Yin Guo's training camp is for this year's 9-Ball World Championships.
A total of more than 30 players participated in the training, and several national team coaches also arrived. Lin Lin was stationed at the base as a training partner.
Lin Yiyang sent her outside the gate of the base.
In order to make it easier for the two to talk, the engine was turned off. From the front windshield, I could see two people sitting inside, but I couldn't tell who it was. Lin Lin just drove across the road and drove into the base in front of his eyes.
Lin Yiyang's car has never been licensed, nor has it been on the road. Naturally, Lin Lin had never seen it before, and would not take a second look here.
He wanted to turn on the high-beam headlights to take a look at Lin Lin and have a chat with her, but let it go.
"Why didn't you call her?" Yin Guo was in the car, pulling up her long hair.
He didn't care too much: "It's not that I will disappear in the future."
Speaking of his group of friends who grew up since childhood, she was really envious: "You guys have such a good relationship, you are all like brothers and sisters. Beicheng is completely club-style management, survival of the fittest, so are the students, and so are the coaches."
Lin Yiyang smiled and said nothing. He habitually touched the back of her neck, where there were broken hairs, and the skin was tender, and it felt good to the touch.
She was itched by him, and she pushed his hand away, and he was all reflected in the bright black pupils: "Lin Yiyang?"
He said yes.
The car was turned off and the air conditioner was gone.
The air is not flowing, and naturally, the unique breath of the two is much stronger.
"It seems that after marriage, there will be a lot of quarrels." She thought of her ex-sister-in-law.
My sister-in-law was at home during confinement, and Yin Guo happened to be on winter vacation. She was unhappy all month long, from who changed the diaper, what brand of milk powder to eat, to whether her mother would have to work in the future, and so on. The sister-in-law is financially independent, and she is also independent. The divorce agreement was written in confinement, the child was taken away, and she remarried within a year.
Yin Guo was surrounded by a complete book of divorce and remarriage.
Lin Yiyang replied: "People are different."
"What if we never get married?" She imagined, "If the relationship is good, we will be together. If the relationship is not good, getting married is useless."
When Lin Yiyang was not in the past, she imagined it like this, playing basketball, competing in games, traveling, having a boyfriend to accompany each other, and being able to have her own busy things like herself, so as not to interfere with her competitions and training.
Especially depending on what the family thinks of him, she doesn't want him to always hit a wall. As long as he doesn't get married, his family can't control him.
Lin Yiyang was holding the steering wheel with his left hand, and the light from the street lamps dyed his short hair. He looked as if he was seriously considering her words, but suddenly he pulled her wrist up to her waist and pressed it under the waistline.
The light inside the car was very dim, Yin Guo was still blushing from him, and wanted to withdraw his hand, but was pressed even tighter.
"What have you seen here?" Lin Yiyang said with a low smile, "For me, if you want it or not, you have the final say."
Outside the window, the light from street lamps illuminates the front windshield and shines in.
He was holding the steering wheel with one hand and holding her hand with the other, looking at her on her left side in the light outside the car. He didn't let her go for a long time.
The training time is long, and after this release, I will not see anyone for at least two weeks.
Yin Guo was also reluctant to part with him, but they were all at the gate, the cars and people coming and going here were all acquaintances of Jiuqiu. It's not good to be seen by others, and I'm even more afraid of spreading it to the ears of family members.
"It's gone," she said.
"Later," he said, "two minutes."
***
When Lin Yiyang returned to his ball room, Jiang Yang had just taken a shower, and with his upper body bare, he took out a letter of intent to buy a house and threw it on the green table: "Look."
"Haven't you seen it?" He had seen the electronic file before he came back.
"After all, it's a big deal, so read it again." Jiang Yang put his gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, looking at him with his eyes behind the lenses. "According to my point of view, I'm the one with the big head, and you should be less."
Lin Yiyang supported the flannel table with one hand, and waved the other hand at him: "Brother will settle accounts."
Jiang Yang smiled: "You and I are much closer than a mother."
"It's even more important to settle accounts clearly, and there must be no impurities that affect the relationship." Lin Yiyang flipped through the agreement, "They are all adults, and you should understand this truth better than anyone else. Good friends don't touch money, and it's not good to touch money. friend."
The two looked at each other.
