The early morning sunlight shines through the glass with no curtains installed in Nuoda's living room. There is no furniture in the newly decorated living room, no sofa, no TV, and no coffee table. There is only one mat on the wooden floor.
On the mat, a young man was sleeping deeply. It wasn't until the pillow next to his ears vibrated slightly that he slowly opened his eyes.
Buzz…
Buzz…
Buzz…
Vibrations came from the pillow, and Song Wenbin stared at the ceiling in a daze.
After looking at it for a while, he recognized from the minimalist lampshade on the ceiling that this was his new home in City S.
After returning from India, Song Wenbin did not go anywhere else, but took the subway directly back to his new home. Now that his home is in City S, he no longer needs to return to City H like before, which is much more convenient than before.
At this moment, his new home has almost been decorated, at least the floor and floor tiles have been laid, but he has not purchased any soft furnishings, so it is an empty shell for the time being.
But Song Wenbin liked this empty shell state very much, which made him feel empty and relaxed. It made him more relaxed than his parents' home in City H, which had a lot of furniture.
Although I don’t have much time to go to India, this job is very mentally and physically demanding. After returning to his new home, Song Wenbin always felt very tired, as if he couldn't get enough sleep.
These days, apart from eating, he spends most of his time lying on the mattress, either sleeping or in a daze.
If no one disturbed him, he felt that he could lie like this forever until the end of time.
But the mobile phone next to his ear reminded him all the time that he was still in the real world at this moment.
Buzz…
Buzz…
Buzz…
After the cell phone stopped for a while, it started ringing again, relentlessly chasing a certain answer.
Song Wenbin had no choice but to put his hand under the pillow, thinking that if it was a scam call or a company call, he would hang up. Now that he was off work, he did not want to have unnecessary and meaningless communication with anyone.
But he picked up the phone and glanced at it, and found that it was a WeChat call from his mother Li Yue.
Song Wenbin let out a long breath, lazily answered the call, clicked on the playback button, and threw the phone aside.
"Say." He said casually.
"Wenbin, what are you doing now?"
My mother's hesitant voice rang from the speakerphone of her cell phone.
"Sleep." Song Wenbin said.
"You little guy, why are you still sleeping now? It's already twelve o'clock. Why don't you get up quickly and get something to eat?"
My mother's bluffing voice came from the phone.
Song Wenbin frowned and said, "Say something quickly, or I will die."
"Hey, don't hang up. Don't hang up. I have something to discuss with you."
"No getting married, no finding a partner, no blind date."
Song Wenbin said: "You say."
The other end of the phone sighed and said, "I'm not asking you to find a partner. Although you should indeed find a partner, that's not the case today."
"What's the matter?" Song Wenbin sat up slightly from the cushion.
"It's something in the factory."
factory?
Indeed, Song Wenbin's family has a small factory. It is said to be a factory, but in fact it is a small workshop. It is an outdoor product production workshop run by Song Wenbin's father and mother. In the early years, when my uncle was still in office, he found connections and obtained a business license to produce some less famous knock-off table tennis rackets and badminton rackets. Wholesale to stationery stores and some outdoor supplies stores, there is not much profit.
Ever since he went to the Caribbean, his mother had never mentioned family matters to him. The sudden mention today made Song Wenbin stunned for a second, and asked slowly: "Ah, what happened to the factory."
"The factory...the factory has suffered a lot of losses this year...this year..."
Mother Li Yue said, her voice hesitant.
When Song Wenbin heard this, he felt a headache and rubbed his messy hair. He sat up from the bed and asked, "How much did you lose?"
"It's not much, just over a hundred thousand. As you know, the economy has been in a slump recently," said my mother.
Song Wenbin breathed a sigh of relief and said calmly: "In business, it's normal to have profits and losses. Just take some cushion at home and come back when the year is good."
】
"The money at home is not enough." Mother Li Yue was confused.
"Why is there not enough money at home?" Song Wenbin was puzzled.
Although his family is not rich, it is still considered a middle-class and well-off family. He does not believe that his parents cannot afford more than 100,000 yuan.
My mother didn't say anything and started to ramble, talking about the workers asking for a wage increase and the dealers being dishonest and purchasing and returning goods.
But Song Wenbin has lived in this family for more than 20 years and is already aware of the family's problems.
"Did Dad lose money by trading in the stock market again?"
Song Wenbin asked bluntly.
Li Yue was silent.
