Yonghe Road

Chapter 14 Cake
"What song do you want to listen to?" Xie Anmin would not refuse the birthday boy's song request.

"'The Pig Who Lost His Happiness,'" said Wang Zian.

Xie Anmin's eyes flashed.

Zhong Ziqi started clapping his hands: "Yes, yes, Wang Boya likes this song the most. But he can't sing it himself, he is tone-deaf." Zhong Ziqi said, laughing, and An Hongdou also giggled, like two simple-minded pigs.

Only Wang Zian noticed that Xie Anmin's expression had changed.

"It doesn't matter if you can't sing, just sing me a birthday song." After all, it is an old song from more than ten years ago, Wang Zian said understandingly.

"I can sing." Xie Anmin's smile suddenly turned bitter.

It was impossible for Zhong Ziqi and An Hongdou to notice. They were overjoyed. One of them ordered a song while the other took out his cell phone to take pictures.

A great writer sings in a KTV in a small county town. This video is extremely valuable.

Under the dim lights of the KTV, everyone sat down on the sofa. Xie Anmin held the microphone and stood in front of the scrolling screen. A sad melody slowly flowed, and the pictures on the big screen slowly played. Xie Anmin closed her eyes, and her slightly hoarse voice brought everyone into another world. The surrounding noise seemed to be isolated. Only her singing voice and the background music were left, telling a story about loss and search: "I can't give you the happiness you want.
So choose to quit

Because I love you
So I let you choose a better destination..."

The colorful light from the large screen cast a shadow on Xie Anmin's profile, half dark, half glittering. The glittering part was tears. Wang Zian's heart trembled: Xie Anmin was crying. Xie Anmin's tears were silent, but her singing was powerful and sorrowful. Even Zhong Ziqi and An Hongdou stopped laughing and looked solemn. Xie Anmin's voice lingered, like a twisting hook, hooking the hearts of everyone in the room to their ups and downs.

"If the road of love could be paved again
I won't let you cry for me again

Now there is only one useless person left, which is unforgivable
A pig who lost his own happiness..."

An Hongdou put down the phone she was recording and leaned against Zhong Ziqi's shoulder, looking like a little bird. Zhong Ziqi couldn't help but put his arm around her and asked her what was wrong. An Hongdou looked at Xie Anmin with a tearful voice and said to Zhong Ziqi, "My idol must be thinking of her first love."

There is a lot of gossip about a great writer like Xie Anmin on the Internet, especially her unforgettable first love, which is the most widely circulated. Book fans like An Hongdou cannot be unaware of it.

"Xie Anmin had a first love?" Zhong Ziqi muttered after saying this, "She looks quite old, it's impossible that she hasn't been in love before. Did she break up with her first love?"

An Hongdou nodded. "I've seen it online, and I've also read some text about her first love in Xie Anmin's book."

Zhong Ziqi lowered his head to look at An Hongdou, paused for a few seconds, and said, "Hongdou, you love studying so much, why are you only attending a vocational school?"

After graduating from junior high school, students were divided into general and vocational schools based on their junior high school entrance exam scores. Only those who failed to get into high school could go to vocational secondary schools. Zhong Ziqi was able to go to high school not because of his academic performance, but because he entered the local high school as a basketball student.

"I don't like studying." said An Hongdou.

"Then you should also read Xie Anmin's books."

“Do you sing pop songs?”

Zhong Ziqi nodded: "Yes, I sang it."

"Does that mean you love music?"

"No." Zhong Ziqi shook his head.

An Hongdou said, "Yes, liking to read Xie Anmin's books is just like liking to listen to pop songs. It's just a form of entertainment and doesn't mean anything. What girl doesn't have spring in her heart? What's wrong with reading a few romance novels?"

An Hongdou muttered to herself, and Zhong Ziqi understood, "Oh, the writer Xie Anmin actually writes idle books, right?" The song "The Pig Who Lost His Happiness" came to an end. When the last note fell, the two words "idle books" popped out of Zhong Ziqi's mouth, sounding particularly loud and harsh.

The air in the private room was stagnant. Zhong Ziqi looked up and saw Xie Anmin staring at him with a dark face. An Hongdou also saw the angry Xie Anmin and hurriedly left Zhong Ziqi's arms, clenching her little pink fist and punching his shoulder: "Hey, Ziqi, what nonsense are you talking about?"

The soft and pretty girl's fist doesn't sound like a beating, but more like a show of coquettishness.

