Chapter 56: Meeting
"Bottoms up!" Everyone raised their glasses. Xue Yiyang, Liu Rui, Lin Zouwen, Wang Weiwei, Lin Luoran, and the boys and girls from their circle in Class Seven and Class Five were all there, in high spirits, with a faint touch of melancholy.
Xue Yiyang laughed. "Let me tell you, when we were kids, Su Can was the biggest closet troublemaker of us all. The first time we smoked was after we graduated from elementary school, up on the rooftop. He'd stolen a pack of cigarettes from his dad. Liu Rui and I both learned to smoke, but he actually quit. Even now, thinking about it makes me grit my teeth at that bastard!"
Liu Rui made sure to spill something too. "There was another time. Back then, we all lived in an old apartment building. Hey, you probably don't know this, but every household used to have a honeycomb coal stove outside its door, with a kettle on top to boil water, winter and summer alike. After we got our New Year's money, Su Can took us to buy fireworks and sky rockets. Then we went along taking people's kettles off their coal stoves and sticking the rockets into the honeycomb coal. The most evil part was that he even knocked on their doors before leaving. They opened their doors in confusion to find fire shooting all over the hallway."
Everyone burst out laughing. Lin Zouwen curled up on the sofa and couldn't stop laughing, while Wang Weiwei shook his head, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. Several of the girls, Lin Luoran included, were clutching their stomachs too.
They had never experienced that sort of life as ordinary workers' children in a courtyard apartment block. They simply found a childhood like that very novel compared