Light

The box of videotapes Chen Hui brought with him was like a rusty yet precise key, suddenly prying open the gates locked deep within time. Those blurry, shaky, and noisy images possessed a power more brutal and primitive than even the carefully preserved photographs and diaries.

They dragged me back to the age of sixteen without any explanation, when the air was filled with the smell of chalk dust and sweat.

I rewatched the digitally restored video files with almost avidity. Every shake, every loss of focus, every clumsy, flustered voiceover recreated the uncanny image of Zhou Yu, the young man at a loss for what to do when his heart first fluttered. He hid behind the camera, carefully capturing my presence. That pure, blazing gaze nearly burned through the screen, searing me in that moment.

After watching it so many times, I can even subconsciously predict the direction of his next shot movement - he will move away hastily when I look up, and quickly focus when I look down; his hands will tremble because of a teasing from his companion, and the picture will shake into a bunch of meaningless blocks of color.

I paused at a single moment: on the sidelines of a basketball court, I was revising a sketch, a strand of hair falling across my forehead. The camera quietly, yet persistently, zoomed in, as if wanting to brush the strand away, only to pause timidly. The tenderness and hesitation of that moment, resonating through more than a decade, reverberated deeply in my heart.

Bitterness and sweetness mingled into a powerful emotion, churning in my chest. I abruptly turned off the video, and a huge silence instantly descended, but the unique, rustling sound of the DV tape still seemed to echo in my ears.

I needed to do something. I had to do something. Otherwise, this flood of memories would completely consume me.

My eyes fell on the largest, always blank wall in the studio. All my previous paintings, regardless of size, had been neatly framed within the canvas, a bounded expression. But now, the white wall felt like a vast, silent blank, a provocation.

A crazy idea popped up.

I didn't reach for my paintbrush. Instead, I went straight to the corner where the paints were stored, picked up a bucket of black acrylic paint, and unscrewed the lid. A strong chemical smell hit me, with an undeniable absoluteness.

I put on rubber gloves, only to rip them off and throw them away the next second. I needed the most direct contact.

I dipped my entire palm into the cool, sticky black paint until it completely enveloped my fingers and palm lines. Then, I walked to the white wall, raised my hand, and without hesitation, pressed my black-stained palm heavily into the center of the snow-white wall.

“Bang!”

There was a dull thud. A clear, textured black handprint was abruptly imprinted there. Like a declaration, a starting point.

Then, the second, the third... my palms, my fingers, my fists, my forearms... I used every part of my body I could reach, dipped it in paint, and smeared, splashed, and smashed it against the wall. My movements grew larger and larger, increasingly uncontrolled. I stopped thinking about composition, color, or meaning.

I was just venting, responding in the most primitive way to the gazes in the videos, the words in the diary, his pale smile on the hospital bed, and the words "Spring will expire" that were as light as a feather but as heavy as a thousand pounds.

Black arcs, splattered dots, rough scrapes... gradually covered the entire white wall. Paint flowed down the wall like black tears, like wildly growing vines. I gasped, sweat mixed with black paint dripping from my forehead, dripping onto the floor, forming small, ugly flowers. My apron and clothes were already a mess.

I seemed tireless, until the bucket of black was almost empty, until the entire wall was completely occupied by a black mark that was extremely chaotic, violent, yet strangely filled with an inner tension.

Exhausted.

I stumbled back a few steps, my legs giving way, and I collapsed onto the cold floor, my chest heaving as I stared at this sudden, massive "painting" before me, or more accurately, a ruin of emotions, a crime scene of love.

The air was thick with the smell of acrylic, mixed with the salty smell of my sweat. Silence fell again, with only the sound of my heavy breathing.

And then, in this utter, cathartic nothingness, in the black center of that raging chaos, I saw it—

It was a small piece of gray-purple color that was scraped off by a scraper and accidentally splashed into the wall texture.

At this moment, it was inadvertently outlined, squeezed, and highlighted by the surging black around it.

So small, so fragile, like a faint star in the eye of a storm, like a young sprout stubbornly emerging from the abyss of despair. It was the color of the dusk, the color of the notes he wrote on the black sand beach of Iceland, and the last bit of gentle light in his eyes.

I stared blankly at the gray-purple spot, my heart seemed to be tightly grasped by a warm and moist hand, and then slowly loosened.

So that's how it is.

He didn't want me to dwell on the past and wallow in sorrow. He left all this behind so I could be angry, unwilling, confused, and struggle... and then, from this emotional ruin, personally carve out that tiny, faint, yet inextinguishable light of my own.

What he gave me was never an answer, but a question, a question that I would need to spend my entire life describing and answering.

Without warning, the tears welled up again, washing over the black stains on my face, making it dirty and hot. I didn't wipe them away.

I just sat there, looking at the wall for a long, long time, until the sky outside the window turned from dark to light again.

The morning light streamed through the window, illuminating the mess in the room and the terrifying black wall. Under the natural light, the layers of black became richer, and the frantic brushstrokes seemed to come alive, roaring silently and telling a story silently.

The gray-purple spot in the center appears clearer and more tenacious under the light.

I slowly struggled to my feet. My legs were numb and tingling from sitting for so long. I stepped around the paint stain on the floor and walked to the wall. With my fingers, still stained with black paint, I gently touched the gray-purple spot.

Cold.

Rough.

But it inexplicably carries a kind of vitality.

I knew that from this moment on, everything was different.

My paintings and my life will continue with this indelible, violent, and warm black mark.

A few days later, when my emotions had calmed down a bit, I started cleaning up the mess in the studio. But I kept that wall. It became the most striking and authentic part of the studio's background.

I even bought a small projector.

Sometimes, late at night, I'd turn off all the lights and project those old videos onto the black wall. The blurry, pulsating images of sixteen-year-old me and sixteen-year-old him would come alive before this violent, abstract black mark. Past and present, movement and stillness, concrete and abstract, overlapped and intertwined in a strange yet harmonious way.

I sat on the floor, watching quietly. No longer crying, just watching. It was like watching a deeply moving movie about someone else.

Chen Hui had come uninvited once again. When she saw the wall, she paused, a rare crack appearing on her calm face, a look of shock, yet also... understanding. She asked nothing, said nothing. She simply stood there, looking up for a long time.

Then, she turned around and took out a thermos bucket from the paper bag she brought with her: "I made some soup at home, so there's more."

We sat down to eat the soup. The soup was hot, tasted homely and warm.

"My flight back to Zurich is next week," she said suddenly.

I nodded: "The project is going well."

"Yeah." She was silent for a moment, then added, "Take care of yourself. He..." She seemed to choose her words carefully, "...he wants to see you live a fulfilling life."

"I will," I said, and this time I knew it wasn't a casual response.

After seeing Chen Hui off, I returned to the studio and my gaze fell on the wall again. The grayish-purple tint seemed a little more pronounced in the sunlight.

I walked over to the easel. The canvas was still blank.

But I picked up the charcoal pencil without hesitation.

I know what to draw.

Not twilight, not memory, not sadness.

It is the cold, warm, cruel, and gentle things that grew out of the chaos.

Light.