Trade Wind Port

Yin Shuanghui's expression suddenly changed, a determined light flashed in her eyes, and she asked aggressively.

"Have you ever slept with a man?"

"Yes, I sleep every day."

I'll go back and sleep in the same bed with Bo Xi later.

In the dim light, Bo Xi's pupils shrank for a moment. The flickering neon lights drew his gaze obliquely to the lonely figure in the shadows.

The girl was wearing a simple down jacket and jeans. Even though the ends of her hair were dyed ice blue, she still looked well-behaved.

Like a little rabbit that accidentally walked into a wolf's den.

Ever since Bai Luo realized that the person on the sofa was the boy who stole her first kiss, the idea of ​​applying for the waiter position disappeared in an instant.

＿＿

In high school, their names were always listed as a pair on the school's black and red lists and on the campus radio.

On the Black and Red List, Bo Qi and Bai Luo are from two different worlds.

On one side is the neatly written “Model Student” and on the other side is the sloppily written “Discipline Violation Record”.

It is clearly divided, not a chaotic mess.

The voice of the broadcast is very different.

One has a low, hoarse throat, and the other has a clear, melodious voice.

It can be described as ice and fire.

A young man read an excellent composition on the campus radio, and his low voice melted an entire teaching building.

"Hello everyone, I'm Bo Xi, and today I'm going to talk about growth..."

A boy of seventeen or eighteen years old, with thorns all over his body.

The teacher’s earnest teachings went in one ear and out the other, and I felt that “the sky is high and I can fly freely, the earth is thick and I can conquer it.”

On the playground in the height of summer, the setting sun lengthened his shadow. The cheers on the court and the whispers in the classroom always revolved around his name. During evening study sessions, eyes would peek at him from the window.

He shines brightly in everyone's youth, as flamboyant as fireworks in midsummer and as warm as the rising sun.

Youth, ignorant of the immensity of the world, is fiery, bright, unbridled, frank, and reckless, making it impossible to look directly at it, yet unwilling to look away.

Every time he finished reading the end of an essay, Bai Luo would clutch his apology and walk through the noisy classroom.

The radio station is located in the Art Building, separated from the teaching building by a moist silence.

The South Huai River crisscrosses the country, and the plum rain season arrives as scheduled in mid-June every year.

The air was filled with the dampness of a rainy day and the unique sour aroma of plums.

In the center of the teaching building's patio, a perennial oriole plum tree stands tall.

The branches are bent with the weight of plums, and the sour wind blows, leaving a lingering sweet aftertaste.

The green fruit is small and exquisite, the same color as summer, and is hidden among the leaves.

Whenever Bai Luo passed by the patio, he couldn't help but tiptoe and secretly pick one.

The plum rain falls lingeringly and gently, with each drop covering the broad umbrella.

The tree-lined path winds forward, and the cicadas chirp like crazy, hissing and lingering.

In the midsummer view, green is three-dimensional.

The sunlight cut across the field layer by layer, splitting the meadows, shrubs and trees into transparent layers of color.

When the wind blows, the color levels surge, light green rises, dark green sinks, light and dark interweave, and green waves roll.

But a swaying blue and white figure suddenly appeared in her field of vision.

The boy walked lazily, splashing water on the stone slabs, humming a tuneless tune, and looked nonchalant.

The umbrella brim was pulled down very low, and the delicate features of the two people were completely shrouded in shadow.

The two people passed each other at different paces. Bai Luoyin was slightly shorter, so the edge of his umbrella just barely passed through his wide umbrella and brushed against the boy's school uniform jacket on his shoulders.

A gust of disruptive wind blew, and the corners of clothes rubbed against each other, leaving static electricity from the friction of the fabric, which was tingling and numb, and pierced into the heart.

The boy was completely unaware and walked towards the classroom humming a tuneless song, while Bai Luo walked towards the radio station while biting a green plum.

During the three years of high school, the two crossed paths countless times.

It's like two rain lines that never merge.

＿＿

The encounters in our youth were countless times of passing each other, in the wind, in the rain, in the corridor, and on the playground.

Rushing to each other is a game of alienation played by youth.

And tonight, as we meet again under the neon lights, I can’t tell in a trance whether it is a reminiscence of our passing each other in our youth, or a destined meeting after many years.

But they were indifferent to each other.

Alienation and coldness became the main tone.

Bai Luo's voice grew several degrees colder, leaving only a vague sentence in his ears.

