Offer your allegiance to Chaos!

Ashe had a dream.

For 15 years, this was the first time he had dreamed of the last days of his previous life.

If I remember correctly, it should be No. 20 years of his previous life. His magnificent life has come to an end—from killing his father with his own hands, walking out of a poor mountain village, and climbing up step by step among vagrants and criminal groups , until he came to the United States on the other side of the ocean, and experienced the grand opening and collapse of the big scam. Although it was only a mere 26 years of life, he almost went through a journey that ordinary people would not dare to imagine in several lifetimes.

However, at the end of this journey, before he left the country once at the age of 29 and was overturned by a 12.7mm sniper bomb gifted by an unknown enemy, his last days, three years, passed. The score is exceptionally flat.

As bland as where he was.

It was a small county.

It is where his hometown is located.

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Compared with the suffocatingly fast-paced metropolis, time in small counties moves slower. There are no hurried office workers on the street, and there are often only old men and women in twos and threes on the bus. For these old people As far as people are concerned, they don’t even need a clock, just watch the rising and setting of the sun, and they can spend the day safely.

After staying in such a place for a long time, it is easy for people to lose the concept of time. Gradually, even the heart slows down.

However, Aixi—although she was not called by this name in her previous life—lived in a high school family courtyard, which relieved this worry—every morning at six o’clock, when the night remained and the east was still dark, the morning The ringing of the reading bell would urge him to get up, and the almost boiling sound of reciting the book would destroy the last drowsiness.

What's quite interesting is that Ashe's balcony is facing the last classroom of the teaching building. In the first year after moving here, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, there was always a chubby guy lying on the railing of the corridor, waiting until the morning reading After the bell rang, he started his English morning reading with an extremely loud, tenor-level "abandon—!", which was more penetrating than any alarm clock.

Of course, Ashe has never understood why he still starts to recite "abandon" after a whole year. Maybe the meaning is to use "abandon, abandon" to remind himself that he must never give up?

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Ashe's day is simple.

When he gets up in the morning, washes his face and brushes his teeth, he will go to the breakfast shop at the gate of the school, finish his eight-treasure porridge, eat two meat buns and two vegetable buns, then wander the street for half an hour to digest his food, and then go for a half-hour run on the school playground Step, then go home and take a shower.

He has already earned enough money that he can't spend in ten lifetimes, and there is no financial pressure. Naturally, he doesn't have to work during the day, and spends most of his time reading his favorite books.

Reading has been his favorite thing since he was a child. In the past, he was forced to make a living. Except for the few years of hard study when he just smuggled to the United States, most of the others were read in the cracked time, and they were all utilitarian subjects, such as business, finance, Management, etc., occasionally read a few literary masterpieces, also out of the need to supplement cultural accomplishment and create elite personalities.

When the bustle is gone, he has countless time to read any books he is interested in, purely out of curiosity and aesthetic needs, books on any subject and in any field, as long as he is interested, he can read them. When you get tired, just throw it away, and read it again when you think of it again.

He doesn't like tidying up the room, so from the living room to the bedroom to the balcony, there are books left behind on the cabinets, on the floor, and on the bed. It's a mess. If someone from outside comes, I'm afraid they don't know what to do with them.

However, no outsiders will come.

In this country, Ashe has no family and no friends. In this city, except for the original owner who met him when he bought the house, no one even knows him or has heard of the pseudonym he is using now.

He went to drink porridge in the morning, and gradually became familiar with the owner of the porridge shop. One day, as soon as he entered the door, the boss greeted him with a casual smile, here we come again. He smiled politely, and changed to another porridge shop the next day. shop.

He runs on the school playground in the morning, and often sees a young and beautiful female teacher who is also running. Maybe it's because he still has an incomparably beautiful face after plastic surgery after fleeing, or maybe it's because his body is obviously worth far more than this little girl. Thanks to ten grades of clothes, watches, sneakers and car keys in the county, the female teacher suddenly came to greet him one day and asked for his mobile phone number. He still nodded politely and changed it after returning home. I got a new mobile phone number, and after that I changed my jogging to street jogging.

Later, when I saw the female teacher again, it was already half a year later on the street. Aixi saw her happily holding the hand of her boyfriend, pointing to the advertisement on the outer wall of a wedding photography shop and smiling.

