damaged

Jiang Man took the two of them to a nearby cafe and sat down, choosing a seat by the window.

She took the menu handed over by the waiter, but delivered it directly to Zhang Ailin, and said, "A glass of American latte, thank you. What do you want?"

Before Zhang Ailin reached out to take it, Zhou Zhou took a step forward, grabbed the menu, looked through it carefully, and asked deliberately: "This is not bad, Arlene, what do you want?"

Zhang Ailin hesitated for a moment: "I don't need it."

Zhou Zhou smiled, closed the menu, placed it on the table, and looked at Jiang Man in front of him: "I almost forgot, Arlene hates coffee."

After obtaining Wang Xi's contact information, Zhou Zhou worked hard to pry Wang Xi's mouth open, and figured out the cause and effect of the name Jiangman.

When Zhou Zhou looked at Jiang Man, it took a lot of effort to force a fake smile.

The embarrassment only stayed on Jiangman's face for a moment, and then he put on a gentle smile: "There is also juice."

"Alin hates fruit juice even more." Zhou Zhou also said with a smile.

Jiang Man was secretly dissatisfied and said, "Where did this girl come from?"

But on the surface, he still has an amiable and gentle appearance: "If you really don't like it, you can drink a little wine."

"My sister is worried."

Jiang Man raised his head and said to the waiter next to him, "A bottle of fruit wine with a slightly lower alcohol content, thank you."

After the waiter took away the menus on the table, Jiang Man turned his head and looked at Zhou Zhou: "Are you Arlene's friend?"

Zhou Zhou pretended to have a coy expression, as if he had been poked in pain: "Ah...Actually, you can forcefully say that..."

Zhang Ailin is not good at interacting with people, and she treats people very coldly, Jiang Man is very clear.

Since the little girl in front of her said so, she reckoned in her heart that she was just a little girl who unilaterally entangled Zhang Ailin.

Since that was the case, Jiang Man was disgusted by following up with the cheek: "The relationship between your classmates is really good. Thinking back to my time, the relationship between classmates seemed much colder."

"Oh, is that so? It's convenient to ask, how old is my sister? She is so beautiful!"

Jiang Man was stunned for a moment, then smiled and said, "In his early twenties, in his late thirties."

Zhou Zhou made a look of exclamation: "Wow, it's not wrong for me to be called Big Sister."

Looking at Zhou Zhou's cute appearance, Zhang Ailin suppressed the smile on her lips, rubbed her right hand on the tip of her nose, and turned her head away.

The little girl named Zhou Zhou in front of me is really annoying.

Jiang Man skipped her words and turned to look at Zhang Ailin: "Alin, how have you been doing these years?"

Zhang Ailin turned her head and lowered her head, like a wilted eggplant beaten by frost, she whispered, "It's okay."

The waiter brought over the latte and placed it in front of Jiang Man's eyes.

"A Lin, you won't blame me for not seeing you for so long, will you?"

?

Hearing this, Zhou Zhou was dumbfounded. The woman in front of him was not only ugly, but also ugly in heart.She resisted the desire to interrupt, and continued to listen to the conversation between the two indifferently.

"No." Zhang Ailin answered truthfully, picking her fingers uneasily.

"Arlene, you have no idea how much I've wanted to see you since I left there."

As he said that, regardless of Zhou Zhou sitting next to him, Jiang Man excitedly stepped forward and straightened up.

Zhang Ailin picked at the dead skin on her finger more vigorously, tearing a small wound, from which blood glistened indistinctly.

Scenes of past images kept flashing in Zhang Ailin's mind like a revolving lantern. The various experiences in the college were nothing more than two kinds, one was called pain, and the other was called Jiangman.

When she was a child sitting in the courtyard of the college and looking at the extraordinarily tall fence built around the courtyard, Zhang Ailin always liked to raise her head high, and guessed along the fence and the barbed wire at the top of the fence. Whether the sky outside the wall is the same as the sky here, guess whether the life outside the wall is as painful as it is here.

The sky is the same.

Pain is the same.

Her world seemed to be separated from the past from the moment she entered the academy, and the middle was split into an indelible abyss and canyon.

Originally, she thought it would be all right to escape there, but she didn't expect that after she got out, all this place became there.

Ji Shui left and never came back, Zhang Yeqiu became someone she didn't know, and Ah Ding was no longer Ah Ding.

Every day seems to be alive, as if in a dream again.

Too dramatic.

Happiness and pain, which one is the most real, she couldn't tell.

All the high-rise buildings rising from the ground, all the flashing lights in the city, all the laughter and laughter on the streets, all the layers of ripples on the river, all the speeding cars on the road. The green leaves of the trees seemed to be frozen, as if they had been frozen by a chill that could not be dispelled. They lost their color and temperature, and there was only a piece of ice and snow left. Everything was gray, gray, Grey, everything is dead, dead, dead.

The only warmth she can think of is the fragment that once appeared in the memory.That period of warmth is called Jiangman.

