"Murong Zhen, let's go out and play!"
The sound of "my friend" calling came from outside the window again. Murong Zhen opened the window and smiled faintly: "Next time, I still want to read."
"Okay, let's go together when you have time!"
Murong Zhen, who was small and still in junior high school, watched his classmates walk away happily. He closed the window, leaned against the windowsill. Unlike his classmates, he had read an entire library of books two years ago. He believed in his own wisdom, his own eyes, and even more so in his own ears.
Just yesterday, he overheard his best friend and classmates talking in the school restroom:
"Tch, if it weren't for the fact that I could cheat on the exam, do you think I would want to be friends with him? He acts like he knows everything, that's the most disgusting thing."
"That's right, good students and well-behaved kids are completely different from us!"
"Should we get someone to beat him up? We can put on a show, and then you'll be protecting him. He won't dare stop us from copying then, will he?"
"Okay, I'll ask him to go out and play tomorrow, and then..."
Leaning against the windowsill, tears streamed down Murong Zhen's face, but the corners of his mouth curled up. "Heh, child's tricks," he said to himself. He walked to the table and looked at the leaves outside the window swaying in the wind, casting ghostly and blurry shadows in the sunlight.
He reached out to grab it, but missed. He still tried his best to grab it with his hand.
“I remember seeing ghosts often when I was a child. Later, when I had these so-called ‘friends,’ I stopped seeing them. Perhaps I never had any friends among the living, only demons and monsters to keep me company.”
"Are you resenting me for making other friends, which is why you've stopped showing up? I don't want that anymore. You're the most genuine one. Even if you were a ghost, you would never lie to me."
"Truth and falsehood are intertwined; everything in the world is an illusion, only what you can grasp in your hand is real."
Murong Zhen seemed to be speaking to himself, or perhaps to the empty air around him.
The wind suddenly picked up and howled in through the window; it was going to rain.
Murong Zhen suddenly burst into laughter, as if something was responding to him. He told himself that there was someone he couldn't see or touch beside him, but this person was more real than anything he could see or touch.
Time flies, the sun and moon revolve, and Murong Zhen graduates with excellent grades from the best university in the country.
On graduation day, his girlfriend nestled in his arms, telling him about her hopes for the future. He just smiled gently, because someone had already told him that a wealthy young man was pursuing the girl in his arms.
He neither asked nor tried to solve the problem.
Human hearts are ultimately unreliable. He enjoyed his girlfriend's affection for him. After she left, he sat alone on the grass, leaning back as if there was an unseen person nestled against him.
"I can do a lot, but I'm unwilling to do it."
He laughed nervously, “All beautiful stories are fairy tales. Dreams can never overcome reality. She told me she loved me, but I could see the struggle and hesitation in her heart. The more I did, the sadder she became. It would be better if I were the one who wronged her and let her pursue reality cleanly.”
The grass swayed gently, as if asking him, "Was it worth it?"
"You should ask me, is it worth the effort to change?"
Murong Zhen laughed heartily. By now, he had read no less than 100,000 books. He could see through people's psychological reactions, facial expressions, and subtle movements. His girlfriend was like a child in front of him, and nothing could be hidden from his eyes.
"It's all fake. It's impossible to find someone who will always stand firmly on your side."
He reached out his hand behind him, as if someone had placed their hand in his palm as well: "Only you are with me, only you have always followed me, only you are someone I cannot see or touch, but who absolutely belongs to me. Everyone else is just a complex of contradictions. Do you know, when I see someone, I know what kind of person they are, what their weaknesses are. I like to observe the myriad aspects of life in bars, those ugly things hidden beneath the glitz and glamour, they truly make me extremely happy!"
Have you heard this story? Two tour groups were traveling on the Izu Peninsula in Japan. The road conditions were terrible, full of potholes. One tour guide kept saying the road was like a face full of pockmarks. But the other tour guide poetically told the tourists, "We're now traveling on the famous and charming 'dimpled road' of Izu."
This is the simple distinction between two types of people: one is optimistic, the other is pessimistic; one transmits positive energy, the other transmits negative energy, and...
Dealing with either of these types of people is quite simple.
As they were talking, Murong Zhen suddenly felt a chill on his palm. "It's raining?" He looked up at the sky, where the sun was shining brightly. He turned his head in surprise and saw a round, smiling face with bright, kind eyes.
"Do you enjoy dealing with others?" The Empress's body was still blurry.
Though a smile lingered in the Empress's eyes, a deep-seated, uncontrollable killing intent remained—the primal urge of a demon to devour the living. Murong Zhen remained silent for a long while, then embraced the Empress, placing his neck near her lips.
"No, I'm just imagining things. I'm the kind of person who's destined to be an outsider. I was born in the wrong era."
Murong Zhen's voice was low: "How I wish I had been born in a chaotic world, so that people would depend on me to live, and I wouldn't be lonely. Fortunately, I have you. You are my 'pretend,' and fortunately, you truly exist..."
At this point, Murong Zhen laughed loudly: "Is it interesting? Is it fun? Fang Zong, do you know how I felt when I discovered that the confidant I had been pretending to have actually existed?"
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