In the night, the brightly lit city edge.
In the bright and prosperous neon colors, there is a peculiar building that is not illuminated. From the top floor to the bottom floor, it is pitch black. It stands imperviously opposite the largest shopping center in the city center, as if it can suck the surrounding light. Huge monster.
When you walk into this building bit by bit, you will find that this 36-story building looking out over the prosperous city is actually a semi-finished building that has not yet been completed.
The concrete wall has just been exposed to the ribs. In some places, the wall has not been completely sealed. The edge of the room is directly exposed to the night sky, and the inside of the room can be directly seen from the outside.
The strange thing is that in such a semi-finished building, these rooms are not empty. With the dark and colorful lights, you can vaguely see the placement of the rooms in the night.
In some rooms, there are simple mattresses, sleeping bags and desks, and there are two or three rolls of toilet paper in a hot water pot on the floor. People can live there at first sight.
In some rooms, only one altar was placed on the altar, and a black-and-white photo was placed on the altar. The photo displayed a stack of apples, an incense burner and a jug of ashes placed in a shrine.
There are four incense sticks still burning in the censer, which means that someone has just come to offer incense.
Fragrant lingering upwards, the phone rang in the unfinished building at night, and there was a man with a bag of heavy apples in his left hand and a bag of paper money in his right hand. : "Hello? I just cooked it for Li Ma, where is yours?"
This is a clearer, younger male voice.
"After burning the 17th floor." A female voice came on the phone, sounding the same young age, "Then we meet at Brother Wang's house on the 18th floor?"
When the man finished speaking, he had to raise his hand hard to hang up.
The female voice over there was silent for a while, and then whispered: "Yuan Guang, the two players who died in the preseason this year, we haven't given them incense yet."
The man hung up the phone for a while, the apple in his hand seemed too heavy, he hung his hand little by little, his shoulders slowly closed, his head lowered and he exhaled a long breath: " …When we win the last game, we all go to give them incense."
The female voice hung up.
18th floor, room 1803.
Inside the room is an altar. In the black and white photo on the altar is an uncle with a big smile and beard, with his name written next to him-[Wang Shuqi, aged 42].
The man carrying the apples silently, as if he had obsessive-compulsive disorder, placed the apples one by one in the tribute tray in front of the uncle, took out four incense sticks, and lit his hands together and closed his eyes after three prayers. Do not move, talking to himself:
"Uncle Wang, we are in the playoffs again this year. I hope you are in the spirit of heaven and bless you all to be safe and to survive."
"...Last year...Last year's game..."
The man took a deep breath like a jam when he said that, his eyelids trembled twice, and a little wet: "Thank you guys!"
After speaking, he stepped forward solemnly and inserted the incense into the stove.
A woman walked in the next doorway.
This woman was wearing flat shoes, t-shirts and jeans, her hair in a bun at the back of her head. She was only 27 or 28 years old. She was obviously full of vigor, but she looked at the man skillfully. Scented, sighed in a complicated mood, and handed over a candle: "Yuan Guang, I buy a candle, should I order a pair of wax for Uncle Wang?"
"No point." Yuan Guang shook his head and turned his head in the dark, the moonlight outside the house surging layers on his side face.
Single eyelid, thin lips, just looking at the facial features, it is a bit of a young talent, but the overall look, the feeling of a young talent is instantly destroyed.
The hair that has not been trimmed for a long time is awkwardly bundled, but it is tied crookedly, on the right shoulder, and there are hair branches on both sides, and the eyes are dark and dense, and it looks like I haven’t slept for three days. The same, the body leaned tiredly.
There is a band-aid on his left forehead obliquely, and there is a red mark applied by a marker on his cheek, but he himself didn't seem to notice that the marker was applied on his face.
Looking at the woman this way, she was startled. She remembered that Yuan Guang was in a good state two or three days ago, but now it is almost...
Haggard too much.
Yuan Guang shook his head while lowering his head to pack his things: "Don't light the candles. Sister Qian and the others still live here. There are no fire protection measures here. It is not safe to light candles."
"Let's guard the incense and leave after burning."
The two stood quietly in front of the altar without saying a word.
Yuan Guang's eyelids drooped twice, and his body suddenly staggered forward before falling straight down, almost putting his head in the incense burner.
This shocked the woman next to her, and quickly reached out and held her hand: "Yuan Guang!!"
Yuan Guang's head slammed hard on the altar. He covered his head and screamed, shaking his head sleepily, and began to fall back again dazedly.
The woman laughed and laughed and held him down and said, "How many days have you not slept?"
Yuan Guang’s head leaned against the wall. He only vented without air intake. He trembled and complained: "... Recently, there is a project in our company, and Zhu Mei has been leading us to work crazy overtime because I want to take time off to play the game tomorrow. The leader said You can only get the work done in the first two days..."
The woman gasped: "You haven't slept in these two days?!"
Yuan Guang was dying, and nodded in tears, "I just finished it this afternoon."
