After hanging up the phone, Hu Zongren raised his chin at me and said, let's wait a while, the other party hasn't arrived yet. So the two of us squatted on the flower platform on the side of the road, looking at the crowd around us and being stunned.

Due to the narrowness of the road, and this was originally a relatively concentrated area of Chongqing science and technology, so there are many vehicles that want to go around the main road from here, and the red light time is very long, and there is a traffic patrol police platform that has not had time to be removed nearby, so the road that is not spacious has become very crowded, and many drivers impatiently stick out their heads to see what has not been moved in front of them. Some motorcycles even proudly turn on their loud stereos and play refreshing songs such as "On the Moon" or "Can't Hurt".

After waiting for more than 20 minutes, a man wearing a down jacket and a flower scarf walked up to us, he greeted me and Hu Zongren and said, "May I ask if you two are Mr. Hu together?" Hu Zongren threw away the cigarette butt in his hand, this was the third cigarette he smoked this morning. Then he said to the man, I am Hu Zongren, I just arrived, and I am stuck in traffic? Hu Zongren looked a little impatient because he was waiting, so his originally polite words sounded more like a threat. The man said yes, he still ran all the way after getting out of the car, and he was afraid that we would have to wait for a long time.

I took a closer look at this man, and he looked quite young, maybe a few years younger than me and Hu Zongren. Medium and short hair, with a three-seven-point parted head, with a pair of rimless resin glasses, he looks quite thin and should have a pointed face, but his chin is shrunk in a scarf due to the cold. He looks about the same height as me, but his body is not strong enough, the light blue down jacket used to be my favorite sports brand many years ago, and the pair of jeans and sneakers he wears underneath looks like a college student who has just stepped out of school from any angle, at least the working hours are not very long. His voice is also soft, if it is true that he has just said goodbye to the campus, then he must be an obedient and good student in school.

I beg your pardon, this is just that when I treat someone for the first time, I will judge the person's situation from some details, which is a habit that has been formed over the years, and I really can't break it. This man's surname is Yang, because Hu Zongren called him Teacher Yang on the phone just now. Mr. Yang said that he was the reserve manager of this branch of the supermarket, who was responsible for the miscellaneous things of shelf distribution and replenishment, and said that it was the manager, which was nothing more than a position placed by the boss, and he said that it was freezing outside, so he went to the office to chat, so Hu Zongren and I followed him into the supermarket.

There was hardly a time in my life that I went to the supermarket without spending money, and this was the first time. The place occupied by this supermarket is the original garage on the ground floor of the old residential area, which is quite large, but there is no special access for employees, so Hu Zongren and I followed Mr. Yang to enter from the customer passage, Hu Zongren brought his own sack, and was required to wrap the sack at the entrance. When Hu Zongren was about to get angry and say that Lao Tzu's bag can only be tied with my exquisite rope, Mr. Yang hurriedly came over and whispered a few words to the aunt who was going to wrap the sack, and Hu Zongren continued to walk forward angrily. Probably Mr. Yang felt very embarrassed, and asked me and Hu Zongren along the way, did we have breakfast, do you want to take something to eat, etc., originally I also understood that this was just a kind word from others, who knew that Hu Zongren really said to Mr. Yang, do you have fries and shrimp crackers here? I'm going to eat.

So on the way to the office, Mr. Yang also went to twist a basket by the way, and then took a lot of flavored potato chips and shrimp crackers as snacks for Hu Zongren to eat later. Mr. Yang's office is behind a fire door in the stocking area, where there is a striking slogan that reads "Non-employees are not allowed to enter", of course, I disdain this kind of separating people into three, six, nine, etc., but I also understand that this is the rule of their own business. After passing through the security door, I climbed the stairs and went up one floor to Mr. Yang's office. On the way upstairs, I smelled a smell of burning things, as if someone had smoked sausages here before, but I didn't ask too much, and followed Mr. Yang directly into the office.

There are many cubicles in the office, and Mr. Yang's cubicle is one of them. The rest of the cubicles were lined with computers and some documents and the like, and they looked like a normal office. But because there is no covering, this means that every word we say will be heard by the other employees present. So Hu Zongren expressed his concern to Mr. Yang, but Mr. Yang told us that there is no need to hide it, and all of us present know the way for the two of us to do this today, and we ask you to do it, which is also a decision made after discussion by all of us. Hu Zongren said Okay, since you don't worry about it yourself, I have nothing to worry about.

