Hello, How Long Has This Been Going On? - Chapter 84

The mobile phone next to the computer beeped twice.

Huo Ran’s hand that was signing the signature paused, and his smooth handwriting condensed into a deep ink dot. He stared at the black ink that was gradually fading, continued to sign the name, and picked up the phone.

[Tao: I have received a gift, which is barely worth the night snack. ]

[Tao: Take it apart and look at it, it looks so difficult, each piece looks about the same, can this puzzle really be put together? ]

Seven o’clock sharp.

So Tao Zhiyue got off work on time today. It took 20 minutes from the company to the vegetable market. After shopping for vegetables, he walked home. It was exactly seven o’clock.

There was a faint smile on his stern face.

[HR: The boss said it’s really okay, if you can’t spell it out, you can ask him to refund the money. ]

[Tao: It’s not as expensive as the air ticket to fly there. ]

[Tao: You can only work hard, if it doesn’t work, I will beat you up. ]

[Tao: Until what time do you have to work overtime today? ]

[HR: Around nine o’clock. ]

[HR: I’ll be back as soon as possible. ]

[Tao: Good. ]

Huo Ran thought for a while, and imitated Tao Zhiyue’s reply briskly.

[HR: Ok. ]

The conversation came to an end, Huo Ran pressed the lock screen, and the screen turned into darkness, he looked at the darkness.

After waiting for a few seconds, Huo Ran found that the signed documents on the table had not been taken away by the assistant, so he looked up suspiciously.

The assistant seemed a little distracted and looked at him blankly.

“Any thing else?”

Huo Ran glanced at her, quickly looked away, and flipped through other documents piled up on the table.

“Ah, no more, sorry Mr. Huo, I’m going out first.”

The assistant woke up immediately, quickly picked up the file, bowed to him, and walked out of the office quickly.

She suddenly remembered something: “By the way, do I want to bring you food?”

“No.”

“Okay, Mr. Huo, then I’m going out.”

no respond.

The assistant who walked to the door turned around, and when he gently closed the door, he saw Huo Ran keeping his head down, like a silent sculpture.

The door is closed.

For some reason, she sighed with some melancholy.

The assistant walked back to her work station with the processed documents in her arms. On the way, she ran into a familiar colleague. Seeing her distraught look, the colleague joked, “Why are you being scolded for this expression?”

She said casually, “It would be fine if I was scolded.”

“! I didn’t see it, you still have this habit.” The colleague laughed, “But I have never seen Mr. Huo training people, so I don’t know what it will be like.”

“Speaking of which, I haven’t seen…”

It was dinner time, put down the files, and the two of them went to the restaurant for dinner together.

This is the most relaxing time to gossip and chat in a day. My colleague asked curiously, “So what were you depressed about just now? Could it be that something happened to the company?”

“That’s not true.” The assistant thought for a while, and then mustered up the courage to say, “Do you feel that Mr. Huo has changed?”

“Huh?” This topic surprised my colleagues, “It may be very far away for me, and I don’t have much chance to get in touch, so I don’t feel it.”

“Is there any first-hand gossip? Tell me quickly.”

“It’s not gossip…” the assistant organized the words, “It’s just, in the past month, I feel that Mr. Huo is in a bad mood, and he has no expression every day.”

Colleagues were shocked: “Isn’t there no expression all the time? Every day is a very standard president’s face!”

“No, that was on purpose.” The assistant lowered his voice, “Everyone knows about Mr. Huo having a boyfriend. In fact, sometimes when I go to Mr. Huo’s office, I will see Mr. Huo sending messages or making calls. Then his expression was completely different from usual, very cheerful, but when he turned his head and saw me, he immediately changed back.”

“Huo always feels a little embarrassed at times like this. I usually pretend not to see it and talk to him calmly. At the same time, I can only scream in my heart by myself. You can’t see it, so I can’t share it. But It’s really good!”

Colleagues suddenly tightened the chopsticks: “Now I have been scratching, ah ah ah, abominable! Good incense! Is there any more?”

“Oh, no more. Since Mr. Huo was often away during this period, he seems to have really become expressionless.”

