Chapter Fifty-Three: The Courage to Hit a Wall
Jiang Chuan took the sparkler Lin Yu handed him, the tiny sparks of the sparkler reflecting on her face. In the flickering light, he suddenly remembered Lin Yu's sleepwalking and hangover from a while back, and couldn't help but ask, "Have you been having any trouble lately?"
Lin Yu was surprised that Jiang Chuan would suddenly bring up this topic. She hesitated for a moment, then mentioned the changes at work to Jiang Chuan, without saying a word about the troubles her father's alcoholism had caused her.
"Everything is unpredictable in the short term," Jiang Chuan said seriously, his smile fading.
"Unresolved issues are a normal part of life." His words were like a scalpel, precisely dissecting the root of her long-standing problem. "Don't torture yourself over and over again because of what's normal."
Lin Yu realized long ago that he was too sensitive and had an overly strong sense of self.
In her short twenty-odd years of life, she constantly struggled with this morbid lucidity, tearing at her own shadow like a trapped beast, resisting angrily, until she was defeated, desperate, escaped, and reconciled.
Her fate may have been influenced by this kind of foresight, a tendency to build dikes in advance for storms yet to come.
But beneath the seemingly calm surface, there are often hidden undercurrents. She felt like a rusty screw on a large machine, and once discovered and removed, she would face the risk of destruction.
Jiang Chuan's words seemed to cleave a tunnel of nothingness through the shadow, piercing through the anxiety and self-doubt beneath her optimistic facade. At that moment, Lin Yu suddenly felt less anxious to go home.
She slowed her pace and turned a corner on the street adorned with colorful lights. A night breeze swept through the empty alleyways, causing the red lanterns in front of the shops to sway gently. Gazing at this familiar street scene, she realized for the first time how beautiful the town's nightscape could be.
"Jiang Chuan." Her voice was so soft it was almost a whisper to herself. "Do you think my optimism is just a protective shield against my self-indulgence and decadence?" Lin Yu looked at the rows of colorful lights lining both sides of the road. "Maybe I'm already doomed, it's just that the referee hasn't blown the whistle yet."
She has a morbid fear of mistakes and criticism. The moment she senses potential failure or negative feedback, an overwhelming anxiety about being abandoned overwhelms her. Lin Yu thinks she may never truly accept that ordinary, potentially failing version of herself.
“If you can’t feel happiness, it’s all in vain.” Jiang Chuan followed slowly, stepping on her shadow. “So from a certain perspective, success or failure isn’t that important.”
He said calmly and confidently, "Relax, break out of this vicious cycle, and seriously ask yourself what kind of path you originally wanted to take."
"Perhaps you'll find that you've already reached the finish line, and the race you were talking about never even existed." This statement may not only be advice to Lin Yu, but also Jiang Chuan's expectation for himself.
Lin Yu pondered his words repeatedly, and before she knew it, she had arrived at the gate of her former middle school. During the holiday, the school gates were tightly closed. They stood at the gate for a while, looking at the blurry outline of the teaching building through the locked iron gate, and Lin Yu felt a little disappointed.
Just as she was about to leave, she saw Jiang Chuan walk towards the guardhouse, say something to the security guard, and a moment later, the turnstile slowly opened a crack. He turned around, waved to her, and pulled her hand, slipping through the half-open gap.
"What did you say to him?" Lin Yu asked, her eyes wide with curiosity, following behind Jiang Chuan. "Bribery is illegal, Attorney Jiang!"
Jiang Chuan turned to look at her, a smile on his face. "I said I'd like to propose to my fiancée on the playground after the New Year, so I'm just checking it out first."
"Nonsense!" Lin Yu's ears burned, and she shook off his hand, walking quickly forward. The moonlight cast long shadows of the two of them on the empty playground, one in front of the other, like two parallel lines that finally met.
Jiang Chuan looked at Lin Yu's finally relaxed brows and gently took her slightly cool hand in his. "Desperate situations will give you the courage to face reality! Besides..." His palm was warm and dry, and his fingers tightened slightly.
