sunk into the earth

Zhang Chen and Cheng Sheng seemed to have completely disappeared from here.

But their stories are still being told over and over by their old friends to strangers.

A female master in a massage parlor for the blind always tells the stories of a guitar player to the customers at work, telling the stories in detail and embellishing them, and sometimes even she herself wonders whether these stories really happened.

The guests like to hear these anecdotes very much, most of them never take it seriously, they only come to listen to the stories on the book stand, and smack their lips when the female master smiles and tells about the uncovered scars: "So weird? "

The female master smiled and said, "It's not very strange, is it? This kind of thing happens often."

"It doesn't happen often, does it? Why haven't I heard of it?" After finishing speaking, the guest said "Ouch": "It hurts so much here, I can't stand it, just press it lightly."

The female master responded and slowed down the strength in her hand.

The back was pressed comfortably, and the customer was very satisfied. He leaned his head on the massage chair, and asked the person behind him in a muffled voice: "What's your name? It's very interesting. You don't sell cards and you like to tell stories. Next time you come, go directly to me. you."

The female master smiled: "My name is Haiyan, next time you come to the front desk, just report my number, no need to mention my name."

The guest who asked her name came back several times in the following days, and found that Haiyan, the female master, was not picky in her skills, but she only had one story in her mouth. She told it over and over again, and even the details were different every time. Know what she said is true or false.

Finally one day Haiyan slipped her tongue and casually mentioned during the massage that the person mentioned repeatedly was actually her younger brother.

At that time, the guest was lying face down on the massage table, and was a little surprised to hear that this bizarre protagonist turned out to be the younger brother of the female master: "Your brother?"

Haiyan was stunned for a moment, and even the movements of her hands stopped for a few seconds, but she quickly reacted and said naturally: "Yes, my own brother, my own."

The guest on the massage table sighed: "I didn't expect this man to be your younger brother, so it's really not easy for your family."

"It's okay." Haiyan changed her approach, moved her hands to the shoulder blades of the guest, and pressed them cleverly, and then said: "We are all used to it, everyone has their own way of life, why not live?"

The guest sighed heavily when he heard the words, but thinking that she had never told the ending of this man, his curiosity was aroused, and he asked again: "Then where is your brother now?"

"died."

The guest gave an embarrassing "ah" and muttered, "What a pity...how did you die?"

"I jumped to my death, but I'm not sad."

Haiyan moved her hands away from the client's back, patted her arms twice with relief, and said to the client lying on the massage table: "Boss, it's over."

The guest shook his head and got up slowly, thinking that this female master was so cruel that she didn't even feel sad about the death of her own brother, so she stopped talking to her and went downstairs to pay with all her briskness.

Lao Qin, the owner of a bar on Gulou East Street, always mentioned the stories of these two people.It is said that the boss’s family background is quite solid. He gave up the opportunity for further study back then, and suddenly regretted it when he graduated from university. Come.

He was not short of money, so he gathered friends from all corners of the world who played music but were short of money, and gave them a chance to perform, so as to fulfill his adolescent dream.

He also knew a blind girl, Haiyan who told stories every day.Whenever the two get together, they always mention their mutual friends Zhang Chen and Cheng Sheng.

Lao Qin opened the business early today, and when he saw Haiyan coming in at the door, he greeted her, placed her behind the bar, mixed a glass of wine, sat down opposite her, and said with emotion: "It's been several months, and I still don't understand the relationship between the two of them. , why do you say?"

Haiyan took the wine from him, bit the straw and asked, "Speak clearly, what don't you understand?"

"There are so many things I don't understand, but the one thing I don't understand the most is: when they jumped from the third floor, did they hope that they would die or not?" Lao Qin poured himself a glass of wine and leaned against the bar. Drinking slowly, I was still thinking about this bizarre thing in my mind, "Life and death, I have seen it through now. But this incident has always puzzled me, and I don't understand why the two of them did this Think about it, if they really wanted to die, why didn't they jump from the top floor? But if they didn't want to die, why did they explain everything about their funeral early? Zhang Chen sent his recording studio and all the equipment in it to Lao Liu , Cheng Sheng wrote suicide notes to his parents, grandparents, me, and Chang Xin one by one, and the contents are all different."

"I don't know Cheng Sheng, but Zhang Chen..." Haiyan shook her head and said, "No one can guess what Zhang Chen is thinking."

