Luo Binhan has known Zhou Yu for almost as long as he has known Zhou Yu.
But after all, she is a girl from the next class, so she doesn’t have many opportunities to interact with her. The main intersection between the two of them is that they are Zhou Yu's best friend and Qingmei respectively.
Luo Binhan has always felt that there might be something going on between these two people. Beautiful women with similar names, similar temperaments, and familiar families will sooner or later break through the window paper and transform from friends into lovers. In order to avoid suspicion and adhere to the principle of "don't bully a friend's wife", he has often walked around these two since high school.
In fact, he didn't have much affection for Zhou Yu. Although she was a beauty, she was not Luo Binhan's type, and their interests rarely overlapped.
And for some reason, he always felt that Zhou Yu's usual personality was not his true nature. Especially every time she was in front of Zhou Yu, her half-smiling look always seemed to contain some hidden meaning.
However, no matter how he feels about Zhou Yu, at least one thing is that he doesn't want anything to happen to her.
But on an ordinary day half a year ago, Zhou Yu disappeared. There was no message, no sign, just a normal tone after the class reunion: "I'll take the subway back."
Then she disappeared. Surveillance video from her residence showed that she did not return home that night. He didn't show up for the next three days.
At that time, Zhou Yu was about to graduate from graduate school and planned to pursue a doctorate in medicine. The accident destroyed both his career and his life. He abandoned his thesis and defense and desperately searched for her missing. Luo Binhan accompanied him to take notes. Not only the police, but also private channels, private institutions, and even Luo Binhan's father's special network. After a month of searching in every possible way, no one was alive or dead, but no bodies were found.
Zhou Yu simply seemed to have disappeared from the world.
In high school, she was not very popular among her peers, and she had very few friends with whom she could keep in touch. A few phone calls could easily rule out the possibility of her staying at a friend's house.
In terms of relatives, Zhou Yu's ancestral home is not in Lihai City, but moved here with her father, a painter. The father's family was passed down through three generations. After his father's death, there were no other close relatives alive.
As for the situation of the maternal line, it is completely unknown. It seems that Zhou Yu ran away from home when she was very young. At this point, the possibility of Zhou Yu hiding in a relative's house was basically ruled out - then again, she had no reason to hide in the first place.
The remaining worst guesses became more and more credible as time went by. Three months later, although Luo Binhan didn't mention a word to Zhou Yu, he believed in his heart that something unexpected had happened to Zhou Yu.
Whether it was luck or misfortune, a corpse matching Zhou Yu's appearance never appeared.
Unwilling to accept the reality, Zhou Yu began to expand the search scope to neighboring cities, while Luo Binhan had no time to leave due to personal matters. Another three months passed like this, until he learned from Zhou's father's phone call that Zhou Yu was admitted to the hospital.
After only three months of separation, the usually calm friend collapsed to this point. The only reasonable reason was Zhou Yu.
However, after half a year, there was still no news from Zhou Yu. If there were no external stimulation, there would be no reason for Zhou Yu to commit suicide at this time. Before meeting Zhou Yu himself, this was something he still couldn't figure out.
"I dreamed about Zhou Yu."
The friend on the hospital bed was silent for a while, then continued: "I dreamed that she was in a city called Migenzhu. She studied at the university there and had a very good relationship with a girl named Zhang."
Luo Binhan smiled bitterly when he heard this: "Are you under too much mental pressure?"
Zhou Yu just shook his head calmly: "That was not a simple dream."
"Zhou Yu has graduated from college a long time ago, isn't she still your alumnus? You know best whether she has any friends named Zhang. I have never heard of that city."
After Luo Binhan said this, he took out his mobile phone from his pocket: "How do you write those three words? Let me search for you... Look, there is no such place at all, right? This is a city after all, no matter how small it is, Did you find it from the Internet?"
As he said, there is no equivalent of this weird name on the Internet.
But faced with this evidence, Zhou Yu still shook his head. Luo Binhan wanted to persuade him more, but he was afraid of irritating the other party's spirit, so he had to change the subject and said: "Let's not talk about this for now. I am here today just to check on your physical condition. If you are tired, just go to bed."
Zhou Yu shook his head and said, "I'm fine... It's a long story, I'll talk about it next time."
Although it was not life-threatening, Zhou Yu's wrist-cutting behavior still caused a large amount of blood loss and mild shock. Coupled with his emotional instability, he was required to be hospitalized for more than two months. However, the director of this private hospital was Zhou's father's classmate. If Zhou Yu proposed to go home to recuperate, he would probably be accommodating.
Luo Binhan had already expected Zhou Yu to be discharged from the hospital early. The person holding the scalpel lay down on the hospital bed by himself, which must not have been a pleasant experience. Before he could think of a few jokes, Zhou Yu asked again: "How is your mother's side?"
Luo Binhan waved his hand and said: "That's it. Don't you know what my mother's temper is like? The daughter she had with her new husband, let's round it up, is my sister. Her temper is similar to my mother's. I haven't learned anything at all. Is it better to find a boyfriend? She's a speedster, and it's boring to go there all day long just to wipe her butt. Anyway, my mother's disease has not been cured, so she can just be raised like this. That girl should go to boarding school and study. I won't be angry with her."
When he mentioned the troubles in his family, Zhou Yu also showed a sympathetic smile.
It may be due to some kind of fate. Although the two people's conditions are very different in all aspects, they only have one important thing in common, that is, they became children of a single-parent family when they were children. This lack not only made the two incompatible in the social circle of elementary school students, but also made them quickly become friends after entering junior high school.
But unlike Zhou Yu, who lost his mother in a car accident, Luo Binhan's parents are still alive. Although his mother's marriage broke up due to her husband's affair and she focused on her career as a lawyer, she did not forget to discipline her son. It would be better to say that she used military-style management.
In contrast, the father, who is the owner of a chain bar, seems to be determined to compensate his son. Apart from settling his son's credit card debt every month, he never inquires about Luo Binhan's whereabouts.
Such an educational model of both fire and ice caused Luo Binhan to form a conditioned reflex that was considered comical in Zhou Yu's eyes: he usually imitates his father in his glib, enthusiastic and cheerful state, but once the woman expresses something, he will stand like his mother. As if behind him, he hurriedly ran away with his head in his hands. When he was a student, Luo Binhan was known as frivolous and unreliable among girls, but in fact, not only did he never have a girlfriend, he didn't even touch the hands of the opposite sex.
His parents both contributed a lot to creating such a contradictory and pitiful situation.
Every time the two meet, they inevitably talk about Luo's mother, who is a popular figure in the legal world. From her free time, one can roughly infer whether Luo Binhan will live a comfortable or miserable life in the next period of time. Although Zhou Yu was in the hospital bed at this moment, he still carried out the conversation according to the standard procedure.
Finally, Luo Binhan looked at the mechanical watch on his wrist, stood up and said goodbye to Zhou Yu.
"...It's almost time, so I'll go back first. There's still a fool waiting for me to deal with at home. We'll have a good talk after you're discharged from the hospital."
He walked out of the ward and took one last look at the other person's appearance before closing the door.
He saw that blank expression on Zhou Yu's face again, as if his soul had passed away.
