As the word “elopement” kept coming out of Jian Wei’s mouth, my mind was pulled back into the whirlpool of memories. I recalled every detail of how she had followed me to Suzhou years ago, defying all odds. Although this was now a worn-out chapter of the past, the expressions of satisfaction, sadness, joy, and heartbreak on her face during those days surged through my emotions in an instant, leaving me unable to return to face her inside the room.
Finally, I heard Mo Zishi respond to her, “What I meant by elopement was just to show you my determination. Objectively speaking, it never really existed. If only you had bravely stood by me, we wouldn’t have ended up in a situation so desperate that elopement seemed like our only option!”
Jian Wei’s tone became increasingly pained as she kept repeating the word “elopement.” Mo Zishi, sensing from her reaction that this word had touched the deepest recesses of her heart, softly tried to comfort her, saying it was just a slip of the tongue and urging her to calm down.
To avoid further agitating Jian Wei, Mo Zishi left the room, leaving only Yan Yan and Qin Yan to soothe her. As the man who had originally taken her away in an elopement, I lacked the courage to face her again. I simply stood outside the cold, desolate house, feeling a profound sense of loss.
Mo Zishi came to stand beside me. He asked for a cigarette, placed it between his fingers, and hastily lit it, as if borrowing the flame in haste. He took a quick puff and then coughed violently, clearly inexperienced in this act. I lit a cigarette as well, exhaling the smoke in textbook fashion, letting it blend with the light from a nearby lamp before it dissipated into the air.
Inside the house, silence finally fell. After a long while, Jian Wei’s voice, full of sorrow, broke the quiet: “Yan Yan, tell me why I always feel like I’ve experienced certain things before, yet I can’t remember anything at all. This feeling is as if it’s hollowing me out completely—I can’t take it anymore!”
“Vivi, if you can’t remember, then don’t force yourself. Sometimes forgetting is actually a form of relief. Please don’t keep tormenting yourself like this. I’m begging you, okay?”
A heavy silence filled the room. Through the window, I saw Jian Wei’s expression, nearly broken. Finally, she softly said to Yan Yan, “You guys go back first. I’m tired. I need to be alone for a while.”
…
This evening, which should have been pleasant, had turned somber due to Mo Zishi’s unexpected arrival. However, this was not solely Mo Zishi’s fault—it was the unresolved history between Jian Wei and me that had dragged him into this mess. If there had been a possibility for Mo Zishi to meet Jian Wei early on, right after our breakup, many things might not have turned out so regretfully and complicatedly.
After leaving the sanatorium, I drove Mo Zishi to a nearby hotel. On the way, we inevitably ended up talking about Jian Wei. He gave a bitter smile and said, “Zhao Yang, do you think fate is a strange thing? At first, I had only promised Xiao Cai to do my best to treat Jian Wei, but now it has turned into a destined entanglement. What’s most incredible is that you were her subconscious first love, and yet here we are, having this conversation about her past and the life she might live in the future.”
“Many things in life are indeed beyond our control, which is why we often describe the world as absurd and bizarre.”
Mo Zishi remained silent for a moment.
I slowed the car slightly and asked him, “I roughly understand your view on love because we’ve talked about it before. So now I’m curious—why is it that you, who could have countless women, ended up falling for Jian Wei, a woman whose life is full of gaps and incompleteness?”
Mo Zishi looked at me and, with a natural expression, asked in return, “Then tell me, Xiao Cai had countless golden men to choose from, yet why did she stick with you so devotedly? She did so much for you, sacrificed so much, even disregarding her own life without regret. How do you explain that?”
“What do you mean by ‘disregarding her own life’?”
Mo Zishi hesitated for a moment and replied, “I’m just exaggerating for effect. What I mean is that love isn’t something that requires reasons or truths. Sometimes it happens in an instant, and in that instant, many people bind their entire lives together. Do you understand?”
“I know. The reason I question it is because I’m worried that your feelings for Jian Wei are just a fleeting, unreliable impulse. She has practically nothing left now, except for that beauty that makes every man’s heart flutter. If you’re only after her beauty, then you would be a dangerous man to her—that’s my concern.”
