sunk into the earth

Chapter 53

Cheng Sheng had a dream. In the dream, he was lying on the sofa watching a movie. It was a very old and long French movie. He remembered that there was also this movie in the thick stack of DVDs in the drawer of Zhang Shen’s house ten years ago. He forgot the rest of the film, and only remembered that at the beginning, the hero accidentally glanced at the heroine on the bus, and at the end, the hero aimed a pistol given to him by the heroine at himself.He didn't do much research on romance films, and in the end he only saw that love too deep makes people greedy and impulsive, people can escape in shallow water, but if they go deep, they will hurt each other and die together.He also dreamed of a manor, a farm, and a red tile house. When he got closer, he found that the tile house turned out to be a chic coffee shop. There were many red piles around the cafe. He didn't fall down under the sun, Zhang Chen stood not far from him facing the sun, and easily removed the red stakes firmly nailed to the ground one by one.Cheng Sheng looked at his mature back and thought of his 17-year-old appearance, always unhappy, but at the end of the alley he blocked a stick and was beaten by himself, hit him himself, but he kissed himself.Cheng Sheng still remembered that Zhang Chen held the wine for him last night and wanted to hit someone for him. It was rare for him to dress so formally, and he must be handsome when he beat someone up, especially when the other party was a middle-aged man with a swollen face. Zhang Chen stood next to him. Stand, these two seem to be two different species.Thinking of this, Cheng Sheng smiled in his dream, and with a smile, he understood again. In fact, everything has changed but not changed. Zhang Chen is still the boy who always makes himself sad but will never hurt himself.

When he woke up again, Cheng Sheng felt the sun shining on his eyelids, and his throat and stomach felt swollen like a hangover. He vaguely remembered that Zhang Chen carried him back last night and said something extremely important to him. Before it was fully opened, he called Zhang Chen in the air: "Zhang Chen, Zhang Chen? You didn't leave, did you?"

Zhang Chen came out of the bathroom with a towel around his neck, looked at Cheng Sheng who was slumped on the bed, and went to pat his face, "Get up quickly, you have a small interview in the morning, go and tidy up. "

Drowsy and completely astigmatized by Zhang Chen's photo, Cheng Sheng sat up and recalled the events of last night carefully, even his eyes widened, pointing to Zhang Chen who was taking his clothes for him uncertainly: "Where did you go yesterday?" Didn't you say something important?"

As he recalled, his eyes widened again, and he asked incredulously, "You said we'll do it again?"

Zhang Chen threw the clothes to him and said "hmm".

"Is it the one I understood again?"

This time Zhang Chen sat down next to the bed and looked at Cheng Sheng who was staring with a hangover face at this time. He wanted to laugh in his heart, but he didn't show it on his face. He nodded calmly: "We should be thinking about one thing." .”

But Cheng Sheng was not sure. He always felt that he and Zhang Chen had different understandings of the same definition. He stroked the crooked hair in front of his forehead, and asked hesitantly, "What I said again refers to falling in love."

"Otherwise, why come again? Friends? We were friends in the first two months."

Seeing him sitting on the bed motionless, Zhang Chen moved over to him and threw the quilt aside. Just as his hand touched the pajamas on his body, Cheng Sheng suddenly grabbed his wrist with his backhand.

He glanced at Cheng Sheng, and Cheng Sheng was also looking at him.

"You mean we were in love before?"

"of course."

Cheng Sheng was completely awakened by the stimulation, as if he couldn't believe it, "I thought I was the only one who thought we were in a relationship before." As he said that, he looked towards Zhang Chen on the opposite side, only to see that he had already tidied himself up. Sitting next to the bed in a clean suit, on the contrary, he looks sloppy like a sleepwalker.

He immediately cut his hair and rubbed his eyes, thinking that he should not be too ugly on the first day of dating, and tried to make himself look more energetic before asking: "Why did you suddenly agree? Didn't you pretend that you didn't know me the first two months?" Don't you want to talk to me?"

This series of questions caused Zhang Chen's originally relaxed expression to sink. Cheng Sheng suddenly remembered that Zhang Chen was full of people who wanted to ask questions around him, but hated others asking him questions the most. Can always carefully observe the expression of the person opposite.

Zhang Chen frowned, his face was much colder than before, as if he was thinking about some important issue, after a while, his expression gradually softened, his frown opened to the surroundings, and his lips no longer kept pursing Then, the expression on the whole face stretched out, as if thinking about this series of questions had finally come to an end.

Immediately afterwards, Cheng Sheng heard him slowly talk about the answers to those questions, "In fact, it's good to live alone. I can do whatever I want. No one cares about me, and I don't need to run in with others. There is nothing more free than living alone. .”

