The nurse knocked on the door, and after getting permission, she pushed open the door of the ward, followed by two people who walked in, one was Jiang Hong and the other was a female secretary. The chairman's wife looked at them in amazement: "You ...... Did you go to the wrong ward? ”

Liu Xingchen took the medicine in the morning and then slept again. Jiang Hong looked at him lying on the bed with bandages on his head, and replied to the chairman's wife with a pleasant face: "There is no mistake." Madam, hello, I am the general manager of Beauty Shadow Hotel, my name is Jiang Hong, and I am Ai Mengmeng's mother. ”

The chairman's wife looked at her in surprise, her expression looked a little stupid, she didn't expect that an Ai Mengmeng's mother would appear at this time, did she come to ask her daughter for an explanation, Wu Jiao's parents didn't know how to explain it, this is another Ai Mengmeng's mother, oh my God, it's really a wave of unevenness.

Jiang Hong waited for a long time and couldn't wait for half a sentence from the chairman's wife, felt a little embarrassed, turned back to the female secretary and said, "Put down the flowers and go out and wait for me." The female secretary placed a large bouquet of flowers on the coffee table, walked out gracefully, and closed the door.

Jiang Hong smiled and said, "Madam, it's an honor to meet you, my visit may be a little abrupt, I'm really embarrassed." ”

The chairman's wife woke up from a lot of messy ideas, and smiled perfunctorily: "Oh, hehe, please take a seat." ”

The chairman's wife sat on the sofa with Jiang Hong, and smiled and nodded to each other face to face: "Mr. Jiang, is it?" ”

Jiang Hong smiled and said, "Hehe, don't call me Mr. Jiang, we are about to become a family." ”

The chairman's wife was in front of her at that time, and her blood pressure suddenly rose to two hundred. Jiang Hong saw that her face suddenly turned pale, and hurriedly asked her, "Madam, what's wrong with you?" You okay? Do I need to call a doctor? ”

"No, no." The chairman's wife waved her hand and looked back at the sleeping Liu Xingchen, whose spirit was on the verge of collapse.

The shrewd Jiang Hong saw that there was a problem here, and asked tentatively: "Madam, you should know about my daughter and your son, right?" ”

The chairman's wife smiled bitterly and nodded slightly, her eyes flickering.

Jiang Hong smiled reassuringly: "Oh, hehe, that's good." She took out a few books from her bag and stacked them on the coffee table: "This is the book that Xingchen wants, I brought it to him, and it happened to be in the ward, you can read it when you are idle and bored." ”

The chairman's wife said: "Oh, thank you, Xingchen didn't sleep well last night, and he is still sleeping, or when Xingchen wakes up, I will tell him for you?" ”

Jiang Hong heard that she was indirectly issuing an eviction order, and she was a little unhappy, even if she had a high family background, she couldn't look down on people like this, and it was less than five minutes after she came in, and she started to pick people off before her ass was hot, and she originally wanted to talk about the marriage of the two children with her future mother-in-law, but now she is not in the mood at all. Jiang Hong smiled, got up and said, "It's okay, then you can rest, I'll leave first." ”

The chairman's wife smiled very unnaturally, in fact, her mood at the moment was as uncomfortable as being punished, and she sent Jiang Hong out while coping: "Hehe, I'm sorry, this child has somehow become a night owl, maybe the jet lag hasn't reversed, in fact, it's almost recovered, and I'm about to be discharged from the hospital, please bother to visit, thank you." ”

Jiang Hong stood at the door and said, "Thank you, people say that sons-in-law are like half sons, they are all parents, why should Mrs. be so polite." Xingchen must sue me when he is discharged from the hospital. ”

The expression of the chairman's wife was smiling and crying: "Well, okay, okay...... Heh, heh, heh......"

Sending Jiang Hong away, the chairman's wife suddenly felt weak muscles, a tense nerve in her head immediately collapsed, and she almost fainted at the door of the ward. She leaned on the doorframe and moved to the bench by the wall, sat down, and wept bitterly. It's a good home, now that the son is hospitalized, the father and son are against each other, the son and daughter-in-law are separated, the in-laws don't know yet, the mother who is having an affair comes to the door, and it doesn't seem to be easy to mess with.

