On the gray and bald concrete wall, two teenagers crawled down carefully, clinging to the plastic pipes.
"Where's the steel plate?" Cao Ye, who was going down the fourth floor, tried one foot to find the steel plate, "Why can't you step on it?"
Liang Sizhe went down first, and had already climbed to their room on the third floor. The window edge was quite wide. He hunched over and squatted steadily, holding the window edge with his hand, and looked up at Cao Ye: "A little bit to the left."
"Where?" Cao Ye stretched out his left leg a little to the side, not too daring to look down, "Can't you step on it?"
"Wait." Liang Sizhe grabbed the edge of the window, turned his back, stretched his legs and stepped on a steel plate at the bottom of the third floor, and just as he put his hand on the drainage pipe, Cao Ye waved one leg over.
"Hey, fuck!" Cao Ye felt that he had kicked a hard object, and suddenly panicked, "Did I just kick you in the head?"
There was no answer below. Cao Ye felt that his ankle was being held by one hand, and that finger was a little cold. He dragged his left foot and touched the steel plate next to him. Liang Sizhe's voice came from below: "Here, step down. ."
Cao Ye's heart suddenly became clear, and his heel fell and stepped on it: "Then I will continue."
Liang Sizhe retreated to the edge of the window. The window was not closed. He jumped back into the room. After landing on his feet, he leaned over the window frame and looked up: "Come on, I'm in the room."
Two minutes later, Cao Ye also jumped into the room. As soon as he came in, he squatted down along the wall and sighed with lingering fear: "My God, my legs are weak and I'm sweating..."
Liang Sizhe closed the window, took off the guitar and put it aside, and asked casually, "Then why aren't you afraid when you go up?"
"You don't have to look down when you go up! When you go down, you always have to lower your head, and every time you lower your head, you feel like you're going to fall..." Cao Ye sat against the wall, grabbing his neckline with one hand and fanning the wind back and forth, looking up at Liang Sizhe , "Oh right, did I just kick your head?"
"No, I just lowered my head and you kicked the guitar."
"Oh... that's good, startle me." He didn't say anything in the second half—it would be a big kick in the face.
Going downstairs one after another, Liang Sizhe led the way, while Cao Ye followed curiously and looked around.
When going downstairs, a woman with big wavy curly hair and heavy makeup greeted Liang Sizhe, "The handsome guy brought a friend over today?"
Liang Sizhe smiled at the man: "Well."
On the first floor, Cao Ye walked up to Liang Sizhe and lowered his voice: "What on earth is this place for? Just singing?"
"Just as you think." Liang Sizhe didn't say much, "What do you want to eat?"
"No idea," Cao Ye thought of the row of doors he saw when he first came that day, a thick grease stain with water - is it really edible? Thinking about it, I lost my appetite, "What did you eat at night? I'm the same as you."
"Noodles, I don't know if it's still open," Liang Sizhe stepped out of the door, looked in the direction of the noodle restaurant, and raised his chin, "That restaurant, do you want to eat?"
"Okay." Cao Ye said.
At 0:00 in the morning, most of the stores in the alley have closed their stalls, and there are a few scattered stores waiting for business. The owner of Laodu Noodle Shop is in his 40s. He is sitting on the edge of the alley with a beer belly. He has old newspapers under his butt and a radio on his lap. He is singing along with humming and humming. A plastic fan from the Men's Hospital.
Seeing the two teenagers approaching, the boss grinned enthusiastically at them, and pointed his hand behind him: "Are you coming for dinner so late? Just sit down." Then he got up and handed them the menu, "What should I order?"
Cao Ye glanced at the menu and looked up at Liang Sizhe: "What did you order tonight?"
"beef noodles."
"That's it." Cao Ye said to the boss.
The boss raised his voice and shouted into the store: "Shengzi, a bowl of beef noodles, hurry up!"
The beef noodles were brought up quickly. Cao Ye raised the noodles with chopsticks, measured them with his eyes, and then ate them into his mouth.
"It's delicious." He took a bite, then picked out the chopped green onion and coriander in the bowl, and asked Liang Sizhe, "Are you from Beijing?"
"No," Liang Sizhe said, "Yancheng."
"Oh... I haven't been there." Cao Ye picked a clean place and took another bite of the noodles.
"Small place." Liang Sizhe said.
Cao Ye lowered his head to eat the noodles. Liang Sizhe watched for a while, but also felt a little hungry. Although Cao Ye was picky about eating, the way he was eating noodles with his cheeks puffed up made people feel quite appetizing.
Liang Sizhe beckoned the boss to serve another bowl of noodles. He didn't choose what to eat, he mixed the seasoning with chopsticks, and ate it together with Cao Ye.
"How did my dad find you?" Cao Ye asked curiously.
"I don't know either," Liang Sizhe swallowed and continued, "I went home that day and they were standing in front of my house. What about you? How did you get sent here?"
"My dad wants me to experience life... You say, will we both act in a play?"