As he said that, he stood up and walked to the balcony to open the curtains. The sunlight flooded into the room in an instant. Zhang Chen stood in the sunlight and was cleaning the curtains with his hands. He must have thought about it for a long time before he said to Cheng Sheng behind him. There are many, many words that I would never say on weekdays: "But people can't do without a home, and they will become less and less like themselves. It's a terrible thing not to be like themselves. Sometimes when I stare at my face in the mirror, I feel strange. I I always wonder who this person is? It must not be me. Our band has toured many cities, and every time I go to a city, I will go for a walk on the street, occasionally stop in the corner alley to take pictures of these strange places, and occasionally hold the guitar in my arms I played on the street, and a few passers-by stopped to listen to me playing the piano, and looked at me curiously, but I felt that what they were looking at was not me, but a wandering soul. But the day we were in Yuncheng, when you walked in the rain, behind you It’s the gray sky in Yuncheng. Obviously, Yuncheng has changed and you have changed, and the environment is so bad. We walked in the dilapidated cemetery, and I don’t know how many ghosts and ghosts surrounded us, but I felt so safe , I seem to be back to my original self.”

When he said this, his back was facing Cheng Sheng, his whole body was soaked in the sun, his face was blurred, for some reason Cheng Sheng suddenly remembered their first meeting, he pushed open the door, and what was waiting for him was a blurry The figure, and then his heart contracted violently without warning, and now he seems to see the back of that shadow, that's how it is now.

After finishing all the curtains, Zhang Chen went to pour a glass of water and handed it to Cheng Sheng who was still on the bed in a daze, and said, "It seems that we are not living like ourselves. I thought for a long time why it became like this, and finally I only think of the reason why we haven't been together in these years, we have been floating in the air without landing."

Cheng Sheng still couldn't believe it while washing, and looked at Zhang Chen with shaving foam on half of his face. Zhang Chen was still the same, as if the agreement was just an ordinary answer like "what's for breakfast today", but he As soon as he thought this way, Zhang Chen next to him seemed to sense the gaze that had been staring at him. He suddenly turned around and looked up and down suspiciously at Cheng Sheng, whose face was full of foam. As if he understood something, he took it over very naturally, pressed the switch and pushed it carefully on Cheng Sheng's face, and asked casually, "Do you want me to shave for you?"

After speaking, he asked himself and answered: "It turns out that this is a stupid thing to do when you are in a relationship. Whatever you can or cannot do, you have to help the other party."

Cheng Sheng looked up at him, but couldn't utter a lot of words in his stomach, and finally said something out of nowhere: "We are an office romance, and sooner or later someone will find out."

This endless sentence coupled with Cheng Sheng's funny look at this time is very refreshing. Zhang Chen took a towel from the side and helped him wipe off the foam on his face, and then helped him rinse his face and apply lotion. Fully exposed, Zhang Chen pressed his upper body down with a sense of accomplishment, until he found some shadows from many years ago on the nervous face of this man, and then showed a satisfied expression.

Cheng Sheng could clearly feel the oncoming woody aroma mixed with the smell of smoke. He guessed that Zhang Chen must have gone out to smoke alone in the morning and thought about it for a long time before returning to his room. The man asked him back, "Are you afraid of being discovered?"

"Of course not, how could I be afraid?"

Cheng Sheng hesitated, and finally expressed his concerns: "But I'm not in a good state, and I'm afraid that I will hurt others by doing impulsive things..."

As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly felt that someone had covered his head with a towel.The person behind him rubbed his wet hair with a towel, pushed his shoulders and walked out, saying, "I'm not afraid, I promised you that I figured it out, figured it out and handed myself over to you to hurt me casually."

Hearing these words, Cheng Sheng's eyes were a little sore, and his shoulders shrank slightly inward because of Zhang Chen's embrace. He kept subconsciously touching his scarred knee along the way, but he couldn't feel any pain there. I have reached a certain sensory agreement with Zhang Chen, for example, I can't feel pain after being hurt for a long time, but I can't feel love without pain, so I will always torture myself back and forth between the line of going and not going.

After arriving in the room, he no longer changed his clothes in a secretive way like before, but showed Zhang Chen the wound generously. Zhang Chen watched him change his clothes, and naturally took care of the rest of the things that should be packed, not asking too much to embarrass him The uncomfortable thing, just say: "Do you want to eat barbecue when you go back tonight?"

Cheng Sheng just changed his interview clothes for a while, raised his head and asked, "A celebration banquet?"

"No, just the two of us."

"That counts as a date?"

