Chapter 49: Turning Point The cry is the cry of surviving a disaster, the tears are the cry of humiliation...

After sending the friend request, Zhu Yingning stood in front of the screen for a while before logging out of QQ, turning off the computer, and leaving the Internet cafe.

Not long after, the car carrying Zhu Jixiang arrived in town. The door opened, and Zhu Jixiang stepped out, carrying a large bag. After just a few months, he still had the same face and familiar features, but his entire demeanor had changed dramatically. Zhu Yingning squinted for a moment before stepping forward to acknowledge him. "...Brother Xiang?"

He looked at her, his eyes sparkling, and greeted her with a spirited, "Sister!" Then he turned around twice in front of her, baring his teeth and asking expectantly, "Look at me. Do you think I'm different now?"

"It's so different." She smiled cooperatively and listed them one by one. "Your hair has grown longer and is trimmed more stylishly."

"That's it." He twirled his bangs and continued, "What else?"

"You've changed your clothes too. Did Xu Sirui's parents buy them for you? They're really nice."

"Yes, this outfit is from Nike. You know what Nike is, right?"

Hearing this, Zhu Yingning smiled awkwardly, and Zhu Jixiang snorted knowingly, "Sister, you're so unsophisticated! I don't blame you. I didn't know these things before I moved to the big city. But what you just said isn't the point. Look at me again, what's different about me?"

She held her chin and looked carefully again, musing: "Hmm... where?"

"Oh, how come you can't tell? The shoes! The shoes." He lifted his leg like a three-year-old with a Transformers toy, and just about shoved the shoes in her face. "This brand of sneakers is even better. They're called AJs, and they're very expensive. I heard Xu Sirui wears the same kind of shoes. The pair I'm wearing is said to cost eight thousand. I wonder how expensive Xu Sirui's pair is, but I think it's definitely more expensive than mine."

"Eight...thousand?!" She froze in place as if struck by lightning. Then she became nervous and her words stuttered. "So, are you just going to accept it? Such a valuable item, how can you..."

"Of course, why not?" Zhu Jixiang interrupted her, as if to say the sun rises in the east, and said as a matter of course, "You have no idea how rich Xu Sirui's family is. A mere 8,000 is nothing to them. They spend 8,000 just like we spend 80 cents... No, we don't even have the confidence to spend 80 cents like them. Sister, after going out, I finally understand what rich people are like. I also bought a few success books. They say 'To make money, you must first learn to spend money.' I think it makes sense. We are just limited by the thinking of the mountains. If you don't go out, you don't understand how people outside live. You have to make money to make money to make a lot of money."

"ah?"

Zhu Yingning was stunned by what he said, not only because what he said was very unfamiliar to her, but also because Zhu Jixiang was not such a talkative person before. Before participating in the variety show, he was the shy person who didn't even dare to ask the waiter to help him get a pack of tissues when he went to a restaurant. But now, his face was filled with an unfamiliar glow, and he talked about success in front of her.

Zhu Yingning suspected that she was sleepwalking.

Could it be that she had just dreamed that Xu Sirui hadn't left, was still sleeping soundly on the other side of the 38th parallel, and that at dawn the next day, he would roll over bleary-eyed and vent his grumpiness on the kang? Otherwise, why would her brother seem like someone had switched places after just a few months of not seeing him?

She didn't know whether this change was good or bad, but on the way home driving the ox cart, her mind kept uncontrollably thinking about the price of the shoes.

Eight thousand...

Eight thousand!

That’s a full eight thousand yuan.

Zhu Jixiang's words, "They spent eight thousand just like we spent eighty cents," failed to convince her, but she had a vague feeling that insisting on Zhu Jixiang returning the shoes would not only hurt their relationship but also put Xu Sirui's parents in a difficult position. However, she couldn't just sit back and watch such an expensive gift, so she quietly added another eight thousand yuan to the bill she owed Xu Sirui.

Now she owed him eight thousand three hundred yuan.

Zhu Yingning almost wanted to cry.

**

Zhu Jixiang's return caused quite a stir in the village. For a week, children from the same village and even from neighboring villages flocked to his home, asking him about the city and what fun things to do there—is Beijing big? Is it hot? Does Tiananmen Square in Beijing really hold the grand flag-raising ceremony they see on TV?

Zhu Jixiang, unlike his usual reserved demeanor, became talkative, like a storyteller who had traveled through time and space to the modern era. He even became the idol of the children. His classmates also began to approach him, asking him about Xu Sirui's family and whether they were wealthy.

"Rich, very rich! Richer than all of us combined." He always said this.

Whenever this happened, Zhu Yingning would quietly leave her seat and walk into the corridor. She felt that it was not good to talk about other people's families so openly, but she couldn't put her finger on what was wrong, so she could only instinctively avoid it.

I truly realized that the filming was over when the crew left.

