Later, Wei Qian recalled that at that moment - the moment when Lao Xiong singled him out in public and whipped his corpse, he really had only one question and two choices in his mind: should he break up with Xiong Yingjun? Or should he die with him?

But he soon ran out of time to think about such a philosophical question. Old Bear took a step to the side and pulled his chair back: "If you agree, then come and sit over here. From now on, I will not participate in any decision-making. You have the final say. In the end, I will take the responsibility for whether you live or die. If you disagree, let's continue with plan one, and I'll wait to collect your body."

Wei Qian, who was wearing a yellow robe, looked at him, and his eyes turned thousands of words into one sentence: Why don’t you just die?

Lao Xiong's gaze fell on Wei Qian, and then avoided Wei Qian's gaze.

At this point, all reflection and repentance come to an end.

He knew that this was a very humiliating thing. Lao Xiong held the nameplate on the conference table in his hand, but he knew clearly in his heart that this was the best he could do and he left with relative dignity.

He saw clearly that when Wei Qian was suddenly called, his eyes were panicked at that moment.

Astonishment, disbelief and confusion flashed through his mind alternately, and finally settled into anger after he came to his senses.

But the old bear knew that he would definitely come over.

Wei Qian is the kind of person who won't cry until he sees the coffin. It has nothing to do with his age and experience. He has become accustomed to the days when he has nowhere to escape. Even if the world comes to an end one day and everyone scatters, he will definitely be the one who reacts the slowest.

Only such people can serve as the backbone of a company or even an enterprise.

After a moment, Wei Qian did as he expected. He lowered his head, straightened his clothes, stood up and walked over.

Lao Xiong handed the name tag to him. Wei Qian hesitated for a moment and took it. The chairman's secretary was well-trained and before Wei Qian had time to react to what was happening, he quickly replaced the glass of water and placed it in front of Wei Qian.

The water cup had been placed on the table for a long time, but the water surface was still shaking. I wondered if it was because the girl who was serving the water was shaking with her hands.

The wooden chair would become cold if no one sat on it for a while. Wei Qian felt the strong wind and waves rushing towards the helmsman from the coldness, which made him feel suffocated.

Except for a few young people who had just started working, most of the people present were older than him, and they all looked at him in silence. In this world, everyone would find fault with others, and even in the smallest details, someone would find all kinds of reasons to make a point that seemed like they knew a lot.

But when most people actually sit in this position, they will be overwhelmed by the extreme fear of being exposed to risks.

It may seem magical to say this, but at that moment, the moment Wei Qian sat on Lao Xiong's chair, all the resentment he had towards Lao Xiong, like that of everyone else, disappeared.

"Why didn't I stop him?" Wei Qian asked himself, "Was it out of sympathy for Chen Lu?"

No one would allow Lao Xiong to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a sentimental gamble. The most fundamental reason for their silence was that no one, including himself, saw the risk of this project when they made the initial decision. No one had expected that the small hillside would be divided into an oversupplied villa market in just a few months, and no one saw clearly in the colorful project proposal that it did not have an accurate and real customer base.

The market is unpredictable. At the end of every sunny day may be a hideous face. The Titanic hit an iceberg. Every day, countless large and small ships disappear and sink silently in it.

Ordinary employees and even management are not so easy to feel the dangers of this because they are all in the eyes of the person at the helm.

Now, it is in his eyes.

Wei Qian did not make any inaugural speech. He just took a sip from his water cup to moisten his throat, and said briefly: "Let's not talk about anything else. First, please ask Mr. Xiong to talk about the sales situation of the project department, and then the budget department and investment department will announce the funding gap. After listening, those who want to leave can adjourn the meeting early and submit their resignation applications to the human resources department in time. Those who want to stick with it can stay. Let's discuss the focus of the next stage of work - Old Xiong, let's start with you."

But the fact is, although he said so, no one left early. It is hard to find a job, and employees will not resign on their own initiative as long as they can still get paid. As for the managers... if someone had the determination and insight to "leave early", perhaps they would not have come to this point.

The longest meeting was over, and Wei Qian and Lao Xiong were the last ones left.

Wei Qian stood up and stood in front of the old bear, and the old bear closed his eyes.

"Why are you closing your eyes?" Wei Qian said unhappily, "You don't think I can kiss you even though you look like this, do you?"

The old bear whispered, "I thought you were going to hit me."

Wei Qian glanced around and said, "Here? No way. I will at least wait until I'm off work and you're somewhere where there's no one. I'll put a sack on you before I beat you."

The old bear laughed softly, "What a rascal."

Then he leaned heavily back in his chair and tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling above him.

