Chen Zhuan's steps were a little chaotic when he walked. His mind was confused, his thoughts were hot and tangled, and his temples were throbbing.
He touched his forehead with the back of his hand and laughed at himself: It seems that I have played too big a game and really got a fever.
The lights at home were not turned off, and the hot water in the bathtub had cooled down. These days, I was just making excuses to her that I was busy, but I really wasn't too idle. Last night's creative meeting lasted until four o'clock. I was woken up by a customer's call at nine o'clock in the morning. I hurried to the company. When I was about to catch up on my sleep in the afternoon, I received a message from Wu Yubing and had to go out again.
Half an hour ago, in order to pretend to have a fever, I soaked in hot water for half a day before going out. When I entered Sheng Yiqing's house, the air conditioner blew violently. The excessive fatigue and the alternation of hot and cold made the fever really self-inflicted.
The temperature in Beijing dropped at night in late September, and there was no need for air conditioning. Chen Zhuan took off his clothes and fell on the bed. He wrapped himself in a quilt and felt cold and hot all over. The thermometer was right next to the bed. He reached out from under the quilt and took his temperature—38.5 degrees.
"Fuck."
Not remembering the last time he was sick, the first reaction of the dog man was to take a photo and send it to the group of three, weakly showing off, "Am I awesome?"
Mr. Yu replied in seconds: "Normally. Last time I had a fever, I went straight to 39. You should try harder."
Chi Wei, a kind-hearted doctor, followed closely, "Do you have a fever? Do you want me to make an appointment for you?"
Chen Zhuan said: "It's okay. You are a conscientious guy." He fell back on the bed.
Chi Wei continued: "Last time I had a fever, Xiaoyi made ice jelly for me. Can you let Sheng Yiqing try it too?" He paused for three seconds and said: "Oh, I forgot. She doesn't like you recently."
Chen Zhuan threw the phone aside.
After a while, he felt dry mouth again and got up to pour water. Thinking of Chi Wei's words, he ran to get his phone again, quickly forwarded the photo he had just sent to the group to Sheng Yiqing, then stared at the phone and counted down for one minute, stuck at the point where he could withdraw the photo, and then withdrew the photo as if nothing had happened.
It was rare for Chen Zhan to use his mind, and he was in a good mood. After a while, seeing that his phone was silent, he remembered something again, got up from the bed again, and dragged his sick body to change the door password to the original one.
Everything is ready, only missing——
However, an hour passed and nothing happened.
Finally, the phone vibrated, and Sheng Yiqing replied: "I didn't check my phone just now, what did you withdraw?"
"..." Chen Zhan was frustrated, "Nothing."
After a pause, he came up with another plan, pressed the voice bar, and said a very attractive sentence in a hoarse voice: "I have a fever. My mind is not clear."
"How many degrees?" She really cares!
Chen Zhuan almost jumped out of bed, and immediately sent the photo of the 38.5 degree thermometer, and continued to say in a hoarse voice: "Cough... cough cough... nothing, cough cough, nothing..."
He tried his best to show his terminal illness. Soon, the phone vibrated, and Chen Zhuan hurried to check-
Sheng Yiqing: "So, you have a thermometer at home?"
.
"What are you laughing at?" The living room was playing the Douyin hit song, and Yu Yue and Sheng Yiqing were sitting around the coffee table. On the coffee table, there were a few recipes and a large stack of lottery tickets. The two were scratching the lottery tickets one by one with coins.
"Nothing." Sheng Yiqing put down the phone and swept the scraped dust aside.
Yu Yue snorted: "You refused to come to my house before, why did you change your mind after that man came?"
Sheng Yiqing was busy scratching the lottery ticket: "He wished you and me a happy marriage. I can't help it, I'm a traditional woman, I especially listen to my husband!" At the end, she couldn't stand the noisy music in Yu Yue's speakers, and complained: "Only you would use a speaker worth tens of thousands of dollars to match such a pop song."
Yu Yue shrugged, "I'm uneducated."
"How can an uneducated person have so much money? Will he be reincarnated?"
Yu Yue continued to smile without hesitation: "I said, it's a woman's money." Then he approached Sheng Yiqing: "So you Have you thought about it, are you really planning to marry me later?"
Sheng Yiqing hooked her finger, signaling him to get closer. Yu Yue was stunned and moved closer. The next second, he felt a chill on his collarbone. It was Sheng Yiqing who pulled open his collar——
"Damn——" He stepped back in shock, "What are you doing? !"
