POEM / DIARY / ESSAY / FICTION / PAINTING

FICTION

The Flux of the Blue

2022-05-16 19:02:45

1.

The twenty-third century was crucial for all humanity. If the nineteenth century was a turning point because humanity seemed to accelerate like a motor after the Industrial Revolution, with wars, diseases, and plagues repeatedly plunging humans into crisis, while giant factories, multinational corporations, and colonial enterprises seemed endless once begun—then by the twenty-third century, everything had returned to calm. Through humanity’s collective efforts, people no longer worried about survival. Even the most remote African tribes could rely on technology that fully extracted organic matter from soil to provide all tribal members with their daily nutritional needs, ensuring every living being’s health. In the twenty-third century, if someone called themselves rich, they would be laughed at by everyone, because material abundance was so extreme that no one measured distance between themselves and others by wealth possession.

So readers might wonder what people valued then. Could it be knowledge possession? This might be possible, but people then not only received over twenty vaccines after birth to make their bodies nearly disease-free, but wisdom chips were also included in the global healthcare system, implanted in every newborn’s brain immediately after birth. These chips contained basic scientific knowledge and historical facts. Though some radicals in the twenty-third century opposed this measure, developing their followers worldwide to resist what they called “thought colonization,” once they actually removed the chips from their brains as they demanded, they became remarkably dull and incompetent compared to other “normal people.” Therefore, these radicals existed like clowns to most of society.

If differences between people weren’t basic wisdom possession, what else could it be? Worth mentioning is that in the twenty-second century, all human institutions had been deconstructed by philosophers, politicians, and scientists until almost nothing remained. Differences between men and women became extremely minimal. Gender reassignment surgery was cheap, and some communities even included gender reassignment in their social insurance services to attract excellent and interesting partners. Why communities? Because in the twenty-third century, even the concept of nations was abolished. Everyone possessed absolute self-destruction capabilities, able to choose mutual destruction with those who maliciously harmed them in critical moments. Though underground hackers could also provide technology to invade specific targets’ brains, altering or even controlling certain subjects’ thinking patterns, fortunately, the firewalls and anti-tracking technology of people’s wisdom chips correspondingly improved. Once someone was discovered attempting to invade another’s brain, they had two choices: immediate death sentence, or chip removal and exile to completely uncivilized wasteland. Why was the latter considered punishment equal to death? Smart readers should figure this out themselves. Under such measures, no one would risk harming others, because harming others meant risking one’s own life. Though occasional malicious revenge did appear in social news, people then, with higher intelligence and greater wealth, wouldn’t rashly act in ways that harmed themselves without benefiting others.

In the twenty-third century, everything was deconstructed, and humanity fell back into the initial chaos of new civilization. Socialism was no longer an ideal but had become humanity’s normal life. Marx became humanity’s idol again, rather than just a joke to most people as three hundred years earlier. Regrettably, this enormous improvement in material conditions couldn’t alleviate people’s inner emptiness. Therefore, in this new era, everyone without exception regarded pursuing their unique life as the most important and valuable thing. People no longer compared wealth, education, family, or bloodline. The most important evaluation standard for others was: did this person have their own beliefs? People’s casual conversations always favored this content. At such times, some people would become very uncomfortable, pretending to be pursuing something, but people then were wise enough to quickly know through micro-expression identification whether someone was pretending. Therefore, in the twenty-third century, people without life beliefs were mocked, just like those without money three hundred years ago, without air motorcycles two hundred years ago, or without wisdom chip implantation one hundred years ago.

Our story’s protagonist, Ge, was also part of this new wave. Honestly, by twenty-third century standards, he basically counted as an upper-class citizen in society. He was a gifted musician and lead singer of a band called “Simulator,” writing many melodies and lyrics he truly wanted to write. Overall, he was a decent person. As a decent person, he also had a decent intimate relationship. His other half was called Xiaotian. Yes, this was a man. But as mentioned earlier, the twenty-third century no longer distinguished between men and women. People could have relationships with anyone, even objects, and even marry them. Weddings with intelligent sex/love robots were already very common then. So Ge and Xiaotian’s relationship was just a very ordinary, normal couple relationship.

When Xiaotian met Ge, he was still a junior at the Foreign Languages University, fond of drinking and women. He majored in Latin and minored in Chinese. English, as a normalized language, had been embedded in wisdom chips early on, requiring no laborious study (except for English literature majors, of course). He and Ge met on a cheap night. Why cheap? Because of multiple vaccine injections, our future partners no longer needed to worry about diseases like AIDS. Though this causal relationship seems abrupt, it was indeed correct. One night, Ge had just finished a performance and was smoking behind the stage. Xiaotian was one of that show’s audience members. After wild jumping and shouting, Xiaotian felt he absolutely had to use the restroom. While randomly searching for the restroom, he encountered Ge.

The moment he saw Ge, Xiaotian felt struck by something—a feeling he’d never had before. He suddenly saw a field and a canal in this stranger. Ge leaned against a silver-gray railing with one hand, holding a cigarette with the other, looking at surrounding flying vehicles, perhaps considering which brand of aircraft he should buy. Xiaotian, watching the orange glow of the cigarette butt in Ge’s hand, suddenly lost focus. What was happening? Xiaotian put one hand in his jacket pocket and began scratching his hair with the other, lowering his head, not daring to look at Ge’s face again. Under physiological instinct’s demands, he hurried to the restroom. This restroom trip was very fast, almost sprint-like, consciously increasing pressure, hoping to quickly squeeze out unimportant water from his body. He felt himself racing against that half-cigarette butt in Ge’s hand. In just half a minute, he quickly thought many things: if Ge finished his cigarette, he would definitely find a special cigarette trash can to throw the butt away—if he violated this rule, he’d be fined 600 new coins; the nearest designated trash can should be on the left side of the downstairs plaza; if after using the restroom, he couldn’t see him by the railing, he must have gone downstairs; then he’d have to quickly run down to catch up; but what would he say to him? How would he view him? Should he tell him about seeing a river because of him?… Almost the moment Xiaotian finished using the restroom, he had already imagined lying together with Ge tonight.

Xiaotian gathered his things and quickly ran out, forgetting to wash his hands. Just as his steps were about to accelerate, he noticed a thin figure passing by. He looked back—this was Ge! His planned Ge-seeking route naturally became void. It seemed Ge also needed to use the restroom. A slight smile appeared at the corner of Xiaotian’s mouth. After pacing in place for two or three seconds, he naturally turned around, following Ge’s steps, walking toward the restroom direction again.

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2.

Xiaotian followed Ge back to the restroom. Ge stood at Xiaotian’s previous position to urinate. Xiaotian unhurriedly walked to the position next to Ge and said, “I just used the restroom here too.” Ge was obviously startled, but at this moment he hadn’t completed his physiological task—pale yellow liquid flowed out at a steady rate, finally ending after a few seconds. Before Ge could think of how to respond to Xiaotian’s abrupt conversation starter, Xiaotian continued, “You know what? Watching your performance just now, I seemed to see my hometown’s canal.” Ge was not only surprised by this strange man’s absurdity but was also inexplicably moved by the metaphor of “a canal.” But in this moment Ge remained clear-headed, saying, “Sorry, I have a girlfriend.” Xiaotian slowly raised his head, looking at this man who was half a head taller than himself, making eye contact with Ge for the first time. In that instant, Xiaotian’s gaze was filled with intense nostalgia, even showing a rare glimmer of tears born from hope—Ge’s image had somehow merged with Xiaotian’s childhood memories, and a forest-like freshness and freedom began flowing through Xiaotian’s mind.

