【Summer Five】Iron City Wall

"Have you read the ranking of the first issue?" Wutiao poked Xia You.

The standard language teacher stumbled on the podium to read the ppt, and the cold autumn wind lifted a corner of the handout, and the paper trembled needlessly under the kettle.There were a few exercise papers scattered in the aisle, and the expressions of the students were all different, most of them were engrossed in their own affairs.

Xia You listened to the class with her chin propped up, the pen spinning in the palm of her hand.After listening to the five words, he turned his head slightly and replied, "I read it. What's the matter?"

Wutiao lay on the desk and sighed slowly: "You didn't come up to me immediately to ask me how I did in the exam? As soon as the results came out this morning, I didn't know how many people stopped me along the way."

"Then you are really unlucky." Xia You said perfunctorily, "Hong Shu said that paying attention to others can only show one's own vanity and inferiority."

The wind poured into the room through the half-open window, and the paper rattled.Xia You was silent for a moment, looked at Wutiao's slightly squinted eyes, put the pen on the table as if in compromise, and asked tentatively, "So... how did you do in the exam?"

Wutiao smiled contentedly, stretched his waist like a cat, and said, "It's not very good, I'm only ten points taller than you."

"...shut up." With a dark face, Xia You stretched out his hand to press the top of Wu Tiao's head, and neatly ruffled his silver hair, determined not to be fooled by this guy again.

The person whose hair was plucked was still smiling, with a hint of frozen red on his slightly rounded cheeks, like a beckoning cat in front of a grocery store.

It has been more than half a year since the two started school. During the period, there were several exams, big and small, and Wu Tiao showed his expected amazing talent.Xia You's unchanging No. [-] throne was taken away by him like this, but he could have a slight upper hand in grammar.

Wu Tiao seems to be born with a very high sensitivity to mathematics. Everything involving logical chains, numbers and laws is like an open computer case in front of him, and all the parts are neatly laid out, just waiting for him to reach out and assemble.Even on the small stove of the powered armor that Hongshu gave to the two of them, he could always find the right entry point and analyze the most critical theoretical core.

As for grammar—it's not that he's not good at all, but it's not as outstanding compared to his amazing science thinking, and it's slightly behind Xia You, who loved reading since he was a child.

"Two points deducted for the last question?" Wu Tiao's voice brought back Xia You's thoughts.He looked up and looked around, only to realize that get out of class was over.

The deskmate tapped the equation with a [-]-centimeter ruler, and a smug smile overflowed his lips, "The variables here are very particular, and according to your thinking, it will only get more and more chaotic."

Xia You glanced at him, "Say something quickly" brightly.

Wutiao picked up the pencil, and the phrase "I'll teach you" came to the tip of his tongue, but was interrupted abruptly.

"Student Xia You!"

The girl in the adjacent group stood timidly in front of the summer oil table, holding the test questions of the previous test in her hand, and said as thin as a mosquito: "Can you help me... tell me about the final question?"

The girl has a gentle and gentle Asian appearance, apparently her ancestors were once residents of the plate called "Asia".Today, the narrow world inside the iron city wall has no distinction between races. Most people have three or four bloodlines flowing in them. Everyone communicates in the first common language, and they can only get a glimpse of it by their names.

Xia You nodded to the girl with a smile, and said, "Sit down and talk, this question is really troublesome."

He took the pen and patiently broke the stems of the questions into pieces, his voice was a little hoarse in the period of voice change, and he narrated in a straightforward and clear way.The girl was still a little nervous at first, but she slowly picked up the rhythm and began to listen intently, occasionally glancing at Xia You's face, her cheeks flushed slightly.

Five sullen heads crouched back in their arms, looking at them lazily.He looked at Xia You, but what he saw was not the face that was popular with girls, but a few drops of black ink on the knuckles of his right index finger.

The unspoken words fell back into the stomach from the tip of the tongue, like a heavy pebble.The few drops of ink lined between the white and slender fingers, shaking slightly with the movement of holding the pen, also dazzling and uncomfortable.Wujo was suddenly a little upset, but he didn't know why he was angry, so he simply turned his head away and stopped embarrassing himself.

The curtains were lifted by the wind, and a few rays of sunlight suddenly fell into Wu Tiao's eyes.He suddenly realized: his credo in life has always been "I'm not happy, so don't think about others." Since Xia You makes him unhappy, then don't think about giving girls a lecture with peace of mind!

So, the silver-haired boy got up slowly, adjusted his smile, cleared his throat leisurely, and threw a trap at the girl.

After school, Xia You climbed onto the tram and asked Wutiao inexplicably, "Why were you so eccentric just now? Did she offend you?"

Wujo sat in the corner and smiled brightly: "No, which eye of yours sees my eccentricity?"

"Both eyes have seen it." Xia You sighed, "Forget it, I have to go home quickly today. Minako has been talking about it for a long time, and Hong Shu also asked for leave."

Wutiao: "Why is there such a big fanfare? Are you going to get rich and move?"

Xia You: "No, you better shut up."

He changed his schoolbag from his left shoulder to his right shoulder, looked at the withered and yellow flowers and plants on the street, and said seriously: "It's time to prepare for winter."