Lao Qin leaned against the bar, stared at the guests coming in one after another with his empty eyes, and said with emotion: "Cheng Sheng's mother went to their house when they were just transferred to the general ward, and wanted to help tidy up their things. You Guess what she found? She found that the two of them bought a lot of flowers and plants the day before they jumped off the building together, and there was a small ticket for ordering epiphyllum on the coffee table, and the dates were all fresh. She was very prepared and ran to the place where they jumped off the building together Looking from that balcony, I found that several pots of freshly bought flowers were neatly stacked on the balcony, and the sun outside seemed to be shining. Cheng Sheng's mother is a literati, and she can't see such a scene that makes people feel emotional. Tears flowed down a bank when I mentioned this matter. I am not a literati, and my ability to empathize is far inferior to that of a woman. I have never shed tears since puberty. But when I heard her talk about this matter in the ward that day, tears almost burst into tears. He rushed out in an instant, completely out of my control. Before I realized what was wrong with me, his mother took out a tissue and handed it to me. Later, every time I think of that scene, I cry. I seem to be shocked by life itself. , I can't help but think about what kind of mentality they had when they went to the flower shop to buy potted flowers and bunches of flowers the day before they jumped off the building? Want to die? Want to live? Struggling? Ask for help? Or take a gamble? They don't know anything about it."

Haiyan on the opposite side suddenly pulled out a piece of paper from the bar counter, raised her face and covered her eyes.

She thought of Zhang Chen who came to the house that day. He held his hand, almost forcing himself to accept the "home" he bought over the years, and then opened his heart to her a little like reading his suicide note.When this picture appeared in Haiyan's mind again, she burst into tears and laughed, as if she understood something, covered her red eyes like soldering irons and said: "Zhang Chen has never bought flowers before, he doesn't know how to buy such things people."

Lao Qin shook his head: "Then I don't even understand."

Haiyan tightly clutched the tissue that had just wiped her tears, lowered her head and said, "Don't think about it if you don't understand, Zhang Chen told me he was going to leave, and I will treat him as completely dead, as if both of them are completely dead. "

Old Cheng also said this sentence.

When he came home one day, he found on the coffee table in the living room the household registration book that disappeared with his son in the hospital some time ago, and it was placed in the most prominent position in the center of the coffee table.He walked over slowly, leaned on the sofa and sat there for a long time, but he still didn't dare to reach out to touch it.

On the way, he called his elder brother and said he wanted to play a few games of chess.The other side quickly agreed, and their tone was unconcerned, as if they were a pair of brothers who had never had any estrangement or harm.

After hanging up the phone, Lao Cheng finally had the courage to pick up the household registration book on the table. His drier hands kept trembling, flipping through the pages of the small book, checking back and forth several times, and finally Acknowledgment that Cheng Sheng's page became empty.

When playing chess, the atmosphere between the two brothers was very silent. To be precise, it was only Lao Cheng’s unilateral silence. His elder brother was more than happy to chat with him about the situation and developments, but Lao Cheng’s reaction was flat. chess.

Uncle Cheng Sheng looked up at him, changed the subject, and suddenly started talking about Cheng Sheng: "Do you remember the days before 1990 when we never saw each other? Cheng Sheng always sneaked up to me on weekends, because I always brought He plays."

Lao Cheng played chess in silence, but still didn't say anything.

The other person quickly said again: "What do you think is the thing that impressed me the most? One summer I took him to the swimming pool. At that time, he was only eight or nine years old. He had never been in the water, and he couldn't even dog plan. I bought a ball that can float on the water at the entrance of the swimming pool. I originally wanted to take him to learn water together, but I didn’t expect him to hold the ball all the time, and he couldn’t put it down. He refused to go into the water and learn with me. I At that time, I was in a hurry, grabbed the ball in his arms, and threw it into the deep water area without saying a word, to see if he would still learn!"

The old man held the chess piece in the air, thinking about how to make this move in his mind, but his mouth was not affected, and he slowly said what happened afterwards: "But your family Cheng Sheng is really fierce! Eight or nine years old, and he can't swim. He plunged headfirst into the deep water, dying just to pick up his beloved ball. I was terrified at the time, so I hurried down to catch the ball ashore, and pressed my chest to make him spit out all the water he had choked on. I can still remember the appearance when Shengsheng just opened his eyes. I asked him: The depth of the deep water area is almost as deep as two of you. Are you dying? Guess what he said to me, he blinked Say to me: I am not afraid of death, I just want it."

Just finished speaking, the last white piece fell on the board and won.