"The injury on your right forehead is also like this?" The woman was distressed and speechless again: "You are going to play a game tomorrow, maybe you will die, you can't just look away and don't go to work?"
Before Yuan Guang spoke, he and the woman's cell phones rang at the same time.
[Your loan with the end of the debit number XXXX will be deducted RMB 6,439.96 from 18:00 on September 29. Please ensure that the amount in the repayment account is sufficient. Your credit history will be truthful...】
The two looked down at the phone, and the woman was silent.
Yuan Guang looked at the woman faintly: "Isn't this thinking that if you don't die, you still have to continue working to pay off the mortgage?"
woman:"… "
The grass cannot be refuted.
The woman sighed, patted her butt and sat next to Yuan Guang. It was funny and sad: "The guild presidents of other people's houses are always calling for trouble, and then look at you, Yuan Guang, can't even pay the mortgage."
"Doesn’t the ace players of other people’s teams also respond with one answer, millions of fans, and tens of millions in one live broadcast?" Yuan Guang hugged his knees, put his head on his knees and aimed at the woman, whispering, "Shi Qian, look at you. , Our guild’s ace fog player, now the audience can’t even remember your face."
Shi Qian: "... I have a fog skill, so I put fog on the field to cover my vision. Can the audience remember my face to have a ghost?"
The two people were silent again when they said that, Qi Qi sighed in awe.
"I really envy it, the rich big guild or something."
Yuan Guang first spoke: "How many years did you borrow?"
Shi Qian recalled: "I borrowed the same principal and interest for twenty years, how about you?"
"Similarly, at that time, I chose this to mean that there will be less money." Yuan Guang looked down the text message and checked the balance in his bank card. When he saw that it was greater than 6,437, he let out a sigh of relief. "The result is still three years. One hundred dollars less in a month."
"Uncle Wang and the others... How many years did they borrow?" Shi Qian asked lightly, lowering her head.
Yuan Guang was silent for a while: "For 30 years, Uncle Wang and his family's income is not high, and the whole family repays the loan together. The down payment is also collected. They borrowed more than 100,000. The down payment was only paid off when the developer ran away."
"Uncle Wang couldn't hold on when he entered the game. He stayed in the game for a while, but he still couldn't. Finally, he knelt in front of me and begged me to let him play in the league. ."
"I didn't agree at the time, so Uncle Wang... cut his wrist."
"Fortunately, Uncle Wang lives in an unfinished building, and the rooms are not installed. The neighbors next to him will be able to see what happened soon, and he was sent to the hospital in time."
Yuan Guangjing took a long time. He lowered his head and fiddled with the apple in the bag:
"Last year I let Uncle Wang come on."
"Last year's mid-season, hundreds of people asked me to sign up and want to play. Some were the owners of this unfinished building, and some joined the guild later. In short, there are various reasons that they can’t survive in reality and the game. , The situation is similar to that of Uncle Wang."
"Among the team members who died last year, 47 were the owners of this unfinished building. They all joined me in the game. They lasted for several years and couldn't survive. I beg me to let them play."
"I... agree."
Yuan Guang poked Apple, exhaled, and then twitched the corner of his mouth: "I know they are at their limit, because I can't hold it anymore."
Shi Qian didn't speak, she patted Yuan Guang's shoulder vigorously, and the two of them were back to back like this, huddled in a room where the unfinished building could not be capped and made public.
The four-point incense red light on the altar behind them was faint in the dark, small, flashing, seeming to be extinguished at any time, but it was the only light in this building next to the lights of Wanjia.
Yuan Guang raised his head and looked at the colorful night scene outside the house. The lights were dazzlingly reflected in his eyes and shook, like chaotic oil paints mixed together, melting into a tear that was about to drip out of his eyes.
Yuan Guang sniffed, and suddenly smiled: "It's funny when I think about it. So many big guilds came to analyze our tactics before, saying what cruel, cold, willing to sacrifice, the members have problems with their brains, and they are willing to rotate. To sacrifice."
"But in the beginning, there was no way to fix the reasons for the team members. These people must have never thought of it."
Yuan Guang exhaled, his eyes flushed, and he said with a trembling smile: "It's because in reality everyone has to go to work every day to save money to repay the mortgage. It is inconvenient to ask for leave. There is no way to stay in the game all the time. Take your turn to participate in the competition."
"Unexpectedly, it turned out to be our guild's unfavorable tactic in the end."
He clenched his fist at his side:
"Shi Qian, I sometimes find it strange. In fact, everyone in the guild has jobs, friends, relatives, and someone likes them, supports each other, lives so hard and so hard, no matter how hard they are, they will swallow themselves, and they will not die. Trouble others, no matter how difficult it is, I want to help others live."
"Everyone is a good person, why do you live so hard, so hard, that you can't survive for three years?"
The night wind blew Shi Qian's hair, and she whispered: "Yuan Guang, we will go to the stadium tomorrow."
"You said that in a year, will it be our anniversary?"