no longer ordinary friends

But more than ten minutes later, Li Yafang called back again, her voice was very low, with deep apology: "I am in Dongfang Village, but today there is a disturbance in the village in front, the bus is not coming, there is no car, Zhou Sister, I'm sorry."

"It's all right, are you at the bus station in town? I'll pick you up."

"Sister Zhou, I'm sorry." Li Yafang said guiltily.

"It's okay." Zhou Zhicheng reassured her, "I was the one who asked you to help record the show, and you don't owe me anything."

"No, no, sister Zhou, you have helped me a lot."

"Don't worry, Sister Zhou has a car, I'll pick you up to the county seat, Grandma Cai misses you too."

Jiang Xianghuai was almost done eating, so he went to the bathroom, rinsed his mouth, and said, "Let's go." Seeing Zhou Zhicheng's car keys on the dining table, he took them away naturally.

Zhou Zhicheng glanced at him.

His tone was calm: "Grandma Cai bought it for our wedding, I'll get used to it in advance, maybe it's suitable for future purchases and delivery."

Zhou Zhicheng: "I got married."

He didn't say anything more, but he had the key in his hand. He got into the driver's seat directly and said, "Take a break. Where is the specific address? I'll navigate there."

Dongfang Village is in the mountains, about 10 kilometers from the county seat. The winding mountain road is rugged, narrow and bumpy. There are some landslides on the side of the mountain, while the other side has no guardrails at all. Going down is a small cliff , some turns are large, and it is easy to collide with oncoming vehicles.

But it is undeniable that the scenery along the road is very beautiful. There is a blue lake under the cliff, and the blue sky is lighter. The clouds are floating in the air, and it seems that milk covers the boundary of the blue lake in the distance.

The air conditioner in the car was still on, but Zhou Zhicheng opened the car window. The wind was soft, and the hair fell on her face. She squinted her eyes comfortably and looked at the scenery outside the window. The thin sunlight shone on her. On the eyelids, there was a bit of autumn tiger's heat wave, and she was still thinking that there should be a cup of iced tea and a piece of lyrical music at this time.

Just as she was thinking about it, the driver randomly clicked on her car music and said, "There is a cup of iced plum soup on the cup holder in the center armrest."

Zhou Zhicheng was taken aback.

He said: "It was delivered by the restaurant just now, and I took it with me when I left. Don't you like drinking it too?"

Zhou Zhicheng pursed her lips and remained silent. After all, she still picked up the glass of icy sour plum soup. After she returned to Nanri County, she seldom drank it. The sour plum soup has a strange taste, and I prefer to drink iced bayberry juice, until she fell in love with the sour plum soup and matsutake chicken soup bottom of the hot pot restaurant in the east gate of the school.

The first time Jiang Xianghuai went to eat, it was Zhou Zhicheng who invited him to go, and said that she would treat him to a big meal. It turned out to be a small hot pot restaurant with an average of 50 yuan per person. Vegetables and drinks are all self-service, and there are too many people to breathe. The exhaust is poorly done, the indoor air is stuffy, the glass windows are covered with wet mist and slipped water marks, the hair is greasy after eating, and the whole body smells like hot pot.

He is indeed not used to eating, and he doesn't think it tastes good.

But Zhou Zhicheng is Zhou Zhicheng, she has her own cuteness, she has the magic power to make all the unpleasant things beautiful, she holds his face, like coaxing a child: "It's delicious, I love you!" He and Li Li come here every week, so it doesn't matter if you smell, it's not to let everyone know that you have money to eat a delicious hot pot."

After she finished speaking, she let him sit down, and she ran to help him adjust the hot pot dipping sauce: "Xiaocheng's exclusive secret recipe, who eats it?" Holding two cups of sour plum soup that were almost full, he enthusiastically said: "I didn't like to drink it before, but since I drank it, I think about it day and night."

What she likes to eat is basically different from his. She took a bunch of self-service vegetables and introduced them while rinsing: "Konjac shreds, sweet potato slices, pumpkin slices, sauerkraut, lotus root slices...you will know how good it is after eating it." After eating, if I don’t come to eat for a week, I won’t be able to sleep.”

He smiled and told her a story about a restaurant adding poppy husks to the soup base to make customers addicted. She was startled, then covered her ears, her misty eyes reflected his face, she was angry and deceived herself: "I I didn’t hear it, but I can still come to eat in the future.”

He laughed out loud. He remembered that the dipping sauce was sweet and salty, which made him feel uncomfortable, and the sour plum soup had a plastic smell. The hot pot in the mandarin duck pot made his black eyes wet, and he leaned forward to kiss her through the floating smoke of the hot pot.

She just drank sour plum soup, her lips were red from the heat, she was so cute.