"'The lingering winter lurks in the fifth district'-you must have heard this phrase?"

Humans on the permafrost rely on furnaces for heating. If they leave the iron city walls without wearing any protective equipment, they will die of hypothermia within a minute.This is still the case in summer, but once winter comes, the already harsh climate will intensify, forcing the central government to send twice as many people to operate the furnaces to ensure that the iron city walls are warm enough.

And all resources in the human ecological chain are distributed from top to bottom. No matter fuel, food, rare resources or heating that kills people, they are all given priority to the first district, and finally distributed to the five most populous districts with the few remaining ratios.The "noble gentlemen" in the high-end districts are carefree all year round, and at most they fold a mink coat over their Chinese clothes; the workers in the fourth and fifth districts are desperately hoarding supplies months in advance, just hoping to survive safely winter.

Even so, countless dead are still quietly buried every spring, especially young children and the elderly.Often they died of diseases brought on by cold snaps, leaving their families to pass the winter numbly and be buried hastily and unseemly.

When he was in the third district, Xia You only said that he needed to "add a few more thick clothes" in winter; it wasn't until he moved to the fifth district that he suddenly understood the description in the book that "the residents were densely packed like ants by the furnace, holding their chapped fingers and exhaling." , Even if it is incinerated by high temperature, it is unwilling to withdraw its hand." Why?

Last winter, he and his parents hid in the basement at a loss, sat around the oven to keep warm with three layers of blankets on the inside and three layers outside, and ate a little cold black bread every day to survive.Drinking water will freeze if you don’t pay attention, so you can only roast it on the fire from time to time, and drink it up as soon as the temperature drops; The snow sculpture, the snot bubble was frozen stiff as soon as it poked its head out.

When the Meteorological Bureau finally heard the district-wide broadcast announcing that the cold weather alarm that had sounded for two or three months was about to be cancelled, the 12-year-old Xia You had already been tossed to death.

So this time, Minako made full preparations, and after a few weeks of hard work by the owner of the East Coast supplier, he managed to find a good day to clear the warehouse, and planned to lead the whole family to go shopping together.

Wutiao—and no matter where he came from—of course, he has never seen the severe winter in the fifth district, so he doesn't quite understand the attitude of Xia You as an enemy.But he also saw the anxious and eager discussions of the students in the class recently, and "heard" some rumors on the sidelines.

"Just for the winter?" he asked, "Even uncle has to ask for leave?"

When Minako loads the boys onto the truck, Gojo demonstrates what it means to "make a big splash."

The old man who drove the car introduced himself as the father of an employee under Hongshu. He was very grateful to this executive because his son had received a lot of care.One day I heard that Hongshu was going out to do some shopping, so he immediately volunteered to help with a broken truck that was decades old.

Hong Shu restrained but sincerely thanked Minako, covering her mouth and snickering.The old man started the truck, Xia You looked at his father with eyes mixed with respect and complacency, and Wutiao was fiddling with the car window beside him.

The wheels split the airflow, and the cold wind whizzed past the windows, leaving a few dull scrapes.There were children on the street casting envious eyes, and a few withered and yellow grass leaves were blown up by the wind, and then fell slowly and lonely.

The east coast warehouse they went to was the largest daily necessities warehouse in District [-], and its person in charge often acted as a sales manager, selling the items piled up in the warehouse to customers who were willing to bid.

Rather than crowding together with everyone in District [-] to grab supplies in an ordinary supermarket, picking slowly in a large warehouse is obviously the best solution.The person in charge only communicated with well-connected customers, so Minako used Hongshu's identity to go online and successfully booked a day with less traffic to go shopping.

"Come on," Minako took out five or six huge nylon woven bags from the trunk, and sent one to each of them aggressively: "You can't go home until the bags are full!"

The interior of the warehouse was densely packed with containers, and the person in charge led them around familiarly, and finally stopped in front of a shelf that was as big as three football fields, and said, "It's all here, pick it slowly."

Xia You looked up, and saw that all kinds of items were stacked on the shelves in different categories, with trademarks on the outward side.A few incandescent lamps were lit on the roof of the warehouse, dust swirled in the air, and scattered on several fireplace-like goods.

There were several ladders leaning against the shelves, and Hong Shu called Xia You to help hold the ladder feet, and began to shuttle busily through the container group, looking for the goods on Minaizi's list.

"Portable...stove?" Wutiao rummaged through several rows of shelves on the ground, wondering, "Is it possible to make a fire after winter?"

Xia You climbed up the ladder and leaned over to look into the nearby box.Hearing this, he replied with a bit of a subtle show off: "The furnace developed with the technology of the driven armor——you will understand at that time, whether there is fire is almost equivalent to whether there is life."

"Isn't that so?" Minako gasped, her voice cut into paragraphs by the shelf: "I hope this year is well-prepared, so I can feel better."

Wujo fell silent, and buried himself in pulling the heavy machine out of the container.Xia You caught a glimpse of a drop of sweat on the side of his face, moved her lips, but finally swallowed the question hesitantly.

Who are you?At that moment, he suddenly realized part of the answer to this question.

where you came from -

It must be warm enough to survive the winter without a fireplace.