Until his best brother caught up with his favorite girl, the brother said, "Si Hao, you are beaten or scolded I recognize, but you never said you want to be with her!"
The girl asked, "Shen Si Hao, is it so hard to say that you like me? Once I liked you is true, now I love him is also true."
He couldn't answer, so he had to say, "I wish you grow old together."
True.
Later, the brother proposed to the girl, on the shore of Lugu Lake, one knee on the ground, promising a lifetime of deep love.
He looked at his brother's wedding ring in the circle of friends, clicked a zan, and said, "Congratulations, come back to give you a big red envelope."
The brother smiled and said yes.
That night, he had a dream, the girl wearing a blood-stained wedding dress asked, "Si Hao, if you said you liked me earlier, would it be different between us?"
He woke up from the dream with a twinge in his chest, and an unprecedented panic invaded him.
He asked, "Do you believe people are telepathic?"
When he asked this question, he was sitting in a white van going to Lugu Lake, the winding highway up the mountain, with green hills in the distance.
Listening to him speak is a woman with short, floppy hair, wearing a black jacket, one hand on the steering wheel, the corners of his lips slightly up, with a hint of mockery if any.
"Don't you dare not believe it." This is the first time he took the initiative to mention this to others, "On the night of my dream, they had an accident on the way back to Xichang from Lugu Lake, collided head-on with a large truck, and rolled down the mountain with all the people and cars."
The female driver slowed down and looked at him.
"Don't you think they're dreaming of me?"
For three years, he's been hypothesizing that if he had been the one with the girl at that moment, wouldn't she and his best friend have died?
Ten minutes later, the female driver pulled over and said, "I have an impression of that accident, the lot where it happened is around here, don't you want your brother? Let you see."
He was so moved that he was close to tears, "You're such a good person."
The female driver nodded and answered.
He opened the door and walked to the edge of the guardrail, all the past days such as film rolled over in his mind, looking at the distant green hills like Da, his eyes red.
Suddenly, a pair of hands from behind in his shoulder heavy push, the left foot slipped out of the highway, the heart jumped, the arm is again a tight, he crooked body stunned back to the head, only to see the female driver stood behind him, hands grasping his sleeve, the corner of the lips with a touch of meaningful urge.
"What are you doing?" He broke away from her hands and said in a somewhat agitated tone, "It will scare people to death!"
"Didn't you say that your brother dreamed for you to leave in one piece?" The female driver snorted, "Who hasn't had two people die around them? Say it like you're the only one in the world with a story, how pretentious."
02
The woman is called Axia, a black cab driver she met in Xichang.
From the first time he saw her, he felt that she was different from the others, with cold eyebrows and eyes, full of banditry, eating a cage of steamed dumplings in one breath without gasping.
At that time, he was inquiring with the owner of the breakfast store, how to go to Lugu Lake.
The boss didn't say anything, she spoke up first, "I'll take you to the chartered car, six hundred."
He ignored her and continued to ask the boss, "Where can I take the bus?"
Asha looked at him.
The boss said, "It takes almost eight hours to get there by bus, and it's mountainous all the way, so it's better if you charter a bus."
"Forget it, I'm going back anyway, count you four hundred."
"Two hundred." He said.
"I shucks." She said, " *** Nowadays a date is more than that, three hundred and fifty, not a penny less."
"About cannon spend three hundred and fifty can sleep, I spend three hundred and fifty chartered car can sleep you?" Than mouth cheap he is not bad at all.
"It depends on whether you have that ability." She picked up the bowl and drank the diluted rice in one go, "Are you leaving or not?"
"Go." He returned as he shoved the last bite of noodles into his mouth.
She drove an old Suzuki, splattered with mud and dust falling from the windows, he stood in front of the door and couldn't help but question, "Is this car still drivable?"
"It's drivable." She briefly said horrified, opened the driver's seat to get in.
Shen Sihao followed her on the road.
The closer he got to the incident, the more panicked he became, and he could only rely on constant talking to ease his anxiety, but all he got was her ridicule.
Four hours later, the car drove into the scenic area, A Xia said, "Scenic area ticket one hundred, I take you in, as long as eighty."
"Thanks, no." He handed her the money, opened the door and got out of the car, took down the suitcase from the back seat, and walked straight to the ticket hall, in the peak season, the crowd is like a tide, the setting sun slanting horizontally, the end of the straight highway dim.
At this time, his arm was pulled from behind, A Xia stood behind him and asked, "This way, tickets plus accommodation, I charge you two hundred and two, how about it?"
"No need." He withdrew his hand and walked towards the hall.
He wanted the wounds to be revealed to her, but was mocked by her as a joke.
