Carrying a Suitcase, He Ran Away Overnight
Wen Ci didn’t answer the phone. He had gone to sleep early and put it on silent.
The next morning, after getting ready, he took his résumé and went straight back out to interviews.
He visited five companies in the morning, but still couldn’t find anything suitable. It wasn’t until he got home that he saw Mother Wen had called him the night before.
Wen Ci didn’t call back. He just asked on WeChat what was wrong, but Mother Wen never replied.
That night, Wen Ci wrestled with things in the kitchen for ages before finally managing to make a bowl of tomato and egg noodles that looked decent enough.
He carried the noodles to the table, and the moment he set the bowl down, the heat burned his hand. He hurriedly pinched his ear.
His phone vibrated a few times. Wen Ci ignored it, sat down, and took a bite, only to stiffen up from the salt.
It was completely inedible.
He turned to look at the pot in the kitchen, which was still full of leftover noodles, and wished he could go back more than ten minutes and stop his own hands, which kept feeling there still weren’t enough noodles and adding more again and again.
He dumped everything out, cleaned up the kitchen, and opened his phone.
It was a notification from the streaming app asking whether, on his first day as a registered streamer, he wanted to go live.
Wen Ci glanced at the time. Eight-thirty. He could still stream for two or three hours.
He opened the app, looked through the categories for a while, chose game streaming, and started the livestream without turning on the camera.
Wen Ci played chicken dinner, a battle royale game.
In a match with a hundred players, everyone started on the spawn island and boarded a plane. After jumping, they landed on the island, picked up supplies, eliminated other players, and ultimately won by surviving to the end.
The game had solo queue, duo queue, and squad queue.
Wen Ci had only played it back when he was in university. Since it had been so long, he was completely out of practice. In the first round, he was killed the moment he landed.
In the second round, he had barely picked up a gun before someone shot him dead.
In the third round, he fell straight from high altitude and died on impact.
Looking at the green-glowing crate on his computer screen, Wen Ci started a fourth round.
As a new streamer, he didn’t have much traffic. After streaming for more than ten minutes, there were only a dozen or so people in the room. No one had been sending chat messages, but when Wen Ci started the fourth round, someone finally did.
Xnsaijsbx: “Game? Isn’t this a mukbang stream?”
Wen Ci looked at his own stream category and only then realized it had been misfiled under mukbang.
Xnsaijsbx: “It really is good enough to watch over a meal. No wonder it got put in mukbang. Thumbs up.jpg.”
Laughing to death but not really dead: “Hahaha, I’m losing it. Side-dish streamer, straight-up planting rice in my mouth.”
Wen Ci changed the stream category. Right after he finished, before he could even speak, he got ambushed and killed.
Altogether, he had only played four rounds, and he hadn’t even gotten the chance to pick up a gun and shoot anyone.
Wen Ci gave up on solo queue and matched into squad queue instead. This time he quickly found a rifle and eliminated one person.
When he heard familiar bot gunfire through his headphones, Wen Ci reloaded and rushed over.
But the other side saw him and instantly opened fire at his head.
Wen Ci hadn’t expected him not to be a bot. He froze for a split second. Even though he reacted fast and ducked behind a rock, he still got blasted down to red health.
“Got fooled.”
While reloading, he said it aloud, and when the other side charged over, he seized the chance and eliminated them.
“Nice, bro.” A teammate who had rushed over praised him over voice chat.
Wen Ci didn’t say anything. After looting the crate, he even fired a few shots at it, pretending to be a bot himself.
The other player hadn’t left yet and was still spectating. Seeing that move, they got so angry they immediately opened voice chat and cursed at him a few times.
That one “got fooled” line drew in a few chat messages praising Wen Ci’s voice, and the number of viewers also went up a little.
Wanting hotpot so badly it was driving me crazy: “What did the streamer say about getting fooled? Wasn’t that a bot? How do you guys know?”
