icebreaker
The falling snow makes the winter fields silent.
Before Bai Luo could hear a single word from the other party, his phone suddenly sank into darkness.
The dim night light poured onto the dark screen, reflecting her tearful eyes.
A person sniffed helplessly, his body with a weak immune system having been gouged by the wind and snow for a long time, the coldness had penetrated into his lungs, and a drowsy feeling of coldness wrapped around his whole body.
The kitten in her arms was still warm, but she found it difficult to get up.
My legs were already sore and weak from squatting for so long. The moment I stood up, my center of gravity collapsed and my knees hit the thick snow hard.
Her hands were covered in white snow, glistening and cold. She casually brushed off the accumulated snow on her clothes, but the white marks were instantly covered by new snow.
Like life's indifference to her, it flutters down without stopping.
The stumbling slender figure slowly blended into the vast cold color.
The last bus has already left.
The long Ginkgo Avenue is deserted, with only dim lights on the snowy night.
Only snowflakes are floating, floating, floating...
I don’t know where the way home is, and I don’t know where the road ahead leads.
I don’t even know where my future lies.
Trapped in the snowy wilderness, trapped in the prison of the heart.
The phone is turned off and the navigation is ineffective.
She was born with a poor sense of direction and lost all sense of direction.
All I remember is the warm body of the little orange cat in my arms, and the layer of snow under my feet, some deep and some shallow.
But some roads become open as you walk along them. If you think too much about them, they will become useless.
Before I knew it, I was under the Hangzhou River Bridge, where large trucks occasionally whizzed past.
The car lights cut through the darkness, illuminating patches of snow and fog. The figure lying on the railing looked thin and lonely.
The lights on both sides of the river are sparse, and the fishing lights flicker, like someone lighting a cigarette in the dark, sometimes bright and sometimes dim.
The shadows of the snow merged with the light of the sky. In a trance, it was hard to tell whether the snow was falling into the river or the river was flowing into the night sky.
Being sober is too tiring, being confused is more enjoyable.
The city is full of people.
Who is in your shadow?
*
The video call came to an abrupt end.
A line of cold white returned to his vision, piercing obliquely into Bo's darkened eyes.
Most likely she realized she had dialed the wrong person.
Well, she hung up on her own initiative, saving him from having to do it.
Looking at the short 20-second call record, he pressed the tip of his tongue against his cheek.
Memory is unreasonable and strikes back.
The girl's eyes were so clean that they were almost transparent, and there was an innocent beauty between her eyebrows.
The soft and silly "little uncle" was clearly drunk, but it had a kind of bewitching effect that made people lose their minds.
Feeling inexplicably uneasy.
Call now?
Too hasty, too cheap, too low-class.
I can't let it go even if I ignore it.
After careful consideration, the message was sent with a flick of the finger.
No nonsense, no greetings.
There was only one transfer, which fell silently into her account.
The bar's heavy metal music is boiling, the roar washes over the eardrums, and the irritability rushes through the blood vessels.
He picked up a cigarette and held it between his lips. The flame flickered and the chaotic light and shadow outlined the restlessness between his brows.
Time turns into ashes and falls with the rhythm of heartbeat.
The cigarette was two-thirds burned, and a cold light suddenly appeared between his fingers.
With his bony fingers, he tapped the voice call that had just lasted 20 seconds.
Only a moment to hang up.
"The other party's phone is turned off and cannot accept the video call."
The hint flashed by. Like a clown.
Bo Xi suddenly felt something was wrong, grabbed his down jacket on the sofa and rushed to the private room on the second floor.
Someone tugged at the hem of his sweatshirt.
"What happened?"
"let go."
Bo Xi didn't look back, his figure was like a black shadow, he went up the stairs in two steps.
The corridor on the second floor is decorated with warm golden lights that make it look gentle.
The private room behind the solid wooden door is his territory. He reserved one room for his own use during the renovation.
The keys to his sports car and motorcycle were hidden in the cabinet. He had drunk a lot tonight and couldn't drive the sports car, so the only thing that could speed around was his motorcycle.
Grab the keys, pull off the helmet, and run straight downstairs.
The fierce cold wind outside the bar was biting me.
I walked into the parking lot, quickly found my motorcycle, inserted the key, started the engine, and the roar echoed in the night.
*
The horizon is the endless river.
The Hangjiang Bridge gradually blurred. The figure shrank to a dot. Desperate eyes stared at the ice marks on the gray road.
Snow is not a season for her.
It's a prison sentence. It's the beginning of a nightmare.
The snow piled up, freezing into crystals, blindingly clear. Like sugar. Like poison. Like her broken heart.
