"What are you doing?" Sheng Min poked his head out, seemingly not expecting it to be Li Xuan. "I heard footsteps and thought I had misheard."
"Did I wake you up?" Li Xuan was stunned for a moment, then squatted down to talk to him, "Aren't you sitting on my left?"
When he first came out, he took a special look and found that the light in the tent had been turned off long ago.
"There are more floor lights over there, and Yinying said she was afraid of the dark. So I switched with her."
"She came to you and told you?"
"She came here with her assistant." Sheng Min didn't understand why, and seeing Li Xuan frown, he spoke for Liu Yinying. "She is really afraid of the dark. She was scared when she was filming a ghost movie when she was a child." He asked Li Xuan again, "Why did you come out?"
Li Xuan briefly explained the masterpiece of the swimming crab.
"So where are you going with your computer?"
"There's a chair under the lighthouse over there..."
"No." Before Li Xuan finished speaking, Sheng Min interrupted him firmly, "The wind is so strong at the seaside at night."
"fine."
"Of course I have something to do." Sheng Min then looked at the dim light outside. After a day of filming, except for the two of them, the entire camp was probably asleep. He thought for a moment and said, "I'll go over there, and you can use this tent."
"What's the difference?" Li Xuan said, "You are the magic needle that stabilizes the sea. Once you go, the storm will stop?"
Sheng Min could tell he was laughing at her, but she wasn't angry. She said kindly, "But you still have to record a show tomorrow, so you need to get some rest. I can still catch up on my sleep during the day."
"It's okay, it's not that windy. You go to sleep." Li Xuan didn't want to argue with him about this issue anymore, so he said you go to sleep and planned to leave. Fu didn't move, but Sheng Min grabbed the hem of his clothes.
After squatting for a long time, his legs were a little numb, and his center of gravity was unstable. Moreover, he was holding a computer in his hand. Sheng Min was anxious to stop him, and suddenly pulled him without paying attention. Li Xuan leaned forward suddenly, and was about to hit Sheng Min. He quickly supported himself with his hands on the ground to avoid being crushed.
"Did you bump into her?" His hand was less than five centimeters away from Sheng Min's side.
Sheng Min was half pressed on the mat by him. She shook her head and quietly hid her hands behind her back to prevent him from seeing her red knuckles. The first thing she said was: "I think it's better for me to go."
The lights were dim, and Li Xuan really didn't notice it. He frowned and said, "It's not a big deal. What is there to argue about?"
"Yes." Sheng Min agreed with him, "So it's still me..."
As she spoke, she blinked, and her eyelashes brought a thin breeze that fell on Li Xuan's face. Li Xuan was stunned for a moment, and Sheng Min paused. The two of them came to their senses and actually communicated in such a close posture. Li Xuan hastily withdrew his hand and sat up suddenly. His posture was a little panicked, and the back of his head hit the top of the tent directly.
"Are you okay?" With a bang, Sheng Min hurriedly knelt up and wanted to check his injuries.
"It's okay." Li Xuan took a breath and turned his head away from him, "I told you not to fight."
Sheng Min curled his lips: "Don't argue."
"Forget it." He said this with a stubborn look in his eyes. Li Xuan was both angry and amused. He rubbed the back of his head and said, "No one should go. It's not like this tent can't accommodate two people."
This is actually a very simple solution, which could have been proposed at the beginning. However, no one proposed it, preferring to argue about it childishly like elementary school students, and everyone knew the reason.
Just like now, after Li Xuan calmly made a suggestion, he coughed and lowered his voice: "You don't mind, do you?"
"I, I don't mind." Sheng Min stuttered, his voice was also very light, "As long as you don't mind."
"I already told you it's okay."
This was considered an agreement, but neither of them made the next move. They stole glances at each other unconsciously, and when their eyes met, Sheng Min stepped aside as if waking up from a dream: "Then you come in first."
The production team prepared two-person tents. However, the two men were tall, and even though they were thin, it was not crowded, but the space was indeed not spacious.
Ever since Sheng Min's newly bought bed was delivered, they had never stayed in the same room at night again. They had long forgotten to keep their distance during the day, but at night, somehow, they felt awkward again. Perhaps it was because the night was dark and there were many secrets hidden in it.
"You can continue to sleep." Sheng Min sat on the inside, and Li Xuan closed the zipper of the tent on the outside, "I still have something to deal with."
