Eight days before the Spring Festival in 2027, Xiao Nanzhu, who had been a soldier for 1989, finally ended his military career and returned to his hometown Y City.
Although Y City is his hometown, it is true that his home has long been here. He has no father or mother, and his only relative is his grandmother. The old lady had already gone to heaven the year he enlisted in the army. Because of the lack of money, after the demolition of the old city, Xiao Nanzhu, who was still in the army, could not afford a house by himself. Now that he is discharged from the army, the transfer fee from the army is not too much, and he has no special skills except for his strength. When he was transferred, his comrades asked him about his future plans, but Xiao Nanzhu just casually said this. He smiled, and then perfunctory with a sentence that counts one step at a time.
For him, Y City is just a place for a short rest after so many years of wandering. As for his future, Xiao Nanzhu, who is now approaching his thirties, has not really thought much about it.
He spent the first half of his life in this city. Before the old lady passed away and the house was demolished, his childhood had been living in a very old-fashioned small alley. The hutong is not big, but it is connected to more than 20 or 30 families, all of them old neighbors who have lived nearby for more than 60 years.
These neighbors knew each other well and mostly engaged in similar businesses. Because Y City can be regarded as a famous historical and cultural city in retrospect, most of these old hutongs are old people who are familiar with traditional folk customs. Or sell antiques to read calligraphy and painting, or look at each other and touch the bones, or dance with the upper body, or acupuncture and moxibustion to give people medicine, in short, until now, they are all old things that are about to be eliminated. Like Xiao Nanzhu's grandmother, she is someone who shows the life to others. Whenever a girl in the hutong gets married or a house is built, there must be a time for Xiao Nanzhu's grandmother to see the life. The old lady doesn't usually go out, she just earns some pocket money to feed her eldest grandson, and after being passed down from three generations to four generations, it is inevitable that these juniors who grew up living here will have friendship. , Xiao Nanzhu came back from the army this time, and the first thing he notified was a good buddy who grew up with him.
Speaking of this buddy, Xiao Nanzhu himself has not seen him for five or six years. The military is strictly managed, and he was unable to meet Faxiao even on occasional family leave. What remains in my memory now are only some scenes when the two of them fought together in the alley when they were eleven or twelve years old, and if I think about it, there are only some yellowish and messy fragments when they lived in that alley.
So just like this, Xiao Nanzhu came back just like this, with the thoughts of his hometown and his old friends. On the day of arriving in Y City, it happened to be the Lunar New Year's Eve. Facing the most turbulent year-end return in China, he walked out of the train station alone with his few luggage, his eyes were blurred by the cold air. .
In the winter tide, the streets and alleys are all white. As the Spring Festival is approaching, passers-by are also full of smiles. Most of what I saw outside the station were the backs of people rushing home with their luggage, which made him stand taller and taller. At this moment, the thin man with a pale face was a little out of place, and when he frowned and nodded at the station gate. Yuxi, when he bit the filter next to his mouth and took a sip, he suddenly heard a shouting voice not far away,
"Xiao Nanzhu! Xiao Nanzhu! Here it is! Hey! Why are you standing there stupidly!"
He was tall and tall, with a small head, a black jacket with a pair of fronts, and a man with round sunglasses with a wide-open mouth. From a distance, he looked strange.
Xiao Nanzhu, who was still in a daze, looked up and saw this man, and his heart was suddenly shocked. After confirming that the man was really calling him and that he looked familiar from his facial features, he took a few steps with his luggage and walked away. He walked down the steps, looked him up and down with a cigarette in his mouth, and then said with a smile,
"Hey, I said you dressed like this for the new year, are you here to pick me up, or to pick me up..."
This made the young man with sunglasses stunned for a moment. He squeezed his fingers and took off the sunglasses.
"What are you talking about, darling! It's not a work uniform! I came to pick you up right after work. You are not satisfied with your conscience? What's the matter? Today, buddy, I'm the host. Let's go have a drink and talk later. How have each of these years been…”
I haven't seen each other for many years, and this guy's tone is not unfamiliar. Xiao Nanzhu, who was accustomed to being cold-hearted and cold-faced, felt somewhat relieved inexplicably, raised the corner of his mouth and hooked his neck to give a firm hug. Mr. Situ Zhang, who was dressed like a blind man, laughed when he saw this. Xiao Nanzhu strangled his neck and walked forward while shouting, but his heart was quite warm. When the two of them took a taxi, they found a local restaurant to sit in. It was already half an hour after we started talking about the old times.
