Chapter 37 Chapter 37 I feel heavy, as if...
My body felt very heavy, as if I was constantly falling, and sometimes it would suddenly stop.
His chest was filled with transparent clouds and every breath was laborious. He simply held his breath, and a sharp alarm sounded dimly in his ears.
It’s so noisy that it hurts my ears, my body, and everything else.
Why does it hurt so much?
It is a door that cannot be closed tightly, an empty lock, old wounds piled on top of new wounds, tears and pleading, a waking nightmare and endless fear.
They become scars that can never heal, buried deep in the nightmare.
At a certain moment, Fang Shimian felt that he had completely stopped falling.
He sat up and saw that he was squatting on that small mound of earth, so he sat there and started digging the earth, very diligently and seriously.
After digging up the soil, he saw that the eternal lamp in the Ksitigarbha Hall was flickering in the wind and rain. Senior Brother An Guo walked over in the rain and protected the faint flame.
He continued digging and saw many people in white clothes surrounding him, reaching out to him and talking. He listened carefully but couldn't hear clearly.
He spread out his hands and saw that his palms had become edgeless, like the world inside the window of the rental house, and he had become a blurry person.
The colors outside seeped into his body.
He dug up a layer of water, which made him feel cold. Huo Zhongshan came out of the water fiercely and told him in a serious tone, "I will turn this place into an amusement park."
Fang Shimian cried so hard that he couldn't speak. He was trembling with sobs and wanted to say, "No."
I want to say, "Please, this is my home. I want to have a home."
"You said I could make a wish for you."
“I just want a home.”
But it was very strange that he could not make any sound, as if he had lost the ability to speak. It was as if he had never spoken before and could only cry and tremble and beg for mercy.
He looked at Huo Zhongshan, feeling a little aggrieved, and wanted to ask him not to be so harsh on him because he was afraid.
He wanted to cry, wanted to beg him for mercy, to ask him to let him go because they might be good friends.
But before he could say anything, Huo Zhongshan hugged him tightly. The warmth in his arms was very familiar to him. His large, slender hands gently patted his back and he called his name in a low voice, over and over again.
"Don't cry. Don't cry."
Fang Shimian didn't know why he couldn't stop crying. He heard Huo Zhongshan talking to him, gently buttoning his clothes for him. He said, "Don't be afraid of me. I will protect you."
"Stay closer to me."
In an instant, the pain in my body suddenly became clear.
There seemed to be a ball of white light in front of his eyes. He wanted to reach out and touch it but he couldn't lift his hand. The white light was getting weaker and weaker. Fang Shimian was very anxious, so he looked very hard to see what it was.
The moment my eyes opened, the white light disappeared.
The focus of attention was Huo Zhongshan's calm face.
The man stared at him without blinking, then stood up silently and pressed the pager in front of the bed.
When Fang Shimian saw Huo Zhongshan, his confused memories were stripped away and the context became clear, giving him an indescribable and subtle feeling.
He rescued Huo Zhongshan from the fire, and Huo Zhongshan brought him back to the world on that cold and rainy day.
The doctor and the nurse came in, lifted the quilt to check the wound healing condition, and did many tests. They kept talking, and it was only then that Fang Shimian truly realized that he was not dead.
Still alive, alive in the world of the living.
After the doctor left, Huo Jun walked over to Fang Shimian and sat down slowly, resting his hands on the bed, and threatened him maliciously: "Stupid rabbit, you are in trouble."
Fang Shimian tilted his head, looking confused.
Huo Jun sat up straight suddenly, his expression a little unnatural, "Don't think you can be safe if you look at me like that."
Fang Shimian opened his mouth. He felt pain all over. It took him a long while to speak. His voice was hoarse. "Can you... help me take a sick leave?"
As long as one is alive, life has to go on. He did not take the college entrance examination and did not even get a high school diploma, so it was very difficult for him to find a job.
Huo Jun was shocked by the will of the workers. He didn't know whether to be speechless or in admiration, and he didn't say anything for a while.
Fang Shimian said slowly: "If you are absent from work without reason, you will be deducted three days' salary and fired."
