The Memories of Bee and Rose Garden
Chapter Courtesy: Wang Mei
To this day, Huo Cheng remembered that day when he was ten very clearly. After all, it was the day when he first saw Shen Wanying.
At that time, his father had decided to take him abroad. Before they left, he took him to visit a friend. While the grownups were chatting in the living room, he was sent to play in the garden.
It was there that he saw Shen Wanying reading under a rose vine.
He didn’t know how to describe the view at that time. He only felt that the little girl under the flowering vine looked very much like his mother’s oil painting. An ethereal scene that he couldn’t take his eyes away from.
The fragrance of flowers penetrated deeply into his heart. He wanted to get close to her but didn’t dare, so he just stood at the other end and looked at her. Then came a gust of wind, and the little girl’s hat was blown away.
The little red hat landed on a tree branch. The girl tried reaching for it but couldn’t, and after a few failed tries, she was almost in tears. Huo Cheng ran over to help her get it back. However, after he jumped several times, he found that he too couldn’t reach it.
“Who are you?” Shen Wanying looked at him curiously. Perhaps because she was distracted by his presence, losing her hat didn’t make her sad anymore.
He didn’t expect she would suddenly talk to him. With a somewhat shy voice, he replied, “My name is Huo Cheng. I came to visit with my father.”
She nodded. “Oh, I know! My mother told me. My name is Shen Wanying. Can you help me get my hat from that branch?”
“Sure.” Huo Cheng looked around for something he could use. “There’s a ladder over there. I’ll bring it here.”
Huo Cheng ran over and began mulling over how to move the big ladder by himself when Shen Wanying came to him and said, “I’ll move it with you.”
“No need, I can move it by myself.” Huo Cheng’s hand barely touched the ladder when he felt that something had pricked him. As he withdrew his hand, a wasp flew out of a hole on the ladder where he had placed his hand.
“What are you two doing?”
The adults seemed to have finished chatting at last. They all came to the garden.
Huo Cheng hid his hand behind him and said to his father, “Her hat has been blown onto the tree. I want to move the ladder there.”
Huo Tingxiao looked at the ladder, then laughed. “How can you two move this? Just ask us adults to get it for you.”
The hat was finally taken down by Shen Wanying’s father and she happily put it back on her head.
Seeing how happy his daughter was, Shen Qian persuaded Huo Tingxiao, “You don’t know when you’ll come back. It would be better to take a picture of the two children now.”
Huo Tingxiao looked at Huo Cheng. During this period, Huo Cheng had always been in a bad mood. It was rare to see him as cheerful as today. So, he readily agreed. “Ok.”
From Huo Cheng and Shen Wanying’s encounter that day in the rose garden, what remained was a single photo of them together.
After leaving the Shen family, Huo Tingxiao noticed Huo Cheng’s swollen finger. “What’s wrong with your hand?”
Huo Cheng: “A moment ago in the garden, I wasn’t careful and got stung by a wasp.”
Huo Tingxiao: “Then why didn’t you tell me? I’ll take you to the hospital first.”
♥
In the classroom, Shen Wanying asked in surprise. “Ten years old? Then were you all right?”
Huo Cheng: “It wasn’t much. Just a rash on my body from an allergic reaction.”
“Oh…” Shen Wanying nodded, “Well, you were stung by a wasp, wasn’t it very painful?”
“M-hm.”
“Was it more painful than an injection?”
“Mmm.” Huo Cheng looked at her, his eyes not betraying his thoughts. “The injection will hurt for a bit, but the wasp is poisonous. Its toxins will spread through your body, so you’re going to suffer from the pain for a much longer time, and it only gets worse.”