Author: Bai Yan
Source: Southwind Magazine, Issue 5, 2022
01
I moved into Shen Zhimian's apartment on a rainy day.
As he described it: he appeared at his door like an escape.
I was carrying two large suitcases of luggage and three crumbling cartons. The moment he opened the door, a glass vase in the cardboard box fell out and smashed into pieces.
He brought a broom and tried to help clean it, but I insisted on picking it up myself, like cleaning up my broken heart.
He was not reluctant, closed the door and played his guitar, and a song "Murong Xue" came out. I cried against the glass for an unknown amount of time.
At that time, I had just ended a 7-year relationship, and the whole person was depressed.
Fortunately, Shen Zhimian took me in. He said that rent, water and electricity, and internet bills are evenly shared, and natural gas is counted.
He bathed for a long time so that I wouldn't suffer losses.
Later, I learned that there would be such a bathing boy under the sky, twice a day, at least for an hour at a time. If it weren't for his particular seafood love, I would have suspected he was a beautiful male fish that sneaked ashore.
02
I don't know how others got through a long and painful period of lost love.
For me, it's like being in a cold winter at minus 30°C. I imagined myself as a hibernating animal, not eating or sleeping, not taking half a step out of the room.
I can only stay still so that the memories in my mind freeze into ice little by little.
After paying half a year's rent and water in one go, my only request for Shen Zhimian was that there was nothing to knock on the door. Don't knock on the door when something happens.
And what he asked of me was that I wasn't allowed to leave strands of hair in the bathroom.
After three months of living in peace, one night he suddenly cooked in the courtyard. To be precise, it's an outdoor barbecue.
Oysters, prawns, scallops, pine charcoal fire mixed with the aroma of cheese and minced garlic, enough to penetrate the soul through the sense of smell.
It was the first meal we ate after sharing the house.
He did not knock on the door as promised, but opened my window from the outside. Raising an eyebrow, I asked if I should add pepper to oysters.
I don't know how to describe that vivid face in my memory. His eyes were shining brightly, and his fingers were slender and beautiful, like a splendid plant. Vibrant and a little lonely and lonely.
After that meal, we got a little closer to each other than the average landlord and tenant.
But the catalyst that really made me familiar with Shen Zhimian was a girl with a Korean egg roll head. It is said that she volunteered to drive Shen Zhimian, who had drunk a little too much, home.
Two minutes before I got home, he suddenly sent me a WeChat message asking me to go out and pick him up. Just when I was still amazed at what medicine he was selling in the gourd, he came straight over to my shoulder and said to the girl in a twelve-point honest and frank tone, I already have a hostess in my house, I didn't lie to you.
At that time, I was probably a drama master, pretending to fiercely twist Shen Zhimian's ear and asking who this woman was. But the girl confessed first, and even said that the sister-in-law should not be misunderstood.
Then throw away the car keys, pedal high heels and disappear into the night.
I looked at the girl's back and lamented, in terms of figure, she simply had the style of Miss Hong Kong. I put my arm on Shen Zhimian's shoulder and asked him if he was a Tang monk.
Who knew that he coldly avoided it, said that he owed me a favor, turned around and went into the bathroom again.
Later, Shen Zhimian's so-called way of repaying was to introduce me to a job. Commuting is not far away, and the focus is on paying enough for me to continue the rent later.
I agreed almost without thinking about it. Until I went to the company to report, I learned that Shen Zhimian himself was my boss.
As I knocked on the glass door of his office with a large stack of papers, he took a sip of coffee. Wearing a suit, it is really worthy of the four words of Fengshen Handsome.
I remembered that when we met at school, he was still a third-year younger brother of the younger me, playing basketball in general, but speaking English fluently.
Even my master's supervisor praised him as something to be made. But less than a year later, he offered to take a leave of absence for health reasons, and no one knew where he had gone.
Until I came to Hangzhou, every day sent a lot of friends to eat and stroll, he just liked the message, I learned that he had long settled in Hangzhou.