The old man stroked his cuffs, slowly put away his chess pieces, and said to the younger brother opposite: "You insist on forcing the child to behave against his nature. This is forcing him to death. Why don't we just let him live his own life? We have the right to do so." he died."

Lao Cheng, who hadn't spoken for a while, finally came back to his senses. Like a big brother, he put away his chess pieces, leaned on the back of the chair and lost his mind, watching the fiery red sun sinking into the ground little by little in the distance, until the whole yard was covered with darkness. Sighing, he said with relief: "Now I can only treat him as completely dead."

August? Beijing——Yuncheng? On the expressway

This highway, like all highways, has a service area every few tens of kilometers, but the last service area away from Yuncheng is extremely narrow, and the size of the supermarket is comparable to a small store.

The owner of this small supermarket seems to enjoy the small and leisurely state very much. Every weekend, he always spends time talking with his daughter who is about to take the high school entrance examination in the supermarket.

That day, he and his daughter were eating lunch on the counter when a customer came in at the entrance of the supermarket. After picking and choosing from the shelves, he bought two bottles of mineral water and two bottles of Coke.

This was the most ordinary business order. The boss put down the bowl to pay the bill as usual, but he was a little dazed when he inadvertently looked up and saw the man's face clearly.

Until the man pushed open the supermarket door and limped away, the boss still didn't recover, looking thoughtfully at the back of the man running towards the car in the distance.

Seeing him acting abnormally, the daughter put down her chopsticks and asked, "Dad, what are you looking at?"

The boss came back to his senses, let out an "ah", picked up his chopsticks and stirred the noodles in the bowl again, and said, "The man just now is like the person I met when I was racing a car more than ten years ago. His facial features are almost exactly the same. But the demeanor and temperament are completely different.”

The daughter didn't quite believe it, and asked again: "Can you still remember the people who met each other more than ten years ago?"

The boss shook his head: "Of course not everyone can remember your father, and those who can remember are extraordinary."

"Then how do you remember that person? How is that person unusual?"

"It's so unusual." The boss said: "At that time, you were young, and our family was so poor. I just focused on running goods every day, and I could be happy for several days when I went to Beijing once in a while. Suddenly one day a child came to me. Me, when I said I wanted to buy goods, I thought it was just an ordinary business, so I drove the truck away, but when I got there, I couldn’t even get in the door, and in the end it was the kid who called himself to let my car in.”

The daughter smacked her lips: "Such a big brand of noodles? Still not allowed to enter the door? How stupid."

The boss laughed after hearing this: "It's not the same. There is an inscription in the courtyard. Of course, you can't just let anyone in. Once you go in, you have to register and make a phone call."

"So powerful?" The daughter's eyes lit up, and she was a little curious: "Then what about the kid you mentioned? Did he just ask you to pull the goods?"

Mentioning this person, the boss completely put down his chopsticks, thinking about the past, and told his daughter a story: "He asked me to pull a car of musical instruments, and he also went to Yuncheng. At that time, there was no high-speed rail, and we drove on the national highway. It’s so boring to sit all day, you have to chat? But the kid looks very proud, he doesn’t bother to chat with me about the news, he insists on talking about music, literature, poetry, movies, and foreign countries. Name, how do I know that? I was just thinking about earning back the money from this trip, and then taking your mother to have a good meal."

He turned his head just in time to see his daughter, who was gradually becoming an adult, looking at him with her head upright, with a look of interest on her face, thinking that at this age, it was time to get in touch with love, so he talked about what happened later: "That kid still fell in love with me He insisted that love and marriage are the same thing. I don’t think that’s nonsense? So many people who have been married, how many have true love? But what he said was convincing, which made me doubt myself. "

He raised his chin towards his daughter: "Girl, are you capable of finding a boy from such a family for your father in the future? Your father will be waiting to enjoy happiness in his life."

"Tch, I don't."

The boss smiled and looked outside, the black car parked by the roadside had completely disappeared. Looking at the empty road, he suddenly felt a sense of loss. He sighed, not sure if he was talking to himself or to his daughter. Said: "But I really want to know how that kid is doing now, has he found the love he said."

In an unoccupied cemetery on the outskirts of Yuncheng, two men were lying side by side in front of a monument, looking at the big black chimney in the distance that was incompatible with the entire new city.

Zhang Chen stretched his hands into the air, and looked through his fingers at the huge chimney that had accompanied him since he was a child, and suddenly found that he no longer felt stomach pain for no reason when staring at it.

Cheng Sheng turned his head, looked at Zhang Chen's profile, and said, "On the way here, someone said that this chimney will be demolished."

