Wei Qian was simply afraid of Wei Zhiyuan.

Wei Qian has never been the type to run away; he always finds ways to face problems - since he was a child, it has been a habit that no one else will take the blame unless he does.

But he racked his brains and couldn't come up with a solution that convinced himself, so he had to keep thinking until his head was about to explode.

Fortunately, Wei Zhiyuan seemed to have noticed it, and after returning from the pond that day, he stopped pestering Wei Qian. He also had his own things to do. Sometimes he would go out, and sometimes he would lock himself in the room to work or hold remote online meetings. But I don’t know how he did it. Wei Qian felt that although the boy’s presence was not as strong, he was actually everywhere!

Wei Zhiyuan's eyes are relatively large among the crowd. You can't see it when he opens them normally, but when he smiles, they look a bit like peach blossom eyes. A glance can cover a large area. His gaze is like a substance, always fixed on Wei Qian.

Sometimes gentle, sometimes focused... I can tolerate this, but what I can't tolerate is that sometimes when Wei Zhiyuan comes out to pour water or get something to eat, he will think of something he shouldn't think about. At this time, his gaze will become very explicit, almost constituting voyeurism.

It was a hard-earned weekend off, but Wei Qian felt like he was on edge during his "rest".

Finally Monday came, and Wei Qian went back to the company early in the morning. This perverted workaholic looked at the table piled with various reports that needed his review, and he actually felt relieved and refreshed.

When Wei Qian went to the Monday morning meeting, he was still thinking unhappily: Why should I be afraid of him? What do I have to feel guilty about?

Just as he was daydreaming, suddenly a man with a dazed look came towards him and almost bumped into him.

Wei Qian looked carefully and saw that it was Ma Chunming. He immediately said unhappily, "Did you just take drugs? What kind of image do you have?"

Ma Chunming was born with a long oval face, a pointed chin, big eyes, double eyelids, and bulging eyes. Overall, it can be said that he does not conform to the aesthetic taste of the people. Fortunately, he usually always smiles, so at least he can be regarded as a golden monkey with a friendly expression, which makes him very likable.

But for some reason, at this moment, he had a hairy head facing the sun, his steps were unsteady, his face was pale, his eye sockets were red, and his eyes looked even more bulging. He looked like ET with a big head and a thin neck.

Ma Chunming gave him a look of resentment, which successfully gave Wei Qian, who had suffered from the torture of his eyes for a weekend, goose bumps all over his body. Then Dr. Ma said to Wei Qian in a mournful tone, "Morning, Director Wei."

"..." Wei Qian, "Good morning."

Ma Chunming passed him by with a dull look in his eyes and a distraught look.

His risk control consultant and executive vice president, Comrade Ma Chunming, is a person who loves his work very much. Dr. Ma always remembers that it was not easy to get this job back then, and getting to this point now is like winning the lottery by accident. Therefore, he cherishes it very much and always works diligently.

But at the morning meeting that day, he was silent from beginning to end, and was in a very trance. When Wei Qian asked about the risk control work arrangements for this week, he called him twice, but Ma Chunming didn't hear it. Finally, the fat man sitting opposite him rolled up a paper ball and hit him on the head, which made Dr. Ma, whose soul had left his body, notice that there were so many stupid humans around him.

Ma Chunming: "Ah... I... I have nothing to add."

Wei Qian rolled his eyes: "Did I ask you to add more?"

Ma Chunming had a confused expression on his face, and the manager of the risk control department next to him quickly reported the work for him, and at least the situation was dealt with.

Wei Qian gave Dr. Ma a warning look, but did not glance at his face on the spot. Instead, he took him to his office after the regular meeting.

He sat behind his desk like a demon, crossed his legs, lit a cigarette, and asked Ma Chunming coldly with his eyelids drooping: "Doctor, let me ask you, is the theme of our regular meeting today sleepwalking?"

Ma Chunming stood by the side, not daring to look up or speak.

After all, he was an old subordinate for many years. Seeing his horrible appearance, Wei Qian still had some sympathy for him. So he softened his tone a little and said to him, "If there is anything at home, you can go back and deal with it first. It doesn't matter if you take two days off."

At this time, Ma Chunming suddenly asked out of nowhere: "...Am I successful in my career?"

Wei Qian: "Ah? What is that?"

Ma Chunming staggered to a chair, slumped down on it, and began to complain like Xianglin Sao: "You pay me such a high salary and let me take care of so many things. Sometimes I have the illusion that I am very successful, but what's the use? I will still be abandoned. No matter how hard I try, I will still be abandoned by others."

Wei Qian: “…”

He was listening so intently that he even forgot to put the cigarette in his mouth.