After she left for so many years, he has eaten at many hot pot restaurants, but he never tasted like she was around. He also went back to the restaurant at the east gate of the school, and ordered a table full of dishes, two cups Sour plum soup, through the mist, pretending that there is a young girl chirping like a bird sitting opposite.

What he wanted was not hot pot, but her.

Zhou Zhicheng took a deep breath of icy sour plum soup. She felt that she was still quite fragile. She had been avoiding things that would remind her of him for the past few years. After a long time, she always thought that she didn't care anymore. So long, but just a few years of love, what is it?

But now drinking this cup of sour plum soup, which is so ordinary that it can no longer be ordinary, those memory images covered with dust invaded.

The first meeting in Nanri County, that unspecific summer where the sun was scattered but still dazzlingly bright, full of insects and the sound of clear sea waves, a certain late winter night in Nanri County, she still misses The people who were separated by an unknown number of kilometers squatted under the streetlight in front of her house and waited for her with a smile, and then the four years of spring, summer, autumn and winter in Beicheng. In the rainstorm, he went to pick up her who came back from the support teacher who was drenched like a drenched chicken. When it first snowed in winter, she was looking at the snow, and he was looking at her, a southerner who rarely saw snow. slipped off.

On birthdays and New Year's Eve every four years, she made eight wishes, four under the light of birthday candles, and four under the shadow of the red Kongming lanterns filled with blessings.

He always laughed at her: "When you say your wish so loudly, is it because you are afraid that God will not hear you, or that I will not hear you?"

In the next semester of junior year, everyone started to prepare for the exam. Everyone was looking at various strategies, but he had already bought materials for her that he thought would be useful, and wrote a long document of his experience in preparing for the exam. In the information flow of the internship recruitment group, they still can't tell what is the red circle firm, foreign firm, capital firm, litigation business, non-litigation business and legal affairs, etc. He helped her choose a few law firms and analyzed them in detail. The differences and advantages and disadvantages of several directions, polished her resume, and paved an advanced path for her as a capital market lawyer as an experienced person.

It was like an empty, absurd and grotesque dream. The dream ended with his indifferent words. She was flying back to Nanri County alone. She was half-dreaming and half-awake, as if floating in mid-air, with the roar of the plane engine and the noise in the cabin next to her ears. The noise made by the child made sleeping restless and uncomfortable.

Grandpa, who is in poor health, and Jiang Xianghuai, who has been lost, still have an uncertain future.

And now, everything seems to be looking up.

Stefanie Sun's music was playing in the car, "It turns out that people will become gentle. I understand it thoroughly. Love is fluid and cannot be controlled. Why bother to get excited and ask for a reason. I believe you are just afraid of hurting me, not lying to me, very Who would be willing to give up if you have loved... I started to understand that happiness is a choice..."

She just looked out of the window, pursed her lips, not daring to blink, and sucked the sour plum soup one mouthful after another.

No one spoke, silent, silent.

Jiang Xianghuai made a move, as if he wanted to shake her hand with one hand, Zhou Zhicheng immediately warned: "This is driving on a mountain road, what do you want to do? It is illegal to drive with one hand."

He didn't move again until the car drove into the entrance of Dongfang Village. He parked the car and grabbed her hand before she unbuckled her seat belt. His fingers were tightly intertwined, preventing her from breaking free. .

His Adam's apple moved slightly: "Chengcheng, I came to Nanri County to find you. I regretted it a long time ago. I regret what I said back then. For the past five years, I have come to Nanri County every year. Every birthday of yours I have seen it all, but my condition is not good, the time for atonement I promised myself has not yet come, Grandpa Zhou's body, your career, my parents..."

A faint sarcasm appeared in his eyebrows and eyes: "Maybe you will find it ridiculous and absurd. I am not making money as a lawyer, but I push it to my brother with a high-sounding reputation. My brother even lost his life because of me. The one who benefits from being a partner is myself. But hypocritically under the banner of fulfilling my brother's dream."

"It doesn't matter if she says I'm a murderer or a broom star. I know she's in a bad mood. We're all the same. We fall asleep on drugs all the year round. We still see the same psychiatrist. But she curses you and the sick When Grandpa Zhou was around, I was really afraid that something would happen, it would be impossible for us in this life."

Zhou Zhicheng's tone was light: "Haven't you ever thought about it, will I get married and have children in the past few years? Don't say I don't know what you did, even if I knew, I wouldn't wait for you."

He was silent for a while: "If you really fall in love with someone else, I will bless you."

Zhou Zhicheng smiled lightly and said, "Let go, I see Avon."

There was a young and beautiful girl standing at the bus station at the entrance of the village. She looked at the car here several times with doubts and hesitation, but because she was not sure, she didn't come over. Instead, she called Zhou Zhicheng again.

