The most surprising thing was finding the bottle of handmade plastic stars from her house in the drawer!
How did Lu Xingzhi bring it here without her knowing was a mystery for another day.
Underneath the bottle was a few photographs. They were laid face down, so Jiang Yao could not see what they were. However, from the looks of it, they were recently developed, not longer than a couple of years.
Jiang Yao toyed around with the bottle filled with plastic stars and tried to imagine Lu Xingzhi’s reasoning for bringing something boring like this from her schooling days over to the platoon before checking out the photographs.
It was a thick stack of photographs. The main character was a girl, her life recorded in these photographs.
Jiang Yao lightly caressed the photographs with her fingers. She looked at the familiar face staring back at her and suddenly felt teary-eyed, the girl was her.
Starting from the first picture when she was five years old until the picture she took for remembrance during her high-school graduation ceremony, sometimes it was her alone, some other times it was with her parents, her two brothers and her friends. The only constant was her; she was in each one of the photographs.
These were not the old pictures found in the Jiang family. Lu Xingzhi must have obtained the negatives from the Jiang family and developed them again.
Growing up, the Jiang family was not financially sound, but Mr. and Mrs. Jiang were famous in the village for spoiling their child.
At that time, plenty of children did not have enough to eat, only the Jiang family would bring their children on a vacation to the city every year and take pictures.
Her first picture taken was when she was five years old. The girl in the photograph had two braids on her head, clipped on with a now-obsolete purple-red flower hair pin. She looked a little uncertain, maybe it was her first photograph, and stood still without any pose. Even then, she looked adorable.
There was a handwritten note behind the photograph, obviously written by Lu Xingzhi.
Darling’s first photograph, five years old, after taking this photograph she hugged Mother-in-Law and cried, she was then coaxed with a packet of candies.
Jiang Yao remembered this incident, but not from her own memories, instead it was told by her family and she was relentlessly teased by her brothers because of the story behind the photograph.
After that was a picture of her at six years old, seven years old, eight years old, and all the way till nine years old, there was another handwritten note behind the photograph.
Her first performance on stage, vain since young, her lipstick was the reddest among all, Mother-in-Law said that she wanted her teacher to put on prettier make up for her.
In the photograph, a little girl with a pink princess dress was wearing a pair of white shoes embroidered with a flower pattern. She curtsied and smiled charmingly.
She remembered this vividly.
She also remembered her different little white shoes. Back then, the teacher asked everyone to only wear white canvas shoes on stage. Everyone in class bought the same type, except for Jiang Yao. She had her eyes set on a pair of embroidered shoes when her mother brought her out shopping.
In hindsight, her fashion sense back then was to be desired, but fortunately she was prettier than the rest of the girls in her class. Even with the over-the-top make-up, she still thought that she was the prettiest girl in her class.