As Ma Chunming spoke, tears began to fall like rain. His expression showed heartbreaking pain, but his voice did not sound like he was crying loudly. He just sobbed softly with grievance.

Wei Qian: "Oh, did you have a fight with your wife? Is it because I always send you on business trips that affects your relationship?"

Ma Chunming couldn't help it any longer. He propped his elbows on his knees, covered his face with his hands, bent his body, and collapsed. "I've been dating her for three years and married for more than two years. I know she's beautiful and has a good family background, and I'm a little unworthy of her, but after so many years, I've gotten her whatever she wants as long as I have it. Even if she wants to eat a human heart, I can rip open her chest, cut it into slices, and fry it for her..."

"Please change the way you put it to something that's not so disgusting." Wei Qian wrinkled his nose. After hearing this, his breakfast started to turn upside down.

Ma Chunming turned a deaf ear to her: "...but why would she be with someone else behind my back?"

Wei Qian was surprised: "What? How do you know? Did you see it?"

Ma Chunming wiped away tears: "I saw it with my own eyes. I just came back from another place with my partners last night. I arranged their accommodation and meals. When I sent them to the hotel, I saw her walk in hand in hand with a man. She didn't know I was back yesterday... I... I stood outside the hotel all night."

As he spoke, he sniffed hard, feeling a bit like a cold.

"Wait a minute, I have some cold medicine here." Wei Qian took out a few packets of cold granules from the drawer and gave them to him. "Standing outside the hotel all night? Hey, they're shooting and you're guarding the door - don't you think you're sick?"

Even at this point, this man could still say such heartless and harsh words to add insult to injury. Ma Chunming burst into tears and was heartbroken.

Wei Qian waved his hand and put out his cigarette: "How about this, tell me what you're going to do, divorce? Sue? Or something else? Have you figured out who that bitch is who hooked up with someone else's wife? Or should I get someone to investigate for you?"

"That's not the case at all!" Ma Chunming raised his voice, "I don't care who that person is! I've only liked this one woman in my life, and I know I'm not worthy of her, so I don't mind that she only returns a little of my love for her. But how can she trample on someone else's sincerity like this?"

The words "trampling on other people's sincerity" were like a wasp's sting, stabbing Wei Qian's heart lightly.

He couldn't help but think of Wei Zhiyuan.

Wei Qian was unable to accept Wei Zhiyuan's feelings which had turned from passionate to deep, and he also felt a little panic - just like the panic of a child who was usually unpopular and had no sense of existence, when suddenly he became the center of attention.

To use an inappropriate analogy, a person who has been starving for years is suddenly forced to eat two blood-soaked buns. Even if he resists morally and refuses to eat it, he will treasure it and will not throw it away.

Ma Chunming: "Why did you keep me here? Because I look like a monkey. Is that fun? I am totally useless."

Wei Qian was brought back to his senses by his howling. He was still absent-minded and just said dryly to comfort him: "Okay, it's not your fault. Don't belittle yourself here."

Ma Chunming heard his consolation and knew that he was not taking advantage of others' misfortune and that it was quite good for him to perform at this level, so he smiled miserably at Wei Qian and said, "Thank you."

Then the smile disappeared, leaving only a sad and miserable expression: "You won't understand us losers. Being abandoned is like being completely denied. I don't hate her, nor do I feel that I have hurt a man's self-esteem. I... I can't find the meaning of my own existence..."

After Ma Chunming finished speaking, he stood up shakily and said, "Director Wei, I'll take two days off."

Wei Qian heard something else and said hurriedly, "Hey, wait a minute, come back!"

But Ma Chunming seemed really disheartened, as if he didn't hear anything and left his office like a walking corpse.

Wei Qian had no choice but to hang up the internal line and call Xiao Fei: "Call someone... um, let's call Mr. Ma's assistant. Keep an eye on him these two days. Why do I feel like he's going to buy a hemp rope to hang himself?"

After a while, Xiao Fei knocked on his office door, holding a coat in her hand: "I've asked someone to look after Mr. Ma."

Wei Qian stared at the thing in her hand for a while: "It looks like my clothes?"

"Yes, Xiaoyuan brought it just now. He said the temperature will drop in the afternoon." Xiaofei hung the clothes at the door. "I haven't seen it for several years. I didn't dare to recognize it just now."

As Xiao Fei spoke, she took out a tea bag from the drawer, picked up Wei Qian's cup in a well-trained manner, and made him a cup of steaming hot tea; "I heard about Mr. Ma's incident. His wife is quite unkind. In fact, for some people, love is like an advanced replica of the family parent-child relationship in childhood. If you suddenly lose it, it's like being abandoned by your parents. Just thinking about it makes you feel miserable."

Wei Qian: "...The child was abandoned by his parents? What does this have to do with anything?"