The colleagues who were aroused by the interest began to recall hard: “If you want to say this, I also found a little difference… I met Mr. Huo on the road before, and he would nod and say hello to us. Now it seems that there is no more, so I walked in a very ordinary way. In the past, it’s like I didn’t see it.”

“That’s right! And the way of speaking has also changed. For example, if he found that I was distracted or hesitant to speak, he would ask what’s the matter and if there’s anything wrong. Now it’s very short, and he just asks if there’s anything else. ?”

“Also, in the past, at noon, Mr. Huo would often specify dishes for me to order. According to my observation, I should have the same lunch as my partner. But recently, there is no more. Let me do whatever the restaurant serves. What to send, I work overtime at night and often don’t eat.”

“Ah…” The colleague was dumbfounded, “The change is so big, it feels like I have been hit by something, can’t it be a breakup?”

“At first I thought so too, but later I found out that it didn’t seem to be the case. When Mr. Huo read the news today, he still smiled. It was the kind of expression that would only be shown in front of the object. So I guess there is no breakup, but the arc of the smile is small A lot, and it won’t hide it from outsiders.”

“How can I describe it… It’s just a feeling of indifference.”

The two looked at each other, silent for a while.

The colleague whispered: “After listening to you, I am also a little depressed.”

The dining room was brightly lit, with employees coming and going with their trays, and the lights streaming from the windows lit up the night. A series of clear glass windows are neatly arranged, gradually rising with the floor, in front of the topmost window, Huo Ran stands quietly, staring at the small and busy traffic in the distance.

Usually he should be hungry at this time, but not now, it may be the chain reaction some time ago, which made his brain feel very annoyed, so he simply stopped reminding himself to eat.

Huo Ran was at the beach that day, he came up after snorkeling and took off his equipment, because he was very tired because he had exhausted a lot of energy.

He suddenly smelled the aroma of fried crab coming from the seaside restaurant, and suddenly felt very hungry, so he turned around and walked towards the restaurant as a matter of course.

His hair was wet, blown by the sea breeze, and the tourists passing by him wore swimming rings, holding sweet coconuts in their hands, and their smiles were extraordinarily dazzling.

Huo Ran turned around in a daze, and saw that everyone on the beach was laughing, and under the sunlight, they looked like countless blurred and shining phantoms.

He suddenly felt a deep fear.

Are the feelings of hunger and exhaustion that are rushing up at this moment real?

The soft sand on the soles of his feet imprisoned his movements, and he couldn’t go any further.

So when it was dark and night, a bonfire was lit by the beach, tourists cheered and danced around the circle, Huo Ran sat under the tree, quietly observing everyone in front of him, and never ate.

All everyday feelings need to be rethought.

Every day spent in such a mood is very long.

When he gets up in the morning to brush his teeth, he will feel uneasy when he sees the old man boxing downstairs through the bathroom window. Only when it rains one day and the old man does not show up, Huo Ran breathes a sigh of relief.

When he took the elevator to the underground garage and saw the driver who opened the door for him, he always hesitated for a while before making up his mind to get in the car.

No more playing music in the car, and no longer chatting with the driver, Huo Ran would tell him to concentrate on driving every day.

When he arrived at the company, the employees he met along the way would say good morning to him. He didn’t know how to respond, so he simply pretended not to hear.

At work, he seems to be able to find a little comfort, because the things to be busy every day are different.

But except when meeting the assistant, when listening to her report, Huo Ran will always be distracted and think of another “Huo Ran”.

Who will be the assistant of “Huo Ran”? Is it the same person?

What kind of attitude would he use to talk to his assistant?

Is his handwriting the same as mine?

Every time he thinks about these questions, Huo Ran will become very depressed, but he can’t help thinking about it.

The bright days that once had nothing to worry about have become far away.

Huo Ran felt the change in himself, so he rarely met and chatted with familiar and close people. He didn’t want to pretend to be a normal self.

Sometimes he wonders if it would have been better if he hadn’t pursued it to the end that day.

Tao Zhiyue didn’t lie to him, this is indeed a secret that even if it were him, he would be reluctant to open it for a long time.

