Chapter 31 chapter eight

It was noon when I woke up.My throat is burning, my head is cracking, and I can't remember anything that happened last night.All I remember is that Debbie picked me up to the party in the afternoon and we had a good time at the ball.My eardrums are aching, and the crazy music seems to be still echoing in my ears.Holding my dangling head, I struggled to go to the kitchen, found two tablets of paracetamol in the drawer, then took a glass of cold water from the tap, and poured it directly. "Are you awake?" Alex walked into the kitchen with a freshly used dish, ready to do the dishes.

I vaguely agreed, poured another glass of water and drank it.Then I pulled up a chair and sat down to watch Alex work in the sink.The sound of the water was rushing, and after a while, I felt that my mind seemed to be much clearer. "When did I get back yesterday?" I asked him. "It's today." Alex glanced back at me. "It's early in the morning. It's so noisy." "I don't remember." I scratched my head embarrassedly. "Of course you don't remember. Debbie and Roy brought you back. You're dead drunk." "Where are they?... Uh, you said Roy is here?" I froze for a moment, a nerve deep in my brain seemed to send out a warning.But what's wrong, I can't tell.

"Because you were so drunk that Debbie called Roy." Alex put the washed dishes on the dish rack, then wiped his hands with a dry towel, "She can still What should I do? Don't drink so much if you don't want your fiancé to see it." No, that's not what I'm worried about. "Where is he now?" I asked. "I'll leave after you settle down," Alex looked up at his watch, "about seven or eight o'clock." "He didn't stay?" I muttered, but Alex overheard me. "You are dead asleep, what is he doing here? Let me tell you, your sleeping appearance is really not very good. If I were you, I would have died of shame a long time ago. I would never ask here without pain. 'Why didn't he stay'!"

I slam my mug on the dish rack and give Alex a hard look.But he didn't care, he slowly arranged the dishes on the dish rack neatly, and then suddenly changed the subject. "When are you going out?" He asked me, seemingly casually. go out?Oh, by the way, I'm going to pick up the plane at Heathrow Airport in the afternoon.It was like some kind of information exchange, when the thought came to my mind, the thing about Roy was displaced.Yes, I'm going to the airport this afternoon to pick up my parents who are coming to my wedding in a few days.Nothing is wrong, the only problem is that I was too drunk last night, and now I have a splitting headache, and all my memories are confused into a blur.It’s as if a person is walking alone in the dark with a lamp, unable to see the past or the future, the surroundings are pitch black, only the moss in the gaps between the stone bricks under his feet is occasionally illuminated by the light, and then continues to be thickly covered. Overwhelmed by the breathless darkness, there is no chance to breathe.

"I'm going to take a shower," I stood up holding the table, feeling unstable and shaky, "Don't worry," I said to Alex, looking into his eyes, "I won't be late." I I don't know why I said this, but I said it anyway.Alex on the opposite side looked at me blankly, holding a washed spoon tightly in his hand. Maybe the painkillers finally did their job, and my head didn't seem to hurt much when I got on the subway.I took an empty seat and sat down, squinting to make out the long, dark blue line above the door.Heathrow Airport was at the end of this line, seemingly out of reach, and the dense station names below were blurred into an unrecognizable dot.

As the oldest subway in the world, the London Underground has many stories.In other words, many stories happened on the subway in London.Like Neil Gaiman's Neverland.I remember that after opening the door at the "Earl's Court" station, it was the real Earl's Court.But when the train slid into the platform, nothing happened except that the overhead lights suddenly dimmed.I took out my phone to check the time, it was quarter past four, fortunately, I should not be late. The carriage rumbled and swayed from side to side, and I fell asleep in disappointment, but just after the train passed the platform of "Earl's Court", the lights suddenly went out.

I mean, the lights of the whole train went out.The car also stopped.I opened my eyes wide in the dark, expecting the train conductor to comfort the passengers with a calm voice like before, saying that the signal is only temporarily lost, and let everyone wait patiently.But I waited for a few seconds and got nothing.There were not many people in the carriage, and I heard a rustling shaking somewhere.I didn't know whether to ask loudly or to keep silent. Following that sound, I saw two people playing chess.Through the dark glass of the train, somewhere just behind the platform, two men are playing chess.

The man with sunspots has long black hair that hangs down his shoulders, and his elegant dark gray striped shirt is decorated with delicate shell cuff buttons.He stretched out his slender white fingers from his cuffs and tapped the chessboard, thinking for a long time before taking a step. The person holding the white pieces sits on the other side of the board.Compared with the opponent, he sat with his arms folded, taking a good rest. He looked at the chess game opposite and the players behind the chess game, with a smile in his lake-like blue eyes. I'm not good at chess, I just know the rules a bit.But even so, the situation on the chessboard is already very clear.The white pieces occupy most of the advantageous positions, and only a few black pieces are still fighting tenaciously.The black queen was imprisoned, and the black knight desperately defended her lord and defeated all enemies. However, just as he was approaching the white king, the white knight suddenly shot out from a diagonal stab and ate another sunspot.The black player was lost in thought.

"Aren't you admitting defeat?" The white knight smiled slightly, and took another step, only two pawns away from the black queen's position. The black knight took a step forward without hesitation and stood in front of the black queen. "That position," the white knight was shocked, "I can eat you in the next step." "It is true," said the Black Knight quietly, "but then you will be within range of my queen." The white knight was silent. "You are too competitive." "Each each other." "But you don't have to sacrifice yourself," said the White Knight. "Even if the queen dies, you still have a chance of victory as long as the king lives."

The black knight was motionless, seemingly frozen. The white knight on the opposite side sighed, "You are such a poor player, D." Suddenly there was light in the darkness.I gripped the armrest of the seat tightly, feeling the bumps and vibrations of the car body, and for a moment, the train swayed into the brightly lit platform. Earl's Court. I squinted to read the name on the stop sign.If I remember correctly, we had just passed this stop.I checked my phone again, it was quarter past four.The numbers displayed on the LCD screen have not changed at all. The door of the carriage opened, and passengers with large and small bags of luggage entered the carriage one after another. It seemed that they were passengers going to Heathrow Airport.The voices of talking and laughing in different languages ​​were mixed in my ears. A black boy in a baseball cap next to me was playing rap loudly on his mobile phone. A middle-aged woman in a suit on the opposite side just took out a book from her bag.She frowned at the boy, caught my gaze, and gave me a helpless smile.

My head started hurting again.Did I just have a dream?I opened my eyes and searched on the platform, passing passengers one after another, looking for the two chess players just now, but found nothing. The doors closed again, and the train tremblingly left the platform.But my eyes were still locked on the platform, and the moment the train entered the tunnel, after all the passengers had left the platform, I seemed to see a man there, a young man in black, alone after everyone had left Standing there, watching me silently with gray eyes, watching the train I was on go into the tunnel and disappear.