Only after the figure completely disappeared did Chen Yanbai withdraw his gaze from the window. He walked over to the table where the old lady had just sat, picked up the bowl of noodles and the small plate of pickled radish, and turned to the sink.
"Brother," he suddenly spoke, his voice low and strangely calm, "The thing in her pocket...is it a hospital bill? It's folded so tightly it's almost falling apart."
Chen Yanxiu put the cleaned knives back into place one by one without any pause.
He picked up a new dough, placed it on the chopping board, and began to knead it. The dough made a pliable sound under his slender, strong fingers.
"Yeah." He replied calmly, his eyes focused on the dough. "It's in the late stage. The cost is very high."
His tone was calm, he was just stating an objective fact, as if he was talking about the weather.
Chen Yanbai turned on the faucet, and the rushing water washed over the dishes. He lowered his head, his silver hair falling, covering the teardrop mole at the corner of his eye.
Amid the sound of flowing water, he seemed to hum very lightly, and it was impossible to tell whether it was sarcasm or some other emotion.
"Is there a little one to raise?" He seemed to be talking to himself while washing the dishes, but also seemed to be asking Chen Yanxiu.
On the back of the bill, there seemed to be a child's doodle drawn crookedly in pencil.
Chen Yanxiu continued kneading the dough. The dough in his hands kept changing shape, full of toughness and strength.
"Yeah. Grandson." His answer was still concise.
The gaze behind the gold-rimmed glasses was as calm as water, as if it could penetrate the cloth pocket and see the cold numbers on the bill and the heavy story behind the graffiti.
"Heh." Chen Yanbai chuckled, meaningless, and turned off the faucet. He drained the washed dishes and neatly replaced them.
Then he shook off the water droplets on his hands, walked to Chen Yanxiu, and looked at the dough that seemed to come alive in his brother's hands.
"Brother," he stretched out his finger and poked the soft dough, "Tell me, is there always more suffering in this world than noodle soup?" His tone was filled with a bit of naive cruelty and bottomless indifference.
Chen Yanxiu didn't answer. He just continued kneading the dough, his movements steady and rhythmic.
Under the dim light, two men, equally young, equally stunning in appearance, equally burdened with an unknown and heavy past, stood side by side in the small kitchen.
One kneaded the dough, the other watched quietly. The air was filled with the rich aroma of bone broth, the slightly sweet scent of flour, and a faint, warm lingering aftertaste of the bowl of plain noodles.
Outside the noodle shop, the night deepened. The cold wind still blew, but the dim light inside the noodle shop seemed a little warmer than usual.
(——————Time dividing line)
The old lady, Sun Guixiang, lived in the nearby old town. Her life, like her washed-out cotton-padded jacket, was covered in patches and filled with bitterness.
She lost her husband at an early age and raised her only son alone. He was a good-for-nothing, lazy and addicted to gambling when he was young. He squandered the family's small savings and even ran up a mountain of debt.
Later, he simply abandoned his elderly mother and young son and disappeared without a trace.
The burden of life weighed heavily on Sun Guixiang's hunched back. She struggled to raise her grandson, Xiao Shitou, by collecting scrap, mending clothes, and occasionally doing odd jobs on construction sites.
Little Stone is the only light in her gloomy life, and he is so sensible that it makes people feel distressed.
However, fate seemed to think her suffering wasn't enough. Six months ago, Sun Guixiang began coughing frequently. Initially, she thought it was a cold, but it progressed to chest pain and hemoptysis. A trip to the hospital revealed a shocking diagnosis: advanced lung cancer.
The doctor looked at the film and just shook his head, euphemistically saying that the treatment would be of little use and extremely expensive.
Sun Guixiang held the thin diagnosis as if it were a red-hot iron.
Her first thought wasn't about her own life, but about what would happen to Little Stone? She was only twelve years old, a freshman in junior high school, with excellent grades. Her teachers all said she was a promising youngster.
She couldn't die, at least... at least she had to hold on until Little Stone grew a little bigger and could survive on his own...
She hid the diagnosis and told her grandson that it was just an old problem and nothing to worry about. She worked harder than before, spending every penny wisely.
She carefully saved all the money she could, along with the little she had secretly saved to pay for Little Stone's high school education. She folded the hospital bill neatly and hid it at the bottom of her cloth pocket. Every time she took it out and looked at it, the number on it felt like a needle piercing her heart.
She knew that this amount of money was far from enough, but she could only do this, like a devout believer, struggling forward in vain towards a slim hope.
This afternoon, she had just finished half a day of the most tiring moving work at a nearby construction site. She was hungry and cold, and felt that her body had reached its limit.
When she passed by the Chen Ji noodle shop, the aroma of the noodle soup was a fatal temptation for her. She hesitated for a long time, but in the end, the desire to survive and watch her grandson grow up overwhelmed her shame.
She mustered up the courage to walk in, just wanting a bowl of the cheapest vegetarian noodles to warm her body and replenish her energy.
She had never expected to meet two young yet unusually cold bosses. Even less had she expected that beneath that cold exterior lay such a silent, scorching warmth.
The bowl of hot soup that was served first, the plate of pickled radish strips that was "casually" given to her, and the hundred-yuan bill that was slipped into her purse without anyone noticing...
All of this was like a bonfire that suddenly ignited in the cold winter, which not only warmed her cold body, but also heated her long-numbed and desperate heart, making her feel the intense pain and surging warmth again.
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