In the afternoon of cicada noise, Wu Jiao walked alone on the embankment, it is said that there is a family in the town, the son-in-law had a car accident and became a vegetative person, the mother-in-law and her daughter took care of the son-in-law for more than ten years, and then the daughter also became a vegetative person in a car accident, the mother-in-law took care of the little couple alone and insisted on drug treatment, many institutions gave her fundraising, and reporters came to the home for interviews, she said that she was particularly afraid of death, because no one cared about her two children as soon as she died, the reporter asked her, she felt that life was hard, she said, this is what she owed them in her previous life, there is nothing to complain about. This spirit is very admirable. That was when Wu Jiao was in junior high school in the town, she accidentally read it in the corner of a newspaper, and at that time she felt that this mother-in-law was not humane at all, and if a vegetative person could speak, she must not save her. But

She remembers reading a book with Liu Xingchen, which was an English version of a philosophical work, and there was an intriguing sentence on it, to the effect that you can't live according to your own will, because when you have your own will, you are already surrounded by the will of others. She didn't understand it at the time, and she lay on his arm and smacked the tongue twister-like sentence over and over again. The quality of teaching in the town is not as good as that in the city, so that her English foundation is not solid, and when she encounters this kind of sentence, she doesn't even want to take it directly to Liu Xingchen and ask him to translate, of course his English is great, but after he finishes translating, she still can't understand. He explained to her that everyone thinks they are living for themselves, but in fact everyone is living for the expectations of others, and this is the truth. For example, he himself, his parents, teachers, school, society, relatives, friends, housekeepers, neighbors, and even nannies, since he began to remember, people have all subtly taught him a sentence, to study hard, and then he became an international student, and he lay on this bed in this rental room. But Wu Jiao thought at the time that there was nothing wrong with living according to everyone's expectations, just like now, isn't it good. At that time, how could she have thought that it was everyone's expectations that sent her to a crumbling high pole, so that she could not live. She regretted that she hadn't looked down at what was written in that book, there must have been more important sentences to follow. But that day she fell asleep, lying in the crook of his warm arm and dreaming sweetly, content with the stable and happy status quo.

Wu Jiao wiped the tears that flowed to her chin unconsciously, and ran back desperately, she wanted to find the book, and remembered that when she returned to China, she brought back a lot of original English books!

That afternoon, she rummaged through all the boxes and couldn't find the book. What's the use of finding it? She asked herself, could a single sentence turn back time and space? Can you make him change his mind? Will this marriage be saved? It's useless, there's really no way to do it. So after a period of restlessness, the heart returned to death-like peace.

At night, Liu Xingchen couldn't sleep because he made up too much sleep during the day, which seemed to be a vicious circle in his mother's eyes, but in his opinion, this was a good phenomenon that was getting closer and closer to Ai Mengmeng. He wanted to try to see if Ai Mengmeng's mobile phone could get through, but he accidentally found a message from Wu Jiao, this short message was very strange, she said: I fell asleep that day, is there anything else to say later?

Perhaps it was because he was too familiar with her, and he found that he couldn't pretend to be confused if he wanted to, and his mind couldn't help but search for some fragmentary memories of being alone with her abroad. Habit is too terrible for a person, in those cold nights, he often hugged her, lying in bed and reading a book together, there are countless nights when she falls asleep first as described in the text message, but he now knows that she is asking about the book, it is that sentence.

He finished reading the book, the gist of the book is that this world is a cage that cannot be escaped, if you do the opposite, want an alternative life, sorry, okay, because someone explained the concept of rebellion to you, you learned the way of rebellion, your alternative is still a painting scoop, thank you. Therefore, the ultimate goal of the book is to dissect the phenomena and forms of the world, to "see" the truth and essence of things with subtle insight, and not to discuss the so-called transcendental and acquired phenomena in terms of the general or individual categories of phenomena.