Of course, there are also people who cannot be avoided.

There is only one movie theater in this small county town. Every year, every season, every movie that can be shown here, whether it is a good movie or a bad movie, Ai Xi will always buy a ticket for the midnight show at midnight.

In such a small county, it is very rare to watch a movie alone, and it is extremely rare to watch all the zero-point shows of movies released by one person, not to mention a special person like him. also know him.

Those who will work here basically don’t have any long-term plans. Most of them are part-time factory girls. They will become students during winter and summer vacations. Most of them are girls, and they are also highly mobile. Every time he comes, during the few minutes waiting for the opening, young The girls are always giggling and shoving each other, pushing a guy to talk to him like playing truth or dare.

Some were young, flushed, stuttering, hesitated for a long time, and were forced out by the sisters at the last minute before the opening, but they could even bite their tongues when they asked for WeChat.

There are those who pretend to be mature, imitating the old-fashioned way to strike up a conversation on the Internet, and say that handsome guy, you have countless stories at a glance, why don't you tell my sister?In fact, the ears are red to the root.

There are those who are really bold, or who are so fierce and hot that they directly put the room card key and a small note on the small table in front of him, or buy a ticket for the seat next to him without saying a word and watch the whole movie with him, or even almost movie.

There are also those who are dismissive, and deliberately mock him loudly when chatting in the distance, but he is just a rich second generation playing tricks on little girls.

For all of this, Ashe responded silently.

He no longer pretended to smile and nod, and did not give aliases and contact information. He was like a wooden man in the seat in the waiting area before the opening, and he did not communicate with anyone.

Those who came to strike up a conversation turned a deaf ear.

The small note in front of you, don't glance at it.

The guests sitting next to him changed and changed, without squinting.

Finally, in a bustling zero-point field, a group of young staff girls who had planned for a long time took the courage to give a birthday party to one of them, 10 minutes after he bought the ticket and before the opening In the gap, they collectively bought tickets to enter the arena and surrounded him with a heart, and deliberately made all kinds of noises while watching the movie, even birthday cakes, ribbons, balloons and bubbles were all over the sky. Movie theme songs are loud.

But he still acted as if he hadn't felt anything, remained motionless in the jubilant and noisy atmosphere, his eyes were fixed on the big screen, and he quietly got up and left after the staff watch finished playing and the big screen went out.

When his back disappeared at the end of the corridor, all the little girls, including the heroine of the birthday party, looked at each other in blank silence.

At this moment, everyone understood that this man was not playing tricks, nor was he a rich second generation who came to catch little girls for fun.

He... really has a story.

——A story that they would never guess in their lifetime.

Afterwards, Ashe became much cleaner, and no one bothered him to watch every movie. The girls would gather around him, stare at him, lower their voices, and twitter and speculate about him when he was waiting quietly in the waiting area. In the past, there will be low exclamations and even sobs from time to time, like a never-ending story meeting.

Later, Aixi almost became the urban legend of this movie theater and even this shopping mall. Whenever a new employee joins the job and catches up with the release of a new movie, the seniors will arrange one or two night shifts for her , allowing her to "look up" to Ashe's true face, but strictly prohibit all her attempts to strike up a conversation.

"Perhaps before his girlfriend died of illness, his last wish was to come here with him again—the place where he and her first dated—to watch another movie. It’s enough to watch another movie... And have you noticed? No matter which hall, no matter which time, he always sits at the number ten in the seventh row. If the number ten in the seventh row is gone, he will go home and wait for the next one. Maybe around zero o'clock on July [-]th is the anniversary of his girlfriend's death."

Ashe once heard an old employee choke up saying this to a new employee.

He didn't understand how this group of little girls with over-imaginative brains could come up with such a wonderful story. No. [-] on the seventh row was just the best place to watch movies in a small hall he found from the Internet, and he never had any girlfriends. Let alone a wheelchair.

However, they were surprisingly right about one thing.

Ashe doesn't really like watching movies, at least not to the point where he has to watch every good or bad movie released that season. The reason why he does this is indeed related to someone.

That person is his mother.

Twenty years ago, when his mother gave him the last of her secret savings and sent him across the border after he killed the beast that should theoretically be called "father," he remembered that his mother's The last sentence.

That's not what was said to him.

But looking far away.