After a moment of silence, the woman on the phone hesitated: "Yes...yes."
Song Wenbin raised his eyebrows, not surprised at all. When he was a child, his father Song Siping once went to the casino with his uncle, a contractor, and lost more than 10,000 yuan. It was the Chinese New Year. When he came back, he scolded the family. Later, the casino was also closed down, but I didn’t go back.
But it’s hard to change people’s gambling habits. Although he no longer plays offline real games, since an aunt who made money from stock trading came to the house to brag about it in 2008, he also threw the money he finally earned into the stock market. However, when I was thrown into it, I encountered a stock market crash, got stuck, and almost got divorced.
Despite these painful lessons, Song Siping himself has always believed that it was his lack of academic skills that led to his constant losses in the stock market. Every once in a while, I have to invest some money in an attempt to "hone my skills" in the market so that I can come back one day.
These things seemed very ridiculous to Song Wenbin himself. He was not interested in gambling by nature. When he became an adult, he once persuaded his father at the dinner table to try to get him to stop his losses in time. But my father always used some lofty terms, such as the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, this insider, that insider, to support his actions.
After saying it several times, Song Wenbin stopped talking. After all, he is my father, and it is his business to do whatever he likes, and as a son, I cannot control it.
But now that his mother called, Song Wenbin couldn't help but feel a headache again.
"What did he do again this time?"
"He bought a store at the bottom, and now the company has been delisted."
The mother's voice trembled as she said, "More than 300,000 yuan was paid..."
"Okay."
Song Wenbin was not surprised when he heard the news, but only felt tired.
"Now that the economy is so bad, he dares to do this and do charity." He rubbed his forehead and asked calmly.
"I said the same thing, but he didn't listen." My mother, Li Yue, burst into tears on the phone, feeling so sad.
But when Song Wenbin listened to his mother's cries, he felt no sympathy in his heart. In the past, when he tried to persuade his father to stop, his mother would always find various reasons for his father's losses. The most common reason was that "he also wanted to lose money." Earned”.
"What are you going to do? Do you want me to give you money to advance?" Song Wenbin said: "I still have a mortgage to pay, and I don't have that much money."
"I know it's not possible, and your dad doesn't mean that. He...he wants you to come back and take over the factory. He said he is old and can't do it anymore," Li Yue said.
"uh-huh."
Song Wenbin snorted and said sarcastically: "Then I still have to deal with it. I have my own business now and don't have time to do what you do. If you ask me, your work is not very profitable. You can't make it in a year." How much does it cost, and since you are old and can’t work anymore, you might as well sell that dilapidated factory for a million or so, plug up the holes, and the remaining money will be almost enough for you to live in your old age. "
My mother was on the phone, silent and wiping tears.
Song Wenbin was impatient and said, "I'm dead."
"Son." Li Yue begged, "Your father and I have never accomplished anything in our lives. I just can't bear to sell this factory."
After a pause, Li Yue said uneasily: "Besides, I'm worried about your dad... I'm worried that after we cash out, your dad will use the money to speculate in stocks again. If we lose money..."
"Huh, you know you're scared."
Song Wenbin said happily.
"You still have the heart to joke, but you have no conscience."
Her mother was dissatisfied with Song Wenbin's attitude and said excitedly on the phone: "I'm not kidding you."
"Let's talk about it later." Song Wenbin said noncommittally and hung up the phone.
After hanging up the phone, Song Wenbin sat alone in the empty living room, expressionless, listening to the birdsong outside the window.
He didn't know what to say. He just felt as if everyone around him was a Dou. Although his father and mother lived decades longer than him, some things seemed to be completely innate. In some things, they were just like losing money in the stock market. Like all living beings, they will not repent even when they are eighty years old.
Stock trading is only done by idiots...
After muttering something, he fell back on the mattress, intending to sleep and forget all this nonsense.
However, after his mother's call, he couldn't fall asleep. After squinting for a while, he felt a little annoyed. So I got up from the mattress and walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth.
Compared with the empty living room, the facilities in the bathroom are quite complete. Song Wenbin felt that if he were a father, instead of throwing money into the sea, he would use it to buy a toilet with water spray heating, so that he could still sit in the pit. Get comfortable.
After briefly washing up, he went downstairs wearing a mask and slippers and carrying rubbish. After going downstairs, he pushed a shared bicycle and rode it on the street.
