Sunlight leaked in through the window, irritating my eyes. Downstairs there was a commotion of people walking, the shouting of vendors, and the ancient town once again began to wake up from silence. I looked at Xia Yao on the bed, yesterday was a tiring journey on the road, and only a long sleep could restore her spirit. Still closing her eyes, the sun flicked down her long eyelashes, and the quilt fell to the ground, she was like a lazy cat. I got up and closed the window, picked up the quilt on the floor and covered it for her, she slowly opened her eyes, saw that it was me, turned around and tightened the quilt and continued to sleep. I tiptoed into the bathroom and went downstairs after washing up.

I don't know when I started to develop a habit, I always have to smoke a cigarette every day to wake up and feel refreshed. I sat on the stone steps of the doorway and smoked a cigarette, and a few passing guests looked at me with disgust and hurried away. I've always been thick-skinned and still a maverick smoker. Robben brought back a big bag of weird steamed buns, fried dough sticks and soy milk from the breakfast shop around the corner. "Grab breakfast, and pick someone up with me later." Robben threw over a breakfast. Immediately put a large bag of breakfast on the table of the inn and waited for Lu Chenyang, Qiao Bing'er, and Ye Wei, who were still sleeping, to get up.

I sat in the doorway, eating my breakfast, while watching the slow-flowing river, in which a pair of ducks were foraging together, following each other, sometimes plucking their red and yellow paws, sometimes diving into the water and flapping their wings together.

"Isn't your little girlfriend up yet?" Shen Yan'er walked up to me and asked me with a smile.

"Oh, Sister Yan'er, why don't you believe it, she is my friend!" I was smiling and arguing.

"Oh? Is it? My sister didn't believe it. Shen Yan'er looked at me with a suspicious expression, my eyes and Shen Yan'er's eyes met in the air, and her gaze was like a strong light in the interrogation room tormenting me.

"No, no, just no." I'm just shameless and shameless.

"Hahaha, I won't tease you, by the way, breakfast is on the table, take your little girlfriend upstairs." Shen Yan'er laughed like a wind chime a few times before turning around and leaving.

Looking at the breakfast on the table, thinking back to Shen Yan'er's words, I shook my head helplessly and smiled bitterly. I stood up, grabbed a glass of soy milk, and went upstairs with two fritters. Quietly opened the door, Xia Yao was still sleeping, she was breathing calmly and gently, the white fluff on her face was clearly visible under the perspective of the sun, Xia Yao at this moment was like a baby, at a certain moment, I actually had an imperceptible throbbing that wanted to hold her. I shook my head and smiled wryly and went downstairs.

He followed Robben out of Xitang and rushed to Jinshanwei Station again.

"It's really scary that time is gone, tomorrow is your wedding, Brother Robben."

"Hahahaha, in a few months, my child will be born!" Robben gripped the steering wheel and laughed.

"Hahahaha, you don't know all the names of children, right?" I stared at Robben suspiciously.

"You kid is really smart, Yan'er and I preliminarily named Luo Fan. You know, Van Gogh was a great painter, and I hope that in the future our children will become painters as well. It can be regarded as a fulfillment of my dream, after all, my current financial situation is not unexpected, and it is enough to afford the future of my children. With that, Robben accelerated past a brand-new Volkswagen directly in front of him.

Soon Robben and I arrived at Jinshanwei Station, Robben and I parked the car and squatted in the trash can on the side of the road to smoke. There is not much traffic at Jinshanwei Station, and passengers come out of the station in twos and threes, looking at the not prosperous surroundings with a confused face, and they don't know what to do. Robben suddenly got up and walked to the exit of the station, a passenger dressed in extreme moderation, the only thing that made the passenger feel unusual was that the passenger was carrying a guitar, which made the passenger's non-existent temperament suddenly turn into an informal artist.

The two shook hands, Robben handed over the cigarette, the traveler lit it, and the two of them walked over to me. As the traveler got closer, the face became clearer, and I was more and more surprised.

"You, you, you're a smoker!" I stammered in surprise.

"Hahaha, I know you, when we were in Guizhou, we sang and smoked together on the street, and at that time you told me to wait for you to come back and invite me to drink, but then I didn't say goodbye, I'm really sorry." The smoker laughed, took a cigarette from his baggy coat and handed it to me, and I took it and lit it.

