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That night, I had a dream.
I dreamed of a time long, long ago when she and I were just children, sitting side by side in a movie theater, watching an unpopular film, with just the two of us in the theater.
The image on the screen was bizarre and took me a long time to realize it was a little boy walking alone in the wilderness. The wind was strong, and the streetlights on the distant landscape twinkled like stars. It took me even longer to realize it was me. This was a movie she and I made together, and we were the only audience, so we were the only ones who could understand it. At this thought, our hands clasped together between the seats.
She looked at me, her face flickering. She said, "Don't be sad. I'll be with you tonight. Let's watch a movie all night long."
Why was I sad? Of course, because I was about to leave and never return to this small town. And she would stay here, alone in her private cinema. In college, when I first started working, when I was still young, I kept forcing myself to accept this fact.
But when I thought about permanently losing this lively soul and gentle touch beside me, my emotions were captured by the panic of falling from a great height and the endless feeling of loneliness - in my dream, I couldn't help but think, how nice it would be if the movie never ended.
When I woke up, I fell off the sofa, and the suit jacket I used as a blanket fell at my feet, crumpled.
Because I dreamed about something that happened a long time ago, it took me a while to sort out the reality - this is the company's reception room, and I was so sleepy from working overtime that I lay on the leather sofa and took a nap.
This afternoon, I argued with the general manager about the plan change for quite a while, but after he escalated the issue to the level of the company's financial report and exerted pressure, I had to temporarily give up my personal position.
Before leaving work, I called a quick team meeting to explain the situation. As expected, everyone complained bitterly. I had no choice but to use company performance targets as an excuse to push the task forward.
I'm afraid that many people will form gangs and curse me in private, including the whole family, young and old, men and women.
Everyone worked overtime well into the night. After 9:00 PM, progress was still far off, but people began to clock out. Most were gone by 10:00 PM. The last person to leave, a graphic designer who was close to me, said somewhat sheepishly that he'd go home, shower, and then work overtime. I knew better than to expect too much, so I nodded and said nothing. We'd been working overtime for a week straight, and everyone was exhausted. It was hard to ask for more.
I was left to work on the final presentation PowerPoint. I made up for any lack of preparation in other areas by using the PowerPoint presentation as a pie in the sky.
At one in the morning, I was so sleepy that I set the alarm on my phone for a two-hour nap, and I have been sleeping until now.
I glanced at the time on my phone. It was already five in the morning. My alarm had somehow gone off. I washed my face with cold water in the bathroom and rushed back to my desk to continue revising my PPT.
But I couldn't get into working mode. My fingers were on the keyboard, but I didn't know how to move them.
It seems the dream had a far greater impact on me than I'd imagined. I simply closed my office software, opened my music player, and activated the shuffle function. I poured myself a glass of cold water to calm my pounding heart. A faint light was already visible in the eastern sky. Yet, this city, always bustling with activity, was still immersed in the sweet, cradle-like slumber.
Why do I have such a dream?
I guess it was because the female police officer mentioned Li Zitong during the day. I haven't heard this name for many years, and I feel nostalgic and sad.
The player happened to play a familiar tune. "Sunny Day," from Jay Chou's second album, "Yeh Hui Mei." It was my favorite single in high school. The nostalgic melody lingered in my ears, and before I knew it, all the emotions I thought I had long forgotten gathered like a torrent, gushing out of a spring, stirring up tiny ripples on the surface.
When I was in high school, I came to Shanghai with my mother to study. At that time, I never thought that I would stay in this city for so long.
We boarded at my grandmother's house, an old apartment in an alleyway. Her attitude toward our arrival was hardly friendly. Through her repeated nagging, I soon learned a surprising and startling fact: my mother had eloped with my father and married him.
The two met in college. Because her father was a poor, out-of-town kid, her grandparents strongly opposed their daughter's relationship with him. As a result, her mother completely broke with her family, stole her own page from her household registration book, and moved north with her father. Though it's hard to believe, her parents were brought together by love.
For over a decade, my mother hadn't contacted her family in Shanghai. Her shameless return to apologize and stay with her was undoubtedly akin to asking for a slap in the face. My grandfather, who was the most vocal in opposing the marriage, has passed away, but my grandmother is still eager to complain to all the relatives, berating her daughter for her years of unfilial behavior and emphasizing that if my mother had listened to the advice and not insisted on her own way, she wouldn't have ended up divorced and taking the children back to her parents' home.
My mother found a job selling insurance. I didn't think my proud mother was cut out for the job; in fact, her sales were always at the bottom. Fortunately, with the small monthly allowance from my father, we were able to scrape by. She repeatedly urged me not to contradict my grandmother's scolding, and she endured it herself. Of course, I had to endure it too, feigning indifference no matter what pain I encountered, because that only made things less troublesome.
The atmosphere at home is depressing and school life is not pleasant at all.
