The first time I went to the office building was one day in October, and the first time I saw the piano in the lobby of the office building, the black piano paint reflecting the bright light. A report in the workshop needs to be handed over to a department in the office building, and the colleague who is usually in charge of this matter asks for leave to go home, and when he leaves, he does not explain the specific situation clearly, so that I go back and forth from the workshop to the office building three times in the afternoon, which takes more than two hours. It wasn't until half an hour after getting off work that the handover with the people in the office building was completed, and the other party said that he was in a hurry to leave in advance, told me how to upload data to the computer, and left in a hurry. I typed the data recorded on the paper one by one to the computer, and then uploaded it to the database, and it was already half past nineteen. There was no one in the office building, and the hallway was empty and echoing with the sound of my footsteps.

When I went down to the hall, it was raining outside, different from the usual autumn rain, the rain outside was accompanied by a strong wind, like a summer rainstorm, and the sound of the rain made the hall even quieter. Hai Linlin was standing in front of the glass window of the hall looking at the rain and fog outside, she heard the footsteps of someone coming downstairs, turned her head to look at me, we saw each other, and quickly shifted our gaze to the direction of our original gaze. The rain flowed down the glass window, and we were four or five people away, and we could feel each other in the afterglow. When I came to the office building, I thought that I might meet her, and if I met her, I would pass by normally and never say a word to her. But I didn't expect to meet it in such a way, and I was imprisoned in the hall by the rain. I knew she didn't want to talk to me, and the result was that I didn't want to talk to her either. But we know each other after all, and if no one says a word in a space wrapped in rain and fog, it will make time pass more slowly, and it will be more embarrassing than the embarrassment caused by speaking.

I know we're all waiting for the storm to light down in order to get back to our respective dorms, and I think I should break the silence because the wind and rain and the mutual silence are slowing down time and compressing the space we had before. I felt the distance between us shrink because I didn't want to talk until I could barely breathe, and I don't know if she felt that way. To ease my mind, I turned my head to look at her, and she kept the position I had seen her when I came down, as if she was drawn to the rain and fog outside. I'm sure she could feel my gaze on her.

"Every autumn time it rains. I said, "When it rains, it won't get hot anymore." ”

She turned to look at me, and for the second time we looked at each other, I smiled at her, and she responded with the same smile she had given me when she first spoke to me in the library six years ago.

"yes. "It's the same time of year that it rains in the city," she said. ”

Although we knew that the other party had been in this company for half a year, although we had met in the company park during this period, this was still the first time I had spoken to her in six years, and the familiar and unfamiliar feeling almost made me unsteady, at that moment, I felt that the time of six years had passed so quickly, from the moment I first saw her help her take the painting off the wall, until I saw her back walking up the stairs, except for memories, there was nothing left. I felt like crying, not because of the past in my mind, but because time was so mean and cruel. Just as I tried my best to keep myself on my feet, I tried my best not to let tears come out of my eyes, still smiling at her. But I didn't know what to say, and I didn't think it was appropriate to say anything, and she didn't answer, and we both looked out the window again. I still feel the need for words to break the silence.

"Do you still paint?" I asked, turning my head to look at her sideways.

This time she didn't turn her head to my side, as if she was still lost in thought about the rain curtain outside the window. I don't know if she didn't hear or didn't want to answer my question, but my self-esteem and politeness made it inconvenient for me to ask her again, and when I was about to turn my head to look out the window at the rain and mist, she turned her head to look at me, her eyes as if she had just returned from the distant past, and her voice was slow and her voice seemed to be moldy from the rain outside the window.

"I don't draw anymore. She said, "What about you?"

"I don't paint anymore. I said.

The rain showed no signs of stopping, and it was already 20:20. She made a phone call, and in the middle of the call, glanced at me. Ten minutes later, a woman wearing the same work uniform as her came over with two umbrellas. She handed me one of them, didn't speak, didn't look at me, didn't say goodbye to me, didn't say how to return the umbrella to her, and then held an umbrella with her colleague, clinging to the umbrella, stepping on the water stains on the stone and brick floor of the park and gradually walking away, the wind blowing her hair up.

