Yan City Third Hospital is close to the city center. From here to the business district where the “Xiao” bar is located, it is an extremely busy traffic route. Even during normal working hours on weekdays in the afternoon, all the buses passing this route are crowded with people, like huge cans of sardines.
Zhou Yamin squeezed into the bus with Shen Qiaohan’s version of “Tao Xiao” and took out his phone to scan the code.
Shen Qiaohan frowned slightly and took out his phone, but he didn’t know which APP to use.
In his memory, he took the bus only a few times, most of which were when he was very young and his family didn’t have a private car. He has never experienced the QR code payment for bus tickets that has been popularized in Yan City recently.
He stood in front of the card machine in a daze, and the people who got on the bus behind him pushed him, squeezed him aside, and scanned the tickets one after another.
“What?” Zhou Yamin looked at him strangely, “Scan the ticket!”
Shen Qiaohan unlocked his phone and slowly searched for the APP that might be applicable. He felt that he might be a fool in the eyes of others now.
Zhou Yamin made an impatient “tsk” sound, reached out to grab the phone, clicked on the Yan City Card, and “beeped” in front of the machine.
“I think your ankle injury is minor,” he tapped “Tao Xiao” on the head with his phone before returning it, and couldn’t help complaining, “I’m afraid your head has become stupid!”
Shen Qiaohan: …
Taking the phone Zhou Yamin handed back, he shook his head with a helpless smile.
It’s been too long since he got in touch with the ground, and it’s also quite troublesome.
The bus swayed around the embassy district and stopped in front of a famous business district nearby.
Because it is close to the embassy district, there are many foreign faces on the streets of this business district, and there is a canal on the edge of the business district. Along the canal is the bar street where “Xiao” is located.
Most of the shops on the bar street are renovated from old-style courtyards. “Xiao” is located in such a narrow and old courtyard. The front is decorated as a bar, and two rooms are left in the back as dormitories for bar staff.
It is called a courtyard, but in fact this part of the old courtyard is narrow and cramped. The walls and floors are paved with blue bricks with a very old feel, and green moss grows in the cracks of the bricks in the corners. Fortunately, after the renovation, the bathroom was moved indoors, the kitchen was refitted with gas pipes, and air conditioning and internet were also available.
However, in Tao Xiao’s room, three bunk beds were placed very tightly together – there were a total of six people living in this room, all employees of “Xiao”.
As soon as Shen Qiaohan entered the room, he couldn’t help but wrinkled his nose and knitted his brows together.
The room was filled with a pungent smell of cigarettes, mixed with the inevitable sweat odor in summer, and the unpleasant grease and spiciness of takeout boxes that were not thrown away after eating.
Four big men were shirtless, sitting, leaning, and lying on the bed in various postures, each holding a mobile phone, playing games.
“Push the tower, push the tower, push the tower–”
“Fuck, we were killed by the opponent!”
“Where’s the jungler? Where did he go?”
“Hey, Taozi is back? How is he? What did the doctor say? Hey–don’t steal my blue!”
Shen Qiaohan:…
Zhou Yamin threw the two boxes of instant noodles in his hand onto the only table in the room: “I don’t know what you are thinking. Buying instant noodles in the hospital supermarket is two yuan more expensive than buying them online! At first I bought it because you said you were hungry, and then when I asked you you didn’t want to eat… Are you still hungry now?” Shen Qiaohan’s gaze paused on the takeaway lunch box next to him that was covered with a layer of oil. He took out his mobile phone and sent a message to Tao Xiao: “Can you cook?”
After a moment, the reply came: “Yes.”
Shen Qiaohan looked up and said, “I don’t want to eat instant noodles, I’ll make something to eat myself…”
Zhou Yamin and two of his roommates turned their heads and stared at him as if he had seen a ghost.
The phone rang, and Shen Qiaohan saw the follow-up message: “Hey, are you back to the dormitory? The gas stove is broken, and we have been ordering takeout or eating instant noodles recently. Why don’t you go to the front venue to get some snacks to fill your stomach, such as French fries and fried chicken.”
Shen Qiaohan:…
“Yeah,” he calmly pretended to be flawless, “I’ll eat instant noodles.”
At least with this thing, you can control whether to put oil packets and whether to reduce the amount of salt.
It was a rare meal of junk food that didn’t taste very good. Shen Qiaohan took a photo of the five people in the dormitory who were busy playing games, cleaned up the takeout boxes piled on the dining table, and took them out to throw away.
The sky was beginning to darken, and a slightly hoarse male voice sang French chanson from the bar in front, mixed with human voices, and it was obvious that it had already opened for business.
Shen Qiaohan didn’t know the specific performance arrangements of the bar, but at present, it seemed that the band and dance performances might have to wait until the second half of the night when there were more people.
He sent a few WeChat messages to Tao Xiao on the way back, and got a rough idea of Tao Xiao’s work schedule. Because he was frightened by an accident on stage and injured his ankle, Zhou Yamin said Zhao Guangyao would give Tao Xiao an extra week off.
This made Shen Qiaohan, who couldn’t dance at all, feel relieved.
Although the air in the yard was not fresh, at least there was no smell of unknown objects mixed in, and no noisy sounds of playing games. Shen Qiaohan did not return to the dormitory, but went around to the bar in front and went out to the canal.
