"Grey Millennium" Series: "Summer Vacation in 1998" (3)

Jul 24, 2020

Foreword:

"Grey Millennium" is a series of novels and essays, telling about the strange, weird and terrifying events that happened in a northeastern city that had not been blown away by the spring breeze of reform during the turn of the old and new centuries. Each novel will have different characters, but the unease behind the rapid development of technology around the millennium will connect the fate of all these people...

"Summer Vacation in 1998" is the second installment of the "Grey Millennium" series, which debuts in the form of a novel.

third chapter

The next day, the four boys arrived at the door of Xinxin's house very early. Xinxin went out with his parents. His grandmother was very happy to see these boys coming to help, and promised that as long as they helped move the furniture, half of the money from the sale of the scraps collected at home would go to them. This time, the four boys are eager to work hard. By ten o'clock in the morning, the furniture in Xinxin's house was almost moved. The four boys gathered the scraps from his house and piled them up at the entrance of Building No. 5. They planned to take a nap and then take the tricycle of the guard Li Jing to the scrap station east of the insulation factory.

Jiang Bo and Gao Xiucai thought that they would have money to go to the arcade room in the afternoon, and they both snickered happily; Yang Yang sat under the shade of a tree and looked up at the sky, thinking that the summer vacation would end soon, and was a little depressed; Xiao Hao poked around in the pile of waste books, dug out a copy of "A Qigong Master Comes Out of the Mountain", sat down in the pile of waste books, and started to read. The nonsense and serious sentences in the book made him smirk.

"What are you laughing at?"

Xiao Hao raised his head, it turned out that it was Xu Second who came back from school after the holiday remedial class.

"This book is so fucking bullshit." Xiao Hao said with a smile, throwing the book in his hand back to the trash heap. "We'll sell these scraps in a while, will you come? You'll have a share of the money if you sell it."

"Okay, take me one."

"Are you studying English?"

"Choke to death, the monkey bows? (Yes, How are you?)" Xu Miao jokingly said, "Yes, I'll go home and put my bags first. I'll come down in a while." After that, he quickly walked towards Building No. 8.

After the four boys lost their sweat, they borrowed a tricycle from Li Jing, the guard. After waiting for a few seconds, the five people loaded the waste books, waste cardboard and waste bottles into the car together, and then set off. Jiang Bo and Xiaohao took turns pedaling, while the other three pushed. Ten minutes later, they arrived at the junk station, and the junk on the car sold for a total of 13 yuan and 56 cents.

After selling the scraps, five friends were pushing their carts and walking out of the scrap station. At this time, they met four young people with snarky eyes. They were carrying a long object covered with a cloth into the scrap station. The four of them put down the strip in front of the boss of the junkyard, and after whispering to the boss for a while, they lifted the veil, leaving a section of rusty rails exposed to the sun. The boss looked down and hurriedly waved his hand at the four young men, saying in a firm tone, "Hurry up and take it away!"

"We got it for a long time, you can take it, or give less!"

"I don't dare to fix it. You are so fucking obvious. Hurry up and take it away!" The boss said with a frown.

So the four of them scolded and wrapped the rails and laboriously lifted them out.

The five little friends looked at each other while pushing the car away, each with a wicked smile, and they all laughed and scolded "SB" in their hearts.

Shortly after lunch, the four friends gathered under the big willow tree beside the double-deck slide, anxiously waiting for Gao Xiucai, who was late to come out. It was not until a quarter past three in the afternoon that Gao Xiucai came out of Building No. 8 belatedly.

"Oh my god, you can figure it out, we won't wait for you if it's too late." Jiang Bo complained.

"Our class leader called me at noon and asked me to write an essay to sing praises to the anti-flood heroes, and bring it on the day of school. I thought about it in two weeks. Let me make the outline first, or let me come out..."

"Okay, Gao Xiucai, Gao Xiucai, it seems that your family's literary talent is ancestral. Xiao Gao has Lao Gao, and Lao Gao has Lao Lao Gao." Jiang Bo joked.

"Damn it, he is so active, you can let him write for you." Xu Miao said.

"I……"

"Come on, stop talking nonsense, let's go! It's too late!" Xiao Hao said.

The five friends quickly walked out of the courtyard gate. The doorman, Li Jing, who was listening to the radio at the gate of the courtyard, looked at them with a smile and made a gun gesture, as if he knew their little secret. The five people passed by the warehouse area on the west side of the freight station, and then crossed a bridge parallel to the railway line, and gradually entered the boundary of the vegetable market next to the freight station.

There is still a period of time before get off work, and there are very few people buying vegetables in the market. An uncle who sells vegetables is arranging the vegetable stall, trying to make the vegetables that were not sold in the morning and shrunken by the sun to look better; a young man in a straw hat next to him is dozing off on a tricycle, and the car is loaded with The fruits are full of bruises, and swarms of fruit flies eat the fermented pulp on the surface of the fruits, and they are all drunk and dreaming to death; every afternoon, the short and strong man who pulls a cart of tofu from the nearby village to sell it comes to his site early as usual, The penis of his donkey that pulls the cart changes from size to size, attracting the attention of several children next to him; a shirtless stoker in a white apron sits at the entrance of the small workshop selling biscuits, and he temporarily escapes from the roasting. The flames of hell from the cake stove came to the steamer in the world to cool off the heat.

