My friend came back on Wednesday night.

I was working overtime at the company that night. If I hadn't seen his WeChat Moments, I wouldn't have known he was back.

I sent him a message that night and asked him why he came back suddenly?

Is the company on vacation?

But my friend said he just came back to see me.

From what he said, I knew something bad must have happened to him, but I had no intention of asking any more questions.

I just asked him to go to the Zhanghe River on the weekend.

He paused and agreed.

The Zhanghe River is regarded as the mother river of our city, with its long green water flowing through the entire city.

In this increasingly busy city, it is the only unhurried scenery.

My friends and I live on the outskirts of the city, and we can see the water of the Zhang River when we go out.

Maybe it’s because we live in the upper reaches of the Zhang River. The water of the Zhang River at the door is clear and transparent, flowing quietly.

From time to time, sparkling water flashes, like a pair of bright eyes, staring at this inconspicuous small town.

When I was a child, my favorite thing with my friends was to walk further upstream along the bank of the Zhang River to see where it ends.

In all my childhood memories, the Zhanghe River occupies an absolutely important position.

When I saw my friend walking towards me from a distance, I was stunned and almost didn't react.

We met years ago, so it didn’t take long.

But his change really surprised me.

The memory of him from half a year ago was still a pair of sharp eyes like a falcon, a tall and straight posture that would never bend, and a majestic walk, just like the general's momentum when he returned from a victorious battle to show off.

But what now?

As he walked toward me step by step, he was obviously a deserter who had lost the battle and lost his fighting spirit.

Of course, he is more like a beggar living on the street.

His beard clung to his face like dust.

His eyes were also empty, without a trace of blood, let alone vitality.

When he came completely closer to me, I felt like his eyes and mental state were like taking drugs.

And what about him?

He didn't care about the confusion in my eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked.

"Unemployed." He spoke calmly in a low voice.

He sighed vaguely.

My friend was holding on to the stone railing on the bank of the Zhang River, his eyes looking very distracted.

And it’s hard for me to ask why he lost his job.

I know him very well, and it feels a lot relieved to be able to talk to me about being unemployed so calmly.

Of course, he might have said that because he knew I had noticed his embarrassment.

"Then what are you going to do next? Do you want me to introduce you to a job and you can do it first?" "No, I can find it." He paused and touched the back of his head, "Sooner or later." I suddenly realized

Not knowing what to say, my friend also looked at me and smiled.

In the adult world, smile at each other and don't have to ask more questions.

The two of us walked along the road we often walked before toward the end of the upper reaches of the Zhang River.

Along the way, we never had a word about work.

The weather in mid-April is already a bit hot.

But walking by the river, the river breeze was blowing, and it was a bit chilly at times.

"I remember we didn't have this cement road when we came here after our senior year, right?" my friend suddenly asked.

"Yes. This road should have been built in recent years." "Time flies so fast! In the blink of an eye, we have graduated seven years ago." His sudden sigh caught me off guard.

But before I could formulate a word to answer him, he continued to walk forward.

Looking at the back of my friend.

I thought to myself, maybe it was just a sigh?

It was a bit baffling.

The upper reaches of the Zhang River are not like the Zhang River flowing through the city.

The Zhanghe River that flows by the city has been cleaned up without even a trace of garbage.

But it's different upstream. Maybe it's a little further away from the city. Residents living upstream will blatantly dump all their garbage into the Zhang River.

Of course they knew it was wrong.

But so what?

They knew that the thrown garbage would be picked up by sanitation sanitation personnel if it floated all the way to the edge of the city along the Zhang River, and the river surface would be cleaned up, as if there had always been only river water in the river.

Therefore, on the water surface of the Zhanghe River, which is watching everything, the residents upstream just throw garbage, and the sanitation workers on the edge of the city have to silently clean up the garbage because of their work.

The two do not interfere with each other, but are closely connected.

Just as my friend and I were walking along the river, a middle-aged woman in her forties, wearing heavy makeup, a cheongsam and a pair of flesh-colored stockings, threw a bag of garbage into the river in front of our eyes.

in the river.

When the river flushed, all the garbage contained in the garbage bags scattered.

At a glance, we saw several red and green condom boxes among the garbage.

When the middle-aged woman saw that we had seen the box, she did not hide it. Instead, she smiled at us, then twisted her waist and went back to the house.

It was an extremely ordinary small shop with the word "massage" on it.