Shanghai is a bustling city, but I struggled to adapt. Its vastness was dizzying, and commuting to school required a crammed subway. My classmates and I had little in common to talk about. Our past experiences were completely different, and their entertainment was largely unfamiliar to me. Add to that the constant amusement of malicious individuals imitating my northern accent, and I quickly fell into complete loneliness.
But it doesn't matter.
I have a photo of Li Zitong. She sent it to me with a letter after she arrived in Shanghai. It's probably a class photo from a high school sports day. All the students are wearing white short-sleeved shirts and sweatpants. She's standing in the second row, fifth seat, facing the camera. Her smile is a bit stiff, but still incredibly gorgeous and captivating. I tuck it away in the pages of my textbooks. Whenever I finish my homework, I stare at it like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and then I write to her.
It was still a long time before the age of mobile phones. Although we exchanged numbers, my family's phone was located right outside my grandmother's bedroom door, and I didn't dare use it in front of her. There were plenty of public phone booths out there, but neither she nor I could afford the high long-distance charges.
Fortunately, Li Zitong is a skilled letter writer. She seems to express herself better in letters than in direct conversation. Normally reserved, she writes with a fluent flow. The envelopes I receive are always heavy, sometimes bearing overweight stamps.
Compared to hers, my letters are always short and lackluster. I don't know what to say, so I can only write about the weather and my daily experiences. But with the Gaokao approaching, my daily life is almost the same, just the same old routine of studying. It's hard to find any difference.
But the content might not be the issue. What matters is that the paper was exchanged between our hands, and the words I wrote jumped into her eyes, becoming an extension of our bodies that we could touch.
With the comfort of the letter, I finally survived my last year of high school.
We had already agreed to choose Shanghai for our college entrance exams. Because we were quite conservative in our applications, I wasn't overly excited when the scores and acceptance scores were announced. It wasn't until two weeks later when I received a letter from Li Zitong confirming that we would spend our college years in the same city that I burst into tears of joy.
During the summer vacation, I worked part-time to save up enough money for the trip. I had planned to go back to Chengguan City to visit my father and give Li Zitong a surprise. But then something happened to my mother.
Due to poor performance, my mother was constantly on the verge of layoffs at her insurance company, and her supervisor and colleagues were constantly speaking coldly. But for my sake, she persevered, shamelessly selling to relatives and friends to earn a small income. But since March of this year, she'd sold out to almost everyone she knew, and many people wouldn't even answer her calls. After three consecutive months without a single sale, she completely collapsed, lost her job, and was diagnosed with a serious mental illness.
I had no choice but to stay home and take care of my mother the entire summer. If no one was watching her 24 hours a day, who knows what she would do.
Back then, I lived in fear and anxiety every day. If I wasn't careful, my mother would take excessive amounts of medication that weren't prescribed, popping them into her mouth like sunflower seeds. If I said anything to her, she would turn the house upside down.
By the time my mother's condition had improved slightly, it was already nearing the end of August. I struggled to find time to write a long letter to Li Zitong, apologizing for my delay in replying and explaining my current predicament. I looked forward to meeting her in person when she returned to Shanghai.
But after college started, I waited and waited, but Li Zitong still didn't come, and the letters I sent her still received no response. I went to the prestigious university she had been admitted to many times to look for her, but in the end I found out that she had not enrolled.
In the bleak autumn of October, the reply finally arrived. I felt completely devastated. In it, she offered a sincere apology, explaining that she could no longer fulfill her original agreement. The savings left by Mr. and Mrs. Li Xueqiang were nearly depleted, and they couldn't afford to send her and her brother to school simultaneously, even with a scholarship. Furthermore, the siblings had no relatives in Chengguan City. If Li Zitong came to Shanghai, her brother would have to be sent to an institution like a children's welfare home. After careful consideration, she decided to forgo university and found a nursing job at a hospital in her hometown. She wanted to earn a few years' salary before returning to college.
I immediately called her long distance, trying to persuade her to change her mind. Although my family was short on money and I had no idea how to help her solve her problem, I simply couldn't accept such a cruel future. Her brother answered the phone and said she didn't want to take my call and wanted to be alone to calm down.
Later, the correspondence stopped.
That winter, Shanghai didn't snow, yet I felt frozen to the bone every day. It was the first time in my life I'd ever experienced such a long winter. By the time winter break rolled around, I'd finally settled my mother down and bought a ticket back to Chengguan City.
After leaving the train station, I didn't go home, but went to Li Zitong's house first. After hesitating at the entrance of the corridor for a long time, I mustered up the courage to knock on the door, but it was only a crack open.
"Who are you?" a man's voice.
I was stunned, and it took me a while to react. "You are Li Zitong's younger brother Li Tianci, right?"
"Yeah, who are you and what's the matter?" The other party's voice became obviously impatient.
