"Why didn't you come last night?" On Wednesday afternoon, Long Shisheng walked into Manager Ma's office with a small teapot.

"I drank some at noon yesterday, and my stomach hurts when I drink it again." Manager Ma finished replying and closed the work documents on the computer.

"Yesterday's account came out! And guess what? The fat-headed and big-eared Long Shisheng whispered to Guan Zi.

"How?" Gui Ying was curious, glaring and inquiring.

"Hey, 'It's like a bird that has eaten all of its food and thrown into the forest, and the white land is so clean'!" Long Shisheng dragged a poem, then slapped his hands and shook his palms three times.

"What do you mean?" Manager Ma frowned and didn't understand.

"Work in vain! Basically not earned! I heard - I heard from the finance - the penultimate day of the exhibition began to step up the accounting, after the calculation of this number - 30 million, it is enough for the expenses of Nanan Group for half a year! Long Shisheng raised three fingers in the air.

"So little!" Manager Ma was a little surprised, took a breath, and stared at the keyboard with his eyes.

"Y-how's it going?" Long Shisheng turned the Buddha beads and inquired about Manager Ma's commission.

"Not yet! I've been distracted a lot lately. "Manager Ma was a little disappointed.

"I'm fine, huh! Everyone had dinner last night, and several of the business department were less than seventy percent of last year! Lao Huang Shao earned seventy or eighty thousand, Zhao Ming and Yang Yue were average, Song Chen and Lei Chunyan were a little more than in previous years, and the remaining few were all lost! ”

"Hey......" Manager Ma shook his head helplessly. As the manager of the exhibition business department, she is ashamed.

"I'm telling you, Joden has started to make layoffs now!" Long Shisheng stretched his neck and whispered, grinning after speaking.

"Cutting business? Impossible! ”

"Humph! You love to stay and walk around in business, anyway, the basic salary is a little bit between your teeth, I heard! Several department managers have already received the task last night to start ordering people! This time, it is estimated that a lot will be cut. Long Shisheng closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Hey...... I knew I was going to eat with you last night! Manager Ma regretted missing a lot of exciting inside information.

"Yesterday, I dragged you to go, you didn't go, besides, I sent it in that small group, and you don't read the group message yourself!" Long Shisheng craned his neck and sneered.

"Hey...... I'm not done with the finishing touches yet! ”

"Then you still have time to find Lao Wang (Wang Fuyi, the former department manager of the business department) for a drink and dinner at noon yesterday!" After Long Shisheng finished speaking, he rolled his eyes at Manager Ma.

"Oh my God! Brother Long, you are God! Even this knows! What are you...... Do you know the emperor the minister had a treat last night? Manager Ma pointed to Long Shisheng's nose and shouted in surprise.

"Cut! I'm not Zhu Yuanzhang, I'm not Liu Bowen, brother, I call myself a god operator, don't believe it! Mr. Li (Li Yubing) what's the matter, don't ask me the same! The gossip master shook his whole body and showed off.

"Tsk! Bow to the ground! Admire, admire! Manager Ma clenched his hands into fists and raised them high, his face turned to the left and his eyes closed and nodded.

"Huh!" Long Shisheng said, pinching the teapot and pouring Pu'er tea directly into his mouth.

Manager Ma was amused by Long Shisheng's performance art of drinking tea directly from a teapot, and was worried about this layoff.

In the afternoon, many colleagues slipped away early, and many people couldn't stand it for more than ten days to prepare for the exhibition, and the personnel today was also relaxed, after all, it was the last day before the holiday, and they turned a blind eye. Ma Guiying was about to take the subway back at five o'clock, but Zhiyuan called to pick her up, but she refused - Guiying didn't want him to work hard, and besides, the car accident that night had passed. He Zhiyuan bought vegetables and arrived at home near six o'clock, the old man and Yangyang had not come back, and the middle-aged man went into the kitchen and wanted to stew a pot of nourishing black chicken soup for his wife.

At half past six, the old horse came back with Yangyang, Yangyang saw his father running into the kitchen at home and hugged his father's leg and did not let go, and the old horse stood at the kitchen door and smelled the aroma of the chicken soup that had just been boiled.

"What time will she be back?" Lao Ma asked his son-in-law.