Jiang Xianghuai said lightly again: "Fake."

Zhou Zhicheng looked up at him.

"I said, I will bless you. It's a lie. I will come to you when I know you are in love and getting married."

"and then?"

"As it is now, I swear to you, God is above." Jiang Xianghuai's face was a little blurred in the dense light of the mountain village. The light beam passed through the window glass, and fine dust fluctuated. His black eyes were smiling, gentle and patient. It's all true, "I, Jiang Xianghuai, I heard about that cute girl from Zhou Bingcheng many years ago. Cuteness is a rare and rare quality. Although I am sorry for my brother, I don't have the hobby of being an abusive brother. In the next few years, Rixian treated Chengcheng as his younger sister just because she was Zhou Zhicheng, no one else could."

"Our family has been trapped in the shadow of my brother's death for many years. I had a bad year studying abroad, but I received messages from a child who kept sending me messages. It was the first time I wanted to meet someone like that."

"Later, that child came to my city and became my elementary school girl. Knowing about her military training, she also excused her phone's battery life and didn't reply to my messages. I asked the art troupe teacher who went to the school to give her condolences to help me bring it to her. A few charging treasures, I didn't expect that child, still didn't reply to my message."

"Before she came, I never thought that I would go back and forth between my alma mater and the law firm so frequently after graduation. I had never participated in cultural activities when I was in school, but I went to play with a child many years after graduation. , besides work in my boring life, there is another her."

"Actually, I didn't think about the first birthday that much. I just wanted to celebrate her and meet her. Later, I wanted to take her to do many things and plan our future for her."

"I am very familiar with the lotus birthday lights, just because the lights she threw away on her birthday in the past few years are all in my place... a bit stupid, isn't it? The electric pole near the canteen feeds the mosquitoes, I always think, if I can marry her in the end, I still have to thank that pole, and tie a red silk ribbon to it when I get married."

……

He said a lot slowly, her hair was blown in front of her eyes, and her eyes were sour.

She didn't show it on the face, but she believed it in her heart.

In the long ten years of knowing him, in a sense, she is the relative beneficiary, and he is helping her grow.

Apart from her pretty face, what else is there for Jiang Xianghuai to covet after making up this long string of words after many years?After the reunion, they slept together, worked together, did not have as much money as him, did not have as successful a career as him in the worldly sense, and were not as successful in their family background.

Jiang Xianghuai continued: "Nanri County is very good, and I really want to stay, not impulsively, if I feel sorry for Zhou Zhicheng again, then..." He also wanted to swear to God like Jiang Li's mother.

Zhou Zhicheng stopped him: "You don't believe this, forget it, don't stain the ears of God."

An embarrassed Li Yafang stood outside the car window. She regretted that she came over curiously just because Sister Zhou didn't answer the phone, but she stood behind Sister Zhou and had to face the strange man in the driver's seat. Lawyer Zhou confessed affectionately, but used the third person in the second grade. She, born in 00, couldn't help but feel her heart skip a beat, and then she grabbed the ground with her toes. ah……

She met Jiang Xianghuai's eyes, so she had to wave her hand gently, and whispered, "Zhou... brother-in-law?"

Jiang Xianghuai smiled. When they met for the first time, they called people without their surname: "Avon."

Too kind.

After all, she called him brother-in-law.

Zhou Zhicheng planned to ask Avon to record it tomorrow, and took her back to Zhou's house for dinner today.

After Jiang Xianghuai parked the car at Zhou's house, he went back to the hotel first.

Zhao Yanjia didn't see him for a day, so he squatted at the door of his room: "Brother, the two of you acted alone today, did you seize the opportunity? Like this or that?"

Jiang Xianghuai was in a pretty good mood, his brows and eyes were stretched, and even looking at Zhao Yanjia contained a thin layer of joy.

Nothing was said.

But Zhao Yanjia understood, and he still had an inexplicable sense of relief that "the child is finally sensible". When his brother was taking a bath, he rushed back to his room and found a box of condoms that his brother-in-law had given him. Used it, but always carried it in the suitcase.

This box of covers means a lot to him.

It means that he has stepped into the world of adults. His brother-in-law educated him about sex knowledge, let him correctly understand the concept of gender, let him understand the importance of safe sex, learn to respect women, and be a responsible and graceful adult man .

Although his brother has grown up early, at this moment he also feels that his brother has grown up again.

He wants to give a condom to his brother, and the rest will continue to be treasured.

But when he returned to Jiang Xianghuai's room, he was a little embarrassed to give it to his face. While his brother was taking a shower, he stuffed it into the pocket of his brother's trousers on the bed.