The night was dark, and the clouds hung low.
On the Dumont Expressway, two shuttle cars were driving in tandem, the one in front was a bright red, and the one in the back was a low-key matte black. The light from the headlights shone quietly like water.
Yan Suizhi remembered that Fitz once said, "No matter what Gu Yan thinks, at least I unilaterally regard him as a good friend."
He always wanted to say to this girl, "It's not one-sided, Gu Yan is the same."
There will always be a different kind of tacit understanding between friends at certain moments, tacit understanding.
When he and Gu Yan went to the first floor, Fitz didn't say anything.
She just stared at the eyes of the two of them for a long time, and then suddenly laughed, the kind of smile that was relieved. Then he took out the light-sensing start key of the shuttle car, and shook it rather willfully: "The office is in a panic, I want to speed racing. Are you going?"
Gu Yan looked at her suspiciously for a moment, then went upstairs to get his coat: "Let's go."
At that time, Yan Suizhi hadn't figured out why he was suspicious until he got on the suspension track.
This young lady, who kept saying she wanted to race a car, was stunned to finish the entire Dumeng Expressway while pressing the bottom line of speed. During this process, as long as she had four wheels, she could overtake her car.
In this way, she dared to instruct the shuttle to turn into the faster suspension road in the cloud, and then still pressed the lower limit of the specified speed.
During this period, Lawyer Gu couldn't hold back, opened the in-car communication, connected with Fitz who was leading the way, and asked calmly, "Miss, do you know what racing means? I suspect that I may have heard it wrong before. What you said should be walk?"
Fitz's laughter came out on the communication channel, "Don't use meanness to scare people, even the intern is not afraid, how can I be afraid of you. To be honest, I usually don't drive on the suspension road by myself. For me, it's already fast. If you have any dissatisfaction, feel free to mention it, I won't speed up anyway."
Gu Yan was silent for a moment: "Then why did you choose the Flying Shuttle when you bought a car?"
"Because he's handsome."
"… "
Gu Yan thought for a while, and turned off the in-car channel with one click.
Yan Suizhi knew too much about Lawyer Gu's temper. He is just a person with a cold mouth, and the better the relationship, the more rude. You can see that he was mean for a long time, and after hanging up the communication, he still followed Fitz's car to the end.
They galloped on the suspension road for more than an hour, and they had already left the Fawang District and entered the forest on the outskirts.
There is even a time difference between this and the center of Fawang District. When they drove along the winding road to the top of the mountain, the local time was exactly 12 o'clock at night.
The mountain is the highest point in the area, with a wind tower on top, and the gate is open all day long. As long as you are interested, you can go to the top viewing platform at any time and overlook the entire forest area.
The wind tower is always lively in spring and summer, and it will be deserted in the late night of autumn and winter.
They chose the time well, and the top-floor viewing platform was empty.
Fitz opened the skylight familiarly, and all the shading roofs retreated to both sides, leaving only the huge glass without any brackets or division marks, and the starry sky above his head was so unobstructed.
Fitz didn't even need to look for it, he pointed to a distant star and said, "Hey, see, that one you know, right, is my hometown, where I've lived since my great-great-great-grandfathers, but I have a lot of I haven't been back for many years."
Yan Suizhi, as a senior lost faction, was born with hatred for orientation, and he could never find the north without a map.
He met Miss Fitz's eyes, nodded with a smile, then turned his face and tugged at Gu Yan's ear, and asked silently, "Does this mean north or south? Which planet?"
Gu Yan moved his lips: "West. The brightest star in the west in winter is Yunqiao Star."
That is one of the wonders of all the habitable planets in the Alliance. Because of the special composition of the atmosphere, the sky there is always as bright as fire. The star closest to it will always be blocked by its own satellite, like a silver crescent, hanging upside down across the entire sky forever, like a bridge in the clouds.
Hence the name of the planet.
