During the Snowstorm - Chapter 27
This is her first time on a train with him.
Drive through Philadelphia.
Time is running out, always in New York.
Yin Guo was looking out of the window at first, but when the car stopped briefly to pick up passengers, he turned his head to look at the man beside him.
Lin Yiyang has been driving Google Maps on his mobile phone, where he has passed, how many kilometers are left, and how much time is left to arrive by car… The data is being updated in real time, and he doesn’t know what he is doing when he has time to watch it.
“What do you want to say?” He caught her gaze.
I squandered a bit last night, and then I went to sleep after explaining it, and my throat was numb again, like being rubbed with sandpaper, and the sand was bad.
She found that he was beginning to see through his own mind.
She whispered in Lin Yiyang’s ear, “You look good with a beard.”
He doesn’t show his age at all, and he is still a ruffian.
Lin Yiyang sat on her left side, stretched out his left hand, and touched her right face. Such an action seemed to hug her in front of him. However, he has always been disgusted with watching people do intimate actions in public, and neither does he.
I just touched my face and my ears.
The man’s finger pads were rough after all, and when they passed her chin, there was a slight friction feeling: “Really?”
Lin Yiyang lowered his pitch-black eyes down, and his placement was clear, and he didn’t shy away from what he was looking at.
“The blue one?” he asked.
Yin Guo was at a loss, remembering that the underwear he changed into today was blue, he touched his shoulders, and sure enough, the shoulder straps were exposed.
“Can you be any more rascal?” she whispered, pulling up her collar.
He smiled, pinched her face, and whispered, “Next time you’ll know.”
next time. Naturally referring to next week, the day when the two meet again.
Sure enough, I slept in the same bed and spent the night together, and the content of what I said began to shift.
Always bring it up there.
She took out a book from her schoolbag, flipped through it, and looked at the lines of black printing in front of her. Actually it was yesterday.
He washed his hands and came back because he wanted to have a deep intimacy with her, but in the end Yin Guo didn’t let him do anything except kiss. Last night Lin Yiyang was even more trustworthy and promised to let her sleep peacefully, so he slept with his back to her all night without turning over.
According to everyone’s description of Lin Yiyang, he is an unruly man, but he really never chased after her in bed.
She doesn’t like it, he doesn’t care.
Yin Guo flipped a page of the book, the ghost knew what the previous page was talking about, but he was just using the action of flipping the book to show that he was reading.
Lin Yiyang also leaned there, flipped through the phone, picked out a few important messages and replied first.
“Are you coming to my game?” she remembered.
Lin Yiyang didn’t speak unexpectedly. After a while, he said, “Look at the time, maybe you won’t be able to catch up.”
Yin Guo thought about it, yes, he was so busy.
They arrived at the train station at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Lin Yiyang took Yin Guo back by train. He went back alone. Of course, taking the bus was more economical and convenient.
But he didn’t plan to tell Yin Guo the truth, he made an excuse so that he would not look weird when he left the train station for a while: “My classmate is nearby, ask me to bring something back. Another ten minutes.”
Where can I go in ten minutes?
Only in the railway station hall, they found a corner, where there are benches to sit. Yin Guoren is very thin and cannot sit for a long time, otherwise the bones in his thighs and buttocks will hurt, and the journey back is already exhausting.
So she stood and Lin Yiyang sat.
The two held hands, and her arms were dangling. Looking at the nebula map on the ceiling of the train station, she recognized a few familiar ones.
“Is there a constellation above?”
“Yes.” He didn’t have to look up to know that he had been to this train station too many times.
“What month were you born, what zodiac sign?” she asked, feeling guilty for a second. The two were so close that she didn’t even know his birthday. When I looked at the ID card, I only paid attention to the year, not the date, and Lin Yiyang knew her information clearly.
“212, water bottle,” he said.
February 12?
“Then we have known each other,” she arrived in New York at the end of January. “What was I doing that day?”
Yin Guo pulled out her phone and wanted to see the chat history: “What did we talk about that day?”
The distance is too far, and the memory is completely blurred.
“We didn’t talk about anything,” Lin Yiyang said. “It should be said that before we met, we didn’t talk about anything.”
“Have we met yet?” I don’t remember at all.
Lin Yiyang smiled, raised her chin, and let her turn over the record by herself.
Still for sale?
She flipped through her phone and finally found it.
It was that day.