The feeling of wanting to cry hit me again, and now that there was no one else in the hall, I could have allowed myself to cry, but I still held on—in order not to bow down to myself. I felt the need to sit down, and the only place I could sit in the hall was a piano bench. I sat on a stool and experienced the feeling of gradual aging, my brain was blank, I didn't want to do anything, I didn't want to think about anything. I lifted the piano key cover and pressed a semitone black key, and the sound reminded me of Qiu Pei.

I sat on the piano bench and stayed in the lobby of the office building until twenty-one and a half, before walking back to the dormitory in the rain and fog. It was a blue checkered umbrella, I didn't open it, I went back to the dormitory and put it in my cupboard, thinking about how to return it to her.

The rain fell for half a month, and our outdoor work was forced to stop, and we were all inside the park for half a month. In mid-November, the second issue of "Blue Star" after the reform was sent to various departments and workshops, and the first issue was lackluster. The second issue was particularly appealing to me, because during the editing of the second issue, she and I were confined to the lobby of the office building. The events of that night were unforgettable and triggered the most distant emotions in my heart, and the infinite memories of the past. I would like to know if talking to me again that night, in the midst of wind and rain, after six years, touched her feelings of compassion. I hid in the grass at the back of the workshop, carefully flipping through each page, looking for clues, trying to find the feelings she didn't pay attention to between the lines, in each picture, in the layout. But the more I flipped, the more disappointed I became, everything was the same as the previous issue, there was no change in the slightest, the news was still verbose, and a few readers were groaning without illness.

I didn't want to admit defeat, and the umbrella became the only weapon I had to reascertain the outcome, and I searched for one to find her like me—the same as me—the same as the one I had been attacked that night. But I racked my brains and couldn't come up with a perfect solution. One day in the park, I met the female employee who gave her an umbrella, she knew my name, called out to me, and said that she wanted me to return the umbrella to her. Everything came to an end without a start, I had to go to the dormitory to get the umbrella, return it to her, and out of politeness, I thanked her, and when she was leaving, I called out to her.

"Please also take me to thank Hai Linlin. I said.

Since the change of "Blue Star" to a 16K magazine, there will be a column of readers' contributions in every issue, and the number has increased. I saw that every issue of the company would write a call for papers at the end of the column, encouraging the company's employees to submit their papers, tell their stories to other colleagues in the company, and share their emotions. In the end, the reward policy was implemented, and each article published on it had a manuscript fee of 100 yuan, and a colleague in our workshop posted two articles on it. He once asked me why I didn't write some and send them to me because I loved reading so much, and asked me to help him revise what he wrote. I didn't think about it in the first place, and I didn't think about writing something on it, because you have to sign your name and department to post something on it. But since Umbrella Time, I've come to feel that Blue Star is a platform to connect with her. So, before the release of the issue of Blue Star in January, I submitted an essay about time and memory to her submission email. At first, I made up a byline, and I didn't write the department. She wrote back that every article in Blue Star had to be written with the author's real name and department, and in desperation, I had to write my real information, and I still felt that it was inappropriate before I clicked send. So I told one of my colleagues, in his capacity, and I asked again and again, and he agreed. He wondered why I didn't use my name, I said that my name was cursed and would cause disaster, and to my surprise, he believed it. After that, because of this incident, he became one of my best colleagues.

My article was published in the first issue of the New Year issue of Blue Star, and I was very happy with the results, not because of the publication itself, of course, not because of the 100 yuan manuscript fee, which I paid to my colleague who took the name, but because she read the article I wrote. In that article, I used ambiguous words and sentences to reveal the shadow of the story between me and her, but with someone else's name under it, she would not have doubted it.

I always thought that after what happened that night, she would change the way she behaved when she saw me. But it's business as usual, and she still goes her own way. Once, at the end of our workshop inspection, she shook hands with everyone on our side, and that was the second time I shook hands with her, and I thought she would be more enthusiastic than last time. I didn't expect it to be the same as before, without the slightest change. It turned out that the events of that night had no effect on her, which made my heart ache, and I tasted the bitterness of defeat again, and the dignity that was gradually lost.