Chapter 3: Darkness of the Rainfall (3)
Just as Lu Mingfei and Chu Zihang were about to wipe the blackboard for the sixth time, a low whistle sounded in the playground at the right time.

The headlights cut through the rain like sharp swords, and the vibration of the engine sounded like a lion deliberately suppressing its roar.

Maybach 62, the top luxury sedan.

"Wow, a Maybach 62! Brother, is your father so powerful?" Lu Mingfei almost pressed his entire face against the glass window.

Chu Zihang didn’t know what Maybach 62 meant. He didn’t know much about cars. He only knew that the car was several times more expensive than the most expensive Mercedes-Benz in his “father’s” house.

His lips moved imperceptibly, but he still couldn't say "It's not my father's."

"Let's go down." Chu Zihang said lightly.

"Okay, okay, I'll turn off the light."

After making sure the classroom door was locked, Lu Mingfei and Chu Zihang went downstairs together.

When I reached the exit of the building, the middle-aged man had already opened a huge black umbrella and was waiting in front of the eaves. He was hunched over and smiling, looking more attentive than the driver of Liu Miaomiao's family.

When he saw Lu Mingfei, the smile on the middle-aged man's face froze for a moment. Obviously, he didn't expect that there would be other people around Chu Zihang.

"My junior, it's raining so hard, give him a ride." Chu Zihang was very frugal with his words. He did not get under the middle-aged man's umbrella, but walked to the car in the rain and got in.

The middle-aged man was stunned for a moment, but he was not discouraged. Instead, he smiled and held the umbrella over Lu Mingfei's head.

Lu Mingfei had never received such a great gift since he was in middle school in his previous life. He shrank his head in surprise and nodded to the man to express his gratitude.

After sending Lu Mingfei to the back seat, the middle-aged man returned to the driver's seat, folded the umbrella, and handed it to Chu Zihang who was sitting in the back seat.

"On the car door. There's a hole there for umbrellas."

"I know, you said so." Chu Zihang took the umbrella, and his hand sank. He felt that it was much heavier than an ordinary umbrella. But he didn't care too much.

He heard that Rolls-Royce has a special custom umbrella, which comes with the car and is very expensive. He doesn't know which is higher-end, Maybach or Rolls-Royce.

But since they are all top luxury cars, this umbrella may have come with the car, so it is normal that it is better and heavier than ordinary umbrellas.

The middle-aged man turned around, put his hands on the steering wheel, and looked at Lu Mingfei through the rearview mirror of the driver's seat.

"It's rare to see Zihang going home with his classmates. What's your name? Where do you live?"

"Hello uncle, my name is Lu Mingfei." Lu Mingfei answered truthfully and then gave the address of the community.

"Ion Hang's home isn't far away, so it's on the way."

The middle-aged man started to ramble on: "You and Zihang must have a good relationship, right? Your clothes are all wet? I'll turn on the rear seat heating for you, how about you try it? Zihang knows, it's so comfortable!"

Lu Mingfei choked up, not knowing what to say to the man. Instead, he turned his head to look at Chu Zihang outside the window and said impatiently, "Let's go."

"Okay!" The man took his eyes off the rearview mirror, cleared his throat, and gave an order to the center console: "Start!"

The screen lit up the moment the words fell, and the car seemed to be connected to electricity in an instant. The air was instantly compressed into the turbine and then pushed into the engine, turning into a steel lion's roar.

The low-key blue light extends all the way from the center console to the surrounding areas, and the linear ambient light outlines the car body in the space like flowing light.

"High-tech, voiceprint recognition. There are only three people in the world whose voices can start this car. One is me, one is the boss, and who do you think is the other one?"

Chu Zihang had a blank expression on his face: "I don't care."

Lu Mingfei looked at the two of them cautiously, recalling the heart-to-heart conversation he had with Chu Zihang in the restaurant of Kassel College before he went to Neon in his previous life.

The man in front of him... should be the father that Senior Brother with Paralysis mentioned, who divorced his biological mother? The two look quite similar. But their temperaments are very different. Chu Zihang is cold and arrogant, while the man's temperament... I'm afraid he would believe it if he was said to be Fingel's father!

The Maybach started in the rain, and the splashing water was thrown behind him. Lu Mingfei leaned back in his seat, feeling the force of the back of the car.

Lu Mingfei has ridden in many cars, but he has only felt this kind of push-back feeling in Caesar's Bugatti Veyron and Nono's Ferrari.

"It's raining so hard, and your mother doesn't know how to pick you up."

"Fortunately I didn't wash the car this morning."

"By the way, the security guard at your school..."

The man looked very excited as if he was recalling his youth, but Chu Zihang didn't respond to him. He just kept talking to himself. But Lu Mingfei felt that Chu Zihang should be listening to every word the man said.

Maybe because he was tired of the man talking, Chu Zihang simply turned on the radio and listened to the news.

The female announcer's fluent Mandarin came from the radio.

"…Typhoon Dandelion made landfall on the southeast coast of our city this afternoon…"

"I hate this kind of typhoon weather the most. It rains heavily, the water level is rising, and there are traffic jams everywhere."

