novel-bin 031 Meng Zhen
031 Meng Zhen
Yu Wenhao was driving and had just left his workplace. Before he could receive any orders, his usual cell phone rang. Yu Wenhao looked at it and saw it was Meng Zhen. Yu Wenhao answered the phone.
"Brother, where are you? Are you looking for work?" Mengzhen asked.
Yu asked, "I just left the office and haven't received any orders yet. What's wrong?"
"I'm off today, so I made braised beef. Call me if you're passing by, and I'll bring it over to you."
Yu Wen smiled and said, "I brought my own lunch from work, you can eat it yourself."
"No, I made this especially for you, I have to give it to you." Meng Zhen insisted.
Yu said, "Okay, I'll call you when I get near you."
"Okay, I'll wait for you, bro."
Yu Wenhao and Meng Zhen met last summer. That night, around 10 p.m., Yu Wenhao received a fare and arrived at the destination, Chaoming Temple Lane. There, he saw a girl standing by the roadside crying. Yu Wenhao parked his car in front of her, and she stood there blankly, trembling under the streetlights.
Yu Wenhao looked around and, seeing no one else, rolled down the car window and asked:
"Hey beautiful, is this the car you called?"
Yu asked twice before the girl seemed to hear him, opened the back door and got in, but continued to cry after getting in.
Yu Wenhao gave her the last few digits of his phone number to confirm, but she just kept crying and ignored him. Yu Wenhao then asked:
"Are we going to Cuiyuan?"
The girl then spoke up, saying, "Take me to the riverbank."
"Where is the riverbank?" Yu asked.
"Anywhere is fine, the riverside is fine," the girl said.
As Yu Wenhao drove, he looked at the girl in the rearview mirror. The girl was crying and crying without any attempt to hide it. She sat there straight, not bowing her head, and the tears just kept flowing without her wiping them away.
While waiting at a red light, Yu Wenhao took out two tissues, turned around, and handed them to her.
The girl didn't say anything, took the tissue, but still didn't wipe her tears. Instead, she crumpled the tissue into a ball in her palm and let the tears flow uncontrollably. Yu Wenhao had never seen anyone have so many tears, cry so sadly and unrestrainedly. He finally understood what it meant to "wash one's face with tears."
Yu asked and drove to Zhijiang Road, then stopped. The girl sat there, unmoved.
Yu asked, "We've reached the riverbank, are you getting off?"
As if suddenly realizing something, the girl abruptly pushed open the car door and got out. Yu Wenhao watched her staggering figure disappear into the woods on the river embankment.
Yu Wenhao shook his head. Just then, an order came in, which he accepted. The customer was at the entrance of the Binjiang Golden Coast residential complex. Yu Wenhao drove to the Wujiang Road intersection and made a U-turn. He kept thinking about the girl from earlier, and the more he thought about it, the more uneasy he felt, and a chill ran down his spine.
When the car reached Sunshine Coast, Yu Wenhao pulled over and called the passenger who had called the car.
Yu greeted the other party and said, "Excuse me, sir, could you please cancel the order? I just took a girl to the riverbank, and she cried the whole way. I feel something is wrong, so I need to go and check on her."
The other party immediately understood and said, "Okay, go ahead and do it. I'll cancel it here."
Yu Wenhao turned off the app, made a U-turn on Yongjiang Road, drove back to where the girl had gotten off, pulled over to the side of the road, turned on his hazard lights, and got out of the car.
After passing through the grove of trees on the river embankment, Yu Wenhao arrived at the riverbank. At around 11 o'clock, there were hardly any people on the riverbank, and most of the streetlights were off, making the light dim.
Yu Wenhao didn't see the girl, so he quickly walked to the stone railing by the river, stuck his head out to look over the railing, but the river was flowing and there was no other movement. Yu Wenhao walked briskly upstream along the riverbank, soon working up a sweat, and kept looking over the railing as he walked, but he still couldn't see the girl.
After walking five or six hundred meters, Yu Wenhao felt uncertain. He wondered if he had gone the wrong way, so he quickly turned around and walked downstream along the river embankment. The more he walked, the more anxious he became, and he simply started running.
After running back to his starting point, he ran another two or three hundred meters and saw a person sitting on the stone railing, facing the river. Yu Wenhao breathed a sigh of relief, stopped, calmed his heavy breathing, and then walked over.
The girl had stopped crying; she just sat there, staring blankly at the river and the darkness before her.
Yu asked warmly, "Beautiful lady, are you alright?"
The girl seemed startled, but she neither turned around nor responded.
Yu Wenhao explained, "I'm the driver who just dropped you off..."
The girl then turned around, looked at Yu Wenhao, and asked, "What do you want to do?"
Yu Wenhao said, "I don't want to do anything. I just noticed you weren't doing well, and I was a little worried, so I came to check on you."
The girl muttered softly, "I don't know you."
"Yes, yes, I don't know you, but you were just my guest... May I sit down?"
The girl neither said yes nor no, but continued to look at the river and the darkness before her.
Yu Wenhao climbed onto the stone railing and sat down about a meter away from the girl.
"Are you afraid I might do something rash and jump into the river?" the girl suddenly asked.
Yu Wenhao said yes.
The girl snorted, "I'm just not thinking straight, I just want to jump into the river."
"It's not worth it," Yu Wenhao said.
"What's not worth it?"
"It's not worth it to be depressed, and it's even less worth it to jump into the river."
"What do you know!" the girl said resentfully. "The guy you were with for over three years dumped you. You were even planning to get married this year, but he cheated on you with his boss, an unattractive woman in her thirties with a family and children. Do you think I can't understand it?"
"No need to think about it," Yu Wenhao said calmly.
Why?
"That's his loss. He had such a good girl like you and didn't cherish her. He was blind," Yu Wenhao said. "On the contrary, you should feel fortunate."
"Feeling fortunate? Hmph, fortunate that you were tricked?"
"It's fortunate you didn't get married, so you found out his true colors. If you had only discovered it after marriage, that would have been truly tragic."
The girl remained silent for a while, then turned to greet Yu.
"I don't even know you, why do you care about me? What I do is none of your business!"
Yu Wenhao said, "I have a daughter, and I feel very sad when she's not doing well. She's my precious daughter. I just saw you crying in the car, and I was thinking that you're also your parents' precious daughter. If they saw you so sad, they would feel very sad too."
The girl fell silent and lowered her head. Yu Wenhao said:
"Let me give you a piece of advice, okay?"
"you say."
"We live to cherish those who cherish us, and we live well because of those we cherish. If you die, it will only make those who cherish you sad. Those who hurt you and don't care about you won't be sad at all. You can't hurt them or get revenge on them. So I say it's not worth it. It's not worth dying for those who don't care about you. You should let them die, die in your heart."
The girl turned to Yu Wenhao and said, "Actually, I didn't want to die. I'm a coward, very afraid of dying. I just wanted to come here for some fresh air to clear my head. But what you just said is very true, thank you!"
This girl is Meng Zhen. Meng Zhen later told Yu Wenhao that she was actually quite moved that day because when she felt particularly isolated and helpless, she didn't expect that a complete stranger would care about her so much, worry about her, and specially come back to find her, afraid that something might happen to her.