Huo Jun choked and was speechless.
Fang Shimian looked past him and looked elsewhere in the ward. As he was searching, Huo Jun spoke slowly, "How dare you look for my second brother at this time? You are indeed a fearless guy, with courage greater than the sky."
"Thank you for saving me." Fang Shimian said thank you, but his eyes clearly revealed loss and regret.
It's a pity that I didn't die.
"I'm sorry to trouble you."
Huo Jun felt a tightness in his heart when he heard this, and he felt inexplicably uncomfortable.
"Huo Jun, do you have nothing else to do today?"
A cold voice sounded from above. Huo Jun stood up wisely and gave up the throne for his second brother, who was unparalleled in his dignity. When he realized that this man was not in a good mood, he sighed and said, "I have something to do. How can I have nothing to do? I have a meeting in the company this afternoon. I'll leave first."
After saying that, he picked up the suit jacket beside the bed and told Fang Shimian, "Take good care of yourself. I'll come to see you when I'm free."
The door of the ward was closed.
Fang Shimian and Huo Zhongshan were the only ones left in the huge room.
Huo Zhongshan casually placed the document on the low wooden cabinet beside the bed, bent over to check again whether Fang Shimian's hand was swollen while receiving the infusion, and straightened out the quilt that had been lifted up during the doctor's examination. Then he sat down slowly, took the warm water on the bedside table, inserted a straw and handed it to Fang Shimian's lips.
"You've been sleeping for three days. Drink some water first and eat later."
Normally, I shouldn't be able to sleep that long. The anesthesiologist looked at it many times over the past three days.
If the instruments had not shown that everything was normal and the wound was not healing quickly, this experienced anesthesiologist would really have thought that he had encountered the biggest career crisis in his history.
Fang Shimian bit the straw and drank slowly in small sips. He didn't feel thirsty at first. After the warm water slid down his throat and moistened his internal organs, he felt the dryness in his body. Huo Zhongshan pulled the straw out of Fang Shimian's mouth when he was only halfway through drinking.
Some water dripped out of the straw, flowed onto the boy's fair chin, then rolled down his neck into Nan Bai's hospital gown and disappeared.
"Take a break. Don't drink too fast." Huo Zhongshan naturally took a tissue and wiped Fang Shimian's face, from his soft lips to his collar. He was very careful and gentle, as if he was afraid of hurting him.
"It's already clean." Fang Shimian felt a little itchy, so he shrank back.
Huo Zhongshan calmly withdrew his hand and threw the paper into the trash can.
Fang Shimian lay quietly for a while, looking at Huo Zhongshan again and again, until the man put down the documents and looked up at him. Fang Shimian immediately bent his eyebrows and said in a low voice, "I'm resting."
The straw was brought to his mouth again, and Fang Shimian swallowed faster than last time. He drank all the water in the cup in one breath, then reluctantly let go of the straw and hummed with satisfaction.
Huo Zhongshan put the cup aside and stopped looking at the document. His eyes fell on Fang Shimian's face. He stared at him quietly for a moment before saying something calmly.
"You kept calling my name in your sleep."
Fang Shimian was visibly stunned.
The man looked at him motionlessly, his expression changing from calm and leisurely to a serious and persistent look, and asked, "What did you dream about?"
Fang Shimian couldn't really remember those scattered dreams at this moment, and he couldn't refute the facts pointed out by Huo Zhongshan, because he did dream about Huo Zhongshan, so he tried to recall for a while before slowly saying: "I seemed to be digging the soil, and then you came, and said...you wanted to build a playground on my grave."
Huo Zhongshan leaned back a little, adjusted his sitting posture slightly, and asked calmly without changing his expression, "And then?"
Fang Shimian carefully observed Huo Zhongshan's expression and continued, "Then you comforted me and said that you would never build an amusement park on it..."
The man stared at the uneasy boy with his deep eyes. After a moment, he came to a conclusion, with a slight smile in the depths of his eyes, and said slowly: "Lie."
Fang Shimian immediately closed his eyes, turned his head to the other side and stopped talking.