"I don't know," Liang Sizhe shook his head, "no one told me about filming." He ate a few mouthfuls of noodles, and felt that he was hungry just now as an illusion, so he stopped and put his chopsticks on the bowl.
"I asked Uncle Yin, and he said that he would arrange a role for you, but he didn't go into details. I'll ask you carefully when I look back." After a while, the bowl of noodles in front of Cao Ye had been eaten up. The wind swirls the clouds, not a single one falls.
Not full? Just as Liang Sizhe was about to wave to the boss for another bowl, Cao Ye opened his mouth and stared at Liang Sizhe's bowl of noodles: "Aren't you going to eat it?"
"Ah," Liang Sizhe said, "I'm not too hungry."
"Then..." Cao Ye looked at Liang Sizhe, "Can you share with me?"
Liang Sizhe felt that his eyes were very similar to the little white dog on the street next door. The dog looked at him like that when he was begging for food with its tail wagging at him. "I'll order another bowl for you. I've eaten this bowl."
"It's fine, I'll do it with this bowl." Cao Ye reached out and brought the bowl of noodles in front of him, picked a few chopsticks into his bowl, and as usual, picked the chopped green onion first, then raised his head and smiled at him when he finished picking, "Look back at me. I want you to eat too."
"You don't have to invite me to eat," Liang Sizhe said. "Someone would deliver meals every day at noon and at night. Why, I didn't deliver it today?"
"Give it away..." Cao Ye reached out and touched the bridge of his nose, feeling a little guilty, "I was found by my dad and threw it away. I shouldn't have to send it away in the future, I'm sorry..."
Liang Sizhe didn't show anything on his face, but he thought in his heart, that meal was for you, but I just dipped in it, what's so embarrassing about it? Then I couldn't help but think again, Cao Xiuyuan's son is really different from Cao Xiuyuan. Cao Xiuyuan looks unsmiling and hard to approach, but Cao Ye seems to be easy to get along with by nature, which makes people easily put down their guard and get close to him.
It was a sweltering summer night, and the noodle shop owner thoughtfully turned on the fan, and the humming fan blades sent wind straight towards them. Cao Ye ate his noodles, his hair was blown up on the side facing the fan, and the energy-saving lamp hanging next to him gave off a weak and dim light. For some reason, Liang Sizhe felt that Cao Ye's hair should feel a little soft to the touch. .
The noodle restaurant saw off the last two guests and closed the lights.
Before leaving, Liang Sizhe bought two bottles of iced hawthorn-flavored soda, handed one to Cao Ye, and took a sip from the other.
The cold liquid slid down the esophagus with a refreshing coolness.
The wind picked up in the night, blowing away the heavy sultry feeling, the leaves rustled, and the cicadas gradually weakened. The two squatted on the side of the road, blowing the wind and drinking soda one after another. "I didn't expect it to be quite comfortable here." Cao Ye said.
Liang Sizhe glanced at him sideways: "Is it more comfortable than finding someone to sleep in?"
"Why bring this up again..." Cao Ye put the cold, dripping bottle on his forehead.
Liang Sizhe smiled: "Actually, it's comfortable for a while."
The soda bottle was empty, the two walked back to Lanyan, and went upstairs to the room.
When passing through the row of wooden doors, Cao Ye asked the same question as Liang Sizhe before: "Do you really think people can live here?"
"Yes," Liang Sizhe said, "Yesterday I saw someone come out." It was a woman who looked to be in her thirties, holding a crying baby in her arms.
"Last time I went in and took a look, it's very small inside, and the walls seem to be moldy," Cao Ye lowered his voice, "You can't imagine the smell as soon as you enter..."
"It's less than 20 yuan a day, what do you think?" Liang Sizhe said as he unlocked the door, then pushed open the door and walked in.
"20 yuan?" Cao Ye opened his eyes wide and asked in disbelief, "Is it true or false?"
"Really, I heard 500 yuan a month."
"Ah..." The shock on Cao Ye's face hasn't faded away, "Okay." After that, he threw himself on his bed, "Fortunately, Uncle Yin is kinder and arranged this room for us."
Uncle Yin? Zheng Yin's face appeared in Liang Sizhe's mind. He looked gentle and gentle, but in fact he didn't seem to get along so well. It was just-"How old is he, you call him uncle?"
"Did he call my dad 'Brother Yuan'? He kept stressing that they were of the same generation, so he asked me to call him uncle... I felt a little awkward at first, but I'm used to it." Cao Ye rolled over and lay on his back He pulled a pillow behind his head and looked at Liang Sizhe, "Uncle Yin is actually very powerful, can't you tell? He is my dad's manager, assistant, producer, director's assistant... But whenever my dad mentions There is nothing that Uncle Yin can’t do, he is like Doraemon, my dad is a director, he only cares about filming, plus a bunch of whimsical demands, so my dad doesn’t have Uncle Yin at all. It can't be made into a movie."
"That's quite powerful." Liang Sizhe agreed.
