equatorial doldrums
A very familiar taste.
Bai Luo guessed who it was.
Her younger uncle.
It seemed that no one except him dared to take her away from the chessboard.
The man didn't speak and she didn't move.
The cost of confrontation is mutual destruction.
The wind blew away the faint sandalwood scent and turned the memories of the two into cold ashes.
The rain in Nanyang made the whole world cry for her, but Bai Luo just felt it was noisy.
The noise was so loud that she couldn't hear her own heartbeat, but she could hear a fatal verdict.
"He has not woken up yet due to excessive blood loss."
In one second, the fingertips pinched the palm of the hand so deeply, so hot, and so long that blood slowly seeped out.
He lost too much blood and is still unconscious.
My eyes suddenly turned red, wet, damp and bitter.
Her lip was bitten and blood was flowing. She licked it and it tasted fishy and sweet.
She made a case against herself:
"Bai Luo, you killed half of his life."
Sorry, sorry.
It is so light that it cannot crush the sky or save people.
But she still wanted to say it.
Over and over again.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Tell it to the wind. Tell it to the rain. Tell it to some damp corner north of the equator.
She remembered the bone umbrella he handed her.
Said: "Bai Luo, don't get wet."
But in the end, he got the wettest.
Blood mixed with rain flowed all over the ground.
She thought he had woken up early. She thought he knew that her uncle had hurriedly taken her away to Southeast Asia, disappearing like a fugitive.
The reality is ridiculous:
He didn't even have the strength to open his eyes.
He didn't know she was gone, didn't know she had escaped, didn't know she...
He protected her, but she pushed him to the brink of death.
Everything was caused by her.
If she hadn't accepted his proposal last winter.
Would he not be lying in the hospital room, his life hanging by a thread?
Will they pass each other on the Hangzhou University campus again?
Unfortunately, there is no if.
She is not an innocent girl, she is the chess player and the loser.
We can't implicate him anymore.
He deserves to live in the sunshine, not to take bullets for her, bleed for her, and die for her.
She sows the seeds, she reaps the fruits, and she bears the consequences alone.
It's only natural.
Being born is original sin, and escaping is futile.
Shang Yu moved an inch closer to her, and his elegant figure cast a shadow, blocking the blue rain of the Pacific Ocean for her.
He looked down at her face with a cold gaze, as if he was looking at a lost and recovered private property.
Cold, decadent, and beautiful to the point of being morbid and rotten.
He rolled his Adam's apple silently, his voice softer than the damp night.
"Want to go back?"
"Any time."
But his fists broke the rules, his knuckles turned white, and the selfish desires in his heart burned hot.
He didn't want to let her go at all. He just wanted to lock her up by his side, even if it meant destroying her escape route.
The island's boundary is the sea. The sky and the sea are one, a blue that reaches the end of the world.
Like a floating cage.
Bai Luo sniffed lightly, and with each breath he took, sobs broke through his defenses.
She only said three words.
"Is it safe?"
Three words, all lies.
She doesn't care about safety at all.
She just wanted to see him, to throw herself into his arms, to bite his lips, to pinch his shoulders, to do everything that "couples should do", to do it thoroughly, and to ingrain it in her bones.
It is to seek death.
It's the madness of crashing into something even though you know it will break.
She didn't want to live anymore.
As long as he is still here.
But reality sentenced me to death.
Is it safe?
How can it be safe?
The dark web is priced, her name is the currency. With the wanted order out, people are hotter than gold.
In the global black market, she is not a fugitive, but a living asset.
Time is like tropical rain, falling season after season.
She understood his silence.
Not safe.
From the moment she was put on the price tag, safety was dead.
There were countless evil shadows staring at her hungrily.
She didn't want to drag him into this anymore.
He was not originally a victim of Panqi.com.
It is ultimately a dream destined to be shattered.
"Uncle."
"When he wakes up, don't tell him where I am."
She knew him too well.
——Madman, a pure madman.
He is stubborn and vindictive. He doesn't believe in fate and refuses to let go. He is possessive, paranoid, and pathological, hurting others and himself.
She would rather he hate her than die from his obsession.
The wind from the other side hides a floating island, drifting towards the monsoon belt.
Shang Yu's clenched fists relaxed, a rare moment. A thin layer of sweat was blown away by the night breeze.