The sound quality of landline phones back then was poor, and the voices coming from the receiver were always slightly off-key compared to real-life voices. The boy's voice behind the door was noticeably rougher and harder than I'd ever heard before.
I gave my name and explained my purpose.
"My sister isn't home."
"Can I go in and sit down until she comes back?"
But he refused to open the door. Come to think of it, the murder case back then must still have left a shadow.
"Then I'll wait at the door. What time will she be back?"
A sneer came from the other side of the door, "I think you should go back. Sister doesn't want to see you at all."
I couldn't help but get angry. "Do you know the relationship between her and me?"
"Of course I know. Aren't you the toad who has been pestering her? My sister often talks about the stupid things you do behind her back to make her laugh." His voice was filled with a damp smile.
It felt like a large basin of snow water was pouring into the back of my collar.
"To be honest with you, she's out with her boyfriend today. Who knows if she'll come home or stay the night? If you want to wait, just wait at the door."
Like a wandering soul, I wandered aimlessly in a city that was familiar yet completely unfamiliar.
The streetlights flickered, and a light snowflake drifted across the night sky. Soon, the snow intensified, swirling with wind and snow, leaving no trace of other pedestrians on the road. But I couldn't stop, and I didn't know where to go. I knew only that if I stopped, the very system within me that had sustained me until now would collapse under its own weight, my spirit would lose its support and collapse into nothingness.
The asphalt road ended, and I continued along a barely formed dirt road, through fields and woods, until an impassable body of water suddenly appeared before my eyes.
It's a reservoir. Li Zitong and I once filmed a movie here. Remembering it feels like a lingering memory from a past life.
I stood still for a long time, the heavy snow falling in sheets, piling up on my shoulders. Might as well just naturally transform into a snowman, frozen on the shore along with time. The moon hid behind cotton-like clouds, and the view was as dark as a splash-ink painting. Only the tiny ray of light collected by the lake barely revealed the presence of ripples on the surface.
The moon never appeared on that sleepless winter night.
I didn't meet my father and fled back to Shanghai directly.
There's not much to say about my four years of college. Thanks to the abundance of electives, I devoted most of my time to studying, even if I didn't earn any credits. After all, whether it was solving calculus problems or memorizing historical chronology, there was no room for emotion, making it much easier than doing other things.
With the help of a distant relative, my mother found a part-time job in the community. The salary was modest, but the pressure was low, and her mental state stabilized, though she still needed occasional care. I had no choice but to give up my boarding school life and continue living in the depressing old public housing estate.
I didn't go to school except when I had classes, so it was hard to fit in with the class. Just like my last year of high school, I spent most of my time alone, watching movies and reading. On days when I wasn't caring for my mother, I'd go out for some fresh air and while away the entire day reading on a bench in People's Park.
However, if I were to truly pinpoint the reasons for my inability to make friends in college, it wouldn't simply be "no dorm room." Ultimately, the problem lay with me. I'd lost interest in socializing. My college classmates seemed youthful and energetic, but after a few conversations, the topics became dull and monotonous. I never met anyone who piqued my interest, made me want to get to know them better, or even engage in more conversation.
Because I've been so busy studying, it's only now, halfway through graduation season, that I realize I should have started looking for a job. My classmates have already secured their jobs, but I seem to be the only idiot who hasn't made any preparations and missed out on so many campus recruitment fairs.
I hurriedly wrote up my resume and sent it out everywhere. But I don't know if it was because I hadn't done anything tangible in my four years of college, so my resume was too thin, or if the recruitment quotas of various companies had already been filled, but all my resumes fell into the sea and I never heard back.
It just so happened that my grandmother passed away from illness around that time. She left her old apartment in her will to her youngest son, who only visited her home once every one or two years. My mother, who cared for my grandmother during her final years, cleaning her medicine and urinals, received nothing. This led to a huge argument between her and my uncle, who ordered us to vacate the apartment within a month.
My mother's income was clearly not enough to cover the living expenses of the two of us in Shanghai, so I cautiously suggested that we move back to Chengguan City.
"It's too late to go back." Her mother clutched her medicine bottle tightly. "There's no home there anymore."
Time was running out, so I took out all the savings I'd saved from my part-time jobs during college and rented a 30-square-meter studio apartment. Although the formaldehyde smell was strong, it was enough to house my mother and me. I also found a job as a supermarket cashier to start collecting the salary.
Because the night shift paid more, I applied for a transfer, working until two or three in the morning each day. Dragging my exhausted body through the deserted streets, I had to steel myself. To survive in this city, I had to shed my weakness and become stronger. This resolve has remained unchanged to this day, solidifying over time and becoming the cornerstone of my life.
The company's office is on the 53rd floor. Looking out from the floor-to-ceiling windows, the night in Pudong has come to an end. Fragments of dawn are flickering on the river, and cars are starting to pass by on the street.
I took a deep breath, put down my coffee cup, turned off the music, and continued to devote myself to my work.
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