"May you be safe and sound every year." Sheng Yiqing raised his eyebrows and looked at his collarbone with interest. It just flashed by, but he still saw his tattoo clearly. "It's just four words, why are you so mysterious? !"
Yu Yue couldn't hold back his smile, and stared at Sheng Yiqing coldly: "Are you sick?"
"What's wrong? Did it touch your reverse scale?"
He lowered his head and said nothing.
Sheng Yiqing continued: "I remember that you knocked on my door that day, and the name you shouted seemed to be - Sui Sui. I understand, that woman's name has Sui in it?"
Yu Yue sat back in his original position, picked up the coin and buried his head in scratching the lottery ticket, as if Sheng Yiqing didn't exist.
"Hey, aren't you going to marry me? Why are you so dishonest with your fiancée?!" She was so excited that she simply turned the coin and speculated: "You can get drunk for her and tattoo her name. It seems that you are deeply in love with her. But she abandoned you, so you want to find someone to marry quickly for revenge... Oh no, she must be getting married, but the groom is not you, so you are so anxious to marry me..."
Yu Yue slammed the coin on the glass coffee table and looked at Sheng Yiqing coldly: "Have you said enough?"
Sheng Yiqing smiled, holding his chin with both hands and looking at him: "It seems that I got it all right."
Yu Yue lowered his head, adjusted his collar, and completely covered the tattoo. Then he whispered: "I don't like strangers mentioning her."
"Can't you see that you are still a dog?" Sheng Yiqing widened his eyes.
"That's because she's so, so, so, so good!" Yu Yue looked at Sheng Yiqing seriously, and her eyes lit up when she mentioned another woman. "She has her own career, her own things to do, and her own responsibilities. Love between men and women is just a very insignificant part of her life. So any choice she makes is right. Even if it hurts me, I, I will support her unconditionally."
"...Then why are you mad at me? Why are you looking for me to renew your contract!"
"Do you want to hear good things?"
"Good things!"
"You and her..." Yu Yue felt a little awkward, "You are quite similar. From some angles. You are the kind of woman who is not annoying. I am happy to play with you."
"What about bad things?"
"Just..." He leaned back on the sofa and stopped pretending. "I heard about you two from Yu Youyang. I thought it was quite interesting. And I'm not chasing you because of you. It's mainly because Yu Youyang said Chen Zhuan is more handsome than me! He is more pleasing to women than me! He also said that if I can be like Chen Zhuan, Sui Sui will definitely marry me..."
Sheng Yiqing frowned: "What is your relationship?"
"We were classmates in the MBA class. We met before school started." Yu Yue said as she threw a coin into the air and caught it with one hand: "Anyway, they are just some bad friends. Go to class, drink, pick up girls for him. And brag together."
"Don't you pick up girls yourself?" She hugged her chest and looked at him.
"I'm not interested anymore. I'm a sad person now, and I can only hide in marriage. So--" He looked at her, "I've told you the truth, will you still marry me in the future? I can cook, and I have some spare money, I can accompany you to eat, drink and have fun, and have sex... I may not be able to do it, but I don't mind you finding someone else. How about it? Am I a perfect husband?"
Sheng Yiqing frowned and listened to his nonsense, "What about your Sui Sui after we get married?"
Sure enough, when Sui Sui was mentioned, he got anxious again.
"Who told her to marry someone else first..." Yu Yue argued hastily.
Sheng Yiqing interrupted her: "Women like chaste men. If you marry me, you will be unclean. She might get divorced, and you two still have a chance, but if you marry another woman, think about it, will she still like you?"
Yu Yue was stunned: "What kind of bullshit theory is this?"
"If a man loves me, loves me from the bottom of his heart, then he should not be with a third person. Even if we are separated, he should always stand there waiting for me, secretly miss me, protect me, and sincerely hope that I can be happy. If I am happy, he is happy. If I am not happy, he will try every means to make me happy. Even if we may not be together in this life, his love for me will always be the same as before - this is the self-cultivation of a qualified white moonlight. Do you understand?"
Yu Yue "snorted", "Women like this?"
"Sui Sui must be the same. What do you think marriage is? Is it a pique? It's a bond! Once you marry someone else, your love for Sui Sui will be dirty." She narrowed her eyes and warned.
Yu Yue was silent for a moment, then whispered, "I won't listen to your nonsense." After that, he kicked the coin into his pocket and went to the kitchen to tinker.
