Chapter 56
As Shen Haoyu lay a cold corpse under the flashing neon lights, Li Muxue beside him was smiling, a smile that contained many things that most people couldn't understand...
A week later, the forensic medical psychiatric evaluation results came back: severe manic-depressive schizophrenia, in an acute phase at the time of the incident, lacking insight into his own condition and criminal responsibility. The court's final judgment was: compulsory hospitalization for treatment, with an indefinite period.
Twenty years is enough to completely transform a city, enough to turn black hair white, enough to let intense love and hate settle into the dust of history. But for the world within the white walls on the outskirts of the city, time seems to flow at a different pace. Here, life is slow and cyclical, like a calm and stagnant stream, reflecting the unchanging light of the seasons.
Li Muxue has lived here for twenty years.
Her room was neat and simple, with a bed, a table, and a chair. Outside the window stood an ancient locust tree, its branches and leaves lush and verdant, bearing a resemblance from the one that once stood at the entrance of the old courtyard. Li Muxue was no longer the panicked, battered young girl she once was. Time had left its mark on her; fine lines appeared at the corners of her eyes, and a few noticeable strands of silver hair were mixed into her long, black hair. But strangely, her eyes often revealed a girlish clarity and sweetness that seemed incongruous with her age.
She spends most of her time talking to the air every day.
In the early morning, the caregiver brings breakfast and smiles as she says to the empty seat next to her, "Xu Chen, there's pumpkin porridge today, drink it while it's hot." Then, she carefully divides some of the porridge from her own bowl into the empty bowl opposite her, as if there really is someone she can see sitting there.
On sunny afternoons, she would sit in a chair by the window, knitting a cream-colored scarf that seemed to never end. After a few stitches, she would look up and smile gently at the swaying shadows of the trees outside the window: "Look, doesn't that cloud look like the little dog we saw in Dongling Park before? You said it was silly back then." She paused, as if listening, then covered her mouth and chuckled softly, a faint blush rising on her cheeks, "You're so silly, you're the silly one."
She would discuss with "him" what she wanted to eat for dinner, complain that "the weather has suddenly turned cold, you should wear more clothes," and ramble on about how pretty the nurse's new hair clip was, and how the pomegranate tree in the yard had borne an unusually large amount of fruit this year. Her voice was soft, with a gentle, dependent tone, the kind of tone only someone deeply in love would have.
Xu Chen never left her world. He lived in every morning sunlight, in every gentle breeze that brushed against the windowpane, in every simple meal, and in every scarf she was always knitting. He was her closest lover, her most considerate companion, the sole emotional anchor and reality in her small world.
Occasionally, new medical staff would ask the veteran caregiver curiously, "Who is she always talking to?"
The elderly caregiver sighed and lowered her voice: "Xiao Xu, her ex-boyfriend, I heard... he passed away many years ago. She always feels like he's still around. Sigh, she's a pitiful person..."
No one would deliberately correct her "mistakes." Here, lucidity sometimes meant greater pain. Her hallucinations, like a strange self-protective mechanism, built her an absolutely safe and warm haven. In that haven, there was no violence, no betrayal, no separation or death, only an unending first love.
Sometimes, she would sit quietly, staring blankly at the distant wall, her gaze momentarily empty, as if piercing through time to see some distant, blurry shadows. But that emptiness would vanish in an instant, quickly replaced by a satisfied, serene expression. Perhaps, in the deepest recesses of her consciousness, fragments of memories stained with blood and hatred still existed, but they had been cleverly isolated and sealed away by her powerful illusions. The earth-shattering matter of revenge, for her, might have long since blurred into an insignificant, distant nightmare, perhaps even "remodeled" by her into some thrilling adventure she had experienced with Xu Chen.
For her, the real world—the world of Shen Haoyu's atrocities, Xu Chen's tragic death, the legal judgment, and the passage of twenty years—had utterly collapsed and vanished. She chose to live in an eternal present constructed by her own heart. Here, time stands still in the prime of life, love triumphs over death, and her Xu Chen, forever gentle in his eyes, forever by her side.
As the sun set, it bathed the room in a warm orange-red hue. Li Muxue put down her knitting and softly said to the empty chair beside her, "Xu Chen, look how beautiful the sunset is. Just like the day we had our first date. Let's go eat at Lao Siji tomorrow. Go save me a good seat and wait for me there..."
She tilted her head slightly, her face radiant with happiness, as if she had truly heard a response.
Then, she softly hummed an old, slightly off-key love song, its melody soothing and bearing the marks of time. The song drifted through the small room, floating towards the distant horizon where the evening glow filled the sky.
Perhaps she will never wake up, perhaps she never wanted to. Because in her world, Xu Chen never left, and their love never ended. The snow falls silently, the morning breeze remains unchanged, and they will forever walk together, sweetly and happily, until the end of time…
(End of article)
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