"...What? You're asking for trouble. The Flower Branch Award. Other authors, like Gui Wa, would feel happy if they could be selected even if they knew they wouldn't be selected... To be honest, Mr. Hikawa, your "Luohe Divine Book" has a much higher chance of winning than "Hearing". At least the male protagonist has a normal sexual orientation and cares about his country, right?"
"I'm not going."
“…”
Just send someone off with a simple “I’m not going”?
"Why???!"
"Why, why, the winner of the last Flower Branch Award was my Mr. Zhou Guxuan. Do you know what you mean by sending me to the South Pole and the North Pole this time? Besides, the 2008 Olympics were held in Beijing, and the 2012 Olympics will be held in Beijing again. Wouldn't the people of the world rise up and crush the Olympic Committee to pieces?" In order to prevent being yelled at again, the man frowned and held the phone a little further away from his ear. His voice was neither fast nor slow, but it sounded justified. "So I won't go. It's boring."
As soon as the words fell, there was silence on the other end of the phone. Perhaps she was a little confused by the man's strong resistance. After a while, she reacted and asked, "What do you mean by 'boring'?"
Chu Li: "Is it interesting to climb up the roof and remove the tiles?"
Zhuo Chuan: "It's fun to strip the bones and skin. I'll give you a free experience since you're in front of me."
"When you come back, I'll tell you in person."
"It'll take another seven or eight days... It doesn't matter if you do it in person or not. If you come in front of me now, I'll fight you."
"…………" Mad is stupid. On the other end of the phone, the editor was still trying to persuade him, "Don't think this is boring, Teacher Chuan, I think this opportunity is rare, and you don't need to revise the manuscript, just submit it and it's over - if you really win the prize, you won't lose anything if you lose, right? Since Teacher Xia said that the selection committee has recently decided to open up the acceptance level to welcome new trends..."
"Shut up."
“…”
"Just because you can convince me to come to S Province to start this inexplicable association doesn't mean you can convince me on everything." Zhuo Chuan said calmly, "Save your energy. Jiang Yucheng, that shameless scoundrel, might agree to your request. Go find him."
Chu Li never expected that Zhu Chuan would react like this. He was stunned for a long time without saying anything. His mind was full of "this person is very resistant to traditional literary awards", "he seems to be very resistant to traditional literature", "but there are quite a few famous books in his study" -
Why is this happening?
Chu Li was full of questions, but Zhu Chuan on the other end of the phone did not give her a chance to continue brainwashing him after she reacted. He took advantage of her sudden silence and hung up the phone directly.
Before deducting the money, he did not forget to threaten me: "Don't mention this again. From now on, every time you say one more word, I will charge you an extra 100 yuan in rent every month. The starting price is 100 yuan, and there is no upper limit."
The man quickly hung up the phone after he finished speaking, and glanced at the fragrant tea in front of him that was still emitting milky white steam. A hint of irritation unconsciously appeared in his tea-colored eyes. He pushed the tea table away, climbed up from the couch in a somewhat irritable manner, and walked out of the tea room to find that his parents were sitting in the living room waiting for him.
His father was on the phone, and from the tone of his voice he seemed to be talking to a younger generation; his mother was beside him, peeling an apple with her head down, and when she heard the footsteps she raised her head and glanced at him, with an expression that almost said: Come here, son, and receive the education of love while I think about how to start the conversation in a nonchalant and unobtrusive manner.
He is already twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, so there is no need for him to be educated in love.
The man raised his lips and turned to escape. At this moment, Zhuan Guxuan hung up the phone and shouted in a deep and stern voice, "Where are you going? Come and sit down!"
With his back to his father, the man showed a helpless expression. He turned around and sat down on the sofa like a dog. As soon as his butt touched the ground, he heard Zhao Guxuan say, "Xiao Cheng just called. He said that you have a high school reunion the day after tomorrow. Your former classmate asked him to help notify you--"
After hearing the first half, Zhuchuan wanted to stand up and leave, but before he could even lift his butt up again, he heard his father yell, "Sit down!"
Zhuo Chuan sat back down with a thud and said helplessly, "What class reunion? I can't even remember the names of my high school classmates, so why did they ask me to go? If they wanted to ask me to go, wouldn't they have contacted me themselves?"
Zhuo Guxuan: "Look at the expression on your face. Who would be willing to contact you and then give you a cold shoulder?!"
Zhuo Chuan: "Then don't post it. Did I let them post it? I'm not looking for a girlfriend and I'm not in a hurry to show off my success to anyone. What's the point of me attending a class reunion..."