Huo Zhongshan was not in a hurry either. His eyes fell on the boy's beautiful white hand placed outside the quilt. The fingertips were slightly red and curled up, rising and falling slightly with the boy's even breathing.
Only when the hand slowly retracted into the quilt did Huo Zhongshan calmly continue to take the documents from the bedside and read them. In the middle of the process, his secretary knocked on the door and came in to deliver some new documents.
After a while, Fang Shi couldn't help it, turned his head back and whispered: "Brother Huo, I haven't asked for leave yet."
Huo Zhongshan raised his head and glanced at him. "Are you worried about losing your job?"
Fang Shimian nodded quickly.
"It turns out there are things in this world that you worry about." The man's tone was neither fast nor slow, and his expression was not stern, but for some reason it made people feel uneasy and a little more afraid.
Isn't it because he didn't succeed in dying that he is trapped by all these? If he could get rid of all the problems, he would certainly not be afraid of anything. However, he dare not say this out loud now.
Fang Shimian said after a long while: "I'm afraid of everything..."
Just a few words seem to cover a lot.
This time it was Huo Zhongshan's turn to remain silent. His stern expression gradually softened. He rubbed Fang Shimian's head helplessly, sighed imperceptibly, and whispered, "I see you are not afraid at all, you are very brave."
Fang Shimian lowered his eyes.
"I already know about your father's affair." Huo Zhongshan rubbed Fang Shimian's head gently from time to time, "Do you want him to get what he wants?"
"He came to you?" Fang Shimian's eyes widened, feeling somewhat ashamed in the face of Huo Zhongshan's calm gaze. His eyes were filled with moisture, and he said in a low voice, "Please don't help him. I have nothing to do with him anymore. He is not my father."
Huo Zhongshan was very pleased that Fang Shimian could say this, because if he didn't make a decision, he would suffer the consequences.
But compared to relief, heartache prevails.
He knew what kind of person Fang Shimian was, and he knew his soft heart even better. He had the purest soul in the world. If he had not been completely disappointed and given up, he would never have said something like "it doesn't matter".
Huo Zhongshan had a very dark childhood, which was also spent in that compound.
At that time, he was sitting alone in the study with no electricity. Apart from the meals delivered at a fixed time every day, he had nothing, including his freedom.
The window of the study faces the corridor of the opposite building and the balcony of one of the families.
That family often beats their child. The child, who is in unbearable pain, subconsciously seeks the embrace of his closest parent, but is driven away by the even greater pressure of pain and becomes afraid and timid.
The child often cried very loudly and was dragged to the corridor by his angry parents to stand in punishment. At this time, the child would automatically lower the volume of his crying because of the neighbors passing by in the corridor. He only dared to turn his face towards the outside of the corridor and kept wiping his tears with his little hands full of red marks.
He really loves to cry, as if he was made of water, always crying.
Because of the isolation of the children, because of the scolding, because of the pain, because of the grievance, because of not feeling loved...
Obviously no one would feel sad for him because of his tears.
Huo Zhongshan thought at the time that the child must hate his parents to death. Those trivial things were not enough to support him to suffer those severe punishments. Anyone with a discerning eye knew that it was just the nonsensical venting of the unscrupulous parents.
But that child was really stupid. He didn't know that even though he had never received any love, he would still be nice to his parents instinctively.
The little boy would stand on a stool and excitedly help his father tie his tie, and would pick a small bouquet of flowers for his mother when the flowers were in bloom in the summer.
Even if his father is always dissatisfied with the tie he wears, even if his mother will throw the flowers into the trash can in anger because of his unsatisfactory test scores.
I only know how to be afraid, but I don't know how to use strong hatred to arm my heart and make it harder.
It seemed like the child was born with the ability to love others, but could never learn to love himself.
A very strange child.
He totally didn't understand, and even felt very disappointed with his friend, but he couldn't help being moved.
Who doesn't want such pure and perfect love?
I thought the heart beating in my chest had turned into rock, until I met Fang Shimian again.
The completely unfamiliar figure at the dinner party had a soul that was still clear and pure, and he seemed to have never changed.
It was then that Huo Zhongshan realized that, deep in his dark world, there was still a soft spot left.
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