"It's coming. Leave the company at five o'clock, enter the subway at five twenty, take the car for fifty minutes, leave the station for ten minutes, and ...... at six o'clock" He Zhiyuan was calculating, Gui Ying opened the door and entered the house.

"Mom! Mother ......" Yangyang turned around and ran to hug her mother, Gui Ying picked up her daughter and came to the kitchen door, and the family was crowded together happily.

"Don't stop any of you, I'll send Yangyang to school tomorrow and tomorrow!" Gui Ying kissed her daughter's face after speaking.

"You can get up! Which holiday is not to sleep until three poles in the sun! It's just right that you're on vacation, and it's time for her to wash her hair, so wash her the day after tomorrow. ”

"Hmm." After Gui Ying finished speaking, she buried her head in her daughter's arms and smelled it everywhere, itching and giggling.

"Dad, I'll take Yingying to see a Chinese medicine doctor tomorrow, she will rest for a few days, just drink some Chinese medicine to recuperate." Zhiyuan Chong said.

"Well, you're busy with yours, and we'll see after the Chinese medicine is finished with Western medicine." The old horse held back the door frame.

"In the past two days, my stomach has been uncomfortable, I am always nauseous after eating, sometimes I have colic, and I can't eat much." Gui Ying complained.

"You're drinking again!" The old horse suddenly turned his face towards Gui Ying.

"Nope! Not today, I drank a little bit yesterday! ”

"If you can't drink it, you won't drink it! It's a shame to get drunk and let the family send it back! The old horse glanced at Gui Ying, but Zhiyuan raised a heart.

"Not drunk! Yesterday I drank a little bit of fruit wine, Japanese, good, not stomach-hurting, you think it's 52 degrees Xifeng wine! Gui Ying pouted, but Zhiyuan, who didn't know that he was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, was suspicious.

"Dad, when did she get drunk and let someone send her back?" He Zhiyuan asked his father-in-law with a chuckle.

"That's it...... The day before yesterday or the day before yesterday...... I forgot. Lao Ma didn't want to mention that Wang Fuyi carried the drunk Gui Ying upstairs that night, so he turned around and left, but it was this expression that he didn't want to say much that made He Zhiyuan particularly confused.

Drink before the car accident and send it home, arrive at the scene on the night of the car accident, solve the psychological shadow together, drink Japanese fruit sake together...... The innocent Gui Ying hugged Yangyang and played at the kitchen door, leaving He Zhiyuan to cook, but he was honest in his heart, guessing that the two of them should have met every day recently, and even the old man knew about it. But this night, He Zhiyuan still insisted on sleeping in a rental house, which made Gui Ying even more angry, I don't know why he was looking for a job to sleep outside, and the woman couldn't figure it out.

After finishing his son's shoes, He Zhiyuan returned to the rental house at eleven o'clock. Gui Ying's relationship with the man was so cranky that he couldn't sleep at all, and the man turned on the computer at two o'clock in the morning and continued to browse various recruitment websites. Bookstore clerks, clerical clerks, administrative clerks...... He Zhiyuan was already numb, he applied when he saw the position, and even blind voting and part-time jobs did not have the slightest result, how desperate he should be, the middle-aged man even suspected that all the recruitment websites were fake. Why would no company hire a forty-five-year-old middle-aged man? He couldn't figure it out, and kept flipping through the positions, and he had already flipped to the point where the big data of the system overlapped or the job recommendation began to circulate.

Do you want to do nothing in the second half of your life?

He Zhiyuan couldn't accept this result, he felt that he was not old and middle-aged. Regarding all the details of the job search, he had no face to tell his family, and he could only say "I'm busy", "don't worry about it", "don't ask" in the face of his wife's inquiries, and he could only hide in such a dilapidated house and slowly seek hope. But at this moment, the man appeared. With such two things together, which man can remain calm? Helplessly, he finished flipping through the recruitment website on the computer, and then flipped through the subscription account about recruitment on his mobile phone. One by one, he opened the job details and company profiles until he yawned at four o'clock in the morning before going to bed.