He didn't want to say another word to her.
03
At night, he chose to stay on the southeast side of Lugu Lake by the Sea of Grass.
The roadside of the Grass Sea is dusty and desolate, but he chooses to live here because he hasn't thought about what he's going to do in that place that witnessed their happiness.
And what is the meaning of his coming here.
Pieces of dead grass floating on the surface of the Caohai Lake, sunshine photo once someone asked him if he was in the place where the Red Army crossed the grassland, only a friend called to ask: "Si Hao, you go to Lugu Lake to do what?"
"I don't know." He really didn't know, just happened to have a vacation, just happened to think of his brother and the girl, everything was just right.
"It's all in the past." His friend wanted to say, "Think about it, don't do anything stupid."
He laughed, "What can I do?"
My friend couldn't answer, "Anyway, you've been acting weird since they died, so don't keep everything inside, it's always better to talk about it."
For some reason, he remembered the female driver.
"Say it out for what? For people to hear as a joke?" He stood on the promenade of the inn, looking at the dimming sky and said, "Old dog, don't worry about it, who hasn't had two deaths beside him, I'm not that fragile."
He hung up the phone and went downstairs, following the highway all the way, with few pedestrians along the way, until he came to a bar that was being renovated, and then stopped and paused.
A sign stood in front of the door called, Asha's Tavern.
A short while later, he walked towards the barbecue stall next door, and after ordering a couple of bottles of wine and a few skewers of pancetta, he chatted with the owner: "Is the owner of the tavern next door A Xia?"
The owner laughed, "All our girls here are Asha, which Asha are you looking for?"
Which Asha?
He thought for a moment, "A female bandit, tall and thin, a little dark skinned, smiling eyes curved up like a fox."
He wasn't a person with a particularly good memory, yet he was able to portray the woman's looks without missing a beat, and there was usually only one of those cases, the person must have owed him.
"Ah, Natsuki." Half a moment later, the boss turned the roasted meat on the grill over and said, "What? You want to charter a car?"
He nodded without moving, "En."
"I think I have a business card here, wait." The owner looked down and rummaged through his grease-covered apron, only handing him the card after a burning smell came through the air, "Look, is that her?"
The dark blue business card had a name and a string of cell phone numbers printed on it, as well as the various types of business and identities contracted.
Hsia Chi.
The owner of the inn, contracting for chartered buses, guides, lodging, and scenic area tickets on behalf of the purchase.
That's a lot of business.
He took out his cell phone, according to the business card above the phone dialed the past, a glass of wine down, the phone connected, a cold female voice from the other end of the phone, "Hello."
He cleared his throat, "Xia Zhi?"
"I am, what can I do for you?" The gentle attitude was a far cry from the open-mouthedness in front of him.
"It's like this, I want to charter a car to Lugu Lake tomorrow morning."
"Oh, about what time?"
"Six o'clock, I think, on this side of the Caohai." He popped a face and gave the name of a nearby hotel and said, "My last name is Shen."
"Okay, Mr. Shen." She didn't seem to catch his voice, "Can I ask you anything else?"
"I see you offer so much business on your business card, so I was wondering, any special services?"
She hung up straight away.
04
The next day, he slept in until eight in the morning, and by the time he was cleaned up, it was after nine, and the sunlight spilled over the entire lake, casting a radiant glow through the windows on the wooden floors of the hotel.
Carrying his travel bag, he slowly walked out of the hostel, took out his phone, which had been turned off for a long time, turned it on, and dialed, "I'm sorry, Ms. Xia, my phone ran out of battery and I overslept."
She let out a cold laugh and looked in the rearview mirror and said, "Look up, look across the street."
He raised his head, blinding sunlight came straight up, shaking his eyes, raised his hand to block the sunlight, through the gap in his fingertips, only to see a white van parked on the opposite side.
He crossed the street and walked over to the driver's side window and stopped, only to see Asha wearing black sunglasses and her black hair glistening in the sunlight.
"Mr. Shen?" She laughed angrily.
"It's me." He replied matter-of-factly.
"Teasing me?" She asked as she opened the driver's door, "Fun?"
"Didn't you tease me yesterday? Everyone counts as even." He shrugged, "Tell you what, I'll count it as money if you have to wait a couple extra hours."
If it was a few years ago, Axia would have inevitably exploded, now she just looked at him calmly, "OK, two hundred an hour, total **** seven hundred, take the money."
"Owed." He walked around her, pulled open the passenger door and sat down.
He pulled a carton of cigarettes out of his pocket and asked, "Do you have a light?"
"I've got a fire here." She slammed the car door and gritted her teeth, "Want one?"