Xiao Fei shrugged, "Of course not everyone is like this, but some people do have that kind of feeling. Maybe it's because they really have deep feelings for each other. After being together for a long time, they tend to be particularly dependent on each other, like a clumsy child or puppy trying to please each other... Mr. Ma has such a good temper. I feel sorry for him. He keeps circling around his woman, thinking that he works so hard outside for her, but in the end she doesn't care at all and kicks him away."

She spoke vividly, and Wei Qian could not help but imagine a scene in his mind: Ma Chunming, with his tail between his legs, standing at the door of the hotel all night in the late autumn night, with his neck shrunk and shoulders straightened, like a bamboo pole swaying in the wind and rain...

The protagonist of that scene suddenly changed, and in his wildly divergent thoughts, it became Wei Zhiyuan.

Wei Qian suddenly got a start and looked up to ask Xiao Fei: "Where is the person?"

Xiao Fei: "Who is it?"

"Where's Xiaoyuan?"

Xiao Fei said in confusion: "He went home. I saw him chatting with someone from the investment department before he left. It seemed to be about investing in that game. Then he said that you hate being disturbed, so he didn't bother you anymore."

Wei Qian waved his hand and let her go out.

He suddenly couldn't continue reading the materials in front of him. The words floated before his eyes one by one, but none of them jumped into his eyes. Wei Qian raised his head, leaned heavily against the back of the chair, and covered his face with one hand.

"Xiaoyuan, Xiaoyuan..." He muttered weakly in his heart, and finally ended with an echoing sigh.

I'm so worried.

When frost falls, the maple leaves turn red.

Wei Qian put his hands in his pockets, blending in with the crowd of people on an autumn outing in the suburbs, waiting for Wei Zhiyuan, who was taking pictures enthusiastically.

He still couldn't figure out why he agreed to come. It seemed as if it was all because of Ma Chunming and Xiaofei. Those two bastards seemed to have made a plan and together they had been poking his heart intentionally or unintentionally, making him feel like he was seeing a creditor every time he saw Wei Zhiyuan.

Later, Ma Chunming did not try to commit suicide. He came back to work and seemed to have talked it out with his wife. They were planning to divorce. Sanpang was arranging to find a lawyer for him to help him break up.

Ma Chunming himself was not in good shape at all, and looked listless all day long, as if he had taken rat poison.

Every time Wei Qian saw him, he couldn't help but think of Wei Zhiyuan. The vague fear and guilt he felt at the beginning gradually became more and more intense.

When Wei Zhiyuan said he wanted to go to the suburbs to see the red leaves, Wei Qian thought, "Are you bored?"

He hesitated for a moment, then agreed reluctantly: "Okay."

He heard the sound of a temple bell halfway up the mountain. A little girl of about four or five years old ran past him and said in a childish voice, "The stone path is slanting up the cold mountain."

Seeing Wei Qian glance at her, the little girl jumped a few times on the spot, not shying away from strangers. As if to show off her abilities, she shouted to him with a giggle: "Frosted leaves are redder than flowers in February!"

"Naughty kid, you're really good at cutting off the beginning and the end." Wei Qian thought, forced a fake smile at her, blew out a puff of smoke, and sighed in his heart again, "I'm really losing my country!"

The two of them walked side by side all the way to the temple in the mountains. Wei Qian then remembered that this seemed to be the place where Lao Xiong became a monk.

Wei Zhiyuan seemed to be very much like the real deal, burning incense and bowing his head as if it was a standard move, attracting many pilgrims to follow his example. However, Wei Qian ignored them and stood aside with his hands behind his back, waiting for him indifferently like an elder.

Perhaps one of the monks felt that this donor was such a nobody that he didn't even bother to give a perfunctory response, which was disrespectful to the Buddha, so he walked towards him, bowed and put his hands together and said, "Donor, you are a predestined person. Let's draw a lot."

Wei Qian shook his head.

The monk said kindly, "Today, the fortune is interpreted for free by those who are destined to have it. Please draw one. It doesn't matter."

The little monk was very clingy. Wei Qian was already quite bored, so he finally took a cigarette as a joke, and saw four lines of poetry written on it that had no clear distinction between level and oblique tones and seemed incoherent.

The young monk was immediately shocked when he saw it: "Oh, benefactor, this is a bad fortune!"

Wei Qian: “…”

He knew it was this.

The little monk went on to say, "This is a bad year for the donor. You may encounter a bloody disaster in the near future. Amitabha, the Buddha has mercy on us. This is fate. I will do my best to help you resolve it. I will never..."

Wei Qian asked coldly: "Just tell me how much it is?"

