Released

With the special reward of having a supper together, Boss Lu's work speed has doubled one after another, like a student working crazily on homework on the last day of summer vacation.

Seeing him spinning like a spinning top in front of the workbench, Zhou Xi always felt that it was time for God to send Boss Lu a labor model pennant, the kind that said "ruthless pie-making machine".

Not all of them.

After all, for the first time in the past few days, Boss Lu had the idea of ​​having a good meal.

Since receiving the call from home, Lu Xiangyang's heart felt like a rotten tomato, and his mood fell from time to time.

He didn't even have the strength to think about how his family got the cell phone number he had hidden for so long.

In the past two days, there have been intermittent calls. It is nothing more than that his father's illness is getting better, and his father's illness is getting worse. His father still remembers calling his son's name when he wakes up.

In fact, he can figure it out, this is just an excuse for the family to ask him to go back, and ask for some money by the way.

After all, he was the only child left in the family.

A common and clumsy trick, what are these grown-ups expecting?

After tidying up the work in hand, Lu Xiangyang pulled down the switch in a daze.

"What do you want to eat?" Zhou Xi closed the door for him.

"Let me think about it." Boss Lu stood under the street lamp and flipped through his phone, "It's so late, and there are no shops open, why don't you go downstairs to my house, there is a barbecue stall that is quite delicious."

"Okay." Zhou Xi nodded, "Let's go, drive."

The barbecue stall that Boss Lu mentioned is really a stall - the place where you make a living is only about ten square meters, and there is a long charcoal stove transported by a flat tricycle. The charcoal fire is very good, and the flames under the grill net are red. be shiny.The foam boxes on the car were filled with ice one by one, filled with various skewered ingredients, and various wines were iced in the buckets next to them.

It seems that it specializes in midnight business, and it has been open for a while.The dining table and chairs behind him are also simple folding models, covered with disposable plastic tablecloths.People eat in small groups, which is quite a lot.

The stall owner is an elderly man, who is turning the skewers on the grill, sizzling with oil.

No wonder you choose to set up a stall in the middle of the night.

In the early days of this kind of mobile stall, it would attract the city management.

"Here?" Zhou Xi looked around the endless streets, "Get out of the car first, I'll find a parking space."

"Hey." Lu Xiangyang quickly got out of the car, looking very happy, "I'll go to order first!"

The snack stalls that flow late at night are the most fulfilling harbor for a city to comfort those who come back from the night.There are fireworks wafting in all directions, the hustle and bustle of the city after drinking, and more precious human feelings.

The owners of the small stalls mostly attract regular customers. With the hot food and a few pleasantries, the tiredness of the day seems to fade away slowly, and the stomach and heart are warmer.

Life is like an adversity, and I am also a pedestrian.

Zhou Xi didn't know why, but suddenly such a sentence popped up in his heart.

He seldom came to the stalls to eat, and it was rare to see the hustle and bustle on the street corner in the middle of the night.

By the time he parked his car and came over, Lu Xiangyang had already ordered all of them.

"Here, let's see what else to eat." Lu Xiangyang held a small iron plate for weighing vegetables, and looked around the stall, "This old man is a fisherman, and these seafood are sold by the old man himself. But it’s so fresh—you can’t even buy such fresh ones in the supermarket.”

Zhou Xi glanced at the cart, then at the plate in the other party's hand and said, "It's almost there."

"Then go and sit down first." Lu Xiangyang turned around and shouted, "Master Hu, we don't add spice to this one! Remember not to add any spice!"

Zhou Xi's heart skipped a beat when he heard the words "no spicy" on the back.In a blink of an eye, something melted involuntarily in my heart, like spilling a cup of warm milk that was just scalded.

It was getting hotter and hotter.

He did remember it after all.

"Hey, braided brother! Bring friends today?" The boss yelled back at him amidst the noise, "Will you have some wine? The glutinous rice wine brewed by the old lady at home is good to drink hot!"