He chose to reveal it himself, but he never thought that accepting it would be such a difficult thing.

There are many encounters in life that are so sudden that they seem to have no reason, or even should not have happened.

Obviously it shouldn’t be like this, and it can be better.

People suffer, complain, escape, break down.

But it just happened.

Huo Ran was trying hard to accept it.

Sometimes the string is stretched to the extreme, and he will read the chat records with Tao Zhiyue over and over again.

Tao Zhiyue was the first person to know this secret, and he kept it alone for a long time, unable to share it with anyone.

How did he spend the year alone before Huo Ran inadvertently enlightened him?

Every time he thinks of this, in the boundless imagination, Huo Ran will have a little more courage.

Then when he returned to the empty house at night, the French windows on all sides were so transparent, the first thing Huo Ran did was to open the refrigerator door.

Seeing the well-prepared supper inside is the only moment when he doesn’t question his hunger.

Because it was done by that person, he also wrote a different note every day and drew very vivid stick figures on it.

Where Tao Zhiyue has touched, he will inexplicably feel that it is real, like a guide in the primeval jungle, wherever he walks, the latecomers will follow with confidence.

But thinking about it this way, Tao Zhiyue felt even more lonely.

Moreover, did he really come to this world suddenly on his ordinary commute to get off work without anything happening?

Compared with his peers, his daily routine is extraordinarily regular, and he cares about his health very much.

In the past, Huo Ran felt that this was because Tao Zhi had good living habits and strong self-control, so he could do it.

Thinking about it now, maybe it’s not just because of habit.

Whenever his thoughts wandered here, he stopped himself just in time to think about it.

In fact, Huo Ran didn’t know if he was ready.

He didn’t know whether it would bring him more happiness or more sorrow when he got along with Tao Zhiyue again.

He is not sure about anything.

But he wants to go home.

Huo Ran stood at the door of Room 1502, holding the key in his hand, and was hesitating whether to knock or not.

He was a bit at a loss.

After a few seconds, the door was opened from the inside.

Tao Zhiyue, who was wearing an apron, showed him a very familiar smile.

“I heard footsteps and guessed it was you.”

It was late autumn and the weather was getting cooler. Tao Zhiyue was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt with the top button unbuttoned, making it look less formal. The cuffs were rolled up, looking very homely.

Huo Ran hadn’t seen this scene for a long time, he was almost in a trance.

Under the warm yellow light, he stood in the room, smiling and asking questions.

“Guess what’s behind me?”

Huo Ran remembered that it was the dining table.

“It shouldn’t be a completed jigsaw puzzle.” He answered the question seriously, “Is it dinner? Did you not have dinner and are waiting for me?”

Although it was a question, he used a very firm tone.

Tao Zhiyue nodded: “Because I think you definitely haven’t eaten, so today is not supper, but dinner.”

He walked a little to the side, revealing a table of hearty home-cooked food behind him.

Rich colors and intense fragrances intertwine to invade the senses of sight and smell at the same time.

“It smells good, I’m hungry.”

Hearing what he said, Tao Zhiyue laughed: “You really didn’t guess right, just like me that day.”

Huo Ran was at a loss: “Which day?”

“I saw you on TV the day you attended the forum.”

The memory gradually came back. In the forum venue full of voices, he was wearing a neat black suit and sat in the first row with a pretentious expression.

Then Huo Ran came to the stage and gave a speech, while a TV camera was watching him.

He was thinking while talking, in two hours, Tao Zhiyue would see him on TV.

He prepared a surprise for Tao Zhiyue.

I hope the camera can take a longer close-up, preferably the collar of the shirt in the suit, Tao Zhiyue will definitely recognize it.

Then he’d look at the screen and couldn’t help but laugh.

At that time, Huo Ran memorized the manuscript smoothly, imagining what would happen two hours later in his mind.

And now, a long time later, amidst the smell of vegetables in the room, he looked at Tao Zhiyue’s shirt collar, and finally guessed correctly what was behind him.

So Huo Ran couldn’t help laughing.

In an instant, he forgot everything else, only remembering what was in front of him.

A large colorful bear hidden behind the shirt.

That is a secret that only they know in the whole world.