Chapter 49: Cosmic Latte (1) People are in a dream of youth, but when they wake up...
October 15, 2019, sunny
The cell phone alarm rang several times beside her pillow before Lin Xia finally woke up. She dragged her sleepy and heavy body and slowly got out of bed.
The first thing to do in the morning is to turn on the coffee machine.
Weekday mornings require coffee to wake her up. Like most busy urbanites these days, Lin Xia has a serious caffeine addiction, starting with one cup each morning and afternoon, not counting overtime. This habit developed during her senior year of college, when she spent months in the studio working tirelessly day and night to finish her graduation project, barely getting four hours of sleep a day. Without coffee to keep her awake, she'd likely collapse.
It was a particularly painful and dark time, and Lin Xia still doesn't dare to recall it too much.
She took out the bagels she had bought yesterday from the refrigerator and put them in the tin foil tray in the oven. Amid the regular and mechanical sound of coffee beans being ground, Lin Xia walked into the bathroom to wash up. While brushing her teeth in front of the mirror, she discovered faint dark circles under her eyes.
She stayed up late last night, not to work overtime, watch TV, or play games, but to organize her past diaries.
She has had the habit of writing a diary since junior high school. She doesn't write every day, but writes an entry every few days. At first, she used a paper and pen diary, and later she used computer documents and mobile phone software. Everything ended in 2012, and she didn't write after that.
When she was young, she was very afraid of the doomsday prophecy of 2012, but after experiencing it, she often thought, what if the world really did end in 2012?
After washing her hair quickly, she wiped the water off her hair with a towel while standing in front of the coffee machine, watching the brown liquid slowly drip into the mug. A layer of amber oil formed on the surface of the coffee, with intricate patterns and beautiful colors, as if there was a small world inside.
It is said that scientists calculated the average color of the universe through observation and analysis and named it Cosmic Latte.
Therefore, the entire universe is just a cup of coffee, and we are just the tiny foam on the surface of the coffee.
bite--
As the mug was filled with coffee, the timer of the mechanical oven happened to trip, and the aroma of wheat and the bitter taste of burnt coffee intertwined in the room in the early morning.
Wish me a good breakfast!
.
Every second counts in the morning. After breakfast, Lin Xia packed up and went out.
She rented a one-bedroom apartment on the 24th floor of an apartment building, not far from her company. The location was good, and while the rent wasn't cheap, her salary was still decent enough to afford it. After four years of undergraduate study and three years of graduate school, she'd had enough of dormitory life and didn't want to share it anymore.
Enter the elevator and press 1F.
On the dashboard, the 24th floor, where she was, was listed as 2A, as were all other floors with a 4. Cantonese people are very particular about this, avoiding even the slightest possibility of affecting their wealth and fortune. Even when waiting in line at a restaurant or bank, numbers in the 40s are skipped over, with calls going straight from 39 to 50.
It is these differences in details that constantly remind Lin Xia that this place is thousands of miles away from her hometown and this is not the Northeast.
The elevator went down quickly, and Lin Xiaru took advantage of these short ten seconds to adjust her clothes in front of the smooth wall in the elevator as usual.
Her long, half-dry, woolly curls draped over her shoulders, her face lightly made-up just enough to cover her dark circles, and she wore a loose cotton dress, a backpack, and canvas shoes, all focused on comfort and freshness. Her company, an internet company, has no dress code requirements, and Guangdong Province has a naturally relaxed atmosphere, allowing both white-collar workers and migrant workers to dress casually when they go out. When she first started working, she was timid about wearing a professional suit every day, but now, leaving the house without slippers is her highest respect for her job.
This is the sixth year since she graduated with her undergraduate degree and the third year since she came to work in Shenzhen after graduating with her master's degree. From the outside, her height and weight have hardly changed over the years, but only she knows the changes inside.
Yesterday, when she looked through her diary, she suddenly realized that so many years had passed.
These diaries have been well preserved as she moved from Wangchun to Beijing and now to Shenzhen, but she has never looked through them. Last night, she carefully read over the words she had written and couldn't help but feel an indescribable sense of separation.