Seeing him being so wise, the little monk smiled and said, "It costs 50 yuan to open a peace charm. It can ward off evil spirits and bring in wealth, and keep your family healthy and safe. It's worth the price, and has many functions. Would you like to buy one?"

Wei Qian raised his hand and pointed behind him: "You, turn around and march forward."

The young monk shook his head and sighed, intending to persuade this "donor" who would rather die than give up his money. Without saying anything, Wei Qian picked up the phone and dialed a number: "Xiong Yingjun, where are you? Come to the main hall - yes, I'm in your temple. Where did you recruit these kids? Are they sensible? Are there any who specifically take advantage of their acquaintances to cheat them?"

Upon hearing this, Xiong Yingjun rushed over at lightning speed. He no longer sells tickets. He has become a "senior monk" responsible for chanting sutras and blessing the temple for tourists every day.

He is now as fat as a ball, and no one knows how many rules and regulations he has secretly broken.

The senior monk Xiong Yingjun reprimanded the ignorant monk Xiaoxin, and then invited the two acquaintances to his meditation room. He took a quick look at Wei Zhiyuan and seemed surprised. In the end, he said nothing, but shook his head vaguely: "It's incredible."

When Wei Zhiyuan saw him, he felt very friendly: "Brother Xiong, you taught me a lot back then, thank you, I will come back to repay my wish in the future."

The old bear waved his hands, sighed, and said, "A thousand-year-old turtle is a ten-thousand-year-old tortoise, a thousand-year-old fox becomes a spirit, it has not yet transformed when I first saw it, and in the blink of an eye it has passed the calamity... Oh, what a sin, what a sin, good and good."

Wei Zhiyuan seemed to be discussing Zen with him, smiling without saying anything.

Wei Qian frowned: "Can you two speak human language?"

The old bear gave him a disgusted look and expelled him from the pure land of Buddhism: "You foolish man, I told you that I don't agree with your values. Now, open your sanitary napkin and go back to your earthly world."

Who knew that day would be so weird for some reason.

Perhaps some humans are really like crows. They can speak in a way that is either good or bad.

Wei Qian sat in the passenger seat and looked down at Wei Zhiyuan's camera. After flipping through it, he felt something was wrong: "What did you take a picture of? Where are the maple leaves?"

The photos are big and small, taken from different angles, either dotted with one or two maple trees, or dotted with a field of fiery red maple leaves, but they are all photos of people - himself.

Wei Qian doesn’t like taking photos very much. He thinks he looks weird from this angle.

There are back views with heads down, and close-ups of faces looking up at the mountainside. Wei Qian didn't know when he took these secret photos of himself, but the quality is quite high, and it looks like a photo album.

There is also a close-up photo, in which he has one leg on the upper stone step, holding a gun in his hand, with his eyebrows slightly raised, the sunlight shining on his face, his eyes narrowed, with a hint of teasing smile at the corner of his mouth, watching a little girl who is jumping on the ground with her feet off the ground.

The timing of the shot was extremely fortuitous, and it just captured the fleeting micro-expression on his face. It was as if someone had been staring at him with bated breath for who knows how long through the camera, to capture such an extremely vivid moment with incredible accuracy.

"I like this one the most." Wei Zhiyuan said, "I plan to print out a copy and carry it with me, and take it out to look at before going to bed every day."

Wei Qian raised his head and glanced at him.

Wei Zhiyuan showed that revealing and deep expression again, and whispered: "Save it for your erotic dreams."

Wei Qian was speechless. With his wicked mouth, he had ten thousand excuses that were guaranteed to make the other party flee in panic. All of them went through his mind vigorously. Wei Qian found that no matter what he said, it was inappropriate. In the end, he could only continue to look at Wei Zhiyuan woodenly.

Wei Zhiyuan laughed: "I was just kidding - Brother, fasten your seat belt."

Wei Qian didn't say anything and fastened his seat belt. As for the person in the passenger seat, he would always check and then loosen his belt. If Wei Zhiyuan hadn't reminded him, he would not have fastened his seat belt on his own initiative.

Later I thought that this kind of standardized safety awareness is really necessary.

Because just as Wei Zhiyuan was driving through an intersection, a car somehow rushed out from the intersection as if seeking death, and collided head-on with a car driving in the lane next to them. Coincidentally, the model and color of that car were exactly the same as Wei Qian's.

The car that was hit turned over on the spot and rushed towards them. Wei Zhiyuan suddenly turned the steering wheel, and there was a violent friction and collision sound. The glass on the left side of their car was shattered, and debris was scattered everywhere, most of which was blocked by Wei Zhiyuan who turned sideways.

Wei Qian was unharmed, but Wei Zhiyuan's rolled-up arm and the back of his neck were covered with bloodstains of varying sizes.

This really became a bloody disaster.