It was the day of eating ramen. She came back from Washington and decided that Lin Yiyang had an opinion on her, and then the two did not communicate for ten days. The WeChat records began after Lin Yiyang sent her back to the hotel in Queens.
It’s all “does the watch scratch my ear” and “is ramen with chicken broth better than pork” little dialogue.
“It turned out to be your birthday,” she looked up in surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t I invite you to eat noodles?” He asked back with a smile.
At first, I simply wanted to invite her for a coffee, but I didn’t expect to meet her in Flushing.
A twenty-seven-year-old man, who has been away for many years, does not know how to celebrate his birthday. The friends around him are a group of rough old men. If he doesn’t say hello, no one can remember the specific date of birth. Lin Yiyang had never had a birthday since he was a child, and Wu Wei certainly wouldn’t remember it, so the two people who ate noodles with him that night didn’t understand what day it was or what it was celebrating.
“Then you are looking for me for coffee, and Meng Xiaotian and me, because of your birthday?”
“By chance,” he said.
The words are true but not true, and false but not false.
It’s not actually a coincidence.
He is deliberately doing one thing, or even more than one, all by himself, without telling anyone.
I don’t notify everyone on my birthday, but I still invite my friends to eat noodles, drink a drink, and chat happily… Yin Guo looked at him, and had never felt so sorry for a person before, and didn’t feel that he was lying to him. How romantic is a bowl of noodles, but what I think of is, why is this person so pitiful, not celebrating his birthday?
She didn’t know what to do with this emotion, and kicked the edge of his sneakers: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He was funny: “On the subway that day, you were still saying, ‘My name is Yin Guo’. Do you think it was because of our relationship that day that I told you that you were not sick?”
That’s right.
But my heart is very uncomfortable.
Lin Yiyang raised his wrist to look at his watch, it was time to go.
He held her hand and patted the back of her hand, trying to say something, but in fact there was nothing to say. Whatever you want to say, you can say it anytime with WeChat.
She was still immersed in the guilt of not celebrating his birthday: “going?”
He nodded.
“Here, tell me.”
He clenched her hand tightly as an answer.
Lin Yiyang stood up from the bench, his waist suddenly tightened. Yin Guo took the initiative to put his hand inside his jacket and hugged him. She smelled the mixed odor on his body, the dust after a long journey, which was really bad, and she probably did the same.
She heard his heartbeat and wanted to say something, but couldn’t.
Lin Yiyang realized that she had something to say, so he lowered his head, accommodating her height.
Yin Guo felt that he was patting her on the back. She raised her head, looked at his close eyes and the bridge of his nose, and said, “Next time… let’s try.”
Lin Yiyang had an illusion at this moment, and he returned to the room in the Washington Hotel in the morning. Yin Guo got out of the quilt in a daze and wanted to pass over him, but he was completely unaware of the curvature of her bend to open her neckline to infinity. She stepped over herself and stepped on the carpet with her bare feet firmly…
“Why don’t you talk?” Yin Guo stepped on his sneakers, but didn’t exert any strength.
Lin Yiyang smiled, but still didn’t speak.
He squeezed her hand heavily on her waist: “Okay.”
…
The pain is second, this position and this gesture are too suggestive. No, she took the initiative to say it, and his response made it look like he was teasing.
Yin Guo wanted to avoid his hand, but Lin Yiyang hugged him tightly, and said in a low voice, “You don’t want me to sleep soundly this week?” There was a smile in his voice.
Yin Guo buried her face on his chest and stopped speaking.
The trouble caused by the hot-headed… How to deal with the aftermath, I will talk about it next week.
I just want to hold him now.
The two hugged for half a minute in front of the bench next to the wall. Lin Yiyang sent Yin Guo out of the station and took him to the car he had arranged for.
He was on the side of the road, patiently watching the car carrying Yin Guo turn to the next intersection and disappeared. Then he turned around and went back to the bus stop. He remembered that it was downstairs in a nearby commercial building.
He didn’t arrive at Washington’s court until nine o’clock in the evening.
Sun Zhou, who collected the bill at the front desk, wanted to go home to celebrate his wedding anniversary with his wife, so he didn’t go home and came here to help directly.
“Here’s the key. There is a box of vegetable salad in the refrigerator. I didn’t have time to eat it at noon. The rest are bread slices and apples.” Sun Zhou explained, for fear of starving his boss to death.
