Seventeen-year-old funeral

The red light on the operating room door was on all night.

Lulu had completely collapsed and was half-supported and half-carried by Aunt Zhou and taken home first.

The empty corridor was filled with dead silence and an increasingly strong smell of disinfectant.

Uncle Cheng's leather shoes paced back and forth on the cold floor tiles.

"Da, da, da," the sound was amplified in the empty corridor, harsh and anxious.

"That troublesome bastard!" He suddenly stopped, slammed his fist against the wall, and growled through gritted teeth, "All he does is stir up trouble! Wait until he gets out, and I'll break his legs!"

When Aunt Han stumbled in, her hair was messy, she had only a coat thrown over her pajamas, and she was still wearing her home slippers.

She grabbed every nurse who passed by and asked incoherently, "How is my son? Where is my son?"

When she saw the red light still on in the operating room, she felt as if all her bones had been pulled out, and she leaned limply against the wall, with only her chest rising and falling violently.

Finally, the doctor in green surgical gown came out, slowly took off his mask, and slowly shook his head.

At that moment, time seemed to freeze.

Aunt Han held onto the wall and slowly slid down, a broken sob coming out of her throat, like the wail of a dying animal.

Uncle Cheng covered his face and slumped dejectedly on a plastic chair in the corridor.

The elegantly dressed aunt who had hurried over just before dawn also began to press her eyes with a tissue and sob softly.

I stood a few steps away, looking at the brightly lit operating room corridor, as if my soul had left my body, and I felt that everything was ridiculous.

What are these people pretending to be doing here?

Where were they when Cheng Yu'an was alone, stumbling through the days and nights growing up?

He is only seventeen years old.

I suddenly trembled involuntarily, and this realization made all rationality disappear.

I couldn't help but walk forward, straight to the man who had just threatened to "break his legs." I raised my head and said in a terrifyingly calm voice, "How do you want to deal with him now?"

I haven't seen this man many times.

As I recall, the adults always praised him for his abilities and said that once he became famous, they would take Aunt Han and Yu'an to live a "good life".

Is this the good day they promised?

A look of surprise and confusion flashed across Uncle Cheng's face for a moment, and he seemed not to understand what I was saying.

"You, you guys..." I glanced at the adults with different expressions, "Now he's lying in there and will never wake up again. Are you satisfied?"

"He will never disturb your hard-earned new life again. Isn't this the good life you want?"

“Niannian!” My mother rushed over, pulled me away, and whispered, “Stop talking nonsense!”

I let her pull me, but I still stiffened my neck and screamed, "Am I wrong? There are no parents in the world as selfish as them!"

Aunt Han's crying suddenly intensified and turned into desperate howls.

The beautiful aunt looked at me with eyes full of shock and confusion.

I suddenly felt so tired, from my heart to my body, every inch of me was screaming with fatigue.

My mother and Jiang Yuanzhou half-carried me away from the hospital.

On the way home, I was in a daze.

I have been thinking about the phone call that lasted more than six hours that night after the first mock exam.

What was Cheng Yu'an thinking on the other end of the phone, listening to our drunken crying and screaming?

Are you thinking about the little cake we pooled our money to buy him on his eleventh birthday and his off-tune singing?

Or does he remember those stupid things he did when he almost got into a fight with someone just to get a rubber band back?

A long time later, when I had the courage to press that number again, I understood it in my heart.

This time, no matter how much we cry, no one will be willing to hold a cell phone and listen to us wailing for six hours.

Never again.

————

In the days that followed, my memory seemed to be covered by a layer of frosted glass, and many fragments were blurred.

I only remember that we huddled silently on the sofa in my living room where we used to watch DVDs together when we were kids. The sunlight shone through the gaps in the curtains, but it couldn't dispel the gloom that filled the room.

Lulu lay on the glass coffee table, which was once her favorite place and where she often did her homework and ate snacks. Her tears seemed to have dried up long ago, her voice was hoarse, and she was numb with a sense of despair.

"You know what, Nian Nian? Actually, we are all murderers... We are all the culprits who killed Yu An."

Her words were like a blunt knife, slowly and forcefully cutting open my heart that was trying to heal.

The pain was overwhelming and almost suffocated me.

Maybe she is right.

In that mystery of youth, whether it was intentional harm or unintentional estrangement, we all held a life in our hands. No one of us could let go of this knot, and no one could untie it.

————

Lulu fell seriously ill and took a week's sick leave. When she returned to school, she seemed like a different person.

She no longer attended evening self-study classes and was the first one to rush out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang.

I no longer have to frantically practice questions for the physics competition, and I no longer chase the teacher in the corridor with a thick stack of physics competition questions to ask questions.

The admission quota that was once extremely important to her seemed to be unimportant anymore.

Every day at noon and after school in the afternoon, Aunt Zhou would appear at the school gate on time to pick her up and take her home for dinner.

We live in the same housing estate, but we haven't had a good conversation in a long time.

I looked at her increasingly thin figure and wanted to comfort her and ask her to be more positive, but I didn't know where to start.

Jiang Yuanzhou would occasionally send me messages, which were all polite questions like "Have you eaten?" and "Have you finished your homework?"

Later, I went to the head teacher's office to hand in my homework and accidentally heard the head teacher of Class 1 and our old class teacher chatting.

"What a pity for Xu Hanglu, she is such a good seedling...her mental quality is still a little lacking, this blow is too great for her." The head teacher of Class 1 sighed.

"Fortunately, there is a Jiang Yuanzhou in your class," our head teacher also sighed.

"Yeah, that kid has been working really hard lately. It seems like he wants to fight for a spot in the recommended class."

Our teacher also sighed, "I wonder if the college entrance examination is more about mental quality than grades."

I stood outside the office door, my fingertips cold.

What do they know?

This is a human life, but in the eyes of these teachers who believe that "scores are more important than anything else", it has become a test to prove one's "psychological quality"?

I sneered and suddenly felt very bored.

Even the admission quota that once very likely belonged to Lulu has now become Jiang Yuanzhou's goal.

I know that if it’s not Jiang Yuanzhou, there will be someone else, but I can’t help feeling disgusted.

Since then, I have never replied to any messages from Jiang Yuanzhou.

He seemed to have noticed my estrangement, and the dialog box gradually became silent until there was no contact anymore.