Early Thursday morning, it was already ten o'clock when Ma Guiying woke up. I didn't drink sleeping pills last night, but I slept very deeply, and I didn't have a dream. After leaving the house, the old man watched TV in the living room, and at the dining table early, she went to breakfast in a trance. At noon, Zhiyuan came to make it, and the three of them ate together, and after the meal, the couple packed up their things and went to the Chinese medicine hospital. Come back at five o'clock in the afternoon and the two of them carry seven pairs of traditional Chinese medicine, as soon as Zhiyuan arrives home, they are cooking and boiling medicine, Gui Ying and Yangyang are watching cartoons together in the house, and Lao Ma is still sitting on the recliner on the small balcony on the east side and smoking hookah.

The phone rang at half past six, it was a courier call, it turned out that Gui Ying was accidentally Amway by someone else during the exhibition, and bought some furniture and decorations on the balcony on the Internet with a brain fever, because some of them were freshly made, so they arrived today.

"Dear, courier!" Gui Ying shouted in the room.

"What's that?" Zhiyuan asked out of the kitchen.

"The one on the balcony is a bit heavy, I can't hold it, let's go get a piece." Gui Ying got out of bed.

"What?" Zhiyuan was curious, stretched out his hand and asked.

"A set of solid wood tables and chairs, wooden floors and wall decorations." After Gui Ying finished speaking, she changed into pajamas and put on casual clothes.

"Solid wood! How much does it cost? ”

"More than 3,000, recommended by the customer, I feel good, durable and good-looking, so I bought it."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Zhiyuan lowered his face, and his tone pretended to be peaceful.

"It was very busy! Bought during the exhibition. ”

When Gui Ying combed her hair, she saw that Zhiyuan's face was wrong, and she suddenly became angry, and said loudly with a straight face: "Tell you!" Can I find you? Aren't you busy looking for a job? ”

After the woman finished speaking, she went straight out of the room, asked the old man to take care of Yangyang, took the key, and walked out of the house first. Zhiyuan adjusted the fire of the small gas stove, asked the father-in-law to keep an eye on the kitchen, and followed the back foot out to carry things. Twenty minutes later, the couple came in with several large boxes. Zhiyuan went to the kitchen, Gui Ying unpacked, and the old and young watched. Gui Ying took things apart, she didn't know how to install them, and went to the kitchen to find Zhiyuan Zhiyuan was cold and still angry, and she also came out with a cold face. The old horse, who had already seen the sight, could only take the tools himself and skillfully assemble them according to the drawings. At dinner in the evening, the couple was still stiff, and the old horse broke the silence.

"Why don't you know if you buy this?"

"Busy forgot." Gui Ying's chin was high, and her eyelids drooped.

"These things...... How much? ”

"Three thousand eight." Gui Ying drank the soup back.

"Oh my God! So expensive! Lao Ma suddenly understood Zhiyuan's unhappiness, he put down his chopsticks and pointed to a stall in the living room and shouted: "You spent three thousand eight on such a broken thing!" Do I need it at home? Can the balcony fit? ”

"I'm sure I'll use what I bought! The big balcony faces due west, and it's not okay to write homework by light when you get out of school? At that time, the balcony was not installed when the home was renovated to save money, and now I reinstall it, what is wrong, the boxy white porcelain is not ugly? Don't you think it's too slippery when you dry your clothes? Besides, the set of solid wood tables and chairs is white oak, the original price is 5,000, and I only bought it on the last few days of Double 11! That set of flooring is pine, the market price, where you buy it is a price! Gui Ying shouted at the old man and continued to lift her chopsticks to eat.

"If you want these things, you can't make a set from us! What are you doing with this money for nothing! "Lao Ma really can't understand how a small round table with a big ass and a few small chairs is so expensive.

"What do you call a white flower? Let's order over there, you don't spend hundreds of dollars on logistics? Besides, I don't want to owe people family favors, a little something, why bother people! Year after year, I rarely take the initiative to buy big things, only this time you still chatter! What kind of face are you throwing one by one? After saying the last sentence, Gui Ying swept his eyes at Zhiyuan, who still had a cold face.

"The money you earn, you like to spend it, it's a big deal to have another stomach bleed." After the old horse finished speaking, he picked up the dishes and chopsticks and continued to eat.

