born to ashes

"Which friend?" Josh smiled unnaturally.

"When we first met, you said that I was very similar to a friend of yours, so polite that you wanted to slap him..." Wei Linze paused, took a peek at Josh's expression, and continued: "That friend of yours , is it Cheng Jiezhi?"

"Ang..." Josh replied vaguely.

"Tell me."

"Tell me..." Josh repeated Wei Linze's words seemingly absent-mindedly, "Awkward and arrogant, fake polite, working hard but having bad luck."

Josh recalled Cheng Jiezhi in high school. He had good grades, was over-mature, and worked hard everywhere.Such a person shouldn't have to suffer all kinds of hardships. How can there be a life without any improvement from the beginning to the end... But Cheng Jiezhi is like this, stuck in the quagmire and unable to break free.

Josh originally thought that his life was bad enough, but he barely survived the past 20 years, luckily, he met Wei Linze.In Haicheng, watching Cheng Jiezhi lose weight day by day, the little vitality is like fine sand in the middle of the open hand, the gap between the fingers can't be closed no matter what, and the sand that falls can't come back no matter what.

It was only at this time that I began to be in awe of life.

How can you not want to rescue Cheng Jiezhi?

If what he said to Lu Chen was an element of anger, but he was really thinking about Wei Linze's sake.

But he wanted to save Cheng, it was also not just talk.Occasionally, I thought of pushing a wheelchair and walking along the Shizier path in the hospital in Haicheng. Cheng Jiezhi was out of spirits, but he always liked to joke with him, talk about the clouds, the wind, and the little wild flowers on the roadside. Joking with drooping eyelids, the labor camp head duo.

Seeing Josh's listless appearance, Wei Linze stopped, and said in a deep voice, "You want to save him, right?"

Josh didn't speak, and didn't ask how he knew about it.

"I want to save him." Wei Linze said.

"No!" Josh immediately shouted after him, "No... who knows what Zhang Zhihe's plan is."

Wei Linze shook his head and said, "There will be a solution. This operation is not necessary for Zhang Zhihe. I am not just doing it for you. Xiezhi is also my relative in a certain sense."

After Josh's persuasion failed, Zheng Ying found Wei Linze again, but Wei Linze did not agree at that time.For Wei Linze, he had heard the name Cheng Jiezhi a few times at most, and he had no reason to hand himself back to Zhang Zhihe just because of this.However, after he went back, he found that something was wrong with Josh. Josh thought he hid his little thoughts well, but in his eyes, he clearly had a lot of preoccupations.

Wei Linze has never been a nosy person, but this probably isn't a nosy matter.

"Save someone's life under the condition of ensuring my safety..." Wei Linze deliberately adjusted the atmosphere and made a gesture of clasping his hands together, "Successfully built a seven-level pagoda."

Josh ignored his joke, and still had a serious face, "It's not like that, I'm afraid that Zhang Zhihe will hold back, and I've gotten in touch with people like Lu Chen a lot, so I don't treat people as people, if Zhang Zhihe Zhihe made a provisional condition for him, that he would give you to him for experimentation before he would treat Cheng Jiezhi... We have no place to cry."

"I can't beat Lu Chen again." Josh muttered softly.

"Why do you say that we can be like mermaids?" Wei Linze smiled, "If you can't save someone when you have the ability, it's a thorn in the side, it doesn't have much impact, but after that, it always comes from time to time. Come out and tickle you. Besides, this person is not someone else, he is your friend, and he has the same genome as me."

"But, it must be painful! Aren't you afraid of pain?"

Josh has gone into unreasonable mode, and every word exudes unreasonableness.

"There are anesthetics." Wei Linze said.

"After the anesthetic wears off, I must be dizzy and backache, maybe I can't even move."

Wei Linze smiled more happily, "Then I don't have to do anything, just wait for you to serve me tea and water for a few days."

"You really think about it?"

"Really." Wei Linze drew out the tone.

The first time Lu Chen saw Wei Linze, he felt a little uncomfortable.

If nothing had happened back then and Xie Zhi had continued to take the college entrance examination, postgraduate entrance examination, and doctoral examination, he would still be what Wei Linze is now, with a refined and gentle temperament.Such a peaceful life was what Cheng Jiezhi wanted most, but what he got in the end was far from this.

Wei Linze stretched out his hand to Lu Chen and said, "Hi, I'm Wei Linze."

"Lu Chen." Lu Chen shook back.

Josh glanced at Lu Chen, didn't say anything, and sat down on the sofa directly, leaning against the back of the chair and crossing his legs.

"I won't be secretive. The purpose of my visit was clearly stated in the phone call. Please take a look at this agreement." Wei Linze put the document on the table.

