A Thousand Thoughts

Tang Cuo, who was sitting next to him, stood up.
“Firstly, I would like to correct a mistake made by the teacher.” Tang Cuo stood there quietly, speaking in a measured tone.

He Zhong was momentarily stunned and forgot to use his special move as he looked up at Tang Cuo.

The teacher on stage was also stunned.
“Ah, please speak, student.”

Since Tang Cuo stood up, some girls had secretly taken photos.
His shocking remark attracted many classmates’ astonished glances.
Tang Cuo was not used to such inquisitive and voyeuristic eyes.
He squeezed his palms nervously, and his heartbeat gradually became uncontrollable.
For a moment, he wanted to sit back down, but the black words on the screen were like bright red blood pouring into his eyes, and in that sea of red, he saw her again.

“She didn’t commit suicide.
She was washed away by the river while trying to save her child.”

This sentence is like a bomb, exploding into countless scattered words that filled the classroom after a moment of silence.
The teacher was obviously confused.
He pushed up his slipping glasses and stuttered, “Save, save the child?”

Tang nodded seriously at her, “Yes, at the time his child fell into the river, she went down to save him, and finally she lifted the child onto the shore, but she was washed away.
She was not weak, and she was not bad.”

The teacher took two steps forward and still hadn’t come back to his senses from this conversation.
“How do you know it was like this?”

He Zhong had been staring blankly at the people around him, so he saw Tang Cuo’s jaw suddenly tighten and then slump.

“Because I am that child, and she is my mother.”

At that moment, in the full classroom of over two hundred people, no one was looking at their phones.
Even the classmates who were holding up their phones to record or take pictures were shocked and turned to look at Tang Cuo, who was standing in the third to last row.
Sitting in the back of the classroom, with just a slight downward glance, Tang Cuo could easily see the faces and eyes of those who were looking at him.
After finishing his last sentence, he ignored those clear eyes and sat down by himself.
He Zhong swallowed his saliva, came back to his senses, and called out to him, “Cuo Cuo ..”

Tang Cuo continued to look down at the desk, and the formulaic characters in the book made him dizzy.
His palms were even more sweaty, and he didn’t notice He Zhong holding his hand and calling his name repeatedly.

He stood up and spoke for her, but twisted the truth.

She saved his child, but at first she lied to him and told him that it was safe to swim there, and she even encouraged him to swim in the middle of the river.
Perhaps out of guilt, when she saw him struggling in the water, she eventually jumped in herself.

Also, Tang Cuo continued to silently narrate in his mind that after she rescued her child, someone had already seen her fall into the water and come to rescue her, and she had already grabbed the rope that was thrown to her.
However, after being pulled a little bit, she saw the people on the shore, including the person she had saved.

Tang Cuo could never forget the look in her eyes.
Because after that look, she let go of the rope and drifted away with the current, with Tang Cuo’s shouts and gaze following her.

So, in fact, she had committed suicide—after seeing him, she gave up her own life.

In recent days, whenever Tang Xu had free time, he would go to the library to look up some materials on psychology, but as an amateur, he didn’t catch any main points in the past two days.
This day, Tang Xu had been in the library for an afternoon, and around 5:30, he put back the books he had read and returned to the office.
Aromatic control class was on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Tang Xu hadn’t seen Tang Cuo on those two days.
As he approached the office, Tang Xu found that his cigarette case was empty again, so he turned around and went to the office where Tang Cuo’s homeroom teacher was located.

After going in, Tang Xu found that Teacher Wang was on the phone, seemingly discussing some student’s problem with a serious expression on his face.
Tang Xu took out a half-box of cigarettes from the table, picked up a cigarette and threw it back, picked up the lighter, and sat on a nearby stool, waiting.
He was about to light the cigarette when he heard Teacher Wang say, “But Tang Cuo is really good; he has no problems.”

The action of lighting the cigarette suddenly stopped, and his mind couldn’t keep up as he looked at Teacher Wang, who had hung up the phone and asked, “What’s wrong with Tang Cuo?”

Teacher Wang’s forehead was already sweating.
“Oh, by the way, you are relatives.
Come here quickly.
Tang Cuo spoke up in the elective psychology class this afternoon, and it’s one of the top ten topics on the school forum.
The school leaders saw it and were afraid of any emotional fluctuations he might have, so they asked me to talk to him.”

When Tang Xu heard the words “psychology class,” he was already not very relaxed.
He didn’t know that Tang Cuo had taken psychology as an elective course.

He leaned in front of the computer, watching the post with increasing replies; the content was very detailed, and there was even a complete video, enough to let everyone know the beginning and end of the storm that afternoon.

After reading the last sentence of the post, the cigarette in his hand had already shattered into a lump.

He closed his eyes tightly.
Even he had always thought that Tang Cuo’s mother had only committed suicide because she couldn’t bear that kind of life.

Teacher Wang was already calling Tang Cuo, but he couldn’t get through.
Tang Xu turned around, took the contact sheet, and said, “I’ll go find him.”

After speaking, he tightly pursed his lips and wanted to leave.

“Hey, wait a minute.” Teacher Wang stopped him and frowned, “Isn’t Tang Cuo your relative? Why would you…”

Tang Xu paused, but didn’t turn back.
“I went to teach in a rural area at that time, and I was the one who brought him out.”
Teacher Wang had not expected this and was at a loss for words.
“You…”

A child cannot be taken away just like that; there are so many responsibilities to be borne.
In his opinion, Tang Xu was not a kind-hearted gentleman, so what kind of situation could have made him take a child away?