Chapter 23 Chapter 21

The newly found house is near Liulitun, with a semi-basement, except that half of the windows with iron guardrails are exposed on the ground, which is no different from the layout of the upstairs folk houses.The one I stayed in had just a box spring mattress and a simple wardrobe.I asked the landlord for a writing desk, connected a telephone line, and shared the phone bill.Except for the occasional roar of a train, the yard was quiet.The interior is cool and slightly humid, much better than B2-15.The monthly rent is seven hundred and fifty, paid quarterly. The landlord, Xue Ling, is in her thirties, unmarried, and an employee of a small unit.She is small and exquisite, articulate, and good-natured.Her cohabiting boyfriend, Xiaoxin, is about half her age, a farmer's son from Henan.Xue Ling met two years ago when she visited the Shaolin Temple in Songshan. At that time, Xiaoxin left his home in a remote village and planned to become a monk. Xue Ling persuaded him to become a monk.The two first worshiped as siblings, but later became ambiguous.A month ago, Xiao Xin "could not bear the pain of longing for love" and came from Henan.Xiaoxin didn't have a job, so Xue Ling found him a job as a security guard, and was fired because he couldn't beat someone.When he was asked to do odd jobs, he had a high-mindedness and a low-handedness, so he stayed at home ever since.

Xiaoxin was dark and thin, childish, and looked less than seventeen years old.He has a bald head and wears Buddhist beads around his neck and wrists. Compared with a young monk, he is short of a monk's robe.Xiaoxin still cuts off the karma of Buddhism. When he gets up, he sits on the head of the bed, squints his eyes, turns the beads, babbles and recites scriptures for a while, then falls asleep until noon, prepares meals for Xue Ling, and spends the rest of his time doing laundry, cleaning or watch TV.Xiao Xin slept on the sofa in the narrow living room, and often heard rustling sounds in the middle of the night, and then the door was closed, the room was full of heat, and men and women moaned.

The two are in pairs, which is very eye-catching.This little flower monk wants to spend the rest of his life with Xue Ling, but Xue Ling regards him as a godson.Once when we were eating together, the two asked if they were married.I laughed and said, "It doesn't look like it after watching it too much. Besides, it's already a fait accompli, so what's the difference?" Xiao Xin was obviously very grateful for this statement, while Xue Ling blushed.Afterwards, both Xiaoxin and Xue Ling asked me about their prospects behind their backs, and I gave them great encouragement.Xiaoxin was a little discouraged: "She is from Beijing, and I am a farmer in Henan. First, I have no money, second, no education, and third, no job."

"It's enough to have a passionate heart." I said broadly, "There is no reason for love. If you believe in Buddhism, this is called fate." Xiaoxin suddenly took my hand, tears turned into pouring rain, and my sleeves became his rags.What worries Xue Ling is not the difference in their identities but the difference in age. She said: "He is still a child at all." I said: "The times have progressed, don't you see that sister-brother love is popular now?" Xue Ling said: "It's not like a relationship between a brother and a brother, or a relationship between a mother and a child. He was only in his twenties when I was forty, and he was still a young man when I was sixty."

After moving, I found out that this place is separated from Yang Xingchen's house by a wall. After dinner, I went for a walk on a section of the railway, and I could see his window when I looked up.If it weren't for the trees, I would be able to see his balcony and indoor lights while lying in bed. When Yang Xingchen and Li Hao were invited to their new "home" for a dinner on the weekend, a thick, black man who claimed to be Xue Ling's boyfriend Ji Dajun approached Xue Ling.He went around the room, but he didn't see Xue Ling, so he sat down in the living room.In addition to having the thick, black face, cropped hair and sloppy clothes that are common to rough men in the north, this man also has a fierce face.He asked me: "You rent a house to live here?"

"Yeah, what's the matter?" "It's better not to live here, this place is troublesome." "What do you mean?" I was a little displeased, but he smiled all over his face: "It's okay, it's okay, just remind me." No one paid any attention to him, and went to my room, and this fellow took out beer from the refrigerator and drank it silently.Li Hao reminded: "This guy doesn't look like a good person." I didn't take it seriously: "It's none of my business, this house doesn't belong to him." "You work too hard as a writer, you don't even have a computer." Li Hao looked at the place where I lived, feeling a little emotional, and I said I was about to buy it.Yang Xingchen slapped his forehead: "Why didn't you say it earlier, I have an idle one, you can use it."