"So, stay away from me."

She wanted nothing to do with them.

It's not weakness, it's pride.

You can't afford to provoke him, but you can afford to avoid him.

While everyone was still stunned, the slender figure had already merged into the boiling scene of sound and color.

Bo Yu stared into the distance in the direction where she disappeared, a dark arc silently drawn at the corner of his lips, as if he was smiling.

The rest only felt a fog in their chests, hazy and heavy.

Girls have unique souls.

Take the world's prosperity lightly, ignore the noise, and resist prying eyes.

Born with an unshakable tenacity.

*

Midnight. Snowflakes drifted silently across Hangzhou and Hong Kong. Bai Luo walked alone on the deserted streets, neon lights blazing across the sky. She was like a lost moon, silent and bright.

To her, the world is a spinning kaleidoscope, but she only wishes to watch from the sidelines, preferring to be a solitary figure outside the kaleidoscope.

Suddenly, I missed my dad so much.

She stumbled in the cold wind, editing the message with cold hands.

I'm not going home tonight.

On the corner of the street, there is a self-service alcohol convenience store.

She had less than ten yuan in her balance, but she broke in as if possessed by a ghost.

The lighting in the store is adjusted to a gentle warm yellow, and the shelves are filled with crystal clear wine bottles.

She picked up a bottle of the lowest-priced beer and walked towards the self-service checkout area. The green light of the QR code scanner flashed by.

The air conditioner in the room was emitting warm air. There were bar stools placed in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. I chose the leather high stool in the middle to sit down.

She had no strength in her hands, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't unscrew the bottle cap.

He took his cell phone and banged the bottle cap several times, and it opened in a few seconds.

The beer goes down my throat, cold, bitter, spicy, and then goes into my lungs.

The world was freezing cold, but she wanted to drink some warmth.

There was a huge temperature difference in the room, and the floor-to-ceiling windows were covered with a thin layer of mist. Slender white fingers wrote two words one by one.

"Zhao Zhao."

Except for her uncle, no one knew that her real name was Zhao Zhao, not Bai Luo.

A surge of warm air caused the mist to rise again, instantly destroying the writing.

It was just like she couldn't grasp her eleven-year-old self. She couldn't grasp her deceased father.

The cicadas stopped chirping in the summer of 2008, and the butterfly flew past my fingertips and away.

At this moment, when I stretched out my hand, I only felt the coolness of the air.

Her world lost all color, leaving only a silent gray.

Bai Luo has an absurd alcohol tolerance. A bottle of beer is enough to make her eyes dizzy, but she chose a strong liquor tonight.

The bottle of wine was empty and his consciousness was scattered.

The eyelashes were stained with salty tears, and the eyes burned by alcohol were sometimes clear and sometimes blurred.

She loves the thrill of being out of control.

My drunken eyes suddenly penetrated the thick, fogged glass. It was a sliver of orange, not an illusion.

It was so small, shivering under the dim light of the street lamp.

So pitiful.

He stumbled to his feet, holding onto the bar, and unsteadily pushed the door open. He was met with a gust of cold wind, and a frosty mist instantly obscured his vision.

"kitten."

The kitten's jump, as if startled, was a sign of alertness, not hostility.

A pair of eyes reflected the gray and white tones of the city.

In a drunken state, I saw my own reflection in the cat's clear eyes.

Lonely, embarrassed, and broken.

The wind grew colder, and the cat shivered even more violently. Suddenly, it lifted its lower jaw from its paw pads, its round pupils shimmering in the dimming night.

Bai Luo knelt down and lowered his body, his trembling hands hanging in the air.

"Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you."

His voice was hoarse from drunkenness, yet unusually soft.

The kitten took a half step back, its tail tip sweeping the rusty lamppost, but it did not escape.

Bai Luo took off his down jacket and held the shivering kitten in his arms.

The cat slowly let down its guard, as if it had stumbled upon a super VIP safe haven in the snow.

"You must be hungry."

Looking around, the streets and alleys were deserted. Shops seemed to be hibernating, their doors tightly closed, with only a few lights on.

Carrying the warm little life in her arms, she walked on the thin frost of the night towards the convenience store that looked like an isolated island in the night sea.

Tonight, two shadows abandoned by the world found each other's reflections by accident.

The old neon lights of the convenience store flickered in the snow.

The wind chimes rang, and the clerk looked up to see a girl leaning against the door, her brows and eyelashes like transparent snow, with a cat in her arms.