Sheng Min hummed and said okay. Seeing Li Xuan staring at the computer, she thought he wasn't paying attention, so she pushed something under the pillow. Unexpectedly, Li Xuan caught a glimpse of it and suddenly realized something was wrong. The ceiling light of the tent didn't suddenly turn on when he came over, it had never been turned off. Sheng Min's hair was neat, and it didn't look like he was woken up. I'm afraid he didn't rest at all.
"What?"
The voice suddenly rang out, and Sheng Min was caught in the act, and his hands loosened unconsciously. A white corner of something appeared under the pillow, and it was very thick, unlike the drama scripts he often read. Then a pen rolled out. An incredible guess emerged in Li Xuan's mind: "Sheng Min? You are not sleeping at night to do homework?"
I was really doing the exercises. There was a thick stack of bound materials under my pillow, with four neatly written words on the cover: Statistical Mechanics.
"Where did you get it from?" Li Xuan ignored his attempt to stop him, reached out from behind Sheng Min and quickly flipped through it. The front part was the lecture notes, and the back part was the statistical mechanics exam questions from previous years at N University. Probably because it had been flipped through so many times, the corners of the pages were curled.
"I asked your classmates for it when I went to school last time."
That was the case. Li Xuan remembered that he found Sheng Min at the school gate that day. He had just come out of the printing shop with a black bag in his hand. But he was still angry at the time, so he didn't ask.
"Which classmate? I can't even recognize all the people in that class. You can find someone to ask for information after you go there twice."
"It's the one who greeted you the first time. You don't know others, but I think everyone in your class knows you." Sheng Min reached out to take it back, looking embarrassed, "Okay, don't look at it. Don't you have something else to do?"
"Why can't you let me see it?" Li Xuan held on to the other end and refused to let go.
Sheng Min pulled twice but failed to budge, so he simply let go, as if to say, "No reason. I didn't want to let you know... ... There's nothing to say about something that hasn't come to fruition yet."
The light fell from the top of his head, and the shadow was scattered. Sheng Min unconsciously counted on his fingers: "After all, you didn't urge me to take the exam. Of course, this is my fault. I haven't learned these things at all... So I didn't want to tell you yet, as long as you can pass it smoothly. Besides, there is no need to tell you in the first place. You have enough things to do. Sometimes I think that our souls have been exchanged, and you are really at a disadvantage. You have done a lot for me, but I can give you very little in return. It is really unfair to you. Even if I take the exam for you, I don't know how I will do. There is no point in telling you now."
"It's not like buying vegetables in the market, what's fair or unfair." Li Xuan sat cross-legged, his knees touching Sheng Min's calves, thought for a while and said, "I didn't urge you to take the exam, not because I think you are not good enough, but because I didn't care about it."
Sheng Min glanced at him, looking unconvinced.
This was originally half true and half false, but Li Xuan insisted: "You know, I don't like physics..."
"But you have to get your diploma." Sheng Min's voice dragged out a bit. Li Xuan didn't answer. He sat up straight and looked at him, "You don't plan to give it up, do you? You passed the exam with great difficulty..."
Actually, it wasn't that difficult. Li Xuan thought, but Sheng Min seemed to be more nervous than him, so he stopped teasing him. Although he did think some time ago that since he and Li Mingge had fallen out to such an extent, it didn't matter whether he confessed or not.
"I didn't say that. Don't accuse me." Li Xuan changed the subject. "How did you read the information?"
"I read the handout five times." Sheng Min scratched his head. "I did the questions in the back, and I could do the first two types... Actually, I don't know if the method is right, but the answer is right."
His tone was somewhat distressed, or even a little ashamed. But he still cheered himself up and added: "I will try my best, don't worry... ... I know you don't like physics, but these three years of studying are using your time and experience. I am willing to take the exam because I want you to get what belongs to you. Whether you need it or not, it is yours and only related to you. Don't think you can throw it away just because of others' reasons."
He wanted to talk to Li Xuan, but was afraid to touch upon people and things he didn't want to mention. He spoke carefully and in a mess. Li Xuan understood, so he didn't correct him. Judging from the current situation, Sheng Min was the one who was more worried. He just remembered that a few nights ago, when he went to the kitchen to get water, he vaguely saw the light of the bedroom coming through the crack of the door. Now he thought that he was probably doing the homework.
He thought about it and opened the materials again. Sheng Min's handwriting had become familiar to him. "It's not that difficult. Regular scores account for 50%. Attendance accounts for 20%. I missed a class once, so I only got 10 points. I got full marks in the three previous class tests. So you only need to get 40 points in the final exam."
