After squeezing the iron sheet for a long time, the fingertips become slightly hot.
Qi Boyuan had already left and the door was closed. Outside the office, only a few sounds could be heard from the employees walking around and talking.
Li Xuan pressed his eyebrows, and before opening the editor, he moved his fingertips slightly and called up the planning proposal of "Reverse Track". The background of the game is set in the end of the world. A group of death row prisoners killed the warden, set a fire, and escaped from prison...
He closed it again, lowered his eyes and drank a sip of water, then looked up, closed the plan and continued writing the program.
"Brother Xuan." The administrator knocked on the door, "Do you need me to order food for you?"
"Need not."
"Okay." The administrator nodded and was about to leave when Li Xuan called him back, "Is Zhao Jizhe here?"
"Yes, do you need me to call him?"
Li Xuan paused for a moment: "No need."
It gets dark early in autumn. I was staring at the computer and didn't pay attention. When Sheng Min called, I realized that the room was already pitch black except for the fluorescent light of the screen.
"Finished the shoot?"
"Well, it just ended. Are you at home or at work?"
"At the company." Li Xuan glanced at the time in the lower right corner of the screen. It was almost nine o'clock. "... I have some things to deal with at the company today. I will be back later. You can go to bed first. You don't have to wait for me."
"I won't wait for you. You're just being sentimental." Sheng Min's voice sounded smiling, probably because he was in a good mood after returning to school today.
"How was your meeting with the teacher today?"
"I'm fine... It's been a while since we last met. I'll talk to you when you come back..." Then she asked him, "Have you had dinner?"
Of course not.
Li Xuan stood up and turned on the light: "We'll go eat later."
"You." Sheng Min said helplessly, "What kind of dinner is this at this time? What are you going to eat later?"
Li Xuan had never considered this question: "Just find a random store downstairs."
"Whatever, whatever. You won't go." Sheng Min complained to him in a low voice, "Your stomach is getting worse every day... I'll find a porridge shop and buy you a bowl of porridge later. There's an old restaurant nearby that makes good porridge."
"Forget it." Li Xuan said immediately after hearing this, "It's too much trouble. You must be tired after a busy day today. Go home and rest early. I will be back soon."
He refused too decisively, and he himself felt that it sounded very abrupt. Sure enough, Sheng Min was also stunned for a moment, and said hesitantly: "What's wrong with you? I always feel that you don't want me to go to your company recently... It was the same yesterday. I said I would come to pick you up, but you came to wait for me after get off work early in the morning. What's wrong? Are you afraid that I will catch you because you have a beautiful girl in your house?..."
"What book have you been reading these days? You've been thinking about this and that all the time." Li Xuan's fingertips pressed the switch back and forth, making the light in the room flicker. His voice was as casual as always, "I just got off work early yesterday. I said you're a capitalist but you didn't admit it. You got off work early but you still made me find an excuse... But I really don't want you to come. If you come, how can I work?"
"I won't bother you."
"I can't promise not to disturb you." Li Xuan said with a smile, "Besides, when you leave, I will definitely want to go with you, but today is really busy... What should I do? You are deliberately trying to make fun of me."
"You're talking nonsense again." Sheng Min couldn't help laughing, "Okay, then I won't talk to you anymore. Go eat something first, then go to work quickly and come back soon."
Li Xuan hummed: "Okay, I'll be back when I'm done."
The beeping sound on the other end of the phone continued for a long time before Li Xuan put the phone down. He walked back to his desk, where the micro-locator was still lying quietly next to the mouse.
He remembered Sheng Min's joke and his throat tightened belatedly.
A beautiful woman in a golden house is a beautiful woman, but can she be hidden? How long can he hide Sheng Min
He can wade through rivers and cross seas, but would he dare to let Sheng Min get even a little wet
Hit the snake at its most vulnerable part. Qi Boyuan deserves the fact that he has known him for so many years.
Most of the lights in the hall were turned off, with only one remaining near the door. However, there was also light coming out from the crack of the door of Qi Boyuan's office next door. Li Xuan took a look, then looked away, closed the door of his own office, and slowly walked to the workstation with the light still on, holding his windbreaker, and gently knocked on the table.
"Nineteen..." Zhao Jizhe was pretending to be asleep, and actually he looked like one, but he didn't expect Li Xuan to call him suddenly. He was inevitably exposed when he pretended to wake up. He scratched his hair awkwardly, and his sleeves slipped down a little, revealing the mottled scars on his arms, "... You haven't left yet... I fell asleep and will leave soon..."
He packed his things in a hurry. Actually, there was nothing to pack. He secretly looked up at Li Xuan: "... Nineteen, you work too hard every day... You have so much money now, there is no need to..."
This was a sincere statement. When they were very young and lived in an orphanage, he hid in the grass beside the railings and read under the streetlights outside. Zhao Jizhe came to find him and looked at him with the same eyes and the same worried tone: "Nineteen, it's too late. Go to bed and stop reading. Auntie will scold you if she catches you... This is the milk distributed this afternoon. You are not here... You drink it, you drink it, I have drunk it, this is for you..."
It was the so-called milk mixed with very cheap essence. He never liked it, but no matter how many times he was told, Zhao Jizhe could never remember it.
"Let's go." Li Xuan watched Zhao Jizhe moving some documents around. "No need to take any of them." He went out first and waited at the door for a moment. Zhao Jizhe followed him out and looked at him with a look of bewilderment and flattery. "Nineteen, are you waiting for me? ... Or is there something else?"