"I also heard that a chip factory is going to be built in the original place. Yuncheng is going to be transformed into a high-tech city, and the chimney still has to be demolished." Zhang Chen looked back at the chimney, got up from the ground, and took a picture. Patting the grass dregs on his body, he casually picked up a steel rod from the pile of steel rods that had been piled up over the years near the tombstone.

Cheng Sheng raised his head and followed Zhang Chen with his eyes. Seeing that the man got up without any muddled movements, he recalled his experience of not being able to walk on the ground for two whole months, and said in amazement, "Why are you moving so swiftly, as if there are no nails on your legs? It’s like a steel plate!” He stretched out his hand towards Zhang Chen’s back in the air, grabbed his back and played with it, and then asked, “I remember you had stomach pains when you were young, why is your recovery ability so strong now?”

"If you suffer a lot, you can practice it."

Zhang Chen stood still in front of his mother's grave with a steel rod in his hand, and today, 11 years ago, appeared in his mind.

That day he reached under his pillow and took out a piece of paper. The half piece of paper was not even called a suicide note. There were only a few words on the front, without any lyricism or nostalgia. It was all about the future of his son. explain.

17-year-old Zhang Chen didn't feel scared when he looked at this last letter, which meant death.He just wanted to stuff this note into his pocket, thinking about finding time to burn it, but some kind of force suddenly fell on him, Zhang Chen was guided, and accidentally turned the note over.

On the back of the note was a row of small characters written in pencil, which were blurred and looked like they had been severely erased.But the eraser used by the owner is of bad quality, and no matter how much you rub it, you can't completely erase the words that have been written.

Zhang Chen approached the note and struggled to piece together the illegible small words on it. He stared at it for almost 5 minutes, reading word by word before he recognized what was written on the back of the note.

The crooked handwriting on it is: don't leave any trace of me, my mother has won eternal freedom.

Thinking of this, Zhang Chen suddenly smiled. He raised the heavy steel rod in his hand, waved his arm that had just recovered, and smashed it at his mother's tombstone with all his strength.

There was a loud bang in the cemetery, and the stele, which had been weathered by wind and rain for more than ten years, had already been overwhelmed. When it was hit by the first blow, it yielded and cracked a huge gap.

Zhang Chen said to the tombstone: "I can finally let you go."

Bang, bang, bang!The loud noises of steel rods and stone monuments sounded one after another in this barren cemetery. Zhang Chen smashed down the second, third, and fourth sticks until the tombstone was completely collapsed. A few contemptuous kicks on the stone.

Then he turned around and walked to the wooden stakes standing side by side with the tombstone, looking at the row of dilapidated wooden stakes. The bright red paint on these wooden stakes had almost fallen off in the past 11 years, revealing large areas of the original log color inside, crooked. Standing on the ground that is not considered solid.

Zhang Chen raised his arms again in the air, and with a bang, he smashed down the row of wooden stakes he had laid with his own hands with all his might.

Bang, bang, bang!The second stick, the third stick, the fourth stick...

Until the row of stakes completely fell down.

boom!Suddenly there was a burst of explosions in the distance, followed by endless rumbles, and the entire city was about to be shaken.

Zhang Chen held the steel rod and looked at the source of the sound at the same time as Cheng Sheng.The huge chimney that stood in Yuncheng for more than half a century slowly tilted amidst the huge rumbling sound, and the bricks and stones covered in black smoke fell violently like a storm with the blasting, and finally returned to the ground.

A light rain suddenly fell in the sky, Zhang Chen walked up to Cheng Sheng, threw the steel rod, and fell beside him with a bang.

The two lay flat amidst the sound of explosions, looking at the light rainy sky together.

The deafening explosions finally stopped. Cheng Sheng waited for the surroundings to be completely quiet, and slowly got up in the rain. Holding his waist and legs that had just finished the operation, he struggled to climb to the opposite side facing Zhang Shen's head. He stopped at the position, slowly bent down his upper body, and looked upside down at his face.

Zhang Chen was also looking at him, his face was covered with traces of water falling from the sky.

Having seen enough, Cheng Sheng stretched out a hand to wipe the rain off his face, and put his upper body in front of him to protect him from the rain.

Zhang Chen looked up and could only see Cheng Sheng's chest. He poked him with his hand and asked, "What are you doing?"

Without moving his position, Cheng Sheng said seriously, "I'm protecting you from the rain."

After thinking about it, he continued, "My brother will protect you in this life."