"What's the point of that?" He said that he was idle, and he went to get it after eating.I went to the living room to set up the dining table, and I said to the uninvited guest lying on the sofa: "Why don't you come and eat?" "Forget it, you two eat." He got up and walked towards the door. The moment the door closed, he turned his head and said, "You guys, let's find another place." After dinner, I went to Yang Xingchen's house for tea. He took out an old computer from the storage room, which was the computer he used when he started his business.I pretended to be an expert: "What configuration?"

"Pen 2 processor, four G hard drives, memory 64M, Samsung 14-inch color display, Windows98." Yang Xingchen listed them one by one. Li Hao laughed loudly: "This old antique, if it weren't for this Samsung monitor, no one would want the 500 yuan, so just send it to the museum." Yang Xingchen said: "It used to be Windows95. This computer is too old for professionals. Ge Haiyang can use it without any problem, just typing and simply surfing the Internet." I said yes, I don't play games, I don't watch Internet TV, and I don't play videos naked. "This kind of keyboard can't be seen in the world." Yang Xingchen pointed to the rare bow-shaped keyboard again, touching the scene: "Look at this scar, it's from the cigarette butt that I stayed up late at work and dozed off. Don't underestimate this computer. Its meaning is like He Huzi’s two kitchen knives and Mr. Zhu’s box gun. My first business, my first 10,000, the first 100,000 and the first 1 million all depended on it I earned it, and this house is also earned from it. I plan to set up a miniature museum in the company in the future, and it is the most important exhibit.”

"Heirloom." I smiled. "Yeah, if you lose it, I will fight you hard." "This computer is amazing, and it witnessed the birth of a billionaire and a great writer at the same time." Li Hao said to me with emotion, "You must not disappoint Mr. Yang's ardent hope and write a masterpiece handed down from generation to generation." After starting up, the "ZiZi" sounded for four minutes before the screen turned on. I smiled: "The real person is humane, turn it on first in the morning, and this time is just right to pee and brush your teeth."

We came to the balcony to drink tea, and looked out of the window, a large area of ​​roads, buildings and factories had a panoramic view.The yard I live in is under the canopy of big elm trees at my feet, and the windows of my semi-basement are looming.They were all taught by the same teacher, why is there such a big gap? With this broken computer of extraordinary origin, I hurried to the second book.I asked Xue Ling to apply for a dial-up Internet service, and Yang Xingchen gave me a QQ number.In this way, in an unremarkable semi-basement in eastern Beijing, I was instantly connected with the outside world.The memory is too low, and it keeps crashing. According to Yang Xingchen's advice, I deleted the dispensable software and bought a 64m memory stick to plug it in.The computer is much more stable, and the speed is like a railway speeding up. The time between starting up and brightening the screen has been shortened from four minutes to three minutes and five seconds.

Wu Tongtong called me once and congratulated me on finally publishing a book in the tone of a friend.She was rushing to write her master's thesis, and she said she still had to do a Ph.D.She said that she made a lot of money from supplementary lessons for students during the summer vacation. She said that she changed her laptop and bought a second-hand car.She said that one of her classmates had her scholarship canceled, which was very miserable.When I asked her how she was with her new boyfriend, she was so evasive that I didn't bother to ask.But I stopped asking, and she began to do ideological work for me again, letting me understand the truth of life that she has no additional obligations to me; natural law.Like every phone call since the breakup, the phone was dropped again amidst heated arguments and cynicism. In the sultry and quiet evening, I went for a walk on the railroad tracks outside the courtyard, feeling dizzy from typing on the keyboard.Looking up, the windows of Yang Xingchen's house revealed a cool light.I think at this moment, he is either enjoying the delicious meals cooked by his wife Chen Ju while talking about childbearing or business matters; or they have already had dinner and are hugging each other on the comfortable couch "News Salt Broadcasting", in the face of the great situation, sincerely flows the juice of happiness. Frankly speaking, I still don't quite know what I want to do, what I should do and what I can do.On your preset life trajectory, your life train either skids or stalls, hits the wrong signal light or gets struck by lightning, reverses, derails, or overturns.I still haven't escaped the "what to do" nightmare.Education in the Porcelain Country has always concocted batch after batch of megalomaniacs, ideals are always so vague, and goals are always so unreliable.To be a scientist or a progressive writer is not a waste of time at best, and to be a professor or a doctor is barely a profession.Ever since I had a runny nose, I have dreamed of being a martyr. I wish I could swim across the Pacific Ocean with backstroke, breaststroke, backstroke plus dog planing (Note: dog planing, Sichuan dialect, a rudimentary swimming style, pretending to be like a dog swimming, laborious and slow.) To save the working people of the United States from the fire and water, when I woke up, I found that I had a fucking problem with eating.