Xiaotian leaned close to Ge’s ear and murmured, “What does that have to do with me?” Ge thought he had misunderstood Xiaotian’s meaning, so he hurriedly added, “Sorry, lately after performances people often come up to me saying strange things.” Xiaotian looked at the flustered Ge before him, and suddenly an overwhelming surge of love and desire rose in his heart, almost drowning them both. At this moment they were in the restroom, yet not entirely in the restroom. They appeared together in Xiaotian’s childhood, in fantasies that were insincere yet impossible to extinguish. Actually, how could Ge not have noticed his own passivity? But this was his first time feeling his passivity yet being unwilling to resist—he actively chose to give up being the dominant one in this encounter.

Xiaotian was a chaotic person because he never knew how to suppress his desires, allowing his will to guide his actions. Therefore, in the twenty-third century, he was also an upper-class citizen. His only faith was living according to his heart’s desires, including his suddenly emerging lust. He was different from Ge—Ge would weigh pros and cons before choosing a more prudent way to focus on being a creator. But Xiaotian didn’t understand calculation and planning; he only knew to do everything he wanted to do. For instance, he studied Latin, a language that absolutely no one would use anymore in the twenty-third century. Though people of that time would kindly exclaim “This is the language closest to God” when they heard about his major, Xiaotian never studied it for that reason. His only purpose for learning Latin was that he liked it—nothing more. As for whether God existed or how God existed, these were the smallest of small questions to him. This was the benefit of the twenty-third century—everyone could do what they liked without paying the cost of time and money.

“So?… What do you want to do?” Ge widened his left eye, contracted the orbicularis oculi muscle of his right eye, and slightly opened his mouth. Xiaotian continued gazing at Ge with that full-bodied look, stepped forward, and said, “May I kiss you?” Ge realized he hadn’t misunderstood the meaning of Xiaotian’s appearance, nor had he forgotten that this was the same person who had been swaying like a madman in the front row to his composed melodies during the performance. The reason he could spot Xiaotian among a hundred audience members was that Xiaotian’s rhythm and amplitude were strikingly consistent with his own state when alone in the rehearsal room. Perhaps Ge was also, to some extent, anticipating another encounter with Xiaotian? But this moment was too brief—too brief for them to react to what color of pheromones were flowing in the field between them. Fortunately, under Xiaotian’s completely instinct-driven behavioral style, they met for a second time. In the restroom, yet not entirely in the restroom.

“Yes or no?” Ge couldn’t give a precise answer, but was he really waiting for something? At this moment he habitually began calculating his time and life again—compared to brief passion, didn’t he have more important things to accomplish? This more important thing couldn’t be music, could it? “What the fuck is music anyway?” Ge was amused by his own question and couldn’t help but start laughing. Xiaotian looked at this strange person immersed in his own world before him, and the enthusiasm in his heart only increased. He looked at Ge again, thinking their distance was already within reach, revealing a confident smile like those that had never failed him before. He knew well that his technique was completely sincere exposure of his desires, and this excessive honesty was destructive—a skill most people didn’t dare try and had no capital to attempt. It could almost directly demolish the moral laws and ethical norms in the hearts of Xiaotian’s prey. In Xiaotian’s world, before absolute instinct, all claimed responsibilities were sanctimonious.

But at this moment, though Ge had some undeniable ripples in his heart and some unique impressions of this beast-like audience member before him, what did this amount to? In the twenty-third century when open relationships had become trendy and even normal, Ge still maintained an intimate and profound relationship with his girlfriend, and he had deep attachment and dependence on this. If in Xiaotian’s value system momentary desire was the strongest, most real, most affirmable thing, then in Ge’s heart there was still more important happiness he needed to protect—he needed to preserve the integrity of his love as much as possible to exchange with peace of mind for his girlfriend Fulai’s complete attention and love. Fulai was a very good girl. She and Ge had been companions since childhood, and they both agreed that no third person in the world could possibly insert themselves between them. The time and trust they had spent together was the painful price either of them would have to pay when attempting to transgress. For Ge at this moment, the situation was the same. He couldn’t possibly surrender his body for this somewhat peculiar man before him, because he knew his body’s “lending” would make Fulai look at him disappointedly, perhaps hold him and cry all night before leaving, or perhaps turn and walk away directly. In the twenty-third century, discovering a partner’s infidelity wasn’t difficult—everyone’s health data could reflect whether there were abnormal fluid injections in the body, and this fluid naturally included others’ bodily fluids.

Ge and Fulai had agreed to use classical, one-on-one love to resist this speeding, dissolute world in the twenty-third century. On this night, though Ge found Xiaotian charmingly reckless, after a moment of silence he still calmly said, “Sorry, I can’t.” Xiaotian was somewhat surprised by such direct rejection, but also somewhat delighted. Surprised because he had almost never failed before; delighted because he knew this man before him would someday belong to him, and belong to him forever. Xiaotian’s instinct was momentary, but he still waited for a kind of moment that could be called eternal—he guessed perhaps Ge was that person.

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3.

After Xiaotian’s failed attempt at a kiss, he returned home and threw his body onto the bed, with only one thing on his mind: “Why can’t men get pregnant even in the twenty-third century?”

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4.

Though his private life was chaotic, Xiaotian hadn’t forgotten his identity as a student. He naturally woke up around eleven the next day. He randomly grabbed some clothes to put on, did a quick wash, and went out wearing his mechanical flying shoes. In the twenty-third century, except for traveling to outer space or crossing black holes which required public transportation, humans on Earth could already use personally customized means of transport to reach anywhere they wanted in a short time (the deep sea was still an exception, and the Earth’s core remained in the exploratory stage for scientists of that time). The transportation tool quite popular among young people then was exactly the kind of mechanical flying shoes Xiaotian wore.

Today Xiaotian was going to attend a seminar. Actually, by the twenty-third century, schools no longer taught basic knowledge—content that merely required memory and recitation was directly implanted into wisdom chips. Even so, some specialized learning remained expensive: for instance, the Latin dictionary Xiaotian needed to memorize had too little market demand, with only some technically proficient Latin literature professors as developers, and they stubbornly chose to live in the previous century, so breakthrough progress in Latin learning software development remained elusive. Through wisdom chips, one could only obtain basic Latin vocabulary and grammar, so to acquire more precise Latin knowledge, Xiaotian could only research by reading old books himself. The reason mentioned earlier about him choosing to study Latin due to instinctual love wasn’t actually sufficient—he chose Latin mainly because it was an almost extinct language. He wanted to learn something complex and difficult to gain fresh stimulation. Whether this stimulation could be equated with love was another question entirely.

Arriving at the discussion room, he habitually sat in the middle position of the oval discussion table, discovered he’d forgotten to bring his notebook again, so he put both hands in his pockets, planning to be a simple observer in this discussion. Classmates arrived one after another—just over ten people—and the professor called for everyone to quiet down. The professor threw out a topic about “mind-body relationships in the twenty-third century,” and everyone began speaking in turn.

“I love my body, even though it’s almost controlled by intelligent machinery,” a young blonde woman said.

Immediately another male student questioned, “Your body has been replaced by mechanical parts until almost nothing remains, and the chips in our heads have almost nothing to do with us! What part of your body can you actually love?”

“So when all our work is completed by machines, after our walking, calculating, even learning has been replaced by machines, are our sensory perceptions still real, original, authentic?”

“That’s an interesting question. May I ask you, does the world we see become false after we put on glasses?”

“Yes, even though our entire human life now completely depends on that giant database in the desert and that cloud stabilizer built in a distributed manner in the Polar Bear constellation, our experiences and feelings are still real!”

…

The discussion continued endlessly, but Xiaotian wasn’t actually interested in this topic, especially because he really disliked this course’s professor. He didn’t understand why someone in the twenty-third century still needed to show off their learning when everyone had access to download things stored in databases. He always remembered the first class when the professor arranged for everyone to discuss “black holes.” When he asked the professor why people who had never been to black holes could pontificate about black hole topics, and whether someone without sufficient experience and personal perception of the object of observation had the ability to handle such topic discussions, the professor answered: “For this question, you can read Li Anzesfu’s Aesthetics of Black Holes, Duan Litilisruo’s On the Metaphysics of Black Holes, and Telangbixiuwa’s Ontological Deconstruction of Black Holes.” At that moment, Xiaotian was utterly disappointed in this professor.

