My 26-year-old female tenant: Gufan on the Island

Before I knew it, the sky had darkened, and the two blocks I was walking through seemed to have changed in an instant. The block with office buildings went from lively to deserted, while the other bar street was revived at this time. Under the interweaving and changing lights, there were men and women chatting and laughing. They just hugged each other and walked into those well-decorated bars, as if they had endless pleasure in those bars.

This reminded me of Chen Bailu. Before entering the police station, he was still thinking about going to the bar with me in the evening. Behind his seemingly fearless attitude was a long-suppressed mood. He was unable to talk freely with others and could only constantly consume himself in a life full of flaws.

I really want to help him find a way out, but as someone who is also in a period of internal friction, I know that a bar is not a place that can save people. It can only make you forget your troubles temporarily. When you don’t have money to go to the bar, you will only be more troubled…

Therefore, even if it is just going to a bar, once money is involved, it will become extremely realistic...

What does reality mean?

It means that you have to find a way to survive in a competitive society. In addition to survival, you also have to have a love affair with an uncertain direction at the right time. If you are lucky enough to succeed, then you have to consider buying a house and a car, and you have to deal with the mother-in-law who may be difficult to deal with.

This may seem pessimistic, but it is also the real reason why I am reluctant to wake up. I don’t want to face these things.

I imagined myself as a wild horse that had broken free from its reins, free to come and go without any worries. This was how I managed to keep the light of my ideals in my heart.

My ideal is very small, so small that it is not worth mentioning; sometimes it is a city, sometimes it is a gust of wind. There must be wind, only wind can hold up the city, swaying in the air, away from the world.

……

Fang Yuan and I were unable to come to a clear conclusion, which made me even more depressed, so I thought of Robben, another good friend of mine in Suzhou, and I called him.

"Fuck you."

I didn't have any confrontational feelings, I just lit a cigarette and said, "Fuck you, is that not okay?"

"I'm not targeting Auntie, I just want to scold you."

"I have a mother, but no grandfather, so you can't have this kind of clear direction."

"I've never seen you so awake before."

"Sometimes awake, sometimes in a trance..."

Robben fell into silence...

I am also silent.

After a long while, Robben finally spoke: "I can no longer run my funeral business... After all, different trades are like different mountains. In addition, I am short of manpower and my service is not good enough, which has ruined my reputation... I haven't received any orders for several days."

"This is all my and Le Yao's fault...if we run away, you'll be all alone."

"You two are running away... You two are deserting the battlefield..."

"I can see that you are very depressed."

"Don't you two feel any guilt at all?"

"Come out for a drink and I'll tell you."

"it is good."

……

Robben and I sat opposite each other in the food stall. He smoked and I drank beer. After a while, the proprietress brought us the dry pot we ordered. She wiped the table, which was not completely clean, and said, "Later, when you finish eating the shrimp in the dry pot, call me and I will add some soup for you... and then cook instant noodles... so that you can eat your fill."

Robben tilted his head and looked at her, as if frozen.

I quickly said to the boss lady who didn't know the inside story, "Can you cook something else besides instant noodles...hand-rolled noodles are also fine."

"Who has time to make hand-rolled noodles? We just cook instant noodles in soup here."

Robben finally waved his hands and sighed, "This damn sense of fate... Let's just have instant noodles." After saying that, he tried to struggle and said, "Don't use the cheap instant noodles, they don't taste good and they're not chewy... I want the ones that Jinmailang just released recently, the ones that are chewy..."

"What Lang?"

"Jinmailang."

At this time, other customers were urging them to come in, which made the proprietress a little impatient. She rolled her eyes and replied to Robben, "I don't understand... I've come to a food stall, but you're still picky about instant noodles... This really opened my eyes!"

Just as Robben was about to lose his temper, the proprietress had already turned around and walked towards another table of guests who were waiting to be served, not taking Robben seriously at all.

Robben threw away the cigarette in his hand and said after a while: "I don't have to compete with instant noodles... It's just that you are trapped in a fate. Instant noodles come uninvited and you can't avoid them... I have come to eat at a food stall, and you can add soup to the pot and continue to cook instant noodles... Isn't this the same as putting the blame on me...!"

"You can equate instant noodles with shit... You really hate it!"

"I'll say it again, it's not instant noodles that I hate."

"What you hate is the feeling of powerlessness when fighting against fate."

Robben lit a cigarette and stared absentmindedly at the lady boss who was adding instant noodles to the pot next to him. After a long while, he finally spoke: "The greatest pain of a person is to see the world too clearly, but unable to live with an attitude beyond this world..."

I am savoring these words.

Robben asked me again: "Do you and Le Yao feel any guilt towards me?"

"Uh...I have a little...it's hard for Le Yao to say."

"You're talking nonsense... If you had any guilt at all, you wouldn't dare to come back... On the contrary, I think Le Yao is more kind than you... She wouldn't dare to come back."

I was shocked by Robben's logic and cognition. I was stunned for a while before I replied, "Are you sure she didn't return to Suzhou because she didn't dare to face you?"

"She didn't say it, but that's what I thought."

"What did she tell you?"

Robben narrowed his eyes, took a deep puff of cigarette, and replied: "She said that she will stay in Luoyang in the future and open a coffee shop there to make a living..."

"Listen to her nonsense... She stayed there to be a hostess, living a life of debauchery and changing people every day."

"No way...is there an information gap between us?"

After saying that, Robben took out his phone from his pocket. He seemed to have found the chat history between him and Le Yao. He held the phone in front of me and said, "This is the message she sent me yesterday... Look, the design drawings of the coffee shop have been made... It's called Sky City..."

I stared at it and found that what Robben showed me was indeed a design sketch. The structure of the sketch was very simple, but it emphasized the "Castle in the Sky" on the doorplate.

This surprised me a little...she actually wanted to put her previous plan into practice.

Surprised, I sighed and said, "There is no discrepancy between our information... She first worked as a wine promoter to make money, and then used the money to open a coffee shop..."

Robben looked a little speechless, and after a while he asked, "Why do you think she is a wine-selling agent?"

"This is the damn fate you mentioned... She is a penniless person who goes to the bar to drink every day and dreams of opening a coffee shop. Besides being a wine seller, is there any other way to make money? Can these two things be connected together?"

Robben seemed even more speechless. After a long while, he replied, "Have you ever thought that there are other possibilities for her?"

I thought about it for a long time before I came to a conclusion and replied, "Could it be that...she also won the lottery?"