These middle-aged men are really sad.

yes, how sad. It's like looking in a mirror. Yan Xiaojing thought sourly. He is just an editor, and he has never worked in a national newspaper. Unless things turn around, when she turns 50, she will have to stay in front of the automatic printing press and the oil polisher to reminisce about her prosperous days at The Pattaya Express.

Her hand reached into the bag of chocolate beans, and it was empty again, which was really annoying!

Maybe she should go home and stop by a restaurant to get a takeout for dinner.

Yan Xiaojing's editorial office is actually a large room, with more than a dozen small office areas simply divided into gray partitions. Yan Xiaojing thinks that this kind of so-called 'office' that divides people into one grid is particularly similar to the pig factory set up by the Japanese in Thailand. It's just that the pigs' compartments are filled with feed, while the journalists' compartments are stacked with Japanese computers that have long been discontinued.

In a way, computers are not as happy as feed.

Yan Xiaojing got up and walked towards the door, and took out a forgotten cake from her colleague's snack warehouse. Ganha's desk is a 711 convenience store, which guarantees a calorie supply at all times. For Ganha, there is no breakfast, lunch or dinner. Eating can be as constant as breathing, so as long as he is awake, there must be an uninterrupted amount of food falling into his stomach. Yan Xiaojing peeled off the wrapper of the cake and took a big bite, feeling a little incredulous that she had started to eat junk food made from margarine.

Stepping out of the stairwell, the lights of Decree Street came through the door. The sweltering heat of July created a barrier between her and her apartment — 12 blocks of constant humidity and sweltering. Fortunately, on the way home, you will pass by a Chinese restaurant, which is always very air-conditioned. If she is lucky, the store is very busy that night, and she can still relax in the cool for a while.

After eating up the cake in her hand, Yan Xiaojing took out her mobile phone and pressed the shortcut number of the Chinese restaurant, ordered a dry fried beef river for herself, and walked out of the newspaper office in anticipation. In addition to bars and striptease bars, there are only a few scattered tattoo parlors in this section of Decree Street, while Chinese restaurants and Vietnamese rice noodle shops and Texas buffet restaurants are the only two restaurants. She looked up at the eerie and empty complexes around her, which had been used as offices in the '60s but had fallen vacant as the city grew. For her, everything in the street was too familiar to her, she remembered every crack in the sidewalk, could count the length of every traffic light, and was no longer frightened by the strange sounds of the shops on either side.

Crazy Horse is playing black blues, the whistling of electronic music comes from the glass door entrance of the Fifth Space Bar, and the singing of the guests in the Night Song KTV is not willing to be lonely to blend in with the big ensemble. These voices mingled and echoed through the streets.

Most of the bars here are a bit famous, but there are a few that make her stay away. Magnum's Bar, in particular, is populated by hateful-looking villains. She would never have stepped through the doors of this bar without the police in her company.

When Yan Xiaojing silently calculated the distance to the Chinese restaurant, a wave of tiredness suddenly hit. Oh my God, why are you so hot! The heavy, oppressive air made her feel like she was breathing in water.

Maybe it wasn't all the weather, as her exhaustion had been going on for weeks. Yan Xiaojing even suspected that this was a sign of depression: there was no way out of work, it didn't matter where she lived, she had few friends, no lovers, let alone any romantic encounters. If Yan Xiaojing is asked to imagine herself ten years later, I am afraid that she can only sketch out in her mind that she stayed in Pattaya, continued to face Su Pan and the old and small stinky men under him, repeating the same life trajectory every day: get up, work, think that she can overcome life, fail, and then go home alone.

Yan Xiaojing suddenly has a strange picture on the giant TV in the roadside convenience store, and the shopkeeper has moved the huge and ugly TV to the counter to pass the boring time of guarding the store. A middle-aged woman on television recounts her experience in a trained tone with a smirk: "Everyone has a corner of their heart. There may be unfulfilled dreams in childhood, or there may be troubles in life all the time, and only a confidant can truly enter your heart, interpret your frustrations, understand your confusion, and understand your desires. Yes, a blue-faced confidante gives you the feeling of warmth.

He understands you and tolerates you, but he doesn't love you. He is your chivalrous gentleman and your super "best friend", there will always be endless topics between you, but there will never be a spark of love. Only a little less than love, only a little more than friendship, you are with him, treat each other with all sincerity, talk about ideals, talk about the future, talk about work, talk about surprises, talk about distress, talk about gossip, talk about popularity, talk about the past and the present, talk about heaven and earth, talk about everything, just don't talk about love.

If a woman can have a blue-faced confidant, it is really a great happiness. However, in real life, not every woman has a confidant, and a man who can be a confidant must be the best among men.

The perfection of Lan Yan's confidante makes him look so unattainable, he should have plenty of money in his pocket, and he doesn't have to worry about the phone bill being too expensive. He must be mature and steady, able to read through the complexities of the world, and know how to share happiness and relieve suffering with others. He must also have a wide range of knowledge, good communication and understanding skills, and be good at listening and accommodating. More importantly, he has to face a woman without distractions, face a familiar woman like a brother, and guard the emotional city solidly, which requires him to have a good character cultivation and moral restraint. ”

The sound of the horn on the street brought Yan Xiaojing back to reality from memory. Haha, she was amused while thinking that this kind of saying about finding a godfather for a woman can be packaged so high-sounding, it is outrageous. There are many traps in this world, but they are dug for you by the same woman.

Maybe she needs to find an exit, away from the alarm clock on the table, the phone and the TV that disturbed her dreams, from the home stuffed with electrical appliances, from the Pattaya Express, or even from Pattaya, from Thailand. Since the financial crisis of '98, the country has become increasingly hopeless.

Yan Xiaojing has not been in contact with several pairs of adoptive parents for many years, and they naturally won't miss her. The few friends are busy taking care of their families. The devil knows what she's staying in Pattaya for, maybe it's just a habit, maybe she doesn't know where to go.