heard Tang Wenxi talk about his teacher, Yi Hui laughed uncontrollably but he didn’t make a sound when he laughed, so Tang Wenxi cut to the next topic without even knowing that he was still laughing on the other end of the phone.

Tang Wenxi got a new idea. Every time after chatting on the phone he would send a text message asking Yi Hui if he still remembered what he had just said on the phone. Yi Hui typed a reply like a report, using it to improve his memory along the way: learn to shop online and buy a tablet.

Online shopping was mentioned on the phone earlier. Tang Wenxi said he could learn to shop online when he came across things he couldn’t buy around, and told him not to rush to buy paints and learn about digital painting first.

Yi Hui was already intrigued to hear that he could draw with the computer and save the finished picture directly in the computer.

It’s not that he hadn’t heard of this thing before, but at that time he was clumsy and didn’t want to trouble others, so he kept procrastinating and didn’t buy it. Now he was not afraid of it, he was not afraid of not being able to understand it and was not afraid of making mistakes. His courage was growing bigger.

The last time he went to the capital, Jiang Xuemei did not feel comfortable letting him go alone and he was also worried. As a result, it went quite smoothly, he didn’t go the wrong way or was abducted. But the process of taking down the painting was a little bit tortuous.
Thinking of what happened at the painting exhibition, Yi Hui instinctively hunched his shoulders and his body retreated until his back touched the wall. Only then did he come back to his senses.

He would never meet him again. Yi Hui breathed a sigh of relief and said to himself that as long as he didn’t go to the capital or S City, it would be impossible to meet him again.

The modern online shopping system was well-developed and his newly bought hand-painting tablet would arrive in less than 24 hours.

The express pick-up point in the town was near the middle school. Yi Hui rode his bicycle to pick up Jiang Yimang first and then took her to pick up the express delivery.

Yi Hui hadn’t ridden a bicycle much and when he was carrying someone in the back seat, his riding was even more crooked, drawing curves on the ground. Jiang Yimang nervously clutched his clothes: “Can you do it? Or let me down and go by myself.”

After getting home smoothly, Yi Hui locked the bicycle, raised his hand and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Because he had overcome another difficulty, he curled his lips and smiled.

In order to thank Jiang Yimang for taking him to find the express pick-up point and for lending him her computer, Yi Hui’s first task after receiving the tablet was to draw an avatar for Jiang Yimang.
“Big eyes, white skin, golden curls tied with a blue bow, expression… Just make it cute, draw a heart at the corner of the eye, a small one. The overall style is best to be the goddess style, that is, sharp eyes, the kind that looks very haughty, cold and difficult to approach.”

After listening to her request, Yi Hui looked confused, unable to imagine what a haughty goddess with a blue bow and a heart in the corner of her eyes would look like.

Seeing that he was having difficulties, Jiang Yimang gave him a second choice, “If this doesn’t work, you can draw me an anime version of HengHeng and I will post it to the super topic…”
“Okay,” Before she finished speaking, Yi Hui hurriedly said, “The cute haughty goddess, no problem.”
Although the request sounded a bit outrageous, it was not difficult to draw it. Yi Hui also appreciated the “tablet being like a paper” that Tang Wenxi mentioned on the phone.

Once you start doing it, time flies by quickly. He just had enough time to adapt to the painting method of the tablet and draw a rough outline on the screen when it was almost dark.

Yi Hui dropped his pen, put on his coat, opened the door, trotted to Aunt Qiu’s house next door and picked up a few big fat geese.

He wondered if all the animals got attached to people after spending time with them. In short, these geese had never bitten Yi Hui. When they saw Yi Hui walking from far away with a small bamboo pole in his hand, they would flap their wings happily.

The three geese walked to the river by themselves. Yi Hui sat down on the low embankment and had nothing to do. He took out his mobile phone to check the habits of geese on the internet and turned to a forum post. The comments were all about how fierce geeses were and how painful it was to be bitten. One person said that he was bitten by a goose who pinched so hard there was still a scar left on his butt.

Yi Hui looked at it and laughed silently, just gasping a little. Smiling, he looked up at the big white geese pecking at the grass by the river and suddenly realized that his previous wish to raise a small animal had now been easily realized.

