squirrel

He hated summer in the city.

The heat is so pervasive, it envelops people, steams for a whole day, and finally evaporates into sweat, leaving no residue.It's not much better at night, even if you open all the windows, it's useless, the cool wind has been blocked for a long time, although the electric fan that looks like it will be scrapped at any time is still working hard, but it's just Stirring the heat in the room will not have any real effect.

It is only at this time of year that squirrels feel a little bit homesick.However, just think about it.

Squirrel was originally not surnamed Song, and of course the word Shu was not included in its name—what kind of parents would name their children such a name.When he was 15 years old, he graduated from middle school. The poor relatives in his family didn't want to bother with the oil bottle any more, so they gave him a ticket to the city and 50 yuan, which they called "look for a living by yourself".He was drowsy and bumpy in the sweltering passenger car for more than six hours, and it was already evening when he finally arrived, but the moment he got out of the car, he was forced to take a step back by the heat wave mixed with a lot of car exhaust—a very serious disgrace .

But this is just the beginning.With a baby face under the age of 16, the boss of any store shook his head repeatedly when he saw him, not daring to take this risk.No matter how economical he was, the prices in the city were still there. In the blink of an eye, there were only a few steel buns left for 50 yuan, which he used to buy a steamed bun, which he ate in two bites.

How can a steamed bun be full, his stomach is still growling, he can't move and he can't bear to go, so he squats in the shade of a tree opposite the steamed bun shop, staring at the steaming steamer with green eyes with a lame wild cat .After staring at one place for a long time, he looked at the pedestrians coming and going, and finally noticed a boy who was not a few years older than himself staggering all the way, and touched the pockets of three people in one breath.

It doesn't seem too difficult?

Several years later, Squirrel talked to Gao Liyuan about this matter. After thinking about it, it seemed that he did it so naturally at that time. The only thing in his heart was that if he really got his hands later, he must go to the noodle restaurant under the bridge to order a spare ribs Noodles, in twos and threes.

Gao Liyuan stretched out his hands to twist his ears after listening, really hard, and then walked to the edge of the wall to smoke a cigarette, as if the person who hurt was actually himself.The squirrel also felt aggrieved, and gnawed off two apples in one go. Finally, when he was going to get the third one, he heard Gao Liyuan ask: "What happened next?"

"I met Brother Tang later."

He fumbled for bags in the city for two days like a guerrilla war, and was finally stopped in an alley, and led to meet a certain "big brother" in that area.The eldest brother's surname is Tang, squinting his eyes up and down for a long time, he looked him up and down, and asked, "What's your surname?"

"...Song." He still kept his eyes open and made up a surname.He was born in a small county called Songning.

"This surname is rare," Brother Tang smiled, and glanced at him again, "When was it born?"

He reported the year, and the other party nodded, indicating that it was all right.As a result, there was a talkative person in the group next to him, who couldn't help but say, "Isn't this the same year as the mouse? It's also a mouse."

A thin and small boy in the corner laughed shyly, and Brother Tang laughed too: "Another mouse? It's hard to tell...By the way, your surname is Song? Then just call you a squirrel!"

The people around laughed loudly, including Squirrel himself—in fact, he hated this name very much, it sounded so useless, but since it was named by Brother Tang, how dare he say it badly?So he honestly accepted the name, as if... He had completely drawn a line from his past self.

The squirrel lived with this name for three years—until a person frowned at himself: "Squirrel? That's what you call it?—What kind of a broken name."

Of course, at that time, neither Squirrel himself nor the person who was about to enter his life in a few years were ignorant of what would happen in the future. It's just their own days.

With the "organization", the squirrel just settled down in the city.Brother Tang arranged a place for him to live in. A three-bedroom and two-living room was divided into seven small rooms, and thirteen people were crammed together—the squirrel was No. 14.I lived in the same room with him, and the guy who slept in the lower bunk was the boy who was called a mouse that day. Seeing him coming, he showed his embarrassed smile again, but this time he managed to choke out a sentence: "Hello."

He couldn't handle this kind of person, so he scratched his head as an answer, and crawled to the upper bunk to lie down.The pillows and quilts are all ready-made, but they have been used by an unknown number of people, and they smell sour and sweaty, but they are no worse than the small guest house where they slept in the previous few days.

After a day of tossing around, the squirrel was already very tired, and he didn't care about the sound of punches coming from outside the cubicle and the unextinguished desk lamp in the lower bunk. He just closed his eyelids and fell asleep like this, sleeping until dawn without dreaming.

Summer was mixed with annoying heat and thunderstorms from time to time, and it didn't finally show signs of decline until September, leaving squirrels with prickly heat on their backs and mosquito bags on their legs.He got to know the mice a little better, and began to chat with each other every night, although the squirrels did most of the talking.

The rats always listened quietly to his complaints about how stuffy the city was, and the mosquitoes seemed to bully him as an outsider, but they only sucked his blood.Once, out of pure curiosity, after listening to the squirrel's complaint, the mouse suddenly asked, "Then why don't you stay at home and come here?"

The squirrel choked on these words and stared at the ceiling for a long while without opening his mouth.After a while, he replied slowly: "I have no food to eat, so I came out to beg for a living."

"Oh……"

"What about you?" Taking this opportunity, he still asked the question in his heart.After living here for a few weeks, he also gradually realized that the room between them was actually the second best, and the light was bright in the back, which was clearly exposed to the light of a mouse—but that guy was two years younger than himself. month, and apart from helping to look at a store, there is no other work for him. "Is Brother Tang your own brother?"

"No," the mouse shook his head with a blank expression, "what's the matter?"

The squirrel couldn't ask any more questions, so he had to say a few perfunctory sentences before turning over and looking out the window.There was originally a canopy on the window, but unfortunately some bastard upstairs threw a hole in the trash, and a small night sky could be seen.The squirrel looked at it for a while, only to see that there was a star on the edge of the hole, dark yellow, dotted there alone, like a tadpole kept in a bowl.

He couldn't fall asleep for a while, so he simply tried to move it on the pillow, but in the end he really moved the other one into his field of vision.The tadpoles in the bowl turned into two. I don't know if it was my illusion. The moment another brighter star entered the hole, the first one also lit up.

So the squirrel smacked its lips, closed its eyes contentedly, and fell asleep.