After a while, Lao Xiong muttered, "Sometimes I wonder, what am I still doing here? Shouldn't I take Chen Lu away and travel around the world, or accompany her and quietly wait for the last moment?"

Wei Qian sat down quietly next to Lao Xiong. In front of him was a meeting room that was empty except for them. His own bizarre shadow was reflected on the surface of the translucent and cold stone table, which looked like the opening remarks of some mysterious fable.

"But I know that at this point, I will see her less and less, but I still don't want to see her more. I even dream that I died for her in the middle of the night, but when I wake up, I dare not turn my head to look at her face. Do you think I am sick?" Old Xiong's chin showed green stubble. He looked up at Wei Qian as if he hadn't slept for ten thousand years. There was an ashy, silent calmness in his eyes. He said, "Qian'er, please let me go to the project in City C. I will be on call at any time if you need me to run errands."

Wei Qian didn't know what to say. He had never even been in a relationship, so how could he know what was going on between couples?

"Okay, whatever you want." Wei Qian said, then stood up and left.

Maybe one day Chen Lu will die and Lao Xiong will be free.

But if that day really comes, will the old bear still be an old bear?

Time will turn sand into stone, but what will it turn the earliest and most immature love into?

Wei Qian suddenly felt a little regretful for getting angry at Wei Zhiyuan that day.

Wei Qian washed his face in the bathroom sink and put aside all his regrets and doubts as quickly as possible. He knew that there were two urgent things he had to do: how to stabilize his creditors, how to negotiate an extension, and how to make up for the funding gap. Should he find a way to revitalize the project in City C or find a way to withdraw.

Wei Qian never wanted to look back at how he spent that time.

When he had nothing in the past, he would count on his fingers over a hundred or eighty yuan with Old Lady Song at home, and mostly felt the pressure of survival. His responsibility was to have a family, to make his life better, and to ensure that when his sister came to ask for pocket money, she would not have to come up with an excuse to hide away because she did not have any.

Now, he was considered a member of the bourgeoisie in the city, and no one would think of him as a poor man. Although three people were killed by falling advertising billboards these days, two of them were bosses, no one would deny that he was indeed doing well.

The pressure he was bearing also expanded from his entire family to the next month's wages for dozens or even hundreds of people in the entire company and hundreds of millions of debts.

Sanpang secretly told him: "Qian'er, I won't hide it from you, I really can't sleep, I get up every night and wander around the house, my parents thought I was hysterical at first, they almost sent me to a mental hospital. My dad told me to quit my job, I bought a small shop two years ago and rented it to others, I'll just open a hot pot restaurant, I can only make ends meet, it's good enough."

Sanpang was telling the truth. He was frowning all day long and even had no energy to date his beloved goddess... He even forgot to remind Wei Qian about their Xiaoyuan's covetous eyes, like a wolfdog looking at a bone.

Wei Qian commented on him: "Look at what you have accomplished."

Sanpang glared and said, "Can you sleep? Why don't I believe you?"

Wei Qian glanced at him sideways: "Do I look like someone who can't sleep?"

As Sanpang saw, he was in good spirits. I wouldn't say he looked radiant, but his face was clean and his complexion wasn't bad. There was no bloodshot or dark circles in his eyes. He spoke with clarity, and even his donkey temper and coffin face looked normal, without any abnormality.

Kim Jong-un was convinced and thought that there are indeed differences between people.

When Wei Qian was admitted to a key high school in the past, he thought it was because of the boy's hard work and love of study. Now Sanpang discovered that the gap between him and Wei Qian was indeed as huge as a chasm. Not to mention anything else, just his mental quality is as good as that of the Empress Dowager Cixi, who was well fed and well slept even though the country was lost and humiliated. He is simply hopeless.

The Empress Dowager Cixi had passed away for many years, and the spiritual world of that traitorous old woman had long been untraceable. Wei Qian didn't know what her situation was, but he knew that his own spiritual world was always shaky and on the verge of collapse.

"Can sleep well" is just his bragging... No, it's just appropriate packaging to stabilize the morale of the troops.

That year, Wei Qian began to suffer from insomnia. Before that, he had never thought that this problem would happen to him. He used to prejudicedly believe that only those rich and idle uncles would hold their chests and suffer from insomnia for no reason.

For the past twenty years, he could indeed fall asleep anytime and anywhere. Now, he finally dared not talk while standing without back pain.

It is not known whether this is physiological or psychological. In the beginning, Wei Qian was often busy until late at night and had an irregular life. He would not feel sleepy after one or two o'clock and could only take a nap when dawn was approaching. Over time, he found that he could not fall asleep even if he lay down on time.