Jiang Yang sighed sincerely: "It's different, junior brother, it's really different from when I was a child."
Lin Yiyang took out the pen from Jiang Yang's hand, turned to the last page of the contract, and pointed to a place: "Here?"
"Yes, six copies must be signed."
"Bring it here," he said.
All of them were signed quickly, and the six contracts were piled up in one place and pushed to Jiang Yang.
Under the lamp, between the two of them was a stack of letters of intent to buy a house, a belated gift from the six apprentices to their mentor. Lin Yiyang has five seniors. The first four didn't have a good time. They retired before they became successful and their careers developed.
Lin Yiyang and Jiang Yang were young, and they entered the teacher's school when Mr. He was in his 60s. They were lucky to catch up with the development of the times and the explosion of the industry economy today. Therefore, under the leadership of Lin Yiyang and Jiang Yang, the two younger ones paid half of the house payment, and the four senior brothers bought the house as witnesses. After the China Open, I plan to give it to my teacher in the name of the six brothers.
He entered Dongxin City in the second grade, and his skills from being a man to playing basketball were all inherited from He Wenfeng. No amount of entanglement can compare to Shien. A man who is almost twenty-nine years old wants to repay, but the teacher is old, and he is already at the age of wanting nothing. He has been in the society for so many years, all he can think of is these real money, which are common but real.
Of course, with the teacher's temper, how to send it will be a problem. With Jiang Yang around, there is always a way.
Lin Yiyang propped his hands on both sides of the table, looked at the stack of papers in front of him, and thought, if he hadn't left here that year, this matter could have been completed at least five years earlier.
…
It is said that life can be waited for, but in reality time is ruthless.
"What are you thinking?" Jiang Yang asked.
Lin Yiyang picked the most relaxing words to send the other party away: "It's time to calm down and get down to business."
***
The snooker China Open kicked off in April.
After the reform of the snooker competition system, there are as many as 20 world-class professional competitions this year.
This year's China Open has a total prize money of more than 1 million pounds, attracting attention from all over the world, and at the same time attracting star players from all over the world.
At the beginning of this month, the public's attention also focused on China.
According to the usual practice, the top 16 star players in the world will automatically enter the main match and do not need to participate in the qualifiers.
Therefore, Lin Yiyang did not show up until the day of the main match.
In the backstage of the Olympic Stadium, a tall and thin Chinese man with a cropped head, a black sports bag that has remained unchanged for thousands of years, and a club case and a black suit bag in his right hand walked into the backstage door.
Several nearby European and American players saw him and waved enthusiastically: "Hi, Lin."
In the past year, he always appeared backstage in black casual clothes, or at most in summer, he took off his black coat to reveal a simple white T-shirt. Like to wear colored sneakers, dark red, white, dark blue and so on.
This attire is indeed like an athlete, but not like a world champion playing gentlemen's games.
He passed by several lounges, and finally stopped in the Chinese players' lounge, pressed the silver metal handrail, and pushed open the door. That door belongs to the player's lounge of the China Open.
Several men inside were changing clothes, or sitting on chairs to rest.
There were top 16 players, and there were also newcomers who had passed through the qualifiers. Everyone greeted Lin Yiyang warmly when they saw Lin Yiyang. Lin Yiyang nodded, passed by the crowd, found his own seat, put down the club box, and hung the suit bag containing the competition clothes on the hanger.
He took out his phone, opened an extremely boring game, and played casually to pass the time.
By the way, we are waiting for our opponent in the first round of the group stage—Meng Xiaodong.
What a blessing in disguise, the first game back was against an old opponent.
Meng Xiaodong happened to come back from the bathroom. He was wearing trousers, a white shirt, and a slim waistcoat. There were many of them. The bow tie was still on the table, waiting to go on stage.
Meng Xiaodong found his thermos and drank hot tea to moisten his throat: "Did you run into Yin Guo's family two days ago?"
"Yes." "It's not bad." Lin Yiyang's plan was to say hello and let the elders look at him in a low profile, and the goal was achieved in the first round.
Meng Xiaodong nodded: "My aunt is very rigid, just like Mr. He. It won't work with her."
