The third alley to the east of the vegetable market is where Cheng Ye is repairing his car. His hands were full of oil and his mouth was empty. The neighbors called him a bastard and stuffed him with fruit.
Two streets away, Shen Yu was cooking there. Dad was sick and mom ran away. He didn't say a word and swallowed everything by himself.
The two of them sat at the front and back tables at school, and neither of them liked the other.
Until one day when taking out the trash, Shen Yu suddenly spoke up and pointed out that the direction of the last question in Cheng Ye's physics exam was reversed. Only then did Cheng Ye realize that Shen Yu, who never raised his head to look at anyone, had been looking at his paper.
Starting with a bicycle chain, a bowl of noodles, and a late-night tutoring session, the two teenagers slowly approached each other at the alleyway after school. Cheng Ye left the scrap metal from the car repair shop to Shen Yu to sell for money. Shen Yu put hot rice on the window sill of Cheng Ye's house while he stayed up late to make up for classes.
But Shen Yu's father's condition suddenly worsened, and the surgery fee was like a wall in front of him. Cheng Ye decided to sell the car repair shop to raise money, but Shen Yu disappeared the night before the operation.
Cheng Ye found him at the scrapyard in the early morning. Shen Yu squatted on the ground to pick up paper shells, raised his head and said, "I can't have your shop."
Cheng Ye knelt down, took the paper shell from his hand, and said, "The shop is mine, and you are mine. It's all the same."
Amid the fireworks in the market, two teenagers with nothing grew roots in the mud.
Intention: Be strong and unyielding, live hard.