"I missed it for the next better meeting, but I didn't expect us to meet again in Shanghai. And it was Robben who met us. ”

"You two know each other?" Robben was isolated from me and the smoker, and he watched in surprise as I greeted the smoker like old friends.

"I know, after I left Yuzhu Ancient Town, I went all the way to the north, and later sang in a small county town in Zunyi, and this kid stayed with me for a long time." The smoker said as he smoked.

It is not easy to meet in this world, and it is fate to have an intersection, separated from the sea of hundreds of millions of people, but once again caught off guard, I can only sigh that the world is like chess, the sea of people is vast, and people can meet and know each other, or love each other, it is inevitable and accidental. In the dark, there is a saying or something called fate that is implicated, what is fate, fate is the grasp or loss of an opportunity, it is the division and combination of interpersonal relationships, it is the many grievances and grievances deduced in life, and it is also a plausible cause and effect relationship.

The three of them got into Robben's second-hand Volkswagen, and I sat in the back row with the smoker, just as his guitar case could be placed diagonally, and looking at the guitar case, I once again recalled my encounter with the smoker in the small town:

I don't know what the real name of the smoker is, but since I met him in a small town in Guizhou, I have called him a smoker. The smoker is a down-and-out wandering singer who says he is the son of a small fisherman in Zhejiang, but he can speak fluent Sichuanese, his hair is messy, and his face is black, I don't know if his skin is already black or because he hasn't washed it for a long time. There is no sparkle in his eyes, he walks like a puppet, the whole person looks sloppy, and there is always a cigarette pinned to his ear.

I think he's the poet who thinks he is.

The place where he sang was not in a crowded intersection, not in a brightly lit mall, but just on a street corner, with a tree right in front of him, where he could hang his black coat.

Occasionally, a folk tune trickles like a trickle to move people, and someone puts a hundred notes into the piano case, and the red notes stand out from the crowd in the green change. The children watched his performance more attentively, the little boy stomped his feet, the little girl danced, and the baby who couldn't walk laughed and clapped his hands in his mother's arms... Some mothers will give the baby a dollar and let him throw it into the piano case, the baby will take the money and walk directly to me and hand it to him, he will sing and smile and wave to him, saying thank you in his mouth, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth corroded by cigarettes, and the next second he will start to play the strings again.

I remember one night, he was singing "Rose", the prelude had just been played, and the girl in a long skirt stood upright opposite, he, the microphone, the girl, three points were connected in a line, he couldn't help but notice her, the girl looked at him with a smile, the eyes of the two met in the air, and the time was pressed and paused. The smoker panicked, forgetting the first line, and then sang the second line inarticulately. The crowd around him burst into laughter, he hugged his guitar, scratched his chicken nest-like hair, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his trouser pocket and a lighter from another pocket.

After trying several times the lighter but it didn't come out, he smiled awkwardly at the crowd and prepared to pick up his guitar. I walked over and handed him the lighter, he took it, took the lighter, the cigarette burned a hole in his dark corner, and that night was our first crossing.

He said that he might stay in the city for a long time, so I always went to him and listened to him sing songs for a long time. Over time, the two became acquainted.

When I went to look for him once, there was no audience to stop and watch, and everyone passing by was in a hurry, he sat on the ground to rest, I walked over and handed him a cigarette, he took it, took out the lighter, lit the cigarette, handed the lighter to me, I lit a cigarette, and the two of them smoked together, and the smoke swirled in the low air, and finally dissipated.

"I'm going to dinner, can you help me sing for a while?"

"Ah, I'm singing hard and I'm going to scare your audience away!"

"It's okay, you just sing whatever you want, whatever you want."

Without waiting for me to answer, he stood up, clapped his hands, and handed me the guitar that was leaning against him, and I took it. And he, casually grabbed a handful of money from the guitar case and blended into the crowd to look for a restaurant.

My brain was blank, and I looked at the crowd gathered indifferently, at a loss. I hurriedly flipped through his playlist, and the first song that caught my eye was "Rose". I sang to myself.