Gui Ying sighed when she heard the sentence of stomach bleeding, and she completely lost her desire to eat for a while. From beginning to end, Zhiyuan has been feeding Yangyang and eating, without saying a word. Several people ate in a muffled voice for a while, and Gui Ying saw that she had offended two of them, so she took the initiative to soften, and whispered something to break the ice and release her suspicions.

"That...... How are you looking for a job now? How's that going? The woman looked at the man and asked softly.

"Not well! I won't talk about it! Zhiyuan ate and returned, didn't look at Gui Ying, the frowning brows, the disgust on his face, and the soft anger alarmed the old and the young.

Gui Ying understood that it was not easy for him to find a job, so she looked at Zhiyuan after finishing the dishes and said, "One of my customers, the business manager of a company earlier, has resigned now and is running a kindergarten." He's recruiting kindergarten teachers, don't you want to continue to be a teacher, do you want me to take a line? ”

"No, you don't."

After hearing this, Zhiyuan sighed in his nose and responded motionlessly, then got up and put away his dishes and chopsticks. There was no movement during the whole process, and the anger left behind could be felt even rippling. The little man looked at his father's resolute, fast and lonely figure, his eyelashes kept fluttering, and after looking back at the expressions of his mother and grandfather, he decided not to say anything, and continued to look into the eyes of the adults and chew vegetables.

"Humph! He used to be a high school teacher, and if you let him be a kindergarten teacher of such a big age, what a big gap! You can say it. The old horse whispered to Gui Ying.

Gui Ying, who was frequently angry, put down her chopsticks with a snap, kicked away the chair, went back to the room, and closed the door with a bang. A person sat at the head of the bed with his hands on his chest, panting and turning over and over again, wondering what she had said and done that caused her to "betray her relatives". Recalling the recent exhibition work, frequent socializing, going out early and returning late, and Zhiyuan's separation without saying hello, shaking his face inexplicably, and ignoring it, the woman burst into tears.

"Dad, you finish eating the dishes and put them in the sink, I'll come over tomorrow to wash them." Not long after, Zhiyuan tidied up the kitchen a little and came out to say goodbye to his father-in-law.

"Oh no, no, you're busy." The old horse responded positively.

"I'll leave first if there's nothing to do, you look at Yangyang." Zhiyuan said and went to the shoe cabinet at the door to change shoes.

"You go, don't worry about it at home." The old horse stood up and sent.

After Zhiyuan left, the old horse sighed, looking at the lost eyes of Yang Yang couldn't bear it, he moved the chair and sat next to the child and began to explain, comfort and tease her. After Yangyang finished eating, the old horse looked at the messy table with cups and plates, and had no choice but to bring them into the kitchen one by one. Worried that the leftovers would provoke bugs, the old man emptied the leftovers into the trash and flushed the dishes with clean water. After washing, I thought that I had reached this process, so I simply washed the dishes in one go.

So, Village Chief Ma washed the dishes at his daughter's house for a time, which was also an unprecedented time in his life. In his concept, this kind of behavior can only happen to his mother-in-law, but this time it happened naturally, intentionally or unintentionally, to Comrade Ma Jianguo.

At nine o'clock in the evening, Gui Ying, who had been crying, couldn't help but be curious, and came out of the room to start decorating the big balcony. On the one hand, the woman imagined that she would be able to drink a cup of coffee or wine on the balcony like the old man in the future, look at the sunset, and listen to a little song, but on the other hand, she was not happy that Zhiyuan was sleeping outside tonight, and the two of them had frequent conflicts recently.

He Zhiyuan was angry and hurt because of Gui Ying's words of matching him as a kindergarten teacher, and he couldn't sleep in the middle of the night, and his careless wife's casual words were amplified again and again by his sensitive husband, and his insulted self-esteem kept questioning his love and marriage. It's been half a month, looking for a job is fruitless, and the expected salary has dropped to outside the bottom line, as long as the job is reasonable, the treatment of 3,008 is okay, and it just so happens that the 3,080 things that his wife inadvertently bought made him have to question the meaning of his existence in this family.

At half past eleven, Bao Xiaoxing went to bed as usual, the woman who had been busy all day was very tired, but when she was about to fall asleep, she remembered that she had received a text message when she was busy in the store tonight, which was a repayment text message from the bank. Because she didn't repay one of her credit cards on time when she returned to her hometown, the salary paid by the clothing store on November 20 deducted the money for seven days of leave, and her salary was much less, which was not enough to repay the loan. The woman got up from the bed at midnight, turned on the light, took her mobile phone, demolished the east wall to make up the west wall, and finally scraped together the money owed by the card at one o'clock in the morning.

