Exclusive Memory Chapter 4 Part 6

 At night, I get up to go to the bathroom. Walking by the balcony, I saw the snowflakes drifting bigger and bigger outside, covering the treetops with a thin layer of white.

Just now I was so encouraged by them, I really had a little, a little...

I went back to bed and went through the events of the past month or so in my mind like a movie, so I couldn't fall asleep even more.

I pulled out my phone from under the pillow and checked the time.

Then I couldn't help but open the short message and typed the three words "Teacher Mu"(in chinese characters it's 3 words). But what to type next, I am stumped. 

I thought about it, and deleted the three words of Teacher Mu and replaced them with "you".

What should be written after "you"?

I deleted it again.

"Thank you for inviting me to dinner."

After I typed these seven characters, I read them again and again.

In the end, "you" was replaced with "you" (informal to formal), and after confirming that the whole sentence was neither ambiguous nor abrupt, it was sent out. It was exactly one o'clock in the morning.

Surprisingly, after only a minute or two, he replied to me.

Three concise words - "You're welcome."

It turned out that he didn't sleep either.

I wrote again: "I still want you to buy me a drink of vodka."

He replied faster this time than before: "No problem."

I really want to continue this topic, but I am afraid that he is doing something, or he is going to rest, or...or I should stop.

So, I turned off the phone, closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

I waited restlessly for my Russian class on Monday night.

Before class, I folded the scarf squarely, packed it in a paper bag, and took it to the classroom.

He came in on time and it changed into a dark gray scarf around his neck.

This lesson is a lecture text. Before translating, Mu Chenghe read the text sample.

As he read, he slowly walked off the podium with his book in hand.

When he read Russian, his voice would be slightly lower than usual, very flat, not the kind of cadenced reciting voice. Among them, the small vibrato and tongue-curling sounds are pronounced very smoothly, which is very popular, and it is no wonder that he used to have such high demands on me.

I used to hear people say that Russian and German are very similar, but they are not as soft and melodious as French.

However, in my opinion, these two languages ​​are very suitable for men to speak. When the guttural sound rubs, it makes people feel a mellow sense of stability.

I closed my eyes and almost indulged in this exotic language.

In the first class, he said that he had stayed in Russia for seven or eight years. But does it take that long to study abroad?

He put the textbook in his left hand and put his right hand in his trouser pocket. He opened and closed his thin lips slightly as he read the text and paced slowly. When he came to my desk, he stretched out his right hand, with five fingers curled up, gently tapped my desk, and then continued to walk to the back.

Only now did I see that Bai Lin and the others had already changed the page, but I was the only one who was still staring at the front, embarrassed, and hurriedly turned the page.

On Tuesday afternoon, we had no classes.

It just so happened that Senior Brother Li of Bai Lin had his birthday and invited us to eat hot pot at a famous hot pot restaurant in the entrance of the school department. Senior brother is good to Bai Lin, but Bai Lin has always been like a green bean, and oil and salt do not enter.

If I hadn't come today, Bai Lin definitely wouldn't have come. It can be seen from this that although I am a light bulb, I am a good light bulb that emits heat and illuminates the lives of others.

Hot pot restaurants are very lively, and especially in this kind of icy and snowy weather, eating hot pot is the most pleasant thing.

After a full meal, their stomachs bulged, and the three of them were ready to return to the campus for a stroll in the cold wind like a knife cut in the night.

When I got to the school gate, it turned out that our school also had a program of the Russian Aviation Month from last time. At the gate of the most prosperous Dongdaemun(East Gate), there is a huge red sign saying "Aeronautical experts are warmly welcome to visit our school for academic guidance." Then they translate it in English and Russian respectively.

There is a bulletin board at the east gate, on which you can often see various academic news.

At this moment, inside the glass column, there is a huge lecture notice.

"Aviation Month Academic Exchange: On the Optimization Design of Dynamic Aeroelasticity of T-Tail"

Then below, there is a line of words.

"Lecturer: Mu Chenghe"

"Mu Chenghe?" We looked at each other, exclaimed in unison, and then lay down on the glass together, trying to see something.

"You also know Teacher Mu?" Senior Brother Li, who studied physics, interjected and asked.

"The Russian teacher who gave us a substitute class is also called this." Bai Lin regained her sanity a little earlier than me, and said to Senior Brother Li.

"Oh. That's a coincidence, not a single word is wrong?"

"Yes." I nod.

I remember when he introduced himself and wrote his name on the board, I can't remember it wrong.

"Could it be that there are two teachers with the same name and surname in our school?" Senior Brother Li held down his thick spectacle lenses with high magnification.

"He's so tall," Bai Lin gestured, "he looks like..."

When describing her appearance, Bai Lin frowned and got stuck, wondering if she was looking for the idiom I said to describe a good-looking smile in her own dictionary.

"What does he look like?" Senior Brother Li also asked curiously.

Bai Lin said impatiently: "Anyway, he is taller than you, more handsome than you, and better looking than you." 

Senior Brother Li's heart was probably blocked, and he was also bloodied by the injury.

I said, "Our teacher said he had stayed in Russia for many years."

Brother Li immediately said: "Yes, Professor Mu stayed at Moscow University for seven years to study."

Reluctantly, I asked again: "Double eye-lids? White skin? The corners of the mouth turn up when he smiles? Does he drive a CR-V?"

Brother Li said firmly: "We are describing the same person. He is a professor at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics in our school."

Hearing this conclusion, I was a little petrified.

It's really Mu Chenghe.

How can it be?!

"Isn't it?" Bai Lin wailed, but her eyes were shining.

Then, Senior Brother Li described to us the half of Teacher Mu Chenghe's life, which was different from ordinary people.

"You don't know that he is quite normal. It is said that many newspapers have reported it before, but he has kept a low profile these years, and few people know him."

"I used to read a report that said he had a high IQ. At the age of fifteen, he finished high school, probably because of the restrictions of the domestic education system, he went to Moscow University to study fluid mechanics, and at the age of twenty-one he published a paper on hypersound and won the Zhukovsky Prize, one of Russia's most accomplished physics awards. He got his Ph.D. in physics at the age of twenty-three. Then he came to our school, and after two years he returned to Russia for a while, as the Tupolev Institute invited him to join.”

Wait, I have an impression of this Tupolev four words, so I asked: "Is it the Russian institute that designs aircraft?"

"Yes," Senior Brother Li said, "the world's top transport aircraft research institute."

"What can fluid mechanics have to do with airplanes?" Bai Lin asked with a blink in her eyes.

"Aerodynamics is an important branch of fluid mechanics. In the beginning, humans sent airplanes to the sky by studying aerodynamics. This is the specialization direction of Teacher Mu." Senior Brother Li said with a look of admiration, "He will talk about it tomorrow. This T-tail is an important piece of the puzzle in aeronautical design."

"And then?" I asked.

"He came back again this year, and even made an impression as the professor."

"Is it really...professor?" I trembled and asked carefully.

"Yes." Senior Brother Li nodded.

There were a few things in this one that I changed a bit so that it would make more sense in English but I kept it as close to the original as possible.

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