After class, Xiaotian randomly found a patch of lawn on campus to sit on, planning to sunbathe for half an hour before going to the library to borrow books and memorize three pages of vocabulary. He aimlessly watched the figures flying past—some wearing flying shoes, others piloting aircraft. Among the rapidly moving figures, Xiaotian noticed a slowly moving silhouette. Looking carefully, it was a jogging man—shoulders not particularly broad but unexpectedly proportional compared to his delicate head, with a lean yet well-balanced physique. His white short-sleeved athletic shirt was slightly dampened by sweat, and his black medium-short hair jumped rhythmically up and down while running, like gently trembling ripples on water. Xiaotian became lost in thought again at this moment. In this instant, he really wanted to know who that person was, but in the next moment, he remembered those far-fetched words he’d said to Ge last night and Ge’s purple-red face filled with mist under the stage lights.

Unconsciously, he had eaten his bread down to just a few crumbs. He noticed pigeons walking around nearby, so he simply scattered the crumbs to those foraging creatures. When all the crumbs had fallen to the ground, another flock of pigeons actually flew over from all directions, competing for this hardly generous grace. Xiaotian vaguely realized his similarity to the pigeons and began cursing himself internally: “If I can’t control those restless desires of mine, those naked fantasies I always project onto others, what fucking difference is there between me and these pigeons?” Honestly, though Xiaotian was dissolute, he had also to some extent made these behaviors his life creed through extremizing these actions, becoming an upper-middle-class citizen in the twenty-third century, but he didn’t understand why he still always felt empty. He was clearly living according to his desires—why was he still unsatisfied? Why, after repeated fulfillment, was he always met with an even more barren world? Why, after those accidental, passionate, burning nights, did he always have to face again and again that land in his heart more desolate than any desert?

After the pigeons finished scrambling for Xiaotian’s distributed food, they scattered and left him. Xiaotian watched that jogging silhouette growing distant from him and muttered alone, “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

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5.

One morning, Ge woke up to find Fulai wasn’t beside him.

They had known each other for twenty years. They were middle school classmates who had agreed to come to the same city for university, both studying architecture. In his sophomore year, Ge formed a band—he seemed to have found what he loved most. After that, he dropped out. Fulai was different. What Fulai loved most was drawing, especially drawing houses. Fulai’s graduation project was designing the house they would live in together in the future. After that, Fulai also graduated and got a job at an architectural firm.

This year marked the tenth year of Ge and Fulai living together. They still didn’t own their own dwelling because Fulai felt her graduation design was full of flaws. Whenever Ge asked Fulai when they could start building their house, Fulai would always say she still needed to modify some details in the sketches, so they could stay comfortably inside for a lifetime.

But on such a peaceful morning, Ge woke up to find Fulai wasn’t beside him. He went to the dining table to drink water as usual. He noticed there was a letter pressed under his water glass. A white envelope with no signature. He curiously opened the letter, paused for a minute, then his tears began flowing uncontrollably. This was what Fulai had written to him:

“Ge, when you see this letter, I’m already on a high-speed spacecraft heading to the Polar Bear constellation, or perhaps I’ve already arrived there. I will build a classified human project there. I can’t tell you what it is exactly—this is a project I want to complete even if it costs me everything. Therefore I’ve decided to separate from you. I couldn’t say goodbye to you because once I said goodbye to you, my goodbye would no longer be a goodbye. I wouldn’t be able to help but stay. You must believe every word I’m saying. I love you. I think every minute we were together, I was willing to die for you. You are the person I love most—in the past, now, and in the future. But I can’t continue living with you anymore. You can continue loving me, or you can stop loving me. I will miss you, every single day, but I will never tell you.”

Ge’s face was expressionless, with only tears continuously flowing—down his cheeks, his neck, some sliding onto his chest, others dropping directly to the floor. In this moment he clearly remembered that house in Fulai’s graduation design. He thought if he had known this day would come, even if they could only live in an apartment that leaked rain year-round, he would have been willing.

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6.

Fulai hadn’t lied—she really did go to the Polar Bear constellation. She only brought one small suitcase: inside was the music player Ge had given her in high school, filled with songs they both loved; a small towel and a bath towel, both gifts from Ge; aside from these, only some miscellaneous clothing. She didn’t bring any daily necessities, leaving them all in the house, as if hoping these things would make Ge feel she was still by his side.

After boarding the spacecraft, Fulai kept crying, almost to the same degree as Ge’s tears. When she decided to leave, she already knew Ge would hate her, hate her very much, and would hate her more and more—in her imagination, for Ge, the happy memories would become increasingly blurred, with only the terrible fragments left to repeat endlessly. But at the same time, she also knew she would always love Ge, and love him more and more—because she felt that for herself, over the long period ahead, the bad memories of their time together would become increasingly blurred, with only the happy fragments left to repeat endlessly—and this was the consequence she had to bear for actively leaving without any goodbye.

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7.

Xiaotian hated many things about this world, but these past few days he kept recalling that jogging figure he’d seen on campus. It was already the twenty-third century—why did people still like running? Hadn’t vaccinations already granted bodies complete health freedom?

While missing that person, he saw him for the second time. This second encounter was in World Politics class. That boy sat near the window, occasionally looking up at classmates engaged in heated discussion, but showing no interest in participating. Xiaotian gazed at the sunlight flickering on that man’s nose bridge and momentarily lost focus. Who exactly was that boy? Xiaotian’s previous dissolute courage had fled somewhere unknown. He felt he shouldn’t disturb that taciturn man.

That man was undoubtedly handsome—his three-dimensional features were completely self-aware of their superiority yet without a trace of showing off. Most of the time, Xiaotian disdained physical beauty because in the twenty-third century, people could become whatever they wanted through surgery. But why did this face make him feel awe? The man sitting by the window finally realized someone was watching him. At this moment, Xiaotian still gazed at him brazenly with a cautious yet greedy expression, not hoping for his glance back in his heart. But the man did turn around, and then came their first eye contact. It was also then that Xiaotian felt retreat for the first time. Last week’s frivolity and flirtation toward Ge had completely vanished. Facing this man he knew nothing about, this Greek sculpture-like Asian face, and these two eyes looking at him indifferently, Xiaotian somehow shyly averted his impolite gaze and embarrassedly showed an apologetic smile.

Xiaotian didn’t know why he felt ashamed before that man’s almost self-evident handsomeness. Wasn’t he the one who most hated those beauties who showed off with delicate faces? Was this some kind of absolutely natural beauty mocking his longtime contempt for beauty? He knew he was sometimes like a rat in darkness, enjoying ridiculing the sumptuous food at those pompous banquets—but this time he realized his failure. Because that man’s beauty couldn’t be diminished by even the slightest bit through his filthy, inferior, despicable gaze—because that man’s beauty wasn’t for anyone at all. Xiaotian couldn’t see the slightest trace of pleasing from this face—this was a beauty without purpose!

The classroom discussion quickly ended amid Xiaotian’s chaotic thoughts. He habitually scratched his hair, contemplating a romantic accident in his mind.

8.

After Xiaotian woke up, he blinked hard and found that Ge hadn’t woken up yet. He examined Ge’s big head about 20 centimeters away from him and reached out to rub Ge’s hair.

It had been almost two years since his first meeting with Ge. In the first year of these two years, Xiaotian wasn’t actually familiar with Ge. He became friends with Ge because he first became friends with that jogging man. That man was called Wangxing.

