under the filth

"Sir? Sir?"

In his sleep, Tang Cen vaguely heard someone shouting something beside his ear, and also felt that someone was shaking his shoulders non-stop, very noisy.

It's uncomfortable to be disturbed in deep sleep. Tang Cen wanted to drive away the person who disturbed his dream, but his eyelids were so heavy that he could only open a crack, and his brain was also dull and dull, so he couldn't tell who the person in front of him was. , not to mention driving people away.

Seeing that Tang Cen could not be woken up, the woman who was squatting beside the bed stood up and walked into the bathroom.I don't know what she was doing in it, the faucet in the bathroom was turned on, and the water was rushing.

Tang Cen woke up most of the time when he heard the sound of water.He struggled to open his eyes, only to find that the room was so dark that even the lines on the ceiling could not be seen clearly, and the overhead light did not know when it was turned off.He turned his head to look out of the window, but when he turned his neck, he realized that his whole body was so sore that even the cracks in his bones were throbbing.

The small patch of sky outside the window was thick with dark clouds, and it looked like it was going to rain any moment.The weather in London is unpredictable. It was sunny yesterday, but the sky was gloomy when I woke up today.

When Tang Cen looked out the window, the sound of water in the bathroom also stopped.The second after the sound of water stopped, Tang Cen heard footsteps behind him. The person who woke him up just now was walking towards the bed step by step.Tang Cen didn't know who ran into his room, but now he couldn't use any strength, even struggling to move his neck. If someone came with bad intentions, Tang Cen didn't think he could resist.

But it turned out that Tang Cen was overthinking.When the visitor walked to the bed and found that he was awake, he just squatted beside his bed and put something cold on his forehead.

It was very comfortable to stick something cold on his forehead, and Tang Cen's drowsy head slowly woke up.He turned his head and found that squatting beside his bed was a girl in her early 20s. She frowned slightly and asked with some concern, "Sir? Are you okay?"

The girl was still wearing the uniform of the hotel. Although Tang Cen didn't know why people from the hotel appeared in his room, he knew that the girl was not malicious.Tilting his head against the quilt, Tang Cen, who had relaxed his nerves, began to feel drowsy again.

Having touched Tang Cen's forehead before, his reaction made the girl's frown deepen.She straightened the towel that Tang Cen had dropped when she turned her head, gently pushed Tang Cen, and asked softly, "You have a fever, do you need antipyretics?"

The coolness brought by the towel was too short-lived to relieve the discomfort of the high fever at all.Tang Cen opened his eyes, huddled under the blanket and nodded.

Seeing him curled up in the quilt, the girl hesitated for two seconds and said, "Your room is only booked until today, and you haven't checked out at noon. The front desk asked me to come up and take a look. Do you need to apply for an extension?"

today?Tang Cen recited the time silently in his heart several times before his brain, which had almost stopped functioning, digested the information in the girl's words. It turned out that he had slept for two days, no wonder the hotel would send someone up.

After two days without a drop of water, and his throat was burning with smoke, Tang Cen coughed twice before begging the girl in a hoarse voice: "Three days... I'm sorry to trouble you."

"Okay, someone will deliver the medicine after finishing the formalities. Excuse me." The girl slowly got up after receiving a definite reply, and quietly left Tang Cen's room.

Tang Cen was completely relieved when he heard the movement beside the bed, he fell asleep again before the sound of the girl closing the door.

Later, when the hotel sent someone to deliver the medicine, the waiter woke up Tang Cen who was moaning intermittently on the bed.

Swallowing the capsule whole with cold water, Tang Cen didn't bother to be courteous to the waiter, and moved into the warm blanket on his own.

Tang Cen felt as if all the bones in his body had been disassembled and reassembled. When he moved a little, the pain of muscles and joints pulling and rubbing against each other made him miserable.That kind of pain is not a heart-piercing pain, but a pain that crushes the nerves a little bit, repeatedly tormented, and is the soreness that oozes from the cracks in the bones.

After two days lying on the ground in the hotel, and two full nights under the blanket, Tang Cen's temperature slowly dropped.

Tang Cen has had a habit since he was a child. No matter what the temperature is, he will hold the corners of the quilt on both sides of the quilt in his arms when he sleeps, wrapping his whole body in the quilt. This is especially true now when he is sick.With a high fever and wrapped in a heavy quilt, Tang Cen was covered in sweat abruptly, and even the quilt became a little damp from absorbing the sweat.

Struggling to free his hands from the quilt, Tang Cen raised his hand to measure the temperature of his forehead, but felt wet.Sweat slid off the side of the ear, dripped down the tip of the curled hair, and left patches of dark water on the bed sheet.

After sweating all over, Tang Cen's body temperature also dropped a lot, and now the lines on the ceiling can be clearly seen.In the past two days, he was so sick that he was unconscious. Tang Cen only vaguely remembered how many times he woke up and took medicine a few times, but he didn't know how much he took.

Tang Cen reached out and touched the bedside table. "Click", it was the sound of his fingers touching something sharp.He lifted his body, reached forward with his hand, and an object pressed by his fingertips was dragged over when he lay down.