The same beauty, the same poison, the same coldness, can freeze a person from the inside out into a corpse that can only breathe.
During the first cold winter after being rescued, she often stood in front of the glass of the ward.
Snowflakes fall, ice and poison float, and memories overlap in an outrageous way.
White particles.
Is it snow? Is it poison? Is it tears? Is it blood?
She can't tell the difference.
Sometimes, she would stand by the river and listen to the roaring water.
Want to ask it:
Have you seen her?
The little girl in the pretty dress.
Has she sunk to the bottom of the river?
But the river is silent, it just keeps flowing.
Ten years. A very long time.
But she is still the little girl who can't cry out loud, hiding in the icy winter.
2008 was like a nightmare from which I could not wake up.
At the age of eleven, she was frozen in time.
Didn't grow up. Didn't leave.
She couldn't let it go.
It’s not that I don’t want to.
It’s the heart that refuses to let go.
She is waiting.
Waiting for a spring that will not melt.
Waiting for a world that can forgive her.
Waiting for a self that can call out its name.
Snow fluttered. She didn't move.
But my heart was crying loudly.
In the distance, a train slowly passed across the bridge, its whistle blasting like a belated call.
But she knows.
That wasn't coming for her.
She has long been forgotten by the world.
*
New Year's Eve, another rubbish day soaked in loneliness.
The nth New Year’s Day I have counted alone.
I'm used to it, used to rotting alone in the dark from sunrise to sunset.
Getting used to it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
"Meow~"
The kitten hidden in the down jacket seemed to be psychic, sensing the frequency of her heartbreak, and rubbed her ankle with its furry paws.
A cool white light falls on the ice-blue hair tips that give it a cool feeling.
Just like the moonlight, it kisses someone it shouldn't kiss.
The tiny gray shadow gradually turned into a white shadow. It glowed. It became hot.
Like a dream.
But dreams always end, and we will wake up.
The drunken man bowed his head as if he was kneeling to his own shadow.
Dare not look at the world.
I'm afraid that I'll burst into tears at the first sight.
Not until the light faded and the shadows overlapped did he raise his eyes in confusion.
A blinding flash of silver.
It's not light, it's silver.
A flowing, sharp, and menacing silver.
The boy took off his helmet, his fiery silver-gray hair flying like the wind, disturbing his heartbeat.
The slanting glances slid down and collided with the drunken little figure curled up on the ground.
The snow and wind were so strong that they made my eyes sore.
He thought it was the wind.
His eyebrows furrowed, and a surge of anger suddenly rose.
"Bai Luo."
His eyes glared, and with a swipe of his arm, he was already airborne. His down jacket enveloped her. Black. Like the night.
She didn't hide, didn't look, like a stranger.
He then harshly straightened the girl's frozen jaw and questioned her word by word in an unhappy tone.
"Who the hell am I to you? I'm about to turn the whole city upside down just to find you, do you know that?"
He slammed the door of the noisy bar, got on his motorcycle, and the engine roared.
The lights were just coming on, and the air was filled with damp, cold fog.
The neon lights transformed into a blurry sea of light, and the light and shadows passed across his face.
It reveals the gloom between the eyebrows.
I can’t see the pain in my eyes.
Turning into a dark, narrow alley, tires rolled over the bluestone slabs, one sound after another.
He said nothing, just accelerated.
A pair of fierce eyes swept through every inch of shadow. It seemed as if they were searching for a lost self. Or a lost heart.
The cold wind cut my cheeks painfully, but it was not as painful as the burning sensation in my heart.
He doesn't believe in fate, and he never gives up.
We sped along until we reached the Hangzhou-Hong Kong Elevated Road, a long steel bridge spanning the river, connecting the two banks.
A river of spring water, two worlds, north and south.
The south is the misty rain of Jiangnan, and the north is the windy sand of Jiangbei.
He chased her all the way until the whole city was quiet.
If you catch up with me, you will lose me soon.
She is the only person in Hangzhou that he should not lose, dare not lose, and must be picked up by him personally if lost.
Snowflakes were falling, and the two were very close, yet it seemed like a whole winter separated them.
Shoulder to shoulder, but not together in heart.
The cold wind was howling, and suddenly there was a sob.
It’s Bai Luo’s.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
It's atonement. It's supplication.
The next second, tears fell like a rainstorm, like a collapse, one drop at a time into the night.
It was as if her decadent life fell and no one caught it.
"Zhao Zhao will be obedient, I will be obedient, don't leave me."
Don't abandon her to the eternal night.
She tilted her face upwards, her eyelashes shrouded in a damp mist, and spoke slowly, each word tinged with blood.
“I’m going to make a lot of money…”
There was begging in those wet eyes.
