The airport is not huge, but there are still quite a few people wandering around with nothing to do. Ah Xiu found this quite interesting. He watched as people casually put down their bags, noticed them casually stuffing their wallets into their pockets, and watched them put their luggage under their chairs, not bothering to take care of it at all. All this made him realize that he had left prison.

Thirty minutes before boarding, Ah Xiu bought a slice of pizza to eat, only to accidentally burn his lips with the hot cheese on top.

He pulled out his change, walked over to the payphone, and called Robbie at the Gym, but the answer machine was connected.

"Hey, Robbie. "They told me that Laura was dead and asked me to get out of prison early. I'm on my way home. ”

People often make mistakes, and he's seen this happen, so he hangs up the phone and soon hears Laura's voice.

"Hi," her voice said, "I'm not at home right now, or I can't answer the phone for a while, please leave a message and I'll reply promptly." Have fun!"

Ashu couldn't leave any message to the machine.

He sat in a plastic chair in front of the gate, his hands clutching his bag tightly, and his hands were hurting.

He's reminiscing about the first time he met Laura. He didn't know her name at the time, she was a friend of Audrey's. He and Robbie were sitting in chairs at the Strange Bar, and when Laura and Audrey walked in together, he found himself staring at Laura intently. She had long, chestnut hair, and her eyes were so blue that Ah Xiu thought she was wearing a pair of colored contact lenses. She ordered a strawberry Tykeley cocktail and insisted that Ah Xiu try it too. After he drank obediently, she burst out laughing.

Laura loves to share her favorite food with others.

That night, he and she exchanged goodnight and kissed goodbye. She had the sweetness of a strawberry Taikley on her lips. From then on, he never wanted to kiss another woman again.

A woman came up to him and told him that boarding had begun, and that the row he was waiting for was the first to be notified. He sat in a dark cabin with an empty seat next to him. Outside, the rain was battering on the shell of the plane: he imagined it to be countless children scattering dried peas from the sky.

When the plane took off, he fell asleep.

In the dream, Ah Xiu came to a dark place, and a creature with a furry buffalo head looked at him quietly. He had big wet eyes, but his body was human, and his skin was smooth and shiny.

"Change is coming. The buffalo head said without moving, "A choice must be made." ”

The damp cave walls flickered with fires.

"Where am I?" Ashu asked.

"On the earth and under the earth. The buffalo man said, "You are waiting for the Forsaken." His eyes were like flowing black marble, his voice was like the rumbling thunder of the abyss of the world, and his body smelled of damp cows. "Believe. The rumbling deep voice continued, "To survive, you have to believe. ”

"What do I believe?" Ashu asked, "What must I believe?"

The buffalo man stared at Ashu, his body rapidly enlarged, and fire burned in his eyes. He opened the mouth of the buffalo that was spewing flames, and Ashu saw something red burning in the flames deep within his body.

"Everything. The buffalo man roared.

The world around you began to tilt and rotate. Ah Xiu found himself back in the cabin, but the feeling of leaning did not go away. At the front of the cabin, a woman was screaming.

Outside, lightning is exploding next to the fuselage. The captain comforted everyone through the microphone that the plane was pulling up the altitude and getting out of the storm clouds.

The plane began to shake and jolt. Ah Xiu was thinking, calm and silly. He wondered if he was going to die. He felt that while it was possible, it was not realistic. He looked out the window and saw lightning shining in the sky.

Then he began to doze off again, dreaming that he was back in prison again, and Loki whispered to him while standing in line for food, saying that someone had made an offer and wanted his life. But Ah Xiu couldn't know who wanted his life, and he didn't know why. When he woke up again, the plane was preparing to land.

He stumbled down the ramp of the plane, blinking sleepy-eyed.

