‘SEE YOU MORNING’ 113 Second Chance

Is there really a second chance in life? Just as Lin Yuhui stepped out of the high-speed train door, he saw a lady standing on the platform waiting to pick someone up. Although he had already walked past her, curiosity still pulled him to glance back. Who could still need someone to pick them up?
When Lin Yuhui had reached the escalator entrance, he finally saw that it was a mother coming to pick up the girl who had fallen asleep on the train. Sigh, she really wasn’t mature enough yet. As he rode the escalator down, her fair face and those clear big eyes still lingered faintly in his mind.
The lighting in the station passage wasn’t very good. Lin Yuhui looked at the map he had prepared in advance, checking the direction to confirm how to get to the bus stop after leaving the station. After all, it was almost four o’clock in the afternoon, and time was tight.
At the end of the long passage was the station exit. Fortunately, the sunlight outside still looked bright. Next to the exit were two tables and chairs, and security guards were stopping people to scan codes. Lin Yuhui pretended not to notice, thinking it might just be a random check, and kept walking straight ahead with his eyes fixed forward.
“Excuse me, passenger, please scan the code?”
He didn’t get away with it. Helpless, he pretended not to know, stopped and turned around to ask,
“What code?”
“Use Alipay to scan the travel code.”
“I don’t have Alipay. Just take my temperature,”
The security guard took his temperature, which was fine, and then said,
“You have a phone, right? I’ll help you apply for an Alipay account,”
Lin Yuhui was also very helpless. He didn’t have a fever and was in a hurry, but the other party was being meticulous and thorough in his service. He couldn’t say he didn’t have a phone anymore, so he said,
“I don’t have internet,”
“Oh, it’s okay. There’s wifi here. Come on, let me help you set it up,”
Lin Yuhui had no choice but to hand over his phone and ID card. He thought to himself, my Philips X586 only has 2GB of RAM, let’s see how you manage this.
At this moment, the mother and daughter also arrived here, handling the same business at the table next to them. The girl’s eyes looked over here again. Lin Yuhui met her gaze for a moment, wanting to say something to her, but didn’t open his mouth, only greeting her with a slight smile at the corner of his mouth.
At this point, the persistent security guard was indeed stumped by Lin Yuhui’s phone, but he didn’t give up. He turned to the girl’s mother and said,
“Use your phone to register an Alipay account for him. Sigh, his phone won’t work.”
The other party agreed. Lin Yuhui watched her, but she just handed her phone to the security guard and didn’t glance at him at all. The future mother-in-law didn’t seem to have any interest in him whatsoever. Who would prioritize letting their daughter live with a poor old man?
The security guard brother finally lived up to his mission and successfully applied for an Alipay account for Lin Yuhui. But what was the point of a phone number stored in someone else’s phone? None. Forget about it. Lin Yuhui had never thought he would be the lucky one, because life had taught him to abandon such fantasies.
After thanking them, he took one last look at the girl in this lifetime, then turned and strode away.
Only after walking out of the station building did Lin Yuhui realize that it seemed because the Jiangsu and Zhejiang area is at a lower latitude than Northeast China, the daylight hours are longer this season. The sunlight filtering through the leaves still looked abundant at this time. Crossing the path through the green belt, there was indeed a bus stop ahead, the starting station. After confirming, Lin Yuhui got on the bus.
Not long after, the bus started moving. It was a minibus diesel vehicle, fast enough. It wasn’t hot even without the air conditioning on, but wearing an N95 mask the whole way really made Lin Yuhui feel suffocated. Now there was no one else on the bus and the air circulation was so good, he could finally pull down his mask and breathe directly.
The bus was going from the northern suburbs of Changxing County all the way through the county to the southern suburbs. At first, the streets were wide and somewhat desolate, but gradually shopping malls, hospitals, schools and pedestrians came into view. Slowly the streets became bustling. Lin Yuhui quickly realized this was a prosperous place, because before he had even traveled half the distance, he had seen a Porsche 718, a blue Ferrari 599, and an AMG convertible.
After a little over an hour, Lin Yuhui finally arrived at another bus terminal from the first one. Walking out of the station building and standing by the roadside, he called the company’s HR Sapphire as promised, and sent her his location and a photo of himself.
Not long after, a black Audi A4 stopped in front of him,
“Lin Yuhui, right?”
“Yes. Hello, nice to meet you. I probably need to put my luggage in the trunk,”
“Okay, sure,”
After Lin Yuhui put away his luggage, Sapphire opened the rear door for him, but the back seat was full of things,
“Oh, the back seat is all full of stuff,” she said to herself,
“Then I’ll have to sit in the front,”
“Mm,”
Sapphire was a young woman, a proper Chinese girl. Because the company Lin Yuhui was going to work for was a foreign-funded enterprise with a foreign boss, all the employees had their own English names. Originally, Lin Yuhui hadn’t wanted to sit in the front with a young woman driving, but the reality left him no choice.
“I’ll first show you how to get to the company, then take you to your accommodation. That way you can walk to the company to report for duty by yourself tomorrow morning,” Sapphire said,
“Okay,”
Actually, it was already off-duty time now, and Lin Yuhui felt a bit bad about troubling her to pick him up. Soon he found a topic to flatter the young lady,
“I think you look a bit like a celebrity from the past,”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There was a Hong Kong and Taiwan celebrity called Joey Wong back then,”
“Oh,”
“You really look like her, especially from the 45-degree side profile,”
“Haha,”
The accommodation was a room in a private house with a bathroom and toilet. The residential buildings in this area were all self-built houses of three to five stories, and the room Lin Yuhui was staying in was on the fifth floor. When he was alone and it quieted down, it was almost six o’clock. The sky was getting dark, and this place was a bit remote, so it wasn’t very realistic to go out to find a restaurant for dinner. But Lin Yuhui could always take good care of himself. He took out the hamburger he had bought at noon. Yes, he had bought two portions at noon, one for dinner.
While watching the sunset gradually fade outside the window from the fifth floor, he enjoyed his food. After a whole day of rushing around, he could finally relax his tense nerves now, no longer having to hurry.
After dinner, there was still the next task. As the saying goes, everything is difficult when you’re away from home. Now he needed to prepare his sleeping nest. Sapphire had prepared a quilt, and Lin Yuhui had brought his own mattress. After making the bed, he also had to hang up the mosquito net he had brought. He knew very well how fierce the mosquitoes were here. The mosquito net already had hanging strings tied to its four corners, but there were no hanging points. Lin Yuhui had to drape one side of the mosquito net over the headboard, tie one end to the wardrobe, and for the remaining corner with nowhere to tie, he propped it up with a washbasin and his backpack.
The bed was set up. Although he was lying horizontally across the double bed, he had no more demands. Then the most important thing was to set up his laptop on the desk, which was his source of information.