"As long as you give it to me I want it." He narrowed his eyes and smiled with smoke, his angular face seemed to radiate light in the sunlight.
Asha started the car and stopped paying attention to him.
"Your name is Natsuki?" He held the cigarette on his fingertips and leaned his elbow against the car window and asked, "Not a local, right? Do you think you're a foreigner, running here for what? You don't look like one of those little fresh literary chicks either."
He swept away yesterday's haze and chattered, "Is there a movie theater here? Isn't it true that you have to drive five hours to Xichang city to see a movie or make a date?"
Asha braked, and his body lurched forward, nearly touching the windshield.
"Get down." She said.
He said, "Aren't you a guide? How about I pay you fifteen hundred dollars to stay with me for a day?"
No matter what the words were, there was always a double entendre from his mouth.
A Xia took a deep breath, "OK."
With Asha, as long as the money is given, everything is fine.
This is yesterday's barbecue stall boss gave him the last eight words of truth, surprisingly good.
05
The car shuttled through the narrow streets and drove into the vicinity of Lugu Lake, where the wind was raging on the lake, and pig-trough boats were parked on the riverbank, and Axia parked the car steadily, but he didn't move for a long time, looking at the surface of the lake with waves, and his breath gradually came down sharply.
"What are you doing?" Asha opened the car door and turned sideways to him.
He just felt his brain a daze, pushed open the door and walked down, the wind will be the side of the banner blowing hunting, the lake water tumbling, from blue to yellow.
There were many people taking pictures by the lake, and he tucked his hands in his pockets and looked ahead speechlessly.
Asha stood at his side looking at her cell phone.
"Are you going to marry me?" He looked at her as if looking at another person.
The wind was too strong for her to hear clearly, and she looked up and asked, "What?"
"Do you want to marry me?" He asked loudly, and a number of people around him looked over at the sound.
"Fuck off." She slapped him on the back, "What's the madness?"
His eyes stirred up a hot tear, his friend was here to propose to the girl, now the reef is still yesterday's reef, but the person has long been not the old deceased, the only thing he can do is to repeat everything again.
His hands on her shoulders, red eyes, "hard to have to say out loud is love? At that time, in addition to my mouth, the whole body is saying love you."
A Xia subconsciously swept a glance to his abdomen below, the surrounding passers-by have already begun to coax, "Together, together."
"The answer comes late, but I still want to tell you that twenty-one year old me is very fond of twenty year old you." He pursed his lips, finally saying what he wanted to say the most, in the girl's favorite place, and maybe that's what he came here for.
He moved his face away, wiping the tears from his sleeve to hide his mess.
"No one blames you, it's just that you've been refusing to forgive yourself." For once, she didn't sneer, "Don't ever come back."
Asha stood up a flight of steps and reached out to wipe the tears from one side of his face.
06
At night, he stayed at Asha's hotel, preparing to leave early in the morning.
The next day, he pushed open the door to see Asha chatting with some young travelers in the compound.
"I'm so envious that you can live here, it's like a paradise." A young girl complained, "I'm falling apart at work every day."
"How much do you make in a year? You must be a rich second generation, right?"
"Sister, you are simply an outstanding representative of literary youth, I'll take a picture of you and send it to microblogging, you will be able to fire."
A Xia sat on a small bench peeling peas, laughed: "I'm not a literary youth, is a friend like here, I promised him to help him realize, so came."
"What about your friend?" The girl squatted down to peel peas with her.
"Dead." She said.
There was a moment of silence.
"I knew you guys had to look like that." She laughed, "In fact, it is young when you do not know, what *** play what, once we went to climb the mountain, encountered landslides, six people are buried inside, at that time do not know if you can survive, said each other's last wish, who survived, who will go to realize it."
"That ...... survived a few?" A boy asked after him.
"All dead." She raised her head, the bright sun shone so brightly that she couldn't open her eyes, "Everyone else's wishes were pretty simple, just this one is troublesome, I should have known to let him change his wish at that time."
"You're such a storyteller ......" the girl said.
"It's not called a story, it's called an accident."
The few people surrounding her couldn't say a word, Shen Sihao turned around and walked back to his room, and in the afternoon, he borrowed a car from Ah Xia, and circled around Lugu Lake by himself.
It wasn't until around nine in the evening that he returned to the hotel and gave the keys back to Ah Xia.
"Are you free? Will you have dinner with me?" He asked.
Asha nodded, "Yes."
The two went to a barbecue not far from the barbecue stall to eat barbecue, ordered a box of snowflakes, a bottle of wine after a bottle of wine, A Xia asked: "Where did you go to play today?"