His old Sagitar had been sold in Chongqing, and now he has no other means of transportation. As for the motorcycle in India, although Song Wenbin wanted to keep it, it was taken away by the program crew after the filming of the program. He has no choice but to ride a bicycle now.
After riding a bicycle to a flower shop near the community, Song Wenbin was looking around, and his eyes lit up when he saw several new pots of gardenias waiting to be placed in the shop. Asked: "Boss, how much does this cost?"
The boss looked at it and said: "30 for one pot, 100 for four pots."
"Bring me four pots." Song Wenbin said, inhaling the fragrance of the flowers.
"Okay." The boss put down his work and came to help Song Wenbin pack potted plants. After buying gardenias, Song Wenbin bought several pots of succulents and Chlorophytum and pothos. Then he put the flowers full of them on the bicycle seat, rode the bike with one hand and held a pot of pothos in the other and walked back to the community slowly.
After returning home, Song Wenbin placed pothos and spider plants next to the mattress in the living room. The new home had just been renovated, so the formaldehyde smell was definitely inevitable. Some green plants could lighten the smell.
After placing the pothos, Song Wenbin carried the succulents and gardenias to the balcony. There was a small wooden ladder leading directly to the roof on the balcony. Both sides of the wooden ladder were filled with various small succulents, spider plants, and honeysuckle.
Song Wenbin climbed up the wooden ladder to the roof. There was a small greenhouse on the roof. This was the benefit of buying the top floor. Song Wenbin got a free attic. Although the attic was not big, it was used by Song Wenbin in various ways at the moment. It was stuffed to the brim with flowers and plants.
Among them are honeysuckle, redbud, prickly pear, azalea, June snow, podocarpus, and several ornamental pomegranates. Among those large bonsais, there are also small succulents.
This is a hobby that Song Wenbin unexpectedly awakened when he bought pothos to remove formaldehyde. When he bought pothos for the first time, Song Wenbin discovered that in the process of playing with these plants, he could gain great inner peace, allowing him to forget about travel and life. The inexplicable and wonderful people and things I encountered.
So these days, in addition to eating and sleeping, he basically cycled around S City, looking for flower shops, and bought various plants from them to put in the flower room.
After climbing the stairs and wiping the dust on the glass ceiling, placing the newly purchased plants in the correct position, and spraying a few pots of water-loving plants with a little water, Song Wenbin pulled up a lounge chair, contentedly Lying down, looking at the plants around me, smelling the fragrance of flowers and plants, I took out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and started smoking slowly.
While smoking, I was thinking about what else I could add to this greenhouse.
Maybe he can add another bird, but he often goes abroad, sometimes for several months, and the birds will definitely starve to death. Or he should install an automatic watering system in the greenhouse to automatically water it regularly, but he doesn't know. Is this kind of system available on the market? Song Wenbin doesn't want all the flowers in his beloved flower house to die after he returns from a trip abroad.
Just as I was thinking about it, my phone vibrated again.
Song Wenbin, who had not finished smoking a cigarette, was a little annoyed. Why did the phone calls keep coming during his break?
But when he looked again, Song Wenbin put aside his impatience, it was not his mother.
"Hello." Song Wenbin answered the phone.
"Mr. Song, we are setting up your bed, now we are downstairs."
"Are you downstairs?" Song Wenbin quickly stood up, lay on the eaves and looked down, and sure enough he saw a small truck below. The bed he ordered for himself has arrived.
"Okay, okay, I'll be right away."
Song Wenbin smoked a cigarette and went downstairs to open the door for the master.
The masters moved the bed to Song Wenbin's master bedroom very awkwardly and installed it. During the installation, the master who installed the bed saw that Song Wenbin's room was almost empty, so he asked: "Brother, why are you doing this?" Why don’t you buy a bed? All the bedrooms here are empty?”
"I live alone in this house." Song Wenbin said.
"Are you renting it?" the master asked.
"Bought it." Song Wenbin said proudly.
The master was in awe and said: "Hey, why don't you buy a few more beds, just in case you need them in the future. Our family is doing activities, so it will be cheaper to buy a few more beds."
"It's not needed." Song Wenbin said matter-of-factly.
"Why don't you need it? Getting married and having children will definitely mean..."
"If you don't get married, you won't have children." Song Wenbin waved his hands triumphantly: "I just need a bed."
"Brother, don't say too harshly, but be prepared for a rainy day." The master said seriously.
"There is no need to prepare for a rainy day, just one sheet is enough." Song Wenbin said firmly.
