Chapter 4
"What are you daydreaming about, Xixi, the noodles are ready."
Two bowls of noodles came out very quickly. After pouring hot oil on them with a sizzling sound, the chef called out to He Xi.
She glanced at the two people sitting at the table in front of her, and lazily reached out to press the food dispenser on the table.
"Please go to the window to pick up your meal, No. 102—"
As soon as the mechanical female voice came out, the restaurant was quiet for a moment before it became noisy again.
She watched Jiang Yue stop the girl who was about to stand up and walk towards the cashier.
When meeting Zhuang Yufei's smiling eyes, He Xi suddenly felt that his previous behavior was a bit boring.
Without paying any more attention to the front desk, she turned and went to the kitchen to replace her cousin.
"Hold still, Auntie and I can handle this. The oil stain is so big."
After being kicked out in disgrace, she simply half-bent over the cashier counter, took out her cell phone and started a game to pass the time.
Just when the call was at a critical moment, the cell phone suddenly rang.
"Tsk, I—"
The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them back as if realizing something. She was used to saying this when she was with Xiang Yuzhi, but once she blurted out "Fuck" at home, she was scolded for a long time.
I glanced at the notification bar and saw an unfamiliar number. The caller ID was Beicheng.
What the hell? After seeing it clearly, she decisively rejected it.
After all, there are a lot of scam calls these days.
On the other side, at the barbecue table, Zhao Lin's face looked a little ugly. He glanced coldly at He Xu beside him, and looked coldly at the row of full cups in front of him amid the crowd's cheers.
"Ahem... Mistake, mistake. How about I have a drink for you, Brother Lin?"
The game had progressed so far and he had finally made a mistake, and He Xu smiled with gloating pleasure.
"Get lost."
Zhao Lin could see through his little thoughts, and ignored the man's flattering smile and picked up the cup on the table. As his hair fluttered on his forehead, there were five or six empty cups in his hand.
"Alright, alright—we're just having some fun, let's not make it so we can't go back."
Amidst the crowd's exclamations and laughter, Hu Yang, who was sitting opposite the boy, frowned and clenched her fingers. Seeing someone taking advantage of the situation and quietly pushing a few full cups over, she finally couldn't help but speak up to smooth things over.
"Oh, someone is feeling sorry for you, isn't he?"
"Hahaha......"
The boys who had been drinking a few rounds earlier were eager to watch the fun and started to make noises. Suddenly, the barbecue stall was like hot oil hitting water.
In the dim night, Hu Yang still felt his cheeks burning, and his voice, which was about to be argued, was drowned out by the crowd.
Zhao Lin threw away the last empty cup in his hand and looked at the lively and absurd scene in front of him with cold and numb eyes.
Countless similar images flashed through his mind, those from the past, the life he tried hard to get rid of, the life that was entangled like vines and was almost suffocating him.
At this moment, he felt like he had stepped into a dilapidated garden. There were lush greenery and colorful flowers in front of him, but he could not find the exit.
"Brother Lin, Brother Lin, are you okay?"
He Xu, who was playing along, took a long time to notice that something was wrong with the silence of the person next to him. He immediately stopped thinking and carried the person back. The other people at the table looked at each other in bewilderment when they saw this.
"You can't drink, but you're still trying to be brave!" He Xu struggled to hold Zhao Lin with one hand, and before leaving, he turned around and nodded a few times, saying, "You guys take it easy, I'm going to send them back first."
The two of them walked and stopped, and just as they turned into the alley, he suddenly felt his body lighten.
"Thank you."
Zhao Lin spoke two words clearly and walked steadily.
He Xu rubbed the back of his head and glanced at his normal expression, a look of disbelief on his face. "Good fellow, were you just pretending?"
"No, I drank too quickly and it did make me feel uncomfortable for a while."
In fact, Zhao Lin's stomach still felt a little painful while he was speaking. He raised his hand to cover it, but his face looked calm.
"We agreed to go out and have fun, but you two are so boring."
"It should still be in time for you to go back now."
"Look at what you're saying. Am I the one who abandoned my brothers for pleasure?"
He muttered, unable to understand why he was willing to treat him like a brother and be so subservient to him after only knowing him for a few days.
"Then you want to follow me back?"
"ah?"
He Xu was immersed in his own thoughts and had not yet come to his senses when he heard the question. When he looked up, he saw that the two of them had already left Yixing Street.
Across a wide road is the land of Lin City, where every inch of land is worth a lot of money.
"Brother Lin...you live across the street?"
"Why, no?"
He Xu was almost choked to death by him. This was not just making a friend, it was simply inviting a Buddha statue! Two statues at home were not enough, so I added another one!
It’s so frustrating!
He kicked the gravel under his feet angrily, exhaled a breath of foul air, and then glanced at his phone casually.
“Oh my god—!”
He shuddered as if remembering something, "I'll cancel the call first."
Zhao Lin watched the frightened man run away and chuckled.
*
It was approaching midnight, and the huge community was shrouded in darkness and seemed extremely quiet.
The elevator goes all the way up to the 28th floor. It is designed with one elevator for two households, and the open entrance corridor seems a bit empty at night.
After scanning his fingerprint to enter the house, Zhao Lin raised his hand to unbutton his shirt in the dim light and went into the bathroom.
The cool water wet my hair and washed down my neck.
The crisscrossing red marks on his back and arms looked hideous. He frowned and reached out to grab the shampoo from the shelf, rubbed the foam with his palms and slowly applied it to his hair.