The medicine was dragged to a place where Tang Cen could easily reach it. He picked up the capsule and counted the peeled tinfoil while counting the dosage of his own medicine.Tang Cen had suffered too much from overdose, so even if it was anti-fever medicine, Tang Cen didn't dare to take it indiscriminately.

I ate four pills in two and a half days. Although it was a little too much, it was still within the normal range.Tang Cen secretly heaved a sigh of relief, and continued to lie on the bed for a long time before kicking randomly under the quilt with his feet a few times.

Tang Cen didn't get up from the bed until he pushed the quilt to the end of the bed and piled it up.The waiter had come several times, and the room had been tidied up. Even the bathrobes hanging in the closet had been replaced with new ones. He grabbed a bathrobe and went into the bathroom.

Originally, he wanted to take a shower and relax, but when Tang Cen stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at the marks on his collarbone that hadn't completely disappeared, the thought that had been quiet in his heart gradually emerged again.

The scene of that night kept replaying in his mind, over and over again, and his body and brain clearly remembered every detail.

Tang Cen held his head in his hands, pulled his wet hair, leaned weakly against the bathroom wall, and slid down the smooth surface little by little.He sat slumped in the standing water, with his head buried deep between his knees.The hot water hit his body and flowed down the raised spine of his back.

The hot water washed away Tang Cen's exhaustion, but it couldn't wash off the marks on his flesh.

The next morning, when the whole street was still immersed in silence, Tang Cen dragged his suitcase downstairs.Half an hour later, after all the bills were settled at the front desk, he dragged his suitcase and left the hotel.

Last night, after taking a shower and calming down, Tang Cen quickly booked a plane ticket to Paris, France.Whether it was because of Eisen's appearance or for other reasons, he didn't want to stay in this country anymore, but before leaving, he still had one thing to do.

It was still very early, and the shops on the street hadn't opened yet. Tang Cen dragged his suitcase and searched around before he found a striking red telephone booth.

When Tang Cen was still studying in Bath, such telephone booths were everywhere, but during the years when he left the UK, thousands of telephone booths were scrapped every year in every city due to various reasons , and not many of the remaining ones can be used normally.Like this one found now, Tang Cen is not sure if it is still usable, maybe it is just waiting for the government to take it back.

Putting away the trolley of the suitcase, Tang Cen gently pulled the doorknob of the phone booth, and the brand new door lock opened instantly, which surprised Tang Cen.But when he saw the empty interior, he understood why the phone booth looked so clean. It was probably a phone booth that had been purchased for second use.

Tang Cen sighed, dragged his suitcase and walked towards the nearest subway entrance.He searched for more than half a block before finding the only telephone booth, but the remaining telephone booth could not be used, and now he could only hope for the public telephone at the airport.

The subway leading to the airport wasn't too crowded at this time, Tang Cen sat on his seat, staring at the empty seat opposite him in a daze.Normally, the public phone at the airport can be used, but there is only one minute, what should he say?

Tang Cen hadn't fully recovered yet, but had to go on a journey again, which was a disaster for someone recovering from a serious illness.He felt that his brain was muddled up with the shaking frequency of the subway, so that he almost missed the station.

After struggling to drag his suitcase into the airport, Tang Cen glanced at his flight time, and found that there were still two hours left before departure, so he still had plenty of time.But after many years, Tang Cen, who suffered from severe memory loss, spent more than ten minutes asking two staff members in succession before finding the location of the public phone.

By the time he stood in front of the public phone, Tang Cen was out of breath from running, and the clothes on his back were wet with sweat, sticking to his skin.

Looking at the neat and clear phone buttons, Tang Cen swallowed several times before picking up the phone.His palms were full of sweat, and his trembling and slippery hands held the smooth plastic shell of the receiver, almost slipping out of his hands.

Repeatedly repeating the well-known number in his heart, Tang Cen raised his hand and pressed the string of numbers with trembling fingers.Those presses, in the eyes of others, were as heavy as if they were going to pierce the buttons, but only Tang Cen knew that every press he pressed would poke a bloody hole in his heart.

No matter how slow Tang Cen pressed, the series of numbers added up to only fifteen digits. After pressing the last number, the call was dialed out quickly.

Listening to the "beep - beep -" sound in the receiver, Tang Cen felt that his own heartbeat seemed to overlap with it.

"Hello?" The phone was picked up quickly, and a familiar voice sounded from the other end. Compared with the gentleness in memory, Lu Sheng's voice at this time was a little more lazy.

Tang Cen didn't make a sound, as if someone had pressed the pause button, he stood there quietly holding the receiver, all his voices disappeared the moment he heard Lu Sheng's voice.

But Tang Cen's silence made Lu Sheng mistakenly think that the other party could not understand Chinese, so he said again: "Hello?"

What answered him was a longer silence, but Lu Sheng soon realized it.

"Tang Cen?" The careless laziness in his tone was gone, replaced by sullen seriousness.

Tang Cen woke up as if from a dream when he heard Lu Sheng calling his name.

It was time to end, no matter what the reason was, there was no room for redemption between him and Lu Sheng.

Tang Cen resisted the soreness in his throat and the tears in his eyes, calmly and gently said the words that had been buried in his heart for five years: "Lu Sheng, let's break up."