It is said that the people of Yunqiaoxing are always innocent and straightforward, as warm and romantic as their eternal sky.
There are not many Yunqiao stars that Yan Suizhi is familiar with, but from the point of view of only a few, especially Miss Fitz, this statement does make some sense.
He asked Fitz, "You often come here in the middle of the night?"
As a result, the young lady immediately shook her head and said, "No, the forest area is too deep, so I don't dare to come alone. I'm afraid that if I turn my head, I will be on social news."
She winked at the two lawyers, and said unceremoniously, "I'm just waiting to coax one or two people who feel safe to come with me. The late-night scenery here is rare, and I've been wanting to see it for a long time. , suffering from being unable to deceive people, I finally caught me today."
Yan Suizhi was holding the railing with both hands to look at the star belt in the distance. Hearing this, he shook his head and smiled and said, "Miss, social news is not so easy to get on."
"Yeah, but you understand that after working in some places for a long time, there will always be a little misunderstanding of the world. There are always many perverts, one every 100 meters and so on." Fitz counted his fingers. "Those like police stations, courts, prosecutor's offices, hospitals, law firms, fall into this category."
She paused as she spoke, then added: "Although I don't file lawsuits, I'm only in charge of administration, but I also encounter various criminal cases every day, plus family reasons... Sometimes it's easy to go to extremes, especially just recently. In the two years I arrived at Southern Cross, I was about to suffer from persecution paranoia. Later, I found a good way to avoid becoming a neurotic."
Yan Suizhi asked smoothly, "What can I do?"
"On weekends, go to the plazas or welfare homes in Dekama or even the Union. Buy something sweeter, find a quiet corner, and sit for an afternoon."
Yan Suizhi was slightly stunned.
This is the stress relief method he had mentioned to his students a long time ago. It's just that at the time, in private, at his birthday party, all he heard were his direct students.
Fitz was not one of them, but he did something similar, and it was a kind of fate between friends.
"Sitting in those places, you always see a lot of moments," Fitz recalled, narrowing his eyes.
There are many people who will stand in front of a wandering musician, listen to the whole song quietly, and then send some thoughts and praise. Some people laughed and chatted because they were sitting on the same bench. Some people will help up a child who fell to the ground during play, and some people will show a knowing smile to a pet who is passing by.
"Every time I see those moments, it will offset a lot of negative thoughts, and I will feel as if there are not so many perverts, and people who are gentle and kind will always occupy the majority." Fitz shrugged, "Of course, this is just my one-sided idea. . But there was something that made me happy for a long time."
As she said that, she glanced in Gu Yan's direction.
When it comes to Gu Yan, Yan Suizhi is always very interested: "Oh? What?"
"Every year, among the newcomers to the law firm, there will always be a group of people who are addicted to our lawyer Gu's handsome face. There are both men and women, but he looks like he has a signal shielding device, you know. That's the kind of people who live within an eight-kilometer radius. , collectively referred to as living creatures, what men and women... Are there men and women in the world?" Fitz told Gu Yan vividly.
"—That's it. When I first joined the company, he ignored me at all. I suspect he didn't even know whether the new administrative personnel were male or female."
Miss Fitz took the opportunity to complain.
Yan Suizhi kept smiling with his eyes bent.
Gu Yan wanted to retort, "That's not enough, I'm not blind after all", but he didn't like to interrupt others, so he had to let the other party continue to talk nonsense.
"Later, there was a coincidence that I went to the orphanage to sit and watch the children sparring, watching donors and volunteers who were not relatives and non-accomplices chatting with those children, and I was seen by Gu. I didn't know what I was doing. It reminded him of someone or something, and since then his attitude towards me has been milder. I thought he was interested in me for a while, but then I found out that I thought too much."
"… "
Gu Yan silently pinched the bridge of his nose, extremely helpless.
"Did you drink before getting in the car?" Gu Yan asked.
"No," said Fitz. "What?"
"It's nothing, I just think you seem very... excited tonight." Gu Yan said.
