After Xie Chenmin finished his postgraduate studies, he was recruited to the headquarters of a well-known large company in the country.
It was a job that many people dream of.
But he applied to the branch.
Fulfilling the promise he made to me when I graduated, he came to the city where I was.
I watched his high-speed train enter the station, saw him throw his luggage and rushed over, and heard him say.
Chu, I miss you.
I said, So am I.
He said, I miss you more than you miss me.
I didn’t argue with the big boy. I gave some support on his back and said, Let’s go, Zhaocai is waiting for you.
Xie Chenmin was in his twenties at the time and was very tall, so you could see him in the crowd at a glance.
He always liked to wear a white tee and a red duck-tongue cap, and his smile was especially neat, like a ray of sunlight that broke through the clouds into the station in the early morning.
His handsomeness was flawless and clear, the kind of look that you couldn’t take your eyes off when you found him in a crowd.
At that time the station was bustling with people and there were countless eye-catching things outside the station, but my eyes were fixed on him without getting distracted.
I didn’t know why, but I just wanted to look at him for a while longer.
I had never looked at him so closely, even when we were first together, and when we were entangled crazily on our bed.
I said, Actually, you’re quite handsome.
Xie Chenmin’s brain formatted for a while, and after recovering, he said to me, Chu, you’re scaring me.
I continued, I’m a little out of my mind.
If he had a tail, I guess it would have been wagging by now.
Morning light got into his eyes.
In the crowd, he took my hand and held it tightly, and my heart skipped a beat. Then it was as if everything in front of me had lost its colour, and only this silly man holding me was in colour.
He said, Chu, I miss you very much.
I said, En.
He said, Let’s go get a room.
I said, fvck off.
If he was a dog, I guessed it must have been a mix of toy poodle.
……
Xie Chenmin slept until the afternoon, and when he got up, his hair was so messy and there was a haze as dense as red wine in the air and he stayed up alone for a long, long time.
He touched the side and shouted, Zhaocai?
No voice answered him.
He remembered that after my birthday he had sent the big dog to his mother in the early hours of the morning.
He was sitting alone in the dim sun, as lonely as a crow that stopped on a tree.
When I was alive, if I didn’t have work to do, I would avoid oversleeping in the afternoon. When I came to my senses and realized that the day had come to an end, I would feel indescribable loneliness in my heart.
But when Xie Chenmin came to me after finishing his postgraduate studies, I no longer had such worries.
Because there was always someone around when you woke up.
I dropped to his side and said, You bastard.
Today was the first seventh days of my death, the only day I could touch him again.
But he did nothing all day and went to sleep.
I stood beside the bed and gently stroked the profile of my face with my fingertips.
I could touch it.
I could feel the warmth that belonged to him on it.
Just as a gust of wind walked by, the white curtains painted the trail it left behind.
Xie Chenmin looked in the direction of the wind as if he was looking at me.
My eyes were wet and I thought, Enough, this is enough.
It was enough to let me look at the light in this fool’s eyes again.
You’ve lost weight, you idiot.
If I’m not around in the future, you have to cook for yourself and not always make instant noodles.
If you feel lonely, go and find someone who loves you more than you love him.
I won’t mind, don’t worry about it, besides I can’t see it anymore haha.
I just want you to be happy in the future.
In the future, you can go far away and fly high, and don’t worry about anything. Take good care of your heart.
I’m sorry for barging in irresponsibly and forcing my way out jokingly.
I’ve never cried like this in my life except for the moment I was born as a human being.
So much that I choked up until I couldn’t sob anymore.
Live once for yourself, die once for him, and this life would complete.
He couldn’t hear my voice.
But he stood up, looked out of the window, in my direction, dressed like a madman, left the door unlocked and ran downstairs.
He said to himself, Chu, don’t go, don’t, I’ll find you, wait just a moment, just a moment.
My heart lurched.
That wind went on for a long time, flipping through the books and diaries on the table, page by page as if time was passing between the pages.
The wind passed by the leaves, either taking a few with it to wander, or just leaving some others with a shuddering ripple and nothing more.
The gust of wind went to the sky.
Xie Chenmin stopped abruptly at the last step of the stairs.
He couldn’t catch up.
I saw him standing for a long time, and called out, Chu.
He said softly and a little aggrievedly, Wait for me, just a moment, can’t you wait?
I didn’t know what blocked my vision一tears, or the half the shadow of someone who didn’t live until half his life.
The last clear image I knew was of him walking down the middle of the road.
The blinding red lights across the pavement and the honking sirens that cut through the sky.
……
I remember that day he voiced out to me and said, Chu, I set the wedding on your birthday.
I was at work and my fingers stalled on the keyboard for a moment.
I said, That’s fine.
He sounded as giddy as a child looking forward to going on a trip.
He couldn’t hide his surprise, so he told me the secret he had kept for so long.
He said, I wrote a program.
I thought I heard it wrong, laughed and said, What did you do?
He said, I didn’t hire an emcee, just wait until the day the computer reads aloud.
I want to laugh when I think about the scene where the Google girl’s unemotional mechanical voice asks ‘Would you like to?’1
in the audience.
I laughed and said, Are you out of your mind?
He said, There are 15 missing ones. When you put them together, you can write Lin Chu.
I said, Love words don’t work for me.
He honestly said, Think about it. The love rival came to me as a wedding witness, it is also too good, right?
The computer really pissed him off.
I said, If there is a next life, I will choose your rival.
He said, Heartless man.
Every member of the bustle in the city has an ordinary daily life that gives him ease and happiness, daily noise, laughter, unintentional jokes, and the mood at a certain time and place.
No one would worry about what was wrong with any one frame of the daily routine, and what was the historical significance of any one paragraph. It was a question that an extraordinary or providential person would think of.
I thought I was the same way.
I never thought that the sentence ‘if there is a next life’ was the last sentence I said to him before my death.
……
The doctor seemed to say that I had a chance to be rescued, but the driver who caused the accident deliberately injured me twice.
Because the amount of money he would have paid out if I had died outright would have been less than the possible follow-up costs after I had been seriously injured.
I didn’t understand this stuff either, but it seemed to be the case. It was something I heard when my soul was still a little painfully connected to my physical body.
I didn’t know how much time passed before my ear nerves were dying to transmit the familiar ringtone of my mobile phone.
Until it went out.
……
I didn’t expect us to meet again in this way.
The cold light of the operating room was cast over his unconscious flesh.
Beside him were expressionless doctors who were desperately trying to save him.
Outside the door stood his mother, who had arrived on the news, his friends, and the young driver who was in a panic.
With great effort, the doctor said “We’ll try our best” and then closed the door.
The light inside had been on for who knows how long.
As he stood in front of the operating bed and slowly opened his eyes, the doctors continued to resuscitate his weak, flaming pulse.
We both looked at each other.
He looked at me for a long time, until tears filled his eyes, and trembled, Chu.
I looked exactly like him, and I said, You bastard.
Behind him, the doctor was sweating and said, Tell the family to get ready, his vital signs are so faint we may ……
He said, I know, you’ve always been there for me, always, right?
With tears on my cheeks, I went up and yanked him by the collar and said, You fvcking…… What the fvck have you done?! Get your ass back in your body and stay there!
When I saw him looking at the oncoming car, there was no surprise in his eyes.
I’m not stupid enough to not see that he had done it on purpose.
I didn’t even expect him to be so stupid as to commit suicide.
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