The way home
Since the party, summer vacation has become even more relaxed, and the boring days are like a stretched rubber band, without beginning or end.
In this void, Ethan-style inner monologues began to emerge quietly and uncontrollably from the cracks of life, like water seeping into fabric, quietly taking over her thoughts.
One afternoon, she squeezed onto the subway to go to the city center. The carriage was stuffy and filled with a cacophony of sounds: the blasting effects of games, the catchy tunes of short videos, sporadic arguments, and announcements over the loudspeaker.
Pan Qiu had a sudden thought—it's so noisy, all useless noise.
Almost simultaneously, that thought was transformed into a calm voice that resonated in her mind:
Noise is not a lack of value.
It was like a rebuttal.
Pan Qiu froze, then couldn't help but smile bitterly. It was clearly her own thought, yet she had to use Ethan's voice to express it. —How wonderful, even the right to complain about noise has been "academized."
On another occasion, she wandered among the bookshelves, her fingertips slowly tracing the spines of each book. The paper felt cool to the touch, but she wasn't really looking for anything; she just mechanically reached out.
A vague thought flashed through my mind—I'll just buy any book, they're all pretty much the same anyway.
Following this, Ethan's voice, restrained yet sharp, emerged:
"Hesitation is actually just avoidance in disguise."
Pan Qiu subconsciously protested in her heart: "I'm not running away, it's just... I don't know what I want."
The response had barely finished when it came from Ethan's voice, but it was much gentler:
You are searching for something you can't yet name.
Her fingertips rested on the spine of the book, and her breathing became slightly disordered.
That sentence was like a ray of light, shining into the most obscure corner of my heart.
So what exactly is she looking for?
On the sweltering afternoon of midsummer, she lay sprawled on her bed, scrolling through her phone, forgetting even what she was looking at. Time evaporated, leaving only an empty weariness.
A thought popped into her mind—if things continued like this, she would be overwhelmed by boredom.
At the same instant, that voice suddenly rang out:
"Avoidance doesn't create rest. Only direction does."
Sharp as a scalpel, it dissected her excuse completely.
Panqiu stared at the ceiling in silence for three seconds, then slowly retorted in her mind: "Okay, okay, I got it. You win again."
She turned over, buried her face in the pillow, and gave a muffled laugh.
She was studying inner speech, but now it felt like she was conducting a "live experiment": she was both the experimenter and the subject, coldly watching how those inner words emerged and how they inexplicably entangled with her in Ethan's voice.
It's as if his thoughts have taken up residence in her brain; she's become accustomed to the fact that she can never win an argument with him.
She sat up in a daze, her phone slipping off her pillow, but her gaze fell on the open notebook on the desk.
A sudden surge of restlessness rose in her chest. She reached out and flipped open her notebook, writing down a few words: "Research plan after the start of the semester."
The moment the pen touched the paper, she felt a sense of ease in her breathing. It was as if the emptiness of the entire summer had been swept away by that one sentence, leaving only a clear direction.
But as this exhilaration subsided, another question arose in her mind: did this power come from the research itself, or from the inner language she had given Ethan's voice?
On the surface, she tells herself: This is research, an academic calling. Ethan's inner monologue is nothing more than a form of "self-psychological suggestion," like an academic echo that pulls her back from the void.
On a deeper level, she couldn't deny that the very fact that she used Ethan's voice to construct her inner speech, instead of someone else, or even her own tone, showed that the research and Ethan were already inextricably intertwined in her mind.
This experience is contradictory and ambiguous.
When she is thinking, those inner words are like the rational guidance of a mentor, calm and resolute, giving her strength; but when she hears them repeatedly in the dead of night, it is as if he is accompanying her.
The "journey home" she is about to embark on is not the journey back to China for summer vacation, but rather the return to her daily life of doctoral research after the summer vacation ends.
After a long and winding journey, at nine o'clock at night, the taxi stopped in front of the little red house.
It was still that familiar summer night smell and the symphony of insect chirping.
Panqiu dragged her suitcase into the house. The moment she opened the door, a long-lost sense of peace welled up in her heart—she had finally returned to her "home".
She knew that Yueyue had moved in a month ago. Thinking of this, she even breathed a sigh of relief: at least, she wouldn't have to face that empty loneliness so directly anymore.
But when she pulled her suitcase through the door and looked around, she paused for a moment.
No one was home, and everything inside seemed exactly the same as before she left. It was eerily quiet, as if time had been frozen in place.
She walked to Zhiwei's door, which was ajar, and the room was still empty. There was nothing there except a bed.
The only change was that there was a new light-colored sheet, a pillow, and a neatly folded quilt on the bed.
Apart from that, there were no other traces.
That was the only clue her new roommate had left her.
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