Xiaotian looked at the back of Ge’s head and thought of Wangxing. Or rather, he always remembered that man who suddenly appeared and suddenly left through Ge. He thought Wangxing would probably be like this in ten years, right? Or was Ge like Wangxing ten years ago? These inferences seemed to have basis, because otherwise Ge wouldn’t have been such good friends across generations with Wangxing.

Xiaotian turned over, staring blankly at the ceiling, realizing that he seemed to repeatedly fall in love with the same person. And this person wasn’t a specific object, but a similar desire that emerged after his repeated confirmations.

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9.

Fulai arrived at the Polar Bear constellation and found the people there somewhat strange. The women here all seemed to come from the same mold, extraordinarily submissive to their husbands. It seemed their life mission was to be a good wife and a good mother. To Fulai, this was simply a harmonious wasteland: women’s willingness to bear children depended on their husbands’ need for heirs. Some men felt children shouldn’t be too good-looking, or they would attract misfortune and trouble, so they wouldn’t edit their children’s genes. Some men wanted a beautiful girl to satisfy their evil fantasies and perverted desire for control, so they would demand that fragments for large breasts and plump hips be put into the child’s genes to randomly obtain an alluring body. Some men wanted their children to be copies of themselves to satisfy their narcissism… Everything here seemed to possess an artificial naturalism.

And Fulai’s so-called classified work was to completely destroy this delicate ruin. Though she was an employee at an architectural studio, she actually had a second identity as an “underwater lifeguard.” “Underwater survival” was an alternative society filled with artists, hunters, wanderers, defective humans who had abandoned their chips… In short, they were a group of people exiled by society. Fulai learned about this group because she met an elderly engineer during the construction of the geocentric tunnel. The engineer had been studying the Earth’s core for a very long time, possibly nearly a hundred years. He had not only experienced the Asian explosion and complete collapse of European land in the previous century, but his body had also experienced chip implantation, removal, and re-implantation—he was an absolute cyborg. Due to long periods underground, he was familiar with changes in this planet’s dust, sunlight changes, even changes in air humidity.

Fulai met this engineer during a work break. She noticed this elder had been following behind their exploration engineering team. Fulai’s superior felt the elder’s behavior was suspicious and asked Fulai to inquire if he had any important matters to explain—Fulai never expected that this upcoming conversation would shake her entire worldview over the next year or two, ultimately almost shattering it to the point of needing reconstruction. But Fulai never explained these changes in mindset to Ge because she felt Ge shouldn’t suffer such conscious pain.

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10.

Xiaotian often forgot about Ge, whether when alone or with others. The reason wasn’t that they were too far apart, but too close. So close that he almost didn’t need to remember, because Ge’s scent inevitably permeated every minute of his freedom.

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11.

Though Xiaotian was chaotic, he had truly fallen in love before. That was his first love in high school, called Lizi. They went to many, many places together. Whenever young Xiaotian looked at Lizi walking ahead of him, a vague sadness would surge in his heart. He always wanted to ask her a question but never spoke it aloud. The question was: “When will you leave me?”

Lizi was free. During those years, she stayed by Xiaotian’s side like a little bird. But Xiaotian always felt that Lizi would disappear soon. He wished he could swallow Lizi down like drinking a glass of plain water—that way Lizi wouldn’t disappear from his world.

Two years later, his doubt received the most definitive answer: Lizi left Xiaotian after two years, three months, and eighteen days.

Her departure wasn’t without hesitation. She had already felt weary after being with Xiaotian for a year and a half. Lizi couldn’t tolerate silence, couldn’t appreciate plain years, couldn’t accept conversations that ended. She wanted a more intense life. She needed waves, storms, sudden rain. She needed constant unexpected invasions and replacements of her world.

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The Universe’s Scar

2024-09-09 01:58:29 Switzerland

0.

When summer came, the scar on A’s back began to itch. A couldn’t help but scratch it, though she only ever stroked the eye-sized mark gently. This scar carried two or three stories worth telling.

The first person to notice it was a real bastard, B, who had once been A’s lover. Four years ago, during that summer, they lay naked together in bed when B asked why A had a blackhead on her back. B tried to squeeze out what she thought was a pimple, but failed. The thing wouldn’t come out. Two months later, B demanded they break up. It was a demand, not a request. After that, they lost touch.

The summer after they separated, A sat diagonally across from C, complaining about the brutal sun. C said with mild annoyance, “Why do you have a boil on your back?” A didn’t think much of it then. She only realized C was the second person to see that strange black spot, and she quietly remembered some happy and bitter memories.

The third summer, A was overwhelmed by three papers she had to submit. Academic and emotional pressure made her miserable. While in France, A discovered the black spot had grown larger without her control and begun to ache. She thought it was from sitting too long, so she asked C for massage therapy. But C pressed too hard, hitting the increasingly prominent black spot, and the area around it became red and inflamed.

While traveling in Berlin, A slipped in the bathtub, badly bruising her shin. Her back was in agony, and so was her leg. One night, A suddenly remembered all of B’s emotional abuse, and her heart began to hurt too. That same night, A suddenly thought of her grandmother, remembering how seven years ago she had missed her grandmother’s funeral because of final exams. A had never been in such pain. She began to sob quietly in the dark. A couldn’t share these nameless but endless sorrows with C, because C was one of their sources. C was clearly frightened by A’s flood of emotion.

Fortunately, a few days after the outbreak, A flew home and had outpatient surgery the day after returning. During the procedure, A cried out in pain because the inflammation had reached deep into her spine, where anesthesia couldn’t reach. The doctor told A not to move because he needed to scoop out the bad flesh bit by bit—or in medical terms, to remove the lesion. The surgery lasted half an hour. The doctor said helplessly that he couldn’t complete the outpatient procedure because the subcutaneous rot was too extensive. A would need general anesthesia on Monday to remove the remaining infected tissue.

After surgery, A told C the results. C asked if A knew that many people reveal their secrets under general anesthesia. A began refusing the procedure, afraid she might tell secrets she couldn’t bear to share, afraid she might cry about her absurd experiences while unconscious. Perhaps because A was so terrified of the upcoming surgery, when she returned for her Monday checkup, she had miraculously expelled the black, rotten flesh on her own. The doctor was astonished and could only praise A’s extraordinary healing ability.

Less than ten days after returning home, A boarded another flight back to Europe. C was vacationing at A’s place. At A’s request, C stayed an extra week to help change the medicated gauze on A’s wound each day. When C first removed the large bandage from A’s back, he was startled. A had never actually looked at her own back—perhaps she hated the bloody mess of herself, even though it was part of her body’s soil. When the surgery was finished, A’s attending physician had invited her to see the lesion and black fluid extracted from her back. A instinctively refused. A’s father, however, had looked with interest at that unbearable sight.

The night C had to leave A’s place for school, A had to lift the bandage herself for the first time. By then, the skin tissue that had been cut away had begun to regenerate, and the black discharge had disappeared. This relatively clean wound was something A could accept. For the next month, she had to stand with her back to the mirror, twisting her head, struggling to change her own dressing and observe how the wound was healing. Finally, after some forgotten amount of time, A stopped using medication and decided to let her skin heal naturally.

Another year passed, bringing us to the summer mentioned at the beginning. A was working at a traditional Chinese medicine clinic in the Swiss countryside. The clinic owner, complaining about too few summer patients, had contracted the secretary work to A at a low price. The job was indeed leisurely. A would chat with the substitute Chinese doctor whenever she had nothing else to do. A asked the doctor why her scar still itched sometimes even though it had healed. The doctor said that once skin is cut away, it’s gone forever. What grows back is scar tissue, and scar tissue behaves this way. The doctor added that our kidneys, hearts, and other organs have a fixed number of cells. When they’re used up, we die.

A was still shocked by such simple yet profound words. So this is how people die! A suddenly realized that perhaps the sad stories that had happened to her were just like this. That mass of terrible sadness had been forcibly cut away after it became inflamed on her back. But even so, after those wounds healed, they still reminded A through occasional itching that while some sorrows had long since left her body, they would forever occupy certain corners of her life.