Philosophical writings are not his major courses, but they are his favorite extracurricular books. In his opinion, Wu Jiao is a guy with an empty head, although her academic performance is very good, but she is unfortunately the so-called "container" family of Ai Mengmeng. In the years of studying abroad, they had a fixed night reading time every day, at the beginning one person held a book, one side of the bedside lamp, the two people read very different types of books, he looked at philosophy, Wu Jiao looked at history, he looked at logic, Wu Jiao read literature, he read religion, Wu Jiao read magazines, and later, Wu Jiao was reduced to reading comics.

Suddenly one day, Wu Jiao said that she wanted to read a book with him, saying that she would read whatever he watched, and he was quite impressed with her at that time, only to find out later that it was because the two of them could hug each other by reading a book, and she just wanted him to sleep with her. Books on philosophy, logic, religion, and so on were her lullaby, and each time she fell asleep very quickly, and occasionally asked him what the book meant, and he explained it to her as he understood it, but she would never go on on a question or debate with him to the left, because he knew that she didn't understand at all, but only pretended to understand.

So this text message surprised him very much, this was the first time Wu Jiao asked an in-depth question about a philosophical question, he knew that she must have encountered a huge obstacle in her thinking, and she was forced to do this.

On a sweltering midnight, when the sky is full of stars and the sound of cicadas, people often toss and turn until the middle of the night to fall asleep in the bungalows in the township, where there is no air conditioning and only a floor-to-ceiling fan. Wu Jiao's mobile phone rang, and the whole room was illuminated by the mobile phone screen, Wu Jiao sat up suddenly, looking at the flickering light on the desk, as if she saw a faint line of vitality, although it was a little sad at the same time.

Wu Jiao held the phone in her hand in a surging mood, and her fingers that touched the screen trembled a little. In the name of the unchanged "husband" on the mobile phone screen, he said in the tone of an ordinary friend: I also forgot, but I flipped through the book again, the author's meaning is very complicated, not a few simple words to explain, I will send you the book when I go back, you take a good look at it, maybe it will help you.

It turned out that the book was with him, and he knew that her English was not good, and she couldn't read the original book at all, especially the philosophy books, and he couldn't be her translator anymore, so he irresponsibly sent the book over and left her to fend for herself. Wu Jiao smiled bitterly, she was laughing at how she could be stupid enough to ask for help from someone who pushed her down the abyss. By the way, she suddenly remembered, the book said that this world is a cage that cannot be escaped, but she doesn't believe it, she wants to escape! She deleted the text message along with his number, and from now on she didn't even want to be a friend, and for some reason, she closed her eyes and recalled his face, feeling very strange.

On a hot afternoon, on the quiet and brand-new ring road in the development zone, Ai Mengmeng was smoking a cigarette and driving a car, with a bulging purse with a hundred bills. The last batch of wine made Bai Long buy it all in one go, he said that this batch of royal salutes can be almost real, especially hot, Ai Mengmeng sat on the ground and started the price, and asked him to double the price, he boldly paid out of his pocket. When I think of going to school, people say that "I am proud of my love and disappointed in my exam; Frustrated in love, proud in the examination room", this is definitely an unbreakable truth, God seems to be finding a balance for people, after leaving Liu Xingchen, Ai Mengmeng's fortune suddenly became very prosperous, a few businesses can earn enough for two or three years, now that rent is not a problem for her at all, this summer does not have to work too hard, but she doesn't want to rest, rather than thinking about it alone at home, it is better to make more money while the iron is hot.