I will always be behind you.
A bright crescent moon hung in the sky. Lin Yu's gaze passed over Jiang Chuan's shoulder and landed on a window on the second floor of the teaching building. "You know what? I actually studied piano for two years when I was little, in that classroom!"
Jiang Chuan followed Lin Yu's gaze and saw the windows in the darkness, like silent eyes, making the atmosphere in the teaching building seem somewhat lifeless.
"But my teacher was too strict. He would always hit my fingers with a pointer and criticize my mistakes over and over again."
At this point, she unconsciously lowered her head, looking at her hand held by Jiang Chuan, and said with a self-deprecating smile, "I gave up later. If I had persisted, maybe I could be playing a duet with you now."
From childhood to adulthood, she heard countless people tell her, "You are very smart, but you are not hardworking enough. If you are willing to work harder and be more serious, you will definitely do better."
But Lin Yu disagreed. She didn't want to be the better person in their eyes. Why should she have to be the best at everything? She would rather frankly admit that she was just an ordinary person with average talent and average ability.
Must one strive with all their might and excel to deserve recognition? Does being ordinary not deserve praise? Does honestly acknowledging one's limitations not deserve commendation?
Lin Yu couldn't help but think that if this point could be agreed upon, everyone would be happy, after all, the skillful are busy, the wise are worried, and the incompetent have no desires.
She stood aside, observing Jiang Chuan's reaction without making a sound. She deliberately brought up this past event, wanting Jiang Chuan to see through her and realize that she was just that kind of person—fickle, willful, and stubborn.
Lin Yu harbored two conflicting thoughts. On one hand, she hoped that Jiang Chuan would see the truth and back down, lest the accident fester into a wrong obsession in his heart.
Just like someone who has already written the ending of the story, they can confidently say, "I told you so," when parting ways.
On the other hand, she may have a hidden hope that someone could see through these fragmented truths and still choose to stay.
Over the years, she always pretended to be carefree, understanding her parents' predicament and comprehending Chen Guang's betrayal. But she knew in her heart that unfinished lessons would keep recurring in her life.
She admits that she is a pure person who is either completely accepted or completely rejected, and she can never honestly face ambiguous results.
"Perhaps you just don't like being the next Yefimov."
Jiang Chuan enveloped Lin Yu's hands in his palms. "Actually, you have many strengths. You are emotionally rich and sensitive, and full of enthusiasm for exploring the world. It's just that sometimes you lack the ability and patience to view things objectively."
"But constantly running away will only make you miss out on the experience and the chance to succeed. Now that I'm here, maybe I can give you the courage to keep hitting a wall."
The sparkler, relit by Lin Yu, emitted tiny golden sparkles between their intertwined fingers. "Don't let short-term preconceptions trap you. The results and meaning will gradually reveal themselves as you do them, and the world will reward you with happiness and freedom little by little."
Jiang Chuan's voice was low and gentle as he looked intently into her bewildered eyes. "Don't overthink it. Sometimes, a little fun and a lot of blind obedience are the best driving forces."
"If you don't think about winning, you'll never lose."
Lin Yu stared blankly at the firelight, unsure whether Jiang Chuan was referring to practicing the zither or something else. She couldn't help but recall her drunken outburst that night, and unconsciously asked herself, "If I hadn't been drunk that night, would things have turned out differently?"
The sparkler burned to its last embers, the last few sparks falling reluctantly, leaving tiny black dots on the snow. "Lin Yu, don't you understand?" Jiang Chuan suddenly pulled her closer, his fingertips running through her hair.
“We were destined to be together from much earlier times.”
Lin Yu looked down at the imperfections she had made on the snow when Jiang Chuan suddenly placed his hand on the back of her neck and gently pulled her into his arms.
Her breath hitched, and at the instant their lips touched, she closed her eyes in surrender, giving up the resistance. In a moment of heightened clarity, in her familiar surroundings, she finally allowed herself to succumb to it.
