Neverland

The days in Neverland are easy.

The advantage of the special nature of the work is probably that the boundaries between commuting and commuting are very clear, and there is no need to deal with serial calls during off-duty hours.Xu Muzhou woke up naturally the next day, and he couldn't believe it when he opened his eyes.

Neverland may be rich and powerful, no matter what time you wake up, there are warm meals in the restaurant, and there are always rows of drinks on the small stalls in the lobby on the first floor, as if there is an experienced butler taking care of you in nothingness Every staff member of Neverland.

After the long talk that night, Xu Muzhou went to the supermarket to submit the application form early the next morning. In addition to the watch, he also applied for an additional set of paper calendars.Perhaps it was because there was no information transmission channel involved, so the supermarket approved it easily, and Xu Muzhou got what he thought of on the third day.

When Xu Muzhou was holding the calendar and thinking about where to hang it on the wall, Yan Cen had just finished catching up on sleep and got up. He walked out of the bedroom sleepily, and was about to go to the balcony to fill up a morning cigarette, when Xu Muzhou's bedroom sent a message. A loud bang woke him up.

At that moment, Yan Cen almost thought that Xu Muzhou was under too much psychological pressure, so that he felt angry with Neverland, and planned to demolish the house from his bedroom.

"...You." Yan Cen leaned against the door and asked hesitantly, "What are you doing?"

Xu Muzhou hadn't finished smashing a nail, and was startled by Yan Cen's sudden noise, and almost stepped off the wooden bench.Yan Cen quickly saved him, so that this new colleague would not be injured at work just after he was on vacation.

"Didn't you see?" Xu Muzhou was used to being rescued by Yan Cen, and he didn't think there was anything wrong, he waved the hammer in his hand at Yan Cen carelessly, and pointed at the wall: "Drill a nail."

Yan Cen: "..."

"Why?" Xu Muzhou realized later: "It is strictly forbidden to drive nails into the wall in Neverland?"

"That's not enough." Yan Cen's expression suddenly became very subtle: "...Do you think this decoration doesn't suit your wishes?"

"Who said that, I think it's pretty good." Xu Muzhou fished it back, and took a paper product from the bed: "Isn't this for hanging this thing?"

It wasn't until Xu Muzhou opened the cup of calendar that Yan Cen realized what it was.

There is no other reason, this kind of colorful paper wall calendar is probably older than Xu Muzhou's age in terms of seniority.I don't know how Xu Muzhou filled out the application form. This calendar is one meter square. The cover is exaggerated to use uneven plastic technology to create a poor-quality relief. A few big lotus flowers that are neither pink nor red stand out. The ground is spread on the copper paper with a red background, and several bright green lotus leaves look exactly the same, which is really eye-catching at first glance.

Yan Cen seemed to be overwhelmed by this aesthetic, and remained silent for two or three seconds.

"...Hey, I didn't pick this one." Xu Muzhou bit a steel nail and stood back on the wooden bench, and started his clanging house demolition again, complaining vaguely: "I just applied I want a wall calendar of the same year as when I entered Neverland, who knew that your procurement personnel had such poor eyesight."

Reasonable and well-founded, it doesn't sound like his fault.

"But what are you doing hanging the calendar." Yan Cen reminded him kindly: "The flow of time in Neverland is different from the world you live in."

"Of course it is..." Xu Muzhou seemed to want to say something, but then swallowed the words, paused before laughing: "Isn't this a bit of an atmosphere, a sense of belonging."

The improvised excuse was so clumsy that it didn't need to be dismantled, the little fox himself understood this, turned his head and winked at him, smiled flatteringly, and fumbled to nail the remaining nail to the wall.

—and crooked.

Yan Cen sighed helplessly, and decided to let him go.

Yan Cen is a person who doesn't like to go out very much, his schedule seems to be slightly different from Xu Muzhou's, most of the time he either stays in the bedroom to catch up on sleep, or smokes on the balcony, Xu Muzhou has bumped into him several times.

However, Yan Cen was surprisingly conniving towards him, probably due to the camaraderie he had cultivated from performing missions together.Occasionally, Xu Muzhou insisted on dragging Yan Cen out to digest food twice when he was full of food. Although Yan Cen was reluctant, he acquiesced helplessly.

Neverland is not a closed space, and it is possible to move around in the non-mission period, but most people are unwilling to come out.The farthest boundary of Neverland is near the coast outside the pontoon bridge. Most of the coast is covered by thick fog, which reveals the danger of the unknown, leaving only a small stretch of coastline for relaxation.

Xu Muzhou has been to the beach several times, and even caught a sunrise on the sea once.

The sea of ​​Neverland is vast, and the waves refract the sunlight into layer upon layer of halos, like it is covered with pieces of broken diamonds, sparkling.When the sun rises completely, a narrow side will be covered by the huge metal clock in mid-air. The bright gold will re-plate a new layer of gold on the wheel, and even the hands with copper rust attached to it will also rejuvenate. vitality.

He once asked Yan Cen about the meaning of this clock.

"If the meaning of the existence of Neverland is to find a balance in various timelines to make the world last longer, then why is the roulette symbolizing time always going backwards."

