In the sixth month since Zhou Hao left, his originally idle circle of friends has changed a status - "Eat dumplings today."
There is him in the accompanying picture, several people with Asian faces, and a black child. They sat around the square table, facing the camera, smiling very heartily, and there were five or six plates of dumplings waiting to be eaten in the middle of the square table.
Jiang Yuqian stared at this photo in a daze for five full minutes. Time ticked by, and the joys and sorrows carried by the little lunatic were getting farther and farther away from him.
In such a place far away from the eastern country and Qianqian, he can laugh so emotionally.
The vain silence of the past six months was broken. Jiang Yuqian turned off the light, lay down in bed and babbled a voice to the little lunatic—
"The new house has been decorated, but the sofa is left unpurchased. When you come back, we will choose together. When will you come back? How is life over there?"
With a five-hour time difference, it was eight o'clock in the evening on Jiang Yuqian's side, and it was still afternoon on Zhou Hao's side, which was the time to work in the hospital.
Jiang Yuqian didn't wait for a reply to this voice until eleven o'clock at night.
"It's good here." The voice was full of vigor.
Jiang Yuqian wasn't asleep yet, he held onto his phone, nervously thinking about what to say next in his mind.
"So, when are you coming back?"
"This one, it's not yet determined."
Jiang Yuqian's heart sank and sank, "You are over there, do you want to go home?"
This home probably refers to a specific home between two people.
Zhou Hao heard the meaning of this man's words, and he typed a line, "Of course I want to."
Jiang Yuqian's heart was filled with joy, and he sincerely typed a line on the keyboard of his mobile phone, "I miss you too."
The two people, who had been disconnected for half a year, formed an inextricably linked relationship with just a few brief conversations.
The unhappy break-up half a year ago seemed to have been imperceptibly broken.
Jiang Yuqian ended the conversation first. He was lying on the bed with the yellow Pikachu in his arms, full of energy, so happy that he didn't feel sleepy at all.
Every night after that, Jiang Yuqian would send a message to the little lunatic who was far away in another country.
He is too honest, let alone exaggerated pornographic words, he can't even learn those little sweet things that please his lover. If you ask me every day, it's just how is the weather today, or how is the current situation, there are no other superfluous tricks.
As long as Zhou Hao thinks about this dull man trying to catch up with each other, Jiang Yuqian's serious and anxious expression will always appear in front of his eyes.
Hilarious and touching.
In the first month of the new year, Jiang Yuqian's mother arranged a blind date for him. The other party was a lawyer, and the family relationship was relatively simple. Both parents were cadres in the system.
Jiang Yuqian didn't know beforehand, when he returned to the imperial garden and found a strange woman at home, and then looked at his mother's embarrassed eyes, he understood everything.
He turned around and left, and in the end this nonsensical blind date broke up badly.
Half a month later, everyone in his family knew about his relationship with Zhou Hao. In his father's words, it was embarrassing to be ambiguous with a man.
Jiang Yuqian also lost his temper, and kept silent without saying anything. Anxious Father Jiang couldn't hold back in the study, he picked up a vase on the bookshelf and threw it at him.
The vase passed Jiang Yuqian's forehead, and that piece was bruised and bruised, mixed with blood. Jiang's mother was outside the door, and when she heard the loud "thump" sound, she quickly pushed the door open and came in, only to see the color on her son's face.
"Jiang Shunian!" Mother Jiang's eyes were full of moist anger, and she punched her husband in the chest.
She walked over to check her son's wound, feeling angry and distressed, "Yuqian, you are trying to force my mother to death. You have been such a good child since you were a child, how could you hurt your mother's heart like this?" As soon as she said that, tears fell down her cheeks.
Jiang Yuqian stood there, motionless and silent, not even the pain on his face made him loosen in the slightest.
"Look at your good son!" Jiang's father pointed at Jiang Yuqian with a trembling index finger, and asked Jiang's mother.
When Jiang's mother saw the scar on her son's face, she turned all her anger on Jiang's father, "I will teach my own son! It's not your turn to beat him!"
"Okay, you come to teach! You just teach him like this!?"
Mother Jiang rolled her eyes at Father Jiang, and pulled Jiang Yuqian away from the study.
They went downstairs and talked on the landing.
"Yuqian, Mom and Dad are old and can't care about you anymore. But you have to know that Mom is always there for your own good."
Jiang Yuqian never said a word.
Jiang's mother looked helplessly at her son who had been silent all this time, knowing that he was fighting, and also understood that she could not control this matter.
"Yuqian, I beg you, mom, can you think about it for mom and dad?"
"Mom, I really, really like him." Jiang Yuqian said in a tired and hoarse tone.