I looked around, and there were at least 6 or 7 cubicle seats in this office of about 20 square meters, and a few of the desks were relatively clean and there was nothing on them, and I guess there was no one to sit there. The rest of the cubicles were full of people, men and women, but they didn't look very old, and one of them, a cute little girl with glasses, was looking at us through the gap in the glass at the top of the cubicle, and her eyes couldn't tell whether she was curious or afraid.

Mr. Yang asked us to sit down on the sofa on the side of the office area, and then instructed the little girl to pour water for us, bring an ashtray, and even pour all the messy potato chips and shrimp crackers in the basket in his hand on the table, and then he asked the little girl, saying that everyone was here? The girl looked at the people present and said that they were all here, so Teacher Yang went to the door of the office and locked the door, and then dragged a chair from her seat and sat down.

At first, after everyone sat down, no one actually spoke. I took advantage of this gap to look at the group of people in front of me, in addition to me, Hu Zongren and Teacher Yang, there were two women and one man, all of whom had uncomfortable expressions. In addition to the little girl, there is another man and a woman, but you look at me and I look at you, if it weren't for the big difference in appearance, the two of them must have the possibility of an office romance. When I was thinking wildly, there was a sound of the plastic packaging being torn, Hu Zongren reached out and grabbed a handful of potato chips and stuffed them into his mouth, and said to Mr. Yang vaguely, what is the specific situation of you this time, let's talk about it now, everyone's time is precious.

So Mr. Yang glanced at his other three colleagues and told us what had happened.

He said that the incident first happened about a month ago, because the main customers of this supermarket are still those aunts and aunts at home, so the vegetables they buy are much fresher and cheaper than other supermarkets, and from time to time they also engage in a shortage of promotions and the like, for example, ten yuan can buy a large number of vegetables, of course, they are all leftovers. Because of this, supermarkets open earlier in the morning, as fresh vegetables usually arrive in the early hours of the morning and are immediately available. And every night at about 7 o'clock in the evening, there is also a wave of this kind of promotion of the small climax, Mr. Yang said, so you can also see, at this time, our supermarket is already very crowded.

When Hu Zongren and I walked in just now, we found that there was indeed a large flow of people, and this neighborhood was an old community, and probably everyone was buying groceries here. Teacher Yang went on to say that we can understand that the elderly get up early, and often before the supermarket opens, there are many aunts and aunts waiting outside the door, planning to buy the freshest vegetables early, but they appear in the early hours of the morning, and they appear in the store we have closed, which is a bit too much to say. Teacher Yang said that the employees in charge of the morning distribution of goods in their supermarket that day heard a clicking sound from under their feet while sorting out the dishes.

Mr. Yang explained to us that usually on the vegetable shelves of the supermarket, the vegetables you see are only part of this batch of goods, and we have inspectors in the supermarket, and when they see where the shelves are empty, they will immediately fill in the new goods, and the bottom of the shelves, which is usually surrounded by KT boards, is actually used to store the vegetables that have not had time to be laid. And that day, our employee heard the voice, coming from underneath. Mr. Yang said that the supermarket was so big, and the vegetable area and the fish area were also next to each other, and there must be sewers in the place where the fish was sold, so it was inevitable that there would be rats in the supermarket. But then the sound came and went, as if there was more than one, so it aroused his curiosity, and he lowered his body to open the partition to look, but found nothing but vegetables, and the clicking sound stopped abruptly at that time.

Hu Zongren asked Mr. Yang, what is the sound of click, I don't understand what you say. Mr. Yang said that according to the employee, it seemed that something was eating something crispy like an apple or a pear, but at the time he really thought it was a mouse. Hu Zongren asked him, what kind of vegetables were placed under the row of shelves at that time? Mr. Yang shook his head and said, this is really not clear, if you need to, you can call and ask, maybe the employee can remember it at that time.

Hu Zongren waved his hand and said that he didn't need it for the time being, let's continue first, what happened later. Teacher Yang said that later, when the employee saw that there was nothing, he didn't care, and continued to serve the vegetables, and it didn't take long for the vegetable shelf to be pushed by something from the inside out, and then there was no movement. He looked down again, but still didn't see anything.

Teacher Yang said, but just as he looked down, he heard an echoing laughter from behind his ears, like the voice of an elderly woman, so he turned his head and found an old woman with gray hair, hiding on the side of the shelf behind him, only half of her body exposed, holding a carrot in her hand, eating a radish.