Meeting old friends is nothing more than to talk about the past and talk about old feelings. The two of them both grew up together as children, and they naturally talked a little bit casually. Xiao Nanzhu was used to being a soldier outside and was not polite to Situ Zhang. He ordered a few dishes and a bottle of wine and leaned on the back of the chair in the small restaurant to start smoking. Situ Zhang, who asked about things, didn't care about the guy's ignorance of his own virtues, he just let out a sigh of relief, wiped his round sunglasses with a glasses cloth and asked,
"Have personal problems been resolved?"
"It's all public, how to solve it?"
"Has the work problem been solved?"
"Unemployed, what can you arrange?"
Lazily replying like this, Xiao Nanzhu squinted his eyes and shook the soot on his fingertips indifferently. In fact, he had already made plans for a long-term job after coming back this time. After all, this society is already under a lot of pressure for employment competition, and even young college students may not be able to find a job, let alone a veteran like him. Situ Zhang, who heard the words, grinned and brought the round sunglasses back to the bridge of his nose. Xiao Nanzhu, who saw this, asked subconsciously,
"Asked me so much, what about yourself?"
After asking this question, Xiao Nanzhu clearly felt that Situ Zhang's smile had subsided a bit. Xiao Nanzhu and Situ Zhang looked at each other wordlessly. The dead sunglasses only smiled and did not speak. Xiao Nanzhu leaned in front of him when he saw this. After looking carefully, he deliberately suppressed his voice and said solemnly,
"Hey, since I saw you, you've been wearing sunglasses. You didn't secretly cut your double eyelids..."
"… "
At that moment, Situ Zhang's face was really too wonderful, Xiao Nanzhu let out a sullen laugh before pursing his lips in a serious manner.
"Xiao Nanzhu, your grandson."
Cursing fiercely, Situ Zhang frowned, he really didn't know what to say about Xiao Nanzhu's love of teasing himself since he was a child, but after taking a sip of wine, he muttered at Xiao Nanzhu. Zhu Zhu opened the mouth while watching with a smile but not a smile,
"I opened a massage parlor for the blind, and I'll take you to see it another day. It's not the kind of big health care, don't think about it, it's a serious Qigong massage therapy..."
In fact, even if Situ Zhang didn't say it himself, Xiao Nanzhu could guess what this guy was doing now. After all, the ancestral craftsmanship of the Situ Zhang family is well-known. Among the various occupations of the three religions and nine classes, qigong masters are always dubbed as liars, and their reputation is basically not much worse than that of selling counterfeit medicines. And many years ago, when the two of them were neighbors, Situ Zhang's parents specialized in qigong massage.
When Xiao Nanzhu was a child, every time he went to visit Situ Zhang to play, he could see many old men and women queuing up there waiting for Master Situ to perform his merits. Master Situ is Situ Zhang's biological father. It is said that if he makes one gong, he can live 15 minutes longer.
