I'm in Delingha tonight

In the early morning when he set off from Golmud, Chi Nian drove aimlessly with the intention of going wherever he went, and arrived at the first service area three hours later.

Haixi is an autonomous prefecture, and because there are many ethnic minorities, the billboards are written side by side in Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian.The Chinese characters twisted out of the steel wire on the top of the service area have been incomplete for a long time. There are two radicals left in the part of the place name, and the rest are arranged crookedly into the "Yueli District".

Chi Nian was not in the mood to memorize his name, so he parked the car and cleared his throat.When he was nervous and bored, his craving for cigarettes also came up, so he avoided the dusty construction site behind a low bungalow.

The service area can only be called a "station", and both sides of the plateau national road are covered with sandy yellow that stretches as far as the eye can see.

A simple building serves as a guest house, providing temporary accommodation, with parking lots at the front and rear.The supermarket and the residence of the traffic police on duty are closely next to each other. When people pass by, their shadows shrink into small balls under their feet.

Before noon, the sun was already very arrogant.

The blue sky, white clouds, and the service station house painted orange-red are bright and contrasting.

Chi Nian went to the small supermarket at the service station to buy two packs of Ziyun, and the owner sent a plastic case lighter.He went out with a cigarette in his mouth, and a few drivers of tourist minibuses were chatting not far away, while the tourists shuttled between the minibuses and the simple toilets with tired faces, resting in a hurry.

Chi Nian found a shady corner, holding a cigarette in a daze.

Beside him, a woman wrapped in a small silk shawl was coaxing the child to drink water. The little boy was tired from the car and began to cry.The woman threw the mineral water bottle aside, and she pulled the child back into the car under the ridicule of everyone.

It kind of reminded Chi Nian that when he was a child, his mother used to coax people like this.He is difficult to coax, and loves to cry, every time he tosses his mother impatiently, shouting "I don't care about you anymore", I don't know how many times, when he really doesn't care about him in the end, it is not himself who is crying.

Chi Nian put the cigarette butt in his mouth, and looked around blankly in the choking mist.

That's when the army-green Wrangler stopped at the service station.

During the tour, Barry's cool and attractive off-road vehicle has its own eye-catching effect, and Chi Nian's eyes stopped for a moment.The car braked crookedly to the base of the wall, and the person in the driver's seat pushed open the door, and then ran towards the bathroom.

Black overalls, hair messed up by the wind, and long legs when striding forward.

Chi Nian remembered, because he had never seen anyone who could wear overalls with pockets on the front and sides so nicely, so that he couldn't help but sigh in his heart when he saw that he was dying.

Perhaps this is the instinct of color control.

At that time, he thought that the handsome guy in overalls might be the last beautiful human being he saw in his life, but within a day, he met the handsome guy again, and happened to get in the same car.

Memories are interrupted.

Chi Nian sneaked a sideways glance at Xi Shan who was waiting for him beside him—the signal in the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was all dependent on fate, and his mobile phone became a brick.

Sensing that Chi Nian was observing secretly, he approached him quite calmly, but instead made Chi Nian quickly turn his head and pack up his things again.

Less than half an hour after they met, Xi Shan drove him to the place where Chi Nian had a flat tire earlier.The car was tipped over, and the Gobi wind blew it vulnerable.

Chi Nian didn't want a car, and it would be too expensive to drag it back to the nearest village and town, and there was no guarantee that someone would make the deal, so the two of them had to give up the idea of ​​"sell it and let others handle it" and planned to wait until the next service area to find a patrolman.So Xi Shan said you should pack your luggage, Chi Nian was reluctant, but still did as Xi Shan asked.

Didn't even show the slightest resistance.

In fact, when he was a child, Chi Nian was not as independent as he is now. He was an only child and an old man, spoiled by his parents.So much so that although his character is not too arrogant, he is really willful-until he falls in love.

The other party is older than him, and was already in college when we met in high school club activities.Because there are too many differences in experience, the boyfriend has always been in a relatively strong position in this relationship.Chi Nian was young at the time, still in the third year of high school, and his attitude of looking up was obvious, but his self-awareness was not too strong.

It's okay not to live together, but it's inevitable that some inappropriate places will be exposed after living together during the holidays.

Chi Nian thought that if the two of them were going to be together for a long time, he would be accommodating if he could, and restrained most of the young master's temper.During that time, his parents praised him every day that he finally grew up and became sensible, but his boyfriend was noncommittal.

He said that Chi Nian is a lazy cancer patient, who loves to be confused and is easily deceived. Sometimes I am not convinced but I can't find a reason to refute.

At the end of every complaint, my boyfriend loves to say, "Only I can bear you."

At that time Chi Nian thought, okay, this sentence is enough.

Who knows, it will become a prophecy.

Thinking of what this man did later, he felt physically sick again, and then began to despise himself for being blind.

Chi Nian didn't want to think about the past anymore, so he took out the mineral water and compressed biscuits from the second-hand car and moved them to the back seat of Xi Shan's jeep.There was nothing left to bring with me, so I walked over to announce the end.

"That's all."

Xi Shan's eyes flicked over his things, he didn't care why he only had such a little, but raised his eyebrows slightly.Can't tell whether the emotions are good or bad, Chi Nian is used to observing words and expressions in love relationships, and he thumped in his heart, afraid that Xi Shan would get angry at him for not acknowledging him, so after thinking about it, he decided to say a few more words.