The shed that had been built behind their house was removed, and the staff evacuated one after another. Only four holes in the ground made by bamboo poles proved that someone had been here.

She felt very lonely.

This loneliness is not due to the departure of a certain person, but to the end of an event. She has never felt so clearly that everything is over. The variety show with urban-rural exchange as a gimmick is like a heavy rainstorm at the intersection of late spring and early summer, sweeping through the mountains, and being evaporated completely by the sun.

On the day she sent the film crew to town to catch the bus, Liu Guifang slipped five yuan into her trouser pocket. Although she didn't understand why her mother had become so generous recently, for some ulterior motive, she still accepted the money in a very "disobedient" way.

It was not until the crew members squeezed into the van that was carrying them and disappeared into a dot in her sight that she turned and walked towards the Internet cafe and took out the five yuan from her trouser pocket.

"Have you been surfing the Internet often lately?" The always half-dead boss behind the counter looked up at her from his eternally unchanging Tetris.

Zhu Yingning smiled at him embarrassedly.

She came to the seat she had been to last time, logged into QQ, entered her account and password, and stared at her friend list carefully, but did not see any notification that her friend request was approved as she had hoped.

...Why?

Is Xu Sirui the kind of person who doesn’t go online for a week?

She wanted to find some excuse for him, but she only felt lost.

However, when she searched for his QQ number in the friend list again and clicked on his space, she was surprised to find that he had not updated any new posts or logs. So... did this mean that he might have just been busy and forgot to log in to QQ?

Zhu Yingning soon felt better. She quit QQ and wanted to leave immediately, but then she changed her mind and felt that it was a waste of money, so she sat back in her seat, opened Kingsoft Typing Master, called up the familiar Apple Save, and clumsily poked at the keyboard according to the typing posture she remembered.

Perhaps because she hadn't played in so long, she seemed quite unfamiliar with the game. Even at the lowest difficulty setting, the apples kept falling one after another onto the ground. It took her a long time to finally regain the feel she had when she and Xu Sirui played together.

She thought, next time she came to play, she should be a little better than this time, right?

But this idea was destined to be just a beautiful wish. She hadn't made any progress. How could she improve by practicing saving apples once a month? Those apples that she couldn't catch were like the friendships that she couldn't catch, leaking through her fingers, leaking all the way to the end of the world.

She finally had to admit that Xu Sirui had disappeared.

Like Zhu Juan, he left her world without a trace.

A month passed and he didn't accept her friend request.

Two months passed and he still hadn't responded.

Three months later, she reluctantly submitted a friend request to him again, but it still fell on deaf ears.

The network is very small, so small that a person can be accurately located with just a string of numbers. The network is also very large, so large that as long as the other party does not respond to you, you will never be able to find any trace of him.

I don’t know when it started, but Zhu Yingning stopped going to the Internet cafe.

**

Time flies, and when the winter vacation comes, Zhu Yingning's family starts to prepare for a big event - welcoming Zhu Dashan home.

Her father had been working away from home for the past few years, returning home only for a few days during the Lunar New Year, a rare opportunity for their family to reunite. This year, Zhu Dashan hadn't called to say when he would be home, but according to tradition, he would usually return by train on the 28th day of the 12th lunar month.

Liu Guifang had already prepared New Year's goods in advance, and Zhu Yingning also helped kill a pig raised by their family, intending to reward Zhu Dashan for his hard work over the past year.

But on the 28th, the whole family waited excitedly from dawn to dusk, but Zhu Dashan never showed up.

"Maybe they didn't buy tickets for the 28th train." Liu Guifang forced a smile to comfort the siblings, "Just wait a little longer... maybe your dad will be back tomorrow."

However, on the 29th, Zhu Dashan was still nowhere to be seen.

Liu Guifang was completely panicked at this point. She grabbed Zhu Yingning's hand, her lips trembling, and she wanted to cry but had no tears. She asked repeatedly: "What should I do? What should I do, Ningning?! Has something happened to your father?" It was as if Zhu Yingning was the mother, and she was just a baby who needed shelter and comfort.

Zhu Yingning had no choice but to comfort her: "I'll go to town and call him. Brother Xiang, give me your pager. Mom, find the address book that Dad gave you. It has the phone number of their construction site in it. It might be useful."

"Hey, hey!" Liu Guifang then trotted over to the counter and frantically searched through the drawers. Soon, Zhu Jixiang also found the pager.

Zhu Yingning carried the pager and the wrinkled address book and drove to a place in the town where there was a signal.

She first called Zhu Dashan, but no one answered. She then called their construction site, but when the people there heard that she was Zhu Dashan's daughter, they hung up the phone immediately. She could only call all the numbers in her address book, trying to find someone who knew Zhu Dashan's whereabouts.

Finally, she learned about Zhu Dashan's situation through a co-worker.