"good."
As long as she can stay alive and away from him... that's all.
*
Bai Luo is sick.
Her ailment was the never-ending damp season.
The days are long and unbearable, and the nights are sleepless.
The disease took root, sprouted, and grew wildly in the rain. She festered inch by inch between dreams and wakefulness.
In my dream, the rain was pouring down, and the world was turned upside down. When I woke up, my eyes were covered with tears, and I couldn't tell whether it was rain or tears, pain or regret.
Calling out but receiving no response, she immersed herself in her own rain. One person's rain fell for a lifetime.
My consciousness jumps back and forth day after day. One second of clarity, the next instant of falling.
The cycle is like a rainstorm, endless.
In the intervals between nightmares, there was always a young man calling her name over and over again.
She remembered the warmth of his palm, the light in the corners of his eyes when he smiled, and the arc of his hair when he lowered his head.
But she couldn't catch it, just like she couldn't catch the shadow in the rain, just like she couldn't catch herself who said "forever" in the sunshine that day.
Yes, forever.
Two fools, holding hands, swore an oath under the scorching sun.
The golden daylight was so warm it seemed like an illusion, and the shadows clung to each other, as if fused into one.
It’s like a season that never gets cold, and like a bitter summer that never ends.
Once the dream is shattered, everything is fake.
The oath rotted in the rain, and the sunshine became perjury.
There is only the winding and humid South China Sea, only the lonely and dark blue ocean.
Sobriety is an intermittent absolution for her.
Bai Luo walked barefoot on the soft sand, aimlessly along the coastline.
The wind pushed her and the sea watched her.
I don’t know what you are thinking?
Ten meters away, the butler was a tamed shadow, following closely.
I dare not approach, dare not lose my mind. It shouldn't exist, yet it exists.
On a whim, she boarded the dark-as-night catamaran. In the center of the deck, a folding easel stood quietly.
There is only one person painted on the pure white canvas.
It's not a portrait, it's not a sketch, it's a recollection.
The front face is her obsession that she repeatedly depicts.
The back view represents her past that she is hesitant to talk about.
Her lips are the only coordinates of her heartbeat.
The silhouette is the banned drug she secretly hid.
Eyebrows and eyes are her destined tattoos.
Every stroke of the pen seems to be cutting out the heart, yet also seems to be resurrecting it.
Melancholy arises in Southeast Asia.
It took root, grew wildly, and became her flesh and blood.
Depression, anxiety, and repeated nervous breakdowns. Autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Delusions of guilt. Shortness of breath. Dizziness. Hand tremors.
She was afraid that one day his face would be incomplete. She was afraid that as she continued to paint, the person she was painting would become a stranger.
She didn't want to forget, but she couldn't control it.
My brain betrayed me. My memory collapsed.
The world is saying:
"Forget him."
She kept shaking her head.
The disease can destroy her body, but it cannot destroy her obsession.
She can forget names, forget dates, forget who she is.
But she couldn't, and wouldn't allow herself to forget him.
She would rather go crazy than delete him.
*
The sky and the sea merge into a line, the blue is endless, like a doomsday that will never end.
Bai Luo was wearing a pearly white waist-length halter dress and had her hair half tied up like a princess.
Oil pastels were scattered all over the floor, red, black, and gray. On the palette, the colors dried, cracked, and shattered.
Colors exploded and emotions collapsed.
The boy in the painting was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt that she bought for him, with flamboyant silver-gray hair and a sly grin on the corners of his lips.
It's just like every time he bit her lips until they bled, and then he dared to blink and pretend to smile innocently.
That kind of arrogance and madness were all carved into the painting and into her bones and blood, stroke by stroke.
Large areas of the canvas are left blank, or covered with a few strokes of light gray.
It's not negligence, it's deliberate.
Without him, her world was dark.
The sea breeze blew by, ruffling her hair and blowing a corner of the drawing paper.
It was as if the boy had come alive, vivid and lifelike. Against the light, on the wind, he walked towards her, and he was smiling.
She knows.
It's a dream. It's an addiction. It's an illusion. It's self-deception.
Delusions are like butterflies, dancing on the ruins of memories.
The boy was the calamity that would never reach her in the spring, and the madness that she had raised with her own hands.