The thin woman said:

"I really want to see a movie."

Chapter 49 Less than a hundred years of loneliness

From the small county town to the small mountain village where Aixi was born, there is only one bus route that opens on weekends. It belongs to the national welfare policy, and it also connects some small settlements. Most of the time, no one is there, except for the front of the bus. When I get in the car, I will drive step by step. Except for the two drivers who go back and forth in the morning and evening, only Ai Xi sits in the last row every week.

The oldest bus has no air-conditioning, and the blue-black windows cannot be opened. In summer, the inside of the bus is always stuffy like a steamer. With gasoline and the smell of old leather and metal being exposed to the sun, it is dark and stuffy. , extremely depressing.

But Ai Xi has always been calm, looking at the book in his hand quietly, accompanied by the shaking of the car, flipping through page after page, no matter how bumpy the road was for nearly two hours, his sight was never lost. Leave the words on the book.

After all, compared to when he smuggled across the ocean, spending three days and three nights with more than 20 strange men and women in the container, listening to women's sobbing or men's coughing in the darkness, smelling the unspeakable stench Smell... The experience of the bus is nothing but pediatrics.

In a sense, it could remind him of his childhood.

His father was a good drinker, gambler, and drug addict. The house left by the old man had been sold long ago. As long as Ai Xi could remember, he lived in a broken brick house in the corner of the village. Pulling a few broken plastic curtains used on the construction site, the kitchen was barely enclosed, and the rest was a complex of bedroom and living room. As for the bathroom, it was natural to go to the woods to solve it casually.

There is only one plank bed that is barely falling apart. Most of the time, a drunk man sleeps on it. When he has no money to drink to sober up, he will "give out" half a seat to the woman, and there is still a place in the corner. There was a broken mattress that was picked up, and it was where the women and Ashe stayed most of the time.

I don’t know where I picked up the mattress. It is probably in the burning garbage dump. The leaked sponge was even burnt to a large piece. It smells like the gasoline leather smell on the bus after being exposed to the sun. Normal people will never get used to the smell of the next car and how many roads they walk.

No wonder men would rather sleep on a plank bed than lie on that broken mattress.

But the young Ashe didn't mind, on the contrary, he liked this mattress, after all, it was one of the few times he could spend with his mother.

Thinking about it now, it was really a strange feeling. Obviously, my mother never cared for him like other people's mothers. She regarded him as a brand of pain from the beginning, and almost strangled him in the bucket. She didn't give He named him and wouldn't say anything to him, just fed him with leftovers out of numbness to the torture of life and biological maternal instinct... When she looked at him, she didn't even look at him .

It's not that there are no fluctuations in the eyes, but that there are no eyes.

It's like looking at a weed.

But he still feels that when he stays with his mother, he will feel at ease.

This is probably the stupid blood instinct of carbon-based creatures. Because of this instinct, his mother raised him, and because of this instinct, he will go back and forth between the county town and the mountain village over and over again to worship the dead.

Said it was a sacrifice, but in fact Ashe didn't bring anything, and didn't say anything, just walked to the ruins where his parents' ashes were buried, and sat down.

Twenty years have passed, and under the great changes of the times, except for a few of the most stubborn elderly families, most of the people in this village have moved to the city, and Aixi's former home is still in ruins.

It was a real dilapidated wall, bricks that had been burnt black by the fire, and the gaps were already filled with weeds, and even a few roots could protrude from the cracks of the bricks, which is surprising in their tenacity.

Ashe sat on the grass from sun up to sun down.

To be honest, he didn't know what he was doing either.

The drama of his life has come to an end. Unless he seeks death himself, he will never appear in front of the world again. All that is left is time that can be squandered infinitely. When he gets tired of reading, he wants to go out for a walk but doesn’t know what to do. He Xiang, thinking about it, the only place that still has "meaning" to him is this ruin.

But when he got there, his mind was blank again.

I didn't have anything to say to them, whether it was my father or my mother, he had never existed in the eyes of those two people. At first, there might be hatred, but later even the hatred was gone, and it became a complete hatred. The indifference of...he has always been a superfluous item.

If there really are undead in the world, if father and mother are still lingering around the ruins, the only thing they are arguing about is hatred for each other.

Nothing to do with him.

Therefore, there is no need to speak.