Fitz nodded. ""No, I'm just excited. I'm really happy to know that you guys are doing the same thing as me. "
"You didn't know that before?" This was a bit unexpected.
"I don't know," Fitz said. "You don't do much in the law firm. How can I know what you're doing? But there's been a lot of speculation—"
She looked at Yan Suizhi and said, "When you came with your registration card, I started to guess. Because I rarely receive a person like you whose resume or even other records are blank. I didn't know at that time. Which side you are on, I don't know if you are good or bad. But I just wanted to cause some trouble for Southern Cross and charge one or two unstable factors, so I received your report card without asking. It turns out that , my eyesight is fine."
"Why?" Gu Yan looked at her.
Why are you siding with us? Why go to Southern Cross? This is the question they want to ask when they are at the law firm.
"Because of my parents," Fitz said.
"Your parents?"
Fitz nodded. She looked at the distant star in the west and seemed to be recalling many things: "My parents...mainly my mother. When I was young, my family was rich and couldn't spend enough money. She later inherited my foreign heritage. The thinking of her great-grandfather and great-grandmother was to take advantage of the money to invest everywhere. She was involved in many industries, such as medical treatment, transportation, materials and even ordnance, etc. Later, she invested in Helan Star and bought two medicine mines. But... these two The medicine mine ruined my home."
"My mother later went to prison and passed away. Because of this, my father suffered from the disease repeatedly for three years. The foundation was so poor that no transplant and sterilization were of great use, nor did he survive."
Medicine mine
Go to jail
Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan looked at each other, the more they listened, the more they felt deja vu. They frowned for a moment and tried to ask Fitz, "What were your parents' names?"
Fitz said, "My father's name is Gorgli Fitz, and he's a teacher. My mother's name is Maggie Luce."
"Luce?"
"Yes what's the matter?"
Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan invariably remembered what Qiao Fang showed them. It was his sister Eunice's video diary, which recorded the tea party at Manson Manor.
The young and capable lady inside was named Luce—
He also owns two medicine mines, also married an ordinary teacher, also went to prison, and committed suicide in prison not long after.
Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan were a little emotional when they heard about the Ms. Luce.
But they never imagined that she would actually be Fitz's mother.
Fitz said softly: "I sometimes feel sad, why can't even my parents be saved with such good medical technology and such good facilities in the Alliance? There must be some conspiracy in it. But then I found out that maybe The intrigue is not here, but elsewhere."
"When I was about to graduate from college, I learned some news—the two drug mines left by my parents were taken over by a shell company, and the shell company was actually owned by the Southern Cross partners, so I went to the law firm."
Over the years, she has been hiding in Southern Cross's administrative personnel system, slowly making herself the hub of Southern Cross's various information. But too much interference made it difficult for her to jump out of the frame of the Southern Cross, to understand things other than the Southern Cross, and if she couldn't find out which characters were involved, she naturally wouldn't know that there were still people standing in line with her.
"I've been feeling very, very alone for a long time. I don't know who I can help or who can help me." Fitz looked into the distance, a few stars in his beautiful eyes, "But it's weird, and I'm not afraid. I have an inexplicable confidence that what I'm doing must be useful, and there will always be someone standing with me, just need to wait."
"So you know why I'm so excited tonight? Because I read those running logs and know that I finally, finally, don't have to guess or wait anymore."
She turned to look at Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan and said, "I'm finally not alone. What could be more gratifying than this?"
Yan Suizhi thought for a while, and said warmly, "That's really not the case."
Gu Yan leaned against the railing, and Fitz also laughed.
The wilderness outside the window is silent, and the long forest is undulating.
The night is long and boundless, as if dormant with many incomprehensible things.
However, the stars above the head are full of light, and the planetary belt that is not many light-years away crosses the sky like an endless river of light, in which the stars gather.
Just like there are always some paths in this world, when you step on it, you know that you are never alone.