Chapter 4 (3)

  "He Dajun said excitedly: 'Company Commander, I have never admired anyone before, but now I do admire you. If you really want to leave, take us with you.'"

  Xiao Hei said: "You think we're some kind of gang, and you can just drag us away?"

  "He Dajun said: 'You're leaving, and the second company is finished. What's the point of us staying here?'"

  Xiao Hei said: "Without you and me, the earth will still rotate, Erlian is still Erlian."

  "He Dajun said: 'The battalion doesn't let you return to the second company, isn't this obviously to humiliate you?'"

  Xiao Hei said: "In this life, how many times can you be laid off by others? If you've been laid off, then take it easy and think about some problems that you didn't have time to think about or couldn't figure out before. Now you can think them through carefully."

  After finishing the cleaning in the room, Xiao Hei didn't idle around and started polishing shoes. In addition to the two pairs of standard-issue three-eyelet boots issued by the army, another two pairs of casual shoes were also taken out from the luggage box.

  Xiao Hei shines shoes like a pro. First, he uses a cloth to wipe away dirt and stains from the surface of the shoe with warm water. Then, he applies shoe polish and puts on a pair of unused cotton gloves. Slowly and carefully, he rubs the polish into the leather, as if giving the shoe a facial massage.

  Xiao Hei was not idle while polishing shoes, casually lifting one leg and placing it on the windowsill, polishing the shoe while pressing his leg. After finishing one shoe, he put his leg down. When polishing the other shoe, he put the other leg on the windowsill.

  Xiao Hei polished his own shoes and also polished the deputy battalion commander's shoes under the bed. After polishing each pair of shoes, he placed them in a straight line in the middle of the room, then bent down to examine which ones were not shiny enough. If they weren't shiny enough, he picked them up, breathed onto the surface like cleaning glass, and continued to rub until the surface could reflect a person's shadow.

  Lu Qiguo went to the small black house as usual every day, and when he saw the row of shoes in the middle of the room, his face showed more surprise than he had seen the floor scrubbed by Xiao Hei the day before.

  Lu Qiguo was originally a person who dressed quite elegantly and neatly, especially the leather shoes on his feet, which were often polished to be shiny. This attention to detail of his was ridiculed by others as being like a political worker's oily and powdered face. It wasn't until he compared his own shoes with those polished by Xiao Hei that he realized leather shoes could be even shinier.

  That's no longer leather shoes, it's art.

  Lu Qiguo didn't leave immediately this time, as if he had found a common interest. He squatted down and said to Xiao Hei: "My god, how did you polish it? You can make leather shoes shine so brightly?"

  "Report to the instructor, this is one of the greatest gains I had when I was in military school, and it's also a secret trick of our 26th squad."

  Lu Qiguo was startled by Xiao Hei's report and waved his hand, saying: "Let's not be so formal in private, which school did you graduate from?"

  Two people chatted and found out they were alumni of the same school.

  Lu Qiguo said: "Really? I'm a student of Class 27, from my time onwards, the leather shoes of your class have been the brightest in the whole school. Your class has a famous saying, 'Spirit is a pair of shoes, elegance is a hat', do you know this phrase?"

  "Knowing this, on the first day of school, this sentence was one of the team's mottoes, and we were asked to memorize it. Does the instructor have any other instructions?"

  Lu Qiguo originally wanted to have a casual conversation with Xiao Hei, which is also the most common way for political workers to communicate. Seeing Xiao Hei being so formal, he couldn't be more familiar and said: "No instructions, you wipe it off, very good, very good."

  Lu Qiguo finished speaking a few polite words and hurriedly left, not knowing why he always felt somewhat uneasy in front of Xiao Hei. To be more accurate, he was somewhat lacking in confidence. There was something on Xiao Hei's body that was like a hidden knife, which would accidentally cut him painfully if he wasn't careful.

  That thing is called temperament.

  Xiao Hei stays in the barracks every day, except for physical training, and seems to be busy with other things. After finishing cleaning his room and brushing his shoes, he starts doing chores. His quilt is folded like a block of tofu cut by a knife in a workshop, and his clothes are ironed to perfection, with sharp corners and creases, as if they have just been run over by a tank.

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