Before taking a bath, Cao Ye opened the suitcase that Zheng Yin had prepared for him, squatted down and roughly flipped through the contents, and sighed: "God, Uncle Yin is too good..."
The suitcase looks small, but it has everything in it, T-shirts, shorts, trousers, underwear, pajamas... All of them are freshly bought and dry-cleaned, with the label of the dry cleaner hanging on it, which contains clothes desiccant, plus wash Supplies, towels, hangers, earphones, earplugs, eye masks, and cell phone chargers were neatly arranged by category, and at the top was the script that Zheng Yin had told him.
Cao Ye took out the script and threw it on the bed, took pajamas and towels and went to the bathroom to take a shower.
After taking a shower one after the other, the two sat on the bed and did their own things. Liang Sizhe took a book about acting and read it while leaning on the head of the bed, while Cao Ye was lying on the bed and flipping through the script.
After turning a few pages, Cao Ye was sure that Zhou Ru was thinking about the character he wrote, called Xiao Man, the son of a bathhouse proprietress. The bathhouse was an old-fashioned type of bathhouse that had been eliminated at the beginning of the last century and required artificial watering. Cao Ye had never seen it before. He imagined what the bathroom looked like, but he had no idea in his mind.
"Have you been to the bathhouse?" He turned his head and asked Liang Sizhe.
"The bathhouse?" Liang Sizhe thought of the bathing center he'd been to before, "I've been there."
"What kind of?" Cao Ye was interested.
"That's right... The hall was quite big when we entered," Liang Sizhe recalled. "There are many reclining chairs in it. After entering, change clothes first, and then go to the big pool inside to take a bath and sweat..."
"It's not that kind of bathhouse," Cao Ye understood, what Liang Sizhe said was not the kind of bathhouse in the script at all, "I've been to the kind of bathhouse you're talking about, right? It's not like that in the script. In modern times, it is the kind that needs to be manually added. When the water runs out, you have to shout to the people outside... "
"I haven't been there." Liang Sizhe said.
"I haven't been there, how does this play out..."
"A script?" Liang Sizhe looked at the pile of stapled paper he was holding in his hand.
"Well, do you want to see it? But Uncle Yin said that this is what he secretly wanted to come here, and I'm not allowed to spread the word..." Cao Ye told the truth with some embarrassment, "You can watch it if you want, just don't tell Uncle Yin..."
"If that's the case, then forget it," Liang Sizhe smiled, "I'm just curious about what the script looks like, I've never seen it before."
"Let's show it to you." Cao Ye thought about it, closed the script, and threw it to him in the air.
Liang Sizhe raised his hand to catch it, and looked at the cover - "Thirteen Days", screenwriter: Zhou Ru.
He flipped through it roughly, didn't read the contents carefully, closed it, and threw it to Cao Ye: "Thank you."
The person who gave it was not hypocritical, and the person who received it did not go beyond the norm. Both of them are well-informed.
"After that, your script will definitely be sent." Cao Ye took the script and said.
Liang Sizhe made a sound of "um".
After a while, there was a crisp sound of "pop", and Cao Ye raised his hand and hit him on the arm: "There are mosquitoes!" Then he straightened up and sat up, "Several, just buzzing in my ear for a while, Did you hear that?"
"I heard." Liang Sizhe lowered his head and flipped through the book.
"Why are you so calm? Are there so many mosquitoes every day?"
"No," Liang Sizhe turned his face to look at him, "because you didn't close the window after you climbed out tonight." - I had expected it.
"Ah... I forgot," Cao Ye realized that he was in trouble, "What should I do? Are there mosquito coils?"
"It's used up, go out and buy it tomorrow day," Liang Sizhe took the toilet water by the bed and handed it to him, "Use this first, and use it a little bit."
"Oh..." Cao Ye took it, poured the toilet water into the palm of his hand, and patted it on his bare arm, then stood up and sprinkled some on his legs. Going down, lying on the bedside and returning it to Liang Sizhe after the incident, tilting his head to see the copy in his hand: ""The Self-cultivation of Actors"...Is this the one that Zhou Xingchi read? It's the one, "The King of Comedy" "."
Liang Sizhe turned the book cover over to show him, "Well, it's that one."
"Huh? There really is this book... Is it good?"
Liang Sizhe smiled: "How can this kind of professional book look good."
"That's true..." Cao Ye said, opening his mouth and yawning.
In the middle of the night, the sound of the KTV downstairs gradually weakened. Liang Sizhe hugged the book, did not turn the pages for a long time, fell asleep, and then woke up with his chin down.
He turned his head and glanced at Cao Ye. Cao Ye was lying on the bed with his head pointed in the direction of his own bed. He fell asleep on his stomach, his face resting on the open script.
You can't fall asleep and numb half of your body when you fall asleep, right? Liang Sizhe put the book aside, got out of bed with light movements, turned off the light, and lay down on the bed.
The moment before he fell asleep, he suddenly remembered the few English songs that Cao Ye sang at night, which were really nice... He thought so, and then quickly fell asleep.