"Okay." Lu Xiangyang happily shook his head, "Listen to Master Hu's arrangement!"

The little braid flicked along with the movement.

When Zhou Xi watched him these two days, he always felt that something had changed.It was only now that I could see clearly—it was the pigtails that had grown longer.

Lu Xiangyang hasn't had a haircut recently, so he can only tie it up when he's busy.The shape of the braid has also changed from a chick's tail to a little wolf's tail, and now it's loose and I don't know how long it will be.

"Okay, I'll take it for you in a while!" Mr. Hu responded cheerfully in front of the vigorous fire.

Lu Xiangyang hadn't had a drink for a long time.

From the last time the plan of spicy crayfish with cold beer was shattered, to the failure of drinking due to eating cephalosporin, he has not even taken a bottle of wine until today.

A plate of crispy barbecue with sesame oil and two sips of wine is a wonderful start to the night life.

Zhou Xi sat in front of the table, put down the car keys in his hand and shook his head: "I see you drink."

After all, he is a gourmet practitioner, and Boss Lu's mouth is still quite picky.If it wasn't for the fact that he was sitting on the side of the road eating an open-air barbecue, Zhou Xi would have thought that this plain-looking plate of grilled skewers came from a luxurious private teppanyaki, the kind with a few hundred dollars.

The taste is not inferior to that of the restaurant.

Especially seafood, the tofu fish is grilled crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, the squid is smooth and refreshing, and even the sea prawns, which are the easiest to grill, are sweet and juicy when bitten.The old fisherman is very careful, and the shrimp lines are all picked clean.

"It's delicious!" Lu Xiangyang took a bite of the squid and began to boast, "This is one of the best barbecues in my opinion..."

When he was talking, the mobile phone placed in the middle of the table kept flickering, with a buzzing vibration.When Zhou Xi lowered his eyes, he could see the text message popping up on the screen, and even the content was surprisingly clear.

It was from his family.

"Yangyang, think about your family, your father is really doing it for the family's benefit, you have to..."

The word "home" just crossed the middle of the crack in the tempered film and broke in two, implying something ironically.

"My parents are old, you should come back, these days you left..."

"Pick up the phone."

There were too many words, and it was a bit difficult for Zhou Xi to look upside down on the screen, and could only understand half a paragraph.

Lu Xiangyang talked for a while, and then he noticed the ringing of the phone.He followed Zhou Xi's gaze, and immediately choked on his words.

He stretched out his hand stiffly to cover the screen, with a little panic in his eyes.

Human instinct is ultimately nothing more than salvaging impotent self-esteem.

That strange call came in again, and the table began to vibrate faintly, and the string of unpleasant numbers came out from Lu Xiangyang's fingers.

Although some pictures are passing by inadvertently, but the consciousness is very competitive, and it can always clearly capture the information that you try to avoid, which is very eye-catching.

Deep and sober.I can't forget it even if I want to.

Zhou Xi lowered his eyes and moved his chair back.

"I'll take it." Lu Xiangyang squeezed his fist hard, "Wait a moment."

The phone finally cut in.

"Yangyang, listen to me, what happened to Xiang Wan is really not your father's fault..."

Just a matter of a second.

It’s over.

Zhou Xi just lost his mind, and Lu Xiangyang stood up from his chair, almost knocking over the table.

There was no chance of even being stopped.

"Shut up!" Lu Xiangyang couldn't hold back his voice anymore, his anger seemed to explode from his body, and he slammed his fist on the table mercilessly, "You don't deserve to mention my sister's name !"

The diners next to him were startled by the movement and turned their heads one after another. Even the boss turned around and took a look.

There was a sudden silence all around.

Zhou Xi also stood up, taking advantage of his height to push him back.

Lu Xiangyang hung up the phone with trembling breaths, and slapped the phone on the table hard.

There was the crisp sound of glass shattering.

"Young people nowadays..." The diners coaxed without knowing it, and turned back in whispers.

Lu Xiangyang's body trembled uncontrollably, and after a long while, he finally buried his head in discouragement, without saying a word.