“I don’t want to explain because it’s not something that can be explained… but I must admit that my relationship with Jian Wei isn’t solid. My biggest fear is her memory issues. Suppose one day she regains her memories and still can’t let go of those deep feelings for you—would that be fair to me? Where would I go then? For me, family pressure is something I can overcome, but I have no confidence in dealing with this particular issue. Can you understand my concern?”
I was silent for a long time before I replied, “I understand, which is why you didn’t take her to the United States earlier. But she misunderstood, thinking she wasn’t good enough for you and that she had brought you a lot of family pressure!”
“That’s one way to put it… Why is it that she can remember so many things from her past, yet has absolutely no memory of you? From a neuroscientific perspective, this is actually a sign of her being unable to let go completely. That’s why the accident triggered the brain’s protective mechanism, causing her to selectively forget you!”
A mixture of emotions welled up inside me, but I had no words to respond.
With a light sigh, Mo Zishi continued, “Now I don’t want to think about it too much anymore… because I just like her so much! I want to take her to live in the United States. Aren’t her parents hoping for that too?”
“I won’t deny that this could be a good outcome for her…”
Mo Zishi picked up where I left off, saying, “But now she’s unwilling to give me that opportunity anymore!”
“Just be patient… time will give you the answer!”
“Yes, there will be an answer, whether good or bad!”
…
Back at the old house, I couldn’t fall asleep, so I kept wiping the coffee table that Mi Cai had once loved to work on. I stared at its almost transparent glass surface for a long time, lost in thought, until the phone rang and brought me back to reality.
I answered the call, and the familiar voice of Leyao came through: “Zhaoyang, are you free now? Come watch a movie with me.”
“Are you in Suzhou?”
“Yeah, I did a TV show recording in Shanghai this afternoon, then had dinner with Luoben, Xiaowu, and others in Suzhou tonight.”
“Oh.”
Leyao sounded a bit impatient as she continued, “Don’t ask me these irrelevant questions—just tell me if you’re free or not.”
“You have to tell me what movie first. I’m not into urban romantic dramas!”
“So that means you’re free then… Wait for me at the entrance of your residential compound. I’m driving over to pick you up and should be there in about fifteen minutes.” Leyao hung up in a rush, leaving me feeling helpless once again. Who knows where she had gotten the urge to go see a movie on such a cold winter night.
It was indeed a very cold night, so I put on a thick down jacket and a scarf before standing by the bus stop across from my neighborhood, waiting for her. Soon enough, a rare pink Range Rover approached, and I saw Leyao inside. It seemed she had transformed into a pink-themed girl for the night, wearing a pink scarf and knitted hat.
She signaled me to get in through the window. I immediately opened the passenger door and sat down, puzzled as I asked, “Are we going to the cinema? Your movie just came out, and you’re super popular now. If your enthusiastic fans recognize you at the cinema, it’s going to be a big mess. And when that happens, don’t expect me to help—I’ll probably run off selfishly without a second thought!”
“Don’t talk. You’ll know soon enough.”
…
Leyao drove the car toward the city’s outskirts, and the emptiness of the place made me feel uneasy. Finally, I couldn’t help but say to her, “This place is kind of creepy and desolate. Is there even a cinema around here? Can we not make it feel like we’re filming a horror movie? I’m telling you, my heart isn’t in good shape lately!”
“Don’t be dramatic. Don’t complain. Just be a real man for once!”
When Leyao finished speaking, a lonely stretch of railway tracks appeared in front of us as she turned a sharp corner. She drove a bit further before finally stopping the car. I felt increasingly uncomfortable in this desolate, uninhabited place until I saw a dilapidated white wall diagonally across from us. It gave me a slight sense that someone had once been here, but there was nothing else—just the railway tracks and the abandoned wall, not even a scrap of trash or any planted flowers, trees, or shrubs.
Leyao checked the angle between the car and the wall, then got back into the car. After adjusting the direction twice, the rear of the car was now facing the white wall directly. She then opened the trunk and stepped out. I watched her with confusion, having no idea what she was up to.