Not far from the boundary of the vegetable market sits a small white house. This small white house is a private building taken from a two-story red brick house at the back, occupying a sidewalk abruptly. The door of the white house was open, the floor was uneven, and the pavement bricks could be vaguely seen through the thin gray carpet. The walls on the left and right sides of the hut barely squeezed two rows of game consoles, and the gamers were caught in the aisle.

The person in charge of the currency exchange in the computer room was a young man in his twenties, with a dazed expression, a little stammering in his speech, and wearing a white hurdle vest with black grease stains. Xiao Hao took the money collected by several people out of his trousers pocket, slapped the money on the table in front of the coin changer with great momentum and a little cautiousness, and exchanged about 20 coins. Xiaohao divided the coins and handed them over to the friends. After that, everyone went to find the games they liked to play.

At this time, a few older kids who looked like high school students walked into the computer room and went straight to the back room of the computer room. The leading eldest boy walked and gestured at a wonderful scene in a certain game. Unexpectedly, when he reached the door of the back room, the door was blocked by the guy in charge of changing the currency. The young man said something to those high school students. The leading high school student rolled his eyes and turned around, muttering, "Fuck me," and with a little disappointment, he led a few younger brothers to the "King of Fighters" machine.

After a while, the owner of the arcade room appeared out of nowhere. The boss looked to be in his fifties, with a bald scalp. He, too, was wearing a vest, revealing a slender chest and two dark arms as dry as tree trunks, but it was hard to tell what color the vest was originally. The boss saw that there were a lot of people in the computer room, he smiled with his yellow teeth and took a puff of cigarette with satisfaction, and then spit out the smoke filtered by the lung lobes, adding a thorn to the already smoky computer room. nose odor.

The boss was pacing the cramped computer room while smoking a cigarette. He looked at this, looked at that, and finally his eyes fell on the child who was fighting on the "Metal Slug 2" closest to the coin exchange - that was Gao Xiucai, who was manipulating a white ribbon on his head at this time. of special forces fighting a group of mummies. The boss bypassed the teenagers playing games, like a slow loach drilling through the water plants. He walked over to Gao Xiucai and asked tentatively, "I have Contra 10 in my house, do you want to play it?"

"How about 10 more in Contra? You made it up." Gao Xiucai glanced at the boss in a hurry, then moved his eyes to the screen again, and clenched the joystick even tighter with his left hand.

"Did I lie to you?" The boss frowned, took another puff of cigarette, and gritted his teeth, "I just asked someone to send a machine from the south a few days ago. It's new from Japan. It's fun, not only Can shoot a gun, and can put a nuclear bomb. It’s much more fun than you play with this one.”

"How many lives does one coin cost?" Gao Xiucai asked, but his eyes didn't leave the screen.

"One coin gives ten lives. Could it be called "Contra 10"!" The boss replied with a smile.

"Oh shit, I'm dead." Gao Xiucai shouted.

"Just in time, come to the back room and play "Contra 10"." The boss said with a smile.

Gao Xiucai looked at the boss with an unhappy face, said "wait a minute", then turned to look for Xiaohao and Jiang Bo who were playing "The King of Fighters" not far away. He patted Xiaohao on the shoulder and said, "Hey, the boss said he has "Contra 10", let's try it?"

"What, there are 10 left in "Contra"?" Xiaohao stopped the game in his hand, "Hey Jiang Bo, don't hit me yet."

"What's wrong?" Jiang Bo was in the upper hand, turning his head to ask Gao Xiucai with an unhappy face.

"The boss said he has a new game "Contra 10" in his back room, let's go check it out!" Gao Xiucai said.

"Wait for me to call Xu Miao and Yang Yang." Xiao Hao said, and got up to find two friends not far away. Yang Yang's coins had long been used up, and Xu Mian's last life had just been given to the gun barrel of a giant robot flying over the sea. The five friends who played different machines stood together again, but the owner of the game hall disappeared.

"Hey, where's the boss?" Gao Xiucai asked, searching around for the boss of the game room. Apart from the five of them, there were only five or six sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds in the room, all of them staring intently at the screen, holding the joystick, and occasionally uttering loud laughter and cursing. The boss and the guy who was in charge of changing the currency disappeared.

"It was still there just now." Gao Xiucai said, scratching his head, then pushed the door leading to the back room of the game machine room. The door remained motionless.

"Come on, don't look for it, I guess he's making fun of you. Are you out of money? Come on Jiang Bo and let's go home after we finish this game." Xiaohao said, turning around and walking to the "King of Fighters" set "In front of the machine. Jiang Bo also hurried to the front of the machine, for fear that Xiaohao would take the lead.

Xu Miao, Gao Xiucai and Yang Yang watched the battle between Xiaohao and Jiang Bo, laughed and applauded. After some fighting, Xiaohao's Kusanagi finally defeated Jiang Bo's Iori.

"It's amazing! Peerless kill!" Gao Xiucai shouted, imitating the half-truth Japanese words spoken by the characters in the game when they made moves.

"Okay, okay, there's no more coins, let's go home." Xiaohao said with a smile.

"What the hell did you do with "Contra 10" and made me lose!" Jiang Bo angrily complained to the innocent-looking Gao Xiucai, and followed the other four people out scoldingly. Come "squeak". When he looked back, it turned out that the door to the back room of the game hall had opened, and the brilliance reflected by the screen of the game console poured out. It seemed that there were games that were more charming and splendid than the popular games in the outhouse. The owner of the computer room stuck his head out of the room and looked out, and when he saw Jiang Bo, he smiled and said something to him.

Jiang Bo paused for a moment, then turned around and walked out of the game room.