Lin Yiyang sat on the high stool outside the counter.
Seeing that Sun Zhou was still talking nonsense, he waved to the outside world and pointed to his own voice.
It means stop talking nonsense and hurry up to coax your wife. As for Lin Yiyang himself, he really couldn’t speak anymore.
“Isn’t it okay? Yesterday, you could talk.” Sun Zhou leaned on the counter with concern and glanced at him.
Lin Yiyang was too lazy to explain to him that last night, in order to give Yin Guo a tour guide and explain the sights around Washington, he made his throat like this: “Tired.”
He shook his head again, refusing to speak.
Sun Zhou didn’t know that he went back and forth to New York once today, and spent more than nine hours on the road. Seeing Lin Yiyang’s unavoidable tiredness, he thought that Lin Yiyang and his girlfriend were too much tossing.
The other party smiled ambiguously and patted him on the back: “Sister-in-law has worked hard, I will accompany you for the past two days.”
Lin Yiyang heard the color in his words and glanced at Sun Zhou.
Sun Zhou also wanted to ask him what happened after graduation.
The Xinhua News Agency that Lin Yiyang originally planned to go to is in Washington, and he can also be distracted to take care of the ball room after work. But this week, Lin Yiyang received another offer from Duke. Duke is not here at DC. If Lin Yiyang wants to study for a Ph.D., the ballroom must ask someone to help.
But looking at Lin Yiyang’s state tonight, Sun Zhou gave up and decided to talk tomorrow.
Before Sun Zhou left, he finally explained something about the ballroom: “There is one last sentence, you listen, don’t talk. They have already left today and are going to New York together.”
Lin Yiyang never goes to the stadium or watches the game. Everyone knows this habit.
So Sun Zhou just told him that the people who participated in the open competition in the ball room had already left.
Lin Yiyang made an OK gesture and waved out.
Meaning: hurry home and serve your wife.
He sent Sun Zhou away, pulled the iron door between the ball room and the elevator door, and locked it.
Opening the refrigerator, he took out the vegetable salad, poured it on the plate, poured the fruit, washed a fork, and sat on the counter, eating slowly. After two bites, I felt hot and took off my jacket again.
A beep, it’s WeChat.
The phone was in the pocket of his coat, he pulled the sleeve to the front and took out the phone.
RedFish: Training is over~
RedFish: I found it especially useful to watch you go through yesterday and this morning. Now I look at the game data of these local players, and I seem to understand better. their thinking.
Lin: It’s good to be useful.
RedFish: Lin, why are you so different from face-to-face on WeChat?
Lin Yiyang smiled.
Type slowly back to her.
Lin: Is there any?
RedFish: Of course, if I show the WeChat chat records to outsiders, I will definitely think that I am chasing you.
Lin: Really?
RedFish: Are you busy? Typing so little?
It’s just inertia, he really doesn’t really like chat tools.
Lin: I’m in the basketball room, just myself.
RedFish: I went back to my room, just myself.
Lin: Video?
RedFish: Hmm.
Lin Yiyang knew that WeChat could make videos, and he had seen it used by his roommates, but it took a few seconds for the first operation. Finally successfully sent a video invitation, waited for the sound to be heard, and it was connected there.
However, the signal was not good, so Yin Guo kept asking, “Can you see me? Is the signal bad?”
The screen was pitch black.
hang up.
Soon, Yin Guo sent another invitation.
It was only this time that he remembered that he didn’t connect to the wifi in the ball room, and the signal was good.
***
Yin Guo specially turned on the table lamp, the light is beautiful, yellow, not dazzling, and can modify the facial features.
On her phone case, there is a metal buckle that can stand on the table, so the phone is securely placed on the desk. After it was set up, I saw the bar in the ball room in the video.
I could hear the rushing water, but I didn’t see Lin Yiyang.
“What are you doing?” she asked while lying on the table, staring at the screen.
Suddenly, the video was cut off again.
Signal so bad?
***
Lin Yiyang was washing the cups. He wanted to chat with her, clean up the bar, and finish all the work that should be done, so that he could go home early.
But when Yin Guo opened her mouth to ask, she realized that her voice was broken again. She didn’t want to let her know that she was uncomfortable, so she had to cut off the picture she just connected.
I didn’t even have time to wipe it, the screen was full of water droplets.
RedFish: The signal in your gym is so poor that no client complains?
Lin Yiyang found a towel and wiped his hands dry.
