Chapter 40: Metamorphosis

Tan Mo rewashed and came out, already changed his clothes, the hairs on his head were gone, and he was back to his usual cold and delicate teenage appearance.

Qiao Lan looked at Tan Mo's neat and tidy hair, and was a little disappointed for a moment.

That aside, Qiao Lan has recently been reading a book about Asperger's. In the book, it is said that this kind of symptom cannot be cured and will never be cured, but there are other ways to make people with Asperger's closer to normal people, and gradually understand other people's facial expressions or body movements.

If you think of this disease as a disease that prevents you from communicating with others, it is no doubt a very heavy thought, but if you think of it differently, as a lesson in communicating with others, as a language that you have never encountered before, it is not too difficult to understand it that way.

I don't understand it because I haven't been exposed to it, but if I take my time to learn it, I might be able to communicate properly.

Tan Mo doesn't know what Qiao Lan is going to teach him, sitting obediently at the table, but in fact his mind is in turmoil.

Because Qiao Lan had left her cell phone on the table when she left the house, Tan Mo caught a glimpse of the big AS letters on the book Qiao Lan was reading.

Then the whole thing froze in place.

He didn't know that Qiao Lan already knew that he was an AS patient, and he didn't want Qiao Lan to know, just as he didn't want Qiao Lan to see his weird legs and embarrassing scars.

But now I realized that Qiao Lan already knew about it, not only did she know it, but she also knew about it secretly behind her back.

When did she know? How did she know? What did she think when she found out? Will she think she's weird? Will she think she's a pain in the ass ......

Qiao Lan hadn't been out for more than a minute, and Tan Mo had already had a lot of thoughts running through his head.

After a while Qiao Lan found a mirror from somewhere, then moved a chair to sit next to Tan Mo, her arm rubbing his arm from time to time, unlike the usual school uniform when sitting at the same table, the house was warm, Tan Mo could feel Qiao Lan's warm skin.

Much warmer than yourself.

Qiao Lan placed the mirror in front of Tan Mo, "Okay, let's start with the most basic, which is to laugh, there are many kinds of laughs, smile, laugh, bitter laugh, cold laugh... So many, so many, let's just learn the simplest ones, like the most basic smile, look at me!"

Tan Mo turned his head.

Ah, so close.

"No matter what kind of smile, generally are the corners of the lips upward, some smile upward arc a little larger, some of it a little smaller. Smile is everyone do commonly used expression, simple understanding is a slight smile, slightly, understand, slightly means that the arc of the smile is not big, so the arc of the upturned corners of the mouth is not very big, that is, I'm now this look."

Qiao Lan looked at him with a smile on her face and pointed to the corner of her lips, "The corner of the lips will rise, usually revealing the teeth, and then the eyes will squint a little bit, and the whole facial arc is upward", Qiao Lan also used her hands to indicate an upward movement.

"If the five features of a person's face are like this, then he is smiling one hundred percent of the time, and generally everyone is in a good mood when they are smiling, and a smile makes a person more confident and better looking, and everyone who sees the other person with a smile on their face will be in a good mood along with it."

Tan Mo averts his eyes from Qiao Lan's near face, somewhat unnaturally.

He also thinks a person looks better when they smile.

Like Qiao Lan now, Tan Mo thinks she looks really good at the moment.

And he seemed to actually sense emotions, and the moment itself was indeed a good one.

"Then let's learn to smile first, okay", Qiao Lan placed the mirror in front of Tan Mo, herself still maintaining her facial expression, "like me, with the corners of your lips raised..."

Tan Mo finally realized what Qiao Lan was looking for in the mirror.

He moved his stiff facial muscles and turned his head to look at Qiao Lan, feeling that he had already imprinted Qiao Lan's face in his heart, but when he did it, it was far from simple.

Normal people, there is no need to learn these, what is the feeling in the heart, eyes and mouth, etc., will spontaneously make the corresponding changes, but for Tan Mo, the feeling in the heart and the facial expression seems to be a different pivot, he needs to send out a secondary command to control his five senses to make the corresponding changes.

Not from the heart, but imitation.

As Qiao Lan said at the beginning, analogize the process to learning a new foreign language.

Remembering the facial expression that corresponds to an emotion is like remembering a new word, but rethinking it and then figuring out how to show it, i.e., forming the new word into a sentence.

Tan Mo thinks back to when he was a kid taking pictures together at school and the cameraman yelled at him to smile and smile, but he didn't know what a smile was.

If only the photographer had told him exactly what to do when he smiled, as Qiao Lan did, he might have been able to leave a smile on his face during his childhood.

The corners of your lips should be upturned and your eyes should be slightly narrowed a little...

Qiao Lan sits next to him, cocking her head and looking at him intently.

Tan Mo did a serious job but had never studied like this before so it was always tough at first, the corners of his lips lifted but they were one high and one low, not like a smile more like a sneer, his eyes narrowed more like a purposeful scowl than a smiling eye.

"Hmm... Not quite," Qiao Lan said, leaning forward a little and reaching out to suddenly land a finger on Tan Mo's lips, whose quirky grin froze on his face as he mechanically turned his head to face her.

