(a)

"It's not because of love that you can be a burden to others. I think bread and love are both. ”

However, day after day of waiting, reading the newspaper again and again, calling again and again, and interviewing again and again, there is still no job to be found.

Time is like sticky, smelly blood, and a month passes slowly. Chang Xia seemed to shrank in the room, and it seemed to dissolve in the hot weather, swelling and floating around the room.

The old house, facing the sun during the day, was so hot at night that it seemed to evaporate. A small floor fan, creaking and turning. There was a sudden power outage at night, and the house was like a stove that had just finished burning, and the place where it was touched was slightly hot.

Chang Xia was irritable and tossed in bed, and Bai Xian, who came back occasionally, picked up a book from time to time to fan her, and fell asleep while fanning him, Chang Xia cried like a child, "This ghost place, this ghost place!" ”

In those days, I felt more and more deformed, and that feeling of boredom was like putting my face in front of a haha mirror, that exaggerated, deformed, and wanted to cry but couldn't cry tears.

Seeing that Chang Xia had been depressed, Bai Xian coaxed her, "Let's go, let's go eat Kende chicken, okay?" ”

Like a child, take her to the nearby "Kender Chicken" shop. Imagine in which town there will be a "Kende Chicken" shop? You can only get a few hours by bus to the larger cities nearby.

Chang Xia, who has just come to the city, every time I pass by "Kender Chicken", I look at the transparent and shiny glass, and I feel that pushing it open is like walking into the door of urban life.

Although in the future, watching "Kentucky Chicken" is just ordinary fast food, it is not as good as Chinese fast food to make them feel more delicious.

Bai Xian asked Chang Xia to sit in his seat and order by himself.

Chang Xia sat on the seat and looked around, and then looked outside through the glass, the lights outside were gorgeous, the car lights flashed with cat's eyes, and there were rows of flowing water; The neon lights flickered above the tall buildings, lighting up the darkness and echoing in the sky above the city. Street lights also make the road surface a kind of light that does not fall.

"I love the city, it's a bright light and it's just the beginning. And in that town, the streets had fallen into a dark silence at nine o'clock in the evening, and the whole street was silent, except for the sound of the night wind and the occasional bell of bicycles on and off the night shift, where life seemed to be cut off. ”

"But I don't know what skills I have in exchange for this city life." Chang Xia retracted his gaze from the outside to the inside, and finally unconsciously stopped at Bai Xian's back.

Bai Xian was wearing a yellow shirt, he was propped up on the table with one arm, and the other pointed to the real picture on the wall and said something to the waiter in Little Red Riding Hood.

After finishing speaking, Chang Xia saw that the hand habitually ran up the other arm, until it reached the long-sleeved shirt that had been rolled up at the shoulder.

Chang Xia's gaze suddenly stopped, and she realized why her gaze stayed on Bai Xian, who was obviously still wearing a long-sleeved shirt.

The weather in Fucheng is already hot in June, and girls have long worn skirts, and boys have long worn short sleeves. They are going around and around, and they always bring very little clothes, maybe his long shirt has been left elsewhere, but Bai Xian, even if you don't have a long shirt with you, why don't you go to the store to buy a short-sleeved shirt now?

Maybe he is reluctant to buy it, after Chang Xia comes, there are still many places to spend money; Perhaps, he thinks that there is a more important place to spend money than short-sleeved shirts, and he will be able to do it all at once.

At that moment, looking at Bai Xian's overlapping sleeves that almost rolled up to his arms, Chang Xia's nose couldn't help but sour, and he turned his face away, forcibly holding back the wet and sour liquid flowing behind his eyes and between his nose.

At that moment, Chang Xia deeply felt that for her arrival, what would Bai Xian have to pay?

Her ignorance of city life, her barely survivability in the city, her future, the burden of life for two, all weighed heavily on the young boy's shoulders.

Recalling, she was still in a public phone booth in Shanghai, and finally decided where she went, "Then if I go and I regret it and I cry, will you tolerate me?" He was silent on the phone, and she asked: "If I go with you, when the time comes, I may regret it, I will cry all day long, lose my temper at you all day, will you tolerate all this?" ”

"As long as you come over, you won't regret it even if you drink porridge and eat pickles, okay?"

The last-second phone call decided where Chang Xia would go in his life.

Bai Xian said that you come here, no matter what happens in the future? Even later we drank porridge together and ate pickles. For this sentence, what did Bai Xian pay in the years to come? From then on, a man begins a lifelong commitment.

The lights of the city outside are still beautiful.

(b)

From the countryside and towns to the cities, they will survive with their bare hands, hand-to-hand, like two hard-working little ants in the city, picking up beans and building nests, and will easily gain a foothold in the city and reproduce in the house.

The story of a pair of ordinary young people born around 80 years old who struggle to settle down in the city. The compressed life story is more or less like this, the shredded paper is stretched out after the water, and different contours and colors appear, and the scenery of the city of that era is all visible, realistic and realistic, and the streets and traffic stand out from the memory.

Looking closely at the light, the stretched veins are still the skeleton of the times, and many children on the skeleton of this era are long-sighted, laughing and bitter.

If you are interested, you will hold the lamp in the middle of the night, recline on the head of the bed, slide your fingers on the screen of your mobile phone, and read on.

Chang Xia, who is only looking for a job, has been beaten many times, but he has not found a job, but renting a house is an imminent matter. You can't always rely on things like this in Bai Xian's office.

After Bai Xian contacted a few on the Internet, he began to take Chang Xia to see it together.

Obviously, it's an old town, shabby and dirty. Around it is a river, with silt deposited on the riverbed, and a faint smell of wind blowing.

There was a pile of garbage on the adjacent road, and a few flies were flying around. The banyan trees in the community are towering, the branches are like giant umbrellas, and the land below is dark and damp. The vine branches of the banyan tree hang down. Some vigorous banyan branches crowded the windows, and the rattans hung like snakes on them.

Chang Xia vaguely remembers that the name of this community seems to be "Shanghai New Village", obviously, this "New Village" has been at least ten years old.

The south of Fucheng loves long banyan trees. The old houses of the community are among these banyan trees.

Holding Bai Xian's hand on the stairs, the gray staircase, walking in, it was dark, Chang Xia used to stomping his feet, and there was no sensor light in the aisle, it was still dark.

Holding Bai Xian's hand, Chang Xia remembered the scene where she and Chun Shan and En Linggang were assigned to Beili Town, they walked in the corridor where they lived alone, and with the sound of their shoes, the lights in the corridor went on and off, and their group of little nurses who had just graduated from nursing school were very curious, so they simply stopped, stomped their feet heavily, and the lights that had just been extinguished turned on again.

Eight years ago, the ordinary dormitory buildings of the state-owned enterprises were equipped with sensor lights, and at that time, the universal application of sensor lights should not have been.

It can be said that once upon a time, that state-owned enterprise was a state-owned enterprise with favorable conditions. Now, when sensor lights are more popular, there are no sensor lights in this community.

And eight years have passed since her youth. Chang Xia, who is eight years older, not only did not rise, but returned to the starting point when she graduated and was assigned, or even worse. Walking in the corridor that is dark during the day. Chang Xia couldn't help but feel a little sour.

For Chang Xia's complex and subtle thoughts, Bai Xian was obviously unaware. He does not have the burden of comparing himself with the past, he only has how to overcome the difficulties of the present wholeheartedly.