At that moment, a beam of purplish-blue light from the trunk projected onto the isolated and lonely wall. I saw the movie Leyao had invested in once again. It turned out that there was a projector and two small speakers in the trunk. As the visuals and sounds reached our senses, it felt as though the entire world had been completely claimed by Leyao and me. I had never imagined that my world could be reduced to just Leyao, a car, a stretch of railway, a wall, and a movie I had already seen.
Leyao pulled me to sit beside the projector and speakers in the trunk. I said to her, “Why go through all this trouble to watch a movie like this? Besides, I’ve already seen it once!”
Leyao looked at me with tears in her eyes… as if she knew I hadn’t really paid attention to the movie the first time.
Indeed, on the day the movie premiered, I had taken my company’s executives to the cinema, but I spent most of the time chatting with Chen Jingming about company affairs. I eventually fell asleep from exhaustion and didn’t wake up until the end, when Chen Jingming shook me awake. I realized then that I had even missed my final cameo in the film.
At that moment, in that setting, I couldn’t help but pay attention. Twenty minutes later, I finally let the movie sink into my heart. I felt regret and pain at every mistake and missed opportunity between the male and female leads. I lit a cigarette and watched as the camera rapidly shifted between the bar and the damp streets, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. It gave me the feeling that I was living inside this movie, because so many of the scenes were ones I had experienced myself… I found it hard to breathe.
Only when the female lead shouldered her backpack, left the crowded, fast-paced city, and saw the first vast expanse of ocean did I feel I could finally catch my breath. My palms had become damp with sweat.
At the end of the movie, the female lead died in a maritime disaster while pregnant with the male lead’s child, buried forever beneath the sea. Her wealthy father bought her the island she had loved most in life and placed her gravestone there.
It wasn’t until three years after her death that the male lead learned the truth. But out of guilt, he dared not visit the island where she lay at rest. Instead, he could only gaze from a distance across the sea. That’s where my cameo appeared as a distant back view. But this wasn’t even the final scene of the movie. I saw a semi-transparent image: a blue sailboat, with only a resting seagull and the wind gently blowing the sail.
“To the ends of the earth we drift,
Tonight, where is home?
Once I had a home, called talking to myself,
Once I had a room, filled with her sorrow…”
Lu Ben’s song “Wanderer of the Ends of the Earth” became the movie’s closing theme, singing of countless sorrows and partings… Finally, as Lu Ben’s voice filled with a sense of time-worn depth, I felt as if I had been emotionally gutted. I swallowed hard, holding back tears that were about to spill.
The movie ended, and only scattered moonlight remained around us. A cold wind blew Leyao’s hair into disarray, and she skillfully tucked it behind her ear. Softly, she said to me, “In the movie, I died for love, yet I live forever in that man’s heart… But in real life? Haha… I live vibrantly, yet in that man’s heart, I’m just a meteor that shone brightly for a few seconds. But what does that really prove? It just shows that life is life, and art is art. So we keep compromising in life, and chasing those strange, sorrow-born pleasures in art!”
“I agree with you, because we’re all like that.”
“Haha…!” Leyao laughed and laughed… until she stopped laughing, and instead cried… and after crying, she laughed again as she said to me, “Zhaoyang, I’ve decided—I’m going to have a child with Jinfei… We must have a child now. Although we haven’t created one yet, Jinfei’s parents and my father are all waiting for this child’s birth!”
“Mm…”
“Remember this—this woman beside you tonight will no longer have that island in her heart, nor the extending railway tracks… Thank you for creating a place called Xiaoyao Pond and Jinfei Valley for me and Jinfei in the game. That will become the place I long for most in my heart…”
“Mm…”
“And remember this too: keep that island and gravestone I left behind in your heart—even if it’s just a small, insignificant corner, you must remember to place it there.”
“Mm…”
Leyao cupped my face in her hands, tears in her eyes but smiling as she said, “Then I’ll go now. You walk back yourself… Although the path is a bit remote and difficult, you will definitely make it back to that old house, because you have an unshakable belief in your heart.”
“Yes.”
“Good! Good… I’m leaving now… Be good!”
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