Beautiful lady, leave your number: “Bots don’t do much damage when they shoot people, and they won’t immediately aim for your head the second an enemy appears. That guy was obviously pretending to be a bot to trick people into rushing in.”
Zjsd28: “Came in through mukbang. Damn, I thought the streamer was going to give us a meal stream. This guy is so bad it’s on another level. My five-year-old little brother plays better than this.”
Wen Ci was running toward the safe zone while checking his stream category, and he noticed that although he had successfully changed the category, he was still visible under mukbang.
He explained it to the newcomers.
As the next few matches went on, his hands finally warmed up. Wen Ci got a chicken dinner in one round, and by the time the stream ended, the total audience had reached more than four hundred, with three gifts received.
He shut off the stream, played a few more matches, got much more familiar with the game, and only then turned off the computer.
The next second, his phone rang.
Wen Ci glanced at the time. Eleven at night. If Mother Wen was calling, it was probably about Wen Sheng again.
Sure enough, as soon as he answered, Mother Wen asked when he was coming back and said he should go see Wen Sheng. “Ah Sheng was worried you wouldn’t like him, so he kept wanting to go back. That child has no sense of security and is a little sensitive. If you can, come back and reassure him, let him know you don’t hate him, that he’s just overthinking things.”
He had already said those reassuring words yesterday. Not only had they been useless, he had been mocked for it.
Wen Ci was hungry enough that his stomach had started growling. Thinking about what he could eat to take the edge off, his gaze suddenly fell on the instant noodles on the table that he had bought earlier, and he lied without missing a beat. “Mom, I’m abroad with Li Shengcheng right now. I can’t come back.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I already asked Li Shengcheng, and he said he hasn’t been able to reach you at all lately. Ah Ci, do you not want to come home anymore? If you have any thoughts, you can tell Mom. Could it be that you’re blaming Mom for bringing Ah Sheng back without telling you? Ah Ci, Ah Sheng was there all by himself. If I hadn’t brought him back…”
“I know, Mom. Wen Sheng is your child, so it’s only right that he comes back.” Wen Ci poured hot water into the instant noodles and tried to use the fork to poke holes in the lid. With only one hand, he tried for a long time without success. In the end, he had to set the phone on the table and use both hands to stab at it. He smiled and said, “I just can’t come back for now. Mom, you’re really overthinking it.”
“Really?” Hearing the indifference in his tone, Mother Wen hesitated, afraid that Wen Ci was just bottling things up and keeping silent, already hurt inside.
“Really. Don’t you know what kind of person I am?” As soon as he finished speaking, the fork finally pierced the lid, and Wen Ci let out a breath of relief.
Mother Wen said, “That’s good, that’s good. I was just afraid you’d resent me, child. Ah Sheng is timid and bored at home too. If you’re free, you can come back and keep him company. Mainly, now that he’s misunderstood you… sigh, it’s nothing really. It’s just that Mom misses you and wants to see you.”
“I haven’t even been out for a week yet,” Wen Ci said.
Including when he had gone out to sea before, it had only been six days.
“Then when do you think you’ll be back?” Mother Wen sighed, catching his meaning.
Wen Ci paused, then said vaguely, “In a while.”
Mother Wen chattered on to him for a long time after that, and all of it was about Wen Sheng. In the end, realizing she had been talking about Wen Sheng the whole time and worrying that Wen Ci might get annoyed, she took the initiative to hang up.
The instant noodles weren’t nearly as tasty as he had imagined. After finishing them, Wen Ci opened his computer and looked up the place where his biological parents had lived, using the address he remembered.
After the house was sold by Wen Sheng, it had been demolished. The area had already turned into a large shopping center, and the surrounding neighborhood had been developed into apartment buildings. Aside from some old photos from before, there was no trace left of the house at all.
His hand gripping the mouse tightened, veins standing out sharply over the back of it. Wen Ci looked at those prosperous images, his eyes carrying a faint trace of confusion.
It seemed he no longer had a home.