Because his ankle was still a little painful, he did not walk far, but stood by the fence at the entrance of “Xiao”, looking at the business district not far away with lights on at dusk.
This was the lights of the world that Shen Qiaohan had not been exposed to for a long time, and for a moment, he felt a little emotional.
The several musical works he created in France allowed him to gain a foothold in the Western classical music circle at a very fast speed, but he was not satisfied with the status quo.
In his opinion, those works are still immature, far from becoming classics, and even less likely to be circulated in this era. They can only be used as musical pieces that a small circle of enthusiasts occasionally listen to when they relax.
His works are like him, too out of touch with reality, and inevitably unpopular.
This may also be the reason why he has been stuck in a creative bottleneck recently and has difficulty capturing the slightest inspiration.
Shen Qiaohan looked at the colorful ripples on the canal under the neon lights and let out a long breath.
This strange soul exchange may become an opportunity to force him to look at the world from another perspective. Maybe… it can open a new door of inspiration for him.
~~~
Tao Xiao was lying on the hospital bed, browsing Weibo.
After reading the super topic he followed, he had a few arguments with people, but suddenly felt a little bored.
Staring at Shen Qiaohan’s clean mobile phone, Tao Xiao thought about it, found the app store, and searched for the game he often played.
Anyway, he didn’t spend money, so he downloaded a game to play, and it didn’t matter even if it wasn’t his own phone.
While waiting for the installation, Tao Xiao habitually raised his legs to stretch his muscles. After lifting them a few times, he realized belatedly that something was wrong.
Shen Qiaohan is a classical musician, so how come his hamstrings are so soft? He can easily lift them over his shoulders, no worse than him who practices dancing.
Tao Xiao got interested and got out of bed to try to see if Shen Qiaohan can do the splits.
“Oh my god, he’s really good!”
Tao Xiao stood up in amazement, lifted up his clothes, and looked at his abdominal muscles, which were not particularly obvious but had a beautiful shape.
“Wow, I didn’t expect Shen Qiaohan to have a lot of muscles…” While sighing, he touched his abdominal muscles a few times and marveled.
The mobile phone that was thrown on the bed suddenly rang.
Tao Xiao was frightened and quickly smoothed his clothes and scratched his hair. Feeling a little embarrassed, he picked up the phone to read the message.
“Introduce me to your roommates.” – From Shen Qiaohan, with a photo that was just taken secretly in the dormitory.
Tao Xiao was bored, so he swiped through the photos and started to talk nonstop: “The yellow-haired guy sitting on the same bed with Yamin is called Wang Xiaobin, the drummer. The guy lying on the upper bunk is hard to see, but he should be Xu Lei. This year is his zodiac year, so he wears red shorts. We all call him Lei Zi. Oh, he plays bass. There are two other people in the band who don’t live here. I’ll tell you later.”
“The one with long hair on the other side is the one dancing with me. His name is Wang Jie. The one who looks the most obedient is Jason. His real name is Zhu Baobei. He is a waiter in the bar. He doesn’t like people to call him by his name directly. You can just call him Jason.”
“The owner of the bar and his boyfriend live in another room. The owner is Zhao Guangyao, a big guy. His boyfriend is called Xiao V. I don’t know what his real name is. He dyes his hair purple so it’s easy to recognize.”
After a while, Shen Qiaohan sent a message: “Him, boyfriend?”
What does that mean?
Tao Xiao was stunned for a while before he realized what Shen Qiaohan was asking. He chuckled and thought: Shen Qiaohan is quite good at grasping the key points.
“Ah, he’s gay, don’t you know?”
The other party didn’t respond for a long time.
Tao Xiao smacked his lips and sent another message: “The door should be open by now. If you have nothing to do, just stay in the dormitory and don’t wander around. I’m quite popular. If I provoke someone, I guess you can’t handle it.”
Although he really wanted to see Shen Qiaohan get humiliated, the other party was using his body now. If he provoked someone he shouldn’t have provoked, he would be the one to suffer in the end, so it’s better to remind him.
~~~
Shen Qiaohan locked his phone, turned his wrist, and tightly grasped the hand on his buttocks. He quickly twisted the man who had come over at some point to the ground.
The man screamed: “Ouch! Let go! You’re going to die!”
Shen Qiaohan let go, squinted his eyes and looked at the man who staggered back two steps, thinking: ‘I don’t know who this person is to Tao Xiao, and I don’t know if my subconscious counterattack just now was too abrupt.’
“Are you crazy?”
The man recovered, rubbed his wrist, and grinned: “Did you take the wrong medicine? I heard that you were injured yesterday, so I came all the way to see you, and you treat me like this?”
Shen Qiaohan didn’t know this person, nor did he know what his relationship with Tao Xiao was. He could only remain silent and stare at him coldly.
Perhaps because he saw that “Tao Xiao” did not attack further, the man looked at him suspiciously.
After a while, the anger on his face dissipated and turned into a nonchalant smile: “Oh, I’m used to seeing you with makeup, but it’s different when you don’t… Tsk, refreshing!”
He stretched out his hand and hooked the tip of “Tao Xiao’s” chin: “Tonight, accompany me for a drink, four thousand yuan!”
The author has something to say:
Shen Qiaohan: Maybe it can open the door to inspiration for me…
A certain man: Four thousand for a night, come?
Shen Qiaohan: … Closed!
Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152