She was startled, and turned her head to see a bald man standing on the platform, wearing a sweater, shorts, and slippers, carrying two large bags of garbage in his hands, and a pair of goldfish eyes stared at her threateningly from behind the lens: "What do you want to do? Sneaky Damn."

She stammered, "Uh...I'm here to find someone...."

"Looking for someone? Did you make a mistake? There are only water pumps and electricity meters down here, and ghosts live here!"

She still didn't give up: "Can you let me go down and have a look? I want to make sure..."

"Whatever you want! It rained heavily a few days ago, the ground was flooded, and the water pump was broken. Be careful yourself, don't fall into the water!" As he spoke, he picked up the garbage and walked out the door. Come along and clear the streets of the waste and scum that the people of the city make.

Xianling stepped down the steps carefully, turned around the platform, but couldn't go any further. The bottom was flooded with stagnant water half a person's height, and there was a moon-like reflection of a light bulb in the calm black water, and there were gnats playing leisurely on the water surface. Flying, several lead pipes stretched upwards from the bottom of the water and climbed up the wall covered with green mold, like hands struggling desperately on the water surface before sinking.Two or three mosquitoes rushed over to kiss her face, enthusiastically wanting to invite her to their party, Xian Ling flicked it away, ran up the stairs, and ran outside the door of the apartment.She wandered the alleys: maybe it wasn't this apartment building?However, these two rows of similar old apartments quietly surrounded her, like clay figurines guarding the undead in ancient tombs, without expressions or answers, but they have existed forever.

She felt that she had missed something, like riding a bicycle at full speed, and a nut on the tire fell off halfway. A small drop causes the body to collapse and disintegrate.Injuries are inevitable, but as long as all the parts of the car body are still in place, as long as the nut can be retrieved and reassembled to tighten them, the road can still be continued.Perhaps Zhao Xiuyin, who had been dead for many years, came here just to bring back this nut for her?But she was too weak now to screw it back tightly on her own.

At the entrance of the Presidential Suite of the Regent Hotel, this gray-haired, flabby, and embarrassing woman really surprised the ladies wearing gold belts and diamonds. They quickly flipped through the thick business card books in their hearts, and guessed that The woman knocked on the wrong door, but the deep wrinkles on that face suddenly relaxed, and a familiar smile bloomed: "You all don't recognize me? I'm Yang Xianling!"

Shouting in amazement, they hurriedly embraced her into the room: "Oh! We thought you weren't coming! Really, we haven't seen each other for how many years? We almost didn't recognize each other! Have you eaten yet? Don't ask the people below to bring up some food..."

They sat on a circle of soft linen white sofas, just like the scene of eating bento sitting around desks 30 years ago, raising eyebrows, pouting at an angle, and laughing like a string of marbles, Everyone still has the shadow of the girl from back then, but they have lost their clean skin that does not need to be painted, and the white clothes and black skirts embroidered with school badges have been replaced by expensive uniforms of Chanel, Issey Miyake and Armani, and the people who are chatting are still irrelevant stars. Gossip with politicians, but what they care about is no longer which ice shop to go to after school and the upcoming monthly exam, but how to handle the procedures for their children to study abroad and the futures and stock market prices.

"What an annoyance!" Fang Ruomei, the hostess tonight, twitched her eyebrows that had been meticulously repaired with banknotes: "The economy is so bad, and I lost hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks alone in the past two years, but what should be spent should be spent." It’s still indispensable, how should I live in the future?”

Liu Zhiyu, who has always been optimistic, filled the red wine in the crystal goblet for her: "If you, the chairman's wife, can't live, then we salaried people should just jump off the building... Come on! It's rare that everyone has a holiday today, just play Have fun!"

"Jumping off a building?... Easier said than done," just as everyone toasted each other, they heard a voice laughing, and everyone couldn't help following the sound with chills down their spines. They saw Xian Ling sitting on a bronze lamp. Under the carved standing lamp, staring at the nectar in the cup in his hand, his fleshy cheeks were also dyed crimson: "Even if the child dies and the husband runs away, life still has to live on. After death, even a little hope Not anymore."

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☆, the final chapter

There was a silence.The others looked at each other in blank dismay, hoping that someone would be the first to attack and take the opportunity to express the doubts they had been hiding in their hearts all night, but no one wanted to be charged with cruelty to steal the limelight.Xian Ling raised a pair of clear eyes and looked around the crowd with a smile. The extreme smile of enduring the pain seemed to touch their long-forgotten memory, and another vague name was about to emerge.

"In my life, apart from failures, I don't have any wonderful stories to tell." After Xian Ling confessed the fact of her loss of daughter and divorce, the lines on everyone's faces relaxed, and under the skin of makeup and powder Like a spring of water flowing from their warm jade-like arms to her shoulders, she almost killed her, and she had to build a temporary sluice to slow the torrent of sympathy that was overwhelming her: "But now I think Even if I have to do it all over again, I will find a way to make my life better than before.”

They didn't really believe what she said. She knew that from the glass window against the night she could see how haggard and desolate she looked among these glamorous ladies. Who would believe such a woman who was tortured by time? How could a dying old woman have a brighter future?However, she felt unprecedented peace in her heart, sipped red wine, stood by the window, and looked far into the distance, across the jewel-box-like basin, she saw on the silent and dark mountain top, there seemed to be a glimmer of light that flickered through the bushes .Maybe it was her hallucination, maybe someone really roamed or traveled there alone with a lamp, who knows?That comet-like point of light doesn't care if anyone sees it.