Lu Chen opened it without even reading it, and directly turned to the last page, signed without saying a word, "As long as you agree, any conditions are fine."

Josh smiled coldly, "You'd better keep an eye on Zhang Zhihe, don't let him do anything wrong. The operation is scheduled to be in Haicheng, Zhang Zhihe must stay in Zhucheng, you let him and Yan Jia that Xu Senior brother, get in touch, Yan Jia and I will watch from the side, and Dean Xu will hold the knife."

Lu Chen stood up, took a step back, and bowed deeply to Wei Linze, "Thank you, Teacher Wei."

Josh still put his right ankle on his left knee, and looked at Lu Chen impatiently with his arms folded.

Wei Linze stood up, and he didn't say that he was polite or humble. He smiled lightly and said, "I accept your thanks."

"Then let's set a time so I can prepare in advance." Lu Chen said.

Wei Linze was thinking about his work arrangements, Josh wandered up to him and handed over his phone, "I have your call."

The words "Dean Zhou" were impressively written on the screen.

"October [-]st, I happen to be on vacation." Wei Linze hastily set the time, "Sorry, I'm going out to answer the phone."

Except for the day when he first joined the job, every time Wei Linze came to the dean's office, nothing good seemed to happen.In the beginning, when The Wave was a mess, he was called to the office and took the job, and later he was called in when he became fat, and he was voluntarily let go of the magazine that cultivated feelings.

this time……

The dean sat behind the desk with a dignified expression. He no longer had the look of discussing things with Wei Linze before, "Mr. Wei, there is something I want to confirm with you."

"You say."

"It's like this. Recently, the courtyard has received some bad news." Dean Zhou pushed the photo on the table forward, "We think there may be a misunderstanding, so we need to check with you."

Wei Linze took a look at the photo, it was the scene of Josh kissing the corner of his mouth lightly and shallowly after the sports meeting that day.He was distracted, and the shots were quite artistic.

"I received an anonymous letter in the college before, but that time I thought it was groundless, so I suppressed it and didn't tell you, but this time...you may have to explain." Dean Zhou rested his arm on the armrest of the chair, lightly forefinger Gently tilt the upper wood.

Wei Linze actually knew about the anonymous letter before.

The person who wrote the anonymous letter didn't want to hide his identity from him at all, so he sent a text message to greet him in a brazen manner. Wei Linze was in class at the time, and when he read the text message later, he smiled. After all these years, Xiao Jingkun hadn't made any progress at all. Take the matter of sexual orientation against him forever.

He didn't take it seriously.

Who knew that Xiao Jingkun could spend so much time remembering and hating him because of his Ph.D., he couldn't keep an anonymous letter and secretly take pictures.

After Wei Linze dropped out of university, he thought about it many times, but he never regretted admitting that he was gay.

No regrets.

Not a single thought of regret.

That's why, when he was asked to make a choice, he would not hide himself for the sake of other people's eyes or the smoothness of his own life. He was not wrong, but he chose a path that most people would not take. There is nothing he dared to admit.

Many years later, Wei Linze thinks that he has become more mature and rational, but his recognition of himself has never changed.

"Dean," he said, in the same tone as he had admitted to his department chair, "it's true, I'm gay."

Dean Zhou stopped knocking on the handrail, frowned pretending to be embarrassed, and said what he had prepared a long time ago, "It stands to reason that the school should not interfere with the teachers' personal... choices, but as far as I know After the Zhizhi sports meeting, there were a lot of remarks about you on the school's network, and there were photos in forums and spaces, which had an impact on the students, so we had to intervene."

After saying this, Dean Zhou glanced up at Teacher Wei, who is usually the most tempered, and continued: "We hope that you can go back and reflect on yourself during this period, and put aside the school work first. "

Wei Linze raised the corner of his mouth: "Dean, what do you mean?"

The meaning of the dean is very clear, but everyone is a decent teacher, and they are too embarrassed to say nothing. Dean Zhou did not expect that Wei Linze would deliberately ask him to embarrass him, and he didn't know what to say for a while.

Could it be that you just told him that although there is no explicit regulation and no particularly legitimate reason, you are resigning yourself in order not to discredit the academy?

Seeing that he hadn't spoken for a long time, Wei Linze stood up and said, "I understand, Dean, then I'll go first."

I didn't give an accurate word, but it seemed to make sense.

Even though Wei Linze was prepared in his heart, he still felt the irony of the sky. This is the university now.

Josh was sitting by the flower bed under the teaching building, holding his chin and waiting for him. From a distance, Wei Linze saw his eyes staring at the gate of the teaching building, as if they were shining.

He stood at the door and waved. Josh stood up and patted the dirt on his pants, waiting for him to approach with a smile.