Life is getting more and more depressing

You become less and less like yourself

A man stands in the wind of sorrow

Rose, where are you

You said that the people you loved were gone

Don't deceive yourself

You're just hiding it deeper

Rose, where are you

You always like things you can't grasp

Please don't cry

We are all left with a bunch of memories woven from youth

Maybe it's fate, maybe it's because I'm confused, or maybe the city is too small, so small that there are only a few pedestrian streets, I saw Xia Yao, who had broken up with me, happened to be on the other side of the street, my singing voice has always been good and recognizable, my aunt was next to her, she turned back frequently, and finally was taken away from the noise of human voices, and the people on the scene threw applause and praise to me. At the end of the song, I added a little sadness.

The smoker returned, cigarette in his mouth, bottles of wine in his hand, and he was out of place in the crowd in his tattered clothes. I'm singing, it's Jian Hongyi's "Even if I sing all the love songs", Jian Hongyi's songs have always been deep and hoarse, and my sketches imitate vividly. At the end of the song, I returned the microphone and guitar to its original owner, and he said, "Keep singing!" I said, "No, no, you come!" He didn't push and shove with worldliness, took the microphone, and began to sing "Distant Her". The voice of the smoker may be because of the erosion of cigarettes, magnetic and full of vicissitudes, with a long history and soaking people's hearts.

In the streets at midnight, the crowd dispersed. Only the dim light casts a gloomy silhouette for autumn. The two of us sat on the floor, and he handed me a cigarette, and I lit it next.

"Where are you?"

"Zhejiang."

"How many cities did you pass through along the way from coastal cities to inland?"

"Guangxi, Guangzhou, Jiangxi." He paused for a moment and said, "Changsha, Hunan, Wuhan, Hubei, Guiyang!"

"You've been to so many cities and brought your favorite guitar with you, your life is simply wonderful!"

He didn't speak, he took a few puffs of his cigarette, and after a while, his eyes began to clear.

The poet Nishikawa once wrote in the poem "Drinking Water": "'The gift of life is so abundant that sometimes it is like sea water, and it cannot be drunk. ’”

I was dumbfounded.

He shook the two bottles of wine in his hand and handed me a bottle, I didn't mean it, I took it, met him with a glass, and the two of them drank it.

"Life is wonderful! Originally, I was a child in a small fishing village in Zhejiang, and I married a wife from Sichuan after graduating from college two years ago. The parents were sad and sick, and after all, they did not escape birth, old age, sickness and death. He laughed helplessly, tears glistening in the corners of his eyes, and he took a few more sips of wine and took a big breath.

I was once again speechless, and I felt the smoke from my bag. Handing it to him, he took it, pinned it to his ear, and looked at a woman walking by on the other side of the street, and he suddenly began to choke up and sing:

My destiny is divided into two parts

Before I met you, and after I met you.

You healed my sorrows, and then gave me sorrows.

A moment of joy between melancholy and sadness

Overdrawn all my life's passion savings.

I want to drink some wine and make my soul weightless so that it can be blown away by the wind.

But when you think about it, it will be your passer-by in the end

I feel that I have become a passer-by in the whole world.

Though the wind is strong, it goes around my soul.

I listened quietly, my soul trembling at the transposition of one of his voices.

Later, he pointed to the fair woman who disappeared into the darkness on the corner of the street and said, "That woman has such a good figure!" I smiled and said, "What if it's a back killer, looking at the back is a hibiscus out of the water, but it actually looks like a terrifying T-Rex!" The two of us laughed, touched the bottle again, and drank it all.

"Why did you stay in this city for so long?"

He smiled: "I don't know if anyone thinks I'm pretending, anyway, I'll sing seriously, not pretentious, not funny, not cool." In every city, there are people who stop and there are people who disdain, but only the chengguan will come and drive me away. It's different here, the chengguan likes it, just listen to me sing for a while, maybe hand me a cigarette, and if he doesn't like it, he will leave. ”

"That is, the city management here is the most humane."

"Where to go in the next city."

"Let's go to Sichuan, go to my wife's mountain village and take a look, and then go back to Zhejiang to be a fisherman, people, you still have to settle down."

He grabbed his hair, pulled out a cigarette from his trouser pocket, and handed it to me.

"Maybe I won't come for a while in the future, I have something to do, and when I'm done, I'll come to you again to sing, and when the time comes, please drink."

He grinned and stretched out his hand, and I reached over, and the two of them covered their hands in the streets at midnight and agreed to say goodbye. Then I went back to the town again, and I went to that familiar corner. No one, no guitar, not even a cigarette butt left.