All the airports looked pretty much the same, he thought, it doesn't matter where you are, it's at the airport anyway. The same floor tiles, hallways and lounges, the same gates, newspaper racks and fluorescent lights. It looked like an airport, but the trouble was, it wasn't the airport he was going to be! It was bigger, with more passengers, more gates.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. ”

The woman looked up from a notepad with a paper clip. "What's the matter?"

"What kind of airport is this?"

She looked at him with a confused expression, trying to figure out if he was joking. In the end, she replied: "Paris." ”

"But my plane should have flown to the town of Braunau. ”

"Originally, because of the storm, the plane made a forced landing here. Didn't they inform you?"

"Maybe, but I'm asleep. ”

"You should look for the man over there, the one in the red coat. ”

The man is almost as tall as Ah Xiu, and his appearance is a father figure who came out of a 70s serial. He typed the message into the computer, then told Ah Xiu to run, run, and get to a gate at the end of the airport.

Ah Xiu ran through the entire waiting hall and ran wildly. By the time he finally reached the gate, the door was closed. He watched out the window as the plane pulled away from the gate.

The woman at the customer service counter discussed with the other woman for a moment, then made a phone call. Then she prints out another boarding pass. "Take it over there," she told him, "and we'll notify the gate that you're rushing over." ”

Ah Xiu felt as if he was a pea, being tossed and turned between three cups, or a poker card shuffled off the table. He ran through the departure hall again to where he had originally started.

At the boarding gate, a small man checks his boarding pass. "We're waiting for you. As he spoke, he tore off the stub of his boarding pass, which had Asho's seat number, 17D. Ah Xiu hurried into the cabin, and they closed the door behind him.

He walked through first class, where there were only four seats, and three were already full. A bearded man in a light-colored suit smiled at him next to the empty seat in front of him. As Ashu passed by him, he raised his wrist and tapped his watch.

You know, you know, I'm delaying you. Ah Xiu thought to himself. May your biggest worry in this life be being late.

On his way to the back of the cabin, he noticed that the plane seemed to be full. In fact, the ordinary cabin was completely full. 17D sits a middle-aged woman. Ah Xiu showed her his boarding pass stub, and she showed him her own: the two tickets were exactly the same!

"Please take your seat, thank you. "The stewardess came running.

"I'm afraid I don't have a seat. Ah Xiu said.

She checked their boarding passes, smacked, and ushered him back to the front of the plane, where he sat in the empty seat of first class. "Looks like today is your lucky day. She joked, "What do you need to drink? There's still a little time to take off, so you're definitely going to need something." ”

"Please bring me a beer, thank you, any brand. Ah Xiu said politely.

The stewardess turned and walked away.

The man in a light-colored suit sitting next to Ah Xiu tapped his fingers on his watch again. It was an expensive black Rolex. "You're late. The man said, grinning at him with a big smile, but there was no warmth at all.

"What did you say?"

"I said you're late. ”

At this time, the lady handed him a beer.

For a moment, he suspected that the man was in a state of nervousness, and then realized that he must be referring to the entire plane waiting for him, the last passenger. "I'm sorry for delaying you. He politely said, "Are you in a hurry?"

The plane leaves the gate. The flight attendant came over to take Asho's beer. The man in the light-colored suit smiled at her and said, "Don't worry, I'll hold on to the glass." She had no choice but to let him keep the Jack Daniel whiskey in his hand, while weakly protesting that it was against the rules of flight.

"I'll take care of it, my dear. ”

"Of course time is important," the man said, "but it's not time that I care. All I care about is if you can catch the plane. ”

"You're so kind. ”

The plane stopped on the runway, the engines trembling, ready to take off.

"That's the kind kind person I am. The man in the light-colored suit continued, "I have a job for you, Ah Xiu." ”

The engine roared, and the small plane they were on slammed forward, and Ah Xiu was slammed into his seat by inertia. Moments later, they lifted off, leaving the airport lights far below. Ah Xiu looked carefully at the man beside him.

