The 108 phone calls you received were all from people who wanted to hear your voice.
— "Your Calls"
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The weather in Haicheng in early July was rather unpleasant. Lin Jing had been receiving text messages about a yellow rainstorm warning for several consecutive days.
At three in the afternoon, dark clouds pressed down outside her window, making it impossible to distinguish day from night.
Lin Jing opened her laptop again, re-checking her college entrance examination scores. Her mood was as heavy as the weather outside.
She had always been a good student, among the top in her grade, and her performance in mock exams before the college entrance exam had been consistently stable.
Everyone believed she was a sure bet, but the result was that she had failed to meet expectations.
On the day her college entrance exam scores were released, she was the first in her class to receive a call from her homeroom teacher. When the teacher heard her score, he was silent for a full two seconds before saying, "You passed the first-tier universities, that's pretty good."
Lin Jing could sense the teacher's disappointment through the phone.
After that, she received calls from various classmates. After hearing her score, their reactions were similar to the teacher's.
"Huh? Are you kidding me?"
"Are you sure your leading digit doesn't need a '1' added?"
"Lin Jing, did you enter the wrong candidate number? Are you checking someone else's score?"
"..."
Actually, Lin Jing's college entrance exam score wasn't that bad. It was just that it was far worse than her usual mock exam scores.
On the day her college entrance exam scores were released, Jiang Wan personally checked her score with her candidate number right on time. The moment she saw the result, Jiang Wan didn't offer comforting words with disappointment like the homeroom teacher, nor did she react with disbelief like her classmates, nor did she scold her angrily like some impatient parents. Her expression was extremely calm, so calm it bordered on indifference. She didn't say anything, just stared at the score on the computer for a few seconds, then got up and left her room. Sudan Novel Network.
After that, Jiang Wan never spoke to her again. She stopped cooking meals, and when she saw Lin Jing at home, she acted as if Lin Jing didn't exist.
What Lin Jing feared most was Jiang Wan's silent treatment, and what she found most unbearable was also Jiang Wan's silent treatment.
She couldn't remember how many days it had been since Jiang Wan had ignored her like this. At first, she would proactively talk to Jiang Wan, and even picked her up from work. But Jiang Wan always treated her like air, never even looking her in the eye.
As time went by, Lin Jing began to feel anxious about it. Especially in the past week, she had felt frequent tightness in her chest, often waking up startled or suffering from insomnia at night.
Lin Jing let out a deep sigh, turned off the computer in front of her, picked up her phone, and found Jiang Wan's WeChat.
— "Mom, I'm sorry."
— "Mom, I was wrong."
— "Mom, it's my fault, I didn't do well enough..."
Lin Jing drafted more than ten messages one after another, but in the end, she deleted them all. Unable to figure out how to ease the tension with Jiang Wan, Lin Jing anxiously fiddled with her phone, when suddenly a person flashed in her mind.
Someone she hadn't contacted in a long time.
Her father.
Lin Zhengru.
Lin Zhengru and Jiang Wan divorced the year she started high school. Three months before the divorce, Jiang Wan, for some unknown reason, kicked Lin Zhengru out of the master bedroom. Afterward, no matter how humbly Lin Zhengru spoke to Jiang Wan, Jiang Wan didn't give him a single reaction. Perhaps Lin Zhengru had had enough. One morning, he angrily smashed a glass cup and said to Jiang Wan, "Let's get a divorce."
They completed the divorce procedures that morning. Lin Zhengru left with nothing; the house, car, and child all went to Jiang Wan.
Lin Jing didn't have Lin Zhengru's phone number saved on her phone, but she remembered it.
Eleven digits, she pressed them one by one, then pressed dial.
The call rang several times before being answered.
"Who?"
As the unfamiliar voice settled, a sleepy yawn was heard from the other end of the phone.
When did Lin Zhengru's voice become so young and pleasant?
Lin Jing blinked and looked at the phone screen, realizing she had pressed a "6" instead of a "5" in the phone number.
She instinctively wanted to apologize, but before the words left her mouth, the person on the other end spoke again, "Hello?"
Perhaps because she remained silent for a long time, the person on the other end became a little impatient, their voice sounding very annoyed, as if they were about to curse at any moment.
But it was this unfriendly, slightly fierce "hello" that made Lin Jing's fingers tremble, stopping the "excuse me" that was about to be spoken.
She seemed to know who was on the other end...
No, not seemed, it was indeed...
It was Sheng Kuang, who was currently extremely popular online.
Lin Jing couldn't help but swallow. Then she heard the person on the other end say "hello" again, impatiently.
This time, it felt like the voice wasn't just about to curse, but was about to curse.
"Ah," Lin Jing opened her mouth instinctively. In her nervousness, she blurted out without much thought, "Sir, hello, congratulations, you've won a prize of ten thousand yuan cash and the latest model of mobile phone—"
The call was hung up without any hesitation.
Lin Jing listened to the beeping busy signal on her phone. It felt like a dream. After a few seconds, she turned to look at the screen.
She stared at the eleven digits at the top of the call log, blinked, hesitated for a few seconds, and then saved the phone number she had accidentally dialed.
— Name: Sheng Kuang
— Phone: 182******25
...
This year's Honor of Kings World Championship Finals was held in Shenzhen.
Two hours before the match was scheduled to begin, the area outside the Spring Cocoon Stadium was already packed with people. The two teams that had made it to the finals were the Shanghai GDT team and the Chengdu HJC team.
Both teams were veteran teams with comparable popularity. The spectators lining up to enter the venue were all holding light sticks. At a glance, it was impossible to distinguish between the fans of the two teams.
In addition to team fans, more people held light sticks with players' names printed on them. Among them, the support signs for GDT's Miracle were the most numerous. The lights used were uniformly golden. From a distance, the crowd queuing outside the stadium looked like a winding golden dragon.
In contrast to the bustling scene outside the stadium, the GDT team's backstage lounge was very quiet.
On two black leather sofas, five people were gathered, speaking in low voices. Four of them were GDT's mid-laner, top-laner, AD Carry, and support. The other, slightly older-looking person was GDT's coach. On the other sofa, one person was lying down, with his team uniform covering his head, fast asleep.
If his phone hadn't suddenly rung, it would have been hard to notice his presence.
After hanging up the call, he pulled the team uniform back over his head and became unresponsive.
The coach, after finishing the pre-match briefing with the other team members, looked up at the person opposite him, who seemed to have fallen back asleep, and called out his name, "Sheng Kuang?"
The person on the sofa remained motionless.
The coach walked over and called him again, "Miracle."
The person lying down finally moved. After about three seconds, he slowly raised his hand, pulled off the team uniform, and slowly sat up.
The coach bent down, picked up a bottle of water from the table, and handed it to Sheng Kuang.
Sheng Kuang twisted it open, tilted his head back, and drank more than half of it. Then, as if fully awake, he stood up.
Coach: "What time did you go to bed last night? Why are you so sleepy?"
Sheng Kuang didn't answer and went into the restroom with a yawn.
The coach followed: "Who called just now?"
Sheng Kuang splashed cold water on his face, propped himself up on the washbasin, and looked at the coach in the mirror. He said vaguely, "A scammer."
The coach didn't hear clearly. He looked at the youth in the mirror, whose skin was so pale it seemed to glow with a cold white light. "What?"
Sheng Kuang turned off the faucet, glanced at the coach blocking the doorway, took a couple of tissues, dried his face, and said again, enunciating clearly, "A female scammer."