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1.

A was walking home from buying groceries when she saw a plane in the sky. Hundreds of people sat on that plane. They had almost nothing to do with her—they were just flying over her head. Also on the way home, A saw her neighbor’s kitten sitting quietly by the roadside. She hadn’t seen it for over twenty days since returning to the country. When A walked over, the kitten sensibly ambled toward her. A stroked the kitten from head to tail, then from tail to head. She thought to herself that the kitten hadn’t forgotten her after all. When she got home, she would definitely watch some videos to learn cat-petting techniques, so the kitten would be more comfortable the next time she petted it.

A was indeed someone who liked to repay kindness, because she felt that love was repayment. A’s world seemed too simple. Sometimes A wanted to think about things more complexly. But even complex things mostly seemed to A to be only procedurally complex—emotionally, they remained very simple. Like was like, dislike was dislike. But what did really liking taste like? Was it the same logic as really disliking?

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2 Person, Earth, Universe

A didn’t often suffer from insomnia, because the chaotic thoughts that crowded her mind before sleep would clog up her brain. To stop thinking, she would simply press the off button, stopping those helpless and boring thoughts. Each morning when she woke up, she often felt she had dreamed something important, but couldn’t remember any of it. To recall those dreams, she had to press the on button, and those confused thoughts from bedtime would surge back. Every day she began thinking and living so defenseless. This involuntary mode of existence made her feel tired, but this tiredness also meant the only real vitality.

This morning A didn’t even plan to start thinking, but her rebooted brain showed her an image of Earth in the universe. It was a picture she had seen on her phone while getting off a train some days ago: the original “Pale Blue Dot” of Earth photographed by Voyager 1 in February 1990. That image had deeply shocked her. Earth was so small! If Earth was this small, weren’t humans just dust in the universe? And if wounds on the human body were already insignificant to humans themselves, what were they to the universe?

Earth was merely an instant of the universe, and humans merely an instant of Earth, and individual memories were merely tiny instants in a human’s long life. Earth’s pain had no echo in the universe, so what did human cries amount to?

A suddenly remembered the second-to-last morning of her junior year living on that southern island. Due to a rare bout of insomnia, she had boarded the first train to the northernmost beach of Taipei. It was so early that when she arrived it wasn’t even seven o’clock. She was alone on the long coastline. Just as she reached the beach, it began to rain. But A kept wanting to walk deeper into the coast, because she seemed to want to shout out loud some things that made her ashamed. Those things weren’t really unspeakable—she just thought her infatuation with D was inappropriate. Her solitary life on the island had deepened her longing for D, because she always felt D was secretly guiding her life. When they were in the same place, they often ran into each other in the library corridors, but A was best at greetings that were slightly exaggerated yet seemingly casual. When the rain gradually soaked her linen pants, she finally reached a piece of driftwood on a beach that temporarily calmed her.

But even when she was completely alone, she could hardly call out that person’s name frankly. Why couldn’t she loudly declare her feelings even in absolute solitude? This was indeed an experience worth examining. Don’t protagonists in novels and movies all speak their expectations aloud? Why couldn’t she? After ten minutes of mental struggle, she finally whispered D’s name, but her voice was only loud enough for herself to hear. That call was so quiet it disappeared before reaching the sand beneath her feet.

But then again, what was the difference between A’s cry and signals humans send into the universe?

Who wasn’t an insignificant existence in this vast vacuum? A’s body was so small—smaller than the surrounding rocks. And Earth compared to the sun was just a drop in the ocean, wasn’t it?

Last night C had excitedly shared the joy of finishing his defense with A, but A’s mind was full of thoughts about how brief these moments were! If joy was just an instant in our lives, our individual lives were just an instant of Earth, Earth was just an instant of the universe, and the universe itself was just an instant from nothing to something, from entropy to extinction—then what was the meaning of all humanity to the universe?

Though A was pursuing a philosophy doctorate, she didn’t really like reading. She habitually spent her energy on all sorts of trivial matters, then rushed to catch up on wasted time during periods when she had to study seriously, completing tasks at the last moment. During these bursts of cramming, A often felt that she and others (including all philosophers) might be carriers of certain spiritual forces. Though A opposed subject-object dualism, disliked Hegel’s absolute spirit, and disagreed with the linear conception of time inherited from Christianity, she often found herself uncontrollably influenced by certain thoughts in her actions.

A had returned home during summer break to give a presentation and reread her own thesis, thinking it was quite good. Especially the part about the visible and invisible: there was no subject-object distinction in the world, only invisible depth constantly being drawn into our bodily experience and life course by our flesh. Depth was the true exterior, and my “subject” was merely the visible that depth provided for its self-manifestation.

Did every visible thing mean a kind of splitting? Was this splitting like that eye-sized scar on A’s back? If so, Earth was merely a scar on the universe.

Should this scar have some kind of temporality? A’s guess was both yes and no. The appearance of a scar lay in its directly causing the loss of something (namely, skin). A small piece of skin was deprived of its existence by the scar, while scar tissue replaced the skin on A’s back to prevent bacterial and fungal invasion. So was every cry, every utterance, every painting a kind of scar? Here A seemed to see something powerful, some ideas that might help advance her dissertation.

A felt she still needed time to organize these chaotic thoughts.

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Bullets in Danger

2022-03-16 22:34:42

1.

When M first entered the Green City, he was in a constant state of wandering. He didn’t know what would happen nor did he expect anything to happen. His main pleasure each day was sharing trivial matters with his boyfriend back home across a seven-hour time difference. When his boyfriend was sleeping or working, M would habitually wander the streets in slippers and headphones. When tired, he’d find a café to sit in and read whatever book he’d randomly grabbed from his table that day. M loved walking, especially along rivers—one of the few childhood hobbies he’d retained. Whenever he reached different riverbanks, he would deliberately open his nostrils wide, hoping to smell the fishy stench of water weeds. Just as when he went to different hospitals, he always expected to smell the mixture of disinfectant and hydrogen peroxide, because this scent belonged to the dental clinic he’d frequently visited in elementary school. He didn’t really like these smells—they simply allowed him to feel a kind of embodied nostalgia.

M arrived in the Green City near summer’s end. The first day he walked here, he wandered aimlessly as usual. When he felt it was time for dinner and opened his phone, he was surprised to discover it was already 10:30 PM, though the sun hadn’t yet set. In this strange new environment, he faced many moments of sudden discovery. Like a week later, when he suddenly realized the gear-shifting bicycle he’d bought online couldn’t actually shift gears. This didn’t trouble him much, since the bicycle’s utility had been basically realized. After becoming a vehicle owner, he often cycled to the mathematics department and sat in the most secluded seat on the library’s top floor. That spot was very quiet, allowing him to mess up his hair without restraint during complex calculations. Of course, there was another important benefit—no one would notice when he napped or watched funny videos.

Interestingly, the only time he was approached at that seat was the first time he sat there. Ten minutes after sitting down, a figure appeared behind him. The person wore a black mask and asked before introducing herself, “Excuse me, are you M?” M looked at this strange woman with some surprise, immediately acknowledged his identity, then said somewhat urgently, “But… you are?” The girl said unhurriedly, “I’m Y. We chatted online before.” M then realized this was the senior student who’d arrived a year earlier and whom he’d previously consulted. Though he immediately greeted Y, M still wondered to himself how this person looked different from her photos. Before they could chat further, Y hurried downstairs, as if her only purpose in coming up was to confirm she hadn’t mistaken his identity.

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2.

Even after becoming involved with H, he didn’t feel his inner self had undergone any sudden transformation. He neither felt himself “turned” nor had any desire to acknowledge homosexual tendencies. Everything seemed to happen accidentally and naturally. H was one of M’s few good friends in college, and their relationship only began to change after an unexpected kiss in a bar on graduation day.