"Excuse me, do you have cat strips?"

The tone was tinged with the aroma of wine, yet surprisingly soft.

The clerk nodded and pointed further into the shelf.

She wandered through the various shelves and took down a bag of cat strips.

There is not much balance in WeChat, just enough to exchange for a bag of warmth.

The clerk lowered his eyes and stroked the cat's ears, his fingertips touching its trembling warmth.

"This cat...was it a chance encounter?"

"Well, it's so pitiful. I want to help it."

"You're such a nice person."

The clerk couldn't help but sigh as he handed her the bag.

It was clearly a drunk girl who was homeless herself, but she provided shelter for the kitten.

After leaving the convenience store, the night wind was howling, as if it was going to dissipate all the warmth in my bones and blood.

Bai Luo leaned against a street lamp, feeling drunkenness surge in him.

The cold snap blew her long, icy blue hair like crazy. A strand of hair half-hid her right eye, but it couldn't stop the tears from falling.

I struggled to unlock the phone, trying seven or eight times before I succeeded.

I didn’t want to go back to the rental house, but the cat was too small to withstand the cold.

The street lights above my head flickered, and I felt dazed.

While my eyes were blurry with drunkenness, the video call interface lit up, but I didn't know who I was calling.

He pulled the kitten into his arms with one hand, his thin undershirt clinging to his skin.

As if she was completely unaware of the cold, or perhaps her legs were sore, she squatted down dejectedly, her head covered with snowflakes resting against the cold, hard lamppost.

As if to show off a super cute kitten, one arm was raised high in the air.

The camera freezes on a girl covered in snow.

In seconds, the video was connected.

The deafening electronic sound was the first to invade the hearing.

The picture was dim and dark, the other person's outline was swallowed by the black, leaving only a pair of vicious eyes.

The pitch-black pupils were like the snow and fog at night, covering all sin and evil.

Bai Luo's cheeks were stained a sickly red and his eyes were watery. He mistakenly thought that the other party was the person he wanted to contact, and called out a name that had been forgotten for two years.

"Uncle."

"Can you transfer some money to me?"

The nose suddenly felt sour and the voice was choked.

"Just a few dollars will do. I... don't have money for the bus."

The video is half-bright and half-fuzzy.

The young man on the sofa was startled when he heard the word "little uncle". He subconsciously checked the caller ID on the screen and found that it was his number.

He exited the call screen again to check if it was his bedmate calling.

It's her, that's right.

When the call came through, he was leaning on the sofa, drowsy.

At that time, he had given up the idea of ​​returning to the rental house and simply let himself spend the night in the neon-lit bar.

The tranquility of the second-floor box was within reach, but he found it troublesome and allowed himself to curl up on the sofa, surrounded by the noise and chatter of his friends.

Who the hell knew that the phone placed on the glass table would vibrate without any warning.

At first he dismissed it, thinking it was someone else's junk. After all, few people would be so ignorant as to contact him at two in the morning.

Until a whisper floats among the playful crowd.

"Zhao Zhao."

The voice attracted everyone's attention.

When they were playing games, they casually threw their mobile phones to the corner of the table, and there were seven or eight models mixed together.

In the dim light, the light from the screen flickered.

"Whose crappy phone is this? Zhao Zhao, sounds like a girl's name."

"Which guy is so miserable that his girlfriend comes to check on him in the middle of the night?"

"Why doesn't anyone recognize her? Whose lover is Zhao Zhao?"

The friends were talking at once, chattering like a flock of crows.

In the shure, they saw the young man with a frown on his face standing up lazily from the shadow of the sofa.

The giant figure, nearly 1.9 meters tall, had messy hair from sleeping, and was holding his cell phone with sleepy eyes.

Half awake, half asleep, he stared at the note "Zhao Zhao" on the screen and paused for a few seconds.

The girl's sudden contact left him completely clueless.

Under the scorching gazes of the gossiping crowd, he pressed the answer button.

What breaks into the entire shot is a girl imprisoned by the shadow of a street lamp, and a cat-like figure wrapped in a white down jacket, shivering.

Before he could ask her why she didn't go home, the camera suddenly zoomed in.

Her long hair was disheveled and scattered, covering half of her face, and the tip of her nose was pitifully red.

She called him "little uncle" in a soft voice and asked to borrow some money from him, not too much, just a few dollars.