After returning from Banai, Qiu Dekao lived for another three months before finally pa.s.sing away. The shareholders of the international salvage company reorganized and auctioned off some a.s.sets. Some of Qiu Dekao's team were personal friends with me and took away many files when a lot of the project teams were withdrawn. Of course, these files had all been sent to me, but none of them were as important as the twelve volumes I had received earlier. Although I found many details to supplement the story and piece it together, the whole thing didn't move forward.

I had coffee with several of them, and they told me that the senior management of the company would continue to look for more possibilities and that their funds were still sufficient. Several potential successors asked them to give me a message that if they had the chance, they would like to continue our cooperation. The conditions would be more generous than when Qiu Dekao was here.

I made a f.u.c.k YOU gesture and asked them to help me convey the meaning back.

Mute Sister got married six months later. The groom was a very humble man with a little baldness. He was middle-aged and seemed to have little money so many people said that he didn't really like Mute Sister, but coveted her money and status. I attended the wedding. The man's name seemed to be Abang and his eyes were full of cunning, but he was very attentive and kept toasting and handing out cigarettes. Mute Sister had been deadpan the entire time, looking at the empty seat beside me.

Many men weren't remembered because of this or that, but he was remembered because he would never come back.

It was said that Mute Sister fell in love with this man because he was a wine dealer who delivered wine many times to the liquor store. Every time he saw a female customer getting drunk, he took care of her and this was how their relations.h.i.+p came about.

After Leather Bag's wound was healed, he turned over a new leaf and took an entrance exam, wanting to major in international trade. According to his own words, he failed the exam because he couldn't even read the professional section's questions, let alone know how to answer them with his current level of education. He couldn't even recognize the 26 letters of the English alphabet.

In the end, he returned to this line of work, but he would definitely not do big business. His partner said that his current mantra was “better to go home and sell tofu than to make money and lose one's life.” Leather Bag became the most skilled, but least daring, of their group and I think he'll soon become a great hero, or at least quite rich.

When it came to Xiuxiu, I thought she liked Xiao Hua. After all, they were really people who grew up and undertook things together. But that kind of love wasn't necessarily the kind of love I thought it was, because they were too familiar with each other. Many of the feelings they should've had became something deeper before they came into being.

Xiuxiu didn't contact me again. Maybe I broke her heart or maybe it was the tragic event and the decision I made at that time that made her unable to face me again.

At this time, my heart had been trained well enough, and her escape seemed irrelevant to me.

The last thing I want to mention is Poker-Face.

Some people said that I was more worried about him because he didn't seem to belong to this world and was a person who went straight ahead with a purpose. Even if there were countless barbs placed on his path, he would go straight ahead, regardless of any harm, until all his flesh was sc.r.a.ped off or he reached his destination alive.

For our two generations, in fact, I already had a general outline of the events surrounding the previous generation. But for him and his purpose, I really didn't know anything.

I could clearly list everyone's goals, but Poker-Face seemed to have been a pa.s.sive puppet the whole time, always acting for others' purposes.

Judging from my experience with him, however, he was a very clear-cut man. Every time he went to a place, he had his own purpose, and judging from his professional missing-person skills and his frequent sleepwalking, he had to know more than us.

Many times I felt that our purpose was ridiculous, and his was the core.

At that time, he refused everyone's company again and resolutely embarked on a journey of his own volition.

"I can only go by myself on the road ahead. There's no way you can go with me. It's too dangerous, and it has nothing to do with you.”

What bulls.h.i.+t, we even got involved in such a big plot. I had a hard time seeing the situation clearly, but I found that Poker-Face didn't care about it at all in his heart. What he cared about was something we all knew nothing about.

Should I have held his thigh and cried “Don't leave us”? Given the mood and situation at that time, however, no one had the strength or energy to do so, so we let him go.

Now, the designed plot seemed to be over, and most of the mysteries around me had vanished while the mystery surrounding him had never shown any sign of scattering.

After I separated from him, I never heard any news.

We each had our own destiny, and his journey to the north seemed to have come to an end. Judging from the expression he showed when he left, all of our tragedies at that time were irrelevant to him.

I still remembered Fatty's words: if one of your relatives dies while the others are still alive, you will feel that this death was a great catastrophe. However, if the relatives around you die one by one within a year, you will slowly become numb. Little Brother's eyes when he left seemed to be the latter. For a long time, watching people around you die one by one in various ways, you find that no one can stay with you. At this time, you will have a different view of death.

A deeper level than numbness was indifference, indifference to death.

Time pa.s.sed slowly as I waited for the secret mentioned in the letter to be revealed, but nothing was sent to me. At first I went to collect mail twice a day, then once a day, then once every three days, and finally once a week, but I never received any information.

I figured there would never be any mail sent to me, I had been cheated again, and everything seemed to be over.

I wasn't sad or even a little bit bothered, and I even hoped later that the mail wouldn't come. Every week, I opened my mailbox and closed it silently, looked at the scenery by West Lake, and scolded my staff. It seemed to be a good day.

In fact, the mail had arrived long ago, but I didn't know at that time that a person who looked exactly like me had already taken it. And it was a long time before I found out about it.

*********

A year later in the beginning of autumn, I rode my bike around the West Lake for some exercise, and then returned to the shop. Upon entering the door, I saw w.a.n.g Meng's face was a bit strange.

After this period of training, w.a.n.g Meng was already a very calm child, but now this expression meant that he encountered something today that he couldn't solve by himself.

I asked him what was wrong, and he pointed to the side. I saw a man standing in the corner of the shop, flipping through some of the rubbings we hadn't managed to sell.

I was quite familiar with this person's body shape, but at that moment, I didn't recognize him. He was dressed in a black sweater with a large backpack beside him.

“Little Brother.” When he turned his head, I instantly recognized him, “How… what… why are you back?”

He looked at me quietly for a long time before he said, “I've come to say goodbye to you. My time is up.”

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TN Note: THE END… Just kidding. I do always seem to pick the best cliffies to stop, though lol. The next chapter is 10 pages (in word) and I've been going since 7:30 this morning so I think I'll take a break and try to deal with it tomorrow. I was super stoked Qilin was back and then he spouts this nonsense. Boo!