Zhao Guxuan: "Xiaocheng said that your Chinese teacher back then was about to retire, so your former classmates held a teacher appreciation banquet for you. With your current status, isn't it right for you to express your gratitude to your retiring high school Chinese teacher?!"
Zhuo Chuan sneered and said dryly, "What am I? A third-rate writer of junk fast food articles?"
Zhou Guxuan immediately frowned and said, "Zhechuan!"
Zhuchuan looked annoyed: "What? Didn't you say that yourself?"
"What are you two doing? Can you talk properly? Your yelling is giving me a headache," Mrs. Zhou put down the apple and fruit knife in her hand. "You must be tired of quarreling after so many days, right? You have to raise your voices and talk about scholarly family. You are like butchers. If it gets out, people will laugh at you. One by one, Old Xuan, you speak first."
Zhuo Guxuan pointed at his son who was sitting on the sofa opposite him and said, "I get angry when I see him like this. He doesn't come to the Writers Association meeting when asked to, and when he comes, he just sits there and doesn't know what to do. He is asked to submit his work to participate in the 'Flower Award' selection..."
Mrs. Zhao showed a surprised expression as if saying "Oh my god, is this true?"
Until Zhuo Guxuan finished speaking: "He refused to submit his work for the 'Flower Award' and kept asking his editor how much it would cost to buy the award - don't think I don't know you said this on purpose for your father, who are you trying to smear?!"
The expression on Mrs. Zhao's face changed from "surprise" to "I knew it", and at the same time, Zhao Chuan fell backwards and collapsed on the sofa...
Zhuan Guxuan got angry when he saw his dead look, so he bent over, took off his slippers and started smashing him!
Mrs. Zhuo couldn't hold back, and watched helplessly as the slipper hit her son's handsome face. Zhuo Chuan was still like a dead fish, and just reached out to take the slipper off his face: "A gentleman uses his mouth, not his hands. Old man, please speak nicely - I don't want to attend the Writers Association meeting, and I don't want to send my work to the competition. Don't you know the reason best?"
Zhuo Chuan sat up, the nonchalant look on his face disappeared, his brown eyes became deep, and his face was somewhat gloomy: "If traditional literature is not truly prepared to accept other non-traditional literature, then don't always do some weird things to make it seem like you are trying to accept them. This time, the Writers Association - I heard that the Writers Association has absorbed quite a few young writers in the past two years. How many did you invite this time? It's just me and Jiang Yucheng, right? What, you can't let me go if I don't have 500,000 fans on Weibo, right?"
The man stood up while talking. "Just like the Chinese teacher who is said to be retiring soon. What's his last name? Teacher Li? Teacher Jiang? Or Teacher Wang? What were you doing back then? When you need to play along, you call me..."
"You are the one who has too many problems. You were terrible at writing essays in high school and only got 30 or 40 points each time. So you blame the teacher for not teaching you well, right? But how come Jiang Yucheng always got high marks? Later he became a writer and became famous earlier than you. When you sold your first bestseller, Jiang Yucheng had sold so many bestsellers that they could have been put together as a set of playing cards. The teacher taught you to write what you should write, and I taught you to write what is in line with the mainstream. But you always refused to listen and wanted to be a troublemaker. As a result, you couldn't get high marks for your essays when you were in school, and your books didn't sell well. Who do you blame? Who are you showing this cynical face to!"
"Zhou Guxuan!"
"Zhuchuan!"
"I've been listening to the Kids Next Door series for 27 years and you still can't stop!"
"You call your father by his full name. I think you didn't learn well in high school. No, you learned the wrong things in elementary school! You have been doing the wrong things since you were a child! How many of the following have you done to respect your teachers, respect the elderly and love the young, and be filial to your parents? You are unworthy of being a human being!!!"
"If a son is not taught, it is the fault of his father!"
"What's wrong with me? Does giving birth to you count as one?!"
"I think it's quite fair! You haven't read my high school essays, what's wrong with that? Just tidying it up is another "Stories to Awaken the World" - ordinary parents would go to school to make a scene in the morning when they saw their children's good writings were given low marks, but where were you? You were persuading me to attend the teacher's thank-you banquet - thank her for nothing! Thank her for retiring early and not harming the next generation of the motherland?!"
"You're still reading Stories to Awaken the World. I almost laughed my teeth off. Have you managed to survive to this day by relying on your blind self-confidence?"
Madam Zhuo: “…”
The final result was that the father and son yelled at each other, glaring at each other, and the people next door heard it before they parted ways...
How else can we say that colleagues are enemies?
Mrs. Zhou sighed and glanced at her husband who slammed the door and walked out; then she looked at her son who was clattering up the stairs in his slippers and slipped before she could warn him. Fortunately, he grabbed the handrail in time, otherwise he would have rolled down the stairs... She shook her head, and no one chased after him, nor did anyone try to persuade him. She picked up the fruit knife she had put down before and continued to peel the apple.
