Is the boss fine today?

Yaduo packed her schoolbag and said that she was going to take a nap.Tan Yue sent her to the door, watched her leave, and closed the inn door without saying a word.

Situ said: "Who told you to close the door? You have a lot of ideas now."

He was standing right behind the counter, the store was dimly lit, making his eyes even darker, and an inescapable smile emerged from his eyes.The eyes of a blind person are very different from those of a normal person. He seems to be a different person, and his whole person is much more vivid.

Situ didn't pretend to be blind, and the more he talked, he became unaccustomed to it.He also remembered that Situ had lied to him for so long, pretending to be blind and pretending to be a ghost, and he was even more angry.After closing the door, he pushed Situ to the wall with a gloomy face without any explanation.

"Boss, let's talk." Tan Yue put one hand on the wall beside Situ, encircling him between the wall and his body, and the two of them got very close.But because the conversation was getting more and more angry, there was nothing charming about this posture.

"You have known me for a long time?" Tan Yue said in a bad tone.He started from the past, which means to settle the account.

"Yes." Situ didn't deny it either, seeing that the conversation was getting more serious, he held back not to tease him.Tan Yue has an inquiring stubbornness, which inexplicably makes him cute.

"Because of that magazine? It has my photo and name on it." Tan Yue didn't know what Situ was thinking, so he continued to ask, but there was nothing Situ expected.

"Forget it?" Situ replied absent-mindedly.He stared straight at the strangulation on Tan Yue's neck, the redness and swelling from yesterday had disappeared, leaving a shocking bruise on his skin.

This tragedy reminded him of other scars on Tan Yue's body.He said: "The last time I saw you were covered with scars..."

Tan Yue interrupted him impatiently: "Don't change the subject."

"Okay, don't you believe me? I can show you that magazine, it's in my room." Seeing that the anger was still there, Situ could only smile reassuringly, "I didn't expect to meet you at the inn. In fact, the lover in the dream is Zhao Zhao's exaggerated rhetoric, and my original words are not like this."

Tan Yue asked, "What is that?"

"Do you really want to know? Ask after you think about it." Situ answered seriously.

"You don't really like me, do you?"

"What do you think?" Situ asked him back.

Tan Yue frowned.

It's not that Situ didn't feel that Situ approached him seemingly.However, they don't understand each other at all, but they are close to each other by human instinct.Does such a relationship need to go further?What's more, Situ didn't know how many other intentions were mixed with these words.

Both of them were silent for a while, not because of embarrassment, but because they had nothing to say.Tan Yue is vigilant like a frightened wild cat now, and what he wants to do now is to peel off the skin of Situ to see what he is hiding from him.

"Forget it." Tan Yue let go of the hand that was supporting the wall.

There was a sound of footsteps behind the door, gradually approaching the two of them.Tan Yue still didn't intend to end the topic, but lowered his voice a bit: "Why are you pretending to be blind?"

"I have an eye disease, and sometimes I just pretend to be blind. Some people do things wrong when I have bad eyesight."

"Am I that kind of person too?"

"I thought you were." Situ seemed to enjoy being interrogated, moved a stool and sat down, and said with his face up, "It turned out that you were just very curious. Do you have any questions?"

The footsteps were approaching, and Lao Xing would be furious when he saw the two of them being so close, so he had no choice but to make a quick decision.

"One last question." He raised a finger and looked down at Situ condescendingly, "Are you a living god?"

"Does it matter?"

"It's very important, I kissed him..." Tan Yue saw his smiling lips, and vaguely remembered the scene of him kissing the Living God in the cave, "If it wasn't for you, I would be at a loss."

"If you kiss me, let me kiss you." Situ avoided answering, "I kissed you too."

"If you don't answer me directly, it will be regarded as your acquiescence."

Tan Yue knew that he couldn't ask anything, and held his breath in his heart, but to put it bluntly, what did these things have to do with him?It's understandable that Situ doesn't want to talk about it, just like Tan Yue doesn't like to mention his past.He passed Situ and walked out from behind the counter.At this time, Lao Xing came out from behind the door with a bag on his back, and said to Situ with his usual expression, "Let's go."

Situ pointed to Tan Yue's back.

He was going upstairs, and Situ didn't intend to keep him in the inn.Just like what Situ said last night, keep an eye on him.

Lao Xing raised his eyebrows, "Bring him, are you sure?"