Qiao Lan took a closer look, lifting his left hand on Tan Mo's chin, his right hand pointed to the right corner of his lips, "A little more up here, yes just like that, don't be nervous, don't be afraid to show your teeth, our Momo's teeth are so beautiful... Huh, is that orange flavored toothpaste?"

Tan Mo felt where Qiao Lan's warm fingers fell on her cheeks, so nervous that she didn't even know what expression to make, and when she heard Qiao Lan say this she subconsciously said, "Orange."

"I like orange flavor too," Qiao Lan smiled, "Let's squeeze orange juice to drink later, okay."

Tan Mo's eyes curved up slightly, and she busied herself by saying, "Good."

"Don't move, don't move," Qiao Lan suddenly said sharply, "Just keep it that way," Qiao Lan hurriedly pulled out her cell phone.

Tan Mo smile is always a little weird, but just now that moment, his smiling eyes curved, the upward arc of the corners of his lips is extraordinarily good-looking, because he has never laughed and make people feel incomparably cold senses, but also at this moment under the smile, slowly dissolve.

Facing the sunlight, Qiao Lan recorded this moment of Tan Mo.

Sunshine, teenagers, smiles.

Qiao Lan hands her cell phone to Tan Mo, "Isn't it nice to smile."

Tan Mo took the phone and looked at herself on it, raising her head to glance at Qiao Lan.

It does look good when you smile.

But what he wanted was Qiao Lan.

She has the best smile.

Uncle Chen came in from outside and was surprised to see this photo for a long time, and after he was surprised, he asked Qiao Lan to send the photo to him.

Qiao Lan sent a copy of the photo to Uncle Chen, another to Tan Mo, and then stared at it for a long time.

If you look so good, you should smile more, smile better, often smile everyone will like him more, there will be more friends more understanding people close to him.

Every day after that, Qiao Lan and Tan Mo learned a new lesson about recognizing facial expressions.

Start recognizing it first, then slowly learn to imitate it.

Qiao Lan was reading a book and saw that it recommended a software that had the same actor who played Harry Potter, showing specific facial expressions, body language and speech characteristics related to emotional feelings, and to make it simpler to understand the feelings, small events were written for each of them.

For example, if you expect to get a gift from your parents on your birthday, but your parents forget your birthday, the feeling that arises is disappointment; for example, if you have not done anything wrong, but everyone thinks that you have done wrong, the feeling that arises is, by and large, aggression.

Qiao Lan asked Tan Mo to look at it first, and then asked him to guess what kind of feeling the other person was trying to express and what kind of emotion he was feeling when he made the expression, and then read the story accordingly after Tan Mo answered.

Tan Mo is really smart.

Relying on such a learning method, he quickly memorized quite a few facial expressions and body language corresponding to his feelings, and gradually understood some of the feelings he couldn't recognize before.

Although this method of identification is stereotypical for the average person and subject to many errors, it is certainly an improvement for Tan Mo.

The summer vacation is slowly passing by day by day. When the vacation was just over, Tan Mo felt that the summer vacation was too long, but now she feels that it is a bit too short.

A few days before the start of the school year, Auntie Chen finally came back from her hometown and froze for a long time when she saw Qiao Lan.

It is said that adolescent girls look different from day to day, and after not seeing Qiao Lan for several months, Auntie Chen did not recognize her.

Qiao Lan's skin color should have been very white, after all, Qiao's mother and Qiao Er Sister as well as Qiao Yuan were all very white, and Qiao Da Sister was probably malnourished and too tired every day, so her face looked a bit worse.

Qiao Lan after Tan Mo nearly a year of feeding, every day is a nutritionist specially matched with nutritious meals, as well as a variety of nutrients, the girl's previous lack of all be made up for, the complexion is no longer before the dark yellow low, finally regained the age of the young girl should have the fairness of the skin texture.

Once the skin was white, the originally outstanding features grew even more open, like a dusty pearl that had been wiped clean for a long time, exposing its original appearance.

What had been just a small girl who could be described as a clean-cut girl had steeply transformed into a beautiful girl that people couldn't take their eyes off of.

Exquisite features, excellent figure, long legs, walking on the street is definitely a stunning presence that causes people to turn around and stare.

Qiao Lan looks in the mirror, and finally believes in the book's portrayal of Qiao Lan's appearance, and how much a person's skin color really affects their face value.

Sitting in his wheelchair, Tan Mo listens to Auntie Chen praising Qiao Lan's beauty over and over again, and feels a little bit honored, as if the person Auntie Chen praises is not Qiao Lan, but him.

Finally, it was the last day of vacation. Qiao Lan packed up her things, returned to school early, packed up her dormitory, and went to report tomorrow morning.

That being said, I'm still a little nervous about how many classes I'll actually be assigned to and if I'll be able to be in the same class as Tan Mo.

Uncle Chen cheerfully sent Qiao Lan to school himself, and when he left, he left a message, and only then left, saying that he would let her rest assured.

Qiao Lan was in a hurry and didn't hear or react too well. When school officially started the next day, she came to the place where the display boards were and found the class division, and laughed softly when she saw that both her name and Tan Mo's name appeared in the eighteenth class.

So that's what reassuring her means.