This kind of words that sounded like bullshit was obviously believed by many people at that time, but this was not a new business in that old alley at that time, so Xiao Nanzhu never took it seriously, but what he did not expect was Situ At such a young age, Zhang actually ran to do this kind of work that had long been eliminated by the times. After all, in his impression, Situ Zhang had a clever mind, and there was no reason to find a way out. Seeing his exploratory expression, Situ Zhang He just smiled, then poured a full glass of beer into the glass in front of him and said,
"What's the matter, I didn't expect that I would still be able to inherit the ancestral business? My family's ancestral qigong has been passed down to this generation for nearly three hundred years, so I can't just stop it like this? Besides, my blind massage business is doing well, if it weren't for today's sake Pick you up, I still have dozens of guests queuing in the back... If I say you've been gone for too long, there's still more you don't know. Do you remember Aunt Liu, the great dancer in our alley? Her eldest girl and the second girl went to dance academies. One studied modern dance and the other studied ethnic dance. Now, the great gods who dance are easier to show off than others. Do you remember that astrologer Wang Xiaodong? His grandson Wang Xiaodong, Weibo Going to a famous constellation expert and earning a lot more than me... Oh, and of course, Li Xiangu, who knows how to get on the upper body of a ghost, and Uncle Zheng, who has a big stone on his chest... "
"… "
The wine in his throat almost spurted out. Xiao Nanzhu really didn't expect that his old neighbors would have a good future, but seeing his disbelief, Situ Zhang didn't expect this. The guy could hear it, but just smiled and winked at him and said,
"Nowadays, people like to say that fortune-telling, qigong and traditional Chinese medicine are unscientific, but what is unscientific? , the ancestral secrets of cultural continuation can't be abandoned, don't you think? Speaking of which, your old lady was a famous Huangli teacher at the beginning, you didn't think about inheriting this craft from your family. Bar… "
Hearing this, Xiao Nanzhu was stunned. Thinking of the old lady who had been gone for four or five years, Xiao Nanzhu's eyes were filled with emotion. However, Situ Zhang's suggestion is not constructive in itself. After all, when his grandmother was alive, he did not intend to pass on the ability to read the Yellow Calendar to him. Now that she is gone, she naturally has no way to learn it, let alone learn it. as your future.
Thinking like this, Xiao Nanzhu didn't take these words to heart. This night's wine was not dispersed until almost ten o'clock. He casually rejected Situ Zhang Tongxiao's proposal to take a bath in the bathroom, Xiao Nanzhu gave a verbal promise to make another appointment next time and waved away, and when he returned with his luggage to the rental house where he would only come back during a normal vacation, This old house, which had not lived in a living person for more than a year, finally turned on the lights tonight.
Old sofa, old wooden table, old almanac hanging on the wall.
All the things in the house were left by the old man. After her death, Xiao Nanzhu didn't have time to clean it up, and was not willing to take it away. Now that he is back, although there is an unpleasant musty smell in the room, there are memories of the past everywhere. When Xiao Nanzhu, who was a little drunk, walked into the room, he first touched the wall. Turn on the light, then go to the kitchen to boil a pot of water, and then sit back in the living room.
The sound of fireworks rang out from time to time outside the window. The New Year is approaching, and everywhere is lively.
Waiting for the boiled water to boil, Xiao Nanzhu leaned back on the old sofa in a daze, and could vaguely hear the sound of the residents upstairs moving the tables and chairs. The old wall clock on the wall indicated that half an hour would pass today, Xiao Nanzhu looked away at the old Huang Li next to it, but suddenly frowned strangely.
In a house that hasn't been in a house for more than a year, it stands to reason that the position of anything should not change in the slightest.
But for some unknown reason, when Xiao Nanzhu's eyes met the old yellow calendar hanging on the wall of the main room, he inexplicably found that the date had been turned on the page of today.
“Wednesday 11 February 2027…”
For a while, his mind couldn't turn around. Xiao Nanzhu recalled the last time he left home, and always felt that the old yellow calendar hanging on the wall was indescribably strange. The doubts in his heart prompted him to stand up and walk to the wall, and when he carefully read the old yellow calendar, Xiao Nanzhu discovered that in addition to the densely packed words such as the daily fortune of the zodiac, there was also a drawing in the middle of the calendar. A carp boy with a splendid red jacket and a mole on the center of his eyebrows.
"Three-in-one tigers and dogs, nine stars and four predestined relationships, auspicious days in the zodiac, everything is feasible... So it's called a small... year?"
To himself, he read the small italicized line under the Yellow Calendar, and Xiao Nanzhu, who was full of doubts, always felt that something wrong was about to happen. This unreasonable premonition made him subconsciously frown, and in the next second, he saw the carp boy who had been sitting motionless on the almanac suddenly opened his eyes, and first dumped him with a fishy smell on his face The water stains, and then stared at him angrily and yelled,
"I still have half an hour to get off work today!! Who is sick looking for me! Do you want to die!! Ah!! Ah!!! (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻"
Xiao Nanzhu: "..."