"Can you share some of my hobbies with me?"
It's not about being greedy.
Just a little.
Just a little bit of love is enough to warm her whole winter.
She counted her tiny hopes.
One more phone call every month, even if it’s just silence, is better than eternal night.
Occasional proactive concern, even if it's just "It's cold, put on more clothes", is enough to keep her warm all night long.
Or on a journey home, her mother walked in front and she followed behind, just like in her childhood dreams.
＿＿
She was really envious.
A family of three sat under a lamp, eating. The children laughed, the parents coaxed them. The hot soup steamed, warming the whole room.
The world is really good at acting.
She wanted an ordinary and vulgar happiness, but fate made her live like a debt collector, with her head lowered, her back bent, and begging carefully.
On the first day of school at Hangzhou University, I was in a four-person dormitory with a bed above and a desk below, which was standard.
Her three roommates' parents drove their cars with the trunks filled with "love supply packages".
Bedding. Snacks and fruit. Local specialties. Endless instructions.
She was the only one who endured the bumpy, shaking, stuffy and noisy green train for more than ten hours.
My roommate talks on the phone with his parents every two days, and all they talk about is "what did you eat today" and "are your clothes warm enough."
Boring and heartwarming nonsense.
In their family group, red envelopes flew faster than their heartbeats. The elders gave them out and the younger ones scrambled for them. It was as lively as the Chinese New Year.
Bai Luo's WeChat account was as clean as an abandoned one. Only class groups, club groups, and part-time job groups stood in a cold row, silently reminding her: Stop dreaming, no one is waiting for you.
The campus is a hotbed of gossip and a live broadcast room for prejudice.
She is always being chased by shadows.
Some people see her as a loner and call her withdrawn. Some people see her as gloomy and say she's not smiling. Some people don't understand her at all, yet dare to define her behind her back.
Some people even pointed fingers and believed everything they heard, not bothering to listen to her explanations at all.
Even when there is an opportunity to clarify, people stubbornly cling to their own opinions and only believe what they see and hear.
The so-called eyewitness facts are just the tip of the iceberg.
The truth we hear is often a distorted rumor.
The world loves and warms as it pleases, but she suffers repeated hurts.
My mother’s. My roommate’s. My classmate’s. A stranger’s.
She didn't make a fuss. She just felt pain.
The pain is like a winter wound, which heals and opens, opens and heals again.
The world is overflowing with warmth and love, but they all bypass her.
＿＿
The snow fell fiercely, hitting my eyes hard and turning into wet pain.
Bo Yi looked at her, his eyes reflecting no light, only her blurry shadow.
"I should say sorry, I shouldn't be so mean to you."
He deserves to die.
Who does he think she is?
What qualifications do you have to be mean to her?
The icy white joints moved, wiping away the tears from the corners of her eyes bit by bit.
The river wind is cold. It ruffles the snow and disrupts my heartbeat.
Two broken gray shadows were reflected, appearing and disappearing from time to time.
It's like the world wants to separate them, but can't.
"Who are you?"
Bai Luo was deprived of oxygen from crying, and his head was dizzy due to his slow sobering.
But she saw him clearly.
With a clear and noble appearance, he was born to be admired by everyone.
High brow bones. Cold eyes. A scar on his left eyebrow. Far from ruining his beauty, it actually adds a touch of broken, dangerous handsomeness.
Like the ascetic villain in the comics.
Leading people to commit crimes.
Bo Qi laughed.
After searching for him for a long time and wiping away her tears for a long time, the girl still couldn't even make out his outline.
What a useless little drunk.
But unfortunately, he was even more unwilling and didn't want to abandon her.
He was the only one standing when her world collapsed.
The night at Jiang Daqiao was hazy and shimmering, with dappled light and shadow. Bo Er's warm knuckles clasped the back of her delicate neck, drawing her into a breath-touchable space.
Guide patiently and correct in an imperative manner.
"Thin yán."
Lure step by step.
"Pronounce it with me."
Reminder emphasis.
"Don't read it as 阽 (diàn) anymore"
The girl was forced to look up and stared at the handsome boy in front of her.
The wind and snow were surging all around, and his breathing was the law.
She carefully imitated his tone, note by note, and called his name obediently, softly and docilely.
"Thin yán."
When introducing yourself, speak in a serious tone.
"My name is Zhao Zhao."
May all your wishes come true and may you live in peace and tranquility every year.
I thought his name was very nice, and in the wind and snow, I called out the name clearly over and over again.
"Thin yán."
"Thin yán."
“…”
"Thin yán."
Neither haste nor slowness. Neither arrogance nor impatience.
