After saying goodbye to Leyao last night, I had interactions with two women: Xiaojun, who was an observer, and Mi Cai, who is directly involved in my emotional life. Both of them mentioned that I lacked a sense of security.
I didn’t bother denying it, instead I spent some time finding the reason. If my relationship with Mi Cai eventually failed, then with my weak body, who else could I fall in love with?
My emotional life would mercilessly retreat back to the most absurd period I had experienced before, but there would no longer be a woman named Leyao to accompany me, nor another woman named Mi Cai to save me.
It turned out that this fear originated from my helplessness in love. After going through a cycle, my age would not return to the starting point. By then, I would already be 28, maybe 29, or even older. How could I stand at the distance of a lifetime, facing the regret of having no love left to anticipate? And these separations, in my view, were far more painful than death itself… Death at least comes with the extinguishing of the heart, while separation is a heart that refuses to die, writhing painfully under the scorching fire.
I wouldn’t tell Mi Cai the reason I realized for my lack of security. Eventually, I just typed out the words “I love you” on my phone and sent them to her as an explanation. Then I sank into a sense of depression again… I pulled open the curtain and cast my gaze onto the dew-dampened road.
…
Under the somewhat chilly sunlight at the end of November, I spent the entire day leaning over my desk at work, and the documents I had processed had already piled up in the corner of the desk. This busy workload stemmed from the fact that various shops along the Cultural Avenue would be holding intensive events as Christmas approached, and these events’ budgets and content needed my approval.
After stretching my body, I finally lit my first cigarette of the day just before finishing work, then emptied my mind and leaned back in my office chair, watching the swaying withered leaves outside the window and the hurried crowd. In that emptied heart, loneliness thinking of someone else began to spread again, but Mi Cai, who was in a foreign country, might still be asleep… I really wished I could sail a boat into her dream.
Thinking of this, I finally smiled, extinguished the cigarette butt, grabbed my briefcase, and walked out of the company. I wanted to go to “Empty City” to sit for a while, maybe if I was lucky enough, I could meet CC. I had always believed that her singing could help people forget many troubles of the mundane world.
That evening, I didn’t drive myself as usual, but unusually took the bus. I felt that only by standing in the crowded, swaying carriage could I feel like I belonged to the crowd.
After waiting for a long time among the crowd, a bus finally swayed towards us. I placed my briefcase over my head, occupied a favorable position, and quickly squeezed into the bus ahead of many others. After exhaling in relief, I suddenly realized that my ability to blend into the bustling crowd was still there, which made my mood a bit better, so I began humming an unfamiliar song along with the bus’s broadcast.
At that moment, a child held by a young mother might have been upset by the stuffy and crowded conditions inside the bus. The child grabbed the mother’s hair and cried loudly, crying while looking out the window, the tears filled with a desperate desire to escape.
The young mother was very afraid of the child’s crying, so she threatened, “Miaomiao, if you keep crying, Mommy will sell you… Be a good child and stop crying!”
The child seemed to have already become accustomed to such threats and didn’t take it seriously at all, instead crying even louder. The young mother looked helplessly at the passengers in the bus, feeling apologetic for the child’s increasingly loud crying.
I pushed through the crowd to her side and, with a serious expression, asked her, “Miss, how much is your child worth?”
The bus immediately fell silent, and the child’s crying also seemed to hit the brakes, stopping abruptly as she looked at me with tears in her eyes… After a while, the crowd in the bus burst into kind laughter, and I also joined the laughter and retreated back to my original position. Then, through the gaps in the crowd, I watched the rows of streetlights outside the window, all lit up in the same posture, searching in this city, which was like a port, for whether there was a boat waiting for me.
…
After arriving at the “Empty City” restaurant, I habitually looked around, but besides the unfamiliar customers and a new guest singer, I didn’t find CC or Luoben. As for Leyao, it was even more impossible. Perhaps she was already with her fiancé at this moment. I was just a bit curious about what kind of man this woman, who had so many intersections with me, would marry in this life.
After ordering a mug of draft beer, I dialed Luoben’s phone. I didn’t want to drink alone on this empty and somewhat chilly night.
After a while, Luoben arrived at the restaurant. Even though he was now a well-known folk singer in the music circle, when I, his friend, needed a drinking partner, he would still drop whatever he was doing and come immediately. This was the friendship accumulated over many years, a friendship that made me feel like I still had a place to dock in this big and somewhat empty city.
I ordered a mug of draft beer for Luoben, and we began drinking under the warm air blown by the air conditioner. After putting down his glass, he asked me, “Has the Big Shot told you she’s going to Beijing to get married?”
I nodded, picked up my glass and took another sip. This time I drank a bit too much, so the coldness stimulated my forehead, causing waves of pain.
Luoben continued, “Sigh, this is yet another tragedy… The Big Shot must have cried bitterly yesterday, right?”
I didn’t speak, just nodded again. In fact, last night, Leyao not only cried bitterly on that high-rise building, but even the soul hidden inside her had shattered. Otherwise, how could she have slapped both me and herself so heavily… Suddenly, thinking again about the child who disappeared during the abortion, my heart ached once more, because that was my child.
Luoben didn’t speak either, lit a Hongmei cigarette, and looked at the female singer on stage.
Finally, I asked him, “Did Leyao tell you who her fiancé is?”
“Her fiancé?… Definitely very rich, very handsome, and from a good family background!… An ordinary person definitely can’t match Leyao!”
“Who is it?”
“Ca Jinfei, a famous young gentleman from Beijing.”
I shook my head, indicating that I hadn’t heard of this person before.
Luoben took a puff of his cigarette and continued, “It’s normal you haven’t heard of him, after all, he’s not a public figure. Unless you’re in the circle, ordinary people usually don’t get to meet him.”
I wanted to know more about Ca Jinfei, but in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to ask further. After all, they were a well-matched couple, and asking too much would make it seem like I had ulterior motives.
After finishing a mug of draft beer, my phone rang in my pocket. I thought it was Mi Cai calling me after waking up, so I quickly took it out, only to find it was a call from Zhou Zhaokun. In fact, I didn’t contact him often, so this sudden call seemed coincidental with the news of Leyao getting married… Perhaps he, who had always had a good impression of Leyao, had already learned about her wedding news!
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