A foreign city, dear you

Cao Xueqian's expression slowly became solemn, and his eyes were deeper than usual, seeming to carry the weight of the thrilling past. His slightly stubbled lips slowly opened, taking Ye Lian back to his past again:

It was in the summer of 2001 when I was in Hwaseong, and I resigned from a factory.

During that time, work was always unstable and always changing.

Because the working hours are relatively short, I only have a pitiful amount of money when I pay my salary. During that time, I was lucky that you were working in school and had a stable income, so I didn't have a lot of pressure to support my family.

But I have another kind of pressure.

As a man, I cannot shoulder the burden of raising a family, and I feel that my self-esteem has nowhere to rest.

So I hope to find another job as soon as possible that will last longer, get paid earlier, and send money home earlier.

But contrary to expectations, in the following days of job hunting, I couldn't find a job that I could barely accept.

As the days go by, the little money in my hands is shrinking little by little.

Although I have been very frugal:

He ate the cheapest meals and slept in the cheapest public hotels. Once he even spent the night in the corridor of a guest house. Sometimes he was reluctant to buy water and tried to find a place to drink it.

I'm not willing to spend money to call you, even though I miss you from morning to night every day.

That day, I went to a talent market to attend a large corporate job fair. There are so many people in the talent market, and they are all packed with heads.

I was sweating and squeezing around inside. When I saw companies that had little to do with my major, I tried to submit a resume.

I submitted about seven or eight copies in total.

Although it is said that "cast the net wide and catch more fish", I still know myself. Several of these companies have very high requirements, and my "stepping stone" is not strong enough. I know that I will not be hired.

If I could be accepted by one of the two less demanding companies, I would be thankful.

It’s too late to come out of the talent market. After a day of running around and working hard in the sweltering job market, I was tired and hungry.

I passed by one restaurant after another, not confident enough to go in, and finally entered a small noodle shop.

I asked for a clear water surface.

But the boss didn't know whether he was afraid that he would be considered too stingy or just kind-hearted, so he gave me two slices of green vegetables and a little bit of starch.

I gratefully said thank you to my boss.

I didn't hesitate to finish the noodles, even though I was so hungry that I wanted to stretch out a hand from my throat.

Because I thought I had nowhere to go after finishing the noodles, and I couldn’t just watch others eating while my own bowl was empty or the boss had taken away my bowl.

But I finished it quickly.

My stomach, my throat, and my hands holding chopsticks didn't listen to my plans and arrangements. They seemed to sense the crisis of "there will be no such shop after this village", and they cooperated in unison to cook the noodles quickly. All wiped out.

Then, I finished the soup again.

I experienced the wonderful feeling of soup flowing from my throat, but I felt that there was too little soup in the bowl.

The bowl in front of me bottomed out.

I didn't pay the bill. I thought I'd wait until the boss came to collect the table.

I looked into the store. There were six tables in the store, and two of them were empty. Then I feel that if I don't leave, it won't affect the boss's business. When the table is full, I can't dominate the table and I have to leave.

Where to leave? I have no idea at all.

I want to see how much money I have left?

I went to my backpack to dig out my flabby wallet. There is only a handful of money in the wallet. Excluding the money I should pay for the noodles, I still have about ten yuan left.

Ten yuan is life-saving money! I don’t dare to spend any more.

So where should I stay tonight? I'll probably end up on the streets tonight.

I rummaged around in my backpack reluctantly, thinking that I might be able to find some more money.

but.

There was a burst of sadness in my heart.

I put my wallet in my backpack and thought about what to do tonight. I thought about it over and over, but there was no decision in my mind.

At this time, I thought of you again.

I don't know what you are doing at this moment? Are you thinking of me as much as I think of you?

I took one of your pictures out of my backpack. Because I miss you so much, I always carry that photo with me.

I looked at your photo and your beautiful smiling face in the photo, and my eyes filled with tears before I knew it.

The photo looks very old because I looked at it a lot and touched it a lot, and some places are worn and hairy.

I wiped my tears to prevent them from dripping on your photo. I stuck your photo on my face and carefully put it back in my backpack.

At this point, Cao Xueqian stopped to take a drink of water. Seeing that Ye Lian was already crying, he said, "Don't cry. I won't talk about it if you cry."

Ye Lian then wiped the corners of her eyes, smiled through her tears, and went to pour a glass of water for Cao Xueqian. Cao Xueqian picked up the cup and took a long sip, then continued to tell his story:

*

It may have been past meal time, but instead of filling the tables, the number of people in the small noodle shop was getting smaller and smaller. Now besides me, there were two other people, and the three of them were scattered across three tables.

One of the two people was a girl and the other was a young man.

I looked at the man and seemed to have seen him somewhere. The man had actually finished eating already. Maybe he felt my gaze, so he looked over at me and nodded.

"Hello, how do I feel like I have seen you somewhere?" The table was not far away, so I asked him directly.

"In the job market, when I was submitting my resume at that lighting factory."

"Oh, yes, yes!" I suddenly remembered.

"How was your job search today?" I asked him.

He shook his head and replied: "I don't know, there is no result yet. We have to wait for notification."

"Me too." We seem to have more and more common topics.

"My name is Cao Xueqian, what should I call you?" I asked him again.

"My name is Xiao Maobing." He said, explaining to me how to write his name.

I am very happy to meet someone in this store who I am looking for a job with.

"Where are you going to stay tonight?" I asked him.

I asked him for a purpose. I thought if he went to stay in a hotel, could I follow him to spend the night in the corridor?

"To tell you the truth," Xiao Maobing came across from me and said in a low voice: "I have no money, and I have nowhere to go at night. Where are you going to live?"

I didn’t expect that Xiao Maobing had nowhere to go like me. Maybe he had the same calculation as me. I immediately felt a pity for him, as if I were the same fallen person in the world.

We each paid our bills, walked out of the noodle shop, and faced the street where the street lights had already been lit up one after another, worrying about where to stay.