The silence stood on the weighing scale, staring at the numbers. The pointer stubbornly stopped at 82.5 kg, which was a glaring echo of the physical examination report three months ago. He tore off his shirt. In the mirror, the man's abdomen looked like crumpled white paper, and the fat around his waist was pale in the morning light.
"It can't go on like this." He whispered in the mirror and grabbed the dusty sports bracelet on the porch.
On the first day of morning running, the air smelled of rust. Lin Mo's sneakers screeched on the asphalt road, and his throat was like a burning cotton. When he turned the third corner, he had to hold the trash can for breath, and his stomach was filled with the smell of instant noodles that he had worked overtime last night.
"Young man, adjust your breathing." A hoarse voice came from behind. The old man in faded Chinese tunic suit is walking backwards, and his silvery white hair stands up in the morning breeze. "Just like the roots of trees absorb dew, they will sink to the abdomen."
The next day, Lin Mo began to struggle in the alarm clock at 5: 30. The road map on the sports App gradually extends from 1 km to 3 km and then to 5 km. The stabbing pain in the knee turned to dull pain, and the sweat on the T-shirt changed from dark gray halo to ink.
On the morning of the seventh day, the rainstorm suddenly came. Lin Mo hesitated on the windowsill, and raindrops meandered into a river on the glass. The screen of the mobile phone lights up, and it is the voice from the old man: "Real runners will not be trapped by the weather."
He rushed into the rain curtain and the spray exploded under his feet. The rain flowed into his eyes along the tip of his hair, and the salty taste reminded him of himself chasing girls in the rain at the age of twenty. Turning a familiar street corner, he saw the old man standing under the street lamp with an umbrella, and the hem of the tunic suit was rattled by the wind.
"Now do you know why you run backwards?" The old man's voice was mixed with the sound of rain. "Because there are some scenery, you can only find it when you look back."
Lin Mo suddenly understood that those morning running hours cursed by him had already unconsciously reshaped his breathing rhythm. When he crossed the milestone of the eighth kilometer, his mobile phone shook-the report of physical examination showed that triglyceride decreased by 27%.
When the rain stopped, the horizon split a Phnom Penh. Lin Mo stood under the cherry trees in the park, feeling the powerful beating in her chest. Petals fall on wet shoulders, like silent awards from spring. He knows that the real change is never the increase or decrease of numbers, but the sudden discovery one morning that he is no longer afraid to start.