M’s college years were not pleasant. The first book he read after entering university was Camus’s The Stranger, which metaphorically explained his subsequent college life. The moment he finished reading this book for the first time was during a hot afternoon when he was watching classmates’ military training on the playground. As he closed the book and looked toward the distant people shouting slogans, he felt a dull ache in his ankle while an unnamed sorrow grew in his heart, giving him a melancholy premonition about the next four years.

As for why he could avoid this inhuman training, it was because he had unfortunately fallen from the upper bunk of a soft sleeper car on a train while rushing to school one morning, causing a minor fracture in his right foot. The huge temperature differences between day and night caused M, whose constitution was already poor, to catch a severe cold after the fracture. For quite some time, he found it hard to accept that this was the prelude to his university life.

In fact, the impact of this series of accidents was far greater than his reasonable ability to avoid that collective disaster of marching in place. Military training continued until almost ten o’clock every night. Although he didn’t have to participate in training, M still needed to be present to observe. On the evening when he finished reading The Stranger, he sat on a bench dazing as usual, occasionally blowing his nose. Just as he opened a new tissue and prepared to blow hard, his homeroom teacher sat down beside him. This was a young woman wearing rectangular gold-rimmed glasses, slowly emanating a gentle yet slightly harsh atmosphere, like furniture displayed at IKEA. M had heard his roommates mention this Teacher Lin intentionally or unintentionally, but at the time M only knew she was a mathematics PhD who had just graduated from a famous American university and returned to China, having arrived at this university just a few months ago. In a sense, she and M were in the same entering class. In her first year as faculty, she was assigned the work of homeroom teacher.

After sitting beside M, leveraging her teacher status, she naturally inquired about M’s plans for choosing a major the following year. M said he actually couldn’t be certain—his choice of this school was only because he’d heard the business administration program here was decent. When M said the words “business administration,” Teacher Lin seemed to have a switch flipped, quickly looking at M with sympathetic yet slightly hesitant eyes, saying unhurriedly, “Ah… I’ve always held doubts about this program at your school, both regarding teaching content and faculty composition.” M didn’t know how to respond to such abrupt profundity from his teacher. To prevent the conversation from falling into silence and awkwardness, he asked, “What about the mathematics department?” (even though he had never before considered such a distant subject). Upon hearing this question, Teacher Lin became interested, her tone containing a kind of smiling expression, though this joy wasn’t strong enough for her to express through facial expressions to this newly met student. She said, “The mathematics department? Of course it’s an excellent choice. As a fundamental discipline, if you can graduate smoothly from the mathematics department, it will provide you with tremendous mental training. Even if you later want to change majors, you’ll feel very confident…” M watched this strange woman’s mouth open and close, quickly sensing her complete love for her research field and complete prejudice against other disciplines. At that moment, M secretly gained a wonderful pleasure. This instant also made him, during the major allocation a year later, resolutely abandon business administration and enter the mathematics department.

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3.

M often couldn’t understand his relationship with H either. He didn’t know how two bodies ended up lying on the same dormitory bed, nor did he understand how H could so flexibly unlock his rigid limbs and give him the first experience in his life that could be called pleasurable. He kept thinking about what those few sexual encounters on the upper bunk of the school dormitory actually meant. Did they mean the labor of love? But when he and H were still just friends, M seemed never to have fantasized about H with desire. So could it have been bold mistakes after drinking? But when he silently accepted another body’s invasion, even though he appeared absent-minded as he often did, he had to admit that in those moments he was not only very lucid but also experienced an unprecedented joy in his heart.

After several trembles, he and H graduated. That summer, he discovered he seemed to have grown an extra organ. And that organ, like a spring, was mainly responsible for continuously providing tears shed for H. Calling H M’s boyfriend earlier was actually inaccurate, because they had never clearly and explicitly acknowledged possession of each other. At least H was always hesitant on this point. The reason was actually very simple—H still had a girlfriend he’d been with for four years. By all rights and reasons, he couldn’t have both a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time, could he? When H told M “I love you,” he was sincere, but when he told his girlfriend “I love you,” he was also sincere. Sometimes M would wonder, could a person’s heart be split in two? If hearts could be divided, could H’s heart give him a little more?

M didn’t have the courage to demand more, because he vaguely knew he was not only an unrecognized partner by conventional standards, but couldn’t even be considered a partner H could acknowledge. He quickly became aware of his own suffering, because he knew he had already let H enter the softest place in his heart. As long as H applied just a little pressure, it would bring him unbearable pain, and that pain kept transforming into the pressure that made that spring gush forth continuously. Not only did his heart begin to flow, his whole body became soft and limp. H was like a riverbed, always able to catch the various fluids M secreted, either swallowing them or letting them merge with his own river water. But this riverbed was too small to bear too many of M’s tears.

Thus it seemed that for M, there was only one way to stop the tears and end the pain—asking H to leave his heart. But this was difficult, just like after a seed takes root and sprouts in a piece of soil, if someone tries to pull up that sapling, the earth will inevitably become fragmented. Thus, a problem similar to Hamlet’s also appeared before M: uproot it completely and let the land collapse, or let this little sapling grow bigger and bigger, so that its roots keep piercing into M’s softest blood vessels?

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4. On Stability

What is stability? M’s junior and senior year life could be considered a model of stable living.

In the second semester of his junior year, M went abroad for exchange. He liked to cycle to the library around ten o’clock every day and sit in the innermost position of the humanities section. That spot was close to the emergency exit. Next to the emergency exit was a restroom, and next to the restroom exit was a water fountain. This position solved all of M’s demands for an ideal seat: no disturbances, convenient exit, and very convenient access to restroom and water (actually, M never quite understood why many libraries placed water fountains next to restrooms—was this some kind of complementarity?). Sometimes this spot would be occupied by an old professor who had also discovered this perfect location, and M could only settle for second best, sitting at a nearby seat. But this way, the new seat directly lost the advantage of being undisturbed. At mealtime, M would eat at the cafeteria closest to the library. He liked the cafeteria’s buffet. When he observed that all dishes were fully arranged around 12:15 PM each day, he would always go to the cafeteria at that time. As the first audience for that batch of dishes, he had absolute choice. Facing nearly thirty dishes, he would happily take just a moderate amount of each. That semester M’s nutritional intake was very balanced, so his body was unexpectedly healthy—he didn’t even catch a cold once. For dinner, he sometimes ate at the cafeteria, sometimes went to a beef noodle shop called M’s, ordering wontons. He never told the owner he also had the surname M, but each time he went he would earnestly ask the owner to put a few more vegetable leaves in his wontons. By the end of the semester, during his last few visits, the owner would directly put plenty of vegetable leaves without needing his request. He and the owner seemed to have reached some understanding, but this understanding had to end just a month after it was established. Because he had to return home.

He always arranged his life this way. No matter where he was, he would immediately find several favorite places, then repeatedly visit those places according to a stable rhythm and frequency.

The first semester of senior year was when he began seriously preparing to go abroad. M made a schedule every week, precise to each hour’s study tasks, even scheduling when to shower into his plan. But sometimes he greatly overestimated his learning ability—a week’s study plan could only complete the first three days’ workload. Though he could never complete his plans, he had a purposeless passion for making schedules. He discovered he was always losing control within control. This experience gave him a kind of pleasure of being humiliated by personal arrogance. That semester, M woke up at seven every day, left the dormitory at eight, finished breakfast at the student cafeteria by 8:30, and sat at the innermost seat on the third floor of the school library at nine to begin the day’s study. When tired, he would go to the social sciences library and pick up a poetry collection to read. He read poetry not because he harbored special enthusiasm for this literary form, but because poems’ length exactly matched the rest periods he set for himself, ranging from ten minutes to half an hour. But he often read for over an hour, thus once again completing a transgression against the orderly plan he had drafted for himself. Around 9:50 PM, the library guard would come to urge everyone to leave, but he always started packing at 9:40, leaving voluntarily without the guard’s prompting. After the day’s study ended, he habitually took walks in the park outside the north gate of campus, or walked around the track listening to hell jokes by Jim Jefferies and George Carlin. After that, past eleven o’clock, he would slowly return to the dormitory, wash up and lie down, ending a peaceful day.

