A bicycle swooped past the camera and rode forward.
The little figure sat on the bicycle, two thin legs pedaling very quickly.
At the same time, Xue Xiao’s narration sounded.
His voice was gentle and peaceful.
[Since I was 9 years old, I became different from other people my age.]
The camera shifted from behind the boy riding the bicycle to the side of the alley.
Another chubby boy entered the audience’s view.
He desperately chased after the boy on the bicycle, shouting as he ran, “Xie Jia!”
“Xie Jia!”
“—Xie, Jia!”
He shouted three times, but the boy on the bicycle seemed to ignore him.
The camera followed them past the residential buildings one after another.
There were two middle-aged women standing downstairs and carrying vegetables. One of them laughed and asked, “Why is your Jia Jia ignoring people?”
The other woman seemed to find it funny as she said, “This child has become very deaf since the last time he had a high fever. He often can’t hear me when I call him.”
The other party was stunned. “…It can’t be burned out, right?”
The woman laughed. “Yes, his father, and I think his brain was burned out!”
The other party saw the woman smiling like this and didn’t know if she was serious or joking. The other part could only twitch her lips in embarrassment.
The camera shifted back to the boy on the bicycle.
“Xie Jia!”
He finally heard the fourth hoarse shout.
He stopped the bike and turned around, panting.
It was a very cute and round face, with big, bright eyes.
Due to the strenuous exercise, his cheeks were a bit red and there was sweat on his forehead.
“You finally heard me. I am almost exhausted!” The chubby boy stopped and complained with his hands on his knees.
Little Xie Jia said blankly, “Ah, I was riding too fast. I didn’t hear you at all.”
[Yes. One day when I was 9 years old, my ears suddenly became difficult to hear clearly.]
……
Seeing this, the audience already understood the storytelling mode of this film.
They couldn’t help admiring the efforts of this group. The actor playing little Xie Jia looked a lot like Xue Xiao!
Did Xue Xiao look so cute as a child?
Xue Xiao hadn’t officially appeared yet, but his voice had already appeared. With this gentle and lively voice, he already established the personality of Xie Jia.
He seemed to be a positive and cheerful boy.
When he mentioned the ups and downs he encountered as a child, he didn’t seem to regard them as suffering. His tone was very relaxed. He should be like a little sun.
It was no wonder that Shen Tingyan said this role was very suitable for Xue Xiao.
The content of the story was limited to 20 minutes. There weren’t too many parts for the young actors.
The screen kept jumping along with Xue Xiao’s narration. What the audience saw was Xie Jia being unaccustomed to the hearing loss when he first encountered it, and him gradually getting used to it.
He always spoke very loudly. Then after being reminded by others, he realized he didn’t need to be so loud to be heard.
He didn’t know what was happening to him, and his parents didn’t care at all.
They even thought it was funny and cute to have hearing like this at such a young age. It was a source of conversation.
His mother would always say to anyone she met, “I don’t know what he will do when he is old!”
Xie Jia was playing with his classmates not far away and couldn’t hear anything. It was only when he turned his head to look that he saw a group of adults laughing there, as if they were laughing at him.
[By the time I was 13, I had almost forgotten what it was like to have normal eyes.]
[I no longer feel as uncomfortable as having two balls of cotton stuffed in my ears, but my parents are starting to get used to it.]
On the big screen, Father and Mother Xie frowned at a slight downward angle, looking at the camera.
Xue Xiao’s narration was still brisk.
[I thought they finally realized this wasn’t funny to me…]
Father Xie suddenly pointed at the camera and said, “The teacher asked you to get up to answer questions in class. Why did you pretend not to hear it?”
Mother Xie said solemnly, “You can fool the teacher, but can you still fool us? How did your ears become so bad that you can’t even hear the sounds in the classroom?”
[…Okay.]
The middle school version of Xie Jia didn’t appear on the scene. Only the voice of little Xie Jia explained, “…I really didn’t hear it. It wasn’t intentional!”
Father and Mother Xie had no intention of listening to his excuses and interrupted him rudely.
“Okay, okay, don’t say it. In any case, if the teacher calls us to school again next time—” Father Xie pointed to the camera. “Watch how I hit you.”
Before the audience could get angry, the scene changed, and Xue Xiao suddenly appeared!
He finally appeared!
His appearance made the entire studio go ‘wow.’
Xue Xiao was sitting at the desk in his bedroom doing homework. He wore a blue and white school uniform, and his side face was bathed in the warm light of the desk lamp.
He lowered his eyes, recited the questions, and drew circles. He was very serious. His face looked so young, but there was no sense of disobedience at all. He was like a young high school student!
The door suddenly opened. He saw it out of his peripheral vision and turned his head.
Mother Xie walked in, turned around, and closed the door.
Her back was to Xie Jia, and her shoulders were hunched tightly. Xie Jia felt that she should be talking to him, but he couldn’t hear clearly. He could only hear her muttering something.
His brow furrowed slightly.
Mother Xie turned around. Her expression sank as soon as she saw his face, and she said loudly, “Did you not hear me again?”
Xie Jia moved his lips, but before he could speak, Mother Xie said sternly, “I said that your dad went out to gamble again! …Forget it, both of you are terrible!”