Jiang Chuan's kiss carried a hint of the sweetness of baijiu, but it was soon interrupted by an unexpected and absurd incident. A burnt smell suddenly wafted into Lin Yu's nostrils, and he opened his eyes abruptly, realizing that his hand was still clutching the still-warm fairy wand.
It was resting against Jiang Chuan's shoulder, and a charred hole was clearly visible on his expensive down jacket. A few strands of snow-white goose down peeked out from the hole, swirling and drifting between the two of them, one even gently landing on Jiang Chuan's eyelashes.
Lin Yu rarely gets stuck on a problem for too long. In the past, when she encountered a problem she couldn't solve, she could always easily get around it or simply bury it in a hole.
But tonight, Jiang Chuan dissected her greed, cowardice, and bewilderment, breaking them down and feeding them back to her, word by word. This, in turn, allowed Lin Yu to grow new flesh and blood, a strange power gathering within her.
He saw through the sensitivity and fear behind her avoidance. This insight might have come from his past emotional experiences. But they were similar yet different.
While Jiang Chuan chose to abandon the emotional connection, Lin Yu continued to feel, struggle, and try to coexist with those surging emotions. He admired and even cherished her seemingly contradictory optimism, which made him feel strange and curious, stirring up a long-lost surge of emotions within him.
He might be able to analyze pain and avoid it, but he would never learn to find solace in pain like Lin Yu did. At this moment, in Jiang Chuan's eyes, Lin Yu seemed to present a complex yet genuine brilliance of humanity.
She made him feel a real, unsuppressed warmth. In her, he saw the answer to how to live as a human being, something he could never have but longed for.
As Lin Min opened the door, the whole house was filled with the aroma of freshly cooked dumplings. She was walking towards the kitchen when she bumped into two people standing in the entryway.
To be precise, it was the conspicuous hole in Jiang Chuan's down jacket shoulder that caught her eye, with a few strands of goose down fluttering comically with his movements, leaving her momentarily at a loss for how to react.
Lin Yu chuckled awkwardly, pulled off Jiang Chuan's coat, and stuffed it into Lin Min's hands. "Fireworks may be heartless, but people are not. Mom, help him mend it!"
Lin Min pinched the hole in her hand and glared at her daughter. "I know without you saying a word, you must have burned Xiao Jiang's clothes!" Just as her fingertip was about to poke Lin Yu's forehead, her daughter nimbly dodged it.
Lin Yu carefully concealed the scar on his forehead with his bangs and darted into the kitchen. "Uncle, I'm starving! When is dinner?"
Dumplings bobbed in boiling water, the lively melody of the Spring Festival Gala filling the living room. While the dumplings were cooking, Lin Yu sent New Year's greetings to her uncle abroad and relatives back home. Jiang Chuan stood before the sliding doors to the balcony, his gaze unconsciously following her silhouette reflected in the glass.
The colorful lights hanging on the balcony cast shimmering shadows on her face, the crimson and lake-blue light alternating across her smiling eyes.
At that moment, the sound of dumplings boiling, the cheerful music on TV, and the gentle silhouette of his beloved—all the little everyday things suddenly converged in Jiang Chuan's heart into a genuine warmth, allowing him to touch the essence of life so clearly for the first time.
The nursing home called, and Jiang Chuan turned and went upstairs. On the other end of the screen, his grandmother was unusually lucid for a moment, her voice weak but gentle. He chatted with her briefly before ending the call.
The phone lit up again, WeChat messages popping up one after another, that familiar profile picture flashing in the notification bar. Jiang Chuan casually tapped the chat window, looked down at it silently for a while, then silently turned off the screen, leaving the other person coldly waiting there.
He sat quietly by the bed for a while, holding his phone. Feeling a bit hot, he took off his heavy sweater, revealing a prominent scar on his forearm, which was particularly noticeable under the light.
He hesitated for a moment, but ultimately went downstairs wearing only a close-fitting short-sleeved shirt.
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