The past and the present, the past self and the present self.
Maybe life is inherently fragmented.
Before the age of twenty, the days pass by as slowly as a snail, and one is innocent and knows nothing of worries. After the age of twenty, time is like a mudslide, and landslides may occur at any time.
When one is young, one is unaware of the dream, and will return home after waking up.
.
Taking the subway to the company building, swiping the card to enter the building, and taking the elevator to the 22nd floor with a group of financial and legal elites in suits, Lin Xia came to the Shenzhen branch of MT Company, entered the design center office area, walked to his workstation by the window, sat on the ergonomic chair, and slowly breathed a sigh of relief under the blowing of the standard 26℃ air-conditioned wind.
It is a tough battle to squeeze into the subway during the morning rush hour every weekday.
The company's working hours in the morning and evening are relatively flexible. At this time, most of the people in the office have not arrived yet. Lin Xia made another cup of coffee for herself, turned on the computer, opened the data platform, and checked the user downloads and usage of the new products she launched a few days ago.
Her project team focuses on overseas markets, including Asia, Europe, and North America. User preferences vary across regions, so a single product can't cater to every market, leading to significant disparities in regional data. Designers are content creators, free to create freely without performance pressure. However, since their work is their own, they still care about audience feedback.
After watching it, I found it to be just as dull as ever. It’s not sluggish, but it’s not brilliant either.
In the Internet age, people don’t look at quality, but at traffic. They want to follow the trend, be popular, have a hit, ride on the popularity, be fast, attract attention, be sensational, and grab eyeballs.
But this is exactly not what Lin Xia is good at. Although she has made many compromises and modifications for commercialization, her painting style is still not preferred by most users today.
She sighed softly, closed the data platform, and opened the drawing software. She was about to continue working on the draft she hadn't finished last night when her colleague Meijia at the next table slid over in her swivel chair and whispered, "What are you doing?"
"Have you heard?"
"What?"
Meijia said mysteriously, "I heard from the administration department that we're going to be renewing the contract soon, by the end of the year at the latest."
"Are you sure?"
"Confirmed."
Lin Xia slowly exhaled.
This story is a long one. Their project team was working on the overseas version of MT's flagship product, which had enjoyed impressive success in recent years, capitalizing on a booming market. However, earlier this year, the company decided to market the flagship product directly overseas, leaving their "overseas version" in a rather awkward position. Subsequently, the company announced an organizational restructuring, spinning off the "overseas version" for a separate, independent listing. After more than half a year of deliberation, the plan has finally been finalized.
Lin Xia didn't know what others thought, but she didn't think it was a good thing. While her salary wouldn't change, the change in contract, from working for the parent company to a branch office, would significantly diminish her experience. The golden age was over, and she was financially independent, responsible for her own profits and losses. She also wasn't optimistic about becoming a competitor to the company's flagship product.
Most importantly, she is experiencing burnout in her current job.
I am confused in every aspect and don’t know where to go.
Meijia speaks frankly:
"I originally came here for the MT title, but now I've changed to another company. What's going on? If I had known earlier, I shouldn't have looked for a job and should have gone abroad directly. By the way, Lin Xia, didn't you say you wanted to study abroad before? Where did you want to go?"
Yeah, where was it?
"Before, I always had this idea, but now..." Lin Xia laughed at herself, "I don't know anymore."
This morning, she looked through her Moments again, but couldn't find the picture that Tan Zhizhou posted last night. She even suspected that it was an illusion caused by lack of sleep.
Or perhaps, all those years regarding that person were just hallucinations, a dream she concocted for herself during her precarious teenage years, under the pressure of academics. Today, there's almost no evidence to prove that the secret, hidden relationship she once shared with no one ever truly existed.
.
After a busy morning, it was another day of hard work for Halloween.
When entering society for the first time, everyone is full of lofty ambitions and wants to do something big and spectacular, but after two or three years they will find that work is just a job, just a means of making a living, it has no value and meaning, and there is nothing much to say.