She slammed the door again and walked out.
Xie Jia: “……”
He pursed his lips, lowered his head in a depressed manner, and continued to do his homework.
[Before high school, I thought that the people’s states changed in points.]
[For example, my hearing decreased significantly one day. It never returned to its original state.]
[For example, the chubby child who chased me when I was a child suddenly broke his leg one day. The doctor said that even if he was cured, there would be side-effects, and his leg would never be the same.]
On the screen, the grown-up chubby boy was holding his bandaged leg and crying loudly while surrounded by his family.
[It is amazing. How could I have such an idea?]
[One day in high school, I suddenly realized that life actually changes linearly.]
[For example, my hearing didn’t decline to a certain level overnight and then stopped moving. It continued to weaken secretly and silently.]
[It is like a thief who keeps taking away things that belong to me without me noticing.]
Xie Jia sat in the middle and back rows of the high school classroom.
He could see his teacher’s mouth moving constantly, but in his ears, he could only hear a buzzing noise mixed with one or two words.
He grabbed his hair anxiously. He could only look harder at the shape of the teacher’s mouth.
Suddenly, his deskmate grabbed his hand.
He was startled and turned his head. He heard his deskmate say, “…Do you remember?”
Since it was class, his deskmate kept his voice very low.
Xie Jia leaned over and asked, “What?”
The deskmate realized that Xie Jia didn’t hear clearly, so he leaned toward Xie Jia’s ear and said, “I said, did you remember the formula on the PPT page just now?”
Xie Jia nodded repeatedly.
As long as it wasn’t what the teacher said verbally, he would immediately memorize other knowledge points!
The deskmate whispered, “As expected of you!”
The next second, the teacher shouted, “Why are you whistling? Do you think it is music class? Stand up!”
His deskmate: “……”
The class laughed.
Xie Jia didn’t hear the conversation clearly for a second or two. He just laughed stupidly along with the whole class.
The teacher said, “Xie Jia, are you still laughing? Stand up too!”
Xie Jia: “……”
[Well, I heard this clearly.]
In the theater, the audience immediately laughed.
[Life is a linear change.]
[For example, it wasn’t like Chubby’s leg would no longer be as good as before. After he recovered, he practiced hard, and his leg gradually improved. He was able to play football after half a year.]
[He took what belonged to him and snatched it back from the thief.]
On the playground, Chubby ran around in circles and laughed. “Hahaha, Xie Jia, did you see it? Did you see it?”
“There is no way I will never be able to play football again in my life!”
Xie Jia sat on the edge of the playground with his knees bent.
Chubby had grown up with him since childhood and knew he had bad ears, so he spoke very loudly.
He felt so good running that he collapsed next to Xie Jia, his chest heaving as he looked at the sky with a smile.
Xie Jia’s eyes fell on Chubby’s legs.
He was envious. “It would be good if my ears could be trained back like your legs.”
“Why can’t it? Just practice and see?”
“Isn’t it practice when I listen to you talking? If it was useful, I wouldn’t be less and less able to hear clearly.”
Chubby suddenly sat up and frowned. “Your ears are getting worse?”
Xie Jia sighed. “I feel so.”
“Do you want to go to the hospital?”
Xie Jia hesitated. “…Is it useful to go to the hospital?”
“The hospital has an otolaryngology department for a reason! There must be something wrong with your ears. You should tell your parents about it!”
Xie Jia’s expression was a bit confused. “I always feel that it is a genetic problem. My mother said that my grandmother’s ears are also very bad.”
Chubby wondered, “How old is your grandmother? Isn’t it normal for elderly people to have bad ears? How old are you? In addition, didn’t your ears suddenly become bad after you had a fever in second grade of elementary school?”
Xie Jia stopped talking.
It seemed that he only started to think seriously about this issue now.
At this moment, the hearts of the offline and online viewers were in their throats.
It could be seen from the background of the plot that Xie Jia was born in an era before computers and mobile phones became popular.
When Xie Jia was in high school, most adults had mobile phones. But at that time, it was still very inconvenient to use phones to access the Internet.
The conditions of Xie Jia’s family weren’t good, and there was no computer at home.
Therefore, unless his parents paid attention to it, Xie Jia had no access to information at all.
Until Chubby reminded him, he didn’t realize that his hearing loss might be an illness that required him to go to the hospital.
It might not be possible to alleviate the condition, but it was necessary to stop the condition from further deterioration in time.
So—
Now that Xie Jia realized it himself, would his situation change?
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Thanks for the update
Thanks for the update!!
I’m so excited about reading this last short story, the stories they act are always so interesting I’m a bit upset that I can’t actually watch them orz
….to be honest I can feel his character so well, not as bad as his hearing problem but I used to have vision problem (quite common myopia) when I was in highschool I was having very sever problems with not being able to see the board clearly, and because of my roll number I was always sat at the back by the teacher. My father hated even the concept of glasses…he always used to say you aren’t trying hard enough to see. It wasn’t until almost the end of highschool when I literally cried in front of my parents because of how difficult it was to try to decipher what’s written far away, at school or otherwise, that when they realised how bad it is for me. I already cried reading the story when it was first told to Xao Xao but the details are making me nostalgic now