In this way, sit from sunrise to sunset.

He didn't remember what he thought during the period, and he didn't bother to remember.

It wasn't until the mobile phone alarm clock rang, and the bus back to the city was about to arrive, that Aixi stood up and walked out of the village.

Every time I look back for the last time, I can always see the deserted dense forest, the sunlight passing by the leaves, casting fine shadows, and reflecting countless floating light particles in the air.

The weekly back and forth, like a movie, lasted for three years.

Of course, the driver of the bus, like the employees of the movie theater, is an unavoidable person, and it has never changed.

This is an old man who is not young and grey-haired. According to him, he is about to retire, so the company arranged for him to take this idle shift with almost no one. — Any driver is a person who can’t keep his mouth shut. The car is not lively, and he always feels that something is wrong.

Therefore, even though Aixi adhered to the principle of silence from the beginning and never responded to any greetings from him except telling the parking place, in the second year, the old man still began to use his loud voice to talk to the driver in the driver's seat. Ashe in the last row was chatting, or unilaterally talking to herself.

Like all the old people, the topic focuses on their children's studies and marriage. While complaining that the youngest son who is in high school is not good at studying and hooking up with little girls every day, he also complains that the eldest daughter who is a doctor of philosophy is too bookish. The one-in-a-million beauty who hasn't even talked to a boyfriend at 26, and only knows how to flip through the pile of tomes when she returns home from the winter vacation, and it's all tm birdsong that he can't understand.

Inside and outside the words, it is natural to faintly reveal the meaning of wanting to match the eldest daughter - Aixi's appearance, figure and clothing are really too eye-catching, even if her attitude is cold, after a long time, the old man who has come to know him has not resisted trying The idea of ​​trying.

Of course, according to what he said, he valued Aixi's filial piety more. A young man who went back to his hometown to sweep the tomb once a week couldn't even describe the rarity of a giant panda.

Ashe naturally didn't respond, but, like the movie theater employees, there was a winter vacation, and there was still a young girl on the bus.

This eldest daughter is not as outrageous as the old man boasted, but she is still considered a rare beauty. The bookish look that rushes towards her face is rare in modern cities. The German original "Critique of Practical Reason".

In the modern impetuous society, even men who are dazzled by beauty will be afraid of a female doctor of philosophy who can smash Kant's original works.

The eldest daughter was obviously forced to come over for a "blind date" under the ear-piercing voice of the old man. Her face was as stern as the unbreakable wall of sighs in Greek mythology. Except for sitting opposite Ashe in the last row, the whole long During the departure of the car, I didn't say a word, and I kept reading in silence.

The old man in the driver's seat probably reached some kind of agreement with his daughter, and this time he kept his mouth shut the whole time, but from the long sighs that came from time to time, it could be heard that the old man was burning with anxiety.

Ai Xi didn't care about all this, he still paid the fare silently and got off the car as usual, walking towards the ruins of his home.

A fierce quarrel could be faintly heard from the car behind, and when Ashe was about to reach the end of the first field path, new footsteps followed.

The footsteps followed Ashe through the entire deserted village, with a long distance between them, until Ashe sat down on the grass, the footsteps stopped.

Ai Xi didn't know how long the eldest daughter was watching behind her back, and she didn't care when the footsteps left on the way. She only knew that the sun was rising and setting again, and when he returned to the bus, the last row was still Two people.

On the way back to the city, the eldest daughter stopped reading all the time, but raised her head from time to time to look at the people around her.

Ashe could only feel her raising her head and fixing her eyes from the corner of her vision, but couldn't see her eyes.

He doesn't care either.

On the whole way back to the city, the eldest daughter still didn't say a word to him.

However, after parking the car, she got up and got out of the car before Ashe, and in the anticipation of the old father, she finally turned around and said a simple sentence:

"When you're so lonely, why do you have to force yourself to live?"

Ashe raised her eyes to meet her for the first time, but only saw her back.

Next, whether it was the old father's shock, anger, and yelling that poured into the eardrum, or the old man's careful apology, Ai Xi couldn't remember clearly, only that he seemed to be circling in his mind until he returned home. sentence.

I can't remember what I was thinking or when I fell asleep.

It's just that, later, when I go to hitchhike every weekend, the old man becomes silent.

The last hustle and bustle in his world also became quiet.

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