How to Save a Failed Farm

They woke up together in the sunlight that flooded the bedside. Unlike the panic and embarrassment of last time, today they can stare at each other quietly and tenderly, until Ye Qun felt that the two big men were too nasty, so they sat down together. up.

"Hiss!" The movement was too big, involving the excessive use of the psoas, gluteus, and thigh muscles. Ye Qun frowned and resisted the urge to beat Lance.

They tossed from afternoon to night yesterday. Before that, Ye Qun never felt that he was old, but now he really felt that the 29-year-old couldn’t bear such a toss. Lance finally found out that he had provided him with a real massage service, otherwise he would Will definitely beat him.

"Don't sleep any longer?" Lance stretched out his hand to hold Ye Qun's wrist, his eyelashes were drooping softly, and his eyes were still hazy with mist when he just woke up.

"Aren't you too indulgent, young man?" Ye Qun glanced at him and taunted him vindictively.

Lance tilted his head and asked innocently, "Do you want me to prove it?"

Ye Qun choked for a moment: "When did you learn to be a hooligan?"

Lance laughed and pulled him back, letting Ye Qun fall on top of him, he held Ye Qun's face and kissed it, the new stubble on his chin tickled Ye Qun: "Honey, wait for me, I'll make breakfast."

Like any couple in love, their seats are close together, and they can touch each other's arms with a slight movement. Ye Qun couldn't help but start to think that they are greasy and crooked. No, we are all straight men. , he pushed the terrible thought out of his head.

They ate breakfast in silence, chatting and enjoying the morning light that flooded the front lawn. "Are you going to leave?" Lance asked awkwardly, eating the last bite of scrambled eggs.

"It depends on your performance." Ye Qun said coldly, and after seeing Lance's nervous expression, he couldn't bear to add, "My visa is only for three months."

"Then you will leave in three months." Lance lowered his head in frustration, like a listless big dog.

"If I can renew my contract, I can stay." Ye Qun once again reminded himself to be careful of Lance's dog eyes in the future.

Lance's eyes lit up immediately: "I'll figure it out." He asked carefully, "Will your family agree?"

"I have no family anymore." Ye Qun sighed, "Both my parents died of cancer."

"I'm sorry." Lance held his hand, which was very warm, "I will be your family from now on."

His expression was so straightforward that Ye Qun's heartstrings trembled. Even though the word family was illusory and far away in his world, he was still full of gratitude and expectation for this promise.He leaned forward and kissed the corner of Lance's lips, Lance smiled shyly: "We need to go to the city, your visa, car, and..."

"What else?"

"Please don't mind, I hope... If you want, you can check the gene sequence again, the kind that can calculate the probability of disease..." Lance observed Ye Qun's face, he knew it was a bit offensive, but he really liked it Afraid of losing Ye Qun again, after all his parents died of cancer.On the day of the reunion, he had just returned from submitting the visa application materials in Houston, and he was already ready to go to China to find Ye Qun.

Ye Qun thought for a while: "No problem." This is a good suggestion, his parents both died of cancer, he must consider the possibility of genetics.

Lance breathed a sigh of relief: "It will take some time to make an appointment, and I'll write an email to Dr. Minnis right away."

"Doctor Minnis? Is it the one you said you saved on the battlefield?" Ye Qun remembered, but they didn't discuss it in depth because they were focused on other issues. "The battlefield?"

"I worked as a war correspondent for a year, in Gaza." Lance looked at him, "You seem very interested?"

"Not everyone has your experience." Ye Qun leaned his elbows on the dining table and looked at Lance expectantly.

Lance stood up: "Follow me."

Ye Qun followed him into the study room, a study room with a very different style from this white mansion in the Texas countryside. Unlike most farm families, it is not just a row of bookshelves and a table perfunctoryly placed. After reading the books, from the pile of red plush carpet to the ceiling, Ye Qun sighed: "There are so many books, you make me look at you with admiration."

"Most of my father's..." Lance explained sheepishly.

"Then he must be a very thoughtful and tasteful person." Since he was a child, he preferred liberal arts, but during the college entrance examination, he chose medicine because his parents suffered from cancer one after another. However, his mother passed away just after he was in the second grade. So switched to microbiology.But he's always had a romantic admiration for those with literary taste, and that's part of what he's missing.

"Perhaps. He's an art critic."

Lance took out a photo album from the bookshelf, and he flipped a page to show Ye Qun the photo on it: a Asian child with a black and gray face squatting in the ruins and eating a dusty apple, this is his black and white eyes A moment captured while looking into the camera.

"It was a terrifying and precious experience." Lance said thoughtfully, "Primary schoolchildren's textbooks lay in the ruins of the bombing, black blood remained on the pillowcase in the bedroom of the deceased, and children's bodies passed in and out of the mortuary , and human body fragments scattered all over the place. A living hell on earth."