In the past, the groceries store owed more than 100,000 packs to the supplier Hyosung used a few credit cards and online loans to pay off in one go, but now the wages of the two jobs can only be repaid a little bit more than the monthly repayment of the credit card principal, excluding the interest, which is very small. But at such an age and with such ability, she has no other way but to rely on her dead salary to pay it back little by little. As long as she can repay a little bit of principal every month, she believes that she will be able to pay off these debts. In the middle of the night, women expect that the health of the old and young will not cost money, that Meimei's school will not have major expenses, and that she will be frugal and save more...... Tight and suppressed thoughts persecuted the good dreams she should have, and it was past two o'clock, and it was even harder to sleep.

In a moment of anxiety, Bao Xiaoxing thought of his hometown, a real place that does not require a credit card, is not compact or depressing, a place where there is no nothing in the event of a crisis, and a place where life is calm and does not panic when it falls.

The two banquets at his cousin's house were the happiest Bao Xiaoxing had in recent years. In the crowd, she wrapped herself as an invisible person, eating and drinking to her heart's content, and her sister-in-law saw that she was greedy, and she couldn't help but give herself a few more chopsticks when she met her favorite food. Bao Xiaoxing enjoys this pampering, even though she is forty years old. Women are happily immersed in this frothy pampering, because there are too few people in the world who know their dietary preferences and are willing to fulfill them.

Bao Xiaoxing has always considered others in her life, she will not enjoy herself like Gui Ying, nor will she be as bold as her sister Xiaotang, she will only hide her desires, and then be a good wife, daughter-in-law, mother, sister, and best friend in secular society. God, the carefree face of the nineteen-year-old wheat made the forty-year-old Bao Xiaoxing ashamed of herself, and she has fallen into serious and intensive self-denial, negation of negation, and the third negation in the past few days. The city has changed her taste, stomach, physique, and thus her temperament. She was looking at her life, but the results of these thorough examinations left her disappointed.

On the back stove, a large board more than two meters long and one meter wide, dozens of white porcelain bowls of meat and vegetables neatly arranged, a smiling chef, the sound of suona in the sun, and the new mourning hall under the light...... Hyosung remembers the meal before leaving. The steaming white steamed buns, the fragrant liquor, the fragrant dinner table, the old man with a white beard, the little doll squatting in the corner stealing meat to eat, and the cheerful and loud villagers...... At the banquet, she sat in the middle of the lively villagers, as if she had returned to her childhood, and people were still so enthusiastic when they saw her, as if she had not left for the past twenty-three years. After the funeral, Bao Xiaoxing walked behind the team, slowly and leisurely admiring his hometown, and there was a lot of hope for a while.

She stepped on the dogtail grass soaked in snow, hoping that in her lifetime she would have the opportunity to cut the grass again, herd the sheep once, harvest the wheat once, have a snowball fight, kick the shuttlecock once, play with the stones, participate in a carnival on the wheat field, and witness the spring, summer, autumn and winter in the northwest countryside...... She looked around from the cliff, hoping to go to the ravine behind Xiaogu's village, where she had heard of a clear spring bubbling and flowing when she was a child, but unfortunately she had never seen it; She stepped on the soft loess, hoping that she would be buried here, by her mother's side, under her grandmother's knees; She has never gazed at the Loess Plateau so affectionately, and in that empty and deep, disappointed and sad look back again and again, she hopes that she will not go to Shenzhen again, but leave the past behind and start here again, fall in love and get married again, have children and raise again, and start a different life again.

That's right, Bao Xiaoxing, who was in the middle of the night, actually wanted to escape from Shenzhen.

Why does she keep asking the villagers about the various problems of growing fruit now? Why did she keep calculating in her heart how much land the Bao family and the Zhong family's land were, and what to plant? Why is she already absurdly dreaming about the next year's harvest and selling prices? What is she doing? Bao Xiaoxing went crazy and was out of control.