Fang Ruomei walked to her side, and her flamboyant curly hair lightly touched her shoulder: "Hey, can I ask you now, why did you transfer schools in such a hurry? Then you didn't reply to my letter, what should I do?" It’s not because of what I said, is it?”

"Which sentence?"

"It's just that one time you brought a signed photo of a Hong Kong male star, and I said it was so amazing, and that you just love to show off. We had a fight and didn't talk for a few days...Did you forget?" Fang Ruo Mei searched Xianling's bewildered face for a while, then suddenly burst out laughing, tears welled up in the corners of her eyes that were wrinkled from laughter: "Oh! Really, I thought..." She quickly pulled out the A piece of tissue, delicately wiped the corners of her eyes so as not to smudge the mascara, and noticed that the people scattered around the suite did not notice her gaffe, so they pressed Xianling's arm, as if to confirm whether her clothes were silk or not. Pure cotton, with a charming smile: "I'm probably confused, it's funny, we were so young at that time, weren't we...? Speaking of which, why did you transfer schools?"

Before Xianling could answer, she heard Yao Xin shouting with a smile: "Hey! Look at what good things Zhang Kejing brought here... Wow! Fang Ruomei, tsk tsk... hot girl!"

When Fang Ruomei heard this, she immediately left Xianling and ran over to join the group looking at old photos.Xianling didn't follow her, thinking about whether she should leave. The 16-year-old events were in the past, and they still shared many memories of the 17-year-old and beyond, which had nothing to do with her.Even though the faces in front of her face that she used to face day and night still have a little expression from that year, but after 30 years of chasm, she has truly become a stranger outside this circle.

She put down her wine glass and was about to walk towards the door quietly, but was stopped by their new topic:

"...Zhao Xiuyin? Didn't she get married as soon as she graduated from high school?..."

"I'm pregnant, of course I have to get married quickly. You don't know that she was not yet in May at that time. Once I met her on the road, her belly was protruding..."

"I heard that her husband is ten years older than her, and his family runs an electronics factory. Later, the whole family immigrated to the United States..."

Xian Ling couldn't help interjecting and asked, "Didn't she go to America to study?"

Yao Xin opened her eyes wide: "Study? What kind of books do you study? Her husband went to work there, and she followed her to be an old lady there! She is only funny because her limbs are well developed and her mind is not good at all. When she was in class, You can doze off with your eyes open."

Zhang Kejing, who was dressed in leopard prints, also lowered her voice mysteriously and added: "I'll tell you a secret, one time when I was taking a math test, I happened to be sitting behind her, and when I was writing the test paper, it was strange that I heard a burst of ticking The sound of water leaking, I thought it was her teacup knocked over or something, I bent down to have a look..." She covered her mouth and grinned: "My mother, she actually wet her pants!"

Everyone took a deep breath, then frowned and laughed, asking: "Liar!" "Really or fake? How old are they..." "Then what happened after that?"

Zhang Kejing shook her head, her puffy bags under her eyes held back her smiles: "What's next? She must be ashamed to death, why am I ashamed to ask? Just pretend nothing happened!"

Xian Ling shivered all over, "Didn't you cheer for her in the stands before? Now that she's dead, you've made her so ugly, it's too much." Xian Ling protested in her heart, but Her lips trembled so violently that she could not utter a word, but let them go on laughing and telling anecdotes and gossip about other old schoolmates who were not there.She couldn't imagine what a poor loser she would become in their mean mouths if she had just left like this, or died.Using imagination as glue to reassemble the fragments with limited knowledge of another person, but what is created is just an irrelevant and strange image. Which is more real, fantasy or reality?She has no answer, the only thing she can be sure of is that when she walks out of this luxurious and spacious hotel suite, everything before last night will become a phantom, gradually replaced by the reality after tomorrow.

Yao Xin suddenly remembered, and gasped, "Yang Xianling, I remember once you said you met Zhao Xiuyin, what happened?"

She was stunned for a moment, shook her head, took off her shoes, crossed her legs, and let the bloated body on the sofa sink a little deeper: "It's nothing, I saw the wrong person."

Liu Zhiyu came over curiously: "Hey! Did you really have a crush on Zhao Xiuyin at that time?"

Many pairs of eyes were also asking this question, Xian Ling touched his hot cheeks, and sneered: "Yeah! When I was 16 years old, I loved any pretty people or things... Don't you guys?"

"It's so romantic!" They agreed unanimously. At that time, Yang Xianling was a bit of a literary girl, so they thought of an old classmate in their class who became a TV station executive. Not unrelated.These peachy inside stories are like the white mist rising in the steam room, covering up the growth rings on their naked bodies, melting the fat they urgently need to discard into sweat and expelling them from the pores, expressing the secret and unspeakable desires in their hearts The criticism with jokes vented freely from his mouth.

All the unfinished things of that year, the half-knowledgeable worries and fears, finally came to an end this night.Xian Ling walked out of the bathroom in a white bathrobe, leaned on the soft cushion of the sofa, drank two more glasses of champagne, and his eyes began to blur. He saw a group of half-hundred women, like crazy fans surrounding an idol singer, heading towards a naked girl on the table. The burly gigolo screamed and jumped.The bronze-colored fresh flesh shattered into countless fine yellow mud balls before her eyes.However, she no longer wanted to bother trying to piece it together. In her dream with half-closed eyelids, she watched them being washed away by the flood of mud and sand, and disappeared in the turbid torrent of time. Mercedes-Benz away to the sea.

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