"What about your other relatives? Like an uncle, an uncle, an aunt, an aunt? ”

Li Xiaoai stopped eating chopsticks for a few meters and looked at me with a look of almost surprise.

"Huh? Isn't it time for the New Year to sit and chat with the seven aunts and eight aunts? And then force you to talk about marriage together, and give birth to a baby? I wanted to warm up the cold air, and asked her with a smile in as relaxed a tone as possible.

"I'm sorry, you can't reunite with your family during the Chinese New Year." Li Xiaoai's thinking was very jumpy, and a witty sentence came back to me.

The air seems to have condensed...

Watching her smile like a cherry blossom to hide her loneliness, I realized that I didn't seem to know anything about her heart and past beyond what I had first found in the defensive shield. What is it like to grow up a child who is not loved by her mother, I think of Jingjing, who also lost Xinrui, and my heart is sour, maybe this is why she pretends to be strong.

"Why do you keep staring at me~" Li Xiaoai's face flushed slightly.

"Let's eat." I turned and left the office and pulled my cigarette case out of my pocket.

In the evening, the streets were empty, pedestrians and cars were scarcer than ever, and Li Xiaoai didn't know where to go as she strolled through the streets after dinner.

"Why don't you go back to the hotel apartment? It should be safe now. The black off-road vehicle no longer poses a threat, and now Li Xiaoai seems to feel that the danger has passed.

I was a little hesitant, I always felt that things had passed too strangely, "Don't go back to live in a hotel apartment, shouldn't you go back to your hometown for the Spring Festival, where is your hometown?" ”

"Hometown?" This word seems to be a little unfamiliar to Li Xiaoai, "When I was a child, I often traveled all over the world, and then I came to the Special Economic Zone, grew up and settled down a little but lived in Hong Kong, can it be regarded as my hometown?" ”

"Maybe..."I was speechless for a while, and for a moment I had the slightest urge to step forward and hold her hand, maybe I could bring some warmth of home, right?

Silence returned, and I walked like this, half a body behind her, and it was still my working hours.

"My father was born in Beijing, and my grandfather used to be in Xi'an, so where should my hometown be?" Li Xiaoai's faint voice cut through the silence.

"...," I thought for a moment, "and where were you born?" ”

"Special Zone, but now only the hotel apartment that my father bought for me in the early years is left, and no one has ever returned to the old house, and the company is his home when I am not there."

If even the feeling of home is so weak, then how can there be a hometown?