Sheng Yiqing also saw that this man had nothing to do all day, had endless money and plenty of time. Most of the time, he stayed in the kitchen, listening to random pop songs, from breakfast to lunch to dinner. If he couldn't sleep, he would make supper.
It was dark, Yu Yue's kitchen was very new, he had the best kitchenware, brand new, expensive and bright, there was the sound of pots and pans colliding in the kitchen, after a while, he heard him say:
"Actually, I don't really want to marry anyone. I'm just, too uncomfortable."
.
Chen Zhuan slept in a daze until three in the morning, and every time he heard something, he struggled to get up to see if anyone was coming. However, the house was quiet, empty and lonely. When it was almost dawn, he woke up again. In a daze, he wondered if Sheng Yiqing couldn't get in because the password of the entrance door had not been changed. With a splitting headache and a pain in his throat like a knife cutting, he got up again and set the password until the voice prompt: the old and new passwords are repeated. He was stunned, thinking that she should be asleep at this point and it was impossible for her to come again.
Disappointment crept into his heart little by little, "So... you don't care about me at all?"
He turned around and sat on the dark sofa in a daze, "....really married to someone else?"
Chen Zhuan was awakened by a noise. Someone came to the kitchen, and there was a busy sound. He realized that he had slept on the sofa without realizing it, and a blanket was covered on his body.
Even the living room seemed to have been cleaned up by someone, and the sundries on the coffee table were neatly arranged. The house was bright and clean in the morning.
The lost heart was filled, Chen Zhuan chuckled softly: "Very virtuous", pulled the blanket and was about to sit up, when he heard footsteps coming from the kitchen, he quickly lay down and closed his eyes, and continued to pretend to sleep.
The fragrance of porridge approached little by little with the footsteps, and then stopped on the coffee table in front of him, and then the person stopped moving, as if watching him quietly. He tried to make his breathing light and even as if he was sleeping. Soon, he felt that the woman reached out to him, Chen Zhuan felt sweet in his heart, opened his eyes suddenly, grabbed the hand, and was about to take it to his arms in the next second--
"Hey, sir?!" He met a shocked old face.
"Auntie Wang?!" Damn... He hurriedly let go of her wrist, "Why is it you?!"
Auntie Wang is his family's cleaning lady. If nothing unexpected happens, she will come once every Sunday and knows his access code.
"Why can't it be me?" Aunt Wang, who hadn't recovered yet, patted her chest and said, "When I came here today, I saw you sleeping on the sofa. I covered you with a quilt. When I touched you, I felt that you were so hot! Do you have a fever?"
Chen Zhuan hummed, "I have a fever. Sorry, I didn't know it was you just now."
"It's okay. I made millet porridge for you." She smiled, "Drink it while it's hot. I'll continue cleaning."
"Thank you." The hot porridge was like a fishbone stuck in his throat and was difficult to swallow. He got up, still dizzy and weak, and said to Aunt Wang while holding the door, "I'll go to sleep again. I won't clean the bedroom this time."
Before going to bed, he took another look at WeChat. There was nothing else except a few work messages. Chen Zhuan simply turned off his phone and swallowed two antipyretic pills.
After a while, there was a rustling sound, it seemed that the bedroom door opened, Chen Zhuan closed his eyes: "I told you not to clean the bedroom."
However, the sneaky voice did not stop, Chen Zhuan simply ignored it, and then, a hand touched his forehead.
Cold and soft. It was her.
My heart ached.
"…What are you doing here?" He opened his eyes, expressionless.
Sheng Yiqing pulled her hand away, lifted a corner of his quilt and crawled in, squeezing Chen Zhuan into the bed, "Have you taken medicine?"
Chen Zhuan did not respond, turned his back, but also made room for her. Sheng Yiqing continued: "I came to see the whitening cabin."
Chen Zhuan said in a muffled voice: "There is nothing to see. I have never used it once."
"I went to the second bedroom to see it as soon as I came. The power was not unplugged, and there was a usage report next to it." She leaned over: "You wrote it? Do you know I need this thing?"
"Who writes this kind of thing." He was disdainful.
Sheng Yiqing continued to carry out a bag from the bedside: "And this thing——"
It's the couple watch he asked Wu Yubing to buy. Chen Zhuan jumped up, but it was too late. Sheng Yiqing read the words on the outer packaging: "Long-distance relationship artifact..."