"What nonsense am I talking about?" Zhong Ziqi stretched out his hand and kept slapping his mouth, but he was not admitting his mistake to Xie Anmin. Instead, he was comforting An Hongdou, which made An Hongdou giggle, making it seem more like the two of them were flirting.

That king who set fire to the beacon tower to amuse the princes only to make the beauty smile, he only slapped his mouth a few times and made An Hongdou laugh so hard, Zhong Ziqi had to slap his mouth harder, after all, hitting himself didn't hurt. So Zhong Ziqi increased the speed of his hands, trying to make An Hongdou laugh even more happily, but before he could slap a few times, he felt a black screen...

Xie Anmin slapped a whole birthday cake on the coffee table onto Zhong Ziqi's face. Zhong Ziqi's face was instantly covered with cream, dotted with colorful sugar beads and fruit slices, leaving only two astonished eyes and one arm hanging in the air.

An Hongdou was so scared that she jumped away from Zhong Ziqi, and Wang Zian also stood up from the sofa.

The originally cheerful atmosphere froze in an instant.

Wang Zian didn't get to eat his 30th birthday cake, and his 30th birthday ended on a sour note. Xie Anmin turned and left the KTV, and Wang Zian ran after him. By the time Zhong Ziqi finished washing the cream off his face and body in the bathroom and walked back to the private room, Xie Anmin and Wang Zian were gone, leaving only An Hongdou, timidly handing him a box of tissues.

She said, "Zi Qi, your hair is wet, wipe it off."

Zhong Ziqi was still in shock and didn't know how he had offended Xie Anmin.

"Is she sick? How could you like such an idol?" Zhong Ziqi said to An Hongdou.

An Hongdou originally planned to wipe the water droplets from Zhong Ziqi's hair, but after hearing what Zhong Ziqi said, she frowned and said, "You are the one who is sick." She threw down the tissue, put on her bag, and left.

Zhong Ziqi chased An Hongdou downstairs at the KTV, but he didn't catch up with her. Instead, he was stopped by the cashier: "Sir, you haven't paid for your private room yet."

*
Wang Zian always felt that his 30th birthday was very interesting.

He had had two particularly memorable birthdays before, one of which was when he was doing his internship before graduating from medical school.

Although his major was gastroenterology, he also interned in gynecology and obstetrics. At that prime age, he was brimming with curiosity about the opposite sex's body. The thought of seeing the female body in the obstetrics department the next day had already excited him and his male classmates the night before. The next day, when they excitedly arrived at the delivery room, they were terrified by the sight of women giving birth and the smell of blood in the air.

He endured even more bloody stimulation and mental beatings in the gynecology department. The clotted menstrual blood from the sick women, from dark red to dark black, exuding all sorts of diseased scents, made him sick to his stomach. At the time, a fellow intern kindly celebrated his birthday with him. The fruit slices adorning his birthday cake were dried strawberries, dark red, large and connected together, resembling clotted menstrual blood. So, that birthday, he couldn't eat a single bite of the cake, and he vomited uncontrollably.

One year on his birthday, Wang Zian didn’t even get to eat cake.

Those were the days in the recruit company in the Tengger Desert. I only remember passing the physical inspection and taking a train for several days and nights to Yinchuan. When we got off the train, a fleet of Jiefang 141 trucks arrived to pick us up and take us to the training camp in the Tengger Desert for three grueling months. At first, as a southerner, I wasn't used to the desert weather and suffered from frequent nosebleeds. On my birthday, Wang Zian had a lot of nosebleeds. He recalled the blood I'd seen shed from women during my internship at the hospital, the blood from childbirth, and the blood from menstrual disorders. So, how could he have the heart to eat cake?

Xie Anmin later compensated Wang Zian for not having a cake on his 30th birthday by giving him one, but that happened a few days later.

On his birthday, Wang Zian left the KTV and searched the city streets for Xie Anmin, but couldn't find him. He called Xie Anmin but he didn't answer. Instead, he got a call from Zhong Ziqi, who was on the verge of tears. He said, "Wang Boya, you left your brothers for a woman? If you don't come back to save me, I'll have to clean toilets in KTVs to pay off my debts."

Zhong Ziqi had no money on him, not to mention paying the bill at KTV, he didn't even have enough money for the bus fare back to Baile Village.

Fortunately, Wang Zian finally came back to take him home. That night, Zhong Ziqi deeply understood the truth: brothers are like limbs, and women are like clothes. An Hongdou actually turned against him for Xie Anmin.

(End of this chapter)