*
The next day, Wen Ci was woken up by hunger.
The fridge held the groceries he had bought the day before. Wen Ci hesitated for a second, rolled up his sleeves, and started cooking.
Half an hour later, coughing all the way, he walked out of the smoke-filled kitchen. Tears were already streaming from his eyes because of the fumes. When he checked the mirror, he looked as pitiful as if he’d just been dumped and cried for three days and three nights.
He gave up on cooking, opened the windows and doors to air the place out, put on a jacket, and went outside.
It was drizzling outside, and the sky was a little gloomy.
Wen Ci held up an umbrella and went into a noodle shop, ordered a bowl of ramen, and idly scrolled through Moments, liking Li Shengcheng’s latest post.
Not long after, Li Shengcheng sent him a message asking where he was.
“Eating.”
Li Shengcheng: “What are you eating?”
Wen Ci snapped a photo of the noodles just brought out to him and sent it over.
Li Shengcheng: “?!”
Li Shengcheng: “You eat this stuff?”
Wen Ci: “Yeah.”
Li Shengcheng: “…You can actually eat this stuff?”
It wasn’t strange for Li Shengcheng to be so shocked.
Wen Ci was extremely picky about food and didn’t really like noodles, but the only place near his neighborhood entrance was this noodle shop. He was also too hungry to stand it, so he had no choice but to come in and order a bowl of ramen to fill his stomach.
But surprisingly, the ramen was delicious.
Li Shengcheng: “Where are you? I’ll come get you.”
“At home. You guys go have fun.”
“Come on, what happened? Ever since you fell into the sea, you’ve been acting weird. Don’t tell me you’ve… gone stupid?”
Wen Ci’s chopsticks paused in his hand.
Right now, Li Shengcheng and the others still didn’t know what had happened in the Wen family. They only found out not long afterward, when they saw Wen Sheng.
Wen Ci and Li Shengcheng had the best relationship, but after Wen Sheng appeared, because Wen Ci had targeted Wen Sheng several times, Li Shengcheng’s relationship with him gradually cooled, and in the end Li Shengcheng became friends with Wen Sheng instead.
That only made Wen Ci feel even more that Wen Sheng’s appearance had stolen everything that belonged to him.
But that was only the Wen Ci from the novel’s plot, not him.
“You’ve been really off lately, you know that? This isn’t like you.” Li Shengcheng sent a voice message.
“It’s fine,” Wen Ci replied. “I’m finishing my noodles. Talk later.”
After he finished eating and went home, he was staring at the computer and thinking about whether he should go out for interviews or go live when there was suddenly a knock on the door.
Wen Ci had bought something online and thought it was the courier. He opened the door, and when he saw Wen Sheng, he took half a step back, baffled. “How did you find me?”
He hadn’t even told Li Shengcheng where he was renting. How had Wen Sheng found him?
“If you put your mind to it, of course you can find someone.” The young man with hair long enough to cover his eyes spoke softly. “Brother, aren’t you going to invite me in and sit for a while?”
Hearing the word “brother” made Wen Ci feel uncomfortable all over. He frowned and said, “There’s no one here. You don’t need to call me that.”
“Dad said you’re my brother, that you were born three seconds earlier than me. Of course I should call you brother, whether anyone’s around or not.” Wen Sheng lifted his head. The gloom on his face was quickly replaced by a bright smile. “Brother, aren’t you coming home? Mom and Dad have been looking for you. They’re really worried about you. They want you to come back and keep me company.”
Wen Ci looked at him. “Do you need me to keep you company?”
The man let him look. There was not the slightest change in his expression, and the smile on his face was as perfect as a mask.
If not for the things Wen Sheng had said over the phone before, Wen Ci might really have believed the version of him standing here now.
“Of course I don’t need that.” Wen Sheng spread his hands, his tone thick with helplessness. “You know I hate you, but I still have to put on a show for appearances, so just pretend you’re accompanying me on the way. After we get home, you can leave quickly.”