The electric bike outside the convenience store was still emitting sparks. Li Xiaoming walked towards the station holding the rice ball stuffed by Kailan. The word "Danger" on the wrapping paper was stretched out by the street lights, like a snake spitting out its tongue. When he squatted beside the electric bike to pry the battery during the early morning shift change, he held a plum wrench from the station tool cabinet in his mouth, and the rusty gears made his gums ache: "The battery is so swollen that the battery life is directly cut in half. If I report it for repair, I will have to deduct a 50 yuan deposit. What use is the broken skill book rewarded by the system?" The burnt round hole of the negative terminal interface was like an eye that was unwilling to close its eyes, and it fit perfectly with the electromagnetic pulse device in the hands of the cleaner last night.
The next day, during the lunch rush hour, I ran to the CBD office building. Ms. Chanel (SUSAN LI) in the elevator was touching up her makeup in front of the mirror. The "click" sound of the powder box opening and closing reminded Li Xiaoming of the reminder sound of the overdue order. As a veteran who has mastered the "rules of survival in office buildings" in just three months of running orders, he glanced at the elevator buttons - 11:45, it was the peak period, the buttons of the shops on the 1st to 5th floors were all lit, and he had to take the freight elevator to avoid the crowds. This was the experience gained from 37 overtime bad reviews.
The moment the elevator stopped on the 18th floor, SUSAN's eyebrow muscles pulled slightly. While the bullet screen popped up on his retina, Li Xiaoming's fingertips unconsciously rubbed the lanyard of his work card - that was the calm action he practiced when dealing with customer complaints:
[SUSAN LI Heartbeat value: 15 (alert state)]
[Inner OS: Why does this delivery man always appear at my get off work and home time? The same thing happened in the underground garage. Could he be in the same group with the lunatic who followed me? ]
"The foundation on Ms. Li's left shoulder is not the same color as the YSL supermodel No. 03 you used for touch-up." Li Xiaoming lowered his voice, and the sweat stains on the collar of his workwear formed salt crystals in the cold air of the central air conditioner. "If this powder cake of yours falls, you can file a complaint on the platform and get 200 yuan in compensation for lost work. I just helped a Heytea store deal with a similar dispute last week." He rehearsed this sentence three times in his mind, as if he had memorized the special requirements in the customer's notes.
SUSAN's knuckles turned white as she held the powder in her hands. The shadow cast by her eyelashes was reflected in the elevator mirror. "Are you following me?" Li Xiaoming took a half step back, revealing the smiley face sticker on his work badge that was smudged by sweat. "Yesterday at 7-11, the man in the grey sweatshirt had the same foundation as you on his sleeve. We run orders and we always keep an eye on everything, especially in 'dark areas' like underground garages, which are most likely to produce 'abnormal orders.'" He deliberately emphasized the three words "abnormal orders", which are the jargon used by the delivery group to refer to dangerous orders.
The system notification sounded as brisk as a text message of a takeaway delivery: [SUSAN LI Heartbeat + 10, current status: Trust (25)]. When the elevator door opened, SUSAN stuffed a piece of paper with foundation printed on it into his hand. The edge still had the ink smell of the office printer: "6pm, B13, underground garage of Guomao." Li Xiaoming habitually used the delivery APP to take photos as evidence - this trick once helped him win the dispute of "customers falsely claiming that they did not receive the meal."
In the evening, squatting in the convenience store to eat "pick up the king" rice balls, the blue light of the electric welder reflected the back of Kailan repairing the electric bike. The metal stick in her sweater pocket was half exposed, and there were three more cracks on the stick than yesterday, which looked very much like the wiper scratches on the windshield of his electric bike. "Xiaoming, help me deliver a bucket of water to 1901, Building 2, there is no elevator." When Kailan closed the door, the gold foil on her fingertips fell to the ground, like a handful of broken system bullet screens, "Brother Chen said that the customer needed it urgently." When she mentioned "Brother Chen", her Adam's apple rolled, which was a lie feature marked in red by the micro-expression analysis skill.