As far as she knows, the business of the antique city in the past two years is not as good as before, many people have to go out to exchange stalls, once she asked the little pigeon to pretend to be a rookie to her father to buy a broken crockpot, which is equivalent to giving her father thousands of yuan for living expenses, and then she asked the little pigeon woman to go once, and bought a broken copper tiger talisman back, her father actually deceived people 30,000, and said unashamedly that it was a cultural relic of the Warring States Period. Ai Mengmeng was so angry that he almost fell on his face with the tiger talisman, in fact, he spent a few dollars to have an old blacksmith take a picture of the Warring States Tiger Talisman, and the outside was coated with a thin layer of copper, and then buried it in the wet soil pit for oxidation for a period of time, and it became a special Warring States cultural relic. Since then, Ai Mengmeng has never asked his friends to buy his broken things, presumably now he has been strapped to a certain extent.

This time she made a windfall, Ai Mengmeng decided to find a friend who had never shown up to go to the antique city again, to find someone she could trust, so she thought of Wu Jiao. When she called Wu Jiao, the sunny day suddenly turned cloudy, and the whole city was shrouded in dark clouds, and the weather forecast said that there would be heavy rain in a few days, and the people of the whole city did not believe it at that time.

Ai Mengmeng sat in the car, staring in surprise at the dark clouds rolling at the end of the highway and the junction of the sky, the sky above the city seemed to be divided into two worlds, one yin and one yang, and in a blink of an eye, it was completely cloudy, and the telephone route was in her ear with a long voice, and she said to herself: "Why didn't Wu Jiao answer the phone, the lunch break had already passed......

The speed of the car hovered around thirty miles, and the garbage cans on the side of the road were very new and beautiful, but someone threw the leftover lunch box outside, and a big black cat with a shiny body flashed a pair of clear blue eyes, staring at the degraded lunch box...... Meow - A sanitation worker ruthlessly collects lunch boxes into the garbage bin with a broom and closes the lid tightly. After the sanitation workers left, the big black cat jumped on the garbage bin and scratched desperately with its paws for a long time.

Ai Mengmeng parked the car on the side of the road where no one was around, and called Wu Jiao again, the black cat looked back at her, the ice crystal transparent eyes were like a clear spring in the desert, its body was slightly larger than that of a domestic cat, its limbs were athletic, its claws were sharp, and its head and abdomen were small, giving people a bit like ...... Leopard. Ai Mengmeng was about to step on the accelerator when she suddenly saw the cat jump off the trash can and come to her car. Wu Jiao still didn't answer the phone, she put her phone aside for the time being and opened the car door.

The black cat actually walked towards her without fear, Ai Mengmeng put on sunglasses, and couldn't scare it away, it was really amazing. She walked over to it with interest. At first, its front feet tried to step back, but its hind feet didn't move, and it seemed that after a brief thought, it continued to walk towards her.

Ai Mengmeng whispered, "Hey, big cat, are you hungry?" ”

With a meow, it tilted its head and stared at her like a torch as if it could understand human speech.

Ai Mengmeng beckoned to it: "Come here, come here." She took off her sunglasses and extinguished the cigarette butt.

Suddenly, the mobile phone in the other butt pocket rang loudly, it was Wu Jiao who called back, the cat swooped into the grass and disappeared, Ai Mengmeng smiled regretfully, and quickly picked up the phone: "Hey, wife, what are you doing?" ”

Wu Jiao's voice was a little strange: "Clean up your things." ”

Ai Mengmeng didn't pay much attention to it: "Oh, I thought you were sleeping, what are you doing packing up?" ”

Wu Jiao said: "Throw it away." ”

"What's that?"

Wu Jiao said: "Something dirty. ”

Ai Mengmeng paused, inexplicably thinking of the kind of "dirty thing" in the trash can, she smiled and said, "Do you have time tomorrow?" How about walking around town and I'll pick you up? ”

Wu Jiao said coldly: "Let's finish everything today, I may not have time tomorrow." ”

Ai Mengmeng was stunned for a moment, and suddenly heard a squirming in the grass, the cat poked out a black head, looked around casually, as if she didn't care about her storage, and finally turned her face to look at her, Ai Mengmeng's train of thought was disturbed somehow, and remembered that there was a meat floss bread in the car. She said, "Then can you come out today, it seems to be raining at this time, and I heard that it is going to rain heavily." ”

Wu Jiao said, "Where are you?" ”

"I'm on the road."