Thus it seemed M was indeed an unusually stable person then, with the only unstable factor being his deviation from established plans. Sometimes he would impulsively buy a ticket to a live punk show on some weekend evening, returning early to the dormitory to change into shoes suitable for jumping (honestly, M had actually carefully reserved those discretionary entertainment times for himself).

But H’s appearance broke all these plans. Because H was not at all part of the entire stable system M had constructed with himself at the center. H’s destructive power over M’s plans grew slowly, and M’s survival inertia correspondingly began to weaken.

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5. On Instability/On Fester

H’s appearance was like a comet to M: from silently orbiting around M, to gradually changing M’s magnetic field, rotation speed, and orbital velocity, ultimately destroying M’s entire “stable” system.

Initially, M could effortlessly maintain a state of detachment in crowds while steadily living in the conceptual world he had constructed for himself, rhythmically visiting those fixed locations that had been selected early on. The major change to this peaceful life occurred after M’s library account was banned from reserving seats. Though he had the habit of writing detailed weekly plans, he also often deliberately violated those plans, wandering in off-campus parks or dazing on the school track to the point of missing reservation times. Due to his repeated offenses, the library administrator punished him by forbidding seat reservations for a month. He wasn’t without effort in trying to regain reservation privileges. He went to the school’s information center to consult the staff there, who told him he should go to the library’s management center, while the library teachers told him to find someone at the information center to handle it. This back-and-forth made M very helpless, suddenly understanding the meaning of “passing the buck.” But fortunately, he quickly found a new place—the café on the library’s first floor, and soon took a liking to the window seat at the innermost side of the café hall. After that, he went there daily to sit and cultivate feelings with that new seat. Because of his continuous daily consumption, the café sisters all got to know him before long, occasionally asking with smiles if he needed any wrongly made coffee or extra cakes. He remained content in this newly established stable system.

And H quietly integrated into his life at this time. Even though H didn’t like studying, he often came to the café with friends to chat or prepare for exams. When H discovered that M sat in the café every day, without needing prior online communication, H could always spot M’s silhouette at that same seat in the café, then walk directly to sit in the empty seat across from M. At first they studied together. M felt that having someone watch him study was actually quite nice—when he wanted to lie down and sleep, he couldn’t conveniently just collapse due to saving face. After some time, H began inviting M to eat off-campus during M’s non-meal times, dragging M to see animals at the zoo in North Gate Park during M’s reading time, or after M had bought livehouse tickets alone, complaining to M about why he didn’t tell him, then purchasing an additional ticket for the same show to go with M.

This was the first time in college that M noticed someone so persistently wanting to enter his boring life, finding it somewhat incredible. During those years, M discovered that many people he encountered seemed to only come look at this oddly behaving person out of curiosity, soon finding it fruitless and then hastily leaving. But H was different—he was a confident and great person. Even when M was sometimes reluctant, H still took M to many places he had never been: a bar called “Strawberry Butt” in the city center, a café with kittens in the urban village, a seafood restaurant at the school’s southwest gate, a rice noodle shop by the downhill road at the south gate… M also began to delightedly realize that his university and university life weren’t as dull and boring as he had imagined.

But real life is always complex, full of changes, and unstable. Only the schedules M made were stable. But at that time, M hadn’t yet learned how to balance that stable self living in the conceptual world with this new unstable self that H had brought into daily life. He maneuvered between two worlds, gradually losing balance.

(When H withdrew, like using a fulcrum to leverage the entire earth, M’s stellar system finally collapsed: like a cosmic big bang, the self M had previously possessed became fragmented. If H left anything behind in the end, it was the unprecedented chaos before M. A tragedy of consciousness dissolving itself lurked in the shadows.)

But what were the reasons for M’s withdrawal and isolation? Why, for such a long time, did he so resist living in this ordinary yet real world?

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6. On the Emergence of Meaning/Burst Inside

M liked to pursue the meaning of things. From age fifteen, he had the habit of keeping a diary, and each time he wrote it revolved around the same few things: studying and the meaning of studying; grades and the meaning of grades; romance and the meaning of romance; the future and the meaning of the future… But M often became more bewildered after pursuing these questions to the end, because he really couldn’t inquire anything out of them.

Sometimes M felt he was actually a cruel yet slightly tender person, because he would forbid himself from thinking about others’ meaning and refuse to participate in evaluations (because he didn’t want everything to become meaningless due to his own harshness). Due to the lack of definite meaning, he would sometimes seek worldly answers, even though he was unwilling to do so. But once he relaxed his guard and attached himself to some discourse system, he could obtain temporary peace, because only this way could he pause thinking about endless questions of meaning. On the other hand, even when M used some objective evaluation systems, he truly despised them. M would assess these systems, then internalize them into his own world measurement, thus forming a scale that intertwined subjective and objective elements. This scale once held an absolutely important position in M’s former world, sometimes even becoming larger than M’s own self. This Leviathan that M himself had produced was carefully nurtured in his heart, ultimately turning host into guest and beginning to rule over M. In M’s past personal world, almost all meaning depended on this set of “M’s Laws.”

M’s diary wasn’t any normal running account of records. He didn’t know when he began to have a tendency to actively dissolve his own emotions. He involuntarily analyzed his jealousy, anger, sadness, happiness in his diary… He would first find the main causes for some of his intense emotions, then (incredibly), after analyzing his emotions, he would formulate action plans for himself, but most of the time he used this to persuade himself not to act. For example, he hated himself when jealous. To prevent this terrible emotion from accidentally appearing on his face and being noticed by others, he would seriously discuss the generation of this emotion in his diary, then try to cancel the rationality of jealousy occupying space in his heart.

These diaries could resist ordinary emotions to some extent, but M used an entire diary and still couldn’t analyze what had actually happened between himself and H. After the breakup, he organized all the details and turning points of their relationship over and over again in his diary, trying to understand where his grief that was about to crush him came from. But the more M tried to understand and explain, the more he fell into a self-aesthetic sentimentality.

Due to his inability to understand, he began seeking a kind of destruction in his love with H—specifically, a kind of self-destruction. All his previous standards failed in this relationship. In the first spring in Green City, M was dumped. His tears kept pouring out regardless of time and occasion, flowing down his face. Even though he had long known the difficulty and inevitable end of this relationship, this love was something M couldn’t resist through rational analysis. Those emotions were too fierce, too complex, for M to have the ability to sort through and narrate to himself one by one in his diary.

And this part that couldn’t be explained and controlled by rational analysis was gradually regarded by M as love. In it, M obtained complete loss of control (which was perhaps exactly M’s hidden desire). It seemed that after the heartbreak, he repeatedly recalled those hopeless sentiments. By doing this, his unclear pleasures perhaps included wanting to repeatedly experience that loss of control—this was the first time in over twenty years that he let his emotions completely control himself. His prolonged loss almost carried masochistic tendencies, but this masochism indeed had something he was secretly fascinated by. Sometimes he would even actively recall those sad, weary desires, using them as nourishment to water some words for self-consolation. The reason, actually, was that M sometimes feared he would lose even the right to be sad.

So what was the meaning of this love and the failure of love? Apart from the passage of time (of course, the meaning of time was another problem that gave M headaches), it finally let M know that what was out of control, what couldn’t be dissolved by narrative touch, was true desire. And those unspeakable desires existed more or less, universally, in every year, every day, every minute M and H spent together, as if they had always been silently accumulating some kind of energy. In a very ordinary afternoon moment after graduation, all the meaning of the time he and H had spent together suddenly descended like lightning on M’s head, followed by a thunderous roar inside M. His initially stable life order and emotional order were almost completely destroyed after this violent moment.

