Ye Lan

I lifted the bamboo curtain at the entrance of the comprehensive service station, and Uncle Decadent was chatting with the teaching assistant I met during the maintenance. His belly was squeezed out from the bottom edge of the old man's vest, like a flesh-colored swimming ring.As soon as I entered the door, the decadent uncle turned his face and said: "What a coincidence!" He stood up.I put the drive—no, strictly speaking, the messy metal case inside—on the counter.

"Boss, please show me, can this still be repaired?"

Uncle Decadent frowned when he saw the deformed metal shell.He didn't bring a magnifying glass, just took a screwdriver to pry off the back cover.The teaching assistant glanced at the driver, then stared at me for a while, showing a playful expression.Here, Uncle Decadent exerted all his strength, only to hear a "poof", and the back cover bounced off by itself.Another foul smell came out.Looking at the circuit board shrunk into a black ball inside, Uncle Decadent shook his head and clicked his tongue.

"Can't fix it, can't fix it. What's wrong with your drive?"

"Over, overloaded."

"This old machine, what do you overload it for? Well, buy a new one...Do you want the rotor inside? I don't want it. I'll accept it, one for three hundred."

My head got bigger with a buzz.A drive passed down from my grandfather died in my hands, which is bad in the first place.Next, I have to buy a "magpie" to make do with it, which is even worse, because it takes more than 2 minutes to drive the deflagration with a "magpie".The worst thing is that my allowance can't even afford "magpies", so I have to write letters to my family to ask for money.I seem to have imagined my mother's stinky face, with cold sweat on my neck.

The teaching assistant walked slowly behind the counter, picking up the charred drive casing.He studied the burnt circuit board with great interest, then took out a small brush from his chest pocket, and carefully swept the bottom of the case.He turned to me: "Are you participating in the Cup of Courage?" I didn't know how to reply for a while, so I just nodded.He let out a "huh" and continued to clean the shell with his head down.Uncle Decadent leaned next to him to watch, and I had to stand outside the counter in embarrassment. Fortunately, other majors were still in class at this time, and no one else came into the service station.After a while, he took a deep breath, took out a small glass bottle from his pocket, and carefully swept all the scorched dust into the glass bottle with a brush.

"Overloading will cause great damage to the machine. If there is no internal partition insulation structure, it will basically break after overloading once or twice." The assistant threw the shell into the big cardboard box behind the counter, making a dull "clang" sound . "Now the driver basically does not set the overload function by default, that is, the engineers at Yundingshan... Are you used to using this kind of driver?"

"Well, but..."

"Boss, please clear the ashes—"

Uncle Decadent immediately opened the drawer and handed him the "Yunding Shanjiayi" that reflected the soft silver light.He took the drive, but put it on the counter again.

"Anyway, you can use it first. The Courage Cup final is in... November? You can come back after that. Don't forget to clean the dust every week."

He turned and walked towards the door, stopped suddenly after taking two steps, and said as if talking to himself:

"The building of the Department of Microcosmic Interactions, you know it. No. 705. My name is Li."

Uncle Decadent watched him leave and coughed awkwardly.

"For you, it's best not to break it. This model costs at least 5 yuan per machine, and I can't repair it."

After that, he collapsed on the recliner and turned on the TV.

There was a loud chorus from the other end of the screen. These days coincided with the national parliamentary elections, and parliamentarian oaths and patriotic anthems were played everywhere.Although this sound is like the source of the signal, it is thousands of kilometers away from an ordinary person like me, like a cirrocumulus cloud in the white-hot sky, so vain that it has no sense of existence.

"Yunding Mountain Jia 5" was placed on the table in the dormitory, and I looked at a certain Zhang in dismay.I think I should probably buy a new drive—this is better than accidentally breaking it and having to pay [-] yuan to Assistant Professor Li.I spoke my mind, and a certain piece seemed to let out a sigh of relief.

"Say it earlier, why are you spending so much money? My family is the owner of the 'Whirlwind' production plant. If you can't get anything else, I'll embezzle one for you."

Only then did I understand why a certain drive is an unpopular brand like "Cyclone" that is only sold in the countryside.But it seems that this is the best way.By the way, a certain cousin from the town next door came to the dormitory early in the morning and applied dark green special burn oil to the burnt part of his face; now his face is as hideous as a special operations camouflage soldier.As the culprit of the burns, I was really embarrassed at the time. A certain cousin turned around and smiled: "It's okay, he just needs to be cleaned up. Train him well in the future."

We discussed it for a while and decided it would be rude to return the drive now.As a result of the discussion, a certain Zhang took the key and locked the drive and the first illustration of the martial arts novel in a drawer.That's probably the safest thing to do, wait until the game is over and we'll return the drive.

I couldn't sleep in bed, and I regretted selling the old driver's casing and rotor to Uncle Decadent.I should keep them as souvenirs.This is a relic of my grandfather.He passed away when I was very young. I only vaguely remember following a short but straight old man into a room similar to an office. Bend down and talk to me... probably after my grandfather passed away, I was the only one left in the family with a useless superpower physique, and the family situation went from bad to worse; Reality.This drive probably does have some special meaning to her.

I had to hide the bad drive anyway.

I thought of Assistant Professor Li again.Black tunic, gray hair, 20-year-old drive model.He doesn't seem to be living in this era, but rather like an old newspaper that has turned yellow.But the more so, the more curious I was about everything about him.I suddenly thought of the boy who dropped out of Uncle Decadent’s mouth—was he, like me, attracted by a certain characteristic of Assistant Professor Li?Or is Assistant Professor Li like a gray spider with a web, quietly in an inconspicuous corner, waiting for someone like me to throw himself into the net?No, I'm obviously not one of those people, but...

The blood rushed to the face again, and the whole body became hot and dry.I quietly took off my underwear under the quilt, and masturbated for a while to calm down.I closed my eyes, but his back appeared in the darkness: Maybe I should really try to understand him better.The excitement peaked and then released, and I fell asleep shortly after.