vstars Chapter 292 The Adorable Business of Sugar Painting Dad and Scarf Mom
Chapter 292 The Adorable Business of Sugar Painting Dad and Scarf Mom
The crystal chandelier in the banquet hall cast two distinct shadows on the guest list: on the left, next to the registration table, Qiu Chang's mentors walked by carrying hardcover academic works, their leather shoes tapping rhythmically on the marble floor; in the right corner, students in blue and white school uniforms huddled together, their uniform zippers still adorned with plush toys they had bought at street stalls, their canvas shoes dusted with chalk dust from the overpass.
Zhen Xiaosi saw the deaf and mute children she had taught communicating in sign language, their fingertips tracing silvery arcs in the twilight, while the handmade greeting cards they held still had frayed edges from the glue. Meanwhile, the parents whispered among themselves at the banquet hall entrance, their eyes frequently glancing at Zhen Xiaosi. "I heard she's just a substitute teacher; it's uncertain how long she'll continue teaching the children." "Giving gifts to a teacher like that isn't worth it." These words, like tiny needles, pierced the air. Some parents hurried past the registration table with their children, afraid of being called back; others perfunctorily slipped their children some change, telling them to give whatever they wanted. Qiu's mother's laughter flashed across the phone screen, shattering into sharp spots of light under the reflection of the ceiling chandelier.
She held up her phone, displaying a QR code. The rhinestones from her French manicure cast dappled shadows on the plastic bouquet. "Electronic gift-giving is all the rage now," she said, "kids, do you want your parents to help you with the process?" She then noticed the soy milk stains peeking out from the edge of the banknote Lin Xiaoyi was clutching tightly, and her gold-rimmed glasses slipped down to her nose. "Cash is fine too, it's just a hassle for the finance team to do the accounting—after all, we're donating it all to the village library..."
Zhen Xiaosi saw the lady carrying an LV bag wiping her child's hands, which had touched the plastic flowers, with a wet wipe. The Hermes bag chain of the female headmistress invited by the Qiu family pressed neat creases into her dress, like invisible barriers. The corners of the handmade greeting cards peeking out of the students' school uniform pockets were curled up; they were folded from the illustrated pages of old textbooks from Hope Middle School, and the crayon words "Happy Wedding, Teacher" on the cover still had eraser marks.
Waiters in tuxedos carried silver trays, each bearing a QR code sticker with the Qiu family logo, gleaming coldly under the lights. As Lin Xiaoyi laid out the warm banknotes she had been clutching on the scanner, Qiu's mother's phone suddenly chimed—it was a transfer notification from Qiu Chang's tutor, the amount followed by three zeros, highlighted in gold in the chat window. "Minimum donation of three digits."
As Qiu's mother scrolled through her phone screen, her gaze suddenly lingered on the total amount of change the students had collected. The two decimal places on the electronic bill trembled slightly. "But the sentiment is what matters most. Just like the deaf and mute children that Xiao Si teaches, even though they can't hear, they've still participated in the rituals of civilized society." She turned to the professor's wife sitting next to her and smiled gently, the pearl earring on her earlobe shimmering with tiny sparkles. "Substitute teachers, you know, always manage to evoke the children's compassion."
Lin Xiaoyi's sign language suddenly froze in mid-air, her fingertips quickly making the gesture of "dignity" in front of her chest—a gesture Zhen Xiaosi had taught her, drawing a vertical line on her chest with her index finger, like a pillar supporting her spine. The girl pulled a crumpled sticky note from her school uniform pocket, on which was written in crooked handwriting: "We saved 27 allowances, and the money we would have used to buy blind boxes will be used to buy wedding candy for Teacher Zhen."
Half a melted hard candy was stuck to the edge of the sticky note; it was an extra gift from a customer when she helped Teacher Zhen at the plush toy stall on the overpass yesterday. Zhen Xiaosi suddenly remembered the scene last week when she was preparing lessons in the attic, her mother using her stiff neck to support the sewing machine and knit Christmas scarves for the students.
Every stitch the knitting needle pierced felt like patching up fate, and the sound of the QR code notification in the banquet hall was just like the sound of coins falling into a tin box at the sugar painting stall in the City God Temple back in the day, only now the "ding" sound was colder, carrying the weight of the digital age. She looked at the amount of money the students had given as gifts on Qiu's mother's phone screen—217.5 yuan, exactly the first tuition fee her father had saved after his sugar painting stall was confiscated three times by the city management during the rainy season.
Lin Xiaoyi suddenly grabbed the banknotes from the barcode scanner and crumpled them into a warm ball in her palm. She gestured "no" to Zhen Xiaosi, drawing a resolute horizontal line across her chest with her fingertips, then pulled out a hand-drawn greeting card and slammed it on the table. The card's cover was a heart made of candy wrappers, and inside, crookedly written, were the words: "A teacher's wedding is a happiness that can't be bought with a barcode." The card was signed with the fingerprints of twenty-seven students, the red ink in the center of the snow-white card like a stubborn little flower blooming on an icy plain.
The auspicious chimes were torn in two by the shattering of the champagne tower. Qiu Chang's tie was askew at his collarbone, draft paper covered in formulas peeked out of his suit pocket, and his glasses still shimmered with the blue light from the video conference. He stumbled, knocking over the three-tiered glass tower, the sparkling wine swirling into distorted question marks on the pure white carpet. He grabbed Zhen Xiaosi with his wet hands and said, "Sorry, I'm not used to drinking with the common people." His words pierced the banquet hall's ostentatious atmosphere like a silver needle, casting comical shadows on his face from the chandelier's light.
The moment Zhen Xiaosi raised her phone, the sizzling sound of sugar painting artisans boiling sugar came from the kitchen. In a video from three months ago, Qiu Chang was vehemently criticizing the "marketization of basic education" at an academic conference, the frayed edges of his suit sleeves magnified by the camera—his impeccably tailored suit at that moment was bought with the money she had saved from selling plush toys.
As Qiu Chang waved her thesis and shouted "Education shouldn't be weighed" in the scene, a real-life electronic scale beeped in the background, a poignant irony of fate. The miniature hearing aid inside her wedding ring vibrated, converting each insult into a pulse signal, transmitted via Bluetooth to the silver bracelets on her parents' wrists. When Qiu Chang uttered "street vendors, unemployed" for the third time, Zhen Xiaosi's father, who was serving cake to guests, suddenly stopped. Golden syrup still dripped from his sugar-painting tools. Though he couldn't speak, he used his sugar-covered fingers to draw a crooked "shame" on the cream cake—the first sign language he taught his daughter, drawing a downward slant on her lips with his index finger, like a wound that would never heal…
Amid the gasps of the guests, Zhen Xiaosi saw her mother pull a velvet box from her handbag. When opened, a jade bracelet gleamed warmly under the light. It was her grandmother's dowry for her deaf-mute daughter, hidden inside a doll's stuffing thirty years ago, and had moved seventeen times with them.
The scraps of cloth she used at her stall were actually drafts of her mother's academic translations from her youth. On each yellowed page, her father had carved the words "Protect her" in Braille. The electronic scale still hummed softly in the corner, but no one noticed Zhen Xiaosi quietly turning off her phone. She knew that when Qiu's mother saw the sugar painting of the word "shame" on the cake slowly melt away, like dripping golden tears, this game of humiliation disguised as academic work would finally reveal its most shameful weight in the sign language of the deaf-mute's fingertips…