Li Xiaoming stopped watching the stopwatch while climbing the 19th floor - 9 minutes and 23 seconds, 1 minute and 15 seconds faster than usual. The newly unlocked physical strength bonus reminded him of the first time he carried 30 kilograms of spicy hot pot takeout to the 22nd floor. His knees hurt so much that he sat in the stairwell for 10 minutes. The foundation marks on the sleeves of the man in the gray sweater who opened the door made his temples throb, and the scarlet bullet screen exploding on his retina was more dazzling than the negative review notification:
[Warning! The target carries an electromagnetic pulse device]
[Zhou Mingxuan's heartbeat value: -30 (killing intent state)]
[Inner OS: Xinyuan Technology actually used the takeout driver as bait? Just in time to try the improved electromagnetic gun]
The posture of holding the bucket automatically switches to "super heavy single mode": the tiger's mouth supports the edge of the bucket, and the elbow clamps the ribs. This move allows the line of force to go directly from the waist to the fingertips. At the moment when the metal rod became hot in the incubator, Li Xiaoming instinctively smashed the bucket at the other party's wrist - this action is exactly the same as stabilizing the hot soup takeaway that is about to spill in a rainstorm. In the mirror of the flooded corridor, he saw the black device on the man's lower back, which was exactly the same as the weapon that destroyed his electric car battery yesterday.
The darkness at the moment of power failure made Li Xiaoming switch to "night delivery mode": knees slightly bent, forefoot first landing, this "silent running method" has never woken up customers in residential buildings at three o'clock in the morning. Kai Lan's exclamation mixed with the smell of seaweed in oden drifted from the safety passage, which made him more panicked than the system prompt sound - that was the smell on her body when she asked him to go to the library for the first time after the university welcome party.
In the B13 parking space in the underground garage, SUSAN's high heels knocked on the ground with rapid points, which was very similar to the abnormal sound when the electric car motor was flooded in a rainstorm. "They want to eliminate the system host!" The YSL foundation shell she handed over was hot. The moment Li Xiaoming touched the engraved words on the inside, the metal stick vibrated in his palm and almost slipped out of his hand - it was the same "Eros Eye" pattern as the metal stick in the incubator and Kailan's silver bracelet.
When Kailan's electric car battery exploded, Li Xiaoming was staring at the silver headset in SUSAN's hair - it was made of the same material as Kailan's silver bracelet, with a tiny "Heart Source Technology" logo engraved on the edge. When the severe pain of memory recall came, he seemed to see the snowy night when he was seven years old, holding the hot metal stick to repel the black-clad man, and the note Kailan's father stuffed in his schoolbag was soaked by the snow water. The four words "Protect Xiaolan" on it were exactly the same as the handwriting on the note exposed in Kailan's sweater pocket now.
The old badge from the locker on the 19th floor is pinned on Brother Zhang's work card. The note next to it reads "Metal stick dispenser, open elevator 1903". The handwriting is stained with oil, just like the delivery map on the wall of the station wet by rain. When the YSL foundation was embedded in the groove of the badge, Li Xiaoming suddenly remembered the first order he had delivered - the old lady on the 7th floor of the inpatient department. When she took the porridge, she said: "Young man, the burn on your wrist is exactly the same as my grandson's."
The engraving on the inside of the pocket watch is clearly visible in the strong light: In the winter of 2012, Xiaoming saved Kailan from a street fight, and the metal stick resonated for the first time. The memories covered by the system barrage suddenly came: in the university library, Kailan pointed to the class schedule on page 37 of "Love in the Time of Cholera" and laughed at his ugly handwriting; when she was on night shift at the convenience store, she always left him the tuna rice balls that were about to expire; and when he was seven years old, the silver bracelet she handed him in the snow left a permanent burn on his palm.
The fire from the convenience store illuminated the underground garage. When Li Xiaoming ran out, Kailan was squatting in the pile of broken glass to pick up the fragments of the silver bracelet. When she looked up, the clarity in her eyes reminded him of the girl who smiled under the spotlight at the welcome party. At that time, he hid in the backstage, holding the love letter he had prepared for three months, but he didn't dare to hand it over in the end.
"Xiaoming, our memories have been tampered with..." Kailan's voice mixed with the sirens of the fire truck, but it was clearer than any system prompt, "But there are some things that the system can't delete." She raised the fragment of the silver bracelet, and the "Eye of Eros" at the break resonated with the metal stick in his palm, like two orders that were ten years late, and finally completed the signature in the delivery of time.
The man in the black suit sneered in the shadows, and Brother Chen's instructions came from the headset: "Start the ultimate clearing program." But he didn't know that what Li Xiaoming was holding tightly at this moment was not only the metal stick and pocket watch, but also the countless days and nights of delivery, which the system could not calculate - the real heartbeat.