When He Smiles - Chapter 37

Time scene, the fire on the street.

Shops in the alleyway have begun to operate normally, and Shi Jin approached the innermost part of the alleyway. The door of the store was half open. Before he could go in a few steps, he yelled, ‘Buddy was stuck for an hour, it’s too back.’ Before he finished speaking, his brows were frowned, his hands on his nose and he fanned.

“Damn, how many cigarettes did you smoke?”

Chi Zheng was typing on the keyboard in black short sleeves, with half a cigarette in his mouth.

Shi Jin stepped forward to look at it, a slip of code.

“What are you doing?”

Chi Zheng half-squinted his eyes and stopped the work in his hands. Turned around, took the cigarette off, pulled the corner of his mouth slightly, and said casually: “When I get it right, I will talk to you later.”

Shi Jinbu laughed.

“Laugh a fart.” Chi Zheng carelessly.

Shi Jin sighed and smiled continuously.

“My buddy now really feels that love is powerful. You are so horrible. It’s a bit of a prodigal son looking back.”

Chi Zheng raised his eyes and let out a ‘chick’.

“I said, how have you been with that woman recently?” Shi Jin asked.

Hearing this, Chi Zheng was silent.

Shi Jin: “You haven’t caught it yet, have you?”

Chi Zheng passed the cigarette to his mouth again, frowning.

“If it doesn’t work, just stick to it. Isn’t this your strong point?”

Chi Zheng gave a cold glance.

Shi Jin chuckled, “Don’t blame your buddies for a lot of things, special circumstances have to be dealt with specially, don’t you know?”

Chi Zheng’s thin lips tightened.

A few years ago, Lu Sibei chased her to death, he knew that this woman is sensitive and stubborn. What’s more, there are so many inexhaustible links between He Liang and them, he always thinks that he can’t be anxious, and it’s best to strip them bit by bit. But she was so concealed that Chi Zheng couldn’t help but frown when she thought of this place, smoking even more fiercely.

“You don’t even care about your hairiness, do you?” Shi Jin asked.

Chi Zheng didn’t say anything.

Shi Jin shrugged, “It’s really boring to be this way.”

“No.” Chi Zheng said lightly for a long time.

“Then why are you still daunting?”

Chi Zheng arched his back molars.

“I say–“

When Shi Jin was halfway through it, Chi Zheng’s face went dark.

“It’s okay to get out.”

“Damn.” Shi Jin curled his lips. “Whenever you talk about it, do you persuade you?”

“Who the **** is it?”

“Want me to call?”

Chi Zheng: “Fuck.”

He took a deep breath, frowning. He has been very busy for the next few days, and it was already the end of June when he was free.

That week, the temperature was frighteningly high.

Meng Shengnan finishes class every day and then returns to the office, returning to the apartment later. People are too hot, and they fall asleep late in the middle of the night. One day a teacher who worked with him was temporarily in trouble and could not go to the kindergarten to pick up his children in time. She was free at that moment, so she agreed.

Within a 20-minute bus ride from the first day of Huakou.

As soon as she reached the ground in the afternoon, she saw the crowd crushed by darkness. It was shocked, but there was still half an hour left before school. She stood across the street and waited, stepping back. Someone was accidentally stepped on, so he turned around and said sorry.

“Meng Shengnan?”

She was also taken aback, looking at Nie Jing, “Your child is going to school here?”

The woman nodded, “Why are you here?”

“Oh, help a colleague to pick up the child.”

Nie Jing: “That’s it.”

Meng Shengnan smiled, “What have you been up to?”

Nie Jing shook her head and was about to speak when her phone rang. The woman glanced at her, turned sideways to pick it up. Within a minute, I heard it say: “Don’t worry, sister asks.” Then he hung up and dialed another number, and it didn’t take a while to get connected. I don’t know what was said over there, but Meng Shengnan heard something wrong.

