The city TV station was broadcasting today's hot spots, and a girl was being interviewed on the screen. The girl had a pointed chin and long dark chestnut hair. Ai Jingchu glanced at her casually, not paying attention, until the girl opened her mouth to speak and he saw her braces, then he remembered who this person was.
Zeng Li, 25 years old, maxillary protrusion and deep rectal reconstruction. In fact, her teeth did not cause any major problems to her appearance, and her facial features were relatively coordinated. In his opinion, there was almost no need for treatment. It was just that Professor Liu had admitted her before, and the medical records stated that the patient and her family strongly requested orthodontic treatment. Since the fee was paid and the case was transferred to him, he could not offend the old senior, so he had to accept her. Of course, the positions of her upper and lower teeth and canines were a little messed up. If they could be retracted a little and arranged neatly, the patient might be more confident psychologically.
He has always believed that the treatment provided by orthodontics to patients should be both psychological and physiological.
Just as he was thinking about this, his cell phone vibrated a few times. He took it out and looked at it. It was a text message from an unfamiliar number: Is it Ai Jingchu
Ai Jingchu stood up, left the living room, walked to the balcony outside the dining room and called back.
"Is it Ai Jingchu?" asked the man on the other end of the phone.
"I am," he answered.
"I'm Yu Yi, buddy. Your number hasn't changed. Are you free? Let's get together?"
After agreeing on a meeting place, Ai Jingchu said goodbye to the old man and drove out.
Yu Yi was his classmate when he was studying in Philadelphia. They were classmates, but they were actually alumni. One holiday, Yu Yi's landlord passed away, and her children and grandchildren were preparing to sell the real estate, which suddenly left him without a place to live. He happened to know that his fellow villager Ai Jingchu from the medical school had an extra room, so he asked people to find him for help. Later, the two gradually became friends. After a few years, Yu Yi went to Singapore, and Ai Jingchu returned to University A to teach.
In the bar, the first thing Yu Yi said when he saw Ai Jingchu was: "You haven't changed at all."
Yu Yi is slightly older than Ai Jingchu, but when he just came to Pennsylvania from China to study medicine, Ai Jingchu was about to graduate.
At that time, Ai Jingchu was a well-known young academic bully in the circle. His age and grades were amazing. According to his conditions, he could have gone to a top medical school, but he stayed in Pennsylvania. He didn't like to socialize with people and always looked like he didn't want to be approached by strangers, so there were few gossips about him. Yu Yi was sweet-talking and easy-going, so he was naturally more popular with girls than him.
Ai Jingchu glanced at him and sat down.
“Still teaching?”
"Um."
"You didn't find a wife?"
"No." After answering, Ai Jingchu asked again for the first time: "What about you?"
"Me?" Yu Yi smiled, "Everything remains the same."
Yu Yi added: "You are the only one who is honest. I called you several times, but one by one they either didn't get through or said they couldn't come because of something else."
"How many days will you stay after you come back?" Ai Jingchu asked.
"I'm leaving tonight. I'm going back to China to give a seminar. My flight is at 11 o'clock."
Ai Jingchu nodded and asked, "What do you want to drink?"
"Should we not go home until we are drunk?"
"I want to drive, aren't you going to take a plane?" Ai Jingchu said.
"I'm just kidding," Yu Yi laughed, "I've quit drinking. I can't drink as much as I did when I was in school. I have to control myself. If my hands start shaking in a few years, how can I do surgery?"
Yu Yi then suggested: "Let's drink some beer."
Upon hearing this, Ai Jingchu turned around and asked the waiter to bring some wine.
Yu Yi sighed: "You were better than me in everything before. You shouldn't have returned to China. It would have been better if you developed your career abroad."
"You have sisters at home to take care of you, unlike me." Ai Jingchu replied.
The two of them clinked glasses and drank half a dozen beers in a short while. When the time was almost up, Yu Yi took a taxi to the airport. Ai Jingchu sent him to the car and stood alone on the street. He could drink quite well but he didn't like to drink. Maybe it was just like what Yu Yi said, that he was required to do delicate work with his hands, so he couldn't drink too much. At this moment, he didn't dare to drive.
He looked at his watch and thought that the old man must have gone to bed, so he simply took a few laps by himself to get rid of the smell of alcohol.
It was sunny during the day, but at night the wind was not strong but it was even colder. He came out of the bar street, walked around the square by the river, and then went back.
It was a busy time in the bar street. Two young girls came out from the bar. A child about six or seven years old stood up from the dark steps and followed them. "Sister, I'm hungry. Please give me some money." He repeated this several times as he walked, and even tried to pull their clothes.