At that time, I was deeply trapped in the lost and regained love, and I was only a friend of praise with him, and even if I chatted, I never mentioned the events of that year again.
Thinking of my cousin C's high-achieving students, who were actually reduced to being subordinates to my students, I felt some indescribable frustration in my heart.
He can also see a few points, and deliberately ridiculed at lunch, if I had not rejected the olive branch of a Fortune 500 company, I would have made tens of millions of dollars now. Unfortunately, you are too emotional.
I laughed, you mean to talk about love brain.
After all, the matter of me chasing Cheng Rui in the first place had already made a lot of noise.
Even my mentor advised me bitterly that I should give up a great future for a love.
But they didn't understand. For me, Cheng Rui is not only a youthful love, but also a long chase for 7 years.
Cheng Rui and I have been neighbors since childhood, and in the years when my parents quarreled and beat each other at both ends for three days, and the chickens flew and the dogs jumped, I only had one friend in my life, Cheng Rui.
I was afraid that in the sleepless night, he was standing in the corridor outside the window and chattering with me.
After I finished my evening self-study, I came home late at night when I couldn't even eat a mouthful of hot rice, and he also came to see me with burnt cakes and soy milk.
In the years of undependable youth, Cheng Rui was the only one who would protect me behind me. In the eyes of others, he may just be a good looking partner.
But for me, it was the only god I could trust in my young and lonely years.
Before I graduated from college, I went to his company for an internship.
From not being able to read the report, to staying up all night for the loss of millions of dollars in the quarter. I spent about two years reworking my management course, just to one day stand by his side and get a word from him that I'm glad I had you.
Later, I finally did it. Almost all of the 12 branches across the country have my participation in the layout, more than 5,000 online meetings every year, and I once wrote a summary report to the onset of tenosynovitis.
Then, everyone thought we were about to get our license, but he spent the night with another girl.
The female star who was popular with capital officially announced their love the next day. Everyone came to me and asked me what was wrong, and I realized that I was so stupid.
All the while I moved out of the house he rented for me, Cheng Rui only called me once.
After I hung up in frustration, he never called again. Seven years in the blink of an eye is like dust. I knew that such a long youth and love were not worth mentioning in his heart.
03
This is my story. Perhaps in the mouth of Cheng Rui and his little girlfriend, there is another version.
I don't know which small clerk commented on the female star's Weibo, and there used to be a female colleague named Fang Xihe who often rubbed the boss's car, Yunyun.
There has always been no shortage of screenwriters in the online world, and in the blink of an eye, I have spread everywhere as a small composition that mixes the vicious little three between them.
I thought that I would never intersect with Cheng Rui again, but I didn't expect that half a year later, I still appeared in his office.
He pulled down the hot search in front of me, promising to smooth out the whole thing and not bother me again. But he never said a word of apology.
I almost forgot how to get out of his office, only that I walked out of the office building in a daze. Just in a large haze of tears I saw a familiar figure.
I don't know how long he stood, only that he walked toward me in the sunlight. His broad chest was like an impregnable fortress.
That was the first time I had slept so quietly and soundly after separating from Cheng Rui.
Shen Zhimian parked the car by the lake on Xiafei Road, and the pear blossoms made people want to cry.
He gently smoothed the broken hair on the side of my ear for me and whispered, It's all right.
My nose soured and I cried bitterly.
We were walking along the lake that night, and I learned that he had premeditated to invite me to share the rent.
He said that I had followed Cheng Rui's footsteps with a moth to put out the fire, but I never thought that there was someone behind me, and I was also touched by my feelings.
A gust of wind blew through, and the white petals slowly fell.
He reached out his hand to whisk it for me, reminding me of many years ago, he held the basketball and chased after me and said, Sister, add a WeChat.
At this moment, the moon is hazy. He said it would be better to start all over again.
About the Author:
Author: Bai Yan. The original article was published in the South Wind Magazine, No. 5, 2022.
"South Wind"
Issue 5, 2022
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