Watch the world for you
He took the college entrance examination.
With his extraordinary talent and an almost masochistic focus that suppressed all pain and longing, he achieved excellent results that were enough to open the door to any top domestic university.
Countless eyes of praise, envy, and congratulations were cast upon him, but he felt no joy at all, and his heart was cold and dead.
Those scores and glory seemed so pale, ridiculous, meaningless, and even like an irony in the face of her lost young life.
Every time he put pen to paper, he seemed to see her expectant eyes, and every time he scored, it was like adding a heavy weight to the scale of her short life.
In the end, he unexpectedly, almost stubbornly, and in a sense of self-exile, chose to stay in the south city and study art at a local, inconspicuous university.
He couldn't leave this city, which had all the traces of her life, all the memories of their brief encounter, her scent, and her grave.
Leaving here seemed like a betrayal to her and a slackness in the promise.
He needs to live in this city filled with her shadow, feeling her presence but also feeling the eternal loss.
He eats on time, and even if the food tastes like wax, he will swallow it mechanically as if completing a task, maintaining the most basic functioning of his body.
He went to bed on time, and even though the long nights were always occupied by nightmares and her pale face and last smile, he would force himself to lie on the cold bed with his eyes open until dawn, or wake up from a suffocating dream, covered in cold sweat.
He was like a sophisticated but empty, soulless machine programmed to "live", strictly and meticulously fulfilling the most basic promise he had made to her.
However, in his world, there was no more color, no sound, no warmth. All that was left was a gray, dead wasteland forever soaked by rain.
He used all his savings and the proceeds from selling his paintings to rent the old studio near the school where they had painted together.
This was where they had shared the most quiet time.
The air seemed to still have the smell of turpentine, mixed with the faint fragrance of her body and the golden dust floating in the sunlight.
Here, there is her silhouette concentrating on painting, their occasional whispered conversations, and the afternoon that changed everything when he agreed to be a model.
He carefully preserved the original layout of the studio, even the place where she used to put the easel and the small stool she sat on, he did not move at all, as if she was only away temporarily and would be back at any time.
However, there were no other paintings here. All the space, from the mottled walls to the high ceiling, was occupied by his own paintings - thousands of them, densely packed and stacked layer upon layer, like a silent, sad altar, all of her.
She smiled, she frowned in thought, she bit the tip of her pen while drawing seriously, she shivered slightly while waiting for him in the rain, she leaned against the window reading with the sun shining on her hair, she had sparkling eyes as she applauded him at the basketball court...
He used his paintbrush to depict every detail of her in his memory over and over again, tirelessly and frantically.
Drawing, watercolor, oil painting...all kinds of media, all kinds of angles, all kinds of light.
It was as if he wanted to carve all her appearances, all her expressions, and all her moments deeply and forcefully into his soul and into his bones and blood.
I am afraid that as time goes by, the memory will become blurred and her smile will fade.
These paintings are proof of his survival, but also his eternal punishment.
The unfinished portrait of him and her was carefully framed in the best custom-made frame, as if it were a sacred relic, and hung in the center of the studio with the best light, like a silent monument.
Every day, he would sit in front of the painting in silence for a long, long time, sometimes an entire afternoon, sometimes all night.
He looked at the young man in the painting, who was enveloped in soft light and shadow, his eyes carrying a hint of gentleness and tranquility that he himself had not even noticed. That was him in her eyes.
That man, clean, with a little melancholy, but still has a glimmer of hope for the future, and is qualified to stand by her side.
And the self in the mirror is left with only the emptiness, vicissitudes and numbness that have been eaten away by guilt and endless longing, like an old, lost soul.
He walked through the streets and alleys of South City for her.
With the camera, and more importantly, with his eyes and heart, he captured and recorded the scenery she had mentioned casually during a chat that she wanted to paint.
The mottled walls of the old town are covered with vines that turn red in autumn.
The weeping willows beside the moat glow golden in the sunset and sway in the wind.
The market, freshly awakened from the morning mist, is full of life, with dewy vegetables and steaming breakfast stalls...
In every corner, there is his lonely, silent figure and silent narration.
He would stop at those places and whisper into the air, "Yile, look, this is the place you were talking about. I've checked it out for you."
He went to see the sea that she had longed for for her.
Standing on the deserted beach before dawn, watching the dark blue sea surge onto the beach tirelessly again and again with eternal power, hitting the rocks and making a low and eternal roar.
The salty sea breeze ruffled his black hair, which he no longer carefully groomed.
He took out a photo of her that he carried with him, in which she was smiling with her eyes curved, and whispered to the vast blue that she had never seen with her own eyes, but his voice was carried away by the sea breeze.
"Yile, look, this is the sea. Is it the same as you imagined? It's... huge, very blue, endless, and the sound is beautiful, like... like an eternal sigh."
The sea water flooded over his ankles, freezing cold, but not as cold as the chill in his heart.
He went to the vast desert for her.
In the cold, soul-freezing night, wrapped in a thick blanket, lying on the sand dunes, looking up at the breathtakingly magnificent night sky that seemed to have been washed by water and dotted with diamond-like stars.
The Milky Way stretches across the sky like a shining, silent river.
He murmured softly into the brilliant, ultimate silence, the white breath he exhaled quickly dissipating in the cold air.
"Yile, the stars here are far more numerous and brighter than the ones we saw in South City before. It seems like you can pick them with your hands. Just like... just like the light in your eyes, so many and so bright."
Tears almost froze in the corners of my eyes due to the extreme cold.
He climbed the towering, thin-air snow-capped mountains for her.
At a pass thousands of meters above sea level, where the wind is as cold as a knife, we face the cold wind that can penetrate into our bones.
Looking at the rolling white sea of clouds below her feet and the holy snow-capped peaks in the distance, they were dyed with a gorgeous golden color in the morning light, just like the blush that once appeared on her cheeks.
His lips were purple and his face was pale from the cold, but he still stubbornly held up her photo, letting the holy, warm light also cover her eternal smile.
"Yile, sunrise... Look, the sunrise over the snowy mountains is like this. Beautiful, peaceful, and... clean, just like you."
The sound trembled in the wind and was almost inaudible.
In every place she had ever dreamed of setting foot, he would do the same thing - take out her photos and softly tell her about the scenery, the smell and the sounds there.
It was as if she had never left, but just changed the way she accompanied him to complete this long, lonely, endless journey.
He kept his promise of "only being sad for a while" and lived hard and mechanically, traveling and painting.
But that sadness is no longer a surging, visible wave, but has turned into a silent, yet omnipresent underground river, blending into his blood, engraved into his bones, and becoming a part of his life.
It was inseparable, following him like a shadow, defining every day for the rest of his life.
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