In order to make himself look less like a dead dog, Wei Qian began to take sleeping pills in small amounts.

This matter had remained a secret until it was discovered by Wei Zhiyuan.

That day, Wei Qian went out to meet someone from a consulting company and came back very early. Wei Zhiyuan had been leading his team to do the final debugging of the program recently, working until very late every day. When he got home, he saw Wei Qian's shoes there and the bedroom door was closed, so he thought he was asleep.

Since there was basically nothing to do the next day and it was winter vacation and there were no classes, Wei Zhiyuan was not in a hurry to rest. After a simple wash, he sat down and began to study the next plan and general ideas.

Around one or two o'clock, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly heard a noise in the living room. He didn't pay attention to it at first, but then he felt something was wrong - it seemed like someone was searching for something.

Wei Qian had finished his sleeping pills and was so busy that he forgot to buy more. In the middle of the night, he couldn't sleep as usual. After tossing and turning in pain on the bed for a while, he suddenly came up with a bad idea - many cold medicines contain sleeping pills, so he decided to make do for a day and use cold medicine instead of sleeping pills.

Wei Qian knew that all medicines are poisonous. He also knew that if you take too much of this stuff, it would damage your organs and brain nerves.

But putting the pain of insomnia aside, it was not unbearable, but Wei Qian had to go to negotiate the debt extension the next day, and he also had a tough battle to fight. How could he not sleep at this time?

The more Wei Qian thought about it, the more anxious he became, and the more anxious he became, the more he couldn't sleep. In the end, he almost felt that even if rat poison could allow him to lie down and sleep for the night, he could drink a bowl of it without batting an eyelid.

Wei Zhiyuan observed him for a while and asked curiously, "Do you have a cold?"

In his impression, Wei Qian's physique was not the type that would easily catch a cold - if he got sick, it would be a serious illness, but he was usually fine.

Wei Qian was startled and the cold medicine in his hand fell back into the drawer with a "click". He turned around to look at Wei Zhiyuan and thought resentfully that this kid's ability to walk as quietly as a weasel had not deteriorated when he grew up.

Wei Qian was too lazy to explain to him and just evaded the question by saying, "Oh, a little bit."

Wei Zhiyuan didn't believe it. Wei Qian didn't speak with an abnormal nasal tone, and he didn't look like he had a fever. Moreover, given his brother's personality, he might not even notice a minor illness, let alone take medicine on his own initiative.

"A little? You're looking for cold medicine in the middle of the night?" Wei Zhiyuan walked over, frowned, and looked at the medicine he had taken suspiciously. He quickly read the effects and side effects, and suddenly raised his head and asked, "Brother, you can't sleep, right?"

Wei Qian cursed in his heart with a blank expression: "How come this bastard can even see this?"

At the same time, he calmly extended his hand to Wei Zhiyuan, still using his nonchalant tone to perfunctorily say: "Well, a little bit - give it to me, and you should also go to bed early."

Wei Zhiyuan retracted his hand: "You can't take cold medicine like this."

Wei Qian: "It's okay, not often."

Wei Zhiyuan looked at him incredulously: "You still want to do it more often? You...ah, wait a minute."

He took out a bag of milk from the refrigerator, poured it into a small pot, put it on the fire, and added a spoonful of sugar.

Wei Qian had tried this thing before, but he didn't reject Wei Zhiyuan's kindness. He just said, "Why not put it in the microwave for a spin?"

"That's different." Wei Zhiyuan said.

Why isn't it hot? Wei Qian couldn't figure it out, but it seemed to taste a little different. He guessed it might be because of Wei Zhiyuan's extra spoonful of sugar.

After drinking, he went back to the room, intending to wait until the kid fell asleep before going out to look for him. But just as he lay down, Wei Zhiyuan followed him in with a quilt in his arms. Wei Qian turned on the bedside lamp and silently watched Wei Zhiyuan throw the quilt on his bed, with something heavy in the middle - when he opened it, he saw that it was a particularly thick notebook rolled up in the quilt.

Wei Qian: "What are you doing?"

Wei Zhiyuan squeezed onto his bed: "Watch you sleep."

Wei Qian felt that although he couldn't sleep, he couldn't be said to be particularly awake. If he had to describe it, his entire nerves were in a numb state between sleep and wakefulness. He tried to think about what was going on, but gave up after a moment and asked his beloved brother: "Are you going to knock me out with this?"

Wei Zhiyuan said: "I have a new idea. I can tell you about it. There are some very boring algorithms involved. Let's see if I can make you fall asleep."

Before he could finish his words, Wei Qian had already pushed back the quilt and sat up.