Tan Yue was surprised and said, "Are you talking about me? Take me where am I going?"

Situ didn't answer Lao Xing's question. He looked at Tan Yue's face and said seriously, "I told you, I have to watch over you in the future, so come with me to Yaduo's house."

Yaduo's house is not a funeral home, but in the east of the town. To be precise, it is Yaduo's uncle Yajie's house.Ya Jie’s house is a small tile-roofed house, which looks very old. The broken corner of the eaves is dripping silently, seeping in from the cracked and peeled-off window sills, and wetting the moss.

Situ sat in the bamboo chair, facing the window on the wall.In the window, the girls from Ya’s family were playing hide-and-seek with Tan Yue. Tan Yue covered his eyes with his hands and said “Ten, Nine, Eight…” as he was counting down, and the girls all hid.Situ saw Yaduo, and she carefully hid under the tree.

"That's all?" Ya Jie weighed his backpack, and he asked Lao Xing.

Lao Xing said: "Because of Ah Bai, I lost a lot of money."

Yajie didn't say anything, and the room returned to silence again, laughter and screams poured in one after another from outside the window, Yajie yelled "be quiet" at the window, and the girls ran away screaming.

Ya Jie stood by the window for a while, then suddenly said, "Why did you bring him here?"

"What's the matter with that outsider, he doesn't buy goods, what does he do?" When he turned to ask Situ, sharp vigilance appeared in his eyes, and he swiped past the figure outside the window.

"Sacrifice," Situ smiled and said a word, "otherwise what else could it be?"

Ya Jie was surprised: "Is that the case?"

The look in his eyes that looked at Situ became ambiguous, "Why did you pick someone from another place?"

Lao Xing stood up in a timely manner and interrupted the conversation between the two."It's almost time to go," he said.

When they came out of the house, Tan Yue crouched under a tree making paper airplanes, a group of girls chattered around him, and when they saw the adults coming, they scattered like birds and beasts, leaving only teeth.Tan Yue gave the plane to Ya Duo, and met Situ's eyes.

"Going away?" he asked.

Situ nodded.

Before coming here, Situ and Tan Yue said that they came to do business, and the jujubes on the mountain could be sold, and Yajie was the middleman.Tan Yue had no suspicion on his face, but when he saw Yaduo, he immediately thought of Yaduo's warning and Situ's warning.They both make the talk more careful with each other.

Tan Yue followed behind them, and the three walked towards the Phaeton parked by the roadside.Lao Xing came with a backpack on his back and walked away empty-handed, which showed that the business was done.

There is a long distance between the east of the town and the west of the town, and it takes more than an hour to drive.There was a traffic jam on the road. It seemed that there was a car accident somewhere, and the traffic queue was motionless. "Are you hungry?" Lao Xing was very concerned about Situ, he got out of the car, "I'll buy something to eat."

As soon as he left, Situ pressed the car lock button and it clicked.Tan Yue leaned over from the back seat, stretched out his arms and hugged Situ who was in the co-pilot.He said behind Situ's head, "Why did you tell me to be careful last time?"

"Yajie is not a good person, he saw you."

Situ let him hold him, and he closed his eyes to take a nap, and his voice was a little muffled.

Talking more and more dubiously, "Is that so?"

Lao Xing came over with a paper bag in his arms, but Tan Yue withdrew his hand.

Back at the inn at night, Tan Yue was knocked on the door by Situ after taking a shower, and the two slept on the same bed again, covering the quilt and chatting.

"Don't kill yourself again... think about your parents."

Situ's voice was clear and deep, but what he said were all words that made Tan Yue uninterested.

Tan Yue turned over impatiently, "Hurry up and sleep."

The next day, it seemed that Situ's persuasion before going to bed had worked. Tan Yue remembered the relics of his biological father and mother he saw in the temple last time, and decided to visit again.He borrowed a car from Situ and said that he was going to worship Tula, so no one stopped him from skipping work.

He has a good memory. After driving to the top of the mountain, he parked the car according to the last route and walked into the woods.

Just when he was about to see the temple, Tan Yue was suddenly grabbed by a strange force behind him, and a strange smell rushed into his mouth and nose.A strong sense of weightlessness and powerlessness rose from his toes, and he was dizzy. Before he fell, he heard footsteps faintly.

