The night deepened, and the autumn wind outside the house became more rampant. The hotel room temporarily became a place without danger. Le Yao still leaned on me, staring blankly at the air conditioner vent, and I was the same. Neither of us had the desire to eat.
After a while, I looked at Le Yao’s face. The finger marks had finally faded a bit. I said to her, “Let’s go out for dinner, or if you don’t want to go out, I can order food.”
Le Yao shook her head and said, “Let’s go out.”
“Okay, when I came, our leader gave me 2000 yuan and asked me to treat you to a meal!”
Le Yao finally smiled and said, “I’m tired of the boxed meals from the crew. Let’s splurge today and eat the best.”
I nodded vigorously, “Yes, eat the best. If it’s not enough, ask the leader for more. Eat him poor, make him afraid of us.”
“You’re so bad!” After saying that, the two of us shared a laugh amidst our troubles.
……
The night wind was blowing “whoosh whoosh”, and there were not many pedestrians on the street. Le Yao, wearing a thick pink down jacket, walked beside me. Although we said we wanted to have a luxurious meal, in the end, we only decided to have a bowl of noodles. Perhaps at this moment, we didn’t like the extravagance of fine clothes and food, but pursued the simplicity of a bowl of noodles, forgetting the pain of reality in simplicity.
In the noodle shop, Le Yao took off her mask, looked at her face in a small makeup mirror, and said to me with some worry, “We have to shoot the poster the day after tomorrow. I don’t know if these finger marks can fade.”
“There’s still tomorrow. It should fade.” I comforted.
Le Yao nodded, “Let’s apply an ice pack when we get back.”
I looked at Le Yao with some heartache, but I didn’t know what else to say. I just regretted that I shouldn’t have been so impatient with her, disgusted with the troubles she brought me. In fact, she was very good to me, but this goodness was only discovered by me when I needed her, which made me feel guilty!
Sometimes people really shouldn’t look at another person one-sidedly. Although Le Yao is a troublesome woman, she also has her good points. At least she has a sense of loyalty among friends. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have chosen to help me willingly, even if it meant she had to suffer.
During the meal, Le Yao and I talked about our friends. She asked me, “Zhao Yang, how have Robben and CC been recently? Are they together?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What a pity, CC is a good girl. Although she’s a bit idealistic, so is Robben. I think they would be good together.”
I nodded in agreement with Le Yao’s words, but said helplessly, “You should know that Robben has a hurdle in his heart that he can’t get over. He doesn’t want to be with CC with this hurdle. Anyway, I can understand him.”
“What about you? Have you gotten over the hurdle in your heart?” Le Yao suddenly turned the topic back to me.
I had an answer in my heart, but fell into silence. At this moment, I really hoped that someone would pass by that “City in the Sky”, come back and tell me how long it would take for me to overcome the obstacles and meet the woman in my heart on that “City in the Sky” again… But I knew that the woman waiting in the “City in the Sky” was no longer Jian Wei.
Seeing that I had been silent for a long time, Le Yao smiled and said, “You’ve already answered with your silence.”
I didn’t deny it, but said with some loss, “Let’s eat, the noodles are getting soggy.”
Le Yao lowered her head and took a bite of the noodles, then seemed to remember something and said to me, “When we go back to Suzhou this time, let’s gather at CC’s restaurant. I haven’t been there for a long time, and I miss it.”
“Okay, let’s do it tomorrow night, and invite Robben too.”
……
With the agreement to be friends with Le Yao last time, we didn’t stay together that night. In the hotel room, I lit a cigarette as usual, immersed in my own loneliness, and couldn’t help thinking of Jian Wei. This thought made me panic, but I couldn’t stop it.
I took a deep puff of the cigarette, and laughed helplessly. Jian Wei and I had experienced so many things together, but what we pieced together was a broken love. In the end, these bits and pieces turned into brute force scattering in all directions, tearing me apart.
In the midst of being torn apart, I seemed to see Jian Wei and Xiang Chen lying on the same bed, whispering sweet nothings. They didn’t remember the bits and pieces we had been through, so they disappeared into dust in the midst of being torn apart, hurting so much that I couldn’t feel the pain!
A text message alert finally saved me. I put out the cigarette and picked up my phone from the cabinet. But the message that saved me surprised me. It was from Mi Cai.
“Do you have a lot of cockroach corpses in your bathroom after you sprayed the insecticide?”
She’s really something, even afraid of dead cockroaches! I smiled and replied to her, “There should be some.”
“Can you come and help me clean up these dead cockroaches now?”
“I’m on a business trip in Hengdian. Wait for me to come back, or you can ask someone else for help first.”
“I’ll wait for you. I don’t want to bother others with such disgusting things.”
I looked at Mi Cai’s reply with a wry smile. She’s really something. Just because I owe her some money and haven’t paid it back, she can make me do all the disgusting things with a clear conscience. I immediately replied to Mi Cai, “It’s hard to be poor. I live without dignity, without happiness…”
“Stop complaining! Be a good person, work hard.”
Looking at Mi Cai’s reply, I found it genuinely funny, but I couldn’t say why. Anyway, it was a very subtle feeling.
My mood gradually lightened. I quickly replied “Good night” to Mi Cai, pulled the curtains, turned off all the lights in the room, and fell asleep after a while.
……
The next day, I took Le Yao back to Suzhou. She had already given up the room she rented in Suzhou. I arranged a hotel for her, and agreed to gather at CC’s restaurant in the evening. Of course, we had to invite Robben. This was something I had promised CC. As a principled person like me, I naturally keep my word.After returning to the company and reporting to Chen Jingming, I continued to be busy for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t until late evening that I finally broke away from work. I lay back in my chair for a moment of rest, then finally took out my phone and dialed Robben’s number.
Robben answered the call quickly. I cut straight to the chase and asked, “Where are you?”
The sound of an electric razor buzzed from the other end of the line. Robben, stealing a moment from his busy schedule, said to me, “I’m about to head to the bar for work.”
“Don’t go. Come to CC’s place tonight. I’m treating.”
Robben sounded a bit impatient, “I told you I’m not going. Can you stop giving me a hard time?”
“Didn’t you say last time that if I bring Le Yao, you’ll come?”
“I did say that.”
“Will you keep your word?”
“I will, but isn’t Le Yao filming in Hengdian?”
I chuckled and said, “How could I invite you, the big shot Robben, without bringing her back? Stop dawdling and hurry over… Oh, and bring my guitar with you. We’ll help CC liven up the place tonight.”