Zhang Chen nodded, took the packed Cheng Sheng out of the door, and said convincingly: "Formalism is indispensable."

In the corridor, they met two other colleagues. The two colleagues were chatting, but they saw that the boss was coming, and the person who was holding the boss was a man who had just been punished by the boss for working overtime a few days ago, and kept silent. Stopped, looked at each other, thinking about when the relationship between these two people became so sticky, they still greeted each other as usual.

The exhibition was held for two days in a row. Today, Cheng Sheng had nothing to do. They walked around the venue for less than half a circle before they were dragged to the backstage by the staff with the badge on their chests to wait for an interview.During the interview interval, Zhang Chen and the other two went out for a while, and when they came in, they brought a hand full of Starbucks to the staff to distribute.

Several cameras were set up in the background, and a young man who looked like a reporter leaned on the small sofa and waited for someone to come, frowning as he looked at the notebook in his hand, which was probably an interview outline.When Cheng Sheng came over, the reporter quickly changed his face, stood up and shook hands with Cheng Sheng enthusiastically, Cheng Sheng was a little uncomfortable with his sudden change, but fortunately, the reporter also realized that he had just It was a little too much, and when he sat down again, his expression was much more relaxed.

Zhang Chen was sitting on the rest chair diagonally opposite them, wearing earphones on his head, holding a computer in his hand, taking a sip of the coffee on the table from time to time, and typing on the keyboard with the other hand non-stop.

Cheng Sheng casually glanced diagonally across, only to feel relieved when he was within his field of vision.

The first half of the interview went smoothly. It was nothing more than talking about some experiences, how he decided to give up his original job and enter this line, how the team was formed at the beginning, and what is the most difficult problem encountered so far. Cheng Sheng can still take these things seriously Answer, but later the reporter on the opposite side accidentally inserted some personal questions, such as your parents' attitude towards you resigning to start a business, and whether high-intensity work affects family relationships.Cheng Sheng hastily skipped the part about his parents. Naturally, he couldn't talk about his family outside, but when it was his turn to talk about the family, he slammed, as if he didn't know how to define the relationship that was confirmed this morning, with a look of uncertainty. He answered the reporter in a tone of voice: "I don't have a family yet."

The reporter on the opposite side was not surprised, thinking that the young man on the opposite side was only 28, nodded and said: "It is not a good choice to start a career before starting a family. Several interviewees have talked to me about their wives and children complaining that they are busy with work. Not with the family."

After he finished speaking, he looked up and saw Cheng Sheng was hesitant to speak, as if he really wanted to say something to prove himself, but the man said: "I don't have a family but I have a fixed relationship."

The reporter laughed and asked, "Then what does your girlfriend think of your current job?"

After these words came out, the reporter saw Cheng Sheng looking behind him uncontrollably, and several camera viewfinders captured Cheng Sheng's eyes moving out of the screen at the same time, the reporter knew it, and said: " Your girlfriend is also present at this exhibition? You can invite her to chat with you."

But just as he turned his head, he saw only a man wearing earphones and holding a computer not far behind him, who seemed to be dealing with work.

Zhang Chen felt a few gazes on his body. When he raised his head, he saw several people looking at him. He couldn't figure out why these people were suddenly looking at him. The reporter on the opposite side met their eyes.

The reporter turned around in embarrassment, said "I'm not here", and looked at the outline to skip to the next question.

The subsequent interview went surprisingly smoothly. Cheng Sheng was very interested and answered every question. After the end, he greeted the reporters and the staff and chatted a few words before leaving.

They have gained a lot from this trip, and they have added some exposure to the company. Xiao Huang is a very social person. When visiting the exhibition, he has some extraordinary skills and got along with several company leaders who he didn't know before. Before he left, he didn't forget While calling brothers and sisters, they said "we will definitely cooperate next time".

When he turned his head, he found that the boss walking in front of him was still sticking to his opponent, and he was muttering in his heart. As soon as he walked forward, he heard them talking about their activities when they went back at night, and they had to sing and eat out, and they were going to have trouble. In the end, it comes down to which barbecue restaurant to go to.

Xiao Huang naturally followed up to pick up the treasure in his pocket, Cheng Sheng immediately nodded his head in agreement, and said to Zhang Chen: "Just go to this place, Xiao Huang's tongue is inlaid with gold, it is very precious, he agreed The restaurant must be delicious.”

Xiao Huang tightened his tie tightly, showing a smug expression, and then asked: "What time do we go at night? Go directly after getting off the plane?"

Cheng Sheng showed some doubts on his face, just as he was about to say something, Zhang Chen next to him spoke first: "Just the two of us, no one else."