As the man spoke, the Maybach's speed really slowed down. Through the windows covered with water droplets, one could see that the road was jammed with cars all around.

It was like a group of flying fish swimming upstream to the mouth of a waterfall in a river, unable to move forward no matter how they swung their tails. The Maybach moved slowly along with the traffic flow, and saw red and blue lights a few hundred meters ahead, and the two cars collided with each other.

Two drivers were holding umbrellas and pointing at each other in the rain, while a traffic policeman in a raincoat was standing between them taking photos of the cars. Only a small lane was left for the car to enter.

"I just said I hate rainy days. When it rains, there are more accidents and then the traffic is blocked."

The man tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, a little impatient.

"Damn it, I don't know what's there to argue about. Anyway, the insurance company will pay for it, so just move the car away and it will be over. After sending my son away, I still have things to do..."

He leaned his head and looked around, and suddenly saw that the right-turn lane not far ahead was connected to a fork road. For some reason, there was no car on the road. An overpass that almost blended into the night was across the direction of the fork road.

"That road should lead to the viaduct, but the viaduct should be closed now," said the man.

"You want to break through the elevated road?" Chu Zihang's eyebrows jumped, "What if you can't get down?"

"If you can get up, you can get down." The man said, "It's just a matter of saying a few nice words to the traffic police and handing them a couple of cigarettes. In such a heavy rain, they won't make things difficult for us."

Just at this moment, the traffic on the right moved forward a few meters, leaving space for the oncoming car.

The man immediately acted quickly, stepping on the accelerator, handbrake and steering wheel in one go, drifting out of the garage beautifully, and cutting the 6.2-meter-long Maybach into the space between the two cars as accurately as a scalpel.

The owner of the BMW behind me braked suddenly and honked the horn, cursing through the windshield.

"Can you fucking drive? To a funeral?"

"Don't worry about him. He doesn't dare to hit us. The rear bumper alone is enough to break his insurance limit."

The man shrugged, whistled pleasantly, and turned the car into the fork leading to the viaduct.

The dim lights of the street lamps illuminated the road ahead. The Maybach sped across the empty viaduct, and the splashing water reflected an amber glow under the lights.

After the road ahead was cleared, the man's mood seemed to be much better, and he began to chat with Chu Zihang about family matters again.

It was nothing more than Chu Zihang's further studies after graduating from high school, some interesting things from his childhood, etc. He even played music on his own initiative. It was a foreign song that Lu Mingfei had never heard of before.

The trees they grow high, and the leaves they do grow green,

Many is the time my true love I've seen,

Many an hour I have watched him all alone,

He's young but he's daily growing.
……

"Altan's "Daily Growing", isn't it good? They all said it was a good album, so I bought it, it's about fatherly love - do you know them, Mr. Lu?"

Lu Mingfei didn’t want to spoil the man’s fun, so he kept agreeing: “I know, I like them too. I sing them every day while taking a bath.”

"That's good, that's good. I was afraid you wouldn't be used to it. The young people I know don't like to listen to foreign songs. They just like to listen to Jay Chou. I like to listen to it too. It's so exciting!"

"Then why did you buy this album?" Chu Zihang looked out the window expressionlessly and suddenly asked, "Can't you tell that this is a song a girl sings to her father? It's not suitable for us to listen to it."

"It can help cultivate one's sentiments. Listening to foreign songs shows that one has higher taste. Besides, it doesn't matter whether one has a boy or a girl..."

Suddenly, for some unknown reason, everyone in the car stopped talking. Only a sad and melodious mezzo-soprano sang the Irish folk song in the car with the faint sound of guitar.

Although the content of the conversation between the man and Chu Zihang was quite restrained, Lu Mingfei still vaguely heard some complicated relationship between Chu Zihang and the middle-aged man.

Chu Zihang showed some obvious disgust...even anger towards some of the topics the man talked about.

If he hadn't been in the car, Lu Mingfei felt that they might have started arguing.

In fact, everyone has their own difficult sutras...

Lu Mingfei couldn't help but sigh in his heart when he thought about how Chu Zihang, who seemed so awesome in the eyes of everyone at Shilan Middle School and Kassel College, actually had his own unknown growing pains.

Suddenly, the music that was lingering in the car stopped abruptly, and Lu Mingfei thought that the man had turned off the stereo.

But then I realized that it wasn't just the audio that was turned off. The dim light poles, the splashing water, the speeding Maybach... everything seemed to have been paused.

A handsome boy in black Gothic mourning clothes sat in the passenger seat. He produced a window crank from nowhere and stuck it on the inside of the door, and rolled down the window back and forth like paddling a paddle.

"It's beautiful, isn't it, brother?"

The boy said without turning his head, and stretched his hand out of the window, "This kind of scene is rare. Even Hollywood blockbusters are reluctant to give you such exquisite special effects."

As the boy spoke, he reached out and tried to touch the raindrops that were frozen in the air.

His movements were gentle and delicate, as if he was not caressing the suspended rain, but plucking the strings of an ancient musical instrument.

(End of this chapter)