The sound of pages turning was particularly obvious at night. Li Xuan quickly ticked off a dozen questions. "You don't need to look at the handouts again, and you don't need to do the questions one by one. Just memorize them. You will probably run into a few questions at the end of the semester, so you should change the data. If you don't know the answer, just ask me."
Then he put the information on his side very smoothly and said without question: "But you don't need it tonight. It's already late. Go to bed first. I'll write it tomorrow."
"Then you..." Sheng Min was very hesitant, but the tent was so narrow and he didn't want the two of them to fight over the information.
"I'll finish the rest of this... I'm not going to lie, my computer is running low. I don't think I can do it all night."
This reason was irrefutable, and Sheng Min did not insist. For a while, Li Xuan really thought he was asleep, and even his eyelashes did not flutter. But when he turned off the computer and lay down, the people around him immediately moved and made room for him.
"You're pretending to be asleep pretty well. Don't move, you're going to roll out of the tent soon."
"I'm not pretending." Sheng Min said, "I just haven't fallen asleep yet."
"Want me to tell you a story?"
Sheng Min smiled and said, "I can tell you."
They were so close that when they talked, their breaths seemed to touch each other, like two entangled vines growing out of thin air. Li Xuan felt that the tent was too narrow, but at the same time, he felt that this narrowness was just right.
As the night deepened, the sea breeze seemed to grow stronger, rolling the waves tirelessly against the rocks again and again.
"What do you want to hear?" Sheng Min asked him, "Grimm's Fairy Tales or Andersen's Fairy Tales?"
"I don't want to think about anything." The smile in Sheng Min's voice and the sound of the sea breeze outside the tent reminded Li Xuan of when he first arrived today. "You haven't told me yet why you are in a good mood at the beach?"
"Do you remember when you first saw the sea?" Sheng Min said after a brief silence.
"I'm about eleven. I told you I'm not from N City. To get to N City from the neighboring province, you have to take a coastal highway."
At that time, Li Xuan had just escaped from the orphanage, and he only had about 500 yuan that he had secretly saved. He didn't dare to spend more, and he was always on guard against being caught, so he just wanted to run away first. He finally found a truck driver who was willing to take them away. When he climbed into the back of the truck, he didn't even have a specific idea of where his destination was. No matter how beautiful the scenery of the coastal highway was, he didn't pay attention to it. He only thought about where he would be tomorrow and what the future should be like. But he didn't think Sheng Min needed to know all of this.
"My father took me to the beach for the first time. I was about four years old at that time. My mother gave birth to my brother and took him back to her parents' home, right at the beach. I wanted to go with her, but she didn't take me. I was too young and ignorant at the time, and I just made trouble at home. Then my father took me to the beach, which was the closest to us. Later, he got sick, and that was the last time he took me out to play.
When talking about the past, Sheng Min no longer sounded too sad, as if he didn't need any comfort.
Li Xuan was a little speechless: "Like this..."
Sheng Min did not respond immediately. The silence lasted for a long time. Just when Li Xuan thought the story was over, he spoke again. Unlike before, his tone was a little dazed.
"Last winter, I was filming in a city near the sea. One day, I don't know what happened, but I walked to the beach... I didn't do it on purpose. My memory was not very good during that time."
It was strange. It was night and December in the north, but the sea water was not cold that night. It even felt warm to him. The waves kept rising and breaking the stars that fell on the sea. Sheng Min wanted to pick up a complete one, so he walked forward step by step.
"I really didn't mean to do that. It caused the staff to look for me for a long time."
Li Xuan's breathing tightened: "What happened next?"
"I don't remember." Sheng Min was silent for a while, as if thinking, and said softly, "I really don't remember. Maybe I was tired from walking, so I fell asleep. I woke up still on the beach. It was almost dawn, and the sun was rising from the sea. I don't actually remember whether we watched the sunrise when my father took me to the beach. I don't think so. But at that moment I always felt that he was still beside me, with me. Don't they say that people will turn into stars after they die? Is it possible to turn into a cloud? Like at the sunrise at the beach. Then I sat on the beach, drying my clothes, and they found me."
Everything seemed like a spontaneous outing, except that Sheng Min didn't pick up any stars when he dived into the deep sea. The sea water took him in and embraced him on a cold night, and then sent him back to land to welcome the new day: "So now when I see the sea, I feel very happy. Don't laugh at me, I know it's just a psychological suggestion."
"I won't laugh at you." Li Xuan was silent for a long time before speaking. Unknown to him, his palms gently covered Sheng Min's eyes, and his voice sounded very gentle in the night, "Go to bed quickly. Get up early tomorrow, and I will accompany you to watch the sunrise."