Lin: Most people don’t dare, the boss has a bad temper.
Lin Yiyang took the mobile phone and the rag for cleaning the ball table, chatting with Yin Guo, teasing the poor, and cleaning the table one by one. After the dozen or so pool tables have been wiped clean, the clubs on the club rack are stacked one by one.
Then I found a black cardboard box and collected all the powder that was scattered everywhere.
Finally, one light was turned off.
There is a resting corner in the northeast corner of the ballroom. There are a few old sofas, a TV and a DVD player. There is a cot. Sun Zhou usually sleeps here when he doesn’t want to go home, or when he has a fight with his wife.
Lin Yiyang was exhausted and lay down, thinking about sleeping tonight.
Otherwise, the journey back to the apartment is long and troublesome.
In the darkness, there is only the light source of the mobile phone screen.
RedFish: You’re still in the gym so late, you’re going home late, right?
Lin: Don’t go back.
RedFish: Sleeping in the ballroom? Do you have a bed?
Lin: Yes.
RedFish: Actually, I feel sorry for you. I took me here by car and went back.
Lin Yiyang put one arm behind his head, resting his head on his left hand.
Lin: Is it distressed? Still miss me?
RedFish: …both.
RedFish: By the way, you take a picture of the tattoo for me, I want to do it as a screen saver for my phone.
He started to tease her.
Lin: Above, or below?
RedFish: …Rogue.
Lin: ?
RedFish: No more.
Lin Yiyang turned over with a smile, looked for a wall lamp, and turned it on.
He contrasted his right arm, took a picture, and was about to send it when he saw her and asked another question.
RedFish: By the way, the game schedule is down. I will send you a screenshot in a while, you can see if you can catch up, I have studied for a long time, you may not catch up in the group stage. Pray I can make it to the quarterfinals on Saturday.
RedFish: Saturday, you should be free.
RedFish: 0.0 people.
Yin Guo really wanted him to watch a game, especially since it was her first professional game, it had a different meaning.
He can read it.
He has been restless about this since morning. Those tea leaves that used to look like old age have been dried and sealed, but now they seem to be poured into a glass and poured with hot water, gradually soaking those bits and pieces of the past…
Lin Yiyang felt the darkness, found a newly bought club on the shelf, and picked up the nearest table.
The light source is far away, and it hits the table. The ball is on the table, with color on one side and black shadow on the other… He wanted to aim, but he didn’t hit a shot for a long time.
ear,
Some people are saying, Old Sixth, if you are soft, you will admit your mistake.
Someone is saying, Brother Six, please.
Someone smashed the teacup, and all the tea was spilled on the ground, and the poor-quality cement floor was sucked dry.
Wet tea leaves were left behind.
…
That year, he was also a teenager wearing jeans, but it was not such a good brand, he bought it from Jiang Yang’s closet; he was also a pair of sneakers, but he only had one pair, one pair was worn for a year. Going to school; how did he know what Saint Laurent was that year, he only knew that the street was called Street, and he always spelled it wrong, and his English was so bad that it was difficult for him to go to school.
That year, at the door of that room in Dongxincheng, he swore an oath: he would never come back to this door again, and he would never enter the arena again.
No one heard this sentence. He said it to himself and practiced it for more than ten years.
But no one knew that when he went out that day, he squatted outside the East New City Gate and cried.
Lin Yiyang’s eyes fell on the black ball he wanted to shoot down, and he slowly twitched the club and hit it hard. The black ball hits the edge of the bottom pocket like a fly, but unexpectedly, it doesn’t go in.
In the dim light, it stopped at the edge of the pocket.
***
Yin Guo saw that he would not return, and guessed that the signal in the ball room was not good.
She held her chin and waited patiently beside the lamp. After ten minutes, a sentence jumped out.
Lin: I went to practice.
Xiaoguo: Why did you suddenly want to practice?
Lin: Try a new pole.
Xiaoguo: Your clubs are good, you can see that the boss knows what to do.
Lin: Xiao Guoer.
He called her suddenly.
Yin Guo looked at those three words, inexplicably intimate, and could imagine his demeanor and tone when he called him. Her eyes were full of laughter, unable to hide it, and the lamp was shining brightly.
Xiaoguo: Hmm.
Lin: I’m going to make mistakes in the future, give me a chance to correct, okay?
Lin: It’s not the kind of derailment.