His hair was as gray as the night sky, his beard was only a little longer than his stubble, and it was also gray, and he looked like an Asian on a wrinkled rectangular face with gray eyes------- he looked like an Asian, Ashu didn't know if he was Japanese or Korean, and his eyes were also black, and the black was as quiet and deep as the night. The suit he wore looked expensive, the color of melted vanilla ice cream. His tie is a dark gray silk tie, and the silver tie clip is a tree with a trunk, branches, and roots, which is lifelike.

When he took off, he held the Jack Daniel whiskey in his hand steadily, and did not spill a drop.

"Aren't you going to ask what kind of job I'm offering you?" he asked.

"How did you know my name?"

The man laughed heartily. "Oh, what does a person call himself, in this world, there is nothing simpler than asking about this. Just use a little brain, add a little luck, and a little good memory. Ask me what kind of job I offer you. ”

"No need. Ashu replied. At this time, Miss Time brought him another beer, and he sipped it slowly.

"Why?"

"I'm going home, there's a job waiting for me back home. I don't need any other work. ”

On the surface, the man's wrinkled smile hadn't changed at all, but Ah Xiu felt that he was smiling more happily. "There's no job waiting for you in your hometown. He said, "There's nothing waiting for you there." And, what I'm offering you is a pretty good legitimate job with a good salary, not a lot of risk, and quite a bit of extra income. Hey, if you live long enough, I can also give you a pension. What do you think?"

Ah Xiu said, "You must have seen the name on my backpack." ”

The man did not answer.

"Whoever you are," said Asho, "you can't have known I'd be on this plane." If I hadn't flown to Paris, I wouldn't have known I'd be on this plane. I'm guessing you're joking, maybe trying to play some tricks. But I think if our conversation ends here, we'll both have a better time. ”

The man shrugged his shoulders.

Ah Xiu picked up the flight magazine on the plane and flipped through it. Small planes are jolting through the air, making it difficult to concentrate. The words he saw were floating around in front of his eyes like soap bubbles, and his eyes were looking, but the words were missing in the blink of an eye.

The man sat quietly in the seat next to him, taking a sip of his Oriental drink--- it tasted good--- Ah Xiu couldn't be sure that he was from that country, in Ah Xiu's limited experience, he really rarely saw tourists from Far Eastern countries--- the Oriental man's black eyes were closed peacefully.

Ah Xiu read the music program on domestic flights in the magazine for a while, and then looked at the world map with red lines showing the routes of airplanes. Finally, he finished reading, reluctantly closed the magazine, and tucked it back into the bag on the back of his chair.

The man suddenly opened his eyes. Ah Xiu felt that his eyes were a little strange, those eyes were completely unworthy of his middle-aged and elderly appearance, and those eyes should belong to a seventeen or eighteen-year-old child, because they were so bright that they almost stung Ah Xiu's eyes.

He looked at Ah Xiu. "By the way," he said, "I'm sorry to hear about your wife, Asho, what a great misfortune. ”

Ah Xiu almost wanted to punch the man. But he just took a deep breath.

"Mark my words, don't mess with those bitches at the airport. Rush's words popped into his mind, "Otherwise, before you have time to take a bite, your ass would have gone back to the prison and squatted." Ah Xiu silently counted from one to five.

"I'm sorry too. He said.

The man shook his head. "If possible, I hope it doesn't end like this. ”

"She died in a car accident, and there are many more unfortunate ways to die than that. Ah Xiu said.

The man shook his head slowly. For a moment, Ah Xiu felt as if the person was not real, and the plane itself seemed to become more realistic, while the person became ethereal.

"Ashu," he began, "it's not a joke, it's not a trick. The job I offer you is much better than any job you can find on your own. You're someone with a criminal record, and no one will line up to hire you. ”

"Sir, it doesn't matter who the fuck you are," Ah Xiu raised his voice over the voice of the plane's engine, "give me the highest salary in the world, and I won't do anything for you." ”