The people in my hometown have changed, and the neighbors who were familiar with each other have left or become old and lost their position like themselves, and there are very few young and middle-aged people like Bao Weichou and Zhang Qigong. It is precisely because of the scarcity that talents like Qigong and Weichou have become the mainstay of every village. Whenever there is a big event in the village, in addition to asking the old man for advice, people will take the initiative to come to such young people to provide practical help, such as building a house and asking them to form a team of workers, asking them to contribute to special physical work, running errands and carrying things, which are inseparable from these young and middle-aged people. If she returns to her hometown, will she be able to adapt to such a role? Will she be able to get on good terms with these rising stars in the village? Can she, a woman who works hard in a first-tier city, suddenly return to Baojiayuan or Zhongjiawan be accepted by the villagers?

She is not just her, she is also the mother of the child, the host of debt, the aggregation of several types of social relations. Any decision she makes involves a network centered around her, and even if it is small and rudimentary, she sees the nodes related to her as important.

Tossing and turning, a few sighs.

It was only six days back to my hometown, but my brain felt like I had spent six years there. Nanguo Village, Nianqiao Village, Baojiayuan, Zhongjiawan, Majiatun ...... The brain, which had been devastated by the repetitive life of the city to the point of amnesia, seemed to come back to life, and the images of how many villages passed by and how many images swept by were vivid in my mind at this time. A bunch of air-dried pumpkins hanging outside the door curtain, a glowing hollow hoe in the empty room, an unknown stubborn grass on the tiles, a smiling and simple old man and old woman, a retro portrait of Chairman Mao on the wall, an old-fashioned porcelain pot with no edges and corners, and a paulownia tree that is so lush that it blends in with the courtyard......

Man is only a passer-by in this land, and no matter what his caravan contains—treasure or servant, old clothes or a tool, a book or a pen—the caravan will eventually pass through the land and eventually disappear into infinity, and the man, the car, and all that is on it will eventually be nothing. Since the result is bound to be nothing, why care about the things on the car, it is better to look at the nail grass blooming in front of the farmer's house, the arrogant rooster encountered on the road, the black piglet lying lazily in the nest, the persimmon tree with leaves like a rubber tree, the barren and vivid courtyard of the villagers, and the rising sun surrounded by the brilliant morning glow...... In the long journey, may not be tempted by the devil to shorten, accelerate or inflate the time of your life, strive to prolong the scenery of the journey, look for the richness and taste of the sparse time, and try to imprint what you have seen and heard in your mind, so that you can recall, recall, and reminisce with your heart before you close your eyes.

The colorful paper piles on the newly repaired graves are very similar to the clothes of a certain brand, a house of tens of thousands of yuan, the dignity of the circle of friends, and the remuneration at work that people pursued during their lifetimes; The blazing flame on the grave is a rare sublimation in a person's life - the title of the gold list, the flower candle in the cave room, the happy noble son, and the four generations are in the same house; The yellow dust of the grave is the long truth of life—anxiety, poverty, boredom, struggle, pain, frustration, regret, remorse, and complaining. Eventually, the new grave crackled and burned loudly, red and yellow flames flew into the sky, and people gathered in a circle to celebrate the departure and liberation of the eldest aunt.

The slopes are endless, with terraced fields to the north, paths to the south, hills to the east, and valleys to the west. The women knelt on the ground and wailed and wept bitterly, the filial sons squinted at the flames with the shovels lifted, and the villagers talked and laughed with cigarettes in their pockets, as if it was a kind of appreciation—appreciating a person's departure, as if appreciating a person's arrival; Admire a flower that closes quietly at dusk as if it were budding in the morning. In the end, the flame became smaller and smaller, and gradually disappeared, leaving a black, white and gray powder on the grave, and everything that was pursued all his life, the highlight of his life, the pain in his heart, the regret that he was unwilling to, turned into black smoke and went away with the wind. The black smoke drifted farther and farther away, and was finally diluted into nothingness by the atmosphere.

Laughter and wailing are the best end to a person's life.

Burning like fire has become the best judgment for everyone in this life.

A little note.

The previous chapter was not proofread before publication due to eye pain, and it was proofread the day after publication. In addition, if the reader finds that there are typos in the text, please send the typos or typos and chapter serial numbers to the comment area, and I will correct them immediately after seeing them. Thank.

(End of chapter)