“Then you have no other way, she is unfamiliar with her place in Shenzhen–“

A few words hung up.

Nie Jing seemed particularly depressed, her eyelids drooping. Meng Shengnan stepped forward and asked softly: “What’s the matter?”

The woman looked up, her eyes wet.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Nie Jing shook her head blankly, and smiled at her forcibly, “It’s okay.”

“Just tell me if you have anything, maybe I can help.”

Meng Shengnan handed over the tissues.

The woman glanced at her, hesitating.

“Say it.”

Nie Jing sniffed, looked down at the ground, “I asked a friend in Shenzhen to help my sister find a job, and she said she couldn’t help.”

“How is your sister now?”

“Still living in a hotel.” Nie Jing pursed her lips, her voice a little unstable, “I take her as my best friend.”

Meng Shengnan sighed.

“Don’t think too much, the important thing now is to get your sister settled down quickly.”

“But I don’t know anyone in Shenzhen anymore.”

Meng Shengnan asked again: “What did your sister learn?”

Nie Jing paused, and said, “College, reading printing.”

“Did you just graduate looking for a job?”

“Ok.”

“In this way, I will help you find out and let you know as soon as I have news.” Meng Shengnan thought for a moment, and said, “Do you think it is?”

Nie Jing looked at her with wet eyes, “Can it work?”

Meng Shengnan smiled, “Don’t worry.”

For a long time, Nie Jing said, “Thank you.”

“You’re polite with me.”

So they left their numbers, and the kindergarten was about to end at that time, and the two were separated from each other. After the woman walked away, she looked back again. It seems that women are really going through a lot of vicissitudes, and the market is angry. After picking up the child and sending it back, she carried the bag back to the apartment. Along the way, I searched all my friends in Shenzhen. Thinking of the newspaper senior who taught her in Changsha, she was seconded over there, she thought about it, and the number was still there.

After a long connection, someone picked it up, with an old voice.

“Hey.”

“Teacher, this is Meng Shengnan.”

Two years ago, she insisted on leaving, and seniors couldn’t keep it. Speaking of it, she was embarrassed to interrupt, after all, she rarely met a mentor in college. Later, I briefly talked about the situation and hung up the old senior and asked her: “Are you coming back?”

Meng Shengnan was silent.

Then, after a long sigh in the earpiece, the beep continued.

The wind is blowing under my feet.

She walked slowly along the path, and did not go directly to the apartment. Instead, he went to the small playground next to him, and the school was over. There was no one around, she sat there and blinked in the dark starry sky. Slowly, without seeing her fingers, she got up and went back the same way.

A few minutes after entering the house, Xiao Lin knocked on the door and came in.

“I’m quite bored by myself, come over and talk to you.”

It should have just come back from a date, and the woman’s face is still flushed. She poured a glass of water and handed it over, and Xiao Lin couldn’t help smiling while sitting on the sofa. Meng Shengnan knew what was going on without guessing, it was exactly the same as Qi Qiao and Song Jiashu when they were in high school.

“The wedding date is about to be fixed?” she asked.

Xiao Lin was surprised, “My God, you are amazing.”

Meng Shengnan smiled, “You can guess seven to eight points like this.”

The woman lowered her head embarrassedly.

“By the way, I heard him say that you two are still high school classmates?”

Meng Shengnan nodded.

“I didn’t expect it to be so coincidental.”

Xiaolin came and got interested: “Then you tell me more about how he was then?”

“At that time—”

Meng Shengnan briefly said a few small things, and the woman couldn’t keep her mouth smiling. In fact, she always felt that Fu Song looked like a person. Reading Keigo Higashino a few years ago, the mathematics genius Ishigami in Suspect X. If you think about it carefully, it’s not very similar. In the end, a young classmate friend found someone in love. Wind and rain are on the same road, walking side by side.

The night is getting deeper.