The two girls had no choice but to look at the dirty kid next to them and take out some change from their wallets to give him. The kid stopped happily and waved the banknotes in his hand across the street. Instantly, a group of dirty kids suddenly jumped out of the darkness, like a swarm of wasps that received a signal, rushing out from the other side of the road and chasing the two girls, all saying, "I'm hungry, give me some money."
The two girls were so frightened by the scene that they quickly turned around and ran into the bar they had just come out of for help.
The bar's security guard heard the news, came out and shouted, and the children dispersed again.
Ai Jingchu stood behind them and saw it all clearly. One of the smallest children was running the slowest and timidly. Ai Jingchu suddenly saw the child's face in the dimming light. He suddenly had an idea and grabbed the child just as he was about to run past him.
He squatted down, held the child's hand and said, "Let uncle see your face."
How could the child be obedient? He twisted and turned, refusing to obey. Ai Jingchu then used his other hand to clamp the child's chin.
The child's face was just as he guessed, with a missing piece in the middle of the nose and the middle of the lips, a very serious form of cleft lip and palate. The child seemed to be very concerned about the defect and tried to turn his head away. Ai Jingchu was afraid of hurting him, so he didn't dare to use too much force, so he had to say, "If you listen to me, I will let you go."
The child nodded.
But as soon as he let go, the child ran away like a loach, and after catching up with his companions, he looked back at Ai Jingchu. Ai Jingchu wanted to chase him for a few steps, but when he saw that the child wanted to run across the road again, he had to give up for fear that a car would hit them.
After a few rounds of this, the alcohol in his body was almost gone, and he hailed a taxi to go home.
Zeng Li returned to Carol's, took out the broken phone and put it back together. After turning it on, there was no network signal, so she opened the back cover and fiddled with the card slot again, and it returned to normal. However, the phone had no previous call information, and she didn't know who had called her just now and why she broke it.
Ma Yiyi said: "Wu Ying won't come tonight, she said they have a dinner party in the department."
"It's like this when the New Year is approaching, there are dinner parties everywhere. Our unit is going on an outing next week, and the director said we can bring family members. Do you want to go?"
"Where are we going on an outing?"
"Dongshan, let's go to the hot springs."
"It would be a waste if you don't go!" Ma Yiyi smiled.
Afterwards, Ma Yiyi left the customers in the store and opened the shopping website to think about what swimsuit to wear. "Hey, who are the people from your company going there?"
Zeng Li said: "Why don't you just ask if there are any handsome guys?"
"The one who understands me is the little fish." Ma Yiyi laughed.
"Don't dream. You've seen it before. Either it's horrible, or it's already taken. Otherwise, would my mom have taken me to get plastic surgery?"
"You finally admitted that you had plastic surgery." Ma Yiyi said.
"… "
After a while, Ma Yiyi asked again: "Do you think I look better in a one-piece or a segmented one?"
"It looks best when I don't wear anything." Zeng Li answered seriously.
"Zeng Li, you have been corrupted by the women in your unit."
"I have always been pure."
Ma Yiyi glanced at her and said, "It's not like I haven't eaten at your company before."
Zeng Li also invited Ma Yiyi to small gatherings and singing at the company. Now she has resigned and is running Carol's by herself. Apart from her former classmates, she has basically no social contact and knows few people of the opposite sex. So whenever there are group activities at the company, whether they are paid by each party or by the company, Zeng Li and Wu Ying will invite Ma Yiyi to join them as long as the situation allows.
When the cafe was about to close, Ma Yiyi's mother came to the door and brought her a bowl of soup. Ma's mother invited Zeng Li to eat and drink with her. Ma's mother was a talkative middle-aged woman. There was basically no generation gap between her and Ma Yiyi. While eating, she talked about idol dramas on TV. Zeng Li smiled and watched the mother and daughter chatting enthusiastically, and could hardly get a word in.
The next day, Zeng Li opened the forum at work and found that it was almost full of posts about yesterday's event, as well as many photos of the event. After a while, he found a private message from Ning Feng: Zeng Li, the website is planning to set up a cycling club, can you sign up
She wanted to ask what time it was and whether it would waste time, but when she looked carefully, she saw that he had already gone offline, so she gave up.
These days coincide with the beginning of the children's winter vacation, which happens to be a busy time for the library. In addition, the beginning of February is the long Spring Festival holiday, and their units have a lot of year-end performance reports and summaries to do, so it is extremely difficult to ask for leave.