"I've seen that boy before. What's so good about him? Yuqian, you're just too young, you didn't figure out anything, and you just plunged into it, thinking it was holy love."
Jiang Yuqian froze and did not respond to Jiang's mother's words.
After a long time, Mother Jiang sighed and said, "Let's sleep at home today."
Jiang Yuqian turned his head and looked helplessly at Mother Jiang, "Mom, I'm not a child, I'm real, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him."
Jiang Yuqian picked up his overcoat and left the house.
When he got home, Jiang Yuqian ordered himself a bowl of noodles, and he sat at the dining table, raising his chopsticks to eat the steaming noodles in the bowl. It was seven o'clock at night, and the little lunatic hadn't gotten off work yet.
He put the phone on the table, next to the bowl.
From seven o'clock in the evening to eleven o'clock, the outside is the bustle and bustle of the metropolis, and the house is as quiet as water. The dim yellow light in the restaurant highlights his loneliness and loneliness.
When the time came, he picked up his phone and edited a wechat message. After much deliberation, he still deleted it.
He began to think carefully about every word, and finally he stuttered and wrote only a short sentence - "Hao Hao, have you eaten yet? The noodles I ate at night."
But this time, the man did not get the expected reply. He waited until three o'clock in the morning, but no message was sent from the man in Tanzania.
He turned to the circle of friends of the little lunatic, and his eyes stopped for a long time on that smiling photo...
Of course, what he had no way of knowing was that Zhou Hao, who was far away in Dodoma, was trapped in the hospital at this time. A large-scale plague broke out throughout the city, and power and water cuts occurred from time to time, and all medical staff were stranded in the hospital.
Some people who are suspected of being infected in isolation would rather believe in folk recipes and gods than receive treatment, and many of them would take advantage of the chaos and run out of the hospital.
This directly led to the expansion of the scope of infection again, and the epidemic was once difficult to control.
It will be one year since he came to Dodoma, and Zhou Hao has a deep feeling of trembling for this poor and backward place.
Although it is the capital, it is not even comparable to a small county in China. There are children wandering everywhere on the streets. They don't go to school, and they have already come out to work at a young age.
The medical conditions are very difficult. The city hospital where they are located does not even have basic color Doppler ultrasound and CT, there are few types of medicines, and the ward environment is also very bad, with mosquitoes and flies flying everywhere.
The plague had been spreading for three months. When Zhou Hao returned to his dormitory, he found the message on his phone that Jiang Yuqian had sent a few months ago.
It's been too long, no matter how I reply now, it seems abrupt, so I simply don't reply.
The tense plague period was temporarily over, and Zhou Hao and his teammates resumed their previous lives. Run and exercise in the morning, and when you are free, read books and play chess together, or go to the surrounding places.
He met a black friend, nine-year-old Habu, with black skin, big eyes and curly hair, always wearing a worn-out pullover sweater, the collar and cuffs of the clothes were frayed, and the original red color was washed into a dark color. brown.
Hubb sells beer for the family, and the skinny man pushes a battered bicycle and sells it along the street. When he came back from work, he would always come to Zhou Hao with a bottle of beer.
There is a language barrier between the two, and they can only communicate through simple gestures. Zhou Hao taught Ha Bu some basic Chinese everyday expressions, and the child was very happy to learn. He can tell the difference between a straight tongue and a raised tongue, but the intonation is not right. For example, his name is Zhou Hao, and he always likes to draw a long ending sound.
This is the habit of almost all foreigners speaking Chinese. Simple and plain words are always called by them with cadence and emotion.
Habu has many places where treasures are hidden. There is a drainage ditch near his house. When it rains, there will be mountain turtles in the ditch. Habu catches them and makes soup. Also in the farmland, many birds that build nests can be found, and Habu takes the eggs in the nests back and cooks them. Even boa constrictors, habu, are eaten, skinned and stewed or fried.
Zhou Hao has also tasted it, but he really can't get used to these wild game in Africa.
Every day in Dodoma is fulfilling. Although life is monotonous, there are very few people's troubles.
Work during the day, study at night, and enjoy the great scenery in your free time.
Zhou Hao was fascinated by being so ordinary.
"A person, from the county town, wandered in the big city for many years, and finally went to the poorer world. He loves reading, lives an active life, and gets along well with others. The original paranoid and weird temperament seems to be in the vast and complex world. If he settles down, does he think he has put his life back on the right track?"
This is what Zhou Hao wrote on the last page of his notebook. After writing this sentence, his notebook is full of words, and there is not a single blank page left.
The notebook is full, and it won't be long before he should go home.