Because of his nervousness, he stammered: "Originally... this is not my car, so there are not many things there, and the food and drink are almost the same—"

"Ah?" Xi Shan was puzzled, "You just take your things and leave."

Chi Nian habitually explained halfway through and couldn't continue the conversation. He was stunned and said "Oh", but stood still and hugged half a box of compressed biscuits.

With a smile, Xi Shan urged him, "Why, you don't want to leave?"

"Eh... sorry."

Chi Nian put the biscuits in the back row, and went to sit in the co-pilot by himself.

After the car restarted, it followed the satellite navigation to the destination. Chi Nian lowered his head to play with the seat belt, and the atmosphere in the car was dull for a moment.The car radio was always turned off, Xi Shan didn't intend to play music to ease the embarrassment, his fingers tapped the steering wheel rhythmically, and the setting sun shone on his fingertips protruding from the gloves.

After putting on the sunglasses again, Xi Shan's side face was extremely stern. Chi Nian looked at it for a while, and this expression reminded him of his ex-boyfriend's cold violence for no reason.

It is very difficult for Chi Nian to sort out the too chaotic thoughts. He presses the start button of the phone, and it turns on and off - this unconscious action can give him a sense of security.

The plateau is about to sink into the night, and the off-road vehicle bumps violently when driving in the Gobi Desert.

Leaning forward, the setting sun made his eyes hurt.

Chi Nian hadn't eaten all day, and eating biscuits could no longer support his fragile stomach.All the impulsive things that he hadn't thought of came up at this time. For example, before he fainted from lack of oxygen, he might be starved to hypoglycemia; for example, he was afraid of the cold, and he might be forced to disappear in despair...

Suicide, these two words are funny when I think of them after that time.

But Chi Nian couldn't laugh now.

He is a coward.

Ninety-nine steps down the road, but he flinched when he was short of the last step.

The off-road vehicle bumped up suddenly, and Chi Nian hit the seat with the back of his head.He hummed shortly, and Xi Shan's voice came from next to his ears: "Your car is quite picky."

Chi Nian: "Huh?"

"Just now I took a detour and went back to pick up my luggage." Xi Shan pointed out to him, "The location where I met you is actually the National Highway one or two kilometers further north."

Chi Nian couldn't understand the various dots, lines, and planes on the GPS, so he asked endlessly, "So I can't meet you, right?"

"No, I'll just tell you." Xi Shan skillfully steered the steering wheel and drove the car onto the national highway, "I was going this way, so if you find the national highway and want to take a ride, I should also stop Bar."

Chi Nian twisted his fingerprint: "...Is that so?"

Xi Shan didn't look at him, and said: "Tourists go back at this point. Like me, those who rush to take pictures of the sunset like to go to Ulan Chaka. There is only one way to the west."

Chi Nian: "What do you mean?"

"Within one hundred kilometers, basically no one else will drive past this point and this place." Xi Shan leaned back, adjusted to a more comfortable sitting position, released his right hand and patted Chi Nian's shoulder very naturally .

"So you're more of a maverick?"

"So, where there are only two people, the probability of us meeting is 100%."

Xi Shan didn't wait for Chi Nian to come back to his senses after he finished speaking. He himself found that this sentence was a bit strange, like a line between the male and female protagonists in a TV series.His eyes flickered behind the sunglasses, and he was about to add something like "long live friendship" and "it's all fate", when Chi Nian sat beside him and laughed.

"What! You are so nasty."

When he smiled, he looked younger than his actual age, with an innocent appearance of being ignorant of the world in the ivory tower.

This sentence was reminiscent of Chi Nian's lips, and Xi Shan also laughed with him: "Is it nasty? As long as it has an effect, look at your sad face, if you don't know it, you think..."

He suddenly shut up, as if he had something to hide.

Chi Nian's smile froze for a moment, his heartbeat quickened, and he kept his face as calm as possible and asked, "What do you think?"

"I thought... hey, didn't there be news about committing suicide before—" Xi Shan said, slowing down the speed of the car, he didn't see the change in Chi Nian's expression, and continued on his own, "But I see you It's not like, it's easy to get lost in this kind of place, come back in the future, try not to drive alone, your car is not good..."

He was rambling on, but Chi Nian didn't say a word, and only said "hmm" softly when Xi Shan talked about self-driving.

"No, right?" Xi Shan asked.

Isn't it suicide?

In fact, I thought about it, but it doesn't seem to be appropriate.

He only met Xi Shan twice, and he didn't know whether Xi Shan knew about it in the service area in the morning.He could barely count the words of conversation with his hands, he didn't know anything about Xi Shan, and Xi Shan's definition of him was not accurate, they were two strangers who met by chance, they happened to be sitting in a car chasing the sunset.

He didn't know how far it was to get to the salt lake, and he had never seen the sunset whether it was beautiful or not.

But he really knew that if Xi Shan didn't show up, or if he showed up sooner or later, he would be trapped in the desert.

"I'm lost." Chi Nian finally said.

Xi Shan didn't know whether to believe it or not, and nodded slightly with a smile: "That's good."