It was already late at night when he woke up again, and when he opened his eyes, what he saw was a scene of starry night sky.I don't know what kind of medicine was given. His hands and feet have no strength, and his tongue is numb.He turned over with difficulty, and the place beside him was the night sky again, full of stars, dense and bright.

The more I talked about it, the more it seemed that none of this was true.He bit his tongue, and the pain woke him up a little.He got up, knelt and sat on the wooden board under him, only then realized that he was lying on a small boat.The small boat carried him floating in the water in the middle of the night. The river was gentle, reflecting the night sky and copying the stars.The river is full of stars, and he seems to be lying in the Milky Way.

why am i here

Tan Yue thought about it and looked around.It was too dark around, and he raised the oil lamp that someone left on the boat beside him, but he could barely see that this was a lake, not a river, and the lake was extremely far away from him.

"Is anyone there?" Tan Yue shouted from the lake, but only the chirping of insects and birds could be heard.

After a while, he touched the lake water, it was wet and cold, he couldn't swim, jumping would be a dead end.He recalled when he lost consciousness and guessed that someone kidnapped him to the lake.

Unable to find a way out, Tan Yue had no choice but to lie down on the boat and face to face the stars in the night sky.Lying in the endless starry sky and the viscous sound of insects like this, he somehow felt a kind of tranquility that he had never felt before.The death of his parents, Kur, the eyebrows, Situ, the living gods that filled his mind before...all disappeared, leaving only himself, and this sky lake.

After an unknown amount of time, he vaguely saw a person holding a torch on a cliff in the distance.Under the firelight, his mask was scarlet and hideous.

Tan Yue suddenly got a jolt and sat up from the boat.

Is this a living god?

The figure flickered and disappeared again.

Soon, he heard the sound of falling water, the waves swayed, and the ripples spread all the way to him.

Someone was swimming towards him...

A pair of hands suddenly stretched out from the water, grabbed the side of the boat, the boat shook violently, and in the next second, a person wearing a mask of a living god emerged from the water.His face was particularly ugly and terrifying at night, red water flowed down from his eye sockets line by line, as if he was crying and laughing.

"Situ?" Tan Yue's heart was pounding and he stared intently at his face, "Is that you?"

The masked man carried a small boat, which was very narrow, only about the width of one person.As soon as he came up, their bodies were almost stuck together.The masked man didn't answer, Tan Yue simply grabbed his collar and reached his ear to lift his mask.

The mask fell off - Situ's pale and wet face.

Tan Yue breathed a sigh of relief, "It's really you."

"Well, have you been waiting for a long time? I don't know, it's late..."

Situ panted, his chest heaved for a while, as if he was extremely tired, he leaned towards him and hugged Tan Yue.

The boat was too narrow, and the two of them could neither sit nor stand. Situ was straddling Tan Yue. His hot breath and clammy lake water poured on his cheeks and neck. He was both hot and cold.

It was the first time Tan Yue saw such an emotional Situ, and he was at a loss for a while, "What's going on, why am I here? I'm going to pay homage to Tula..."

"Sacrifice." Situ whispered in his ear, "You are the sacrifice of the living god."

"Sacrifice? I was sacrificed? Is that what you mean?"

"No," said Situ, "God has only one sacrifice in his life. What do you think?"

"companion?"

"Yes, you have been chosen..."

Talking more blankly, he said, "I didn't promise you."

"That's my problem. I didn't expect them to pull you up so quickly."

"...they, the ones who kidnapped me? By the way, the sacrifices of your Mei tribe are going to float here all night? What's the rule?"

"It's from the town. They found you without telling me." Situ kissed him apologetically, "I'm sorry. It's a ceremony on the boat... The living god came to Amira Lake by boat to find his sacrifice , it has been like this since ancient times.”

"But you seem to have swum here."

"I'm afraid you'll wait too long."

"Thank you so much."

"How do you thank me?" Situ smiled, "Huh?"

"Where are you touching?" Tan Yue shoved him shyly, causing the boat to shake dangerously.He lay down and patted the place beside him, "Lie down and look at the stars! It's the first time I've seen so many stars..."

Soft lips blocked his lips again.Situ's kiss was gentle and short, brushing his cheek and then kissing behind his ear.

……

The boat swayed, Tan Yue's thoughts were also disturbed.

Living gods, sacrifices, Situ, stars...

Tan Kesheng, Yan Ni, Kuer...

Watch out for them...all of them.