He struggled in this flood, finally having to abandon thinking and control. But it was precisely when he gave up that he also obtained salvation.

In the second spring, he resumed a rhythmic life, but from a new perspective. And this turning point happened completely accidentally, yet was extremely necessary.

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7. Starting Over/Shambles after Loving

M never cared what others thought of him from childhood, instinctively despising those authorities claiming dominance, and certainly not spending thought on how the gazes of those without ruling power were imposed upon him. He lived freely but harshly then, because he didn’t understand what love was or where passionate care emerged from—he only knew how to be himself. After getting used to such kindness, he would respond with unthinking gratitude of the same degree. Inexplicably, when he was being himself, others’ gazes would flow toward him, and he gradually took these stares from unknown sources for granted, never feeling the need to please others. When M was M, he already possessed enough attention—whether wanted or unwanted—all seemingly projected toward him because of his disregard for others. He grew up self-sufficiently in such an environment.

All the taken-for-granted aspects of M’s life ended after H decided to become a normal person again. Last spring, M washed his face with tears daily, constantly recalling scenes of drinking, singing, mountain climbing, and making love with H. The more he remembered, the more his heart perceived the world’s emptiness. H said to M: “Can you let me go? I want to be a normal person. I’m not like you—I can’t be myself without restraint. I can’t keep going anymore. Being with you makes me too miserable. Extreme happiness and extreme pain always appear simultaneously in our relationship. I really can’t stand these huge emotional fluctuations anymore. I don’t want our situation to ruin my work, my reports. I’m under a lot of pressure. I’m worried about being fired. I can’t be with you forever. I want to be a normal person again. I beg you, please don’t disturb me anymore.” This conversation kept rippling through M’s every night like a ghost. M burrowed into his covers, wanting to stop these terrible words from repeating in his mind. He couldn’t believe these words came from the first person he’d deeply loved in this world. But the quieter the surroundings, the more piercing these words became in his world.

At some moment, all of M’s inadequacies, perversity, and extremism completely opened up to H. He became exceptionally fragile before H. To truly welcome H’s arrival, he emptied his world, hoping to leave more space and time for H. He wanted to give H the most and most sincere care, because this was the sacrifice that love—as he believed in it then—required him to make. Actually, calling it sacrifice wasn’t accurate, because when making these tacit permissions for invasion, he made the decision effortlessly, simply following his most instinctual desires and profound trust in H. Yes, this wasn’t sacrifice at all—it was M’s eagerness and willingness. But later H said he felt all of this was too excessive. “You understand, right? It’s all too much for me,” H said when facing M’s surging, unrepentant love. Perhaps M should have realized then that the problem wasn’t that his love came too abundantly—it was simply because H hadn’t left enough space for M’s love, nor had he cleared his entire personal space like M did, just to wait for H’s arrival, occupation, and expansion.

But regrettably, M really did this. His world became exceptionally barren after H left. He anxiously stared at those ruins, places where nothing could fill the brief lingering of H’s shadow. M lost that arrogant self he once was, because he had completely bound his former self with H, like intertwined laurel trees wrapping all branches and imagination around H. But after H left, M’s tree was also uprooted. What kind of person was he before falling in love with H? Why couldn’t he remember? What had H done to him?

M felt he’d been killed by H. Though when they lay naked together, when lovemaking reached its peak, M hoped H could preserve them both in those moments—he wished time could stop right there. This was a murder beyond reach, an absolute passion from love’s hunger being infinitely filled, producing such excessive satisfaction that one wanted to rush straight to hell or heaven. But after H departed, M’s death truly arrived. An M who didn’t care about others’ gazes, an absolutely self-centered M was declared dead.

The process of rebuilding the self was exceptionally long. So long that even M didn’t believe he would have a day of recovery. M’s senior once told M, “Everything will get better.” For a long time, M chatted about the same thing with different friends every day, repeating those cold words from H over and over, while recalling their former intimacy during repetition, trying to comfort the continuous and fragmented melancholy before him.

M asked whether H had ever loved him completely. H, perhaps to make M give up or perhaps being extremely honest, calmly said: “If you mean loving you with complete devotion, then no. Because I still felt guilty toward my girlfriend.” After this, M pathologically compared himself with H’s girlfriend C over and over in statistical terms. He ridiculously analyzed their academic performance, family background, appearance, education, future career prospects. The more he analyzed, the less he believed H would choose C. But H always said: “It’s not that you’re not good enough—no matter what, I can only be with a girl.” Did M believe this? Honestly, he should have believed it and had to believe it. But at that time, he believed his own judgment more than anyone else’s. His innate self-destructive tendency became increasingly obvious. He felt called to believe he had to die for this love—to defend what he imagined to be the strongest, most excellent, most pure love.

M’s love for H wasn’t without reason. M always fell for others because of being moved. The best thing H had done for him was telling M he could freely become himself and who he wanted to be, telling M that things done for pure justice that harmed a small part of people’s interests were understandable, so M wasn’t a bad person. In these moments, M felt that stubborn self received the highest affirmation. But the most terrible thing H did to M was also this. M somehow suddenly equated his entire personal worth with H’s complete affirmation. After H left, why did the former M cease to exist? M didn’t understand, but that’s exactly what happened.

How did M recover? This recovery involved too many factors, but most crucially, he realized nothing was his due—others’ care and attention weren’t taken for granted, all love was something he needed to be grateful for, and at the same time, he felt he couldn’t expect more. It seemed a kind of non-ascetic contentment finally made him feel happiness again.

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8.

Two years later, H often made a minimal request to people: “Could you help me roll a cigarette?”

To this day, H still clearly remembered the two e-cigarettes M had given him at the late-night convenience store two years ago—one strawberry-flavored, the other mung bean-flavored. That was the first nicotine he inhaled, and also the first night he kissed a lover while slightly intoxicated.

His world began to bloom (though this tree of brilliant, gorgeous flowers quickly withered). But at that time, H remembered all his rationality had to give way to this hidden emotion. This unnamed madness mocked all stable yet hypocritical structures. What they possessed were postures only permitted at night, and these secrets occupied all the dark hours. It was undoubtedly a feast, feast after feast, then regarded as infinite feasts. All immoral, irrational, violent emotions briefly occupied H and M’s world. After H felt he possessed enormous courage, H and M’s relationship was suddenly sentenced to life imprisonment. At the end, all nights were illuminated, including themselves. Daylight appeared again—this daylight, with a victor’s smile, tried to comfort H, but H knew deeply this brightness was not his homeland. Because he was always filled with nostalgia, missing the expired deep blue coastline.

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Winter’s Plot/Imagination (Small Fiction)

After Li Liren finished showering, he lay back on the bed, sliding his index finger up and down Qu Zihao’s prominent nose, muttering: “If only you could help me die…” Qu Zihao smiled with a crooked grin, then gently patted Li Liren’s still-misty hand, saying: “Wasn’t that enough just now? Looks like your appetite is getting better and better!”

Li Liren smoothly withdrew his hand and slid it straight under the covers. He thought he really did like this person beside him, but could this person help kill him? He still had doubts about this question. If a person was bent on death, should the person who loved him most—and who he also loved most—help him fulfill this major wish?

Li Liren’s only life goal was to plan his own death. He couldn’t commit suicide, nor did he dare to. He needed someone to help him. So this task fell to others. But could someone love him without seeking anything in return, and at the moment of loving him most, prove the omnipotence and selflessness of that love by killing him? He was very doubtful about this. Therefore, he needed to use his own life as the price to witness the birth of perhaps the world’s most noble love while satisfying his unspeakable life goal.

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