It turned out that Zhu Dashan was hit on the head by a piece of building material falling from the sky while working at a construction site a few months ago because his safety helmet was of poor quality. He is now in the hospital and is unconscious.

A coworker on the other end of the phone complained, "I want to contact you, but I don't have your number. Oh, this is such a sin! You don't even know how much Dashan owes the hospital in medical bills—a full 100,000! Hurry up and get someone to take him away! Even if you don't, the hospital will kick him out!"

After hanging up the phone, she sat on the ox's back for a long moment, then dazedly drove the ox cart home. On the way, she met someone she knew and they greeted her, but she neither saw them nor responded. It was as if all her senses had vanished, leaving only her shell, relying on muscle memory to drive the cart.

After returning home, she came to her senses and numbly relayed her coworker's words until Liu Guifang pinched her arm, leaving several deep red fingerprints on her arm, and asked anxiously: "How is it? Have you contacted your father?!"

Zhu Jixiang turned pale with fear, and Liu Guifang screamed, as if she was about to faint, patting her chest and screaming. The old lady didn't understand what they were saying, but she vaguely understood that Zhu Dashan was not going home. She lay on the kang and burst into tears, thrashing and crying, "I want my son! I want my son—"

Amidst the clamor and chaos, Zhu Yingning miraculously remained calm, like a spring being pushed to its limit and forced to spring back. She pinched her thigh, took a deep breath, and said to Liu Guifang, "Calm down. Save the remaining money at home and come up with something. It's probably Spring Festival travel rush, so you won't be able to buy a ticket, but you can find a ride. I'll go pick Dad up. As for the money, we can see if we can get compensation from the construction site, or ask the hospital for some time and apply for installment payments. One hundred thousand yuan is a lot, but... there's always a way."

Is there always a way?

Zhu Yingning didn't know.

In her heart she felt that all was over.

Be it family, study, or ideals, these things that once seemed within reach are now suddenly far away from her and out of reach.

Yes, it's all over.

But she couldn't dwell on the sadness or shock. Someone had to support the family and deal with the problems. She couldn't let her father continue to lie unconscious in the hospital, nor could she ignore the debts.

Perhaps it was her calm tone that worked, and Liu Guifang finally calmed down. Although she was still patting her chest and gasping for breath like a drowning person, her eyes had gradually become focused, and she no longer looked like she was frightened out of her wits.

"Okay, okay, go pick up your dad and take him home." She looked at Zhu Jixiang again and said incoherently, "You should go too? Go help your sister, go see your dad... No! You can't go. I'm scared to stay home alone... You stay here! Oh, yes, speaking of money, take this, Ningning, take this...!"

She dug out an object from her pillow, grasped it tightly like a life-saving straw, and stuffed it forcefully into Zhu Yingning's hand, causing her palm to hurt.

The thing was cold and hard. Zhu Yingning looked down and was surprised to find that it was Xu Sirui's watch.

An Omega watch worth $120,000.

Her entire head buzzed, and it took her a long time to find her voice. She raised her head, her eyes wide with horror, her eye sockets bloodshot from her forbearance. She looked at her with a look that seemed to want to kill Liu Guifang, and asked softly, each word clearly, "...You stole his watch?"

"No—!" Liu Guifang was frightened by her horrified look and quickly defended herself, "He gave it to me himself! He told me not to tell you!"

"Why don't you tell me?" she asked dreamily.

Liu Guifang was also a little angry, cursing: "You have a stupid brain, and I still told you!? Even if I told you, would you accept it? You have to chase him and return it to him! You are a fool! You have a pig brain! If they are willing to give it to us, why can't we accept it? Their family is so rich, what's wrong with taking some money from them! If I hadn't accepted his watch, I wonder what you would do today, what would your father do?!"

The cold watch face now felt like a scorching iron, searing her palm, nearly burning through her skin, leaving a vile mark. She gripped the watch tightly, until a sharp pain shot through her palm, as if it had been cut by the dial, but she didn't let go—this was the torture she deserved. She wanted to retort, to say something, but her throat felt like it was clogged with chewing gum, sticky and unable to utter a word. Her eyes were wide, and scalding tears dripped from them.

Yes, she had to admit that Liu Guifang was right. If she had known at that time and place that Xu Sirui had given her family the watch, she would have chased him and returned it to him even if she broke her legs.

But... she had to admit that the moment she saw the watch, she secretly had a thought in her mind that "that's great".

Great, luckily I still have this watch.

It was great that he was willing to lend a hand in that moment of thought.

That’s great, there’s still hope and room for improvement in the future.

She was filled with immense joy and shame. Her cries were the cries of someone who had survived a catastrophe, and her tears were the tears of meanness and selfishness.

After more than two hundred days of no contact, when she had gradually forgotten the details of their meeting and their time together, he returned to her memory in his usual striking way and gave her a heavy wake-up call.