Lin Yiyang knew what Meng Xiaodong meant: "It's normal to have this attitude when I just came back. I can't say that now that I have a world ranking and become famous, everyone should suddenly change their minds and think that as long as they succeed, they are good people? I don't believe it."
He added: "I believe that the strong prey on the weak in the arena, and the winner is king, but I don't like this kind of situation in society."
After all, if you want to change people's outlook, it's useless to say nice words.
Smart people only observe what people around them do, not what they say.
Lin Yiyang raised his eyes, looked at the wall clock on the wall, got up, pulled the zipper of the suit cover to the end, and took out the shirt, trousers, and vest inside.
Take it off first, then put it on, fasten the trousers, and put on the belt.
He remembered that the first time he returned to the game was in the Australian Open qualifiers. At that time, Lin Yiyang walked backstage, no one knew him, no one greeted him.
World top-ranked players like Jiang Yang and Meng Xiaodong don't need to participate in any qualifiers, and they won't appear in that stadium when the world enters the official competition. He traveled a long distance in a foreign country, and he had no acquaintances, no opponents, and even those brothers who signed up for the qualifiers didn't know.
He changed his shirt in the waiting room, thinking about who he should talk to, that he was about to play.
For the first game after many years, it seems that it must be said to be practical.
All he could think of was Yin Guo.
"It's the first Belgian match, call your sister in the waiting room," he unscrewed the buttons one by one, all the way to the top button of the shirt, and fastened it firmly, "I didn't tell you where I was, and she Say—Xiao Guo, I might still want to play the game.”
He also told her that he hadn't entered the arena for many years, maybe it was not as simple as imagined, the world is changing, the arena is changing, the opponent is also changing, everything is unknown. Perhaps, he was making a bad move.
It is safe to go to Duke for a Ph.D. His brother with the best undergraduate relationship had a Ph.D. in Pennsylvania and was an associate professor at Duke, waiting for him to go there. The two are quite equal in strength, so it's not a big problem to let him follow the way of his senior brother step by step.
Returning to the game is full of variables.
"She was very happy, and I said that if she didn't play well, she would be in trouble in the future. Guess what she said?"
"What?"
"She said, it doesn't matter, you go. When you chased me, you were a poor student, and I was nothing. No matter how bad we are together, we will not be worse than before."
She also said to him, last year I ranked third in the World Association points, no matter how bad you are, you are also the third boyfriend in the world. The kid who was homeless in Blizzard had already hit half of the country with a cue and told him seriously. She Yin Guo is Lin Yiyang's way out in life. Go forward, there is someone behind you, Lin Yiyang.
Meng Xiaodong smiled when he heard this: "My sister is a treasure, finding her is your blessing."
Lin Yiyang smiled: "Let's go." His facial features were set off by the rigorous shirt and trousers, which made his demeanor a little calmer, but obviously, the attitude in his eyes was still his.
The two left the lounge, walked into the passage side by side, and entered the arena under the leadership of the staff.
The snooker field has strict requirements and requires absolute silence. In many open matches, the first requirement is that the audience must turn off their mobile phones. In silence, the applause is restrained. Whether a player stands up, hits the ball, sits down again, or sits alone in a chair and thinks, it is all related to the word "quiet".
In the quiet gymnasium, the attendance rate was as high as 90%.
In this country's Open, the audience naturally knew more about the domestic players. Whether it was Meng Xiaodong or Lin Yiyang who made a sudden comeback, they were the reasons for today's extremely high attendance.
The referee, dressed in a slim black suit and white gloves, approached the two with a serious face and shook hands.
One minute later, Lin Yiyang successfully got the right to serve.
Holding his black cue, he walked slowly to the table. The green velvet surface, a different gymnasium, but the same piece of land. This is the first time he has stood on the field of his motherland after more than a dozen competitions since his comeback.
"Your teacher is here," Meng Xiaodong said in a voice only he could hear, "Look to the north."
His heart trembled, and he looked back.
The arena is where the lights of the audience are, but he looks at the auditorium from the light, and there is only one old man in his eyes. Thirteen years apart, the master and apprentice met for the first time here, on this arena.
Lin Yiyang couldn't see the teacher's face clearly, because it was too far away, because there were tears in his eyes, because...
The man holding the club tightly stood like a sculpture in the live broadcast, and finally bowed deeply in silence. Facing that invisible corner.