Li Xuan didn't say anything and pressed the elevator button silently. Zhao Jizhe followed him to the garage without knowing why. He hesitated in front of the car for a moment and got in only after hearing Li Xuan's call.
"Nineteen, where are you going?" Zhao Jizhe was a little nervous, "Are you going home?... I see that you and your adoptive father don't have a good relationship. You don't live together, do you?"
Normally, Li Xuan would feel bored and disgusted by his inquiries, but now he just felt tired.
It didn't start after he was released from prison. When he came to N City, even in the orphanage, Zhao Jizhe always asked him where he was and whether he met new people...
"We are family. I am your brother. It is my duty to care about you."
When did this sentence start
"All the children who came to the orphanage with me were adopted."
Zhao Jizhe came out of the dean's office with his head down. The aunt who looked very amiable said, we still want a pretty girl.
"So." Li Xuan said calmly while reading a tattered book.
Zhao Jizhe was actually adopted, but the lost child was later found and sent back to the orphanage shortly before Li Xuan went to the orphanage. It was the gossip of the aunts in the orphanage, but Zhao Jizhe did not mention this experience, and it may be because he was too young to remember it clearly.
"Nineteen, the uncle who came last month wants to adopt you, why don't you go? After you go, you will have a father and a mother, and relatives. Other students in school will no longer scold us for being unwanted children."
"I already have parents. They don't cease to exist just because they died." Li Xuan replied unhappily, "I don't need them."
Zhao Jizhe stood there in a daze, as if he had never heard such a statement before. Li Xuan got up and left. At night, Zhao Jizhe came to see him again.
"I think you are right. I also have a father and a mother..." Zhao Jizhe sat next to him and pulled a dogtail grass. "I have thought about it. We don't want to be adopted. Last time, Big Tongue and his new mother came back and said they wanted to see us. Didn't they just want to show off his new plane? I think it's just so-so, not as good as a bamboo dragonfly... It's nothing special... Then we don't need other parents, but I still want a relative. Every time I fill out a form, that column is blank, and the teacher always wants to see me... How about you be my relative and I'll be your relative. I'm older than you, I'm your older brother, and my deskmate has a younger brother, so I'll have one too..."
"Boring." Li Xuan thought nonchalantly, what nonsense.
A lie repeated a hundred times will become true, but what about a joke repeated a hundred times? More than ten years have passed, and Zhao Jizhe still said the same thing: We are family, I care about you, where do you live now, what are you thinking about... ...
"Sometimes I wonder if you didn't have so many questions." Li Xuan interrupted him gently.
This remark, which was not meant as a reproach, strangely made Zhao Jizhe silent. He kept that look of panic until the car stopped near a large, newly built theme park on the outskirts of the city.
"get off."
"Where is this?"
Li Xuan opened the car door directly: "Let's talk about it after we get out of the car."
This place is close to the outskirts of the city. As soon as I got off the car, the cold wind blew. It was too late and the park was closed. Without the lights and decorations, the Ferris wheel was not so romantic. The car was swaying in the air. The crowds of people in the snack street that was lively during the day had dispersed. Only a few vendors who were unwilling to give up were shivering and waiting for the fish that slipped through the net.
The French restaurant next to the park across the street was even more arrogant. The well-dressed waiter stood behind the door, first taking a look at the guests' attire, then adjusting his smile and saying, "Welcome."
Li Xuan had no particular fondness for any Western food, but the restaurants next door were closed, so there was no other option. He took the menu and ordered the food at random, but his luck was not good, as several of the dishes he ordered were sold out.
"I'm sorry sir, we only use the freshest ingredients and cannot stock too much..." explained the waiter.
Li Xuan simply handed the menu back: "Just serve whatever you think is available."
"Have you ever been to this park?" After the waiter left, Zhao Jizhe cautiously said to him, "I seem to have heard Zhu Zhou talk about it, what IP theme it is, but I don't understand..."
"I've been here before this park was built. You've been here too." Li Xuan took the sparkling water on the table. "This used to be a checkpoint for trucks entering the city. There was a dry bridge in front of it, but it was later demolished."
Zhao Jizhe was stunned for a second. When he turned to look out the window again, his expression was filled with a kind of daze shrouded by old memories. After a while, he said, "I can't recognize it anymore."
Who can recognize it? The city is constantly renewing itself. Yesterday's tile has become a layer of soil today.
This was their first stop in City N. Homeless strangers followed the heavy bus, drifting back and forth as the journey was bumpy. The truck bed was like a lonely boat rocked by the wind and waves, and the people were like cargo. The sun rose and the moon set, the sky was sunny and it rained, and when the bus stopped again, they arrived in a completely unfamiliar city that they had only seen on TV and in textbooks.
When he saw the huge landmark in the distance, Zhao Jizhe actually wanted to leave.
“I don’t want to be here.”
He was so scared. He looked at their tattered clothes. Every well-dressed man and woman who passed by made him feel that they would turn into a monster with green faces and fangs in the next second. Their lives were limited to the gray, square sky of the orphanage. The farthest they had been was only to school. The teacher who had been on a business trip to a big city said that many people there lived lives they had never heard of.
The classmates looked at him with envy and longing, but Zhao Jize thought that it didn't sound like much fun.
He even refused to get out of the truck bed, "Nineteen, let's go... I don't like it here."
He wanted to go to a small place, like a closet in an orphanage where he could hide and feel safe.
But Li Xuan decided to stay. "You can go by yourself if you want to." He gave all the money he had to Zhao Jizhe. "Go ahead, I'll give you the money too. You need to change the bandage on your hand. You can go anywhere. We are so far away now. They can't find us anymore."