Before returning to the room to rest, Xiaolin asked her to borrow the book, and Meng Shengnan went to the bedroom to get it. On the sofa, her cell phone rang throughout this night, Xiao Lin leaned forward to take it, walked to the room and handed it to her, “Your phone.”

Meng Shengnan took it and glanced at the caller ID.

“Why don’t you pick it up, who is it?” Xiaolin was curious.

Meng Shengnan licked her dry lips, and the bell was persevering. She didn’t know what to do, and her subordinates were slumped. Shi Jin on the phone covered his mouth with joy, handed the phone to the man who was about to be moldy by the smoke, and said, “It’s OK.”

Chi Zheng frowned and touched his nose.

Meng Shengnan slowly pressed the phone to her ear, Xiao Lin smiled and took the book in her hand, and whispered to go first. The room was quiet for a while, except for the quiet breathing and silence on both sides of the earpiece.

“What’s the matter?” she asked softly.

Chi Zheng pursed his mouth and looked at the perpetrator coldly, a flashy person with a history and interest. All night this guy either typed the code or stared at the contact interface, with the woman’s name on it. Shi Jin was really anxious, so he pressed over while he was not paying attention.

The shop door was closed.

Chi Zheng whispered: “Not asleep yet?”

“Ok.”

“What are you up to?”

Meng Shengnan: “Nothing.”

Chi Zheng was silent, “Last time—”

Meng Shengnan’s heart tightened.

“Do you have time in these two days? Come out and meet.” The man turned the subject temporarily.

Meng Shengnan: “The school will be very busy preparing for the final exam.”

“Then when are you not busy?”

Meng Shengnan paused for a few seconds, and said, “I have been very busy these days.”

“Is it?”

“Ok.”

Chi Zheng didn’t say anything again, and so did Meng Shengnan.

After a while, Chi Zheng said, “Then go to sleep.”

“Goodbye.”

The busy tone in the receiver lasted for a long time before Chi Zheng took the call. He threw the phone aside and stuffed his cigarette into his mouth. The tedious and lengthy code on the computer spread all over the screen, Chi Zheng frowned, biting the cigarette and crackling.

It was dark and bright.

Early the next morning, Meng Shengnan received a call from her senior. She said she had a job in a publishing house in Shenzhen, so she called Nie Jing hurriedly. The woman thanked the woman for inviting her to dinner, but Meng Shengnan couldn’t postpone it, and it was the second day of July after the final exam.

At ten o’clock in the morning, it was her last class in the classroom.

Forty-five minutes in a period, basically fifty-two students spent the day chatting with her. There is a holiday in the afternoon, and the final exam is two days later. There was a pair of boys and girls who fell in love early in the class. The two changed seats next to each other, winking their eyebrows in class.

A student asked her loudly: “Teacher, you don’t care?”

Meng Shengnan smiled, “The world is free today.”

The classroom is roaring.

A woman who lives in an extroverted life stood up and asked everyone: “I read a post two days ago and said that if given a chance, what superpowers do you want to have? Let me first say, let Daniel Wu fall in love with me.”

The class made a long boo.

“Never forget!”

“Past and Present!”

“Teleport!”

“Control your destiny!”

“Let those who like me like me!”

The whole class patted their mouths.

The girl shouted: “Teacher, how about you?”

It was quiet.

Meng Shengnan thought about it seriously, and said with a smile: “I want to hear Cao Xueqin’s retelling of The Dream of Red Mansions.”

The whole class: “…”

After class was over, she went downstairs and walked out. The students walking up and down the stairs from time to time, giggling and youthful. She walked slowly, remembering that she had just lied. If given a chance, she would like to go back to herself at the age of 16 and a half in 2004 and be a brave person.

Outside the teaching building, there was a sudden light rain.

She suddenly remembered this Friday, so she hurriedly went to the newsstand in front of the school under the rain. The old man was kind and good-looking, and asked her which one she wanted. She laughed and said, there are many flavors in the world.