Zhou Xi straightened the table before sitting down.

"Tell me." Zhou Xi stared at him coldly, "What happened?"

At this question, Boss Lu gritted his teeth for a long time, and finally he opened his mouth sadly, unable to utter a word.

In the end, he only let out a soft laugh, with a trembling breath.The broken hair on the forehead was not tied tightly, and slowly slid down from the side of the face.

He picked up the wine bottle on the table, raised his head and took a few sips for himself.

Without a pause, the neck is stuffy to the bottom.

Zhou Xi frowned: "Who did you learn how to drink fast wine?"

"...Ah." Lu Xiangyang came back to his senses now, he looked up at Zhou Xi in a daze, "I learned from my father..."

Master Hu's wine was too hot.

It's so cold, it's so cold that it penetrates the heart.

Who said that some things will be carved into the bones from birth, like genes that have been programmed and cannot be changed.

"What should I do." Lu Xiangyang smiled bleakly, "Brother Xi, there is actually no difference between us."

"Look." He picked up a long bamboo stick and gestured on the table, "You have never been able to find your family members, and I have been avoiding them... We are all the same, and we can't go back."

"My father started to gamble when I was young, and the whole family was ruined by gambling. Once my sister got sick and coughed until the paper was red and white, and she was almost out of breath. My family had no money to go to the hospital, and the imported medicines were expensive, so the figure was a little longer. At one point, my mother would not dare to look at it."

He sniffed quickly.

"My father went to borrow money, loan sharks, and took it back to give my sister an injection in the hospital. I stayed in the hospital, and my mother danced in the ballroom day and night, waiting to raise the money to pay back. Then you guessed it, my father Wanting to get his money back, he borrowed money that was several times higher than the medical expenses, played in underground casinos, and lost everything."

"Loan usury... If you don't pay for it, come to your door to quarrel, find fault, and threaten. I have seen all kinds of people." Lu Xiangyang stubbornly opened his eyes upwards, "Later, after a long time, they will talk about this matter." Blame it on my sister. Blame her for bad luck, blame her for bad luck. They quarreled, argued, intensified, and the house fell to pieces."

"She can be saved obviously, the doctor said there is hope. Relatives, friends and teachers have raised money for her... But my father secretly used it to pay off the debt."

Zhou Xi listened silently, listening to him sentence by sentence.

"The debt has been paid." Lu Xiangyang said with a bleak smile in his voice, "Where is he?"

At first Lu Xiangyang was still sober, and he could figure out a clear logic when speaking, but gradually he was talking to himself like a dream, and later on, the more he drank, the more vague his speech became.

"I've been different from others since I was a child." Lu Xiangyang drank a little too much. He looked at Zhou Xi, his eyes were full of repressed sadness, and the moment he raised his eyes, Zhou Xi seemed to be able to understand what he said What does it refer to, and what does it refer to.

"I think I'm sick, but only my sister believes in me." He choked up as he spoke, his voice was intermittent, as if he had reopened the scars sewn up by the years by himself, and the scars were torn bloody and irreparable. "There's only this one relative, why did she leave... It's fine if she stays for a while..."

"Don't drink anymore." Zhou Xi took away the half bottle of wine in his hand and lifted him up from the chair, "I'll take you back."

The author says:

Today I ate delicious red strawberries!

It is much bigger than the cream strawberry, and has a very strong strawberry sweet taste.

I can smell the sweet fruity aroma through the packaging!Girls' hearts are about to fly!

But just don't let it go... Hurry up and eat two more.

I recommend a method of washing strawberries. I learned it from my mother. Add a spoonful of flour to the water for washing strawberries. The consistency of the flour after it meets water can remove the fine dust from the uneven peel, and it can be washed very clean. ——The method is suitable for delicate fruits like grape raisins, which are not easy to clean!

PS: While eating strawberries, I watched Xiao Lu always get drunk, and a misstep would cause eternal hatred (bushi