What kind of crime is it that the lover is of the same sex, Wei Linze thought.

Josh put his arm around his shoulders and asked, "What's wrong with you?"

"It's all right."

"Impossible," Josh clapped the hand on his shoulder, "I can tell from your footsteps that you are in a bad mood."

"So amazing?" Wei Linze raised the corner of his mouth.

Josh nodded seriously, "I've always been this amazing."

In fact, it's not that magical, Wei Linze usually looks like he has a smile on his face, but Josh can tell which kind of smile is polite and perfunctory, which kind of smile is sincere, and which kind of smile is forced on him.When he walked step by step from the teaching building to the door just now, he clearly had an unnatural expression on his face.

"Is this always the case when you're in a bad mood?" Josh asked.

"What kind?"

"Just pretend it's okay." Josh poked his cheek, "Sooner or later you'll have problems like this, and you're prone to psychosis."

Wei Linze thought to himself that after so many years, he is quite healthy, and he has not seen any psychological problems, "Then what do you non-perverted people do when you are in a bad mood?"

"I don't know about normal people, but when I'm in a bad mood, I lose my temper and throw things. With myself as the center, draw a circle with my height as the radius. Anyone who enters this range will become cannon fodder." Josh said Draw a general range around yourself.

"Your problem is probably more serious than mine." Wei Linze smiled.

"Hey!" Josh yelled suddenly, "Go, I'll take you to a place, I promise you will feel better."

At the end of summer, the air in Zhucheng has brought some coolness. During the day, it is still a little hot under the sun, but at night, without the restraint of the sun, the cool wind begins to penetrate into the clothes unscrupulously.

The sun and the cool wind are incompatible, but in the evening, they have to coexist peacefully for a period of time, weakening each other, which can bring a rare and comfortable weather for a while.

The newly built community next to Zhucheng University was originally a park, but it was fully utilized by real estate developers and quickly erected high-rise buildings.On the sidewalk at the entrance, there is a small stall selling shaved ice. Throughout the summer, the tables and chairs around the stall are full of people. People squeeze into a space of about one and a half meters. Mud, digging ice spoonful by spoonful.

This stall has been around since it was a park, and it is famous for its large quantity of food.

Now that the weather is getting colder, the business of the shaved ice stalls is not as hot as before, but there are still some people sitting in twos and threes.

Wei Linze sat on the ponytail, "Eat shaved ice?"

Josh took a plastic bowl full of ice and put it on the table in a hurry, and said, "Try it quickly, this shaved ice is the best in this area, just now the eldest sister said that today is the last day to set up a stall, let us catch it up."

Wei Linze dug a large spoonful from the middle and stuffed it into his mouth, his cheeks were a little numb from the crushed ice, Wei Linze said vaguely: "It's too sweet, too much sugar."

"Sweet?"

Wei Linze nodded.

Josh hurriedly yelled at the elder sister: "Elder sister, put less sugar in the other bowl."

The eldest sister responded, and Josh moved Wei Linze's bowl in front of him, took a bite, and said, "It's just right, and it's not that sweet."

He sat on a pony horse, with his legs crossed and one foot resting on the rail of the table, hunched over and drinking the shaved ice in the bowl, surrounded by a few small flying insects beside the street lamp that had been turned on above his head, looking like It was full of fireworks.Wei Linze suddenly had an idea, it would be good to set up a stall selling shaved ice in the future.

After Wei Linze's bowl of shaved ice with less sugar was ready, he took a spoonful and tasted it, but it was still too sweet. Josh saw his face wrinkled, glanced into his bowl, then shrugged his shoulders and laughed "goose goose goose".

"You, you ate it without mixing it. You ate all the sugar in the middle of this bowl." Josh couldn't stop laughing, and slapped the table while smiling.

Wei Linze stirred it twice with a spoon, and tasted it again, it really wasn't sweet anymore.

No sweetness at all.

He took a spoonful from Josh's bowl and tasted it, it was just the right amount of sweetness. Seeing his satisfied expression and the hand that was secretly extended, Josh quickly protected his own ice. Wei Linze failed to change it secretly, so he just grabbed it. Josh lay down on the table to prevent him from taking his share. Son.

Wei Linze's stealing and snatching all ended in failure, so he could only shrink back and eat his bowl of not sweet.

"Comrade Josh, I'm unemployed." He tried not to care and said while eating, "What should I do, I have no money to support you."

Josh was startled, a spoonful of ice stopped in mid-air before it could be put into his mouth, and slowly turned into water and dripped into the bowl.He put down the spoon and squeezed Wei Linze's hand.

"It's okay," Josh patted the back of his hand, "I'll support you."