He looked up at the tall, thin woman across from him wearing a long beige sweater and asked, "Do you like it here?"
"Don't hate it." She replied.
"How much did you dish out for this hotel?"
Speaking of this, Axia straight staggered, "with a partnership, my parents' house mortgaged, with the bank loaned a few hundred thousand it."
"You earn enough money to pay it back?" He suddenly remembered so much business on her business card, heart sympathetic tolerance, "Before the matter, say sorry to you."
"No need." She took a sip of her wine, "Didn't you pay me back as well?"
The two were silent again.
After the barbecue, back to the hotel, near the door, he reached out and hugged her, "I'm leaving tomorrow and never coming back."
"Good." Her hands were in her pockets, "When you go back, don't fight yourself."
He was tempted to ask, "What about you? Are you really staying here just because you're fulfilling a friend's dying wish?
He let go of her, "Can I call you later?"
"Yes, I'll give your friend a discount for future stays here."
In the large compound, there is only the faint light projected through the curtains from the window next to him, he looked at her silently, then ghostly kissed her lips.
Splat.
She returned his slap.
In the future, he would never come here again.
06
When he left, he took another black car.
The car was full of people coming into the city, locals and travelers, and the driver, a Chinese-speaking Yi, was very talkative as he drove out of the landscape and onto the mountain highway.
At this point, a young man asked, "Master, do you know the hotel Axia?"
Shen Sihao noticed that this young man was the young man who was chatting with Axia in the courtyard that day.
"Hsia Chi? Everyone here knows her, a girl from the big city is not at all delicate."
"So is the story she told true?" The girl next to her asked, "Something about friends dying."
"Not really." The driver said back.
Shen Sihao pretended not to care and looked out the window, this woman can be a real liar.
"The one who survived at that time also had her boyfriend, but his boyfriend didn't take those last words seriously in the slightest, and she was the only one who was stupid enough to run all over half of China for those few promises." The driver sighed, "Not long ago, her boyfriend's wedding also called her, sarcastic her to come, you say how her boyfriend is so at ease?"
"Then she is quite poor."
"The past few years is better, she just came to the moment, the whole person is thin as a skeleton, all day drunk, said that when she woke up feel that they are talking to her in the ear."
"And now?" Shen Sihao opened his mouth.
"Pretty good." The driver turned the wheel and entered the disk road.
At two o'clock in the afternoon, arriving in Xichang, he stood on the side of the road and smoked a cigarette.
07
Seven hours later.
He stood in front of Asha's small hotel again.
Some people are destined to be different from others from the first sight.
At nine o'clock in the evening, A Xia was wearing flip-flops in the yard to collect the sheets, the sky was full of stars, and he looked at her, without saying a word.
She folded the sheets in her arms with both hands and looked at him with some surprise, "Did you forget something?"
He shook his head.
"Then what are you doing back here?"
"I came to see you."
"Looking for *** what?" She thought it was funny.
"To help you pay off your debt." He scowled, "I'm twenty-six years old and can take responsibility for my words and actions, so please be serious."
"Have you thought this through? This is a place where it takes five hours to get to a movie theater."
"That's okay, I'll act out whatever you want to see later."
Asha wanted to say something else, but he had reached out and hugged her, "Stop it, I'm staying."
"Why?"
"I don't know, I just want to stay by your side."
A Xia told me this story when we just sat in Lugu Lake then finished the first bottle of wine, I said, "Dare I sit eight hours of mountain road, from Chengdu all the way to Xichang blocked, is to listen to your fancy dog abuse?"
The breeze was gentle, and the sound of water was loud.
She looked at me with some meaningful eyes, "No matter when, you have to love someone who is willing to stay for you."
I didn't have the good sense to kick her, "At first let me go to love a person who took me away is you, now let me go to love a person who is willing to stay is also you, how are you so disgusting?"
She laughed out loud and raised the bottle of wine with *** cup, "Zhou Chan, go love a person who is willing to stay for you, and then go with him, do you understand?"
Do not understand.
Later, she was drunk, Shen Sihao came to carry her home, he scolded while coaxing.
I couldn't resist grabbing a handful of Cai Cai's dog food to eat.
I said, "How did you like her?"
He replied, "I wanted to sleep with her at first."
I got choked up.
"And then, a little bit of heartache for her, there aren't many people in the world with 'shoulders' like her." He carefully recalled, "In fact, I was in Lugu Lake that day with her crazy after a fever, although she said she was afraid that I died in the store to affect her business, but at that time really quite sad time, she slept against the chair, guarded me for a night, she is a good girl."
"Treat her well."
"I know."
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