His purpose of wanting to keep a pet was very simple. He hoped to have a living creature by his side, so that when it was cold, he could cuddle with it to keep each other warm.

Others thought that his family was in a superior situation. Even if he was incompetent and stayed at home for the rest of his life, he wouldn’t have to worry about making ends meet, let alone having to work for a mouthful of food and a shelter from the rain.

But no one knew how scared he was to live alone in such a big house. When he woke up at night, it was pitch black in front of his eyes, and when he stretched out his hand, he could only touch the cold mattress. Only the echo of his own voice would always respond to him.
That was why he so cherished the time that man came home. He didn’t want to close his eyes to waste time sleeping. He would rather hold back drowsiness and lie on the side of the bed and look at the man quietly, begging for time to move slower. It would be better if he could quietly store up enough warmth so that the long days alone would not be so hard when the man was gone.

When returning the geese, Yi Hui was a little reluctant to part. He touched the head of the youngest goose across the fence. Aunt Qiu on the side said in amazement: “Our geese chase and peck when they see outsiders, especially this one. It is so fierce that Uncle Qiu doesn’t dare to approach, only you can touch its head.”

Yi Hui was as happy about this “fate” as he was about the prospect of crossing over into another body and starting a new life after his death.

Everything was fresh, and he still had a lot to do in the future, and there was a long way to go.
On the way home, Yi Hui’s steps were light. He walked to the door, heard the laughter coming from inside and smelled the aroma of food. He immediately forgot Aunt Qiu’s comment that there seemed to be outsiders in town today.

After showing the draft to Party A, Miss Jiang Yimang, and getting approval and praise, Yi Hui sat down at the dining table and quietly planned out his words, preparing to announce his intention to sell paintings online to make money.

The Jiang family’s financial situation was average. His family had spent a lot on his illness and it was time for him to do his part. Unlike hand-painting, digital painting was less likely to have a distinct personal style and should not be recognisable.

The dishes were served to the table, steaming with heat. Yi Hui was about to speak when there was a knock on the metal door outside.

“Who is it? “Jiang Xuemei asked out the window.

The person outside the door didn’t answer and knocked on the door three more times.

“Maybe it’s my classmate. She said she would come to our house to play in the next two days.” In a hurry to open the door, Jiang Yimang threw down the spoon she used to scoop up a bowl of soup and was almost scalded by the hot soup splashing up on her hand.

Yi Hui got up and said, “I’ll open the door, sit down and be careful.”

When he walked to the door and put his hand on the doorknob, Yi Hui was still pondering what to say to make Jiang Xuemei accept his idea and how to mention it to Dr. Liu. He wondered if he’d approve of selling paintings to make money.

He opened the door absent-mindedly, and under a low-watt street lamp hanging from the door beam, the first thing that he saw was a tall and upright figure in front of him.

He raised his eyes and looked at the sharp-lined jaw, the thin lips that were slightly open, and the handsome deep eyebrows.
He seemed to have spent the whole night on the road. His neat and crisp coat was crumpled and his shoulders were covered with a thin layer of night dew.

The eyes that were often illuminated by lights were now bloodshot, and a few strands of dew-soaked black hair fell over his razor-sharp brow, drawing attention to the unhealed wound on his forehead.

Even though he tried his best to avoid it, Yi Hui saw the bruises on his face that caused him nightmares for several nights. His dreams were filled with scenes of a man whose face he could not see falling from a high altitude, and when he woke up, his heart was out of control and he could not pull himself together for a long time.

Now that the man was standing in front of him, Yi Hui’s mind was blank and he couldn’t think about anything.

He saw the corners of the man’s mouth slowly rise, evoking an extremely relaxed smile, his exhaustion seeming to be swept away.

In a whirlwind, he was pulled forward with great force and fell into the man’s embrace.

A pair of powerful arms firmly wrapped around his body, and the close proximity to each other gave him an unobstructed feeling of the other party’s rapidly rising and falling chest and the hot breath gushing on his ear.

“I’ve found you.“ The corner of Zhou Jinheng’s mouth pressed against the hair at Yi Hui’s temple, almost greedily claiming the familiar smell of his body after a long absence, as he murmured in a low voice “I’ve found you.”