The next photo shows an outpost standing in the hustle and bustle of the dusk. Two rows of soldiers with live ammunition stand straight outside. Their faces are frozen with cold silhouettes after sunset.

"We were taken individually to a small room before entering the checkpoint, and each of us received a two-page paperwork that we were asked to sign," recalls Lance.

"Life and death?"

"Yes. I looked down one by one like a fool, and my colleague said to me: What are you looking at? It is impossible to let you pass without signing. Don't waste time. Then I signed it quickly."

Lance turned to the back, and it was a photo of him and his colleagues after they entered Gaza. Ye Qun saw him at a glance, the tallest one in the crowd.In the photo, Lance is wearing a headband, wearing an old-fashioned green khaki suit, with a SLR camera hanging on his chest, looking at the camera with his usual gentle eyes.

"Continuous bombing. The bombs don't recognize the American press card. Once I just finished filming the interior building. Before I had time to run out of the block, the bombing started. The sky was full of dust and there was no sunlight. , My ankle was cut by the debris, and I still had to run as hard as I could, and if I ran too slowly, I was crushed under the rubble." Lance showed him the houses in the photos that had been blown in half and the truck with only one head left , while saying.

Turning to the next one, Lance was carrying a little girl on his back. Her clothes were so dirty that she couldn't see the color, and there were two black marks on her face. She was running in embarrassment in the smoke and flames of war. The silhouette was resolute and gentle under the setting sun.

"I have a question to ask," Ye Qun stroked Lance's cheek slowly and tenderly with his thumb, "maybe you have already answered it many times: why did you go?"

One of the grids on the fourth floor of the bookshelf contained the trophies Lance had obtained since he was a child, and Lance chose one of them to give to Ye Qun. "Pulitzer..." Ye Qun whispered, "Wow, this is very important."

"Which young man doesn't want to make big news?" Lance shrugged. "That's what I thought at the time. Being a reporter was my dream since I was a child. And--I'm so big, I have advantages over everyone else. Of course later I knew I was dead wrong, and in that environment with guns flying all over the sky, being tall would only make me more likely to be shot."

"Very much agree."

"It was when I was photographing a family's funeral that I suddenly realized what I was doing here - a family of nine, all of whom died in the explosion. It was not for a weighty report, an exciting experience, a building representing the highest honor of a reporter. but some other trophies, anti-war, peace, human nature, someone who took advantage of the chaos to rob, and someone who gave an apple to a child who lost his parents; Soldiers with a broken leg dug out of the rubble. Every day I watch civilians die, a fate they could have avoided."

"So you won the Pulitzer." Ye Qun gently stroked Lance's face in the photo with his fingers, and said in a gentle tone that he could hardly detect.

He clearly realized that he was falling into a deep obsession.The relationship has developed so quickly, they have only known each other for less than half a month now, but a strong and sweet bond has been created.Ye Qun would not be unfamiliar with Lance because he was different from the honest and simple side. He felt pride and regret from an emotional resonance.

He felt how much Lance loved his profession, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a rising star in journalism, but he finally gave up on this low-hanging fruit. "Would you regret it? Now?"

"I have some regrets, but I will not give up the farm." Lance said firmly, "This is my father's farm, and I will definitely protect it."

"Your father won't like you because he gave up his dream and career." Ye Qun shook his head and said.

"But I have to do this." Lance hung his head, "I missed it for a long time, and this is my only chance to make up for it."

Ye Qun didn't make a sound, he held Lance's hand and encouraged him to continue talking.

"When I was 15 my mum died and we moved from London to America, I thought we'd at least live in New York or Los Angeles or something, but my dad chose this farm when I was in high school and separated from my best friends , I can't understand him very much."

"I understand," Ye Qun said, "it is difficult for adolescent children to adapt to the gap from the city to the countryside."

Lance shook his head in frustration: "I'm much worse than you imagined. My father and I have never been close enough since we were young—he was busy with work, and I was raised by my mother." He said with great self-reproach, " After she died, I was so sad that I couldn't get rid of it, so I blamed him, tried everything against him, I never came home after college, until I went to work, I only came back reluctantly at Christmas Last a day or two, and leave immediately."

"Actually, I regretted it when I grew up, but my relationship with him was already very bad. I didn't have the courage to reconcile. This damn self-esteem. I always think about waiting." Lance buried his face deeply In the palm of his hand, "I used to be really rebellious. Unfortunately, until my father passed away, I was a rebellious son."

Seeing the big man retracting himself into the chair, Ye Qun felt a burst of heartache.He didn't know how to comfort Lance, the loss of his parents was something he had experienced too.He can understand Lance's feelings very well. He was 14 years old when his father died, and his mother also left six years later. Although so many years have passed, he still can't forget the grief and helplessness and the loneliness that followed. Where he came from, there was a gap in the most important part of his life.But fortunately, they are two people now, and two lonely souls can cuddle together.