Like a prayer, like a confirmation, like sewing his name into one's life inch by inch.
The gentle voice in the throat made the owner of the name lose his soul.
It turns out that the coldest night can be warmed by a name.
And she is the only one who holds his name.
＿＿
The blizzard night in my memory came back to me in a trance.
The wind and snow blocked the road and the world was speechless.
On the day of my coming-of-age ceremony, the same bridge. The same blizzard. The same cold. The same pain.
My mother's figure stood on the other side of the river, separated by a layer of fog, a lifetime, blurry as an illusion.
Only one sentence torn apart by the cold wind was left, crushing his entire youth.
"Your sister needs me more."
What a high-sounding abandonment.
The last sound faded away, but the aftereffects took root between his bones.
The warmth remaining in the palm of your hand is the pain of being abandoned that even snow cannot melt.
It's not burning, it's freezing.
It is a piece of ice in the heart that never thaws.
The softer Bai Luo's call was, the more clearly he could hear the sound of his heart festering.
It's not the body that rots. It's the addiction.
Once, he was a high-spirited, proud student at Nanhuai No. 1 Middle School. His school uniform collar was open, a look of disdain played on his lips, and his eyes were filled with the words "I'm number one."
The teacher said:
"This child will become a great man in the future."
The classmate said:
"He was born to shine."
I always thought that the wings of an eighteen-year-old were enough to overturn the entire sky and make fate bow down.
But fate forced him to kneel.
I want him to be bad. I want him to fall. I want him to be corrupt.
He must fall from the altar and become the dirtiest shadow in the mud.
And he submitted to his fate.
Broken bones. Broken back. Dead heart.
Grind pride into dust, trample it into the snow, crush it a thousand times, mix it with blood and ice, and swallow it into your stomach.
He became a failure in the eyes of the world, a mad dog that everyone avoided on the street corners.
He became a "dangerous element" that passersby avoided. He became a negative example that the teacher said was "a pity."
I feel decadent every day, living in alcohol, cold eyes and long nights unknown to anyone.
Never see the light of day.
＿＿
Bai Luo suddenly buried his face in the crook of his neck, muttering "cold, cold, cold".
Bo Xi instinctively responded to her embrace, his fingertips touching the outline of her butterfly bone, but he froze abruptly.
He didn't dare touch it.
It’s not that I don’t have the strength, it’s that I’m afraid that if I touch her, it will give her a wrong impression.
I thought he was still warm and could still give.
But he knew very well that it was no longer the case.
The heart is empty, the blood is cold, and only a rotten shell remains.
The snow fell harder and harder, the bridge railings disappeared, the road disappeared, and time froze the endless white.
They stood in the desolate execution ground, like two corpses that had not yet been collected.
Bo Xi looked at the trembling snow on Bai Luo's eyelashes, and suddenly recalled the wet tears in the corners of his mother's eyes when she left for the last time.
Small and crystal clear, like snow, like sugar, like all beautiful illusions.
But it drowned all possibility of redemption.
The sob in his throat was half swallowed by Xue.
The remaining half took root in my chest, growing into a thorn that pricked me day and night.
Finally, I pushed him away, my fingertips trembling as I touched a lychee candy. The candy wrapper flickered in the snowy light, like a false heartbeat.
"Eat candy and you won't feel cold."
The voice was lazy, with a hint of melting snow, but it held on and did not collapse.
But no one told him.
——Sugar is bitter.
A little bit of sweetness is a deceptive pretext.
The bitterness spread from the tip of the tongue to the bone marrow, and it lasted for eighteen years.
What he swallowed was not candy, but his own bones.
Chew it up, swallow it, and still fucking laugh.
The cruelest punishment in the world is not the pain, but pretending it is innocence when you are in excruciating pain.
He did it.
He won.
He lost.
The locomotive sped across the Hangzhou River Bridge in the night, and the snowy fields stretched all the way.
Bo Xi controlled the car with one hand, and with the other hand he pulled the staggering body behind him and the tactless cat into his arms.
The person was already extremely confused and if he was not supported, he would be thrown into the abyss by the wind.
Bai Luo's forehead pressed against the rising and falling heat in his chest, and he could barely hear any mumbling between his nose.
"I miss you so much."
"Dad, Zhao Zhao misses you so much."
"Dad, Zhao Zhao wants to find you."
There is a faint sunrise in the sky, a thin layer of orange-red.
The young man sneered, twisted the accelerator, the engine roared, and the rear end of the car dragged in an arrogant arc.
The whistling sound filled my ears, and the world collapsed and was reborn.
We must always go through the dark night to welcome the dawn.
The snow is no longer cold, the wind is no longer biting, and the whole world is making way for them.
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