Five minutes later.
There was the sound of cabinet doors banging and footsteps upstairs. Those who knew would know that someone was rummaging through the cabinets, while those who didn't would probably think that the house was being demolished.
Ten minutes later.
When Mrs. Chen placed apples cut into little rabbits on the fruit plate, a tall young man kicked the door open from upstairs and hurriedly walked downstairs dragging a huge luggage.
Mrs. Zhou picked up a little rabbit and said, "Where are you going?"
The man on the stairs was still moving boxes, his face still full of anger: "Run away from home!"
Four words: cut nails and cut iron.
Mrs. Zhou: "Eat an apple before you leave."
Zhuochuan threw the box away, walked over, took the rabbit, opened his mouth and bit off half of the rabbit's head.
…
At the same time.
Thousands of miles away, City G.
Chu Li, despite Lao Miao's schadenfreude and Yu Yao's death gaze, reported to Teacher Xia in a daze about Zhechuan's refusal to cooperate with the Flower Branch Award. Unexpectedly, Teacher Xia didn't seem surprised by the result at all. He just remained silent for a moment, then said, "I'll go talk to Lao Xuan," and turned and left.
Chu Li didn't even have the time to say "Are you sure this won't have a counterproductive effect?"
I dragged my exhausted body back home at night, cooked for Ergou and myself, called Zhuchuan and found his phone was turned off, complained to L but he didn't respond like a corpse.
He keeps saying he wants to have an online romance with her, but he's such a jerk that he disappears at the slightest disagreement. It's not even his turn to have an online romance with her!
Throwing away her phone, Chu Li curled up on the sofa and fell into a daze for a while. When she woke up, she was sweating all over. She found Er Gouzi snuggling up to her and squeezing the sofa with her. Such a big sled dog, with thick fur and a body as hot as a stove, when Chu Li woke up, the big dog had his paw on her chin and was sleeping soundly. Chu Li was sweating all over, as if she had just been pulled out of the water...
It’s going to go bad, take a shower.
Chu Li wiped the sweat off her forehead, got up and walked to the bathroom. When she took off her coat and pants and turned on the water, she heard an ominous "buzzing" sound coming from the water pipe, but there was no water coming out of the shower... Thinking that the water might have been cut off, Chu Li bent down curiously to take a look, and did something that she later regretted: she habitually reached out and patted the water pipe.
——The sequelae of the childhood behavior of “if the TV is broken, just pat it to fix it”.
As a result, something went wrong when they took the photo. Chu Li was stunned when he heard a loud "pop" and the cold water splashed on his face.
The next second she screamed "Ah" and jumped back, and when she looked carefully she realized that the bathroom had turned into a curtain hole, and now she really became the monkey in the curtain hole: if Sun Wukong wore panties and a bra with a banana pattern.
Ergou was howling outside, and no one knew what he was yelling about so excitedly. Chu Li hurriedly grabbed the phone and called the business line to tell them that the water pipe was broken. The other party's tone was very calm: Hello, we have expedited the repair for you, and the repairman will come to repair it tomorrow morning.
"Tomorrow?! That's not how you use the word 'urgent'! Do you have any misunderstanding about 'urgent'? My house will be flooded tomorrow, and I still have to pay the water bill. How much water will it cost to spray it all night? Hello? Hello?!"
Chu Li was in a panic like a drowned chicken, with water dripping down her hair into her eyes. She reached out to push away her hair that was blocking her eyes, stood up, and covered the broken pipe with one hand while trying to find some tape to wrap it up first.
At this moment, a big hand suddenly stretched out from behind her, snatched the phone from her hand, and threw it on the dry towel rack; warm breath swept across her neck, and the tall man standing behind her bent down and raised his hand to close the water gate...
The water that was spraying everywhere stopped immediately.
Chu Li blinked, turned around in confusion, raised his head and looked into a pair of calm brown eyes. A drop of water dripped down his handsome and indifferent face.
Chu Li: "..."
Zhuo Chuan: "Are you mentally retarded? When the water pipe burst, you didn't know to close the water valve and cover it with your hands. If the metal pipe explodes again, you won't use your hands anymore?"
Chu Li: “…………”
The bathroom fell into silence for a long time, with the man's breathing becoming almost the only sound... Chu Li opened her mouth, and was so shocked by the man who suddenly appeared that she didn't know what to say, until the man lowered his eyes and glanced around, then said in a calm tone: "Go put on your clothes first, what nonsense are you talking about."
The next second, Chu Li rolled and crawled, and disappeared in front of the man in a flash.