As he raised and lowered his arms, the tense muscles in his arms revealed his almost masochistic behavior.
After a long ten minutes, Zhao Lin came out wrapped in a bath towel.
The quiet moonlight streamed into the bedroom through the large floor-to-ceiling windows. He put on a short-sleeved shirt and walked to the window. The crisscrossing alleys in the distance were still clearly visible under the stark white streetlights.
The old pear tree that he casually glanced at through the iron gate at noon looked lonely and small among the gray and white cement buildings.
The only few times he could remember going back to his hometown were during the Spring Festival. He had seen the vicissitudes of the old trees isolated in the cold winter, but he didn't expect that on such an ordinary summer night, he would have the same feeling among the lush green trees.
Suddenly he seemed to hear the woman's shrill screams and curses again...
“Snap—”
Drops of water from his forehead dripped onto his bare arms, and he came to his senses. He pulled the curtains shut, opened the drawer of his bedside table, and pulled out a stack of sketch paper.
On the scattered papers, just a few strokes outline the same handsome face.
He leaned his back against the corner of the bed, gripping the pencil tightly until the tip of the pencil lightly touched the paper, and then his whole body gradually relaxed.
Amidst the rustling sound, a pair of slender fingers tightly holding the book took shape as the wrists rose and fell.
Adjusting his pen grip adds detail to his hand, the lines on his fingers becoming increasingly refined and even. His nails are a clean, pinkish-white color, and he carefully spreads the lead powder with his fingers.
After looking at it for a few seconds, Zhao Lin unconsciously started writing again.
Her almond-shaped eyes, guarded yet curious, were framed by thick, curled lashes that fluttered like butterflies in their blinks. Her nose was pointed and her dimples gave her a hint of pride when she smiled.
"It's not enough that his memory is not very good, but he even has problems with his eyesight."
Zhao Lin scoffed, dropped his pen, and put the sketch paper back where it belonged. He stood up and went out to put the light blue shirt he had casually thrown on the sofa when he came into the house into the washing machine.
*
When Xiang Yuzhi called, He Xi was squatting on the rooftop watering fruits and vegetables with Yan Runqing.
The cell phone rang several times in the room but she didn't hear it at all. When she took off her thick gloves and sat on the ground, she saw Xiang Yuzhi rushing into her yard in a hurry.
"You're not going on a trip at all. People who don't know you would think you're digging coal, hahaha..."
A few loud and unrestrained laughs without caring about her image made Yan Runqing glare at her. He Xi quickly waved her hands and made an innocent expression. In order to avoid being nagged again, she quickly hugged Xiang Yu and went downstairs to her room.
"I'm going to invite you to join a group, do you want to come?"
As soon as they entered the house, Xiang Yuzhi approached He Xi mysteriously, and opened his WeChat to signal her.
He Xi doesn't like to join in the fun, and when the two of them are together, she usually plays the role of listener.
"What group?"
Xiang Yuzhi handed the phone over with a smug look on his face. "Is this the boy you complained about the other day, the one who wore He Xu's clothes and caused you to make a mistake and cause a misunderstanding?"
"Well..."
At that time, after Xiang Yuzhi heard her complain, he insisted on seeing the photo. He Xi had no choice but to download a photo from Hu Yang's circle of friends on the day of the dinner and send it to him.
She looked through the chat history in the group. The last few dozen messages were all joking about asking for Zhao Lin's personal information. Even He Xi had to admit that the boy was indeed very good in the photos taken on the court.
The moment he jumped to shoot, his head tilted back slightly, his nose was straight and upturned, his bone structure was superior to the heavens, his jersey was inadvertently lifted up during his defensive running, and his waist and side abdominal muscles were quite eye-catching...
"It looks quite something like that."
She then thought of something else, "But with his wicked personality, they might all be disillusioned if they met him in person.
"You don't understand. This is the kind of arrogance we need. Otherwise, Sister Zheng wouldn't bother with us!"
Xiang Yuzhi took the phone and searched the chat history. "You know Tan Zheng, right? I heard she spent some time in Mingde during junior high school."
When He Xi heard the name suddenly, she was stunned for a few seconds. When that face appeared in her mind, her body shuddered instinctively, and she had a bad premonition in her heart.
"Do you know...Tan Zheng?"
As soon as he said that and saw Xiang Yuzhi's expression, He Xi stiffly changed the subject, "I've heard that she's very...powerful."
Tan Zheng was expelled from Mingde in the first semester of junior high school, and her entire class was reassigned to different classes.
"Tan Zheng is very famous in our school. Um... why do you have that expression?"
Xiang Yuzhi knew that she had never been interested in these things, and she was carefree and didn't think too deeply about it. He nodded and asked He Xi to look at the previous messages in the group.
More than a dozen messages were sent from the same account. Judging from the profile picture, she barely matched the girl in my memory.
"Is this Tan Zheng?"
It was like a completely different person. He Xi was so shocked that he was speechless. For the first time, he felt the impact of the word "head replacement" so directly.
"In my opinion, Zhao Lin is almost as good as Tang Monk's flesh."
Xiang Yuzhi snorted in response, then thought of the grand occasion in the group and uttered a sour remark.
He Xi mechanically swiped his phone, secretly digesting what happened to Tan Zheng. He was unsure whether he should tell Xiang Yuzhi about what happened in the past.
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