So she frantically went looking for Jiang Man.

Go find the kindling that will not be frozen to death in this snowy world.

to save yourself.

Want a reason to live.

After a long silence, Zhang Ailin raised her head, her hands constantly rubbing showed her nervousness and uneasiness: "Then how did you find me?"

Jiang Man saw through Zhang Ailin's careful thoughts, sat back an inch, held the coffee cup with both hands, took a sip, and looked like he was holding the winning ticket: "Fortunately, a small group has been looking for me recently. One of them is Wang Xi Girl, say you know me and you too."

"small group?"

Jiang Man put down the mug lightly: "It's more like a group of punks."

"What did they do to you?"

The waiter brought up the fruit wine on a tray, placed a hanging glass in front of Zhou Zhou and Zhang Ailin, then placed the fruit wine in the middle of the two glasses, bowed and left.

"When I heard your name from that girl Wang Xi, my heart ached. Arlene, there, in that darkness, we are the only ones we depend on each other."

After saying this, two lines of tears fell from Jiang Man's eyes and slid down her cheeks.

?

If Zhou Zhou didn't know the ins and outs of the matter, and knew that Jiang Man had accepted the task given to her by those teachers to mentally control Zhang Ailin in order to leave school early, Zhou Zhou would have been moved by the woman in front of him.

But now, seeing her crying, Zhou Zhou just wanted to slap her twice.

Zhou Zhou picked up the glass in front of Zhang Ailin, poured a little wine, put it back, and looked at Zhang Ailin's face from the corner of his eyes.

Sure enough, the big fool showed great sadness: "Are you doing well?"

Jiang Man gave a definite and positive answer. The teardrops that had just fallen from his eye sockets suddenly turned into river water that broke its embankment, crying like pear blossoms with rain.

"My life is like a puddle of mud, Arlene, only you can save me."

In the end, Jiang Man looked at Zhang Ailin with his tear-stained face, his eyes full of longing.

"How...how can I help you?"

"I have no fixed place now, I don't know where I can be accommodated, I..."

"So I wanted to take advantage again." Zhou Zhou snorted coldly in his heart.

Before Zhang Ailin could respond, two or three tears came out from the corners of Zhou Zhou's eyes, and his face was full of sympathy: "Big sister, although I don't know what happened to you before, I'm really sad to hear you like this.

But now, we are just little students, really powerless, I really want to help you..."

Jiang Man keenly captured Zhang Ailin's movements. She clearly wanted to take out something from her pocket. It was either a mobile phone or a bank card in that shape.

In other words, it is either a transfer or a card.

Jiang Man thought proudly: "It's really thanks to the teacher who gave me this task at that time."

But Zhang Ailin's arm that was about to be raised was pressed by Zhou Zhou: "Big sister, I don't know how to help you." Zhou Zhou pulled out a pen and paper from the bag beside him, wrote a few words, and handed it to Jiang Man looked at her pitifully, "This is a famous saying, big sister, I give it to you, I hope you can live a good life."

Jiang Man accepted it in embarrassment, and typed those words face to face: Anything that can't kill you will eventually make you stronger.

Really speechless.

Seeing Zhou Zhou's repeated obstructions, she knew that relying on words alone would not do.

Jiang Man quietly put his hands behind his back and pressed an extremely tiny button hanging on his waist.

Suddenly, a very penetrating buzz sounded.

Fear instantly crushed Zhang Ailin's heart like a huge wave. She covered her ears tightly with her hands, stared fixedly at the glass of wine in front of her, panted heavily, and tried her best. Drilling into the crevice of the sofa behind.

Everything about the academy, the laughter, the reprimands, the dim flickering lights, the darkness of the confinement room, the pain of the electric current passing through the body, the abuse of being pointed at the nose, the paleness of the ceiling seen by being anesthetized and tied to the bed , the unattainable wall, the endless green paint, the figure who wanted to escape and was beaten back, the floor that wiped the blood, and the retching in the body, like a black giant ant, is going along. She climbed up with her feet, her legs, and her arms, and waved her huge fangs in front of her eyes, trying to devour her ferociously.

Jiang Man quickly ran to Zhang Ailin's side, hugged her, and patted her: "It's okay, it's okay, Arlene is okay, everything will be fine, I'm here, I'm here, don't be afraid."

Just as the corner of Jiang Man's mouth curled into a victor's smile, a loud noise suddenly sounded behind her.

The beeping stopped abruptly.

Jiang Man looked over, and Zhang Ailin also looked over.

Zhou Zhou pulled out a round portable speaker from Jiangman's satchel, exhausted all his strength, and smashed the speaker to the ground, breaking it into countless pieces.

Zhang Ailin had never seen Zhou Zhou like this.

The hair around Zhou Zhou's ears spread out, covering most of her face. Her eyes were hidden in her hair, shining with uncertain light. She stared at Jiang Man firmly, as if she was not looking at a living thing. After a word pause, a smile is not a smile:

"I really don't want to see you exist."