"...A friend insisted on giving it to me. It's a new product of their company. It's called black technology..." Chen Zhuan tapped his forehead and thought: "Oh...When one person misses another person, he taps the watch, and the other person will feel it...It can also update the other person's location and heart rate in real time...It's very stupid..."
"It's stupid, but it's given by someone else anyway. I don't want to wear it." Sheng Yiqing took apart the watch, one black and one white, and handed it to Chen Zhuan. Chen Zhuan put it on reluctantly and asked, "Where did you go last night?"
"With Yu Yue Get up, he taught me how to make ice powder. "As soon as he finished speaking, Chen Zhu snatched the letter. He stared at her: "When I go abroad, do you really want to renew your contract with him? "
"Do you want to hear the truth?"
"Of course."
"I don't know. But the marriage that I expect for life should be unconditional love and lasting and stable companionship. I am a timid and selfish person. If one day someone can make me want to stay with him, then he must be braver and firmer than me. Yu Yue may not be that person, but you..." She looked at him: "Chen Zhu, I know you, neither are you."
Chen Zhu was stunned and cut his throat with a knife. He wanted to swallow, but he couldn't swallow it. After a while, he just smiled stiffly: "You are right. I understand. By the way, will that whitening cabin be used? If you want to try it, I will adjust it for you."
He was about to get up as he said, but was stopped by Sheng Yiqing: "No, I can study it myself, you can have a nap first."
He didn't say anything more.
The whitening cabin happened the next afternoon.
Sheng Yiqing got off work a few hours earlier than usual. The Third Ring Road was smooth, but the intersections near her home were blocked. It took ten minutes to drive ten meters. Sheng Yiqing felt strange and got off the car early. She walked forward and saw that the road was full of grandpas and aunts watching the excitement and young people taking pictures with their mobile phones. Sheng Yiqing looked in their direction and saw thick smoke.
Looking at the building carefully, it was very familiar. Her heart sank. Is it on fire? !
She ran forward and saw that the gate of Chenzhuan Community had been cordoned off. Outside the cordon were grandpas and aunts buying vegetables and a fire truck.
The corners of her eyes twitched and Sheng Yiqing became scared.
Their eyes first swept through the crowd.
She looked around, but didn't see Chen Zhuan. She moved closer and saw thick smoke coming out of a window. The curtains in the window were half burned, and the remains were blown out by the wind - it was indeed his curtains, and the color she chose.
Her heart was instantly filled with lead, and she froze in place.
An inexplicable thought came to her: If he died, she would be a widow directly, and there would be no need to divorce.
Her nose was sour and her chest was empty. She looked at her phone again and called, but the other party still didn't respond.
Nearer to the gate of the community, people were packed shoulder to shoulder. Seeing the fire truck next to it, Sheng Yiqing went over. The surrounding area was crowded with people. She couldn't get through, so she had to find a reliable Chaoyang citizen and said anxiously, "Hello, what's the situation now? Are there any casualties?"
"Oh, how should I know? I just came to see the excitement. But I saw several reporters coming, so it must be a big deal."
Sheng Yiqing's heart tightened and she was about to ask again, "The reporter..."
The old man in the crowd thought of something and said, "But there should be a dead person. I heard a coffin or something. Is the man living in that house?"
She froze in place. Thinking of the couple's watch, she hurriedly pressed it to open it, and received a reminder: the other party's heart rate is 0.
For a moment, she couldn't hear any sound. The old man's mouth was still moving, and she seemed to be deaf, staring at the old man's mouth, trying to distinguish his voice. Her head was empty, and the world was empty.
"Girl! Girl!"
The old man noticed that something was wrong with Sheng Yiqing and patted her hard. Finally, Sheng Yiqing came back to her senses, stunned, and looked at the old man.
"Girl, your phone is ringing!" The old man pointed at her bag: "It's been ringing several times."
She slowly lowered her head and took out her phone with shaking hands-
The caller ID showed: "Chen Zhuan".
He felt even more depressed.
Was it possible that the caller was not him, but the hospital, or the police, or even the forensic doctor...
Her hands were shaking, and she couldn't muster up the courage to press the answer button. The ring rang once, but no one answered. After a few seconds, it rang again.
She couldn't stand steadily, her voice was trembling, and she squeezed out a long time: "Hello..."
"Hello?"
A suppressed voice came from the other end, so low that it almost seemed to be spoken in a breath. No sound could be heard.
"Who are you?" Her voice was so weak that it was floating. The familiar voice sounded anxious: "What a great opportunity! Come up quickly! Oh, take the stairs!"