The straight-line distance between Wang Zixu's unit and his home is no more than 800 meters, and it takes less than 10 minutes to walk home. I originally bought this house because it was convenient and I could go home at any time. But now I get off work at 5:30, and I often don't get home until after 6:00.

It’s not because the unit works a lot of overtime.

There is a yard downstairs in his house. He doesn't like to take care of the property. In the green belt, shrubs have grown to almost a person's height. There are red and blue fitness equipment, and there is rust on the peeling paint.

This place used to be a piece of sand, but now it has been withered for a long time. There is no sand but mud on the ground. In summer, the yellow is shit and the green is grass. In winter, the yellow is grass and the green is shit. Apart from dogs, he is the only one here.

After get off work, he sat on the squatting machine, lit a few cigarettes, and waited until his wife urged him to slowly get up and go upstairs. The cigarettes he lit were 3 yuan a pack of Dafengshou, a local brand, and they were very dry. Very, if you smoke too much, your head will easily hurt, so you don’t feel bad no matter how much you smoke. He put the cigarette in his hand and let it burn quietly. In the smoke, he thought about some absurd things. In this way, three cigarettes Can sit for a long time.

After smoking, he poked the butt of the cigarette against the rusty iron pillar next to it and sucked it up. Over time, the pillar became like a stegosaurus, with dense cigarette butts growing on its back.

In the end, my wife always calls: Why haven't you come back yet? Are you working overtime again? Are you working overtime every day? How about I report it to your boss and tell him not to arrange things while he is off work? That's enough, I don't want to hear your explanation. Come back soon.

Come back quickly, come back quickly, the food is cold...

He slowly got up and walked home. Sometimes his wife didn't call, but he didn't want to go back because he wanted some peace and quiet.

They have been married for 3 years and have no children. He doesn't want children, but she likes them. Sometimes she will look at other people's children with joy for a long time. They have more than one disagreement, including whether to eat coriander and whether to use the toilet.

How to put the cover, how often to tidy up the wardrobe. When these things increase, life starts to become boring.

After eating, he would sit on the bed and read a book. Faulkner, Marquez, Camus, and all the writers who had won the Nobel Prize or were eligible to win the Nobel Prize. His wife folded the clothes and put them away.

at his feet, and said:

"I'm really tired. I have to turn on the fire, cook, do laundry, and go to the store every day. I'm really tired."

His fingers were frozen on the page, like a child who had done something wrong.

"You can quit your job in the store. It doesn't pay much and it's tiring."

It took him a long time to say this. In fact, he had said this countless times, and his wife had also said the same sentence to him countless times. He knew exactly how she would answer it.

, that is:

"How can I have so much money if I don't go to work?"

With a monthly salary of more than 4,000, and the wife's unstable income, they can barely survive in this city, but in the wife's plan, they will have a child next year. After having this child, they will have many unexpected things.

expenditures.

For example, "I can no longer go to the store during the few months after giving birth, so I will save thousands of dollars." Then, "It hurts to give birth. I want to have a caesarean section. Cesarean section is expensive. I also need postpartum care, which is also a lot of money."

", and then "I don't want your mother to take care of me during confinement. She will suffer from postpartum depression. Going to a confinement center will cost tens of thousands..." "There is also money for the child's milk powder, clothes, shoes, diapers...

"If I go to work, I have to help the elderly to take care of me, so I have to give them something, right? I can't let them take care of me for nothing..." "When I get older, I have to go to kindergarten, and I might get sick..." "I have to give it to me during the New Year.

A red envelope for the teacher, right? Should he take a tutoring class? I want him to learn piano..."

In short, this non-existent child has already brought him endless troubles before he came into the world.

My wife has been thinking about this child for a long time. It has been so long that the child's appearance and facial features have been determined.

For countless days and nights, his wife described to him what kind of creature this child was: his/her eyebrows were like him, his nose was like him, his mouth was like hers, and his skin was like hers...

If someone asks what your child looks like, both of you can draw the child and show it to him.

This child has such a sense of reality that he feels that not allowing him/her to be born would be akin to murder.

"You always go home and just lie down, and you don't help me share the burden. How can your salary be enough to live on?"

His wife was still chattering, and the words she said did not match the words at the beginning. The more she behaved like this, the more tired he became and the more he wanted to lie down.

He wanted to say: "I am writing novels, and I can earn a lot of royalties." But he did not say it, because this sentence had been repeated many times for countless days and nights. He even knew that after he said this, his wife would

He spread his hands and asked, "What about the royalties?"

This royalties, just like the child, do not exist and are a fictitious product. Naturally, he can't get anything out of it. As a writer, he is not as good as his wife in terms of imagination.

He couldn't tell his wife what kind of royalties this was: it would be carefully packed in a white envelope, with a comfortable and thick feeling in the hand, and the postman on a bicycle would deliver it with a cut paper

After cutting the envelope open with a knife, a blue receipt fell out, with "Receipt of Royalty Fees" written on it in blue bold letters;

Or after receiving a phone call, he rode his bicycle through the path covered with camphor leaves and came to the bank. He inserted his bank card into the machine and entered the password with trembling hands. He entered the wrong password twice.

After three successful attempts, he saw that the number in his bank card had inexplicably increased, and the extra money was the royalties;

Or maybe one early morning, his phone rang with a "ding" sound, and the message box said "You have a payment in your account" in a unique font. After opening the software, he excitedly saw an official-looking payment method.

The name is followed by a large series of numbers of unknown meaning, with an eye-catching number at the top.

All three ways are possible. There may also be a fourth way. But he couldn't say it because he had never received any royalties. When he described the matter to his wife, he was not conclusive enough, which only made her more suspicious.

In the early days, writing was a pleasant thing for him. Unknowingly, the most important thing became to quickly receive a royalties to prove himself to his wife.

He specifically searched for the prize money for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was more than 6 million yuan. There is no higher royalties in the world than this. In addition, more importantly, the Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded every year.

Once a year, then, if he lives to be 80 years old, there will be more than 50 opportunities to get it. What an exciting 50 opportunities! Whether it is written down or made into a movie, it will become an epic.

He began to study all-round Nobel Prize-winning literature works. Then something interesting happened——

When he read Faulkner, his writing style was like Faulkner's, the scenes kept switching, the characters' viewpoints wandered, and everyone was gibbering as if they were mentally ill. When he read Camus, what he wrote was like Camus,

Everyone in the novel has become a lonely, cold castle; when reading Marquez, he felt like he was in South America, with heat rising between the paper and ink that is only found in the rainforests of the southern hemisphere.

He felt that he had touched these shining great souls with his soul, and the Nobel Prize in Literature was no longer a mirror image.

But before he got the 6 million, he needed a faster way to prove himself. That was to submit articles to magazines. After trying five or six times, the novels he sent were like yellow cranes, and there was no news at all. In this process
Chapter completed!