Today marks the 130th day since Bo Yi fell into a coma and the first day of the Chinese New Year.
On a foreign night, with time differences and a reversal of day and night, she was alone, guarding a painting and a cold lamp, celebrating the so-called "New Year."
There's nothing to celebrate.
The years that a person endures alone are not called years, but habits.
＿＿
The residential buildings in Nanhuai are very old, with mottled walls and creaky stairs.
On New Year’s Eve, every household puts up Spring Festival couplets and hangs lanterns, and the door lintels are covered with festive red.
It was popular and lively. It was popular...it had nothing to do with her.
As the sky was about to darken with blue hues, Bai Luo slowly climbed up the mottled cement steps.
In his palm was a pair of cheapest red paper Spring Festival couplets with curled corners.
I pasted the Spring Festival couplets on the iron door with peeling paint, and while pasting, I smoothed out the wrinkles with my fingertips, as if to soothe my wrinkled thoughts.
First line: "All the best."
Second line: "Peace and joy".
She traced the handwriting one stroke at a time according to the printed template. The strokes were crooked and the edges were uneven, but she wrote it very carefully.
She looked up for a while, then suddenly laughed, her eyes sore from laughing.
Seeing that she came every year, the owner of the convenience store would always give her an extra "Fu" character.
"Little girl, good fortune will come."
The proprietress said this with a look of pity that was too painful to look at.
She took it and said softly, "Thank you
But they never stick the word "Fu" upright, but hang it upside down in the window, hoping that when it falls, it will at least face the ground instead of the sky.
Late at night, the whole building was lifted by the sound of firecrackers, and red confetti fell all over the alley like snow.
The fireworks outside the window rose, lighting up the sky and brightening the eyes.
She sat down at the small wooden table, the broth boiling, dumplings floating in it. The cabbage and pork filling was her father's.
He always said:
"Cabbage, a hundred fortunes, attracting wealth and treasures."
But after her father left, the money didn't come, and the people dispersed. She was left alone, guarding the old taste.
Bite it.
The first bite is fragrant. The second is sour. The third is tears. It is the bitterness marinated by time, the pain soaked by memories.
The welcome party was filled with lively singing.
The host said: "Reunion time!"
But all she heard were the intervals between her own heartbeats, beat after beat, echoing in the emptiness.
She always thinks:
Are some people born not to be reunited?
Are some hearts destined to freeze alone?
She didn't want to believe it.
But the night was too quiet, the alley too long. After the fireworks faded, she was left alone, watching over a pot of cold dumplings and a house of fading excitement.
＿＿
People all over the world are celebrating the Chinese New Year, and thousands of fireworks are launched into the sky, illuminating the entire earth.
From New York to Tokyo, from Paris to Sydney, from Southeast Asia to Hangzhou and Hong Kong.
The whole world celebrates and the whole globe joins in.
Not wanting to endure the loneliness, she set out two sets of bowls and chopsticks, poured two glasses of wine, and said softly:
"Happy New Year, Bo Yi."
Even though he can't hear.
It is like going through a calamity, a calamity that has no end and no point.
Bai Luo picked up his long-abandoned cell phone for the first time.
After she woke up, Shang Yu returned it to her, along with a new phone and a new card.
For so long, I have been deceiving myself and dare not touch the power button.
She was scared.
Afraid that the familiar photos on the lock screen would sting her eyes. Afraid that the piles of "Are you okay?" would pierce her disguise. Afraid that her tears would fail to obey.
There are two cards inserted in the original machine.
Card 1, campus card, for daily use. Send notifications, access control, and chat. A common tool.
Card 2 was issued by Nanhuai, and the only contacts were my mother and Bo Xi.
She hooked her finger at the housekeeper and said, "Take out the card pin." The action was quick and crisp, and with a "click", card one was ejected.
A tiny, thin piece, blown by the blue sea breeze, fluttered into the deep ocean, sinking into the lightless end.
Data reset to zero, contact severed, game over.
People always have to look forward, don't they?
The sea is the inverted sky, reflecting the shadows of the clouds.
Everyone wants to swim into the sea, to be a free little whale. Seven seconds of memory, then forgetfulness. Pain forgotten, only joy remains.
A-jie, you won't blame me.
Is it right?
I can hardly even fool myself anymore.
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