Wu Jiao said: "Have you seen all the photos I sent you last time?" I wanted to give it to you in person, but you weren't home that day. ”

Ai Mengmeng didn't see any photos, guessing that they must have been sent to her home in the Jiulong community, and Wu Jiao didn't know her current address. She said: "I temporarily moved to the development zone, and I will see it when I go back after a while. ”

Wu Jiao said: "You moved? ”

"No, it's just a change of place to live for a while."

"Why?"

"It's because ...... Work required. Ai Mengmeng said perfunctorily.

Wu Jiao said: "I want to meet you, where do you live now, I'll take a taxi to find you." ”

Ai Mengmeng said: "Wu Jiao, can you help me do something?" ”

"Tell me, what's the matter?"

Ai Mengmeng said: "My dad, you know, he sells antiques in the antique city, he can't make a few dollars when he dies, and he dies to save face, I heard that he often borrows money to entertain guests, so I want to give him some living expenses, and now I have tens of thousands of dollars in hand, you help me buy his antiques, you see, are you willing to do such a thing?" ”

Wu Jiao said: "This is a good thing, you send me the address, and I will go over to find you first." ”

"Hmm." Ai Mengmeng happily edited a text message and sent it to her.

With a thunderclap of thunder, the child's palm-sized raindrops fell to the ground. Ai Mengmeng hurriedly hid in the car, and when she turned around, she saw a black cat squatting in the back seat of the car, and a torn kraft paper bag was lying miserably under its front paws. Ai Mengmeng happily stepped on the accelerator and galloped away in the heavy rain. The black cat, who didn't have time to get out of the car, grabbed the saddle tightly with its four paws, staring at the window of the car that was rattling with the rain, and the blurred rain curtain outlined by thousands of water lines, it was ready to pounce at any time, but it was really not so bold, and it wanted to burrow into the ground like a mouse to hide.

The car had already driven downstairs, the rain was still rising, there was no rain gear in the car, she opened the window and waited for Wu Jiao under a not too dense tree. The black cat has eaten enough, and it no longer feels new and frightened by the tinkling window, and it lies comfortably on the back seat licking its fur, at this moment, its leisure is like a noble squire, and it will never worry in advance for tomorrow when there is no food to eat, Ai Mengmeng thought, maybe it is an animal without the concept of past, present and future, only living in the moment, not like people are so troubled.

Maybe it's because it's too dark to see the dirty, although the identity of this black cat is a stray cat, but after the careful licking just now, the body is shiny and shiny, quite a bit of a local tyrant. Naughty, it crawled around the car like a child at the instigation of percussion, and it climbed onto the back of the car, climbed onto her shoulders, and ravaged her little cropped shirt with its sharp claws. It wasn't until her shoulder was crushed by it that she figured out that it was a small glass bead that liked to scratch on her shirt. She took it down and dragged it on her arm, it was heavy and not honest, sniffing the tip of her nose from time to time to see if she was still breathing, accidentally stabbing her face with a prickly chin, the rough breathing always seemed to be excited.

In the few hours of waiting for Wu Jiao in the car, she and the black cat quickly got acquainted, the ethereal music with the scattered raindrops made people enjoy it very much, except for the fact that she hadn't eaten since the morning, the rest were beautiful, Ai Mengmeng thought, it would be nice if there was another meat floss bread, so she could only use cigarettes to satisfy her hunger, and some shadowy memories were also revived in her mind.

Why does he have a lot of similarities with it, she thinks that this is not a far-fetched change of his thoughts, no one is a cat, if he is not wrong about age, Liu Xingchen should be a dog. After playing with Ai Mengmeng's "body", it turned its attention to the pendant of the reversing mirror. It sat on the bridge, one paw scratching at the crumbling ear of wheat that it could never catch, and it could not be idle for a moment. Ai Mengmeng sighed: "I said Liu Xingchen, can't you be honest for a while." ”

But all it gave her was to pause its busy furry paws and glance at her.