At lunchtime, new messages popped up in various groups on my phone, all sharing coupons from food delivery platforms. Whether in Futian or Nanshan, everyone was thinking about the same question: what to eat for lunch?
After trying almost all the restaurants around the office building, Lin Xia searched around but still had no idea. Meijia said there was a newly opened Hunan restaurant nearby, so the two of them hit it off and ordered takeout together.
Meijia is also from Northeast China, born in a small city. She has a similar growth experience to Lin Xia. The two have a lot in common on certain topics and have similar personalities. She is considered to be Lin Xia's closest colleague in the company.
Perhaps because the new store was so popular, even though it was less than a kilometer away, it still hadn't been delivered. Meijia was so hungry that she started chewing on the biscuits in anger. Finally, when the app showed that it was about to be delivered, Lin Xia hurried downstairs to pick it up.
The moment she entered the elevator, a phone call came in. After answering the call, Lin Xia said directly:
"Just put it at the front desk."
There is a special place for takeout at the front desk of the building, and delivery staff are not allowed to go upstairs.
Usually, the other party would understand after saying this, but today this deliveryman seemed to be delivering food here for the first time, and asked her confusedly:
"Where's Exit A? I looked around here and couldn't find it. It's the one facing XX Street—"
Before he could finish his words, the signal was cut off.
"That's Exit B," Lin Xia said helplessly, "I'm in the elevator and will be coming down soon. Please wait for me."
Then she held the phone to her ear while staring at the display screen showing the elevator floors.
It was lunchtime and there weren't many people going up and down the stairs. She was the only one in the elevator, and it was descending smoothly.
25, 22, 20——
When the number jumped to 19, the descent stopped and a crisp ding sound was heard. The elevator door slowly opened. Three people were standing outside the door, two men and one woman. They were all dressed formally in suits. One of the men had a foreign face. Lin Xia's eyes just met the eyes of the taller man.
After seven years of separation and thousands of miles of separation, the man who had filled her entire youth and whom she had just suspected was just a dream, appeared before her without any warning.
He was talking to the person next to him, but suddenly his voice stopped and his pupils behind the frameless lenses suddenly shrank.
In an instant, the whole world froze.
For a second, or perhaps ten thousand years, he and she froze in place, neither moving.
The elevator door slowly closed. The woman with short, neat hair was the first to react. She stretched out her hand to block it and glanced at the man beside her in confusion.
"He Chuan?"
Three people entered the elevator one after another.
The sensor door closed again and the elevator continued to descend slowly.
In the confined space, the two people were only a few feet apart. Lin Xia had the illusion of almost suffocating, and the blood in her body flowed backwards. The hand holding the mobile phone had turned white from being squeezed.
She stared intently at the elevator safety notice hanging on the wall, afraid to look away for fear of seeing the people around her. She pressed her ear to her phone screen, pretending to concentrate on the call, but all she could hear was the pounding of her own heartbeat. The fitness tracker on her wrist vibrated frantically, alerting her that her heart rate was exceeding the limit and she was at risk of sudden death.
She could feel that He Chuan's eyes were always on her, and he seemed to be oblivious to the foreign man greeting him.
"Andy? Andy!"
The other party called him a few more times, and he finally came to his senses as if awakened from a dream and continued to talk with the other party.
They spoke English, and a series of very authentic British accents came out of his mouth, so fluent and casual that it seemed as natural as his native language.
Lin Xia suddenly remembered the young man who listened to English tapes in the study room late at night after the college entrance examination at Wangchun Forest Farm. It seemed as if everything happened in the previous life.
The elevator's descending speed was 0.75 meters per second, and it only took less than a minute to go from the 19th floor to the 1st floor. However, this short minute was still unbearable for Lin Xia. Every cell in her body was clamoring to escape as soon as possible.
Finally, when the elevator stopped again on the 6th floor, she was the first to get out of the elevator.
It seemed like someone was calling her name from behind, but it also seemed like someone wasn't. It seemed like someone was chasing her out, but it also seemed like someone wasn't.
She ran desperately in the corridor, plunged into the stairwell, and rushed down the steps.
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