"Yeah, okay, come on, get me a pen."

"..." Wei Zhiyuan paused and said helplessly, "I just want to help you sleep, brother, can you please stop being so serious?"

Wei Qian pressed his slightly sore temple with one hand and said with a wry smile, "If this can also make me fall asleep, then wouldn't I have to sleep several times during meetings every day?"

Wei Zhiyuan thought about it, suddenly threw his notebook aside, and then laughed.

Wei Qian was surprised to find that Wei Zhiyuan's eyes did not look crooked at all under normal circumstances, but when he smiled, they were genuine smiling eyes, slightly upturned at both ends, like a pair of beautiful crescent moons.

"I understand." Wei Zhiyuan said, and turned the bedside lamp to the dimmest level, leaving only a vague outline of everything under the light. Then he drew open the curtains and pushed open the window. A gust of cold air immediately rushed into the warm room.

Wei Qian immediately got under the quilt: "Why the hell did you open the window? I was completely frozen awake. Xiaoyuan, could you please move to your own room and stop bothering me here?"

Wei Zhiyuan: "Look, it's snowing."

In the cold winter, there is always condensation of ice or white mist on the windows, making it difficult to see what is outside.

After Wei Zhiyuan said this, Wei Qian saw the heavy snow all over the sky. Some flakes of snow even drifted into the house with the cold wind and melted in the blink of an eye.

Wei Zhiyuan closed the window again, but left a gap in the curtains.

He wiped away the white mist on the small piece of glass so that people in the house could see clearly the snow that was getting thicker and thicker on the windowsill outside.

Then he cleared all the documents on Wei Qian's desk and threw them under the table, pulled out a graduation photo of Wei Qian from the corner and placed it in the middle, then sat back on the bed, pulled up the pillow and quilt, fluffed them up, and pulled them to Wei Qian's chin.

Wei Qian couldn't help but smile: "You are quite good at taking care of people."

Wei Zhiyuan said: "When you are old, I will still take care of you like this."

Wei Qian failed to hear the metaphor of "growing old together" in his words: "When I am old, will you be young? You are not my son."

This time, Wei Zhiyuan did not answer. He quietly lay down beside Wei Qian, raised his hand to turn off the light, leaned over and whispered in Wei Qian's ear: "Go to sleep. When the weather is good, we need to dry the quilt in the sun."

Wei Qian's ears were very sensitive and he couldn't help but want to dodge, but Wei Zhiyuan let go as soon as he was touched. Only the light in his eyes could be seen in the darkness.

A picture suddenly flashed through Wei Qian's mind, with those curved smiling eyes. Then, Wei Zhiyuan's words in his ear seemed to have created some kind of spell. He vaguely felt that the fluffy quilt had a freshly dried, sunny scent.

The person was lying on the bed, and when he raised his eyes he could just see the small clean window through the gap in the curtains left by Wei Zhiyuan, and then through the window he saw the heavy snow all over the sky. The quilt wrapped around his body seemed especially warm.

The temperature difference between indoors and outdoors quickly caused the clear glass to be covered with a hazy white frost. The ice and snow were gradually isolated outside the window and soon could not be seen clearly. The sweet milk that he had just drunk spread from his stomach to his limbs and bones, playing a subtle calming effect.

The milk heated on low heat is indeed different from the milk that is hastily spun in the microwave.

The person beside him let out a very comfortable sigh, and in the dimness he seemed to have someone hugged him, but this did not touch Wei Qian's weak and sensitive nerves, and he fell asleep.

Wei Zhiyuan had never heard him reveal a single word about what happened to him outside. Of course he was concerned, but he restrained himself and did not mention a word or ask a single question at this time and place - because Wei Qian's anxiety would not be reduced in the slightest by talking about it.

Wei Zhiyuan simply cleverly combined vision, hearing, touch, taste and even suggestive illusions to create a "home" for him.

It is not a house, nor is it a home in the social or ethical sense. It is not a home that requires food, clothing, housing, transportation, and a “head of house”.

It is a place that is isolated from the biting cold wind and the pouring rain.

It is a resting place for travelers who have traveled through wind and rain.

A good night's sleep.

The next day, when Wei Qian was awakened by his long-standing alarm clock, it was already bright.

From the living room came the sound of Old Lady Song practicing her walking. Wei Zhiyuan went out early to look up information, and Xiaobao also went to class.

Wei Qian got up and washed in a hurry. There were baked bread and fried eggs in the dining room, but the bottle of sleeping pills he had placed on the table the night before was taken away and thrown away by Wei Zhiyuan.

Since then, Wei Qian never bought sleeping pills again, nor did he need them again.