"Because everything in this world is like a round disk, which goes round and round and never stops." Yan Cen said: "This world will eventually turn into a circle. While striving to move forward, it is also constantly approaching the starting point."

Xu Muzhou still remembers Yan Cen's expression when he said these words, the soft light of the sunrise spread over him, Yan Cen narrowed his eyes slightly, looking at the sea in the distance, his eyes were calm, as if he had seen it before. This grand scene has been repeated thousands of times.

Yan Cen has always been an extremely mysterious person in Xu Muzhou's heart.Even after getting along so far, Xu Muzhou still feels the same way, and even thinks that he has more stories than when they first met.

Maybe eating together is an important means for human beings to get closer. Xu Muzhou no longer feels that Yan Cen is so inaccessible. The sense of mystery is more stripped away from the sense of estrangement and turns into a soft amber color. Being included in his deep pupils, it made him look shining.

Xu Muzhou comfortably passed four or five days of vacation with nothing to worry about. The biggest task every day was to draw circles on the calendar with a marker.

It was not until the fifth night that Yan Cen brought back two folders that Xu Muzhou was very familiar with.

"New job content?" Xu Muzhou had just taken a shower, with a towel covering his head, and his voice was a bit muffled.

"Yes." Yan Cen said casually: "The task information given by Zhong Lu, should you read it now or wait a while?"

"Look now." Xu Muzhou said as he wiped his hair indiscriminately, then threw the towel back on the bed, pulled his slippers and came out to take one of the documents from Yan Cen's hand.

Probably because Xu Muzhou has officially passed the "internship period", this time there is no signature on the two folders, so the thickness is not much different.

Xu Muzhou lazily fell down on the sofa, then immediately got up and moved around, giving Yan Cen half of the sofa, waiting for him to unpack it together.

The mission information form of Neverland has the same specifications, and this time it is not different from the previous task form, except that the column that originally said "high risk" has been replaced with a mild "normal" this time.

Among other things, just seeing this is enough for Xu Muzhou to breathe a sigh of relief.

One shock to the schoolyard is enough, Xu Muzhou doesn't want to run for his life while using his brain.

"Brother Yan." Xu Muzhou pointed to the line of small words under the task evaluation and asked, "What does 'special circumstances' mean?"

"The place where the task is carried out is an unconventional place." Yan Cen said.

Xu Muzhou nodded thoughtfully, and flipped to the next page.

Xu Muzhou: "..."

He froze his hand as he turned the page, staring at the column above the mission objective for a long time without saying a word.

In the previous mission information, when the goal of the mission was unknown, there was a cross drawn in that column, but the one in his hand was obviously written before, but it was later artificially erased and added at the end. The word "unknown".

"What's going on here." Xu Muzhou almost laughed angrily: "What happened last time is going to happen again?"

"No, what happened last time will not happen again. The information you have now is all the information that Neverland can capture." Yan Cen quickly shook his head: "When this happens , probably because Neverland captured a non-single signal, but in the end it was impossible to identify the specific source."

"Not a single signal?" Xu Muzhou was keenly aware of the point: "There is more than one person targeted for this mission?"

"It's one person. The task of cleaning up the system has never been more than this number, but there must be some other emotion that interferes with Neverland's judgment." Yan Cen smiled: "Don't be nervous, this situation has happened before ...And this mission, you should be more comfortable with it."

He said and clicked on the task time on the information sheet: "2017 AD, you should be familiar with it."

Of course Xu Muzhou was familiar with him. He had just switched jobs that year, and he was so busy that he stood in the subway every day and wished he could close his eyes and fall asleep. The impression was extremely deep.

"Thank heaven and earth." Xu Muzhou sighed, "I finally don't have to smear my eyes."

As he spoke, he gathered up a few pages of documents and planned to read them twice more at night.Turning around, he found that Yan Cen was using the file folder as a mat, writing and drawing something on a certain page with a pen.

"What are you doing?" Xu Muzhou asked curiously.

Without raising his head, Yan Cen stretched out his hand and twisted a thin piece of paper from the bottom of Xu Muzhou's stack of documents and handed it to him.

"...Application form?" Xu Muzhou took the paper and looked left and right. There were only a few paragraphs of information similar to the identity of the person on it. There was a small square after each person's name, and the whole page was thoughtless. , can't see anything.

Xu Muzhou elbowed Yan Cen and asked, "What is this application for?"

"Identity." Yan Cen said.

"The last mission was an exception." Yan Cen explained: "In each mission, you can choose whether to generate a character from the original world line, or continue to use your own identity. This application form is for you Selected identity information, if you want to keep your own identity, you only need to leave it blank."

"What's the use of someone else's identity." Xu Muzhou stuffed the paper back with a puzzled expression: "My own is fine."

After Xu Muzhou finished speaking, he suddenly became interested, and poked his head over to try to see what Yan Cen wrote on that piece of paper.

However, Yan Cen just finished writing, so he put down his pen and put his completed application form back into the folder.Xu Muzhou was a step too late, he didn't see anything, so he couldn't help feeling a little discouraged.

"What's the rush?" Yan Cen said with a smile, "Of course you will know after entering the mission."